Sweeney Astray
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Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish is a translation of Buile Shuibhne created by Seamus Heaney and published in 1984.
This translation was well-received in many circles and, like his later version of Beowulf, has largely replaced earlier translations on college syllabi.
One critic writes:
Sweeney Astray is a masterpiece on many levels: for the complex weave of its themes to the lyrical quality of its prose--accentuated greatly, of course, by Seamus Heaney's virtuoso translation. We follow mad Sweeney in his crazed wanderings through the forest and hills, torn within himself by his love of the wild and his incurable loneliness. The tale is presented as chunks of narrative interspersed with segments of poetry, their quiet, melancholy beauty evoking the sounds of windsong and rain.[1]