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Book of the Week: Seamus Heaney - Beowulf

Seamus Heaney

Susan Roberts

Book of the Week: Seamus Heaney - Beowulf: Episode 6

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Beowulf

Episode 6

Seamus Heaney - Beowulf

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Seamus Heaney - Beowulf, Episode 6

The warrior faces a terrible battle to the death.

The warrior faces a terrible battle to the death. Poet Seamus Heaney continues his translation of the great Anglo-Saxon poem.

Radio 4 pays tribute to Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize-winning poet, internationally recognised as one of the greatest contemporary voices who passed away in September at the age of 74.
Composed towards the end of the first millennium, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is one of the great Northern epics and a classic of European literature. Seamus Heaney's translation , completed near the end of the second millennium is both true, line by line, to the original, as well as being an expression of his own creative, lyrical gift.
Here, in a recording made ten years ago, Seamus Heaney brings his vibrant powerful writing to life as he reads ten fifteen minute extracts from the narrative.
The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then living on, physically and psychically exposed, in that exhausted aftermath. It is not hard to draw parallels between this story and the history of the twentieth century, nor can Heaney's Beowulf fail to be read partly in the light of his Northern Irish upbringing.
But it also transcends such considerations, telling us psychological and spiritual truths that are permanent and liberating.

Beowulf's fight with the evil Grendel's mother.

Produced in Salford by Susan Roberts.
Radio Drama North.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Seamus Heaney reads from his translation of the great Anglo-Saxon poem

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