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The Translations of Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf (1999) was hailed as a masterpiece, alerting readers to his extraordinary ability to tune into other poets and languages and render their work fresh and alive in his own voice. In fact, as this volume attests, from the very beginning translation informed over fifty years of Heaney's critical and creative output, to which the posthumous publication of his translation of Virgil's Aeneid Book VI (2016) - also widely acclaimed - made a fitting epilogue.Heaney not only translated classic works of Latin and Old English but also a great number of poems from Spanish, Romanian, Dutch, Russian, German, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, classical and modern Greek, modern and Middle French, medieval and modern Italian, and more. He was drawn in particular to the language of his homeland, a preoccupation that runs through this volume in those translations from Old, Middle and modern Irish. As he 'If you lived in the Irish countryside as I did in my childhood, you lived in a primal Gaeltacht.'The breadth and depth in evidence here is from the stark landscapes of Sweeney's Ireland to Virgil and Dante's living underworlds, from monastic hymns and prayers to the civic and familial tragedies of Sophocles and Kochanowski.As editor, Marco Sonzogni frames the translations with the poet's own writings on his works, drawing from various introductions, interviews and commentaries. Collectively we are brought closer to an understanding of the remarkable extent of Heaney's talent, a genius for interpretation and transformation that distinguish him as one of the great poet-translators of all time.
704 pages, Hardcover
First published March 21, 2023
34 people are currently reading
214 people want to read
About the author
Seamus Heaney
380 books1,091 followersWorks of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections
Wintering Out
(1972) and
Field Work
(1979) as well as a translation of
Beowulf
(1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.
This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Heaney on Wikipedia.
This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Heaney on Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 11, 2023
If this had commentary on the poems as well as Heaney's motivation to translate those poems, and if I liked poetry more than I do, this could have been a five star book. The trouble is, I rarely found myself appreciating the fine choice of phrase, focusing instead on the meaning.
Here, Heaney's talent really becomes apparent. His Beowulf truly is superb - making its story and subtleties clearer and easier to follow and more memorable than any other translation I've encountered. His two translations of Sophocles make those plays feel engaging and deep and interesting in ways I've never got from my prior attempts to read them. And his take on book 6 of the Aeneid makes me want to give that another go (I've never made it past Carthage in the translations I've tried before).
If the job of a translator is to convey the meaning and intent and tone of the original author to a new audience, in other words, Heaney appears to have been a superb translator. This - even ignoring the vast array of source languages - is a rare and impressive ability. Making me interested enough to consider trying more poetry again is a rarer talent still.
Here, Heaney's talent really becomes apparent. His Beowulf truly is superb - making its story and subtleties clearer and easier to follow and more memorable than any other translation I've encountered. His two translations of Sophocles make those plays feel engaging and deep and interesting in ways I've never got from my prior attempts to read them. And his take on book 6 of the Aeneid makes me want to give that another go (I've never made it past Carthage in the translations I've tried before).
If the job of a translator is to convey the meaning and intent and tone of the original author to a new audience, in other words, Heaney appears to have been a superb translator. This - even ignoring the vast array of source languages - is a rare and impressive ability. Making me interested enough to consider trying more poetry again is a rarer talent still.
February 13, 2023
I’d read Heaney’s approachable yet linguistically elegant translation of Beowulf long ago, and was excited to see this collection of his translations coming out. The one hundred pieces gathered make for a diverse work, from single stanza poems to epic narratives and timed from Ancient Greece through modernity. The pieces include works from well-known poets such as Baudelaire, Cavafy, Dante, Brodsky, Horace, Sophocles, Ovid, Pushkin, Rilke, and Virgil. But most readers will find new loves among the many poets who aren’t as well-known in the English-reading world, including Irish and Old English poets. I was floored by the pieces by Ana Blandiana, a prolific Romanian poet who’s a household name in Bucharest, though not so well-known beyond.
I’d highly recommend this anthology for poetry readers. Besides gorgeous and clever use of language, the power of story wasn’t lost on Heaney and his tellings of Antigone (titled herein as “The Burial at Thebes,) Beowulf, Philoctetes (titled “The Cure at Troy,”) and others are gripping and well-told.
I’d highly recommend this anthology for poetry readers. Besides gorgeous and clever use of language, the power of story wasn’t lost on Heaney and his tellings of Antigone (titled herein as “The Burial at Thebes,) Beowulf, Philoctetes (titled “The Cure at Troy,”) and others are gripping and well-told.
January 25, 2025
This and the recent Letters must be a sign a single "Collected Works" is coming.
By itself, this is an excellent book though, one I know I'll reread parts of in the near future. Even if only for inspiration.
By itself, this is an excellent book though, one I know I'll reread parts of in the near future. Even if only for inspiration.
August 25, 2023
Really wonderful book. I know I’ll go back to it again and again. Do I wish the poems had been published in their original language? Of course, but it’s still a worthy volume.
February 23, 2023
This was a lovely read, as a huge fan of Heaney. I was familiar with his works in translation in a few different iterations, particularly his translations of Dante. But I'm not sure if I've ever read a book of poetry from different poets, centered around a translator. I love reading works in translation and wanted to prioritize doing more of that this year and this was a novel way of exploring that.
It was interesting to see what poems he landed on to translation, as well as reading the commentary in the back, that united his naturalism and the violence of confronting the outdoors, oftentimes outside of the Irish context that I most strongly associate with him. I am particularly grateful for now discovering the poetry of Marin Sorescu, a Romanian poet I was unfamiliar with up until this point.
It was interesting to see what poems he landed on to translation, as well as reading the commentary in the back, that united his naturalism and the violence of confronting the outdoors, oftentimes outside of the Irish context that I most strongly associate with him. I am particularly grateful for now discovering the poetry of Marin Sorescu, a Romanian poet I was unfamiliar with up until this point.
January 19, 2023
This is another huge Faber publication containing published and unpublished translations of individual poems, followed by the longer texts and plays. As with other Faber complete editions a Commentary is provided at the end. Here the Commentary is mixed with biographical details and timeline and the Commentary itself by Marco Sonzogni is a mixture of some useful textual information, some (often rather obvious) material on the source Heaney is translating from and some unnecessary interpretative musings. This is a long way from the gold standard Jim McCue and Christopher Ricks set in the TS Eliot Collected Poems for Faber where their findings and insight were truly gripping.
There there are the translations. It may be heretical to say but separating Heaney’s translations like this makes this such a drab collection. My interest was piqued for example by the first three cantos of the Inferno. But by the end of Canto III (and also Ugolino) I could frankly see why Heaney might have thought a translation of all of the Inferno was not for him. To have Dante rendered in such an uninteresting way makes for painful reading.
Of the longer works I think Beowulf comes off the best, even if it wouldn’t be my preferred translation of the work. The plays don’t really compel on the page and the final translation from Book VI of the Aeneid is again creaky and ponderous. Its reception at the time when it was probably somewhat overrated was almost certainly coloured by Heaney’s recent death.
I should stress that I remain a huge admirer of Heaney’s work. I don’t feel though that gathering these works together has necessarily done him a service and Sonzogni’s editorial work most certainly has not.
As I have said with previous eBook editions of these Faber Collected Editions they are a nightmare to undertake without another copy and/or e-reader to hand which is ludicrous. As an absolute minimum a hyperlink from a poem or work to the Commentary would have made an untold difference. If Faber want a model as to how to do this properly they need look no further than the John Hopkins/Project Muse editions of Eliot’s Collected Prose whose ePub versions are fantastic. (2)
February 8, 2023
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advanced copy of this book featuring the translations of a Noble Prize Winning poet of works from all around the world.
As a long time comic book reader I have always thought about what superpower I would like most to be gifted with. Flight is usually close to the top, the ability to disappear is one that I would quite enjoy also but that is more a statement of my nature than anything else. However it is the ability to read and speak all the languages of the world all the current ones, the lost, the forgotten or the erased that I think I would enjoy most. Reading a newspaper in any country, doing a crossword puzzle over a coffee, even reading those authors I love so much, but know only their words in translation. Translators get a lot of grief for what they do, and how they do it. I understand some of the criticism, but as I have found so many book that I have loved in translation, I do think translators do a great job, or more than I great job, as great service. The famed poet Seamus Heaney was as well known for his translations as he was for his own works, at least outside of Ireland. The Translations of Seamus Heaney, edited by Mario Sonzogni, is a complete collection of all his translations with some notes left behind at the time of Heaney's passing, a collection of works from all over the world and all times, but all with a beauty that he found worth sharing to as many people as possible.
Seamus Heaney was born in Ireland, in the North, taught in Harvard, was considered the most important Irish poet since Yeats, and won the Noble Prize for Literature. Most Americans will know him for his translation of Beowulf which has a become a mainstay on school summer reading lists. Heaney has also translated many other works, ranging from Irish works, Romanian poems, classic works and more. There are also works of commentary, ideas, notes and biographical sketches of the poets mentioned, along with the works themself.
This has to be the first poetry collection that I have seen that is based on the works of one translator and not on the poet, or themes, or even what is considered essential or classic. As such this is a very mixed bag of works, from small to many pages of verse, from the Aenid, Beowulf, and known poets to many that might be completely new to readers, as many were to me. This is probably one of the most unique collections I have read, with works that were of interest to one man, who wanted to translate them for himself to read and to share with others. There are works that are not commercial, nor probably taught in universities, but are quite good, and deserve their time in the sun.
Recommended for people interested in being translators to see the work involved and in how to accomplish translations that might be of limited interest to people, but still are worthy of the work. Also for readers of poetry, not just Heaney fans, but for works of all kind, for this really is a very different collection. Not a Norton Book of Poetry, nor a Poems to Read Before one Dies, just a lot of different works, chosen by one man, just because. And that makes it all the more interesting.
As a long time comic book reader I have always thought about what superpower I would like most to be gifted with. Flight is usually close to the top, the ability to disappear is one that I would quite enjoy also but that is more a statement of my nature than anything else. However it is the ability to read and speak all the languages of the world all the current ones, the lost, the forgotten or the erased that I think I would enjoy most. Reading a newspaper in any country, doing a crossword puzzle over a coffee, even reading those authors I love so much, but know only their words in translation. Translators get a lot of grief for what they do, and how they do it. I understand some of the criticism, but as I have found so many book that I have loved in translation, I do think translators do a great job, or more than I great job, as great service. The famed poet Seamus Heaney was as well known for his translations as he was for his own works, at least outside of Ireland. The Translations of Seamus Heaney, edited by Mario Sonzogni, is a complete collection of all his translations with some notes left behind at the time of Heaney's passing, a collection of works from all over the world and all times, but all with a beauty that he found worth sharing to as many people as possible.
Seamus Heaney was born in Ireland, in the North, taught in Harvard, was considered the most important Irish poet since Yeats, and won the Noble Prize for Literature. Most Americans will know him for his translation of Beowulf which has a become a mainstay on school summer reading lists. Heaney has also translated many other works, ranging from Irish works, Romanian poems, classic works and more. There are also works of commentary, ideas, notes and biographical sketches of the poets mentioned, along with the works themself.
This has to be the first poetry collection that I have seen that is based on the works of one translator and not on the poet, or themes, or even what is considered essential or classic. As such this is a very mixed bag of works, from small to many pages of verse, from the Aenid, Beowulf, and known poets to many that might be completely new to readers, as many were to me. This is probably one of the most unique collections I have read, with works that were of interest to one man, who wanted to translate them for himself to read and to share with others. There are works that are not commercial, nor probably taught in universities, but are quite good, and deserve their time in the sun.
Recommended for people interested in being translators to see the work involved and in how to accomplish translations that might be of limited interest to people, but still are worthy of the work. Also for readers of poetry, not just Heaney fans, but for works of all kind, for this really is a very different collection. Not a Norton Book of Poetry, nor a Poems to Read Before one Dies, just a lot of different works, chosen by one man, just because. And that makes it all the more interesting.
February 24, 2025
The Translations of Seamus Heaney collects one hundred and one works translated by Heaney from fourteen languages, not all of which the poet read. They vary tremendously in length, from four-line marginalia poems to the 3,182 line of his translation of Beowulf, and are thus too varied to be easily summed up. my favourite, perhaps, is 'Wind fierce tonight', a four-line, ninth-century Old Irish poem written in the margins of a book of Latin grammar; but it was the thousand-plus lines of Aeneid Book VI that persuaded me to pick up the collection in the first place - and also reminded me that I liked ancient poetry in the first place.
There are many ways to translate a poem. Broadly speaking, there is the 'crib' - an aid to reading in the original - and the 'version' - a new poetic take on an old work. Many of these poems are a variety of 'version' in which a section of translation is incorporated into a new composition. Many are not complete translations of works, but abridged versions. In both of these cases I was a little disappointed to only get a part of the work. In some cases I think the source work leads me to enjoy the poetry less - I believe that this is the case with Beowulf. Nonetheless, overall, the quality is high and I got a lot our of the collection.
As a former classicist with an interest in the medieval, I was a little disappointed that the commentary (and introduction) is almost entirely about Heaney's life and development as poet, and almost nothing about the original work. In the case of Beowulf, because I happened to have it handy in its own volume, the commentary is almost entirely a repetition of the second half of the introduction on the process of translation, containing nothing of the (to me more interesting) first half on the poem itself. In the cases of these longer works, where an introduction by the poet exists, it is often more interesting to find that than to rely on the commentary here.
There are several editorial issues with the kobo edition of this collection. Most glaringly, line 3 of The Testament of Cresseid reproduces a chunk of line 300 of the Moralitas of 'The Lion and the Mouse'. But throughout, there are mysterious spaces that appear at random. There are also some frustrating aspects of design - the poems and commentary on them are not linked in any of the ways that the ebook format allows; also, the commentary refers to the poems by numbers that do not appear anywhere else in the volume. Just a few strange decisions.
There are many ways to translate a poem. Broadly speaking, there is the 'crib' - an aid to reading in the original - and the 'version' - a new poetic take on an old work. Many of these poems are a variety of 'version' in which a section of translation is incorporated into a new composition. Many are not complete translations of works, but abridged versions. In both of these cases I was a little disappointed to only get a part of the work. In some cases I think the source work leads me to enjoy the poetry less - I believe that this is the case with Beowulf. Nonetheless, overall, the quality is high and I got a lot our of the collection.
As a former classicist with an interest in the medieval, I was a little disappointed that the commentary (and introduction) is almost entirely about Heaney's life and development as poet, and almost nothing about the original work. In the case of Beowulf, because I happened to have it handy in its own volume, the commentary is almost entirely a repetition of the second half of the introduction on the process of translation, containing nothing of the (to me more interesting) first half on the poem itself. In the cases of these longer works, where an introduction by the poet exists, it is often more interesting to find that than to rely on the commentary here.
There are several editorial issues with the kobo edition of this collection. Most glaringly, line 3 of The Testament of Cresseid reproduces a chunk of line 300 of the Moralitas of 'The Lion and the Mouse'. But throughout, there are mysterious spaces that appear at random. There are also some frustrating aspects of design - the poems and commentary on them are not linked in any of the ways that the ebook format allows; also, the commentary refers to the poems by numbers that do not appear anywhere else in the volume. Just a few strange decisions.
June 8, 2023
This is a fantastic collection of translations made by Seamus Heaney covering 101 texts in 14 languages (he had some help with some of the languages). Everyone from Irish poets to Dante, Baudelaire, Pushkin, Virgil, and the translation he did of Beowulf. He describes translators as "creative stealers" and writers and translators have the same artistic task. Having tried to translate a Marivaux play from French to English, I learned that it is not just about choosing the right words, it is how to capture the essence and feeling of the passage in a different language. Heaney's translations in this volume are well done and what I particularly loved about this book is that there is a commentary section that gives more background and context on Seamus Heaney as he translated these works and about his life. Some of the translated authors I had not heard of so I was pleased there is also a biographical notes section with brief bios on each author. This book is for fans of Seamus Heaney as well as readers of the classics and for those who want to expand their knowledge to other writers.
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.
Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC and I left this review voluntarily.
February 9, 2025
"Séamus, make me a side-arm to take on the earth,/a suitable tool for digging and grubbing the ground..."
This translation of a poem by Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin calls up Heaney's "Digging", the first poem in his first major publication, which seems apt considering how this anthology demonstrates the continuous significance translation has had on Heaney's poetic practice. It juxtaposes his adaptations of canonical authors (Dante, Virgil, Sophocles, Ovid) with the eclectic range of other writers Heaney translated, with intriguing thematic links arising from these pairings.
The pleas to Heaven in "Sweeney Astray" find themselves echoed in "The Testament of Cresseid", the tragedy of Jan Kochanowski's "Laments" re-vocalise the contemplations of mortality of "The Burial at Thebes", the landscape and culture of Ireland re-presented by authors from the medieval era to the 20th century. It's a volume that captures the sheer scope and ingenuity of Heaney's work.
This translation of a poem by Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin calls up Heaney's "Digging", the first poem in his first major publication, which seems apt considering how this anthology demonstrates the continuous significance translation has had on Heaney's poetic practice. It juxtaposes his adaptations of canonical authors (Dante, Virgil, Sophocles, Ovid) with the eclectic range of other writers Heaney translated, with intriguing thematic links arising from these pairings.
The pleas to Heaven in "Sweeney Astray" find themselves echoed in "The Testament of Cresseid", the tragedy of Jan Kochanowski's "Laments" re-vocalise the contemplations of mortality of "The Burial at Thebes", the landscape and culture of Ireland re-presented by authors from the medieval era to the 20th century. It's a volume that captures the sheer scope and ingenuity of Heaney's work.
February 23, 2023
A fantastic resource for readers, translators, poets, playwrights, and instructors, this enormous and rich volume is a treat in addition to being useful. I loved dipping in and out and found myself reading through giant swathes whole cloth simply because of the language and the commentaries that surround it. It's true that Heaney's approaches don't speak for everyone--no translations do--but they are fascinating.
February 6, 2023
Im trying to read more international authors so I picked this one up. Theres a wide range here, from Romanian and Gaelic poetry to Heaney's take on the Orestia. Heaney's now up there with Ken Liu on my fave translators list.
September 29, 2025
It's a good piece, and great to have in a single edition. The notes can be a bit interpretive, though. I don't come to an edition like this looking for criticism - give me more textual notes, version histories, and Heaney's own words on the subject and I'd be happier.
March 20, 2023
Full review will go up here anon after it has gone up on The Dreamcage. The star rating should be the giveaway though.
June 1, 2023
The first ever collected volume of all of Seamus Heaney’s translations, 101 of them across 14 languages here gathered together with a useful commentary. An excellent resource.
July 1, 2023
And now I can see why Seamus Heaney live up to his reputation of being one of the most beautiful poets in the world.
January 10, 2024
Immense.
July 30, 2024
Came for Heaney’s Ovid translations and stayed for his Horace !
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews