Week 3: Phillip Ada

Assertion:
Whoever transcribed Beowulf threw Christian themes into the poem to facilitate conversion from the Scandinavian paganism beliefs to Christianity.

Citation:

·      Note from the translator: “…and they [scholars] devoted themselves to a consideration of the world-view behind the poem, asking to what extent (if at all) the newly established Christian religion, which was fundamental to the poet’s intellectual formation,” – Seamus Heaney, Translator’s Introduction.

·      Examples of discontinuity problems or paradoxes.

o   Lines 473-479.

§  Quote: “It bothers me to have to burden anyone with all the grief that Grendel has caused and the havoc he has wreaked upon us in Heorot, our humiliations.  My household guard are on the wane, fate sweeps them away into Grendel’s clutches—but God can easily halt these raids and harrowing attacks!”

§  Analysis: This is Hrothgar lamenting that Beowulf has to be troubled with such a task as killing Grendel when God can easily make the problem disappear if he wanted to.  The king of a culture based around a warrior code and masculinity would never lament in public, especially to guests.  Also, both fate AND God are mentioned in this excerpt.  You can’t have fate and an interfering god in the same universe.

o   Lines 799-804.

§  Quote: “When they joined the struggle there was something they could not have known at the time, that no blade on earth, no blacksmith’s art could ever damage their demon opponent.  He had conjured the harm from the cutting edge of every weapon.”

§  Analysis: Grendel’s body is impenetrable by any weapon through some sort of magic, a power separate from God.  This is blasphemous to Christian dogma.

·      Examples of fatalism.

o   Lines 32-36, 43-46.

§  Quote: “A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbor, ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.  They stretched their beloved lord in his boat, laid out by the mast, amidships, the great ring-giver. … They decked his body no less bountifully with offerings than those first ones did who cast him away when he was a child and launched him alone out over the waves.”

§  Analysis: This scene describes the funeral of Ecgtheow, Beowulf’s father.  They put him in an ornate watercraft and set him adrift into sea keeping with the style he originally arrived to them.  Ecgtheow was bestowed upon his people through some preternatural means.  However, the Geats did not believe in the Judeo-Christian god and had a kind of Deist credo.  They accepted that they had no power over their lives and were fated to be thrown around at the whim of some divine being or beings.  While they accepted divine gifts given to them, they did not thank whatever god may exist for if a god did exist, it was also responsible for the curses visited upon them.

o   Lines 202-203.

§  Quote: “[When Beowulf decides to repay his father’s debt to Hrothgar, despite the danger] Nobody tried to keep him from going, no elder denied him, dear as he was to them.

§  Analysis: As everyone is powerless to the eventuality of one specific and unpredictable death, courage is not a hard trait to develop.  Fear of the deaths of loved ones is severely diminished for the same reason.

o   Lines 634-638.

§  Quote: “I meant to perform to the uttermost what your people wanted or perish in the attempt, in the fiend’s clutches.  And I shall fulfill that purpose, prove myself with a proud deed or meet my death here in the mead-hall.”

§  Analysis: Here, Beowulf nonchalantly talks about his death.  Why?  Because it doesn’t matter if he dies now or later; his death will come when it comes.  He simply doesn’t care.

·      Examples of implanted Christianity.

o   Lines 90-98.

§  Quote: “[Grendel hears] a skilled poet telling with mastery of man’s beginnings, how the Almighty had made the earth a gleaming plain girdled with waters; in His splendor He set the sun and the moon to be earth’s lamplight, lanterns for men, and filled the broad lap of the world with branches and leaves; and quickened life in every other thing that moved.”

§  Analysis: Why would a poet in Hrothgar’s hall be singing about Genesis?

o   Lines 104-114, 121, 169, 711.

§  Quote: “[Grendel is from] Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed and condemned as outcasts.  For the killing of Abel the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: Cain got no good from committing that murder because the Almighty made him anathema, and out of the curse of his exile there sprang ogres and elves and evil phantoms and the giants too who strove with God time and again until He gave them their reward. … God-cursed brute … he was the Lord’s outcast … God-cursed Grendel …”

§  Analysis: Such evil earthly creatures, if any, would have been destroyed in the deluge.  This translation of Beowulf temporally places it after Christ’s sacrifice which was well after the deluge.

o   Lines 128-129.

§  Quote: “[Survivors of Grendel’s initial attack] wept to heaven and mourned under morning.”

§  Analysis: Why would the Danes, who were fatalists like the Geats, cry to the skies?

o   Lines 175-188.

§  Quote: “Sometimes at the pagan shrines they vowed offerings to idols, swore oaths that the killer of souls might come to their aid and save the people.  That was their way, their heathenish hope; deep in their hearts they remembered hell.  The Almighty Judge of good deeds and bad, the Lord God, Head of the Heavens and High King of the World, was unknown to them.  Oh, cursed is he who in time of trouble has to thrust his soul in the fire’s embrace, forfeiting help; he has nowhere else to turn.  But blessed is he who after death can approach the Lord and find friendship in the Father’s embrace.”

§  Analysis: Any non-Christian ritual was considered pagan devil worship.  This is the original transcriber’s depiction of the moral wrongness of anything non-Christian.

o   Lines 227-228.

§  Quote: “[Upon arriving on the shores of their destination:] They thanked God for that easy crossing on a calm sea.

§  Analysis: This is the transcriber’s reinterpretation of the party’s offhanded notice of their uneventful trip as the seas were usually teeming with danger (sea monsters and storms in particular).  The warriors assumed that they were on the right track to their destinies since they crossed the waters unharmed.

o   Lines 316-318.

§  Quote: “[The guide to Beowulf and friends:] May the Almighty Father keep you and in His kindness watch over your exploits.”

§  Analysis: This seems randomly thrown in after the scene in which the guide takes the warriors to Hrothgar’s hall.

o   Lines 381-383, 626-628.

§  Quote: “[Hrothgar says] Now Holy God has, in His goodness, guided him here to the West-Danes, to defend us from Grendel.  [Later, Hrothgar expresses similar thanks] …With measured words she welcomed the Geat and thanked God for granting her wish that adeliverer she could believe in would arrive to ease their afflictions.”

§  Analysis: Why would any Dane, the king no less, thank God?  God didn’t deliver Beowulf, he came out of his own volition to repay a life debt.

o   Lines 440-442.

§  Quote: “[Beowulf about the possible outcome of his death says] Whichever one death fells must deem it a just judgment by God.  If Grendel wins, it will be a gruesome day…”

§  Analysis: This is an example of the exact opposite of something a warrior as youthful, cocky, brave, and obnoxious as Beowulf would ever say.

Explanation:

It is important to realize the presence of the didactic Christian lines in this epic in order to take in the story separate from them.  The fatalist themes of Beowulf are important and can be easily overlooked if God is taken into account.