Beowulf 0713161477, 9780713161472, 0713161485, 9780713161489

Table of contents :
1. INTRODUCTION 7
2. THE WORLD OF THE POEM 12
Words and meaning 12
Characters and emotions 15
Money, worth, prestige 18
Swords, halls, and symbols 21
Allusion and reality 24
3. THE STRUCTURE OF THE POEM 28
Balance and interlace 28
The implications of digression 29
The ironic image 34
Performatives and perceptions 38
The heathens and the monsters 41
4. POETRY AND ITS FUNCTIONS 45
Compounds, variations, formulas 45
Fragmentation and control 48
Stasis, pleonasm, cumulation 51
The gnomic voice 55
5. AFTERWORD 59
FURTHER READING 62
INDEX 63

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S T U D IE S I N E N G L IS H L I T E R A T U R E N o . 70

General Editor D avid Daiches

A lread y published in the series: 1. M ilton: Comus and Samson Agonistes by J. B. Broadbent 2. Pope: The Rape o f the Lock by J. S. Cunningham 3. Jane Austen: Emma by Frank Bradbrook 4. W . B. Yeats: The Poems by A. Norman J effares 5. Chaucer: The Knight’s Tale and The Clerk’s Tale by Elizabeth Salter 6. M arlow e: Dr Faustus by J. P. Brockbank 7. H ardy: The Mayor of Casterbridge by Douglas Brown 8. W ebster: The Duchess ofMalfi by Clifford Leech 10. W ordsw orth: The Prelude and other poems by John F. Danby 11. George E liot: Middlemarcn by David Daiches 12. C onrad: Lord Jim by Tony Tanner 13. Shakespeare: Hamlet by Kenneth Muir 14. Shakespeare: Macbeth by John Russell Brown 15. Shakespeare: King Lear by Nicholas Brooke 16. Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing by J. R. Mulryne 17. D onne: Songs and Sonets by A. J. Smith 18. Marvell: Poems by Dennis Davison 19. Dickens: Great Expectations by R. George Thomas 20. E m ily B ronte: Wuthering Heights by Frank Goodridge 21. Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice by A. D. Moody

22. Tennyson: In Memoriam by K. IV. Gransden 23. Fielding: Tom Jones by /. Ehrenpreis 24. Shakespeare: Henry IV by R.J.Beck 25. Shakespeare: As You Like It by MichaelJamieson 26. Shakespeare: The W inter’s Tale by A . D, Nuttall 28. D . H . Law rence: Sons and Lovers by Gämini Salgädo 29. Dickens: Little Dorrit by J. C. Reid 30. E. M. Forster: A Passage to India by John Colmer 31. Shakespeare: Richard II by A. R. Humphreys 32. H enry Jam es: The Portrait of a Lady by David Galloway 33. Gissing: New Grub Street by P. J. Keating 34. Blake: The Lyric Poetry by John Holloway 35. Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Stephen Fender 36. M ark T w ain: Huckleberry Finn by Jonathan Raban 37. T . S. E liot: The Waste Land by Helen Williams (2nd edition) 38. Sw ift: Gulliver’s Travels by Angus Ross 39. Shakespeare: The Tempest by John Russell Brown 40. C onrad: Nostromo by Juliet McLauchlan 41. Tennyson: The Early Poems by John Pettigrew 42. G olding: Lord of the Flies by John S. Whitley

A lread y published in the series (continued): 43. H ardy: Tcss of the D ’Urbervilles by Bruce Hugman 44. Shakespeare: Antony and Cleopatra by Robin Lee 45. W ebster: The White Devil by D. C. Gunby 46. D. H. Lawrence: The Rainbow by Frank Glover-Smith 47. Shakespeare: Othello by Juliet, McLauchlan 48. Virginia W oolf: To the Lighthouse by Stella McNichol 49. Pope: The Dunciad by Howard Erskine-Hill 50. Jam es Joyce: Ulysses by Michael Mason 51. Tobias Sm ollett: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker by John Valdimir Price 52. Jam es Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Harvey Peter Sucksmith 53. Gerard Manley H opkins: The Poems by R. K. R. Thornton 54. Dickens: Bleak House by Grahame Smith 55. Samuel Richardson: Clarissa by Anthony Kearney 56. W ordsw orth and Coleridge: The Lyrical Ballads by Stephen Prickett

57. Shakespeare: Measure for Measure by Nigel Alexander 58. Shakespeare: Coriolanus by Brian Vickers 59. Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde by A. C. Spearing 60. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby by John S. Whitley 61. John Gay: The Beggar’s Opera by Peter Lewis 62. Patrick W hite: Voss by William Walsh 63. H uxley and O rw ell: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four by Jcnni Calder 64. Poetry of the First W orld W ar by J. M. Gregson 65. Shakespeare: Julius Caesar by David Daiches 66. Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart by Kate Turkington 67. Dickens: David Copperfield by Philip Collins 68. T ourneur: The Revenger’s Tragedy by Philip J. Ayres 69. Melville: Moby Dick by Brian Way

BEO W U LF by T. A. SHIPPEY

,

Fellow o f St Jolm *s College Oxford

ED W ARD ARNO LD

®

T. A. SHIPPEY 19 7 8

First published 1978 b y Edw ard Arnold (Publishers) Ltd 4 1 Bedford Square London W C i B 3D P I S B N o 7 1 3 1 6 14 7 7 Boards I S B N o 7 1 3 1 6 14 8 5 Paper A ll rights reserved. N o part o f this publication m ay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or b y any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission o f Edw ard Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. This book is published in tw o editions. T h e paperback edition is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, b y w a y o f trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers’ prior consent in any form o f binding or cover other than that in w hich it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon any subsequent purchaser.

Acknowledgement: T h e poem is quoted w ith line references, and reprinted b y permission o f the publisher, from Beowulf, ed. F. Klaeber (3rd edn, Lexington, Mass.: D . C . Heath and Com pany, 1950). Editorial diacritics have not been reproduced.

Printed and bound in Great Britain at The Camelot Press Ltd , Southampton

Generat Preface T h e object o f this series is to provide studies o f individual novels, plays and groups o f poems and essays w hich are know n to be w id ely read b y students. T h e emphasis is on clarification and evaluation; biographical and historical facts, while they m ay be discussed w hen they throw light on particular elements in a w riter’s w ork, are generally subordinated to critical discussion. W h a t kind o f w o rk is this? W h a t exactly goes on here? H o w good is this w ork, and w h y ? These are the questions that each w riter w ill try to answer. It should be emphasized that these studies are written on the assump­ tion that the reader has already read carefully the w o rk discussed. T he objective is not to enable students to deliver opinions about w orks they have not read, nor is it to provide ready-made ideas to be applied to works that have been read. In one sense all critical interpretation can be regarded as foisting opinions on readers, but to accept this is to deny the advantages o f any sort o f critical discussion directed at students or indeed at anybody else. T he aim o f these studies is to provide w hat Coleridge called in another context ‘aids to reflection’ about the w orks discussed. T h e interpretations are offered as suggestive rather than as definitive, in the hope o f stimulating the reader into developing further his ow n insights. This is after all the function o f all critical discourse am ong sensible people. Because o f the interest which this kind o f study has aroused, it has been decided to extend it first from merely English literature to include also some selected works o f American literature and n o w further to include selected works in English b y Com m onwealth writers. The criterion w ill remain that the book studied is important in itself and is w idely read by students. DAVID DAICHES

Contents 1 2

3

4

5

INTRODUCTION

7

THE WORLD OF THE POEM

12

W ords and meaning

12

Characters and emotions

15

M oney, worth, prestige

18

Swords, halls, and symbols

21

Allusion and reality

24

THE STRUCTURE OF THE POEM

28

Balance and interlace

28

The implications o f digression

29

The ironic image

34

Performatives and perceptions

38

The heathens and the monsters

41

POETRY AND ITS FUNCTIONS

45

Compounds, variations, formulas

45

Fragmentation and control

48

Stasis, pleonasm, cumulation

51

The gnomic voice

55

AFTERWORD

59

FURTHER READING

Ó2

INDEX

63

i . Introduction Criticism o f B eow u lf began in falsity and bias. In 170 5 H um frey W an ley wrote that in the poem descripta videntur bella, quae Beowulfus (quidam

Danus ex Regia Scyldingorum stirpe ortus) gessit contra Sueciae Regulos [are seen described the wars w hich B e o w u lf (a certain Dane sprung from the royal stock o f the Scyldings) w aged against the petty kings o f Sweden]. A ll the facts given b y this precis are w rong. T h e hero o f the poem was not a Dane nor a Scylding, and though he did w age w ar against the Swedes, the poet’s account o f them occupies only six lines (2 3 9 1-6 ) out o f more than three thousand. W an ley was misled b y the fact that there are tw o Beowulfs in the poem, but more seriously b y his underlying assumption that epics ought to be about ‘arms and the man’ , about the foundation o f dynasties and the warlike birth o f nations. Grim ur Thorkelin, the Icelander w ho

published the first printed

edition o f B eow u lf in 18 15 , knew enough to correct W an ley on the point o f the hero’s nationality, but still felt obliged to insist that the poem was de Donorum Rebus Gestis [about the deeds o f the Danes], that it was a Scyldingid comparable w ith H om er’s Iliad and V irg il’s

Aeneid. These errors o f antiquity were not, perhaps, inevitable, but they have remained typical. A ll critics o fB e o w u lf& d the temptation, at some point, to assimilate the poem to contemporary canons o f ‘good taste’ , whether these are neo-classical and nationalistic, as in Thorkelin’s time, or socially conscious and m orally concerned, as in the present day. Partly this is because the poem is defenceless : w e do not know when it was written, or how , b y w hom , or for what kind o f audience. It is accordingly easy to fit ‘backgrounds’ to it and insist that these must dominate interpretation. H ow ever, the consistency o f critical uneasiness over the centuries suggests that there is also in the poem something deeply i f accidentally provocative. It is this w hich made Brigid B rophy and her colleagues put it first on their list o f Fifty Works o f Literature We Can Do Without, w hich calls forth the traditional undergraduate jokes about mead-swilling and retarded ceorls, and which led Kingsley Am is to write his itch-scratching poem :

8

B EO W U L F

So, bored w ith dragons, he lay dow n to sleep, Locking for good his massive hoard o f w o r d s . . . T h e common factor in all these snipings, one should note, is embarrass­ ment. Again and again B eow u lf produces in readers (especially highly trained readers) that feeling w hich simple people experience the first time they see Frenchmen kissing each other formally and in public - surprise, horror, a dumb sense that social signals no longer mean what they should. The simplest w a y o f coping w ith this is to laugh, so that the taboo is acceptably transformed into the comic. A politer means o f evasion is to look the other w ay. Truth, however, depends on grasping the fact that social signals are arbitrary, conventional and to be understood only within the system o f which they are part. W ithout this all-purpose insight

B eow ulf remains incomprehensible, at the m ercy o f critical fashion. Take, for instance, boasting. O ur ow n culture puts v e ry strong emphasis on modest self-deprecation: it is in all circumstances w ron g to speak o f oneself highly and without qualification. This embargo is reinforced b y such literary stereotypes as the ‘braggart soldier’ o f Spenser or Shakespeare, whose words mask his cowardice, or the ‘strong, silent Englishman’ o f popular fiction fifty years ago (his silence, note, was an index o f his strength). But B eow u lf ignores it. Before every major combat its hero delivers at least one speech in praise o f his o w n courage, promising to do great deeds (632-8), to pursue Grendel’s mother wherever she m ay hide (139 2 -4 ), not to flee from the dragon the space o f a foot (2524 -7). O n this last occasion he goes further and orders his men not to accompany him : ‘It is no expedition for you, nor is it in the pow er o f any man but me alone that he should try his strength w ith the monster, perform heroic deeds’ (2 53 2 -5). H e turns out to be w ron g here (one o f his men comes to save him), and critics have found the boast hard to forgive. Y e t other characters in the poem appreciate and admire his speeches; w e are told o f the Danish queen : D am w ife þa w o rd gilpewide Geates.

w el licodon, (639-40)

[The words pleased the w om an gready, the boasting speech o f the Geat.] O ur difficulties are summed up in the w o rd g ilp , used thirteen times in B eow u lf and for the most part favourably, but surviving in m odem English only as ‘yelp’, the ignominious and em pty noise o f curs. Semantic and cultural shifts like that make it hard to v ie w B e o w u lf impartially and, in particular, to observe that, though his limits on boastfulness are not

INTROD UCTION

9

ours, nevertheless he does observe one limit v e ry strictly. In all his

gylpspraece he never promises success. H e promises to succeed or die (see lines 6 3 6 -7 , 14 9 0 -9 1, 2 5 3 5 -7 ) . T h e striking similarity o f these three speech-endings suggests that men in the Beowulfian culture k new a brag fro m a promise as w ell as w e do, but that they w ere allowed to feel confident in their o w n w ill-p o w er as w e are not - a difference, certainly, but not a ridiculous one. A fair response to B eo w u lf therefore involves a relative v ie w o f modesty. T h e same is true o f drink. A le, beer, w ine and mead are mentioned m ore than fo rty times in the poem, while there is no w o rd for any item o f food at all - the source, evidently, o f m any m odem objec­ tions. W o rse still, the characters v ie w this w ith complacency. W h e n B e o w u lf says to Unferth that he has said a great deal about Breca,

beore druncen (53 1), he clearly means that Unferth is ‘drunk on beer’ and accordingly unreliable. T h e Danish queen W ealhtheow , how ever, once m ore causes semantic difficulty w hen she uses the same w o rd in her idyllic description o f H eorot ( 1 2 2 8 - 3 1 ) : ‘Here every man is true to the other, kind-hearted and loyal to his lord, the thanes are united, the people all w illing, the drunken retainers [druncne dryhtguman] do as I say / Nervousness breaks out am ong m any translators at this stage, w ith

druncne rendered as ‘carousing* or ‘cheered w ith drink* or ‘wine-glad* or even m ore circuitous paraphrase. B u t the problem is a cultural one; w e cannot translate druncne as ‘drunken* only because it seems to us not to collocate w ith w ords like ‘true* and ‘loyal* and ‘united*. O ur conven­ tional w isdom says that drunkenness is associated w ith weakness o f character. O ne result is that w e find it hard to respond to the willed evocation o f w arm th and jo viality in such scenes as the one B e o w u lf imagines in lines 6 0 3 -6 : ‘Gæp eft se pc m ot to medo m odig, ofer ylda beam sunne sweglw ered

sippan morgenleoht opres dogores, su pan scineð !*

[He w h o can w ill then go boldly to his mead, once the light o f next day*s m orning, the sun clothed in glory, shines from the south over the children o f men.] T o us strong drink and early m orning cheerfulness are proverbially opposed. H ow ever, there are m ore serious consequences o f the old English/modem English cultural gap, centring for the most part on the problem o f violence.

BEOWULF

IO

This most powerful o f m odem impieties is n o w generally reclassified as ‘obscene’ , while it is axiomatic that ‘violence breeds violence’ and ‘violence never solves anything’ . T he story o f Beowulf, though, rests on three sudden applications o f force, w hich are largely successful. In so far as they are not, moreover, one m ight conclude that the weakness stems from an insufficiency o f violence rather than an excess o f it; i f B e o w u lf had been stronger and better supported he might even have survived the dragon. In any case the main and distinctive quality o f the hero is not his courtesy nor his piety nor even his courage, but his physical strength (which w e are very likely to call ‘raw ’ or ‘brute’). The poet furthermore relishes disturbingly his m any opportunities for describing violence, and exploits them in a direct and earthy w ay. W h en B e o w u lf seizes Grendel’s hand fingras burston [fingers burst], seonowe onspruugon, burston banlocan [sinews sprang, bone-locks burst]. A s the giant sword cuts through Grendel’s mother’s neck, the poet is there to explore the shearing process: banhringas bræc;

bil eal ðurhwod

fægne flæschoman;

heo on flet gecrong,

sweord wæs swatig,

secg weorce gefeh.

(156 7 -9 )

[It broke the bone-rings; the sword drove right through the doomed covering o f flesh. She fell to the floor. The sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed.] ‘Bone-ring’ is an expressive and realistic coinage for ‘vertebra’ ; one feels it was not only B e o w u lf w ho rejoiced in the blood and bone and flesh. A n d i f one thinks reassuringly that these actions are after all carried out only against cannibalistic monsters, w ho themselves drink blood, snap joints, devour feet and hands like man-eating tigers, it is w orth recalling ‘D ayraven’ , the Frankish standard-bearer w hom B e o w u lf remembers killing near the end o f his ow n life - a man, be it noted, fighting in defence o f his ow n home. He did not die b y the sword, B e o w u lf ruminates: ‘ac him hildegrap banhus gebræc.’

heortan wylm as, (2507-8)

[But m y w ar-grip broke his bone-house and the pulses o f his heart.] The smashed ribs, the squeezed heart once more make B e o w u lf’s bearhug tactile. T he poet is, in fact, taking evident aesthetic pleasure in the details o f violence. Here many critics dig in their heels. M orality insists that ferocity must not pay. T h e poet is only ‘bringing the realities o f violence home’ , illustrating graphically the impulse w hich leads all heroes to their deaths.

INTRO D UCTIO N

II

Such arguments can be pressed forcefully; they look, however, like a n ew form o f ‘bowdlerization’ . It is better to grasp the nettle at once and admit that, as w ith drink and boasting, violence played a different part in the poet’s culture from that w hich it does in ours. Y e t a final conclusion m ay be that no matter h o w m any allowances are made for cultural gaps and semantic shifts, one more w ill always turn out to be vital. Since literary training and com m on experience are such poor guides to the poet’s assumptions, h o w can anyone hope to interpret such fleeting matters as tone o f voice, shade o f meaning, reliable or unreliable narration? T h e answer to this lies in the m odem demonstration that any text, prose or poetry, carries much more information within it than its creator realized or intended. W h a t was implicit knowledge for the poet and his A n glo -Saxo n audience m ay need to be made explicit for us, and the possibility that one’s judgements are ethnocentric has always to be reckoned with. Just the same, m any o f the poet’s beliefs and prejudices are downright familiar, and others respond to analysis. T he essential caveat is that the fram ework within w hich judgements are made needs to be set up before fine literary details are filled in. G ood readers have probably always done this, consciously or unconsciously; bad readers have approached the poem already burdened w ith their ow n hypo­ thetical Scyldingids.

2. The

W orld o f the Poem

Words and meaning A single scene w ill do to document these assertions - that o f B eo w u lf's arrival in Denmark and his challenge b y the coastguard (lines 229-300), a scene w hich turns on an evident i f unacknowledged crux. W h at has happened so far is that w e have been introduced to the Danish royal dynasty, the Scyldings; have seen the present king, Hrothgar, build the great hall o f Heorot ; and have then been told h o w Grendel, ‘ the m ighty spirit’ , haunts it and kills its inhabitants. T h e news reaches Beow ulf, still named only as ‘H ygelac’s thane’ ; he chooses his men and sets sail for Denmark. Bu t as soon as he arrives, this speedy progress is checked b y the Danish coastguard, w ho rides dow n and, in the poem’s first passage o f direct speech, asks the hero w ho he is. B e o w u lf replies, still without revealing his name, but giving his father’s and stating his business. The coastguard then begins his next speech w ith a brief m axim or aphorism: ‘Æ ghwæþres sceal scearp scyldwiga w orda ond worca,

gescad witan, se þe w el þenceð.’

(287-9)

Translating this ought not to be difficult. Æ ghwæþer can mean ‘each’ or ‘every’, and gescad comes from a root meaning to divide, or separate, or decide, so there is a little semantic play in the concepts, but hardly v ery much. T h e latest published rendering (Howell D . Chickering’s text and translation o f 1977) has: ‘A keen-witted shield-bearer w h o thinks things out carefully must kn o w the distinction between words and deeds, keep the difference clear.’ This is syntactically accurate. H ow ever, it makes no sense. A n y fool can tell the difference between words and deeds, and B e o w u lf’s deeds an yw ay turn out much the same as his words. W h at can the coastguard mean? T h e problem here is caused b y the fact that proverbs are not merely linguistic phenomena. W e k n o w this from our o w n experience, since w e habitually use formulas w hich are entirely tautologous (‘Business is business’) or on a literal level meaningless (‘D o n ’ t cross your bridges till yo u come to them’), without feeling any block in communication at all.

TH E W O RLD OF THE POEM

13

T h e hidden factor is the extra-linguistic fram e; w e have been taught in childhood when to use proverbs, w hat their metaphors mean, w h o to say them to, and h o w to take them. It is this non-verbal knowledge that w e need to be able to understand the coastguard’s ‘ gnom e’ . Reluctance to reconstruct such intangibles and dogged staring at ‘the text’ have led literary critics only into controversy. Thus one scholar decided that the w ords w ere just a pompous w a y for the coastguard to say he was a keen­ witted shield-bearer; another thought they w ere a kind o f ap o logy; a third takes them as grudging deference (‘I suppose you k n o w w hat yo u are talking about’) ; naturally they have been seen as conveying involved and subtle moral lessons.1 In fact the answer is not especially obscure; but to reach it one must consider not the m axim alone, but the m axim in social and dramatic context. Strong clues to its purport have already been given b y the cautious balancing o f both the coastguard’s initial challenge and B e o w u lf’s subsequent reply. Superficially the coastguard is threatening: he does not dismount, he waves a spear, the first thing he says is ‘W h o are yo u ?’ T h e

second thing he says, though, is his jo b : ‘I have long been the frontierguard, kept w atch over the s e a .. . . ’ So his questions are not idle or unofficial. H e goes on to state the reasons w h y he ought to be suspicious, and also w h y his suspicions m ight be allayed: B e o w u lf and his men have come openly and without permission (innocence or defiance?), one o f them is o f imposing physique and appearance (danger or reassurance?). O n ly after these balanced clauses does he repeat his demand to kn o w w h o the intruders are, and then he does it w ith possibly studied im­ personality: ‘haste is best’ , he says, not ‘you had better hurry.’ In his speech one m ight w ell feel that, though no threat has been expressed, there is one somewhere nearby. That seems exactly w hat the situation calls for. T he coastguard is prepared to use words like ‘pirates’ and ‘spies’ [.scipherge, leassceaweras], and recognizes that even B e o w u lf’s noble bearing m ay belie him. Violence therefore remains a necessary option. A t the same time he keeps these potential insults in the sub­ junctive, not applying them openly till the chance o f peace has been ruled out. T act and firmness are the Dane’s most evident qualities. T o this B e o w u lf replies w ith something like submissiveness, though not apology: he explains his business, but twice invites the coastguard to correct him i f he has been misinformed - ‘give us good advice’ (269), 1 For these opinions see, respectively, W . S. Mackie, Modern Language Review 34 (i939)> P- 5 1 7 ; F. Klaeber’s edition, op. cit.9 p. 13 9 ; James Smith, English 25 (1976), p. 2 2 7 ; M . Pepperdene, ‘B eo w u lf and the Coastguard’ , English Studies 4 7 (1966), pp. 40 9 -19.

B EO W U L F

H

‘you w ill know i f things are indeed as w e have heard said’ (2 7 2 -3 ). W hen he declares his intention o f helping the Danes to fight Grendel, he does so for once w ith reasonable humility, spending six lines on the possibility that he w ill fail. B e o w u lf and the coastguard, in short, make signals to each other o f mutual respect, taking care to adopt the appropriate roles o f Official Inspector (not Personal Challenger), Modest Petitioner (rather than Officious Volunteer). T he question o f dominance is not raised. Both speeches exude the w a ry politeness o f a society in w hich men habitually go armed. A n d then the coastguard has to make up his mind, w hich he does immediately after quoting his m axim . Y e t the situation has not changed. The newcomers have no passports; though one o f them has spoken nicely it is without corroboration; the risk o f piracy must still be there. In this context the tw o lines o f traditional saying express tw o different awarenesses - one, that doubt remains, for words are all that have passed, and ‘deeds speak louder than w ords’ ; that just the same decision cannot be shirked, for ‘needs must w hen the devil drives’ . It is the duty o f a sharp shield-warrior to decide correctly, even on inadequate evidence. ‘H e must be able to ju dge everything, words as well as deeds.’ That is w hat the m axim says, and the coastguard follows it immediately b y doing the right thing and letting the newcomers pass w ith a firm ly ‘performative’ verb, ‘Jc pæt geh yre . . . ’ , ‘I hear that this warband is friendly to the lord o f the Danes.’ He backs his judgem ent to the length o f allowing them to keep their weapons and offering to look after their boat. T h e scene and the saying form an excellent example o f heroic good manners. Naturally w e need to adjust our socially determined notions o f politeness to understand both properly. It is hard to resist the conclusion, furthermore, that the poet was appealing to a taste already formed. T h e exchanges w ith the coastguard and W u lfg ar the doorward immediately following are, after all, redundant to the story as a w h o le; w e could have been taken to the intersection between B e o w u lf and Heorot much more briskly. Their inclusion suggests that the poet knew his audience w ould relish displays o f oral and aural skills from the characters, and w ould also expect to use such skills themselves (for the coastguard’s saying is true generally as w ell as in context, and could be taken as warning listeners to w eigh words w isely too). H ow ever, the main difficulty they present for readers brought up on novels is that they are overwhelm ingly ‘superficial’ : meaning has to be decoded from words and deeds alone (just as in real life), w ith only the slightest indications o f thought. One m ay well wonder whether this is true

TH E W O R L D OF TH E POEM

15

o f B eo w u lf all the time. Is there any sense in it o f discrepancy between the inner character and the outer social role?

Characters and emotions O ne can see straight aw ay that the poet has a sharp eye for discrepancy between actions and feelings. A fter B e o w u lf has made his boast that he w ill fight weaponless against Grendel, he disarms and lies dow n to sleep in Heorot. In a tableau o f heroic propriety his thanes fo llo w suit, surrounding their lord in sleep as they ought to in battle: ‘around him m an y a bold sea-warrior turned to his bed in the half (689-90). B u t w ith the im age established, the poet instantly penetrates it:

p x t he þanon scolde

Næ nig heora pohte, eft eardlufan

æfre gesecean,

folc oþðe freoburh, ac hie hæfdon gefrunen, in p x m winsele

p x v he afeded w æs; p x t hie ær to fela micles

wældeað fom am ,

D enigea léode.

(69 1-6)

[N o t one o f them thought that he w ould ever leave again in search o f his loved home, the noble place and people where he was brought up; but they had heard that in that winehall violent death had taken far too m any o f the Danish people.] His aside does not shatter the tableau, but adds to it a silent stoicism. Still, it shows the poet recognizing that his characters have feelings. Does he, how ever, possess the vocabulary to take inner analysis much further? There are examples w hich suggest that he has not. T h e only things w e are told directly about the coastguard’s state o f mind, for instance, are that he was unafraid (287), and actuated b y curiosity (232). W h e n he saw the shields and armour com ing over the gangplank, hine fy rw y t bræc . . . , ‘curiosity urged him in his thoughts, w hat these men w ere’ . B u t this phrase is used twice m ore in the poem, once in line 19 8 5, w hen B e o w u lf’s king H ygelac asks him h o w he coped w ith Grendel - ‘curiosity urged him’ [hyne fyrw et bræc] - and once in line 2784. This follows the death o f the dragon, w hen W ig la f robs its treasures and takes them back to the dying Beow ulf, so he can leave life easier: A r wæs on ofoste, frætw um gefyrðred; hwæðer collenferð

eftsiðes geom , hyne fyrw et bræc, cwicne gemette.

(2 7 8 3 -5 )

[The messenger was in haste, eager to get back, speeded b y his treasures ; curiosity urged him, whether the bold man w ould find (B eo w ulf) alive.]

BEOWULF

l6

‘Curiosity’ seems a callous w o rd here. ‘A n xiety’ w ould be better, but that w ould not fit the completely relaxed enquiry o f H ygelac, or even the tense but fearless figure o f the coastguard. The poet is using one w o rd to cover mental states w e w ould think perceptibly different - a habit which occasionally leads to deeper confusion.

Hreow, for example, is the O ld English ancestor o f ‘rue’ , and normally has associations o f regret or penitence. In Beowulf, though, it is used once to describe H rothgar’s reaction to the killing o f Æschere b y Grendel’s mother (2129), and once o f B e o w u lf’s reaction to the dragon burning his hall (2328). In both cases it is hard to see h o w ‘distress’ can be taken as far as ‘penitence’, and there is a suspicion that the poet cannot distinguish

hreow from the etym ologically unconnected adjective hreoh, ‘fierce, dis­ turbed’, a w o rd used repeatedly b y itself and in compounds to describe the very similar mixture o f anger and pain felt b y kings and heroes and monsters when they are hurt (see lines 1 3 0 7 ,2 1 3 2 , 2296, etc.). In any case the poet uses wælreow, ‘fierce and deadly’, w ith evident approbation at line 629, blodreoWy ‘fierce and bloody’, w ith equally evident dislike in line 1 7 19 . T he semantic field o f hreow/hreoh between them seems too broad for exactness, while there is equally little useful distinction between any o f the poet’s frequent words for ‘sad’ and ‘sorrow ’ - wræc, torn, breed, and the rest. Characters’ feelings are intense, for they ‘bum ’ and ‘boil’ and ‘seethe’ ; but they are not sharply discriminated. Y e t there are half a dozen places in the poem where w e are asked to dwell on complex mental progressions, some o f them seemingly close to the story’s central theme. M an y critics feel that the speech o f Hrothgar between lines 1700 and 17 8 4 encapsulates the moral o f the poem, and its centre is in turn an account o f a sinner’s development. For some eleven lines Hrothgar describes the root o f sin in success, in the physical happi­ ness and freedom o f a lucky man, like Beowulf. The result, he says, is that: ‘he pæt w yrse ne con - , oð þæt him on innan w eaxeð ond w ridað.’

oferhygda dæl ( 17 3 9 -4 1)

[He does not know the worse - till inside him great arrogance grow s and spreads.] A n d having said so much Hrothgar moves rapidly on to allegory - the guardian o f the soul, the enemy nearby shooting his arrows, the sinner overcome b y diabolic promptings. The ‘rake’s progress’ continues w ith a picture o f avarice and envy, visible results o f inner failure. Bu t w hat was the inner failure? A re arrogance and prosperity inevitably connected?

TH E W O RLD OP TH E POEM

I7

W h a t is ‘the worse’ , and w hat the ‘ bitter arrow ’ that strikes the sleeping soul? M o d em criticism is naturally drawn to explicate these questions, and w e w ould like v e ry m uch to k n o w as w ell w h y B e o w u lf makes no reply to the w hole speech, and whether he sees any connection between it and the calamity w hich falls on him at the end o f his days. W h en the dragon comes, is his suspicion that he has offended G o d justified? A t that later m om ent all the poet can say o f his hero is: breost innan w eoll þeostrum geþoncum ,

swa him g ep yw e ne wæs.

(233I-2) [His heart surged internally w ith dark thoughts, as was not his custom.] M eanwhile H rothgar’s ‘great arrogance grow s and spreads’ offers no more eventual sustenance than his very similar account o f H erem od’s fall tw enty lines before: ‘Y e t in his mind his heart’s treasure grew fierce and bloody.’ T h e nouns and adjectives are clear enough - ‘arrogance’ and ‘dark’ and ‘fierce and bloody’ . T h e verbs, how ever (weaxeð , wridað ,

weoll), remain opaque. Com plaining about this, or straining too hard at the bits o f informa­ tion offered, is as mistaken as trying to w rin g sense from proverbs through verbal analysis alone. T h e fact is that though the poet recognizes sensibly that people have an existence outside their social role, his pre­ occupations are overw helm ingly moral, not psychological, and his morals are based on decisions, results, matters w hich rise to tangibility. It is therefore characteristic for dilemmas to be dissipated suddenly b y action or b y gesture. H rothgar is caught between love and g rief at line 1 877, and weeps ; he pone breostwylmforberan ne mehte [he could not restrain the impulse o f his heart]. Hengest earlier is caught between rage and promise, and breaks out in m urder; ne meahte wæfre mod forhabban in

hrepre [the restless spirit could not contain itself within his heart]. W h en he saw his lord in pain, W ig la f too ne mihte ða forhabban [could not then hold back]. A s for Beow ulf, his ‘dark thoughts’ end wordlessly in preparing his arm our; it is hard to take this as anything but right and proper, like the heroic lack o f introspection w hich the poet tells us is his normal state. In the same w a y the important fact about B e o w u lf’s thanes in H eorot is that, whatever they thought, they stayed b y their leader. Their inner pessimism then only does them credit, just as, a hundred lines later (794-805), their over-optimistic hacking at Grendel is in no sense made foolish b y the fact that blades could not harm him. T he poet reserves the right to say w hat people are thinking; he does not, how ever, regard this as ultimately important.

i8

B EO W U L F

M oney , worthy prestige In v ie w o f the stress on external factors already noted, it is no surprise to find in the heroes o f B eow u lf a streak o f hard materialism. M oney hardly appears in the poem ; the com m on O ld English w o rd for it, feoh, is used b y itself three times, but on tw o o f these occasions is immediately qualified b y phrases meaning ‘ancient treasures’ , which show that the w ord carries its vaguer sense o f ‘valuables’. Y e t lack o f cash does not preclude a continuing interest in payment from both employers and employed. A s soon as Hrothgar hears o f B e o w u lf’s arrival he says he w ill give him treasures for his boldness; his last words before leaving the hero to face Grendel are a promise o f lavish rew ard; he says exactly the same thing to persuade B e o w u lf to pursue Grendel’s mother. Even W ealhtheow feels she has to reinforce her pathetic appeal for help w ith promises (lines 1220 , 12 2 5 -6 ) : ‘I w ill remember your reward. . . . I will give you m any treasures/ D u ty, gratitude, and vengefulness are all present as motives for action, but it is assumed that they have to have tangible support. A s for Beow ulf, he accepts w hat he is given, and shows considerable concern about retaining it. W h en he gets ready to dive into the monsters’ lake (14 7 4 -9 1) he thinks first o f his men, but second o f his property: i f he dies, Hrothgar must send it to his next-of-kin. A ll natural enough, w e m ight think. H ow ever, w e should be careful not to let m odem reverence for ‘economic reality’ brainwash us into cynicism. T hough B e o w u lf is careful to collect his winnings, he shows little interest in keeping them. Thus, after Grendel’s defeat Hrothgar pays him as bounty a golden banner, a helmet, sword, and mail-shirt, eight horses (one o f them saddled), w ith tw o gold bracelets and a torque from W ealhtheow . (He also gives something to each o f the thanes, and remembers to pay compensation for Hondscio, w h o m Grendel killed.) T h e poet still has these objects in mind over a thousand lines later (2 15 2 -7 6 ), when B e o w u lf gives nearly all o f them aw ay a g a in -fo u r horses and all the military objects to H ygelac, three horses and the torque to H ygd . His sole profit from Grendel appears to be one saddled horse and tw o bracelets. Adm ittedly H ygelac gives him a sword in return and ‘seven thousand [hides?]’ , that is, a province to rule, but maybe as one o f only tw o Geatish princes he could have expected that anyw ay. One might note that B e o w u lf also misses an easy chance o f profit when he returns from Grendel’s hall w ith a head and a sword-hilt and no other treasures at all, ‘ though he saw m any there’ . W h y are both he and the poet simultaneously so interested in valuables and so stirred b y the

THE W O RLD OF THE POEM

19

thought o f giving them aw ay? The answer lies in those bugbears o f translation, lo f and dom, ‘honour’, ‘g lo ry’ , ‘praise’ . Everyone has noticed the importance o f these concepts in the poem. B e o w u lf himself says that people ought to gain glory before death

[domes ær deape, line 138 8]. The poet agrees that ‘a man w ill prosper in every nation through lofdædum, praiseworthy deeds’ (lines 2 4 -5 ). T o m odem ears, trained to consider ‘glory-hunting’ discreditable, all this sounds ominous, and m any have felt that the last w o rd o f the poem contains silent reproof, as the Geats say o f B e o w u lf that he w as: manna mildust leodum liðost

ond monðwærust, ond lofgeomost.

(318 1-2)

[The mildest o f men and the gentlest, the kindest to his people, and most eager for praise.] H ow ever, the careful and unusual sym m etry o f the tw o lines suggests that all four adjectives are meant to be in harm ony; the difficulty is no m ore serious than the nervousness over druncen discussed earlier. A ccep­ tance o f lo f and dom as absolute goods is nevertheless b y no means in­ consistent, within the value-scheme o f the poem, w ith a strong interest in ‘portable property’ . Consider B e o w u lf’s treatment o f the coastguard as he returns from H eorot: He þæm batwearde swurd gesealde, on meodubence yrfelafe.

bunden golde

þæt he sy ðþan wæs m aþm e p y weorþra, (19 0 0 -19 0 3)

[He gave that boat-w ard a sword bound w ith gold, so that because o f the treasure, the inherited relic, he was from then on weorpra on the mead-bench.]

Weorpra is the comparative form o f the w o rd that descends to m odem English as ‘w o rth y’ . H ow ever, one could hardly say that the man was ‘w orthier’ on the mead-bench; his character is not changed b y the present at all. One m ight say that he was ‘w orth m ore’ , and that w ould be financially true, but o f course not all that is intended. T h e real point is that the coastguard is m ore highly esteemed as a result o f ow ning the w eapon: it gives him status. A n d this equation o f honour and ownership is entirely characteristic o f the poem. W h en B e o w u lf receives his first four gifts from H rothgar, the poet remarks ‘he had no need to feel shame before warriors at the treasure he was given’ (10 2 5 -6 ), and evidently means that people w ould respect B e o w u lf just because o f his possessions.

20

B EO W U L F

W u lfgar the doorward also assumes that fine feathers make fine birds, for he tells Hrothgar that his n ew visitors seem w o rth y o f esteem ‘from their warlike equipment’ [on wiggetawum, line 368]. T he poet consistently lets characters make an impression through their weapons, responding w ith unfailing admiration to gleaming helmets, bright shields, stacked spears, linked and shining mail. Bu t his reaction is only partly materialistic : the objects are offered as an index o f honour, inner w orth.2 A ll this explains w h y lo f in practice covers ‘generosity’ as w ell as praise; also w h y the poem has no use for m oney (which, being neutral, convertible, and w ith a value permanently fixed, can tell you nothing about status); and m aybe w h y B e o w u lf does not bother to pick up Grendel’s treasure (since it has not been awarded to him, it has about the same value as a bought Victoria Cross, not negligible, but not complete either). As for the hero’s spendthrift homecoming, obviously i f possession o f valuables is a p ro o f o f merit, one o f the most honourable things you can do is advertise yo u r resources b y giving them aw ay ! T h e poet sees virtue in lavish donation as w ell as reception, and thinks it his jo b to record both: Sw a manlice

mære þeoden,

hordweard hæleþa

heaþoræsas geald

mearum ond madmum, se p c secgan w ile

swa h y næfre man lyhð,

soð æfter rihte.

(1046-9)

[In this noble w a y the famous lord, treasure-guardian o f heroes, paid for the battle-charges w ith horses and precious things, as no man w ill ever deny - no man w h o means to tell truth properly.] A consistent fusion o f tangible and intangible is built into the poem’s scenery as into its words. T hough the poet never says straight out that ‘g lo ry’ , ‘w orth’, ‘treasure’, and ‘weapons’ are all aspects o f the same thing, his phraseology does the jo b for him : B e o w u lf is dome gewurpad at line 16 4 5, just as H rothgar’s saddle is since gewurpad at 10 38 and the ‘hallman’ (a tinge o f scepticism here) wæpnum gewurpad, ‘made to look w o rth y b y weapons’ at 3 3 1 . Translation must inevitably be cultural as w ell as semantic. It is w o rth noting, though, that this com plex o f evaluations is not as alien as it m ight look. O ver the last couple o f centuries m odem English has been busily developing the w o rd ‘prestige’ . This meant originally ‘illusion’ , but shifted during the nineteenth century in the direction o f ‘influence or reputation derived from previous character. . . or esp. from past successes’ (so says the Oxford English Dictionary entry, 2 This point is made in greater detail b y George Clark, ‘B eo w u lf’s Arm or’, English Literary History 3 2 (1965), pp. 4 0 9 -4 1.

TH E W O R L D OF THE POEM

21

published in 1909). N o w , o f course, it has become something possessed b y m en o f p o w er and (unlike honour) conferred v e ry largely b y the trappings o f success - the ‘prestigious* car, clothes, wristwatch, hom eaddress. A s such it has strong links w ith dom and lo f Adm ittedly, M r Gladstone in 18 78 called ‘prestige* a ‘base-bom thing* and said specific­ ally that it was not to be used in translating ancient epics. H ow ever, being ‘high-minded* probably spoils m ore criticism than being ‘basebom*. T h e w o rd is a useful reminder o f the w a y abstracts and objects can m ix.

Swords , halls, and symbols W e are liable to call such mixtures ‘symbolism*. Indeed, according to the

O E D a sym bol is ‘something that stands for, represents, or denotes esp. a material object representing or taken to

something else . . .

represent something immaterial or abstract.* T h e coastguard’s sw ord is a sym b o l, then, a material object w hich everyone takes to represent the abstraction weorp. H ow ever, one can easily imagine a member o f Beowulfian society insisting that this is not symbolism at all, just matterof-fact. ‘Look* (he m ight say) ‘you w ear a sword to show yo u ’re ready to fight, and people treat you politely because they can see you are. Dis­ tinguishing between being ready physically (swords), being ready emotionally (courage), and having social status (honour) - that’s just splitting hairs ! T h e three things go together, and i f you lose any one o f them y o u ’ll forfeit the other tw o v e ry soon.’ T o return to modern term inology, there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the object and w hat it represents (like that between wealth and Rolls-Royces). T h e sword is an ‘index’ o f honour - admittedly a stylized one - rather than a ‘sym bol’ tout pur .3 This is not just a dispute over vocabulary. W e need to keep in mind (as I have said already) that social signs in B eow u lf function systematically, in systems w hich cannot be entirely, or even largely, the creation o f the poet. T h e literary associations w hich ‘symbolism’ has acquired tend to blur this perception and hinder appreciation. Swords in B eo w u lf for instance, evidently have a life o f their ow n. T h e young retainer W ig la f draws his as he prepares to help his king in the dragon’s den; and the poet stops for tw enty lines (2 6 11-3 0 ) to remark on the w eapon’s significance. This one was not donated, but first w o n in battle and then inherited. 3

These distinctions, and others, are clearly drawn in Jonathan Culler’s

Structuralist Poetics (London 1975), pp. 16 -20 . Several o f the points made in this essay form particular examples o f the general procedure Culler recommends.

22

B EO W ULF

Accordingly it is a reflection o f the courage shown by W ig la f’s father and (given A n glo-Saxon notions o f good breeding) a sign o f hereditary worth. In the end it becomes totally identified w ith its ow ner’s persona­ lity, so much so, as E. B . Irving has noted,4 that it does not weaken andhe does not melt - w e w ould have expected these verbs the other w a y round. B u t what happens i f you inherit nothing? Since weapons are indexes o f honour and status, deprivation o f them becomes doubly unendurable. B e o w u lf himself imagines a scene (2032-69) in w hich a sword is w orn b y someone like W ig la f w h o had it from his father; but this is seen b y the man from whose father’s corpse it was gloriously taken. ‘ Meaht ðu, min

wine, tnece gecnaw an?* asks a troublemaker [Can you, m y friend, recog­ nize that sword?]. H e means, ‘A re you a man or a mouse?’ , but neither B e o w u lf nor the poet bothers to explain this, since everyone knows the next act has to be murder. In exactly the same w a y the poet feels that the displaying o f a sword to Hengest at the climax o f the ‘Finnsburh Episode’ (lines 1 14 3 -5 ) w ill be self-explanatory. T o us, as it happens, it is not; but w e can see that the object prompts revenge w ith irresistible force and in total silence. In B eow u lf objects can communicate w hole chains o f abstraction and reflection b y their presence alone, and in a w a y felt b y poet and audience to be too natural for words. Some objects in fact reach ‘m ythic’ statu s-m o st obviously, halls. W h at the poet thinks about these can be derived most immediately from his run o f tw enty to thirty compound words for describing them. Halls are for drinking in (‘winehall’ , ‘beerhall’ , ‘meadhall’) ; they are filled w ith people (‘guesthall’, ‘retainer-hall’) ; in them w orth is recognized (‘goldhall’, ‘gifthall’ , ‘ringhall’). T h e y are also the typical though not the only setting for festivity and for poetry. It is this ‘loud merriment in hall’

[dream . . . hludne in healle] which Grendel hears and hates from the beginning, while Hrothgaris poet sings ‘clear in H eorot’ on every one o f the three nights B e o w u lf spends there. W h a t he produces is healgamen

[ the sport (yöu expect) o f halls], and when the Geats look into their gloom y future at the end, the tw o things they fear to lose are their ‘prestigious rings’ [hringweorðung] and the ‘m elody o f the harp’ which, rather implausibly, used to ‘wake the warriors’ (from their beds on the hall floor, that is, see lines 12 3 7 -4 0 ). Finally, whether it is from paint or firelight or candles, halls are associated w ith brightness. H eorot is

goldfah [gold ornamented], and shines like a beacon: lixte se leoma ofer landa fela [the light blazed over m any lands]. Inside it is decorated w ith 4 E. B . Irving Jr, A Reading o f Beowulf (N ew Haven and London, 1968),

p. 159.

THE W O RLD OF THE POEM

23

glittering tapestries, goldfag scinon web after wagum [on the walls the webs shone golden], while at line 997 the poet calls it simply þæt beorhte bold [the bright building]. In the end the dragon comes to B e o w u lf’s home ‘to b um the bright halls’ [beorht hofu bæman], and there is a sudden striking image early on o f Grendel prow ling ‘the treasure-ornamented hall on the black nights’ [sincfage sei stveartum nihtum]. A lready one can see h o w the ‘m ythic’ interpretations come in. T h e hall equals happiness equals light. W h a t do the monsters w hich invade halls equal? T h e y are creatures o f the night, ‘shadow-walkers’ , ‘lurkers in darkness’ , things which have to be under cover b y dawn. It is no great stretch o f the imagination to link their darkness w ith death. M eanwhile the poet’s vocabulary, once more, shows an assumption that the happi­ ness o f the hall means life. In line 2469 old K in g Hrethel ‘gumdream

ofgeaf9 [gave up the jo ys o f men], his grandson B e o w u lf (30 20 -21) ‘laid aside laughter, gamen ondgleodreamy merriment and the jo y s o f song’ , the Last Survivor’s kinsmen (2252) ‘gave up this life, gesawon seledream, had seen the j o y o f the hall’ . T h e compound words show h o w tightly men and harps and halls cluster together in the poet’s mind, and presumably in his audience’s. A similar familiarity informs the untranslated and possibly unconscious metaphor near the end, w hen the poet ruminates that it is a m ystery where w e all must g o : ponne leng ne mæg mon mid his m agum

meduseld buan.

(3064-5)

[W hen a man can no longer, w ith his kinsmen, inhabit the meadhall.]

Meduseld is semantically indistinguishable from its familiar precursors medoærn, medoheal. B y this time, however, w hat it means is ‘Life-G oneBy*. T he poet has no need to explain. Halls are ‘indexes’ o f happiness, then, because in them people are most likely to be free from poverty. T h e y are ‘symbols’ too, because they are crow ded w ith not entirely realistic conventional signs, like harps and gold and brightness. Their vulnerability implies a shared social m yth about the limits o f human capacity (stated most overtly b y the councillor o f K ing Ed w in in Bede).5 H ow ever, they remain at all times stubborn and solid facts, things which could be seen in reality as well as heard about in poetry. It is important that literal-minded Anglo-Saxons could always take halls literally, because w hat they w ould get from B eow ulf was not the 5 Bede, A History o f the English Church and People (Penguin Classics translated by L. Sherley-Price, revised edn Harmondsworth, 1968), Book 2, Chapter 13 . See further Kathryn Hume, ‘The Concept o f the Hall in Old English Poetry’, Anglo-Saxon England 3 (1974), PP- 63-74 .

B EO W U LF

24

notion that Heorot was like life, but the more searching one that life was like Heorot. ‘W e too’ , they might conclude, ‘live in a little circle o f light. E v e ry time w e go to sleep expecting to wake up, w e could be as w ron g as H rothgar’s retainers. Æschere is us/ Involvement o f this nature deepens many o f the scenes in the poem. M odem readers no longer reach it naturally and wordlessly, but they are not completely immune to it either. Professor Tolkien’s ‘Golden Hall’ in the second volum e o f The

Lord o f the Rings is still called ‘Meduseld’, and the name still has its power.

Allusion and reality The ethics, behaviour, and vocabulary o f Beowulfian characters all hang together, create strong vraisemblance. O f course the poet also delights in deliberate fantasy, in things w hich never happened and never could the blade melting in Grendel’s corrosive hlood, the robber stepping cautiously past the sleeping dragon’s head, the monsters’ dream o f banquet on the sea-bottom. M ost famous perhaps is H rothgar’s evocation o f that classic m otif o f horror-story, the animal whose instincts perceive something that human senses cannot. Though the hunted hart m ay come to the edge o f the ominous mere, he says: ‘ær he feorh seleð, aldor on ofre, hafelan beorgan;

ær he in wille, nis pæt heoru stow !’

(13 7 0 -7 2 )

[Rather w ill he give up his life and spirit on the shore than plunge in to save his head; it is an uncanny spot !] A n d yet even this fantasia is obeying a fundamental principle o f realistic fiction: it implies a depth o f m em ory for Hrothgar to draw on, creatures and landscapes w hich exist outside the poem’s needs, and consequently a w eight o f fact which urges the reader to think ‘this must be true’ . O ne wonders h o w much o f the poem’s impression o f realism is as artificially created. Consider the poem’s most redundant character, Yrm enlaf. H e appears only in line 13 2 4 , as Hrothgar reacts rather crossly to B e o w u lf’s un­ fortunate ‘H ave you had a pleasant night?’ ‘D o n ’ t ask about pleasure’ , he says. ‘ Sorro w is renewed for the Danish people. Dead is Æschere, Y rm en laf’s elder brother, m y confidant, m y counsellor, w h o stood at m y shoulder____ ’ In the poem Æschere himself functions only as corpse, and it shows a certain conscientiousness on the part o f the poet to award him six and a half lines o f elegy, as he does. B u t w h y bring in his younger

brother? Is this realism again - the outright invention o f corroborating

THE W O R L D OF THE POEM

25

detail? O r is it a sudden appeal to a frame o f know ledge existing outside the poem, in w hich Y rm en laf was a sort o f Pellinore or Bedivere o f Danish legend - not a prominent person, but one know n to exist? O bviously no one can say, and it hardly matters, since in that context invention and reminder w o uld w o rk just about as w ell. H ow ever, our uncertainty over Y rm en laf’s v e ry existence dramatizes a series o f linked and vital questions o f a m uch m ore general kind. Is the w o rld o f B eo w u lf a never-never land created b y the poet? D id the original audience k n o w a version o f history into w hich B eow u lf had to fit? M ost important o f all, did the poet and his original audience feel that the characters in the poem w ere in essence men like themselves, or did they see them as irrevo­ cably different, fictional creatures o f an im aginary society? Answers to these questions cannot be simple. There are three immediate reasons, though, for taking a broadly ‘fictive’ and ‘distanced’ vie w . N early all critics agree that the poet must have been a literate Christian Englishman. B u t i f yo u ju dged fro m internal evidence alone you m ight conclude that he had never been to* Britain; had never heard o f Christ; and w as not exactly sure w hat ‘w riting’ meant. These statements need some qualification. There is an Englishman in the poem, that O ffa (he gets a mention in lines 19 4 4 -6 2 ) w h o according to Widsith ‘ruled the English’ [weold Ongle]. H ow ever,

Widsith also makes clear that Offa lived near the Eider in Schlesw igHolstein; he ‘ruled the English’ before they migrated to England. Similarly, though the poem contains no books, it does use the verb

writan. B u t this seems to mean ‘cut’ not ‘w rite’ . B e o w u lf ‘forw rote’ the w o rm (line 2705), that is, he cut it in tw o. W h e n the poet says o f the giant sword-hilt ‘on it was writen the origin o f that fa r-o ff fight’, he m ay mean it had a picture ‘engraved’ on it. T h e runstafas o f line 16 9 5 (are they ‘secret staves’ or ‘runic letters’ ?) only spell out the maker’s name. A s fo r

serif an (m odem Germ an schreiben), it means ju dge, sentence, condemn’ . T h e absence o f references to Christ is even m ore puzzling, for it co-exists w ith repeated references to G od, the devil, the Flood, C ain and A bel. There can be no doubt that the poet did k n o w about Christ, and England, and book-learning; his omission o f all three indicates a consciousness o f anachronism between his o w n time and that o f his story. Y e t in other respects the poet and the characters are v e ry closely identified. It m ay not seem so at first, for right at the beginning w e can feel the narrator seizing control. H e is the m an w h o know s w hat is happening across the sea, in the future, in the darkness or w ithin m en’s hearts. Connecting causes and effects comes naturally to him (see line 7), while he does not find even G o d ’s purposes inscrutable (see lines 1 3 - 1 7 ) .

B EO W U L F

26

T h e narrator, in brief, knows nearly everything and nearly everybody. W h en he uses the adjective nathwylc, literally ‘I-know-not-which*, it is evident that he also means ‘and the information is o f no importance* ; ‘some slave or other* stole the dragon’s gold and ‘some man or other* hid it in the first place. A n d yet this near-omniscience comes over as only a developed form o f a quality which m any men are expected to share, and to which the narrator thinks he can make occasional appeal. W u lfg ar appears momentarily, and the narrator observes that his courage and wisdom were ‘know n to many* [manegum gecyðed] ; B e o w u lf says his father was called Ecgtheow , and ‘m any a wise man on earth still remem­ bers him*. T h e y m ay both be w rong, o f course, but they are inviting corroboration or contradiction from somewhere. H rothgar’s ecyclopaedic knowledge, meanwhile, rivals the narrator’s; he remembers Ecgtheow , shows traces o f prophetic ability, confidently detects the intentions o f God. His courtiers show exactly the same comparative tendencies as the poet, for just as the latter says again and again that he has never heard o f a greater treasure or a more lavish ship-burial or friendlier donations, so the racing thanes say there is no better man than Beow ulf, and enshrine their opinion in impromptu verse. It would, indeed, be merely dull not to recognize that the cyninges pegn o f line 867 is a ‘disguised narrator’ .6 W h at he says is w hat the poet wants us to know , and several o f the imagined speakers in B eow u lf have exactly the same direct but undramatic role - most obviously H rothgar in lines 170 0 -8 4 , the Last Survivor (2247-66), the anonymous Messenger (2900-3027). It is no wonder that no one in the poem responds to any o f those speeches, nor that the poet on occasion ticks them overtly as correct - he ne leag fêla wyrda ne worda [he was not far w ron g in words or o f events], or in other words ‘that bit can be relied on*. T h e narrator and his characters create what amounts to a continuum the poem o f B eow ulf at one end, at the other nameless gossip like that about O ffa’s taming o f his queen: Ealodrincende

oðer sædan,

pæt hio leodbealewa

læs gefrem ede.. . .

(19 4 5-6 )

[The beer-drinkers told a different tale, that she performed fewer outrages on her people.] Between the tw o lies an entire and w ell imagined com plex o f legendary tradition arising out o f contemporary judgement. O f course this could all be a trick - a device o f the Flaubertian ‘poet* w h o is silently surveying 6 This concept is explained by W ayne C . Booth, The Rhetoric o f Fiction (Chicago, 1961), p. 152.

THE W O RLD OF THE POEM

27

the universe o f ‘narrator’ and ‘characters’ w ithout ever appearing in it. B u t it seems more plausible to think the image is in essence true. T h e poet after all repeatedly equates truth and poetry through the words sop and

riht (see lines 8 7 1, 1049, 2 1 0 7 -1 0 ) , and begins b y including his audience w ith himself in the we o f Beow ulf's first tw o lines: ‘Listen, w e have heard o f the m ight o f the kings o f the Spear-Danes in ancient d a y s .. . . ’ A gain no one can say for sure that these informed listeners are not im aginary too ! B u t they fit in w ell w ith the poet’s projected image o f him self and his characters. Behind them all lies an expanse o f legendary tradition, not an abstract force but one repeatedly incarnated in figures like the

ealodrincende, or the ‘old land-guardian’ o f line 170 2, w h o ‘remembers everything’ and ‘advances truth and right among the people’ - a culturebearer, a poet in em bryo, a link between real present and just-as-real past. A ll this is not to decry the author’s originality, nor the v e ry great scope he allows to fiction and to fantasy. Like the hunted hart, the Danish coastguard and Æ schere’s brother and quite possibly B e o w u lf him self are bom from his imagination into the clear but bounded light o f legendary poetry. Nevertheless, it looks as i f neither the poet nor his audience w ould tolerate anything that contradicted too sharply history as they already knew it, w hile though the w o rld o f the poem is no doubt stylized, its social and physical furniture are not m erely personal inven­ tions. M ost important, w e can reasonably suspect that the poet and his audience felt ‘continuity’ , i f not identity, w ith dead heroes. T h e y knew all these things happened ‘long ago’ [on geardagum], and that ‘in those days’ [py dogore, line 179 7 ] some things w ere different. O n the other hand, even in history an eternal stability ruled men and seasons ‘as it does still’ [swa he nugen deð, lines 1058, 1 1 3 4 , 28 5 9 ].7 Furthermore, w hen the poet says approvingly o f W u lfg a r ‘he knew court custom’ [cupe he

duguðe peaw , 359], clearly he does not mean that particular court’s custom, he means everybody’s. Learning and geography change, w e m ight conclude, but in B eow u lf etiquette at least is felt to remain fixed and standard. 7 For a more detailed treatment o f these variations in authorial distance, see Stanley B . Greenfield, ‘The authenticating voice in Beow ulf \ AngloSaxon England 5 (1976), pp. 5 1-6 2 .

j.

The Structure o f the Poem

Balance and interlace V iew in g the solidity and consistency o f the Beow ulfian w o rld is a useful preparative for considering the Beow ulfian plot, w hich at first sight and even at second exhibits neither o f those qualities. It is almost indecently paraphrasable as ‘three fights w ith three monsters', and yet no matter h o w much yo u compress it, it still looks broken-backed; there is no relationship between die second and the third fight at all, w hile there is a gap in the middle that far outdoes Shakespeare's Winter9s Tale - ‘fifty winters' skimmed over in ten lines. A s Aristotle put it, ‘the unity o f a plot does not consist, as some suppose, in its having one man as its subject'. It is therefore no w onder that critics o f B eow ulf have been quick to look for some supra-chronological unity informing the poem. Professor Tolkien suggested that the guiding principle was ‘balance' or ‘opposition' - ‘a contrasted description o f tw o moments in a great life, rising and setting; an elaboration o f the ancient and intensely m oving contrast between youth and age, first achievement and final death.'1 This theory has the advantage o f concentrating on the poem's essential concerns (the hero and the monsters), but makes the poem seem ‘static', i f ‘diversified', or as Tolkien said (speaking o f O ld English metre as a whole) ‘more like masonry than music'. Y e t most readers o (B eo w u lf take from it an impression o f intricacy; accordingly a more popular artistic analogue has been that suggested b y John Leyerle in 19 6 7, interweaving or ‘interlace'.2 This last w o rd refers to a mode practised b y innumerable English masons and illustrators during the seventh and eighth centuries, reaching a peak in such manuscripts as the Lindisfame Gospels, and having as its main characteristics the absence o f any visual centre, luxuriant and coiling repetitions, an elusive patterning w hich defies attempts to perceive the w hole design at once. T h e main reason for linking this m ode w ith 1 J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics’, Proceedings o f the British Academy 22 (1936), pp. 24 5-9 5. 2 See J. Leyerle, ‘The Interlace Structure o f Beowulf ’, University o f Toronto Quarterly 3 7 (1967)» PP- I - I 7 -

THE S T R U C T U R E OF THE POEM

29

that though the central plot of that poem is simple, our res­ ponse to it is qualified or even prevented by an enormous web of memory, prophecy, and incidental reference from the poet-narrator (the power of whose authorial control has been noted). It is this which makes reading B e o w u lf a distinctive literary experience, and accordingly (though at times it looks as if diey are agreeing with W. P. Ker, that the poet put ‘the irrelevancies in the centre and the serious things on the outer edges’) nearly all modem critics base their readings of the poem on its peripheries, its allusions, the side-references we are no longer allowed to call ‘digressions’.

B e o w u lf is

T h e implications o f digression

An entirely typical example of these occurs within the first hundred lines. Hrothgar, king of the Danes, has decided to build his great hall of Heorot, has given the orders, seen them carried out, and taken posses­ sion - ‘the hall towered, high, horn-gabled’. Then without syntactic warning or detectable change of tone the poet abandons Hrothgar’s triumphant progress to remark: heaðowylma bad, laðan figes ; ne wæs hit lenge J>agen, J>æt se ecghete aJ>umsweoran æfter wælniðe wæcnan scolde.

(82-5)

[It waited for the batde-waves, the hateful fire. It was not for a long time yet that the armed hatred of son-in-law and father-in-law should awaken after deadly spite.] Much could be said about these few words. They contain a certain reassurance: it was not for a long time yet that trouble would come. But the verbs are menacing. The hall is like a sentient creature that knows its fate, for it is ‘waiting’ for the fire all the time, while hatred also has fife, for it will ‘wake’ after sleep. The reassurance and the menace together create a sense of time as long, stretching out indefinitely into Heorot’s future, but also as single, comprehended by the poet’s vision and containing within it events, like buildings and burnings, which only appear unrelated. The passage’s disturbing effect is made greater by its context: the next fine, 86, introduces Grendel lurking outside Heorot in the darkness. However, even these reactions are likely to be overshadowed, for us, by the realization that we do not know what the poet is talking about. We have to start ‘reconstructing’ from the word aþumsweoran, a word

30

BE OWUL F

never used elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon, and not really used in our copy of B e o w u lf either, since the scribe misunderstood it and wrote instead the common but here meaningless phrase apum swerian [to swear by oaths]. Still, *apum-sweoran would be a word of familiar type, a ‘dvandva’ compound connecting two words for family relationship, apum [son-inlaw] and sweor [father-in-law]. Who are these two people? One of them ought to be the owner of the hall ; the only known owner is the first one, Hrothgar; he is too old to be a likely son-in-law; so perhaps (it can be seen what a feeble chain of reasoning this is) he is the sweor half of the compound. Nearly two thousand lines later Beowulf remarks that Hrothgar indeed has a daughter, Freawaru, promised but not yet married to the ‘fortunate son of Froda\ Irritatingly, Beowulf still does not give this man’s name; but forty lines on he lets slip that the prospective son-in-law is called Ingeld. Here we come on to firmer ground, for Ingeld is a well known figure of Northern heroic legend; Widsith says explicitly that he was defeated by Hrothgar at Heorot. It does not say that Heorot was burnt down, or that Ingeld and Hrothgar were related, but the cross-reference gives a little strength to our chain of reconstructions. The real point here, though, is that the whole process just outlined is artificial; a conclusion we must draw is that the poet did not expect his audience to react like that at all, but assumed its members knew of Heorot and Hrothgar and Ingeld already. He had only to mention the first two and hint at the third for a story to rise from their memories. Outside knowledge at that point only makes the little allusion more frightening. Upon the image of size and splendour and novelty which the poet has made one is being asked to superimpose an opposite one of pain and fire and finality. The fact that (if you are familiar with heroic legend) this last image comes from outside the poem, indeed from your own brain, and that you are being asked to recognize the two as still, in a sense, ‘the same* - this creates for modem reader or Anglo-Saxon one a shocking if momentary sense of callous reality enclosing Heorot, wider even than the poem itself. Then the insight vanishes as we are returned to the main story. But can that main story ever seem the same again? The poet says no more about the fate of Heorot, indeed he re-establishes its brilliance and comfort lovingly and at length. Still, no one can say the fire is not as real as the festivity; it could be reintroduced at any time. Such temporal switchings become increasingly important as the poem goes on. One almost identical with that quoted is the passage 1202-14, which centre; on the gold torque given to Beowulf for killing Grendel.

THE S T R U C T U R E OF THE POEM

31

This particular maððum is the climax o f the first string o f donations, stressed b y the poet’s admiring comment that he has never heard o f a greater treasure sin ce. . . - and he mentions a necklace famous in m yth ology. B u t just as w ith Heorot, as soon as the image o f beauty is established the poet superimposes on it death and disaster: pone hring hæfde nefa S w er tinges

Higelac Geata, nyhstan siðe,

siðþan he under segne w ælreaf werede ;

sine ealgode,

hyne w y rd fom am . . .

( 1 2 0 2 -5 )

[H ygelac o f the Geats had that ring, Sw erting’s grandson, on his last journey, w hen he defended treasure under his banner, fought for his booty ; fate took him.] T h e poet goes on to tell the story o f a fatal raid on Frisia, in w hich H ygelac was killed, the Geats defeated, and the necklace n o w given to B e o w u lf stripped from his uncle’s body b y the victorious Franks.

This ‘digression’ owes its fame among m odem critics to the coinciden­ tal fact that for once w e can say, not ‘there must have been a story about it’ , but ‘this is true, it really happened’ . Against all odds o f probability H ygelac turns up in recognizable form as the pirate ‘Chlochilaicus’ whose raid on the Frisians and defeat b y the Franks is recorded in Latin chronicle b y G rego ry o f Tours, an event o f around ad 526.3 H ow ever, the literary questions it arouses are, first, h o w m uch w e should let this insight into disaster colour our perception o f B e o w u lf’s later honours and triumphs, and second, whether w e m ight not in a w a y have been prepared for it already. T o explain this latter: I have remarked already that H ygelac is B e o w u lf’s uncle, indeed his mother’s brother (a relation o f special intimacy to Anglo-Saxons). B u t that fact is not deducible from internal evidence alone at line 120 2. W e k n o w w h o B e o w u lf is, for Hrothgar has explained his descent w ith suspicious care. W e also k n o w that H ygelac is king o f the Geats, and that B e o w u lf is devoted to him, tends indeed to define him self b y referring to him (see lines 2 6 1, 343, 407). B u t w e have never been told that H ygelac is ‘the son o f Hrethel’ , the vital piece o f information expressed rather casually at line 14 8 5. It looks as if, like Ingeld, H ygelac was meant to be familiar already. I f that was so, his death w ould be a know n fact too. A n d i f that was so (this is ‘reconstruc­ tion’ again), every time B e o w u lf in the early lines o f the poem expresses emotional dependence on his king, he is betraying a vulnerability at odds 3 See R. W . Chambers, Beowulf: an Introduction (3rd edn with supple­ ment by C . L. W renn, Cambridge, 1959), pp. 2-4 .

32

BEOWULF

w ith his evident strength and confidence. He has an Achilles' heel, in short, though he does not k n o w it. That speculation contains too m any unknowns to be relied on. W h at is clear, though, is that the poet exploits the gap between his audience's awareness o f the Frisian fiasco and B e o w u lf's unawareness o f it in at least one later scene, when Beow ulf, having fought his second fight against Grendel's mother, is about to leave Denmark. His farewell to H rothgar (lines 18 18 -3 9 ) can be paraphrased as follow s: (1) ‘thank yo u for your hospitality’ (2) ‘i f I can do anything else for you, I w ill' (3) ‘i f I hear you are attacked, I w ill bring an arm y to your assistance - H ygelac w ill ratify this’ (4) ‘w e Geats w ould be pleased to entertain yo ur son in our country'. T h e k ey-w o rd in all this is wat. B e o w u lf says: ‘I kn o w [ic xvat] o f H ygelac, lord o f the Geats, keeper o f the people, youn g though he m ay be, that he w ill support me in this, so that I can do yo u honour, bring a w o o d o f spears to your assistance.. . . ' T he audience, though, knows something different - that soon H ygelac w ill be past helping anyone. So does Hrothgar, the old king, the wise king. H e praises and thanks B e o w u lf for his offer, but there is temperance in his enthusiasm. H e remarks, indeed, that i f the spear should rem ove H ygelac, and B e o w u lf

should survive, then the Geats could not have a better substitute - assum­ ing that B e o w u lf was prepared to succeed. This is too accurate for the poet not to w ant us to notice; all Hrothgar's hypotheses, dow n to B eo w u lf's survival and his reluctance to take the throne, come true. T h e whole scene therefore works on tw o levels, w ith justified optimism from both speakers in the foreground, but behind it an awareness in the audience that Hrothgar is closer to the truths o f history than Beow ulf. This could not happen without the necklace passage six hundred lines before; but once H ygelac is connected w ith failure mention o f him can never be neutral or carefree again. O ne can then go further and say that the leave-taking scene actually works on three levels. B u t this assertion depends on another character (the blankest in the poem as Y rm en laf is the most redundant) - Hrothulf. The poet never explains w ho he is. A t line 10 1 7 he is drinking m any a cup w ith Hrothgar in the high hall, w hich (given the evident ritualism o f drink ceremonies in Beowulf) m ay indicate a degree o f power-sharing. A t lines 1 1 6 3 - 4 he and Hrothgar must be the suhtergefæderan - another ‘dvandva' compound meaning ‘uncle and nephew' - w hich makes him the son o f one o f Hrothgar's (dead) brothers, H eorogar or Halga. Since K in g H rolfr Helgason, nephew o f K ing Hroarr, is a famous figure o f legend, all scholars assume the latter. Bu t this admission o f Scandinavian legends prompts blacker thoughts, for in them the sons o f Hrothgar/

THE S T R U C T U R E OF THE POEM

33

H róarr never appear at all, the kingship going direct from uncle to nephew. This could be legal in O ld Danish society, but it could also have been accompanied b y murder. It is not hard to imagine a legend in w hich all the Scyldings w iped each other out; and though some scholars find such Reconstructions9 illegitimate, they are (as w e have seen) in B eow u lf both com m on and compelled. Ominousness is in any case deliberately stimulated b y the third and last reference to Hrothulf, inside W ealh th eow ’s speech o f 1 1 6 9 - 8 7 . O nce one has made allowance for the conventions o f politeness w hich govern this, no one can mistake its tone o f fear.4 T h e Danish queen is even afraid o f B e o w u lf because Hrothgar has offered to adopt him ‘as a son’ [for sunu]y a phrase she pointedly repeats; and her anxiety about her sons’ future is stimulated further b y Hrothulf, w h o m she asks to protect them - though he does not reply. W ith o u t any analogues at all one w ould see this speech as uneasy, and w ith them it becomes at once alarming and pathetic. Is that w h y Beow u lf, taking his leave six hundred lines later, suggests that H rothgar’s son Hrethric w ould do w ell to leave hom e? I f it is, it makes the dialogue between youn g hero and old king even m ore pointed, as H rothgar sees the danger hanging over B e o w u lf (that H ygelac is going to die), and B e o w u lf reciprocally sees the danger over H rothgar (that he cannot ensure the succession o f his sons). But neither

sees the point o f the other's warning! I f that is the case, one o f the leaststressed scenes in the poem turns out to be almost unbearably loaded w ith hidden meanings; though these, it should be noted, are exactly parallel w ith the poet’s brief and open remark about H eorot at the start. O ne can see n o w w h y ‘interlace’ is such an attractive image for the structure o f B eow u lf T im e and again a passage from one part o f the poem reverberates in and alters another. B u t the threads o f connection are discontinuous, for while the monsters are ‘on-stage’ w e forget about Heorot and H rothulf and all the rest. T h e y are unpredictable too, for you never k n o w w hen the poet w ill bring on a n ew character (like Ingeld), or an insight to change retrospectively yo ur perception o f w hat has gone before (like B e o w u lf’s reliance on H ygelac). Finally, there is a sense in w hich the pattem o f the poem can only be completed outside it, in the stories to w hich the poet appeals and in the experience o f history w hich encloses characters and poem at once. There are then tw o caveats to enter. O ne is that m any m ore ‘inter­ lacings’ can be discovered between passages w hich have not been discussed and even between those w hich have. W ealhtheow relates 4 For analysis see Irving, A Reading o f B eow ulf op. cit.y pp. 1 3 6 -4 1 , and further T . A . Shippey, Old English Verse (London, 1972), pp. 3 3 -4 .

B E O WU L F

34

thematically w ith her daughter Freawaru, for instance, through their shared vulnerability, and is juxtaposed w ith a third ‘unhappy lady’ , Hildeburh, not-quite-heroine o f a story sung in H eorot (lines 10 6 8 115 9 ). The kernel o f that story, furthermore, is one o f the sword-presenta­ tion scenes already mentioned, w hich run w ith evident comparability through the entire poem. A t times one feels the ‘interlaces’ o f B eo w u lf increase geometrically. T h e second caveat, though, is that in the hands o f m odem literary critics this admitted feature o f the poem ’s structure is often drawn out w ith grotesque laboriousness, every incident being dwelt on till it renders up all individual life to a generalized background o f ‘significance’ . A ll the passages mentioned here contain one o f tw o things - an object w hich unites contrasted moments (Heorot or the torque), or a speech w ith both overt and covert purpose (thanks/waming, congratulation/ appeal). In either case something remains ‘the same’ beneath conflicting interpretations, to focus attention and assist the m em ory. D ark A g e audiences have had great strain placed on their knowledge and sensitivity in all that has been said about the complicated histories o f one royal house and another. O f course in those times people had to be cleverer to survive. Still, they also had to respond without study-aids. Subtlety in the pursuit o f abstractions (especially dully moral ones) should not be pressed too far.

The ironic image That is w h y the whole o f the foregoing discussion has been conducted without the term ‘irony’ , so often the bane o f Beowulfians. It means too m any things to too m any people, and though some o f its meanings are appropriate and even vital to reading the poem, others w hich shelter under the same semantic umbrella turn out misleading, or w orse.5 Thus, the element o f ‘innocence’ or ‘confident unawareness’ w hich pre-eminently distinguishes victims o f irony is all but endemic at least in the first tw o thousand lines. B e o w u lf relying on H ygelac, the Danes lying dow n in Heorot, Hrothgar carefully planning the peace-initiatives to Ingeld - all these offer classic instances o f ironic discrepancy between the perception o f characters and the knowledge o f observers. In the same w a y juxtaposition o f ‘appearance and reality’ is strong in the poem from the first mention o f Heorot’s burning; every tiling looks solid enough, but w e know it is only temporary. Finally, ironic com edy is deliberately 5

The discussion that follows relies on D . C . Muecke’s tw o books, The

Compass o f Irony (London, 1969), and Irony (Critical Idiom Series 13 , London, 1970).

THE S T R UC T U R E OF THE POEM

35

entertained by the poet in the account o f Grendel’s approach to Heorot. H e ‘meant’ to catch a man, w e are told, ‘it was not the first time’ he had done so, he ‘laughed’ in his heart on seeing the sleeping Geats, for ‘feastfull expectation’ came upon him. A ll the time ‘the m ighty kinsman o f H ygelac’ lies waiting, and w e k n o w that Grendel’s hopes must fail. O n this evidence there is good reason for granting the poet the status o f a conscious and practised literary ironist. O n the other hand he does seem to avoid one device w hich is vital to ironists o f later date: he never presents as right things know n to be w ron g. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ declares Jane Austen, ‘that a single man in possession o f a good fortune, must be in w ant o f a w ife.’ This is not ‘universally acknowledged’ at all: to spell the point out, only mothers o f economically dependent daughters are likely to think that w ay, and irony comes from the reader’s perception o f the gap between their wishes and reality, or between their pretended concern for bachelors and their underlying self-interest. B u t w hen the B eow u lf-poet says ‘in every nation a man will get on through generous deeds’ , though his m ægpagehwære is very like Jane Austen’s ‘universally acknowledged’, there is every sign that he means it straight. His art, as has been said, consistently lays claim to truth. Y e t it is not impossible to read his plain statements ironically. That, indeed, is w h y ‘irony’ is a dangerous term. Just like proverbs, ironies depend on an extra-linguistic fram e: w e perceive as ironic what w e are reluctant to perceive as true, and perception o f truth is, notoriously, relative. A ccordin gly even the Beowulfian statement just quoted could be read ironically; at that stage o f the poem (one m ight say) heroism is still untarnished, the purchase o f warriors b y gifts still seems excellent advice. T h e body o f the poem, however, w ill prove that ‘the wages o f heroism is death’ and that kings’ generosity is bought too dear. So when the poet ends b y calling B e o w u lf ‘most eager for praise’ , he must mean us to see that that eagerness has been his bane. T h e lofgeornost o f the end and the lofdædum o f the start create an ‘ironic perspective’ ; the poet’s initial ‘gnom e’ must be as false as Jane Austen’s ! So one m ight argue, and there w ould be no disproving it. A ll that proves, however, is that irony is socially determined, pœ t wæ s go d cyning could mean ‘he was a bad king’, just as ‘yo u ’re a fine friend’ n o w usually means ‘yo u let me dow n ’ . This inability to ju dge plain statements brings us, in fact, upon the great divide o f B e o w u lf criticism. Is the poem epic or satire, celebration or critique? In v ie w o f w hat has just been said, it ought to be clear that ‘close reading’ alone w ill not lead to a decision. A com m on train o f thought, how ever, starts from the w o rd ‘heathen’

B E O WU L F

36

[hæþen]. This implies inevitably a sense o f distance and moral superiority; only Christians use it and only o f non-Christians. T h e poet uses it o f Hrothgar’s Danes. U nder the strain o f Grendel’s murders, he says, they asked the devil to help them, for ‘such was their custom, the hope o f the heathens [hæpenra hyht]\ There is no doubt, therefore, that he feels superior to them, and views their behaviour w ith conscious irony as deluded, idolatrous, counter-productive. Does he think like that about B e o w u lf and H rothgar and H ygelac as w ell? H e should: for their historical counterparts must have been heathen, the absence o f references to Christ indicates he knew as much, and (in the famous words o f Alcuin, speaking as it happens o f Ingeld) non vult rex celestis cum paganis et perditis nominetenus regibus communionem habere [the K ing o f Heaven w ill have no fellowship at all w ith damned and heathen kings]. T h e poet admittedly never says directly that he is a sheep and his characters are goats; but anyone w h o calls other people ‘heathens’ is bound to vie w ‘heathenness’ as som ehow reprehensible, even i f he also repeatedly calls his heroes ‘good’ . A n idea w hich fits the circumstances (and one familiar in our century) is that o f social guilt. B e o w u lf and his friends, in other words, are excellent individually, but so involved in the violence o f a vengeful and Christ-less society that they cannot break out o f it. T h e admiration so often expressed in the poem for halls and weapons and courtesies must then be theirs ; but it should strike the outside observers o f the audience as increasingly superficial the more they see the halls burning, the courtesies failing, the weapons being used. Is it not, after all, a fact that the royal houses o f Denmark, Sweden, Geadand, w ipe each other out? The heroes’ behaviour is compulsive and (once more ironically) it is B e o w u lf himself w ho articulates the compulsion w ith his briskly proverbial speech o f lines 13 8 4 -9 6 : ‘ Selre bið æghwæm,

pæt he his freond wrece,

þonne he fela m um e.’

(13 84-5)

[Better for anyone to avenge his friend than mourn too much.] Fifty years later, o f course, this same belief w ill lead Swedes and Franks to overthrow B e o w u lf’s ow n people. But, though he is quick enough to deplore Ingeld’s commitment to revenge in lines 2 0 2 9 -3 1 , B e o w u lf is too much a part o f ‘the heroic system’ to be aware o f its and his o w n contra­ dictions. W e have to be aware o f them for him. So the theory goes, and it draws further reinforcement from B e o w u lf’s uncle H ygelac, whose jo b (in this view ) is to show h o w unnatural peace in the heroic w orld has become. W h y did he raid Frisia and get himself

THE S T R U C T U R E OF THE POEM

37

killed? A s far as w e can see, it w as not thirst for vengeance, but plain piracy. H e fo r wlenco wean ahsode, says the poet, "he looked for trouble out o f pride*. B u t w hat caused his pride and his piracy i f not that he needed m oney to p ay his m en? T h e centre o f society is after all the hall, and the hall’s function is to be a centre for gift-givin g. B u t the king's exem plary lavishness needs constant restocking, and since the gifts his men expect are above all weapons and armour, the natural concomitant o f generosity is robbery-w ith-violence. K in g

and retainers, then, are unwitting

accomplices in a cycle w hich m oves from hall to battlefield and w hich continually supplies initial impetus to feuds w hich then develop their ow n. A grim picture, but a plausible one; it also contains a final irony aimed at B e o w u lf himself. For he at least does not prom ote his kingship b y piracy, and though he takes revenge tw ice after com ing to the throne (once on the Swedes, once on the dragon), both times he is finishing a feud he did not start. Y e t he too dies betrayed. W h y this injustice? T h e unpalatable answer suggested once again is "pride*, for though B e o w u lf is ready to think the dragon m ay be divine punishment (lines 2 3 2 9 -3 2 ), he still w ill not so W ig la f says later (30 79 -8 3) - simply leave it alone. V e r y proper too, perhaps, except that B e o w u lf is not the only one to suffer from his o w n excessive zeal; he leaves his country w ide open to tragedy. A s W ig la sums up: ‘O ft sceall eorl m onig w ræ c adreogan,

anes willan

swa us gew orden is.*

(30 77-8 )

[Often m any a man has to suffer misery from the desire o f one, as has happened to us.] H e means, m aybe, that though there is no excuse for the retainers w h o let B e o w u lf dow n, still he in turn let them dow n, even i f his vice once m ore sprang from good intentions. Just as H ygêlac’s piracy is the other h alf o f kin gly generosity, so the obverse o f B e o w u lf's admirable fear­ lessness is narrowness o f vision, concern for the bubble reputation. Heroes, in short, make bad kings. Unfortunately kings are expected to be heroes; and i f they shirk that obligation, outsiders w ill probably force it on them.6 Such w r y morals as these are drawn easily from comparative con­ sideration o f Beow u lf,

Hrothgar,

H ygelac.

T h e w hole

‘interlace*

structure encourages them. T h e y make us think that the poet is demon­ strating the inadequacy o f heroic society; that he sees this the m ore 6 For a thorough presentation o f this opinion, see John Leyerle’s ‘B eo w u lf the Hero and the K in g’ , Medium Aevum 34 (1965), pp. 8 9 -10 2.

BEOWULF

3»

forcibly for being a Christian; and that his rejection o f overt finger­ pointing first gives yo u the pleasure o f ironic perception, and second shows you the glittering insidiousness o f heroism, the w a y it perverts even the best o f intentions. This w hole approach offers evidently attrac­ tive baits, propounding an interesting sociological thesis, rejecting the cult o f violence, and making it possible to give the poet immense credit for conscious artistry. It is, however, dependent at every stage on silent and unproven ironies. One m ay reflect sceptically that it all seems very up-to-date. Performatives and perceptions In practice there are strong arguments against all the propositions just advanced. Wlenco, the emotion which prompts H ygelac’s fatal raid, m ay not be a vice at all (W ulfgar does not think so at line 3 38 ); the Geatish dismay at B e o w u lf’s death could be just a flattering reflection o f his indispensability; the poet m ay be as blind to the abstract implications o f his story as are his characters. But, as has been said, there is no sure w a y o f proving when irony is intended and when it is not. M ore constructively, w e should note the presence in B eo w u lf o f different styles o f emotion and changing narrative modes. Consider, for instance, the end (already quoted) o f W ealhtheow ’s speech, lines 1 2 1 6 - 3 1 . She has just spoken to Hrothgar about the danger o f introducing rivals to her sons. She has also given B e o w u lf the great torque, for the poet to comment on its unlucky future. Then she speaks again, m oving from praise o f B e o w u lf to appeal for his help: ‘Beo p u suna minum dædum gedefe,

dreamhealdende !

Her is æ ghw ylc eorl modes milde,

oþrum getryw e,

mandrihtne hold,

J>egnas syndon geþwære, druncne dryhtguman

peod ealgearo, doð swa ic bidde/ ( 12 2 6 -3 1)

[Be kind to m y son in yo u r deeds, guard him in jo y ! Here every warrior is true to the next, kind in heart and loyal to his lord, the thanes are united, the people all willing, the drunken retainers do as I say.] This is ironic, in a sense. Certainly w e need not believe it, for ‘here* is Heorot, and among those present are H rothulf and the sinister Unferth, about whose loyalty almost everyone has doubts. Still, it is hard to cast W ealhtheow as a victim o f irony in the same w a y as B e o w u lf in that scene is; for while he remains innocently confident in H ygelac’s immortality,

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39

her preoccupation w ith her sons radiates awareness o f danger. W h y then does she come out w ith these last four lines o f peace and security? The speech could have ended w ith fine pathos at dreamhealdende. T h e answer, surely, is that in them she is striving to evoke the dream for w hich she so desperately wishes. A ll spells proceed from the belief that i f you say something the right w ay, it w ill come true, and that is w hat she is doing. For a moment, too, it works. W ealhtheow ’s pause eternizes that ‘best o f feasts* like Keats’s Grecian U m . T h e poet ratifies her perception fifteen lines later, as the Danish thanes ‘pile arms’ before going to sleep : ‘It was their custom to be often ready for w ar, whether at home or on campaign, either one, just as often as need dictated to their lord: that was a noble nation.’ O f course an ironist could take even wæ s seo peod tilu as critical (for those w h o live b y the sword shall die b y it). In context, though, it is regretful. A proper conclusion w ould be that, just as the lines on H eorot’s burning made future fire as real as present festivity, so these make past festivity as real as present non-existence. Positives have value too; and transience does not make happiness the same as grief. That short section makes an impact even in the doom-laden ‘trough’ o f H eorot between Grendel and Grendel’s mother. It ought to be noted that a similar but much stronger impact is made b y the next ‘trough’ , the account o f B e o w u lf’s homecoming in lines 18 8 8 -2 19 9 . Even Tolkien could not find for this any ‘complete justification’ , while Kenneth Sisam said it was ‘ unsuccessful’ and ‘lifeless’ .7 Y e t in spite o f its narrative sluggishness, the section w orks emotionally as the poem ’s ‘w arm centre’ a place from w hich irony is excluded. It introduces to us H ygelac’s queen H ygd , as yo un g and wise as her husband is youn g and valiant; continues w ith an idyllic picture o f H ygelac and B e o w u lf sitting as kinsmen together, mæg w ið mæge 9 while the queen offers drink lovingly to the retainers in turn; and goes on through B e o w u lf’s adventures to his open profession o f devotion: ‘ Still all m y happiness depends on y o u ; I have fe w close kinsmen, H ygelac, but yo u .’ T h e repeated ðe/ðec o f lines 2 1 4 9 - 5 1 is b y m odem standards almost dog-like. B e o w u lf backs it up, though, b y giving H ygelac most o f w hat he has w on. A n d quite right too, bursts in the poet irrepressibly (216 6 -8 ). ‘ So shall a kinsman do - not prepare webs o f treachery for others w ith secret craft !’ That, w e m ight think, is the w a y the Scyldings behave. B u t H ygelac’s hall is opposite to H eorot point for point. In it nephew is loyal to uncle (2170), and vice-versa ( 2 1 7 1 ) ; its queen has no need to ask for help; the unity it 7 Tolkien, op. cit., p. 2 7 2 ; K . Sisam, The Structure o f B eo w u lf (Oxford, 1965), pp. 4 4 - 5 .

40

B E O WUL F

represents lets even cousins (B eo w u lf and Heardred) stay friends. Indeed the best p ro o f o f Geatish unity comes from the royal carelessness o f demarcation: H im wæs bam samod on ðam leodscipe eard eðelriht, side rice

lond gecynde, oðrum swiðor

pam ðær selra wæs.

(219 6-9 )

[In that nation the land was inherited b y both together, the soil, the hereditary right, the broad kingdom - though more to the one there w h o was o f higher rank.] Vagueness like that might breed murder in Denmark, but only harm ony among the Hrethlings. A n d though H ygelac is dead tw o lines later, it is not because he was w ron g about his relations. It takes more than just misfortune to generate irony. O ne m ight add as a final reflection that literary irony arises when a reader knows more than a character w ho does not know enough. Neither o f these conditions is w ell fulfilled in the last thousand lines o f Beowulf. T o begin w ith, though the proportion o f allusive material is in this section v e ry high (almost a third) it is overwhelm ingly historical and retrospective, about matters known to the characters as w ell as the readers. O f course B e o w u lf himself ‘did not know b y w hat means his separation from the w o rld w ould come about’ (3067-8), while the poet has told us three times between lines 2 3 10 and 2343 that he and the dragon w ill kill each other. Still, he seems to have a shrewd idea. ‘His mind was sad’ before he fought the dragon, and after being bitten ‘he knew w ell’ that the w ound was mortal. This increased awareness n o w makes B e o w u lf unsuitable as a victim o f irony. Furthermore the long experience he has had (and w hich he shares w ith those evident projections o f the poet’s mind, the Last Survivor and the Messenger) makes him something o f an ironist himself. H e knows h o w unexpected things can be, and gives as an example the history o f his ow n three uncles : ‘W æs pam yldestan mæges dædum

ungedefelice

m orporbed stred,

syððan hyne H æ ðcyn his freawine miste mercelses b ro ð o ro ð em e

o f hom bogan,

flane geswencte, ond his mæg ofscet, blodigan gare/

(24 35-4 0 )

[For the eldest a death-bed was unfittingly prepared b y a kinsman’s deeds, w hen Haethcyn wounded him, his lord, w ith an arrow from a

THE S T R U C T U R E OF THE POEM

4I

h o rn -b ow ; he missed the mark and shot his kinsman, one brother another w ith a bloody dart.] ‘ U nfittingly’ in that translation is the suggestion o f Klaeber’s glossary; but one can see that ‘ironically’ w ould fit just as well. B e o w u lf b y this time has achieved very near equal status w ith the poet as a truth-speaker. O ne could say that he is even raised to superiority b y the fact that perceptions o f irony do not daunt him. T hough he seems to identify momentarily w ith old men reduced to impotence b y the son-snatching twists o f fate, in the end he rises to his feet and advances, resolution undimmed b y sad experience. It is hard at this moment to find a chink in his armour o f sober perception, and though later on his belief in the utility o f treasure provides a rather doubtful one, one ought to recognize at the very least that the balance has changed. T h e hero’s progress is towards weakness and death, but aw ay from irony and ignorance; near the centre, too, there is a peaceful and happy state o f equilibrium.

The heathens and the monsters N o n e o f the foregoing explains w h y B eow u lf is a poem about monsters. M ayb e the reason is beyond intellectual grasp : it was a fashion, it w as

a

tale the poet knew, he just happened to like dragons. H ow ever, critics are reluctant to see no reflection in the story’s simple kernel o f the attractive complexities o f the surrounding ‘interlace’ ; there are, accordingly, m any variations on the v ie w that the monsters, for all their strongly realized inner life, are in some w a y ‘sym bolic’ . Grendel represents death, or troublemaking, or the body o f Satan; the dragon is Leviathan, w ar, revenge, the heroic system. T h e ubiquity o f the monsters, the feeling that in the Beowulfian w o rld one w ill com e along i f yo u only w ait long enough, provokes such rationalizations inevitably. Y e t no particular form o f words remains satisfying for long - no doubt because they all ask us to believe that the poet began w ith an abstraction to w hich he added the flesh and bones o f his story, a process w hich seems even more alien to him than to most creative writers. Still, the heart o f the matter remains the poet’s original conception; and here the monsters do possibly offer a clue. A striking fact about Grendel is that he presents a problem o f taxo­ nom y. H e is a pyrs and an eoten - a member, then, o f those races o f non-human intelligent beings (like the elves or ylfe o f line 1 1 2 ) w hich figure in pagan Scandinavian m ythology. In a Christian cosmos, h o w ­ ever, non-human intelligent beings have no secure place, preachers traditionally explaining them as either devils, or spiritual beings o f some

42

BEOWULF

other kind, or ghosts, or o f course figments o f the imagination.8 The

ylfe o f line 1 1 2 are accordingly flanked on one side b y the eotenas o f preChristian bogeyland, but on the other b y orcneas or ‘demon corpses’ , a conception much easier to fit into the Christian scheme. In any case that w hole passage (10 2 -14 ) explains that all these beings are actually the descendants o f Cain, equated in learned legend w ith the ‘giants’ o f Genesis and destroyed (not very permanently) in the Flood. Logically, then, Grendel must be a man, and indeed the poet repeatedly calls him

wer, rinc, guma, maga, all normal terms for ‘man’ or ‘w arrior’ . O n the other hand he also calls him gæst [spirit] and feond, either ‘fiend’ or ‘enem y’ , but in phrases like feond on helle almost inevitably the former. Epithets like ‘enemy o f mankind’ , ‘G o d ’s adversary’, ‘prisoner o f hell’ bring Grendel even closer conceptually to the devil. A n d yet he has a soul and will be judged at Doom sday, tw o facts which again make him a child o f A dam . A ll this looks, frankly, like the confusion bom o f cultural discrepancy. Y e t w e should note that the poet can perfectly well think o f phrases w hich leave the monster/man/devil problem to one s id e ‘w igh t’ , ‘march-stepper’, ‘death-shadow’ , ‘shadow-walker’ and so on while he actually highlights his difficulties in the thirteen lines mentioned already, as in H rothgar’s careful statement that one monster is Udese

onlicnes’ [shaped like a w om an], the other ‘ on wer es wæstmum [in the form o f a man].9 Perhaps the poet recognized the problem, but did not bother to solve it. Perhaps he did the same thing w ith his heroes. W ere they pagan or Christian? It has already been said that they w ere in history and outside the poem definitely pagan, that the poet knew this and said so once, in line 179 . B u t he never says it again. T h e w o rd hæþen occurs five times after line 179 , but one o f these instances is a revealing scribal error, at line 19 8 3, right in the poem’ s ‘w arm centre’ , as H y g d passes the ale-cup

hæðnum to handa [to the hands o f the heathens]. Alm ost all editors have rejected this reading. It is terribly jarring, for just then the Geats are behaving as m ildly and hum bly as ever they can, and is most untypical a mistake for hæleðum [heroes], suggests Klaeber. T h e scribe, however, was in a w a y more reasonable than the poet. B e o w u lf and H ygelac were heathens, o f course. T h e point is that the poet w ill not say so. Hæpen is a w o rd he reserves for monsters: Grendel is a ‘heathen w arrior’ w ith a ‘heathen soul’ , while the dragon, though animal itself, guards and is defined b y its ‘heathen gold’ . T he suggestion being made is that these tw o radical ambiguities are 8 See C . S. Lewis, The Discarded Image (Cambridge, 1964), ch. 6. 9 Tolkien, op. c i t considers ‘Grendel’s Titles’ in an appendix.

THE S T R U C T U R E OF THE POEM

43

connected. T h e poet had one problem in deciding the nature o f monsters. A lo n g w ith it he had the problem o f ‘righteous pagans*. Could such creatures exist - people, that is, w h o had never been offered the means o f salvation (Bible and baptism), but w h o nevertheless acted charitably and properly? T h e m axim extra ecclesiam nulla salvatio [no salvation outside the Church] said ‘no’ , com m on experience said ‘yes*. T h e history o f compromise between the tw o positions is a long one.10 H ow ever, it is precisely in places like A n glo -Saxo n England (where Christian converts m ight have dead, loved, pagan parents) that the pressure for compromise was fiercest. It m ay be no accident that the first, optimistic account o f the salvation o f the pagan Trajan through the tears o f G regory, ‘apostle o f the English*, comes in a book written b y a monk o f W h itb y around AD 7 10 (and called in question b y stricter Christians ever since).11 In any

case it must be clear that a scheme which damned B e o w u lf and W ealh theow indiscriminately w ith Unferth and Heremod could have had little appeal except to spiritual sadists or men o f w eak imagination. T h e poet, then, decided to upgrade his heroes to religious neutrality. O ne w a y o f doing so was to create an image o f ‘heathenness* from w hich they were clearly separate - and that is w h y B e o w u lf is a poem about monsters ! This effect was further heightened by the uncertainty round Grendel, for i f he w ere just a p yrs B e o w u lf w ould lose the credit o f doing God*s w o rk in killing His adversary, while i f he w ere entirely devil his natural antagonist w ould be a saint. There are tw o taxonomic compromises in the poem, but the one is generated b y the other. It m ay be objected either that this reeks o f heresy, or that it makes the poem rest on a double evasion. T h e poet’s voice is, how ever, often evasive, recognizing the limits o f knowledge. N o one knows w h o ‘those’ w ere w h o sent Scyld out on his fateful journey and then took him back again; they cannot have been G od, but they hardly seem to be men. N o one knows for sure w hat Sigemund did, either, ori his campaigns against the monsters. B u t these suggestions o f a w orld larger than men’s ‘middleearth* can suggest humility rather than heresy, as can the careful, not-tobe-disentangled interweaving o f pagan and Christian motifs in B e o w u lf *s last three death-speeches. Salvation is after all G o d ’s affair. T h e poet does the best he can for his heroes b y eliminating from their w orld slaves, sacrifices, incest, all the immediately repulsive accompaniments o f 10 See Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, ed. A . Vacant and E. Mangenot (15 vols, Paris, 1903-46), s.v. ‘Infidèles, salut des’ , vol. 7, 1 7 2 6 -

930. 11 See The Earliest L ife o f Gregory the Great, ed. and trans. B . Colgrave (Lawrence Ka., 1968), pp. 1 6 1 - 3 .

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BEOWULF

paganism. But he will not go so far as to say, untruthfully, that they were really Christians. A t line 1865 it is Hrothgar w h o asserts that the Danes and Geats are ‘in every respect guiltless, in the ancient fashion* [æghwæs

untæíe ealde wisan], but the statement is not openly ratified. W h a t the poet has done is to create a universe w hich is lifelike, consistent, a model for emulation, and one seen through a film o f antique nostalgia; but w hich remains at the same time a w orld the poet and all his contempo­ raries could properly thank their G od they did not live in.

4 . Poetry and its Functions Compounds, variations, formulas A ll literary effects depend finally on words, and it is the last responsibility o f the B eo w u lf critic to examine the w a y the poet uses them. T hat is not the same, though, as agreeing w ith A . G . Brodeur that ‘w hat concerns us is the quality o f his w o rk as poetry’ .1 For this last formulation implies several o f the deepest-rooted and least-challenged pieties o f m odem criticism - that poetry is something above analysis, a true goal beyond mean considerations o f utility, permanent and universal and speaking directly to the reader’s heart. Certainly the author o f B eo w u lf put a high valuation on his craft. O n the other hand he w as not above connecting it w ith horse-racing (lines 853 ffi). There is no sign in his w o rk o f the superstitious veneration for poetry w hich w e have learnt from Rom an­ ticism and its successors. It is accordingly not disrespectful to remark on one o f the sorest and least-probed points o f Beowulfian style - its casual w a y w ith compound w ords. Consider the powerful and successful section at the end o f the Grendel-fight, lines 809-36. A s the monster disappears into death and darkness, the poet remarks o f B e o w u lf: N ihtw eorce gefeh, ellenmærjmm. Geatmecga leod

Hæfde East-Denum gilp gelæsted . . .

(827-9)

[He rejoiced in his night’s w o rk , the fame his courage w on. T h e man o f the Geats had fulfilled his boast to the East-Danes.] W h y ‘ Bwf-Danes’ ? T h e same people w ere ‘N orth-D anes’ fo rty lines before (783), ‘ South-Danes’ before that (463), and ‘W est-D anes’ on B e o w u lf’s arrival (383). T h e y have been ‘ Spear-Danes’ and ‘R ing-D anes’ and ‘Bright-Danes’ too, but at least yo u can be all those things together, w hile to most people ‘east’ definitely precludes ‘west’ , as ‘north’ does ‘south’ . O f course East has been put into line 828 only to make the 1 A . G . Brodeur, The Art o f Beow ulf (Berkeley and Los Angeles, P* 3 *

1 9 5 9 )»

B E O WUL F

46

necessary alliteration w ith eilen. That is the only reason for m any o f the poem ’s other compound forms, and for m any more it is the strongest reason. A fe w lines above East-Denum the poet says that Grendel knew his end had come, dogera dxgrim . This phrase is entirely tautologous, meaning literally ‘the day-number o f his days’ . A more sensible w o rd w ould be dogorgerim (used at line 2728) but in line 823 that w ould not scan. Dæg is thrown in, then, to make up the weight. O ne could balk at line 820 as well, w hen Grendel has to escape, feorhseoc fleon under fe n -

hleoðu [flee life-sick under fen-slopes]. This is a good line, in grim contrast w ith the futile purpose o f the next phrase, ‘to seek a joyless dwelling’ . B u t ‘f e n - slopes’ ? A hlið is something steep, cliff or hillside or even wall. Fens, however, are flat. It is hard to resist the thought that the poet wanted a compound w o rd w hich w ould scan, im ply inaccessibility, and above all alliterate o n / ; he created fenhleoðu , then, b y a kind o f double analogy w ith the misthleoðu [misty slopes] o f line 7 1 0 and the fenfreodu [fenfastnesses] o f 8 51. T h e w o rd sounds all right, but it is not meant to stand close examination. This is not to say that the B eow ulf poet never used w ords imaginatively. Bu t he did accept an element o f redundance and tautology as part o f his style (just as he saw no sin in heroes drinking). Com pounds like

heal-reced and heal-xrn (they both mean ‘hall-building’ or even ‘hallhall’) are then neither tributes to the vividness o f his imagination though they form part o f Professor Brodeur’s statistics o f originality nor signs o f intellectual barrenness. T h e y are, like the poet’s m any indistinguishable synonyms, simply functional; and their function is to create metric or alliterative pattern. It can hardly be a coincidence that the poem ’s next most evident feature o f style also has clear utility. This is ‘variation’ , and examples o f it are everywhere. T h e lines just quoted about B e o w u lf fulfilling his boast continue: swylce oncyþðe inwidsorge,

ealle gebette,

pe hie ær drugon

ond for þreanydum torn unlytel.

þolian scoldon, (830 -33)

[Also cured all their distress, the sorrow and the malice they had endured and in painful necessity had had to endure, no little grief.] A n yon e can see that inwidsorge and tom are both ‘variations’ o f the idea first expressed in oncyþðe, while the w hole o f line 832 is an expansion o f

pe hie ær drugon just before; anyone can see, too, that the poet is enjoying the cumulative roll o f vanished miseries, w ith the sharp litotes o f unlytel

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at the end. Just the same, the ‘variations’ in B eow u lf keep on arriving even w hen their necessity is less than evident (for example in lines 3 5 0 -5 5 ). W h a t they do is help the poet ‘change step’ , that is, m ove from one essential idea to the next w ithout losing alliteration. In this section, for instance, the poet’s final and clearly deliberate stroke is to end w ith the image o f B e o w u lf showing his grisly trophy, Grendel’s arm, to the watching men. pæ t wæs tacen sweotol, he says w ith enthusiastic underunderstatement, ‘it was a clear indication, once, bold in battle, he laid dow n the hand, the arm and shoulder - there was Grendel’s grip all together - laid it dow n beneath the vaulted r o o f’ (833-6). T he tacen, w e can see, is a vital part o f the section’s narrative structure; but its entry has been m uch eased b y the semantically redundant use o f torn. H aving got so far, one can hardly avoid the concept o f ‘orality’ . Does the poet’s functionalism not suggest a man w h o w ill have to recite his poem to listeners w h o cannot be expected to ponder over every single w o rd he says? Could it not even im ply a man himself illiterate w h o never so much as imagined the scrupulous concepts o f literary criticism? These questions (and several others) have in recent years been almost literally bedevilled b y the discovery o f a third stylistic feature o f B eow u lf - the formula, sometimes called the oral-formula. T h e facts behind this phrase can be briefly stated.2 Through the whole o f B eow u lf about one h alf line in six w ill be repeated more or less exactly elsewhere in the poem : examples include hine fy rw y t bræc, already discussed, or in the lines just quoted ellenmærpum and pe hie ær drugon. V e r y m any more w ill be repeated w ith slight (or great) changes: thus nihtweorce gefeh (827) is at least rather like secg weorce gefeh (1569), w hile ond fo r preanydum (832) is virtually identical w ith acforpreanedlan (2223). A n y search for repetitions in B eow u lf uncovers vast but not easily organized sets o f resem­ blances; and these once more offer radical challenge to concepts o f originality, precision, the poetic mind. Thus to m any the epithet nacod niðdraca in line 2 2 73 seems beautifully calculated to evoke the monster’s obscenely and unnaturally leathery hide, the famous armour-plating o f the longw orm . O n the other hand the poet alliterates nið and nacod elsewhere, in line 25 8 5, where he is talking about swords, and he has a w hole range o f similar phrases for the dragon, some o f them (‘dangerous fire-dragon’ , ‘terrible earth-dragon’) no more tightly appropriate than Grendel’s fenhleoðu . Y o u can, in short, regard the brilliant stroke as one m ore accidental overlap o f tw o repetitive systems; the formulas turn out

2 For a full account, including explanations o f ‘one half line in six’ and ‘more or less exactly’, see A . C . W atts, The Lyre and the Harp (N ew Haven and London, 1969), especially appendix B , pp. 2 2 7-6 5.

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as functional as the compounds and the variations, and as artistically neutral. Some critics welcom e these implications as a gain in precisiorir T o others the whole line o f thought acts as intolerable provocation to their most cherished notions o f individual art. T h e problem is ours, not the poet’s. Once again the overwhelm ing temptation for m odem readers is to bring to the poem preconceived ideas o f beauty and w orth, to insist on praising it for w hat w e have already decided is praiseworthy. Beow ulflends itself to these arguments, as it does to symbolic interpretations, ironic interpretations, even the neo­ classic interpretations o f days gone by. That does not make any o f them right. Furthermore w e must fear that while w e pursue sterile contro­ versies o f art versus accident and oral versus literate, w e are shirking the real problem, w hich is to see w hat the poet w ould himself have found stylistically admirable. In pursuing this objective, probably the most use­ ful thing w e can do w ith compounds, variations and formulas is jettison them; and w ith them our quasi-autobiographical curiosity about mode o f composition. T he latter cannot be satisfied. A s for the features o f style already discussed, they are prominent and they do tell us something, but the most useful thing they tell us is that for the underlying charm and pow er o f the poem - as distinct from minor local lapses or neatnesses w e shall have to look elsewhere. The style o£ B eow u lf is clearly functional. B u t w e w ant to k n o w w hat aim these functions serve.

Fragmentation and control One can make a start here b y considering once more the end o f the Grendel fight. Here i f anywhere the poet is deliberately manipulating his audience. From the start o f the struggle he has been insisting that B e o w u lf’s w ill is unbreakable, and so is his grip. Grendel ‘could not get aw ay’ (754), he ‘knew his fingers held in the fierce one’s grip’ (764-5) ; as for Beow ulf, he ‘held him firm ly’ (788), ‘not for anything w ould he let the evil visitor escape alive’ (7 9 1-2 ). So h o w does Grendel manage to flee to the fens? A t the crucial moment the poet evades us, slipping from the physical bursting o f bones in line 818 to the abstraction o f guðhreð, success and glory in 819. T h e answer is held in suspense for fifteen lines.

Then the poet says it was ‘a clear sign’ [tacen siveotol] when B e o w u lf laid dow n the hand and arm and shoulder ‘beneath the vaulted ro o f’ . The hero’s grip has not weakened, w e see; instead it was the monster’s fear w hich proved stronger than his flesh. I have commented elsewhere on the poet’s love o f constructions which tell us first about results and only second about their causes,3 but the 3 Shippey, Old English Verse, pp. 36-8.

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immediate point here is the strongly visual quality o f the poet’s rhetoric. O ne can hardly avoid saying that he ‘cuts’ from the m ighty w oun d to Grendel fleeing dim ly into the night, that at the end he ‘narrows focus’ to the arm ‘framed’ b y the vaulted roof. O f course all these words are cinematic, and so anachronisms. Still, they can remind us that the poet obviously did not mean his words to stay on the page, but to stimulate mental images. Sometimes he directs his audience to visualize, using w ords like ypgesene : ‘O n the bench there over each prince yo u could easily have seen .. . . ’ M o re often he gives them something to look at, and characters inside the poem looking at it. T he Danes pursuing Grendel’s mother com e upon Æschere’s head w ith exactly the same shock as those in H eorot staring at Grendel’s arm, and the poet stops to let them (and us) drink it in: Folc to sægon, he prompts (1422), ‘the people looked at it\ T w o hundred lines later it is Grendel’s head w hich appears on the floor o f H eorot within a frame o f spectators : Pa wæs be feaxe

on flet boren

Grendles heafod,

pær guman druncon,

egeslic for eorlum

ond pære idese mid,

wliteseon wrætlic;

weras on saw on.

(16 4 7-50 )

[Then Grendel’s head was carried b y its hair on to the floor w here the men w ere drinking, a terrible thing for the warriors and the w om an w ith them, a splendid and beautiful sight; the men looked at it.] In between B e o w u lf has (quite redundantly) asked the Danes to visualize H ygelac receiving the news o f his death: ‘Then the lord o f the Geats can realize, the son o f Hrethel see, w hen he stares at the treasure [ponne he on

pæt sine starad] that I found a good divider o f rings . . . ’ (14 8 4 -7 ). A n d w hen the slave makes o ff w ith the dragon’s cup, he shows it to his master: frea sceawode fira fym g ew eo rc

forman si ðe.

(228 5-6 )

[For the first time the lord looked at the ancient w o rk o f men.] Silent vision is an important part o f the poet’s craft; he manufactures occasions for it. That is w h y w e have the rapid and much-admired interchange o f external and internal view s as Grendel bears dow n on H eorot (70 2-27). That is equally w h y, after B e o w u lf has killed Grendel’s mother in the submarine hall, the poet cannot resist switching to H rothgar and the others fathoms above, standing and w atching the blood spread in the water. Silently the Danes ride home. A s silently the

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Geats sit and stare at the mere, wishing hopelessly that they could ‘see their lord him self’. B u t the sight to w hich the poet redirects us is the giant sword melting like an icicle in Grendel’s blood. T h e emotional contrasts are presented entirely visually. O f course this makes excellent sense as a mode o f narration for audiences not yet surfeited b y television. W h a t is less com m only realized, how ever, is h o w far dow n the stylistic scale this quality o f manipulated vision goes. It is something w hich (unlike compound words and form u­ las) resists quantification. Nevertheless, the most powerful consistent feature o f Beowulfian style is w hat m ay be called its ‘epic brokenness’ the poet’s determination not to let successive sentences resemble each other syntactically or describe events from the same point o f view . Som e examples o f this have already been cited. W e are switched in lines 8 1 8 - 1 9 from physical joints’ to abstract ‘g lo ry’ ; in line 825 w e turn from simple past to pluperfect, as the poet invites us to consider all the courage and misery that preceded this turn o f events; and in lines 8 2 7 -8 w e get a neat ‘double perspective’ in time as B e o w u lf rejoices simultane­ ously over w hat he has done (nihtweorce) and w hat he w ill get (ellen-

mærþum). M ore generally w e can see that the whole o f this fight has been described in a w a y peripherally, w ith attention being repeatedly directed aw ay from the centre to the effects that that centre p ro d u c e s-th e echoing hall, the smashed benches, the gallant but ineffective cro w d o f Geats, outside them the Danes listening in horror to the screams o f Grendel, ‘G o d ’s adversary singing a terror-song —

the captive o f hell

lamenting his pain’ . Perhaps most remarkable, though, is the poet’s occasional approach to ‘stream o f consciousness’ , as for instance in his account o f Ongentheow, the grim old Swedish king, falling back in sullen anger before the unexpected Geatish revanche. In lines 2 9 4 9 -5 7 the poet, unusually, allows this character to remain the syntactic subject o f five main verbs in succession: he ‘w ent aw ay . . . turned back; he had heard o f the warfare o f H ygelac, the proud man’s battle-skill; he had no faith in resistance, in beating o ff the seamen, defending from the invaders his treasure, w ife and children; again he turned aw ay, old man beneath the earth-wall.’ O ne sees h o w discontinuous even this ‘stream’ is, as the strongly implied conjunctions like ‘because’ and ‘so’ are omitted, as n ew facts like the rampart and O ngentheow ’s children emerge from each n ew clause. There are fe w passages in B eow u lf o f more direct narrative than this, and yet even here one sees the love o f proceeding b y a series o f minor shocks - o f keeping reader or listener from reaching any easy sense o f predictability, while letting him see, feel, remember, conclude only those exact things w hich the narrator intends.

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This too could be explained, incidentally, as one more accident o f alliterative convention. In line 8 15 w e have a typically sudden leap from emotion to fact, one o f the poem's innumerable ‘changes o f angle' : wæs gehwæþer oðrum lifigende lað. atol aglæca.

Licsar gebad (8 14 -16 )

[Each was to the other hateful while he lived. T h e dreadful monster received a body wound.] Is it coincidence, though, that in the poem l i f and lie alliterate together five more times? There is an obvious reason w h y they should, since they mean something similar, are easily related: in line 2 5 7 1 B e o w u lf's shield fails to protect ‘life and b od y’ [life ond lice], in line 2743 he says he must die, ‘life go from b o d y’ [ lif o f lice]. B u t in 8 15 this semantic connection has become a discontinuity, separating different sentences. Is this (like fenhleoðu or nacod niðdraca) another compulsive prom pting from the traditional vocabulary? M ayb e so. H ow ever, the observation hardly matters. I f one studies compounds and formulas in B e o w u lf one can often feel that the poet’s attention has wandered. W h en it comes to modes o f revelation and concealment, how ever, his delight and involvement are unmistakable. Certainly he snaps up the opportunities created b y traditional pairs like l i f and lie or f y r and flo d , and readers used to the explanatory smoothness o f m odem prose m ay feel that, for him, any excuse to change his view point w ill do. Still, on this level his attention never w avers; there is nothing in the poem as banal visually as ‘EastDanes' is verbally. T h e poet's style is fragmented, but his voice projects control. Stasis , pleonasm , cumulation It is indeed typical o f the poem to develop strength from w hat w o u ld b y orthodox literary canons be weakness. Its characters do not develop or change. A dm ittedly B e o w u lf him self is presented first as yo un g and then as old, and it has been shown h o w vital to the poem this final sense o f age is.4 H ow ever, it is also true to say that the w ay this com plex feeling is produced verbally is b y simple combination o f epithets once reserved for Hrothgar, the old and passive king (se w is a ,fro d cyning , pone gomelan), w ith others w hich remind us that the hero is still in heart w hat he was (se goda , oretta, heard under helme). W h a t is m ovin g is not awareness o f 4 B y John C . Pope, ‘B e o w u lf’s O ld A g e ’ , in Philological Essays in Honour

o fH . D . Merritt, ed. J . L. Rosier (The Hague and Paris, 1970), pp. 55-6 4 .

BEOWULF

J2

change, but juxtaposition o f fixed purpose w ith changed circumstance. ‘W h en I was youn g I did m any battles’ , says B eo w u lf, as i f to himself: ‘g y t ic w ylle, frod folces w eard

fæhðe secan,

mærðu frem m an .. . .’

( 2 5 1 2 -1 4 )

[Once more I w ill, old guardian o f the people, seek out violence, do famous deeds.] N e ver before has he been fr o d folces weard ; but fæ h ð e and mærðu have been his goals a dozen times already. Even this case, then, supports the assertion that Beowulfian characters do not change their true nature, though indeed this m ay be progressively revealed. Sometimes the result is a peculiar inappositeness. B e o w u lf says o f H rothgar (2107) 'hw ilum hildedeor hearpan grette

[sometimes, bold in

battle, he touched the harp]. B u t H rothgar is no longer hildedeor, and even i f he were, it w ould have nothing to do w ith his harping. Similarly, as Unferth lends B e o w u lf his sword, the poet remarks contemptuously that ‘the son o f E cg la f surely forgot, m ighty in strength [eafoþes cræfrig] w hat he had said before, drunk w ith wine, n o w he lent his weapon to a better swordsman’ (14 6 5-8 ). Eafopes cræfrig? W e feel the phrase ought to continue the criticism, and so translators tend to render it b y some such w o rd as ‘strapping’ (which implies disapproval). Alternatively the phrase can be explained as ‘ironic’ . Bu t the fact is that both the style and the ideology o f the poem continue to use honorifics up to the moment (as w ith the ten cowards after line 2846) w hen they are form ally removed. There are occasions w hen this inflexibility becomes a definite asset. A s B e o w u lf and Hrothgar part, for instance, the old king breaks down, weeping at the thought that they w ill never meet again. ‘Locked in the bonds o f his heart’ , observes the poet, ‘a gloo m y longing for the man he loved burnt in his blood’ (1878-80 ). B u t B e o w u lf simply walks aw ay : H im B e o w u lf þanan, guðrinc goldwlanc since hremig ; agendfrean,

græsmoldan træd

sægenga bad se J?e on ancre rad.

(18 80 -8 3)

[A w a y from him the gold-proud w ar-m an trod the grassy turf, exulting in treasure; the sea-crosser w hich rode at anchor was waiting for its lord.] Insensitivity? T h e vicious pride o f youth? W ith ou t the expectations o f

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the epic style w e m ight think so. Bu t as it is, the shining figure trampling the grass conveys something exhilarating, the more so for the g rief and foreboding w hich surround him. W e k n o w B e o w u lf is going to die; he is separated from any possible audience o f the poem b y a great gap o f tim e; and yet for a moment he exists in sharp focus dow n the tunnel o f years, real and happy and triumphant. Poetry has made him immortal. A n d an element in that process is the w a y that despair sloughs o ff him, leaving his character unmarked. W e see the same movement at the start o f the poem’ s last section, as the Geats turn from g rief to action : ‘For him then the people o f the Geats prepared a pyre on earth, no mean one’ ( 3 13 7 -8 ) . T h e y are as correct in their silence as was B e o w u lf himself, confronted w ith the beast his men tugged from the monsters’ m ere: ‘T h e men gazed at the terrible stranger. B e o w u lf prepared himself in warriors’ equipment, nothing did he care for life . . .’(14 4 0 -4 2). In a hard world, w e m ight reflect, emotional stasis could be as much o f a positive as sensitivity. Line 3 13 8 , how ever, displays a further potential weakness o f epic style in its pleonasm: the phrase on eorðan is redundant, for where else w ould yo u build a pyre i f not on the ground? T h row in g in the odd ‘on earth’ or ‘under heaven’ is a com m on device o f the A n glo -Saxo n poet under stress, and the author o f B e o w u lf does not scorn it. In his poem, though, pleonasm can w o rk ; it is indeed the first stylistic device w e should become aware of. A s early as line 13 a child is bom to Scyld, geong in geardum [young in the yards]. Once Scyld is dead this son rules: D a wæs on burgum B e o w u lf Scyldinga [then in the towns was B e o w u lf the Scylding]. H is son was ‘the high Healfdene’ , and to him in turn four children in woruld xvocun [woke into the w orld]. Before long it is the other Beow ulf, the poem ’s hero, w ho is using the same locution, for he says his father is dead and gone, ‘gamol o f geardum [old man from the yards], counterbalancing the Danish B e o w u lf w ho was bom geong in geardum at the start, paralleling Scyld himself w h o ‘went elsewhere’ in death, aldor o f earde [as a chief from the earth]. This cluster o f similar phrases works insidiously and powerfully, along w ith the repeated images o f coming, w aking up, travelling out, to create a picture o f the com m on habitations, the homelands, the geardas, set in space against the universe that sur­ rounds them and in time against the m ystery o f death. T o these forces men oppose their fleeting happiness, their children, their social rituals o f m em ory and inheritance. T h e composite image becomes deeply em­ bedded in the poem as a whole, ready to be restimulated positively b y the mention o f home or inheritance (see lines 693, 9 12 , 1 1 2 7 ; i9 60 ff., 24 70 flf., 2623 ff.), or negatively b y the rumour o f great and ominous forces

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just outside the light-those for instance who sent out Scyld on his journey, ænne ofer yðey umborwesende [alone over seas, being a child], and who take back his treasure-piled body in the end: M en ne cunnon secgan to soðe,

selerædende,

hæleð under heofenum,

hw a þæm hlæste onfeng.

(50-52)

[M en cannot say for sure, hall-councillors, heroes under heavens, w ho received that cargo.] T he heroes are heroes, one might say, because they are ‘under heavens’ and know so little; the phrase is resonantly appropriate. It is not destroyed if one remarks that it is also an evident cliché w hich can (as in line 505) be used entirely mechanically. T h e images o f pleonasm w ork in fact as spatial counterparts to the rhythms o f temporal opposition w hich the poet again extracts from formula and elevates to principle - the circle o f sadness after jo y and jo y after sadness once more. Hrothgar explains this most openly in his long ‘disguised narrator’ speech o f lines 17 0 0 -17 8 4 , whose clim ax is direct appeal to B e o w u lf (and through him to us). Look at me, says Hrothgar, I was confident once, I ruled the Ring-Danes ‘beneath the clouds’. ‘Hwæt, me þæs on eple g y m æfter gomene, ealdgewinna,

edwenden cw om , seoþðan Grendel wearð,

ingenga m in.’

(1774 -6 )

[T o me in m y home came a change from this, g rief after pleasure, once Grendel, old enemy, became m y invader.] W e see the use o f on eple in 177 4 , the syntactic delay o f scoþðan in 17 7 5 , both devices already mentioned. Between them, though, lies the fierce reversal o f gym æfter gomene. T o this pattem the poet has drawn our attention before - swylt æfter synnum in 12 5 5 , æfter wea . . . wyrp in 909, æfter pam wælræse willa in 824 [death after sins, recovery after w oe, desire after deadly battle]. H e makes the rhythm emblematic in line 1008 as Grendel ‘sleeps after banquet’ , and as the Danish warriors are found ‘sleeping after banquet’ in line 1 19 , only to be betrayed b y sleep to Grendel. T h e pattern leads readily to the repetitions o f ‘they knew not sorrow, the fortune o f men’ in 119 -2 0 , and ‘they knew not fate, grim destiny’ a thousand lines later. It finds its w a y from moralizing to description w hen the Danes wake and find their dead in line 1 2 8 : ‘Then was after banquet lamentation raised’ [wop æfter wiste] ; and into direct

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speech w hen H rothgar tells B eo w u lf: ‘D o n ’t ask after j o y ; sorrow is renewed’ [sorh æfter sælum]. A s often, indeed, the poet and his characters turn out indistinguishable. Their shared image o f human precariousness finds multiple but consistent expression. There is little point, finally, in arguing whether the poet was or was not conscious o f these repeated structures. W h at matters is that even i f he em ployed them consciously, he did so unselfconsciously . His tricks o f rhetoric often have learned names - pleonasm, paronomasia, essential hypotaxis. T h e y remain, however, familiar parts o f English speech; anyone w h o says ‘brain versus braw n’ or ‘I’ll love you and leave y o u ’ is using paronomasia as surely as the B eow u lf poet opposing lo f to l if or wsel to w illa . O f course clichés do not spontaneously generate poetry. Nevertheless, the point remains: the stylistic pow er o f B eow u lf depends not on close fit o f words to scenes but on bold use o f familiar phrasing. T h e poet’s art, like his philosophy, is rooted in commonplace.

The gnomic voice T h e core o f this involvement w ith truth and truism is found in the poem ’s m any maxims. These have fallen predictably foul o f m odem critical taste, w hich tends to ignore them, apologize for them, or else (as w ith compound words) to look for some originality underlying their evident­ ly shared and communal nature. T h e most justifiable reason for this dislike is the fact that m any Beowulfian maxims, in strict logic, mean nothing. ‘G o d can easily restrain the evil-doer from his deeds’ , says H rothgar at lines 4 7 8 -9 , and the very w ording o f the phrase protects it from disproof. Yes, G od can. B u t is H e going to? B e o w u lf’s victory in fact shows that H e was, and Hrothgar accordingly repeats the gist o f his ‘sentence’ (9 3 0 -31). B u t even i f B e o w u lf had lost, the m axim w ould remain potentially and forever true. Still, w hat use is an inherently uncheckable statement? O ne m ight ask the same o f B e o w u lf’s ow n

Spruch - a popular one, repeated m aybe five centuries later in the O ld Norse Fóstbræðra sagay chapter 23 - that ‘Fate often spares the undoomed man, as long as his courage holds’ . In this one can translate wyrd and

unfægne all sorts o f w ays, but tw o near-contradictory things are still being said: (a) not even Fate w ill save a man whose courage does not hold (b) the bravest o f man w ill die i f he isfa g . Keep fighting, then; it m ay be no use ! A s a predictor, the statement is as useless as H rothgar’s, its semantic emptiness only surpassed b y B e o w u lf’s later, ‘Things always go as they must’ [Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel]9 a statement as undeniable as inscrutable. Still, it is no use thinking that this vice is confined to characters speaking

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56

under stress. T he poet very nearly duplicates all four o f the maxims just mentioned w ith the conclusion he draws from the dragon-thief's escape: Sw a mæg unfæge wean ond wræcsið

eaðe gedigan se ðe Waldendes

hyldo gehealdeþ !

(2 2 9 1-3 )

[So a man w h o is not doomed can easily survive sorrow and exile, i f he keeps G o d’s favour.] B u t w h y should the dragon-thief be in G o d ’s good books? M aybe he committed the theft inadvertently, but he shows little desire to make up for it, as w e see from Unes 2 4 0 6 -10 . Evidently there is something com­ pulsive about this voicing o f gnomic statements; and the compulsion lies on the poet as w ell as the characters. T he key to these difficulties lies in the observation made once already, that proverbs are not merely linguistic phenomena; they also tell you w hat you m ay or m ay not accept as true. A s such their importance is not gauged b y their logic, and they communicate (to those w h o understand them) w ith supra-verbal directness. Actually w e realize quite w ell that H rothgar’s early statements mean ‘I w ill not give w a y to despair’, B e o w u lf’s ‘I w ill feel no fear’ . Gnomes often contain an element o f defiance against mere physical fact. So, w hen B e o w u lf says (138 6 -7 ), ‘Each one o f us must endure an end o f life in this w o rld ’ , he is asserting not mortality but its opposite - that since death is sure w e should take no notice o f it. A n d though this m ay not be immediately logical, w e cannot say that it makes no sense ! Further, the maxims are often exercises in self­ definition, telling yo u exactly w hat people ought to be. W h e n W ig la f says that ‘for every warrior [eorla gehwylcum] death is better than a life o f shame’ , he is also saying that a man w h o prefers death to shame is an

eorl. W h en B e o w u lf reports that Hrethel left his children land and homestead ‘as an honest man does’ [swa ded eaiig mon], he also implies that honest men ow n property. These conclusions m ay be unpalatable, and they are frequently false as well, but that once more does not matter. W h a t matters is that social ideals have been created and passed on, propriety equated unforgettably w ith reality. A s I have said elsewhere,5 it can be difficult even on the levels o f grammar to distinguish in B eow u lf between statements and maxims, between what ought to be and w hat is. B u t this uncertainty is strength 5 Shippey, ‘Maxims in Old English Narrative: Literary A rt or Tradi­ tional W isdom ?’, in Oral Tradition, Literary Tradition: A Symposium, ed. H. Bçkker-Nielsçn et a l (Odense, 1977), pp. 28-46.

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not weakness. It gives the poem a final element o f solidarity, assuring readers or listeners that they and the poet and the characters are in essentials on the same side, sharing the same assumptions. O f course, b y the accidents o f history, w e no longer do share the same assumptions (and that is w h y the maxims so often create incomprehension or alarm). That does not mean the poem has lost its pull. W e have to w o rk harder at recovering the sense o f w hat is said, and w e have to do it w hile suspending some o f our o w n learnt codifications; on the other hand a familiar element still persists, while there is also a glamour o f strangeness and intellectual difficulty to compensate (quite unfairly) the equal unfairness o f lost heritage. T h e verve o f some o f the poet’s claims comes over unabated, as w hen B e o w u lf throws dow n his useless sword to an accompanying authorial cheer: Sw a sceal man don, ponne he æt guðe longsumne lo f;

gegan penceð na ym b his lif cearað.

(15 3 4 -6 )

[So must a man do, w hen he means to gain lasting glory in battle; life is not w hat he thinks about.] So does occasional regret: Sine eaðe mæg, gold on gründe oferhigian,

gumeynnes gehwone

hyde se ðe w ylle !

(2764-6)

[Hide it w ho w ill, treasure can easily, gold in the ground, overmaster any o f the race o f men.] A n d yet that particular ‘sentence’ (third and last o f the poet’s eaðe mæg set) m ay serve to remind us once more o f the dangers o f appreciating this unfamiliar style. T h e pleonastic variation o f gold on gründe is here extremely powerful, hinting at the strange charm above all o f buried treasure, arousing a vestige o f the dangerous lust it describes. A n d yet

gold on gründe in a sense means no more than sine, existing primarily to keep alliteration going. T o dwell on it w ould be mistaken. In the same w a y the m axim as a w hole is extremely powerful, suggesting the en­ trapment o f B e o w u lf and W ig la f as w ell b y their all too human instinct for greed. B u t does it im ply exactly that? T h e poet likes maxims too m uch to leave them out. Sometimes he puts them in, one feels, just because he thinks them true, not because he thinks they are to be applied to their immediate context. O ne has only to look at lines 1002 if. to see h o w sententiousness could sweep over him. So over-close attention to maxims m ay be as w ro n g as complete distaste for them; in the same w a y

5»

B E O WUL F

as precise attention to the meaning o f every single Beowulfian w ord often exposes the poet in shift or expediency. A b o ve all the style o f B eow u lf depends on pace, on visualization, on letting the poet exercise his right to switch from close description to loose reflection. Its aphorisms demand involvement rather than scrutiny, and without this remain mere words, as w eak emotionally as factually untrue. W ithout similar involvement B eow u lf too w ould descend to the status o f a romance, a tale o f long ago. Y e t that is not h o w its creator saw it. N o r, more surprisingly, is that h o w it continues to be read, translated, paraphrased, and drawn on, even in the to him unimaginable circumstances o f the present, a thousand years and as m any barriers from the w orld in which it was composed.

5. Afterw ord A t this point in critical essays one is supposed to present ‘conclusions’ . H ow ever, these ought b y n o w to be obvious; and since I have already so often expressed discontent w ith the conventions o f criticism, I w ould like finally to abandon them and set dow n plainly some personal opinions. T o begin with, I think the worst failure o f recent B e o w u lf scholarship has been the inability to capitalize on the ‘oral-formulaic’ initiatives o f M ilm an Parry. His adherents were careless and his opponents conserva­ tive, and both saw ‘oral’ and ‘literate’ as mutually exclusive. It has recently been pointed out, though, that literate people can live in pre­ literate societies, just as illiterates can live in our o w n .1 B u t both minori­ ties have to conform, at least until the stage when (as in most medieval societies) the illiterate majority comes to accept that everything impor­ tant is written down. A t this point the nature o f literacy is likely to change; irony, for instance, emerges from inconsistency, as does symbol­ ism from straight description. Professors Bäum l and Spielmann take the argument further in their article on the Nibelungenlied cited below. B u t I can n o w say no more than that m any o f the problems o f B e o w u lf dissolve i f one accepts it as the w ork o f a iliterate man n a pre-literate society - one m ight say, a sort o f Cædm on in reverse. A further failure o f scholarship, in m y opinion, has been inability to cope w ith allegorists. N o single allegorical reading o f B e o w u lf has ever ousted the others,2 and yet the urge to produce them remains, unweak­ ened b y literal arguments. T he trouble is that the human mind is a pattern-producing machine; it even sees shapes in random constellations. A ccordingly allegory, like irony, can never be disproved directly. Its true weakness lies in the innumerable details its discoverers are too singleminded to include: Yrm enlaf, the racehorses, the painted shields o f the Danes, B e o w u lf as a seven-year-old taken from his father, the stolen 1 See F. H. Bäuml and E. Spielmann, ‘From Illiteracy to Literacy: Prolegomena to a Study o f the N ibelungenlied\ in Oral Literature, ed. J. J. Duggan (Edinburgh, 1975), PP- 6 2 -73. 2 The most powerful is, however, M . Goldsmith’s The Mode and M ean­ ing o f B eo w u lf (London, 1970).

B E O WU L F

6o

bride o f Ongentheow, the snapped ribs o f Dæghrefh - all that gives the poem life. Separately all these facts (and hundreds more) can be ignored; their collective absence from consideration makes moral allegory thin and sour. B u t at the same time I think that the m odem preference for multiple meaning and non-didacticism has also made the poem unnecessarily difficult, has indeed smothered it in problems. Actually the poet often tells us w hat he is w riting about - change and the certainty o f death and h o w to balance pessimism w ith optimism. W h e n he is not being pro­ verbial he is repeatedly ‘proverbious’ , saying things w hich sound general though they happen to be particular. In m y opinion a large part o f his meaning is summed up in lines 2 1 8 8 - 9 and 2 2 6 5 -6 : the form er say that ‘a change for every misery came to the valiant man*, and im ply that such changes always com e to all valiant men. T h e latter insist, conversely but not incompatibly, that ‘hateful death has sent aw ay m any races o f men’ (and w ill, o f course, do the same to m any more). H ope for the best, then, prepare for the w orst: traditional advice, but never out o f place. T o this one m ight add that the poet lias a further particular aversion, and that is killing kinsmen, or morporbealo ttiaga (see lines 1079, 2742). His view s on the ethics o f warfare w ere not ours, and I think he accepted social instability as a fact o f life; how ever, though w e m ay feel it a narrow moral, he obviously believed blood ought to be thicker than water, and saw the contrast o f merely piratical Geats w ith internecine Swedes and Danes accordingly. So the meaning o£ B eow u lf is not unusually hard to apprehend. T h at is not the same as finding it easy to comprehend. T h e final observation I w o u ld like to make about the poem is that it is almost implausibly consistent in m inor matters. N o one has, to m y knowledge, written the poem ’s ‘syntax o f gestures’ - people stacking weapons or leaving them outside, people walking round the hall, drinking in turn, sitting at each other’s feet or standing before their shoulders, people going through rituals o f greeting and parting and donation and boast. Y e t this w ould be an easy jo b , w ould turn out plausible, significant, internally as cohesive as the royal pedigrees w hich the poet never bothers to set out but w hich all editors neady reconstruct and transcribe into their introductions. C o u ld the poet have invented either the dynasties or the behaviour patterns? A n d then had the self-restraint to keep them so far from prominence? I cannot believe it myself. This is not ‘realism* but truth: to put it more exactly, the poet believed he was describing facts, whether these w ere mere historical ones or matters still accepted in his o w n time. That is w h y the poem is more than fiction and better than something

AFTERWORD

6l

just original. T o close w ith one critical heresy m ore: I do not think the ultimate justification o f B eo w u lf is its creator's art, but rather its charac­ ters' poise and self-possession and tireless oral propriety. M y ow n image o f the anonymous poet resembles V irgil less than it does a bolder and m ore taciturn Lord Chesterfield.

Further Reading This list should be taken in conjunction w ith the w orks already cited. Larry D . Benson, ‘T he Pagan Coloring o f B eow u lf’, in O ld English Poetry, ed. R . P. Creed (Providence, 1967), pp. 1 9 3 - 2 1 3 . A . Bonjour, The Digressions in B eow u lf (Oxford, 1950). A . G . Brodeur, The A rt o f B eow u lf (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959). N . K . Chadw ick, ‘T he Monsters and B e o w u lf’, in The A nglo-Saxons, ed. P. Clemoes (London, 1959), pp. 1 7 1 - 2 0 3 . R . W . Chambers, Beow ulf: an Introduction (3rd edn w ith supplement b y C.

L . W renn, Cam bridge, 1959).

U . Dronke, ‘B e o w u lf and Ragnarök’ , Saga-Book o f the Viking Society, vol. 17 , part 4 (1969), pp. 3 0 2 -2 5 . E. B . Irving Jr , A Reading o f B eow u lf (N e w H aven and London, 1968). L . E. Nicholson (ed.), A n Anthology o f B eow u lf Criticism (Notre D am e, 1963). T . A . Shippey, ‘T he Fairy-Tale Structure o f B eow u lf’, Notes and Queries n.s. 16 (1969), pp. 2 - 1 1. K . Sisam, The Structure o f B eow u lf (O xford, 1965). E. G . Stanley, ‘B eow ulf ’, in Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G . Stanley (London, 1966,) pp. 10 4 -4 1. J . R . R . Tolkien, ‘B eow ulf: the Monsters and the Critics’ , Proceedings o f

the British Academy 22 (1936), pp. 2 4 5 -9 5 . D . W hitelock, The Audience o f B eo w u lf (Oxford, 19 5 1). O f the m any translations o f B eo w u lf available, the best are those o f E. Talbot Donaldson (N e w Y o rk , 1966), K . Crossley-Holland (London, 1968), and M . Alexander (Penguin Classics, Harmondsworth, 19 73). H ow ell D . Chickering’s ‘Dual-Language Edition’ (N e w Y o rk , 19 77 ), is also extremely helpful, as are the m any texts translated in G . N . G arm onsway and J . Simpson’s B eow u lf and its Analogues (London and N e w Y o rk , 1968).

Index Alcuin

36

Hom er, Iliad

Am is, Kingsley Aristotle

7

Irving, E. B .

35

Bäum l, F. H .

Keats, John

59

23

Booth, W a y n e C .

26«

Brodeur, A . G .

4 5, 46

Brop hy, Brigid

7

22, 33n 39

Ker, W . P.

29

Klaeber, F.

13/t, 4 1, 42

Lewis, C . S.

42«

Leyerle, John Cædm on

59

Chambers, R . W .

31» 61

Chickering, H ow ell D .

12

20 n

Clark, G eorge Colgrave, B .

28, 37«

Lindisfarne Gospels

Chesterfield, Lo rd

Mackie, W . S.

13 «

Muecke, D . C .

34«

Nibelungenlied

21«

59

O xford English Dictionary

Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique

Parry, M ilm an

43/1

Pope, John C . Flaubert, Gustave

26

Shakespeare,

55

5 1» W illiam

33«, 48«, 5 6n

Sisam, Kenneth

Gladstone, W . E.

21

Smith, James

59 n

39

13 «

Spenser, Edmund

Greenfield, Stanley B . G regory, o f T ours

31

G regory, the Great

43

27n

Spielmann, E.

8;

28

Shippey, T . A .

Goldsmith, M .

13 »

W inter's Tale

42

20, 2 1

59

Pepperdene, M .

Fóstbrœðra saga

28

43«

Culler, Jonathan

Genesis

23«

28

Austen, Jane

Bede

7

Hume, Kathryn

8

59

Thorkelin, Grím ur

7

The

Tolkien, J . R . R .

28, 39, 4 2 « ;

The Lord o f the Rings Trajan

24

W an ley, H um frey W atts, A . C .

W idsith

43

2 5 , 30

W renn, C . L . Virgil

6 1 ; A eneid

7

47« 31«

7