From Beowulf to Milton's Satan!

800 or so years in 16 or so weeks:

Literary Survey

and Vision-Quest (or so I hope)

Join the fun at CCSF in San Francisco

Play-Time: From the Medieval to the Renaissance

The manuscript poster--
Spring 2017:
English 46A
Come join the fun!
I'll make it as memorable as I can.

The Winding and Unwinding

THE WINDING AND UNWINDING

The shape of your thought
Entices me
Quite as much as
The thought of your shape.

Clay-minded,
Bloody-brained,
Fickle as a stick in water:
I swim towards you.

I reach for you
Again and again and again
In thought, in force,
Not withholding aught
Save what wyrd demands
From each of us.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide,
Again releasing,
Again embracing,
Tasting and chasing,
Like river-otters sliding
Down the sloped bank.

The winding and unwinding
Of time and tide:
The rounded lift and heft,
The nipple’s assertion,
The twinned-blood rising
Like the swift pull
Of the river’s pulse
And penetration --
Flowing,
Falling,
Following –-

That shared current
Streaming just past the shore,
Stranding us between
Just enough
And quite enough.
___

Coda:
Laughing lips sip --
Swallow -- another draft.
Glasses, glances,
Clash and chime,
Toasting the new year.

Harken to the hearty
Admonition:
Draft, not drift.

--Matthew Duckworth

HWAET!

Lead figurines from the 1970s:
orc-warrior
vs. Spear-Dane.

Winter Solstice Beach Lit

Waterside reading/listening for the turning of the year.

Wael-Seax: The Slaughter-Knife of Beagnoth

A replica of the famous Anglo-Saxon weapon fished from the Thames.

To give you a sense of the size of this mere "knife", my hands are of a fair size and both of them fit handily on that hilt.  Beowulf used such a long-knife on the dragon; Grendel's mother attempted to use such a long-knife on Beowulf.

Seamus Heaney: The Boat-Funeral from "Beowulf"

Shield was still thriving when his time came

and he crossed over into the Lord's keeping.

His warrior band did what he bade them

when he laid down the law among the Danes:

they shouldered him out to the sea's flood,

the chief they revered who had long ruled them.

A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,

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. Far-fetched treasures

were piled upon him, and precious gear

I never heard before of a ship so well furbished

with battle tackle, bladed weapons

and coats of mail. The massed treasure

was loaded on top of him: it would travel far

on out into the ocean's sway.

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.

And they set a gold standard up

high above his head and let him drift

to wind and tide, bewailing him

and mourning their loss. No man can tell,

no wise man in hall or weathered veteran

knows for certain who salvaged that load.

-- translated by Seamus Heaney

Considering Hrothgar

In the original Beowulf, Hrothgar is both a good king and a king beset by woe from outside. I like that situation, that model, better than the newer versions in which King Hrothgar is complicit in the woes afflicting him and his people. Understanding how someone can be good, excellent to his people, and blameless . . . and yet also understanding how that someone can suffer, and how his people can suffer, through no specific fault of his or their own is powerful and compelling to me.

Such riddles matter.

The Journey

Sculpture mix, unfired.

I am yearning for kelp.

Autumnal Reprise: Brecca

Study Session

"The labor we delight in physics pain."
          --Macbeth from Macbeth (2.3.46)

I believe it's best to take that line out of context.

Heaney: Beowulf Takes His Trophy

from Seamus Heaney's translation of the Old English Beowulf, a favorite passage of mine.  But then most of the poem qualifies as such.


A light appeared and the place brightened
the way the sky does when heaven's candle
is shining clearly.  He inspected the vault:
with sword held high, its hilt raised
to guard and threaten, Hygelac's thane
scouted along the wall in Grendel's wake.
Now the weapon was to prove its worth.
The warrior determined to take revenge
for every gross act Grendel had committed --
and not only for that one occasion
when he'd come to slaughter the sleeping troops,
fifteen of Hrothgar's house-guards
surprised on their benches and ruthlessly devoured,
and as many again carried away,
a brutal plunder.  Beowulf in his fury
now settled that score: he saw the monster
in his resting-place, war-weary and wrecked,
a lifeless corpse, a casualty
of the battle in Heorot.  The body gaped
at the stroke dealt to it after death:
Beowulf cut the corpse's head off.

Immediately the counsellors keeping a lookout
with Hrothgar, watching the lake water,
saw a heave-up and surge of waves
and blood in the backwash.  They bowed grey heads,
spoke in their sage, experienced way
about the good warrior, how they never again
expected to see that prince returning
in triumph to their king.  It was clear to many
that the wolf of the deep had destroyed him forever.

The ninth hour of the day arrived.
The brave Shieldings abandoned the cliff-top
and the king went home; but sick at heart,
staring at the mere, the strangers held on.
They wished, without hope, to behold their lord,
Beowulf himself.

                     Meanwhile, the sword
began to wilt into gory icicles,
to slather and thaw.  It was a wonderful thing,
the way it melted as ice melts
when the Father eases the fetters off the frost
and unravels the water-ropes, He who wields power
over time and tide: he is the true lord.

The Geat captain saw treasure in abundance
But carried no spoils from those quarters
except for the head and the inlaid sword-hilt
embossed with jewels; its blade had melted
and the scrollwork on it burnt, so scalding was the blood
of the poisonous fiend who had perished there.
Then away he swam, the one who had survived
the fall of his enemies, flailing to the surface.
The wide water, the waves and pools,
were no longer infested once the wandering fiend
let go of her life and this unreliable world.
The seafarers' leader made for land,
resolutely swimming, delighted with his prize,
the mighty load he was lugging to the surface.
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,
clouds darkened above the bloodshot depths.


Seamus Heaney, translator:
Beowulf: A New Translation,
Faber and Faber, Ltd: London, 1999:
pages 51-53.

Brecca, Bull From The Water

Brecca in the stream. The air bubbles in his eyes --or are those water bubbles?-- are particularly effective, don't you think?

Luck of the Bull-Man.

Brecca: stoneware; blue glazing.  An old piece, but a favorite one.

Aeschere's Echo

Or, "Field of Confusion"?

Or, "The Woodman's Spectre" or "What the Wolf Left"?

Originally, I called this entry "Who? What? Where?" to highlight the odd camouflaging quality of the shots, and then a number of alternative titles came to mind, as you can see. Finally, on reflection, I am recalling a poignant passage from a favorite medieval poem, Beowulf.

Aeschere, the beloved advisor of King Hrothgar of the Danes, loses his head, literally, and his life, of course, as Grendel's mother's victim in revenge for the brutal slaying of her son. The vicious mere-creature (or devoted, though monstrous mother) mounts the Dane's head on a stake beside the mere in which she lairs, the mere into which Beowulf, the Geatish warrior, must dive to gain vengeance in turn.

I recommend reading the poem in the original Anglo-Saxon, but if that's not possible, why not pick up Seamus Heaney's wonderful translation of the poem?

Shoulders (Brown & White): brown clay; white slip, applied and scored; clear glaze.

I'm not sure what I was trying to do, originally. I probably started making the base for a full bust and stopped at the shoulders. I like that form, not sure why (or, the subject of past and future blogs), whereas I've found that making a full bust puts the emphasis on the head rather than the shoulders. As to the glazing, maybe I thought the scoring would look tribal or would draw some sort of proper attention to the curves of the form. That didn't work out, but now that I'm moved the piece onto this mulch, I am seeing possibilities for future projects.

There's life even in our mistakes, if you keep your eyes open and move stuff around. Now I'm glad I didn't trash these "shoulders" when I was tempted too.

Grendel's Mother's Cave

Last night, I had a series of vivid, disturbing dreams. I only managed about four hours of sleep between coming down from teaching my night class and getting up early to finesse the day's teaching plans: The Outlaw Sea and Romeo and Juliet. So, between almost-midnight and 4:14 a.m. I slept and dreamed, often waking, but also slipping back into dreamland, into the same two or three sets of dreams again and again.

Anyway, one set of dreams involved the landscape of the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf, but factually considered, as is the way so often with dreams.

What I mean to say: I was suiting up for a scuba exploration of the undersea cave of the monster Grendel's mother. Just as the hero Beowulf swims down and encounters the monstrous mother, I was set to swim down to tour that cave as part of an archaeological expedition. What struck my dream-self was how matter of fact everyone was being about a matter of folklore, of poetry, of myth. But everyone else took this wonder for granted, and all the talk was technical: how to dive this cave.

I pulled on my wetsuit and checked my gauges with everyone else, but my mind kept shifting between a slight bewilderment that they could be so accepting that this cave was in fact that cave from the poem and a growing apprehension that we could encounter something monstrous down there. No one seemed worried at all, but it's a monster's cave, I kept thinking, as I shouldered my heavy tank and defogged my mask. The water was clear, but dark and cold.

Diving Grendel's Mother's cave: a tense dream, disconcerting, disturbing the silted base of the mind, the psyche. The other dreams were equally outlandish, equally aquatic, but without so much ominousness and wonder. Oh, I woke while en route--swimming downward, dive-light cutting the darkness--so maybe I've something to look forward to in tonight's slumbers. Wish me luck and a magic sword, if I need one, just as Beowulf needed when he paid his visit to that cave.

Brecca on Deck

Another "chess" piece: Brecca, the Bull--Beowulf's foe/companion in the swimming match.

I like the wet "planking" beneath this northern minotaur's head.

Hrothgar's Pawn

Here's another piece from the chess set I never finished. A pawn, I guess.

Another minotaur of sorts. Actually, I think of the piece as a Viking faun, if I may mix my traditions. No horned helmet--an inaccuracy, that, anyway--but a horned head. The fierceness and the shagginess call out "Viking" to my mind.

Bullish and goatish both, though not Mediterranean at all: no Cretan sleekness, no Classical spareness here. The severity is rough and textured. Rough weather; rough water. Cold, kelpy seas; the swift shifting of the seasons; dark forests of oak and pine; harsh frost and snow; wolves and bears and boars (oh my). Bear-shirted berserkers, man-beasts, beast-men. What's his lineage, truly?

If Viking goats seem too far-fetched, recall that Thor the Thunder-god's chariot is pulled by two goats. (At least, until trickster Loki lames one of them.) And the sound of those chariot wheels rumbling across Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge of Asgard, makes the thunder we hear down here on Midgard (or Middle-Earth). I like Thor, defender of gods and men against the frost-giants and all things unhallowed. Thor, whose very name echoes the Norse word for "giant" (thurs), always strikes me as the street-cop of that northern pagan pantheon.

My piece: Beowulf's henchman, perhaps, or Hrothgar's pawn. I haven't named him yet. Perhaps the name of one of Thor's goats would suit?

Hrothgar's Pawn: sculpture mix; deep green glaze.

Grendel's Heirs

GRENDEL'S HEIRS

However, it befell me that I with my sword slew

Nine nicors--sea-monsters.

             --Beowulf, in Beowulf (lines 574-575a)

"Smell the bitter, briny tang,"

The elders angled, hoarse with rage,

Wrapped in hair and hide. "Fear

Caves of sorrow, waves of hate.

Know below fell creatures wait."

Naked Ottar smiling swam

Into the sea, long-knife in hand.

Across the wind, the nicors neighed,

Saltbound night-mares stabled

Beneath these waves. Through the roof

Of Ottar's mouth, the blunt, blind,

Ugly truths his not ignoble

Life tore out. Freshened now,

Rife they sang. "Smell the bitter,

Briny tang and hallow here

This mere-hero, with gilded bronze,

With horn and drum. Scorn not

Ottar's gift, this fierce price,

That we may pass our foes unafraid."

Twice, in their grotto, the nicors neighed.

--Matt Duckworth

P.S. I'd originally written a version of this poem in 1995 or so back when I was deep in graduate studies of heroism and wondering if I shouldn't have been trading Lord Byron back for Beowulf. I've revised the piece slightly just now.

Brecca the Bull

A figure of fun, but no Unferth. This is my small envisioning of Brecca, Beowulf's opponent/companion in that swimming competition amidst the rough waves and rougher monsters of the North Sea. Troublemaker Unferth brings up the competition, claiming that Beowulf lost, but the Mighty Geat sets the story straight and sends Unferth into retreat by a well-placed personal jab. According to Beowulf, Brecca couldn't swim away from him, and he choose not to outswim Brecca just yet. The two men spent days swimming, swords in hand, until a storm on the fifth night separated the two men, and then Beowulf was beset by nicors, nine of which he slew, before coming ashore in Finland, I believe. I always wondered what happened to his swimming companion. And I always wanted to hear Brecca's version of the story.

If Beowulf may figure as the Bee-Wolf or the Bear (aren't kennings fun?), then Brecca ought to figure as a Ram, Boar, or Bull, some stubborn beast. The Breaker figured in my mind, finally, as Bull. I'd meant to form a complete set, a chess set, of such figures from Northern myth and legend, but I don't play chess . . . .

Stoneware; glazed with seafoam. I like how the glaze broke well, filling in the hollows with a rich light blue and revealing the contours just the way I wanted. Art-luck.

By the way, reading the Anglo-Saxon epic in the original Old English showed me just how powerful Beowulf is with words. Translating for myself, I could feel fully how this character is articulate, weighing words as well as deeds. In fact, he's diplomatic and devastating, whatever's needed, and no mere muscleman. Seamus Heaney's translation is my definite favorite, the one I turn to again and again, but the old E. Talbot Donaldson prose translation is the real deal too, a plain-style gem for accuracy and Northern European understatement, just like the original.