And now I can see why Seamus Heaney live up to his reputation of being one of the most beautiful poets in the world.

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.

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.

Such a wonderful author and such a lovely edition! This is a very complete compilation of the translations of Seamus Heaney. Thoroughly recommend it! This is a fantastic resource for literature lovers, but especially those who are in the translation field.

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.

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.

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.

I was so grateful to receive this book of translations by Seamus Heaney because he is one of my favourite Irish poets. This book did not disappoint! A must-have collection for every Heaney lover.

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.

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.