Beowulf and the Classical EpicsAuthor(s): John NistSource: College English, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Jan., 1963), pp. 257-262Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/373610Accessed: 05/10/2010 11:30

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COLLEGE ENGLISH Volume 24 January 1963 Number 4

Beowulf and the Classical Epics JOHN NIST

I

In any cursory reading of the heroic monodrama Beowulf and the epics of Homer and Virgil, one is struck with general similarities of structure and tex- ture between the Anglo-Saxon master- piece and those of the Greek and Latin tongues. In the Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, and Beowulf, a sophisticated bard or scop looks back several hundred years upon a world of unified beliefs and practices- an heroic age-and turns the tradition of that world into first-rate poetry. In the past, literary archaeologists have tried either to downgrade the artistry of Beowulf or to prove, upon the most tenuous of evidence, that Virgil exerted a calculable influence on the Beowulf poet. I believe, however, that Beowulf is the finest poem in medieval vernacular before the sublime achievement of Dante. And ironically enough, the power of the Old-English poet persists on a level where the possibility of influence is an absolute zero: a strength of vision and execution, in his finest moments, com- parable in no small way to that of Homer.

It is true that in Britain the popularity of Virgil at the close of the 7th century was immense. With the exception of the New Testament, the works of Virgil enjoyed a greater distribution and pres-

ervation in manuscripts than did the works of any other author whose writ- ings prevailed into the Middle Ages. But the popularity of Virgil does not prove that the Beowulf poet ever read the Aeneid. One must admit, however, that examination of the two poems reveals certain basic similarities. A sense of family consciousness, for example, is paramount in both. Then, too, the foreshadowing of events in Beowulf and the Aeneid enhances the end of action and its resultant tragic effect. Thus dramatic power strengthens epic scope when Aeneas learns the outcome of the fatum Romanum from the Sibyl (VI, 83-97) and from Anchises (VI, 756- 853) and when both the audience and Beowulf realize that the mighty King of the Geats must die (2419-24, 2586- 91).

As Tom Burns Haber pointed out over thirty years ago, among the heroic ele- ments of the Aeneid and Beowulf such comparables as the following persist: 1) evenly matched combats; 2) heroic spirit of willingness to conquer or to die; 3) hero appealed to as the ultimate hope; 4) lack of modesty among warriors; 5) hero's striking personal appearance; 6) hero closely allied with his men; 7) hero attended by a faithful companion; 8) hero advised by an elderly counselor; 9) success and defeat dependent upon three factors: God/Jupiter, Fata/Wyrd, and individual courage. Furthermore, the giving of gifts, metaphorical ex- pressions for morally repugnant ideas, and the use of compounds and kennings

Mr. Nist, visiting professor of English at the University of Arizona, spent 1961-62 in Brazil, where he translated three volumes of poetry and wrote a critical book, The Modern- ist Movement in Brazil. His The Structure and Texture of Beowulf appeared in 1959.

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-are all common texture. Parallels in phraseology abound. Further parallels in motif and sentiment run almost ad infinitum. Thus they prove nothing.

Despite these many likenesses, the Beowulf poet never refers in his text to Virgil or to a Virgilian character or to a Virgilian expression. If his two allu- sions to the Bible (Cain and the Flood) are any indication, then the Beowulf poet probably knew not much Latin. If he had been so adept at Latin as to be able to read Virgil with ease, the Anglo- Saxon genius probably would have de- voted his life to the copying of religious manuscripts in some English monastery. That he was not a priest is most likely; the best portions of his poem are those dealing with purely pagan elements. Christian 'coloring' in the poem is not really coloring at all; it is a black-and- white acknowledgment of awe in the presence of a power almighty in judg- ment and punishment. It is like the Greeks' building an altar to the Un- known God-just in case there should be a deity greater than the accepted Zeus.

A study of the Homeric epics in comparison with Beowulf shows that all three poems are much more oral in their tradition than is the Aeneid. The gen- eral similarities between the Homeric epics and Beowulf, therefore, are much more striking than all the detailed par- allels drawn between Beowulf and the Aeneid. Such similarities between Homer and the Beowulf poet, who concentrate interest upon their characters and not upon national destiny, obtain perhaps most immediately and discernibly in the heroes of the Greek and Germanic worlds. Achilles and/or Odysseus, for example, share several outstanding per- sonality factors with Beowulf: 1) sheer physical strength; 2) struggles with monsters and subhuman creatures; 3) a curious mixture of epic exaggeration and litotes; 4) ethical gift-giving and the pledging of mutual friendship; 5) en-

joyment of the medicinal effects of food, with profound religious overtones; 6) aesthetic delight in the harp and the recitation of heroic lays; 7) structural support for the role of their authors as mirrors of epic living.

As mirrors of epic living, Homer and the Beowulf poet also depict the cus- toms concerned with death, the last rites of an heroic age. The funeral of Achilles as reported in the Odyssey (XXIV, 63- 70), bears a most striking resemblance to the cremation of Beowulf (3169-79). Thus these two bravest of warriors re- ceive in death the highest respect and the deepest grief from two different peoples with similar cultural backgrounds. These similar cultural backgrounds, in turn, produce other comparisons between Beowulf and the Homeric epics: 1) formalized introduction of speeches; 2) minute description of common happen- ings; 3) careful notation of the move- ments of royal personages; 4) elabora- tion of arrival and reception of visitors; 5) formalized greeting and questioning of strangers; 6) dwelling on emotion felt at greeting and at farewell; 7) use of similar poetic epithets; 8) emphasis upon heroic thirst for fame.

One may, of course, extend such comparisons. Personal attachment, for example, motivates action in both Wig- laf and Achilles. But no matter how long the extension, it would merely point to one fact: that heroic elements in two cultures, separated by roughly seventeen centuries, are similar. There is no other way to explain the likenesses between the Homeric epics and Beo- wulf. Scholars cannot drag in here that exhausted nag Literary Influence to carry the mail. Quite simply, the Beowulf poet did not know his Homer. Two worlds are similar; two poetic minds are of sen- sitive first-order; the results are bound to be in some measure comparable. Where individuality prevails, however, there are differences. Vast differences.

BEOWULF AND THE CLASSICAL EPICS 259

II

Indeed without looking very far, a critic perceives that the Anglo-Saxon poem deals with a much more limited world than that of either Homer or Virgil, with a much less complex world. An outline of the main action of Beo- 'vulf shows that its plot leaves much to be desired in the way of epic material. To be sure, the poetry in Beowulf is epic in tone, but it is not epic in scope. Realization of this fact points to another basic difference between Beowulf and the classical epics-that of digression. The Old-English masterpiece has many more episodes nonrelevant (by logical or probable causal connection) to the advance of the story that can be found in the work of either Homer or Virgil. Of the 3,182 lines in Beowulf, about 700 deal with all sorts of episodic material. In the classical epics, however, digres- sions are a refreshing rarity. Where epi- sodic material does exist in the classical epics, it is introduced in such a leisurely manner that a sense of connection with the plot is not lost. Of the twenty-six digressions in Beowulf, by way of con- trast, only ten have any kind of transi- tion.

Through this very lack of transition among the digressions, Beowulf is more compressed and allusive in its style. Readers of the poem often wish in vain for a series of appended notes. So much of the heroic-lay material was known by the Anglo-Saxon audience that only a few words were necessary to set off a chain reaction of associated ideas to bring forth the complete story alluded to by the author. Thus the Beowulf poet often resembles in his style the indirect, highly sophisticated approach of T. S. Eliot in The Waste Land, the difference being that is is oral and not written material appropriated by the Old-Eng- lish scop. Without the epic tone height- ened by the digressions, Beowzulf would lack much of its setting and atmosphere

-the very things which save it from being a vacuum piece, a tree without roots. If the Beowulf poet, however, had not condensed his digressive epi- sodes, such nonrelevant material would swamp the slender action. That the au- thor can give his monodrama rootage in epic atmosphere and setting without let- ting the background material flood his vehicle of plot attests his conscious lit- erary genius.

In addition to his more compressed style, the Beowulf poet is far less rep- etitious than Homer. Often in the Iliad and the Odyssey, narratives of men merely restate commands of the gods. In Beowulf, however, the author impro- vises on his themes; variation constitutes a key factor in his cyclic-fugal method. This method, in turn, would seem to indicate that Beowrulf is more dramatic than the classical epics. But this is not the case. About 1,300 lines in Beowulf deal with speeches. This figure repre- sents slightly over forty percent of the poem. In The Poetry of Homer (Berke- ley, 1938), however, Samuel Eliot Bas- sett demonstrates that Homer employs impersonal narration twenty percent of the time, dramatic speeches sixty per- cent, and personal explanation twenty percent. That Homer is the most dra- matic epic poet of Western literature can scarcely be doubted. With a dramatic percentage of about fifty percent, the Aeneid stands midway between Beolwulf and the Homeric epics. The first book of Virgil's big poem, for example, shows about 380 lines out of the 756 in dra- matic form.

In moral freedom Beowulf takes the prize from the classical epics, but in so doing it loses another-that of subtle characterization. Omnipresent action of the gods and a sense of national destiny are not to be found in Beowulf. Yet what J. R. Hulbert has called a higher ideal of nobility in speech and in action in the poem results in a greater statu- esqueness of characterization, a more

260 COLLEGE ENGLISH

primitive view of life and of people. True as it may be that Beowulf would not mourn and vex himself over the loss of a captive girl, it is so only because he is a far less complex warrior than Achilles. The two-dimensional element of the fairy tale, of the folk myth, abounds in Beo- wulf in larger proportion than in even the Odyssey.

Simplicity of matter in Beowulf cor- responds with its simple and intense style. The poem boasts no Homeric similes, no Virgilian prettiness and Par- nassianisms. In Beowulf kennings and truncated metaphors do the visualizing work of the poet. And the alliteration of the Anglo-Saxon line dictates a pro- portionately smaller vocabulary, with fewer morphemes. Although crammed at times with metrical excitement, the dipodic rhythm of Beowulf cannot com- pete with the mighty lines of the classical epics. So great is the metrical variety within the thirty-two schemata of Homer, for example, that it is the in- finitely fresh and eternally new thing of beauty which Plutarch admired with schoolboy enthusiasm. Rhythmically, Beowulf combines the quantitative met- rics of Homer with the accentual of Virgil: stress and length unite to produce isochronous measures. Moreover, the Anglo-Saxon scop filled the junctures in his lines with chords struck on a per- cussional harp.

III

At the very outset of The Noble Voice (New York, 1946), Mark Van Doren says that Homer mastered "the main art a poet must learn: the art of standing at the right distance from his matter, of keeping the right relation to it, and of using, along with the knowl- edge he brings, the knowledge he gains while he goes." It is precisely in this proper relationship between artist and art that the Beowulf poet most resembles Homer and not Virgil. Both the Greek

and the Anglo-Saxon genius keep the important things at the center and the less important on the circumference of their worlds. The anger of Achilles is the terrible heartbeat of the Iliad; the vengeance of Poseidon dictates the fab- ulous structure of the Odyssey; and the monsters, symbolizing the forces of evil which every man must battle against in his fallen state of nature, are far more valuable for the dense energy of Beowulf than all the historical tragedies alluded to as minor themes. Despite de- fects of detail, the structure of the Old- English masterpiece is strong, almost in- evitable. The structure of the Aeneid, however, is secondary, derivative, imita- tive of Homer: the first half a pale par- allel to the Odyssey, the second half a weak analogue to the Iliad.

The cumulative enrichment of themes, based upon oral tradition, in both Homer and the Beowulf poet are secret miracles of the creative imagination. By way of contrast, Virgil ransacks history and his library to enforce his will upon patriotic propaganda and produce a structure which he cannot otherwise imagine. The art he brings to his task is immense, but it is not enough to yield that sense of life, no matter how raw and crude, which abounds in the Greek epics and the Anglo-Saxon monodrama. In the terminology of Schopenhauer, Homer and the Beowulf poet execute their ar- tistic vision from the living idea, whereas Virgil does so from a dead concept. In the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowulf- formation is uppermost; in the Aeneid, information. Homer and the Beowulf poet employ emotion and mood for the sake of character and story; Virgil em- ploys character and story for the sake of emotion and mood. Little wonder is it then that Aeneas, so pious and good, gets lost in the fog of his destiny: with- out a will of his own, Virgil's hero has no humanity; he is a voice without a face, a set of dogmas without a heart, proceeding toward a goal which no re-

BEOWULF AND THE CLASSICAL EPICS 261

fined modern sensibility can quite accept. In the Aeneid everything is political, even love; history and flattery pose as prophecy.

What is functional in the Homeric epics and Beowulf becomes merely erudite decoration in the Aeneid. Time and again Virgil falls into a forced elo- quence, into grandiose and vague de- scription, as a tacit admission of the fact that he lacks narrative thrust. Too often his diction is abstract, falsely poetic, and frigid; piled-up modifiers weaken the substance of his imagery. Virgil's locales are usually names rather than places. Combining a Tennysonian myopia of detail with a Spenserian mode of me- dieval tapestry, the Latin poet labors to be masculine in his vision but remains bombastically feminine. The rhetorical questions, the grandiloquent invocations, the mawkishly baroque sentiments, the pathetic fallacies, the patriotic smugness, the puritanical fear of love as a kind of madness, the womanish predilections for hysteria, the Miltonic lack of humor (and therefore of proportion and bal- ance), and the ground of his similes being too light for the bore of the matter-all emphasize the fact that Virgil is the father of the Parnassian. One of the most damning things that can be said of Virgil is simply this: the pseudo- classical sensibility of 18th-century Eng- land invariably preferred his hothouse genius to that of wild and free and nat- ural Homer.

In the Aeneid, the eagles of Homer are reduced to pigeons; the terrifying nicors of the Beowulf poet, to pretty serpents with greenish purple throats. In short, Homer and the Beowulf poet always send men on men's errands; many times Virgil commissions boys. Even the gods of the Aeneid are empty gestures in a world where religion is in absolute decay. The epic machinery, too, is flat and cold, mere method of intellection; Virgil makes it do the work of the will because it is not the product of the

imagination. His mind operates on epic material in a sterile laboratory, but the blood of the doctor is frozen. To com- pensate for the ice in his veins, he turns up the thermostat in the room as far as it will go and delivers sermons on the subject of heat. But he fools nobody, not even himself. And here, if anywhere, is the real tragedy of Virgil: he celebrates the impossible in a command perform- ance of that most pathetic of all artists -the official poet laureate.

If Milton's God is a theologian, then Virgil's is a political wardheeler. Al- though the propaganda in the Aeneid is much too easy, the art that carries it shows immense strain. The strain of a literary mind overburdened with self- consciousness. This self-consciousness is utterly lacking in Homer and the Beo- wulf poet; they, therefore, do not waste talent in attempts at propriety. The blood their heroes shed is real; their agony and courage, more than the sub- ject for statuesque orations; their tears sting the eyes and ravage the features, instead of merely feeding the melancholy mists of creative temperament. Indeed nothing in Virgil can compare with Achilles' meeting with Priam, with Hrothgar's lyric farewell to Beowulf. Nor is the Latin poet equal to the rich brutality of Odysseus' blinding of Poly- phemus and Grendel's devouring of Hondscio. Homer feels his expansive similes and the Beowulf poet his inten- sive kennings and truncated metaphors in the marrow bone. Not so with Virgil: he intellects and therefore strains for sublimity, only to produce too often a violation of experience in exaggerative bombast.

In view of the above criticism, one must emphatically deny that the Beo- wulf poet either knew or imitated Virgil. No trace of influence from the Latin author to the Anglo-Saxon poet exists. And for the history of English litera- ture, fortunately so: had the Old-English genius known the work of the Roman,

262 COLLEGE ENGLISH

he would have ended up with an imita- tion of an imitation instead of with the primitively powerful masterpiece that he achieved. Resemblances between Beowulf and the Aeneid are merely coincidental- nothing more. And in any camparison of the Anglo-Saxon monodrama with the classical epics, two major ironies shout for critical attention: 1) that the works furthest separated in time, where likeli- hood of influence is reduced to nothing, are the closest in spirit and vision; 2) that the latest work in the continuum of Western culture is the most early in the

aesthetics of its literary execution. In- deed, Homer represents a perfection in structure and scope of the raw poetic art of the unknown author of Beowulf; Virgil, on the other hand, represents the self-conscious and literary decadence of that art. It is not until Dante that West- ern civilization achieves the kind of poetic perfection at which Virgil failed so magnificently. And between the pole of that failure and the pole of Dante's perfection, the primitive art of Beowulf reigns supreme.

The Thematic Function of Malory's Gawain BARBARA GRAY BARTHOLOMEW

Malory's characterization of Gawain is one of the enigmas of the Morte D'Arthur. From Jessie L. Weston to T. H. White,' critics have puzzled over Malory's treatment of this colorful fig- ure. In portraying Gawain, Malory uses each of the contradictory chronicle and romance traditions of the "bad Gawain" and the "good Gawain." The result is that in the Morte D'Arthur Gawain is good-humored, chivalrous, and loyal on some occasions, and spiteful, wicked, and treacherous on others. In short, Malory's Gawain emerges as a character composed of obvious inconsistencies of virtue and evil. The scholarly attention focused upon this characterization indicates agreement that the role of Gawain is central to an interpretation of the Morte

D'Arthur as a unified work. Gawain is such a complex figure in the Morte D'Arthur, however, that complete un- derstanding of his character and of Mal- ory's purpose is almost impossible. This essay does not attempt comprehensive treatment of Gawain. By pointing out an artistic purpose for the contradictory behavior which Gawain exhibits, it out- lines what seems to me to be the thematic function of Gawain in the Morte D'Arthur. In my opinion, Malory creates Gawain as an inconsistent character in order that the knight may (1) serve as a focal figure, representing a typified image of the Round Table knights and thus (2) provide basis for Malory's judgment upon the failure of the ideal, specifically as it is brought to life in the society of the Round Table.

The scholarly works on Gawain are valuable in revealing facets of the knight's character and function, though they fall short of completely explaining Malory's treatment of him. Jessie L. Weston exemplifies the older trend of

"Jessie L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Ga- waine (London, 1897). T. H. White, The Once and Future King (New York, 1938).

Mrs. Bartholomew teaches freshman (includ- ing honors students) and sophomore English courses at Louisiana State University.