Despite the "author" of Sweeney Astray being listed as "Anonymous" on this site, this particular translation was actually done by poet (and Beowulf, translator), Seamus Heaney. Although I understand that the repetition of words/facts and the constant shifting from prose to verse and back again are very much in line with the "original" legend, I found the format (and, again, the redundancies) a bit aggravating at times. For a relatively short play, the repetitions are particularly noticeable. I find Sweeney Astray more the type of play you read than the type you'd want to see performed. And if it were performed, it would serve better as something very stark and simplistic, rather than an elaborate and gaudy affair.Heaney's Irish version of Sweeney Astray is translated from Buile Shuibhne and centers around "mad Sweeney," violent and impetuous, and cursed by transformation into a wandering bird. The moments of loneliness hit home, but the oftentimes self-lamenting, "woe is me" quality, in my mind, did not make Sweeney seemed sufficiently redeemed towards the end. All in all, Heaney's done a good job of translating, but it is the story itself that fails to captivate me, and although Heaney has often been praised for the prose/verse combination, I did not find it particularly illuminating or enlightening.
This story is a combination of narrative and verse and tells a story based somewhat on historical events in 637 AD. Like gossip, the story takes on a life of its own. Sweeney, an Irish king insults and assaults a priest. (His wife tries to deter him by grabbing his cloak, but he gets out and makes his assault buck naked.) The king then is called to battle, which he loses. The priest puts a curse on him, and he goes mad, grows feathers and leaps and flies all over Ireland subsisting on watercress and water, living in treetops and crags. He has a leaping contest with a hag and is pursued by bleeding headless bodies and disembodied goat and dog heads.His madness brings him the gifts and hardship of living in the natural world. He suffers a yearning for the constraints and comforts of the church, family and politics, but cannot abandon his love of nature and the land for them. This "madness" has sanity.
What do You think about Sweeney Astray (1985)?
A friend who shares my love of Flann O'Brien gave me a copy of Heaney's Sweeney many years ago and I thought of it wistfully when Heaney made his last leap a few weeks ago. The story is of Sweeney the Celtic king and his adventures after he is cursed with madness by a cleric. There is no plot to speak of, just a narrative broken by spontaneous verse delivered by Sweeney as he is driven throughout Ireland by his madness and further encounters with the Church. The theme is of relentless persecution, and yet the tone is light, and at times quite funny.
—Thomas
This good as it gets version of the Irish medieval saga, Buile Suibhne, isn’t all that good. Sweeney is a not too interesting king who offends a priest, as Ireland sits on the cusp of Christian supremacy, and is turned mad (and into a kind of bird). He flits around the country, fleeing from un-fated dangers until his fated death eventually occurs. Heaney is wonderful but the tale lost whatever tragic potential it carried long ago and works best as a kind of early travelogue of the Irish countryside. A beautiful land, cursed by a dull legend.
—Rick
