Looking for Monster Poems--Translations, especially!
 

Folks,

I am trying to track down verse translations of poems that feature monsters. I'm trying without success, for example, to find the Volsunga Saga (which has several excellent werewolf stories). A good verse translation of the Ramayana or of parts of the Mahabharata would be lovely. I do know our own Charles Martin has recently done the Bhaghavad-Gita, and I need to track that down for his vision of Krishna as the "destroyer of worlds."

If any of you have done such translations (metrical or free verse) or can point me in the right direction, I'd love to see the work. I'm putting together a monster poem anthology (from Gilgamesh on)--and it's pretty complete, but the prose translation thing is hanging me up with a number of texts.

Thanks!

Tony

p.s. Feel free to pm me if you like.

The Argonautica
 

Oh, by the way, I'd LOVE to find a verse translation of key moments in the Argonautica, as when Jason encounters the sirens, plows the field and plants the dragon teeth, and so on.

Tony, have you checked the complete works of William Morris - I know he translated a good deal from Icelandic - and I believe he did a Volsunga Saga which may also be found under the title "The Story of the Volsungs."

Give Pooch a whistle:

http://www.nea.gov/features/writers/...r.php?id=11_15

I'm quite sure I've found bits of Volsunga Saga, but this morning I'm having trouble finding what I found. But I did find the site of Monash University, and I ran a search there, which brought up these hits:

Volsung result set

I see a William Morris 1888 translation mentioned, which seems promising. Here is the WorldCat record for it:

WorldCat page for Morris Volsunga Saga

So you know it's in libraries....

Hi Maryann,

Sadly, the Morris is in prose. I know he did a long poem of his own based on Sigurd, and it ain't bad: http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/sigurdII.html -- I think I can use it.

Thanks! T

Julie,

That's great! I'll contact him. Thanks T

Have you looked at Ovid's Metamorphoses? I tend to teach from the Rolfe Humphries translation. There are several good monsters in it.

Susan

Petronius Satyricon has a good werewolf scene. Lucan's Pharsalia has a necromancer who uses corpses to summon the spirits of the dead.
Don't forget Spenser's dragon in Canto I of the Faerie Queene. Tennyson's The Kraken.

Good luck
Lance

Tony, the Sullivan Murphy Beowulf gives you three great monsters, Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. Longman/Pearson.