Wherefore Beowulf?

In this episode, we talk about the first major text in English: the epic Beowulf.  In addition to summarizing the tale, we'll also ask why a Christian monk would feel the need to preserve an oral pagan legend by transcribing it: why does Beowulf even exist?

Music: "Rejoice" (G.F. Handel) perf. Advent Chamber Orchestra, "Dies Irae" perf. Dee Yan Key; "Mournful Violin" perf. Cottager

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Classic English Literature podcast – the greatest hits of English lit!

I’ve added a Twitter feed for the show with the handle @classicenglish1.  You can follow the podcast on Instagram and Facebook or you can email me at classicenglishliterature@gmail.com.

Before we begin, I must offer the first of what will no doubt be an elephant full of apologies.  Apparently, in episode 2 – called “The Coming of the Anglo-Saxons” – I whiffed the title line in the actual script.  So, after a surreal metaphor comparing the plight of ancient Celts to pickles on a charcuterie platter (which probably deserves its own apology), I announced that these Romanized Britons were faced with . . . wait for it . . . the coming of the Britons!  I meant Saxons, obviously.  What a wally! 

When last we spoke, we learned of the first poet and poem in English – “Caedmon’s Hymn” – and how its assertion of God’s eternity would prove foundational for early Anglo-Saxon poets.  This week, I’d like to expand this idea by exploring what many consider “ground-zero” for English poetry.  I’m speaking of the epic Beowulf, the first lengthy text in our language.

Let’s first explain what an epic is.  We use the term colloquially nowadays to refer to anything large, overwhelming, or awesome.  But as a literary term, epic has a particular definition: it is a long narrative poem concerning the exploits of an epic hero, a character who embodies the values and virtues of his culture.  You may be familiar with the classical epics by Homer and Virgil – the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid.  Or with John Milton’s early modern epic Paradise Lost.

Beowulf is concerned with the exploits of its eponymous hero, a brave Scandinavian warrior who defeats monsters and becomes a powerful king.  Ironically, though it is composed in English and is considered the very foundation of English literature, none of its characters are English nor does the story take place in England.  Rather, Beowulf is a Geat, a member of a tribe that inhabited what is now southern Sweden, and his adventures take place largely in Denmark.

So here’s a stream-lined super summary.  The poem begins with the famous “Hwaet!” the rousing call to attention that means something like “Lo!” or “Hey!”  We then get a history of the Danish kings up to the reign of the current king Hrothgar, who is well loved by his people and successful in war. He builds a spectacular mead-hall, which he calls Heorot, in which he will rule justly and generously.

However, all is not well.  In a scene which never fails to remind me of the grumpy Grinch complaining of his noisy neighbors down in Whoville, a monster named Grendel is provoked by the singing and carousing of Hrothgar’s followers. Late one dark and stormy night, Grendel swoops down upon Heorot and kills thirty warriors as they sleep. For the next twelve years, Grendel haunts and hounds Hrothgar’s posse.  Finally, some Danes flee in cowardice while others turn to devil-worship to save themselves.

Beowulf, prince of the Geats, hearing about Hrothgar’s troubles, gathers fourteen of his stoutest companions and sets sail for Hrothgar’s lands,  The Danes greet them and Beowulf boasts to the king of his unparalleled awesomeness, particularly his success in fighting sea monsters. During the welcoming banquet, Unferth, presumably Hrothgar’s champion, disparages Beowulf‘s resume, and Beowulf responds by accusing Unferth of killing his brothers. 

That night, Grendel again attacks, but this time Beowulf fights the monster bare-knuckled, tearing off his arm.  Grendel escapes, but dies soon afterward at the bottom of the murky swamp that he and his Mum call home. The timid Danish warriors, slinking back into the hall, no doubt with a bit of belt-adjusting swagger and throat-clearing, sing of Beowulf‘s triumph. 

But spare a thought for Grendel‘s bereaved mother. She avenges her son by attacking  Heorot at night and carries off Esher, Hrothgar’s grand vizier. Beowulf volunteers to dive to the bottom of the swamp and destroy her.  During the ensuing battle, Beowulf kills her with a magical sword that he finds on the wall of her home. How lucky is that?  The one weapon in the world that can kill her happens to be hanging above her mantle!  For good measure, he finds Grendel‘s corpse, cuts off the head, and swims home. How long can this fella hold his breath? 

Fast forward fifty years.  Beowulf is King of the Geats when a thief steals a jeweled cup from a sleeping dragon.  Never a wise move – dragons are notorious mercantilists.  The dragon retaliates by burning down everyone’s houses, including Beowulf‘s mead-hall. Beowulf vows to destroy the dragon, he is now an old man and his strength is not as it was in days gone by. During the battle, Beowulf snaps his sword against the dragon’s flank and the enraged dragon wounds Beowulf in the neck.

Beowulf‘s followers abandon him except for Wiglaf, who braves the flames to stab the dragon allowing Beowulf, summoning the last of his strength, to cut the dragon in two.

But Beowulf knows that this is his last battle. Dying, he asks Wiglaf to take him to the dragon’s treasure trove and instructs him to build a tomb, known as “Beowulf‘s Barrow” on the edge of the sea as a guide for sailors.

Wiglaf oversees Beowulf’s funeral. The Geatish king is cremated and his ashes, along with the dragon’s treasure, are buried in the barrow.  A Geatish woman wails as the smoke rises, foreseeing a time of great tribulation ahead.

Bit of a gloomy ending for a heroic tale, no?

The poem was composed somewhere between the 7th and 10th centuries, with various scholars leaning one way or the other for a variety of reasons that don’t really concern us here.  My own thinking is that the poem circulated orally by scops quite early on, based perhaps on a variety of Scandinavian legends and history, and came to be written down somewhere near the end of the first millennium.

We only have one existing manuscript of Beowulf from the Nowell Codex, one of the four major collections of Anglo-Saxon poetry like the Exeter Book, which we mentioned last time.  This manuscript is written in a West Saxon dialect, which became the literary standard under King Alfred the Great in the 9th century, though there are some traces of other dialects which seems to testify to its long oral transmission.  

We are quite lucky to have this manuscript, called Cotton Vitellius since it had been part of Sir Robert Cotton’s collection of medieval manuscripts.  This collection, to protect it from the fire threat many felt the Essex House library to be, was moved to Ashburnham House which burned in 1731.  Oh, the irony!  Seems a name like “Ashburnham” might be a bad omen.  Over two hundred manuscripts were lost or damaged, and Beowulf shows signs of a severe scorching.

And yet, we still have it!  Which is fortunate, because, had it been lost, we would have nothing to talk about today, and this episode of the podcast would be a festival of awkward silence, sniffling, and foot-shuffling.  Glad we avoided that.

But this does lead me to my big question for this episode: why does Beowulf even exist at all?  Why did someone bother to write down an old Scandinavian pagan legend?  And that someone was a Christian monk, which we know because in the early Middle Ages only the clergy was literate.  Not only that, but the process of book-making was incredibly labor intensive and expensive.  Everything had to be handwritten, obviously, as we are centuries before Gutenberg developed moveable type, and it was written on vellum – the skin and membranes of calves.  It could take nearly 200 calves to produce enough vellum for a Bible.  So why would a Christian monk go through the time, labor, and expense to produce a manuscript of a pagan legend?  Or, as Alcuin of York could have put it: “Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?” – “What has Ingeld to do with Christ?”  Here, Ingeld stands as sort of a metonym for Germanic heroic culture and stands in opposition to the compassionate passivity of Christian heroism.

Let’s talk about that Germanic heroic culture.  It was a military society, a warrior culture, so its chief virtues were courage, loyalty, and generosity (which all seem capital “G” good things).  What may surprise us is that this society was not structured hierarchically.  That is, it was not vertically-oriented, with a king at the top, then some nobles, then some peasants at the bottom.  That would come later in the Middle Ages.  Germanic warrior cultures adopted a more horizontal orientation –  a system of mutual obligation called comitatus.  In this system, a king wasn’t a king because he had been divinely appointed; he was king because he was the most successful warrior.  If he began to fail as a warrior, he could be replaced by someone more adept.  So the king had obligations to his followers: he had to lead them in battle, he had to distribute any plunder among his warriors (called “thanes”), and he had to buy the drinks.  It was always the king’s shout.  

On the other end, the warriors had to follow the king in battle – no days off – and, should the king die, the warriors must exact vengeance.  Any soldier who failed to follow and avenge would be exiled for life.

Let’s look at an early passage from Beowulf to see this comitatus in action:

Then Hrothgar, taking the throne, led 

The Danes to such glory that comrades and kinsmen  

Swore by his sword, and young men swelled 

His armies, and he thought of greatness and resolved 

To build a hall that would hold his mighty 

Band and reach higher toward Heaven than anything 

That had ever been known to the sons of men.   

And in that hall he'd divide the spoils 

Of their victories, to old and young what they'd earned 

In battle but leaving the common pastures 

Untouched, and taking no lives. The work 

Was ordered, the timbers tied and shaped    

By the hosts that Hrothgar ruled. It was quickly

Ready, that most beautiful of dwellings, built 

As he'd wanted, and then he whose word was obeyed 

All over the earth named it Herot. 

His boast come true he commanded a banquet,   

Opened out his treasure-full hands.

Hrothgar is glorious in battle and so warriors flock to his banner.  You stood a greater chance of becoming wealthy under a successful and generous king, one who shared “the spoils of their victories.”  To that end, he builds a great mead-hall, a physical manifestation of the comitatus relationship.  Here the king gathers and celebrates with his warriors, shares out the treasure, binding the society together.  

Certainly, this description of Heorot and glory and massive drunken bashes appeals.  But while we may feel initially sympathetic with a social order based on courage, proficiency, generosity, and solidarity, it may be easy to forget that the ethic upon which this all is based is violence and vengeance.  No problem for a pagan Germanic spear-bearer but somewhat antithetical to the “turn the other cheek” ethos espoused by our transcribing Monk, who goes out of his way to make pagan Germanic culture feel glorious.

So, again, wherefore Beowulf?

I think if we read a bit more closely the description of Hrothgar’s victories and architectural endeavors, we can see subtle hints of the Monk’s larger project.  To wit, he describes Heorot as " a hall that would hold his mighty band and reach higher toward Heaven than anything that had ever been known to the sons of men. ”  The greatest building ever, a monument to Hrothgar’s glory, his unrivaled power.  

But a clever listener (or reader) might sense the creeping presence of an allusion here (that’s allusion with an “a” – a reference to an outside person, text, or event).  The Monk, I believe, in his description of Heorot’s magnificence massages his language to remind us of the Biblical Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis chapter 11, verse 4: “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name.”  

[Tell the Babel story]

So, we get a gentle hint that Heorot, too, may be an example of human hubris, of the ultimate insufficiency of earthly endeavor, that while we may be made in the image of God, we are not gods, but mortals, subject to time and mutability.

This sense is continued in the Monk’s allusion to the monster Grendel’s ancestry: 

He was spawned in that slime,  

Conceived by a pair of those monsters born   

Of Cain, murderous creatures banished  

By God, punished forever for the crime  

Of Abel’s death. The Almighty drove  

Those demons out, and their exile was bitter,  

Shut away from men; they split     

Into a thousand forms of evil—spirits  

And fiends, goblins, monsters, giants,  

A brood forever opposing the Lord’s  

Will, and again and again defeated.  

The reference here is to the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve from Genesis 4.  By making Grendel a descendent of Cain, the first murderer, the Monk amplifies Grendel’s threat.  No longer is Grendel simply the monster in the wood that the hero will slay.  Now, he is an embodiment of cosmic evil, of genetic or essential evil – the avatar of a transcendent evil that cannot be overcome finally by human means alone, but only by God.  While we know, because we know how monster stories go, that Beowulf will defeat Grendel, we also come to understand that the cosmic evil that Grendel bodies forth persists beyond the warrior’s transient victory.  In this passage from Beowulf, there also seems to be an implied connection between the offspring of Cain and the Nephilim, the race of giant monsters (perhaps fallen angels) referenced in the Biblical books of Genesis, Numbers, and Ezekiel.

And so, at the very incipience of the first conflict of the epic, the Monk simultaneously celebrates the honor and glory of the warrior code while gesturing, through Biblical allusions, to its deficiency.  If we look at the result of Beowulf’s victory, we can see more ambivalence.

Clearly, Grendel represents the inverse of the Germanic hero code.  He is cowardly (attacking sleeping victims in the dark); he is treacherous and he is gluttonous: the funhouse mirror version, when you think of it, of Hrothgar and his warriors.  That Hrothgar is unable to maintain the comitatus bond marks not just defeat, but a kind of apocalypse – the fundamental mechanism of social cohesion and cultural identity has failed, has been defeated by a distorted image of its own values:

Then each warrior tried  

To escape him, searched for rest in different  

Beds, as far from Herot as they could find,    

Seeing how Grendel hunted when they slept.  

Distance was safety; the only survivors  

Were those who fled him. Hate had triumphed.  

So Grendel ruled, fought with the righteous,  

One against many, and won; so Herot    

Stood empty, and stayed deserted for years,  

Twelve winters of grief for Hrothgar, king  

Of the Danes, sorrow heaped at his door  

By hell-forged hands. His misery leaped  

The seas, was told and sung in all     

Men’s ears: how Grendel’s hatred began,  

How the monster relished his savage war  

On the Danes, keeping the bloody feud  

Alive, seeking no peace, offering  

No truce, accepting no settlement, no price   

In gold or land, and paying the living  

For one crime only with another. No one  

Waited for reparation from his plundering claws:  

That shadow of death hunted in the darkness,  

Stalked Hrothgar’s warriors . . . .

The warriors flee in fear, abdicating their duty to fight for Hrothgar because he has failed in his duty to protect them.  Grendel refuses the traditional appeasements of war: no truce, no bribe.  Hrothgar’s shame travels far and wide – the scops are at work – and for a culture in which reputation is legacy, Hrothgar endures the ultimate shame.

But, in a weird way, the honor code still obtains after Beowulf defeats Grendel.  Grendel’s mother attacks Heorot to avenge the death of her son: “Grendel's mother, monster of women, mourned her woe.  And his mother now, gloomy and grim, would go on that quest of sorrow, the death of her son to avenge.”  Again, the funhouse mirror effect: while we are to understand Grendel’s mother as another, and explicitly gendered, villain, such a conclusion seems, in some way, absurd.  She is behaving exactly as she should: the code demands that honor be satisfied, and so her attack on Heorot should be entirely justified.  It seems the demands of pagan warrior ethics imply, and hasten, their own defeat.

Let’s pop down to the end of the epic.  Beowulf has had a glorious and prosperous reign when the original of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Smaug wreaks his own vengeance for the theft of his treasure (a treasure he hoards, in direct violation of the heroic generosity that organized the warrior economy).  He dies nobly, ensuring that his story will live on.  Beowulf’s last wishes:

“ . . . my time is gone. Have 

The brave Geats build me a tomb, 

When the funeral flames have burned me, and build it 

Here, at the water's edge, high 

On this spit of land, so sailors can see   

This tower, and remember my name, and call it 

Beowulf's tower, and boats in the darkness 

And mist, crossing the sea, will know it."  

He’s asking for, essentially, a lighthouse as a monument.  What does a lighthouse do?  Well, it serves as a warning of danger, a guide to safety.  It doesn’t seem a huge leap to me that the Monk envisions Beowulf’s story as a kind of warning guide.  Here’s what I mean.  Let’s see what Beowulf’s people think during his funeral: 

The bearers brought   

Their beloved lord, their glorious king, 

And weeping laid him high on the wood. 

Then the warriors began to kindle that greatest 

Of funeral fires; smoke rose 

Above the flames, black and thick,    

And while the wind blew and the fire 

Roared they wept, and Beowulf's body 

Crumbled and was gone. The Geats stayed, 

Moaning their sorrow, lamenting their lord. 

A gnarled old woman, hair wound    

Tight and gray on her head, groaned 

A song of misery, of infinite sadness 

And days of mourning, of fear and sorrow 

To come, slaughter and terror and captivity. 

And Heaven swallowed the billowing smoke.

Phew!  That really is one of the most harrowing descriptions of a funeral that I’ve ever read.  Look at the verbs here: weeping, roared, wept, crumbled, moaning, lamenting, groaned.  The bleakness engulfs all action.  Beowulf was the greatest of lords: beloved and glorious.  The best there ever was, the very pith and marrow of the pagan Germanic warrior.  But he is gone.  Gone.  What will follow? Infinite sadness, days of mourning, fear, sorrow, slaughter, terror, and captivity.

Ultimately, Beowulf fails.  His long history of glorious victories is only a temporary stay against the forces of enduring evil.  But never is the Monk dismissive of Beowulf or his values or his culture.  Heck, the Monk is an Anglo-Saxon himself, perhaps even a retired warrior, so he treats that culture with great respect.  But he can’t escape the notion that the most heroic and heroically virtuous of men was also a mortal man.  In the end, the pagan warrior culture, in all its glory, is ill-equipped to provide lasting salvation.  That’s the danger I believe the Monk warns against, that’s why he takes the effort to record and edit the pagan legend.  As recounted by this Monk, Beowulf’s story, like a lighthouse, guides us away from the rocks.  But to where?

Well, friend listener, next time we’ll try answering that question.  Here's a hint, if you haven't twigged it yet: the Monk may be advocating for a hero who has overcome death. If you think you know who, write your answer on the back of a $20 bill and send it to me here in the Clubhouse. 

In our next episode, we will look at Anglo-Saxon elegies, their other major poetic mode, to see what those poets suggest as an alternative to the comitatus model.  I will pop links to the poems up on the Instatwitbook pages.

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