Blogging Beowulf: Fit IV, lines 258-319

5 February 2009

Not a lot of action happens in this fit, which consists mostly of speeches by Beowulf and by the coastal watch, but there is some interesting language and some themes are developed.

Beowulf, still unnamed, answers the challenge of the coastal watch, declaring who they are and his lineage (without giving his name) and that they are on an errand to give counsel to Hrothgar about how to defeat Grendel. The officer of the coastal watch sets a guard on Beowulf’s ship and conducts them to Heorot, at which point he takes leave of them.

The fit opens with one of the most famous lines from the poem, famous mainly for one word, word-hoard:

Him se yldesta          andswarode,
werodes wīsa,          wordhord onlēac.

(The eldest one          answered him,
leader of the troop,          unlocked his word-hoard.)

It’s a great word and the image of unlocking a treasury of words as one starts a speech is a powerful one. And it compares with the image of a noble distributing treasure to his people, but in this case a treasure of fair and kind words.

Throughout this passage there is an opposition of words and deeds. Beowulf unlocks his word-hoard. He declares in line 278 that he has come to ræd ġelæran (give counsel) to Hrothgar, even though he comes armed and clearly intends to fight Grendel, not to just give advice. The officer of the coastal watch says (lines 287b-289):

                                  Æġhwæþres sceal
scearp scyldwiga          ġescād witan,
worda ond worca,          sē þe wēl þenċeð.

(                                   Each sharp shield-warrior
should          distinguish between
words and deeds,          if he thinks well.)

Meaning that he has heard Beowulf’s words and trusts him, even though he has come to Denmark under arms.

In contrast, Beowulf calls Grendel, in line 275, a dēogol dædhata, a secret persecutor or literally, a secret hater by deeds. Beowulf is set up as a warrior who bears arms openly and in daylight, but who speaks fair and honest words. Grendel, on the other hand, is the secretive tormentor who comes by cloak of night and commits evil deeds.

There is also an interesting thematic introduction of the role of fate in lines 280-81. Beowulf says his “advice” will be useful:

ġyf him edwenden          æfre scolde
bealuwa bisigu,          bōt eft cumin—
ond þā ċearwylmas          cōlran wurðaþ;
oððe ā syþðan          earfoðþrāge,
þrēany¯d þolað          þenden þær wunað
on hēahstede          hūsa sēlest.

(if change to him          should ever
come and in turn relief          of afflictions, of trouble—
and the seething of sorrows          become cooler;
or always          in a time of tribulation,
will suffer dire distress          while he dwells
in the lofty place          the best of houses.)

Beowulf can only help if it is fated to be so. He is an instrument of fate, possessing no agency of his own.

A few other words of note. There is the word wicg (pronounced / widge / ), meaning horse. It’s notable simply for its humorous pronunciation, at least to the modern ear. The word is related to way and the German wegand is from an Old Germanic root meaning to carry.

Last time I wrote about physical metaphors being used to denote emotions. In line 278 Beowulf says he has come þurh rūmne sefan, or with a large heart or spirit. Big-hearted is a metaphor we still use today.

Finally, at the end of the fit, as he departs, the coastal watchman prays that fæder alwalda, or father almighty, will guard Beowulf and his companions in their journey. It is one thing to have Christian references in expositional text, but this appears in dialogue. There is clearly a very complex relationship going on between the Christian world of the poet and the pre-Christian world of the story. The poem was created by a Christian society, but hearkened back to a pre-Christian era. I wonder how much more blending of cultural attitudes I’ll encounter as I go.

Grammar & Punctuation in Comics

4 February 2009

I’ve always suspected there were conventions and standards for writing dialogue in comics and graphic novels, but not being a big reader of the genre, I didn’t know enough to be sure. But here it is (and it’s not really “grammar,” just conventions for punctuation, fonts, and layout):

http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml

(Hat tip to Barbara Wallraff)

Blogging Beowulf; Fit III, lines 189-257

3 February 2009

The first few lines of this fit have Hrothgar brooding over the afflictions that Grendel is wrecking upon his people. Then we are introduced to our hero, Beowulf, although he remains unnamed here, described only as Hygelac’s thane—Hygelac being the king of the Geats. Our hero hears of the predations of Grendel upon the Danes and resolves to go help them. He commands that a ship, or yðlida, a wave-crosser, be built and selects fifteen of the bravest warriors from among the Geats to accompany him. The journey to Denmark takes somewhat more than a day. They are met upon the shore by Hrothgar’s coastal watch, the leader of which rides out alone to challenge them. The officer of the coastal watch makes the first of many speeches in the poem. Brandishing his spear and using very formal language, he commends them for openly bearing arms and not skulking about; he says they are clearly fine warriors, especially their leader (Beowulf), who is the mightiest warrior he has ever seen. Then he demands they tell him what they’re doing in Denmark and that they better answer quickly.

There is some interesting use of language here. First, there are the descriptions of emotion. The Anglo-Saxons did not use a rich vocabulary to express emotions. Instead the poet uses metaphors of physical actions to convey emotion. As in Hrothgar’s brooding over what Grendel has done to him and his people, which the poet describes with the verb sēoðan, to boil or seethe. And the officer of the coastal watch, faced with an armed force and knowing it is his duty to ride out alone and face them, has his fear described with the words hine fyrwyt bræc mōdġehyġdum (anxiety broke him in his thoughts). The verb brecan should not be literally translated; as he remains the master of his fear, it doesn’t break the officer, as we would say today. Rather it torments him.

The entire scene with the officer of the coastal watch riding out to challenge the Geats can be read multiple ways. It can be read heroically, the officer doing his duty in the face of potential death. Or it can be read comically, an absurd scene with one man waving a spear about in front of sixteen very deadly warriors and spouting off a mock-heroic challenge. I think the latter is a modern spin and the heroic reading is what the poet intended.

There’s another passage that I’ve always liked and it reads even better in the original Old English than it does in modern translation. It’s the scene where Beowulf and company set off on their voyage across the sea (lines 210-16):

Fyrst forð ġewāt;          flota wæs on yðum,
bāt under beorge.          Beornas ġearwe
on stefn stigon.          Strēamas wundon,
sund wið sande.          Secgas bæron
on bearm nacan          beorhte frætwe,
gūðsearo ġeatoliċ;          guman ūt scufon,
weras on wilsīð          wudu bundenne.

(The time had come;          the ship was on the waves,
the boat was under the cliffs.          The eager heroes
mounted the prow.          Currents eddied,
the sea against the sand.          The men bore
into the bosom of the ship          bright weapons,
splendid armor;          the men pushed the wood-bound ship off,
men on a wished-for journey.)

The cadence of the passage is superb. It carries the emotional urgency and eagerness that Beowulf and company must have felt.

Finally, I want to talk a bit about the manuscript. As I’ve mentioned, London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.xv. is the only manuscript that contains the poem. Without this manuscript, we would know nothing about the poem, and it was almost lost.

Two scribes wrote down the poem in the manuscript. The first scribed penned the three preceding items in the codex and the first part of Beowulf. He wrote in a script known as English Vernacular miniscule, which is not known to have existed before the year 1001. The second scribe finished writing down Beowulf and went on to pen the next item in the codex (a poetic version of the Biblical book of Judith). He used Anglo-Saxon Square miniscule, which is not found after 1010. So the manuscript was most likely produced in the first decade of the 11th century, or almost certainly between 990-1020. The poem was, however, certainly composed sometime earlier. A date of the c.800 is often assigned, but unlike the dating of the manuscript, there is considerable academic controversy over when the Beowulf poet worked.

We have no record of the manuscript prior to 1563, when the antiquary Laurence Nowell wrote his name and date on the first page of what would come to be known as the Nowell Codex. BL, Cotton Vitellius A.xv. consists of two codices, the Southampton Codex and the Nowell Codex. The manuscript came into the possession of Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631), whose collection was to form the core of the British Museum’s manuscript collection. (In 1973, the British Library was created and the manuscript collection was moved there; hence older commentary will refer to the manuscript as British Museum Cotton Vitellius A.xv.)

While awaiting transfer to its permanent home in the British Museum, the Cotton collection was stored in the Ashburnham House in Westminster. A fire broke out in 1731, destroying about one quarter of the books. Cotton Vitellius A.xv. was badly damaged and only saved when someone started throwing books out a window in order to save them.

In 1787, Danish archivist Grimur Jonsson Thorkelin commissioned a copy of the poem, which was created by an amanuensis who knew no Old English. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as someone ignorant of the language will tend to copy it exactly. Someone who knows the language will have a tendency to make emendations. But Thorkelin, who knew some Old English, but was far from expert in it, did not trust the copy and made a second one himself. Ironically, it turns out that Thorkelin A, created by the man with no knowledge of Old English, is more accurate than Thorkelin B. These two early copies are referred to as Thorkelin A and B. The creation of these early copies was fortuitous. The charred edges of the manuscript were crumbling and the Thorkelin copies are the only record we have of some words at the end of lines.

The manuscript was conserved and rebound in 1845. Each folio was separately mounted on a paper frame, allowing both sides to be visible. This put an end to further deterioration, but resulted in the one-time loss of more words, as the some of the edges are not visible through the frames.

Blogging Beowulf: Fit II, lines 115-88

31 January 2009

The murder and mayhem start here in Fit II. Grendel, who we were introduced to in the last section, finally attacks Heorot under the cover of night. Hrothgar’s thanes are all asleep in the hall after a long evening of beer drinking and Grendel seizes and kills thirty of them, dragging them back to his home in the fens. Morning comes and the deaths are discovered to great lamentation and wailing (dawn is a bad time for Anglo-Saxons). He returns the next night and kills more. Soon the thanes wise up and start sleeping elsewhere and Grendel rules the night at Heorot for twelve years. Nothing can be done to stop his predations. He is a monster, caring only for the slaughter and can’t be negotiated with. Hrothgar becomes despondent and the Danes take to offering sacrifices to their pagan gods in a vain effort to get Grendel to leave. The fit ends on a homiletic note, telling the reader to put his trust in the Christian God.

Two passages are problematic. The first is on lines 168-69 where it describes Grendel’s behavior within Heorot:

Nō hē þone ġifstōl     grētan mōste,
māþðum for metode,     nē his myne wisse.

(Never might he touch the throne,
a treasure, on account of God, nor [did he] know his love.)

Is the throne (ġifstōl) Hrothgar’s? Ġifstōl is literally “gift-seat,” the chair from which gifts, like rings, are distributed. Or is it God’s throne, indicating that the passage is a metaphor for Grendel existing outside of God’s grace? Grētan can mean touch, approach, or attack (and also to know carnally, but that would be a radical interpretation of the text), which meaning is intended is not clear. Mōste can mean permission or volition. Did Grendel choose not to approach the throne or was he unable to do so? Metod is an interesting word, too. Appearing almost exclusively in poetry, it is usually an epithet for God, but it carried an older, pagan meaning of fate or destiny as well. And myne could mean mind or love. Remember that the punctuation is a modern editorial addition, so a translation need not conform to what Klaeber’s thinks the punctuation should be.

Fred Robinson interpreted the passage to mean that Grendel ignored the treasure and symbols of power, intent only killing. R.M. Liuzza follows Robinson’s interpretation and translates the passage as:

he saw no need to salute the throne,
he scorned the treasures; he did not know their love.

While this is logical, this translation leaves out metode and invents scorned out of thin air.

The second problematic passage begins on line 180. It’s the homiletic ending of the fit. It’s problematic chiefly because its tone is completely different from the rest of the passage. One could think that it was not part of the original composition.

The poet appears to engage in word play on several occasions. Lines 129-30 describe Hrothgar after finding the slaughter in the morning as:

                         Mære þēoden,
æþeling ærgōd,     unblīðe sæt

(                         The famous king,
a prince good before others, sat joyless.)

The key word is ærgōd. Is it being used as a standard epithet for a beloved ruler, or is it implying that Hrothgar is over the hill and declining in his abilities—which is certainly the case.

There are also some wonderful alliterative phrases in this fit. Grendel is a deorc dēaþscua or dark deathshadow. The residents of Heorot have a miċel morgenswēġ, or great morning-wailing, when they discover the carnage that Grendel has wrought, only to have him return the next night for morðbeala māre, or more slaughter. Good stuff!

(Next: Fit III, lines 189-257)