14 Feb 22 Beowulf

14 Feb 22 Beowulf – A Pause

Opinions on Morality and Advice for the Future

Our last episode ended with Beowulf killing Grendel’s mother , and then “lugging” treasure to the surface where his men meet him with “great delight.” But the delight doesn’t last long. The atmosphere turns somber after a short “welcome back” for Beowulf. Most of this segment is a series of characters speaking about what to do and what not to do. Moralizing, in short. Recall, that scholars largely agree that the oldest known written version of Beowulf was set down between about 700 and 1,000 A.D., and there is speculation that more than one poet composed it. At this same time, England was converting to Christianity form Paganism.

In this period and in the milieu of the times, Pagan and Christian influences were quite mixed, and stories that have come down to us (Beowulf being the prime example), as well as what is known about social, religious, and cultural aspects of the time waver between the two worldviews, i.e., gods and God. Please note this, in particular, in this week’s segment in the references and imagery used by the characters.

Modern scholars believe Beowulf was first written by a scop, or Old English poet. Due to the intrusion of medieval Christian ideology amidst the pagan imagery of Beowulf, many scholars believe the Beowulf poet was a Christian monk in Anglo-Saxon-era England. This may well be the reason that Christian “philosophy” All this to say, this segment 12 also wavers between Pagan and Christian. You may want to picture the author as you read.

Author! Authors?

The Epic Continues . . .

His thanes advanced in a troop to meet him,

Thanking God and taking great delight

In seeing their prince back safe and sound.

Quickly the hero’s helmet and mail-shirt

Were loosed and unlaced.

The lake settled, 1630

Clouds darkened above the bloodshot depths.

With high hearts they headed away

Along footpath and trails through the fields,

Roads that they knew, each of them wrestling

With the head they were carrying from the lakeside cliff,

Men kingly in their courage and capable

Of difficult work. It was a task for four

To hoist Grendel’s head on a spear

And bear it under strain to the bright hall.

But soon enough they neared the place, 1640

Fourteen Geats in fine fettle,

Striding across the outlying ground

In a delighted throng around they leader.

In he came then, the thane’s commander,

The arch-warrior, to address Hrothgar:

His courage was proven, his glory was secure.

Grendel’s head was hauled by the hair,

Dragged across the floor where people were drinking,

A horror for both queen and company to behold.

They stared in awe. It was an astonishing sight. 1650

Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke:

“So, son of Halfdane, prince of the Shieldings,

We are glad to bring this booty from the lake.

It is a token of triumph, and we tender it to you.

I barely survived the battle underwater.

It was hard-fought, a desperate affair

That could have gone badly; if God had not helped me,

The outcome would have been quick and fatal.

Although Hrunting is hard-edged,

I could never bring it to bear in battle. 1660

But the Lord of Men allowed me to behold

For he often helps the unbefriended--

An ancient sword shinning on the wall,

A weapon made for giants, there for the wielding.

Then my moment came in the combat and I struck

The dwellers in that den. Next thing the damascened

Sword blade melted; it bloated and it burned

In their rushing blood. I have wrested the hilt

From the enemies’ hand, avenged the evil

Done to the Danes; it is what was due. 1670

And this I pledge, O prince of the Shieldings:

You can sleep secure with your company of troops

In Heorot Hall. Never need you fear

For a single thane of your sept or nation,

Young warriors or old, that laying waste of life

That you and your people endured of yore.”

Then the gold hilt was handed over

To the old lord, a relic from long ago

For the venerable ruler.

That rare smith work

Was passed on to the prince of the Danes 1680

When those devils perished; once death removed

That murdering, guilt-steeped, God-cursed fiend,

Eliminating his unholy life

And his mother’s as well, it was willed that the king

Who of all the lavish gift-lords of the north

Was the best regarded between the two seas.

Hrothgar spoke; he examined the hilt,

That relic of old times.

It was engraved all over

And showed how war first came into the world

And the flood destroyed the tribe of giants. 1690

They suffered a terrible severance from the Lord;

The Almighty made the waters rise,

Drowned them in the deluge for retribution.

In pure gold inlay on the sword-guards

There were rune markings correctly incised,

Stating and recording for whom the sword

Had been first made and ornamented

With its scrollwork hilt.

Then everyone hushed

As the son of Halfdane spoke his wisdom.

“A protector of his people, pledged to uphold 1700

Truth and justice and to respect tradition,

Is entitled to affirm that this man

Was born to distinction.

Beowulf, my friend, Your fame has gone far and wide,

You are known everywhere.

In all things you are even-tempered,

Prudent and resolute.

So I stand firm by the promise of friendship

We exchanged before.

Forever you will be

Your people’s mainstay and your own warriors’

Helping hand.

Heremod was different,

The way he behaved to Ecgwala’s sons. 1710

His rise in the world brought little joy

To the Danish people, only death and destruction.

He vented his rage on people he caroused with,

Killed his own comrades, a pariah king

Who cut himself off from his own kind,

Even though God Almighty had made him

Eminent and powerful and marked him from the start

For a happy life.

But a change happened,

He grew bloodthirsty, gave no more rings

To honor the Danes.

He suffered in the end 1720

For having plagued his people for so long:

His life lost happiness.

So learn from this

And understand true values. I who tell you

Have wintered into wisdom.

It is a great wonder

How Almighty God in his magnificence

Favors our race with rank and scope

And the gift of wisdom;

His sway is wide.

Sometimes He allows the mind of a man

Of distinguished birth to follow its bent,

Grants him fulfillment and felicity on earth 1730

And forts to command in his own country.

He permits him to lord it in many lands

Until the man in his unthinkingness

Forgets that it will ever end for him.

He indulges his desires; illness and old age

Mean nothing to him; his mind is untroubled

By envy or malice or thought of enemies

With their hate-honed swords.

The whole world Conforms to his will, he is kept from the worst

Until an element of overweening 1740

Enters him and takes hold

While the soul’s guard, its sentry, drowses,

Grown too distracted.

A killer stalks him,

An archer who draws a deadly bow.

And then the man is hit in the heart,

The arrow flies beneath his defenses,

The devious promptings of the demon start.

His old possessions seem paltry to him now.

He covets and resents; dishonors custom

And bestows no gold; and because of good things 1750

That the Heavenly powers gave him in the past

He ignores the shape of things to come.

Then finally the end arrives

When the body he was lent collapses and falls

Prey to its death; ancestral possessions

And the goods he hoarded and inherited by another

Who lets them go with a liberal hand.

“O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.

Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,

Eternal rewards.

Do not give way to pride. 1760

For a brief while your strength is in bloom

But it fades quickly; and soon there will follow

Illness or the sword to lay you low,

Or a sudden fire or surge of water

Or jabbing blade or javelin from the air

Or repellent age.

Your piercing eye

Will dim and darken; and death will arrive,

Dear warrior, to sweep you away.

“Just so I ruled the ring-Danes’ country

For fifty years, defended them in wartime 1770

With spear and sword against constant assaults

By many tribes: I came to believe

My enemies had faded from the face of the earth.

Still, what happened was a hard reversal

From bliss to grief. Grendel struck

After lying in wait.

Background

I imagine readers know J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. I thought the essay excerpt below might be of interest as Tolkein had his opinions and interpretations of Beowulf as well.

Beowulf, J.R.R. Tolkien writes in an essay:

. . . It is not an irritating accident that the tone of the poem is so high and its theme so low. It is the theme in its deadly seriousness that begets the dignity of tone: lif is læne: eal scæceð leoht and lif somod (life is transitory: light and life together hasten away). So deadly and ineluctable is the underlying thought, that those who in the circle of light, within the besieged hall, are absorbed in work or talk and do not look to the battlements, either do not regard it or recoil. Death comes to the feast.

According to Tolkien, Beowulf was not an epic or a heroic lay, which might need narrative thrust. It was just a poem—an elegy. Light and life hasten away.

Exploration 1: More than the previous eleven segments, this one contains references to Christian stories and a (the flood), and many mentions of God and God Almighty. Why do you think this is so?

Exploration 2: “Heremod was different . . .” Who is speaking? Is a moral implied: “So learn from this and understand true values.”