Finished reading: Beowulf: a Translation and Commentary, Together with Sellic Spell by J. R. R. Tolkien 📚

Tolkien’s prose translation of the Old English poem “Beowulf” aims to hew closely to the original sense and details of the poem. In this Tolkien’s scholarly expertise in Old English is evident. But it looses some of the poetic majesty of the original - and of Seamus Heaney’s later verse translation.