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

Crossley-Holland: An Anglo-Saxon Riddle

 RIDDLE 61

A woman, young and lovely, often locked me 
in a chest; she took me out at times,
lifted me with fair hands and gave me 
to her loyal lord, fulfilling his desire. 
Then he stuck his head well inside me, 
pushed it upwards into the smallest part.
It was my fate to be filled with something 
coarse if that person who possessed me 
was virile enough. Now guess my name.

--translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Solution: 61 -- Helmet

The Exeter Book Riddles, translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland,
Penguin Books, ______.

Wyrd Oft Nereth: Two Views

Recommended Reading: Nicola Griffith's "Hild"

A new and quite fine historical novel about 7th-century England and a very remarkable character.

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.

"The Wanderer": Burton Raffel Translates From The Old English

THE WANDERER

This lonely traveller longs for grace,
For the mercy of God; grief hangs on
His heart and follows the frost-cold foam
He cuts in the sea, sailing endlessly,
Aimlessly, in exile. Fate has opened
A single port: memory. He sees
His kinsmen slaughtered again, and cries:
               “I’ve drunk too many lonely dawns,
Grey with mourning. Once there were men
To whom my heart could hurry, hot
With open longing. They’re long since dead.
My heart has closed on itself, quietly
Learning that silence is noble and sorrow
Nothing that speech can cure. Sadness
Has never driven sadness off;
Fate blows hardest on a bleeding heart.
So those who thirst for glory smother
Secret weakness and longing, neither
Weep nor sigh nor listen to the sickness
In their souls. So I, lost and homeless,
Forced to flee the darkness that fell
On the earth and my lord.
                         Leaving everything,
Weary with winter I wandered out
On the frozen waves, hoping to find
A place, a people, a lord to replace
My lost ones. No one knew me, now,
No one offered comfort, allowed
Me feasting or joy. How cruel a journey
I’ve traveled, sharing my bread with sorrow
Alone, an exile in every land,
Could only be told by telling my footsteps.
For who can hear: “friendless and poor,”
And know what I’ve known since the long cheerful nights
When, young and yearning, with my lord I yet feasted
Most welcome of all. That warmth is dead.
He only knows who needs his lord
As I do, eager or long-missing aid;
He only knows who never sleeps
Without the deepest dreams of longing.
Sometimes it seems I see my lord,
Kiss and embrace him, bend my hands
And head to his knee, kneeling as though
He still sat enthroned, ruling his thanes.
And I open my eyes, embracing the air,
And I see the brown sea-billows heave,
See the sea-birds bathe, spreading
Their white-feathered wings, watch the frost
And the hail and the snow. And heavy in heart
I long for my lord, alone and unloved.
Sometimes it seems I see my kin
And greet them gladly, give them welcome,
The best of friends. They fade away,
Swimming soundlessly out of sight,
                         Leaving nothing.
How loathsome become
The frozen waves to a weary heart.
               In this brief world I cannot wonder
That my mind is set on melancholy,
Because I never forget the fate
Of men, robbed of their riches, suddenly
Looted by death—the doom of earth,
Sent to us all by every rising
Sun. Wisdom is slow, and comes
But late. He who has it is patient;
He cannot be hasty to hate or speak,
He must be bold and yet not blind,
Nor ever too craven, complacent, or covetous,
Nor ready to gloat before he wins glory.
The man’s a fool who flings his boasts
Hotly to the heavens, heeding his spleen
And not the better boldness of knowledge.
What knowing man knows not the ghostly,
Waste-like end of worldly wealth:
See, already the wreckage is there,
The wind-swept walls stand far and wide,
The storm-beaten blocks besmeared with frost,
The mead-halls crumbled, the monarchs thrown down
And stripped of their pleasures. The proudest of warriors
Now lie by the wall: some of them war
Destroyed; some the monstrous sea-bird
Bore over the ocean; to some the old wolf
Dealt out death; and for some dejected
Followers fashioned an earth-cave coffin.
Thus the Maker of men lays waste
This earth, crushing our callow mirth.
And the work of old giants stands withered and still.”

He who these ruins rightly sees,
And deeply considers this dark twisted life,
Who sagely remembers the endless slaughters
Of a bloody past, is bound to proclaim:
          “Where is the war-steed? Where is the warrior?
                         Where is his war-lord?
Where now the feasting-places?
Where now the mead-hall pleasures?
Alas, bright cup! Alas, brave knight!
Alas, you glorious princes! All gone,
Lost in the night, as you never had lived.
And all that survives you a serpentine wall,
Wondrously high, worked in strange ways.
Mighty spears have slain these men,
Greedy weapons have framed their fate.
                These rocky slopes are beaten by storms,
This earth pinned down by driving snow,
By the horror of winter, smothering warmth
In the shadows of night. And the north angrily
Hurls its hailstorms at our helpless heads.
Everything earthly is evilly born,
Firmly clutched by a fickle Fate.
Fortune vanishes, friendship vanishes,
Man is fleeting, woman is fleeting,
And all this earth rolls into emptiness.”

               So says the sage in his heart, sitting alone with
                              His thought.
It's good to guard your faith, nor let your grief come forth
Until it cannot call for help, nor help but heed
The path you've placed before it.  It's good to find your grace
In God, the heavenly rock where rests our every hope.

--translated by Burton Raffel,
borrowed from Beowulf and Related Readings,
McDougall Littell; Evanston, Illinois; 1998.

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.

Ezra Pound's "The Seafarer"

One of my favorite poems in Old English is "The Seafarer," that melancholy lament with the wonderful setting of being adrift, physically and soulfully, in the sea, however much the speaker plies the oars. I often think of this poem at the end of a tough outing in my kayak.

Here is the translation by Ezra Pound, a translation known for its sonic fidelity and religious infidelity (or reworking). Pound approximates as best one can the rhythmic and alliterative style, the heroic and elegiac spirit, even as he substitutes, as another translator once said, the Angles for the original angels, holding to the underlying pagan culture instead of the specific Christianity of the poem as it has survived to this day.

THE SEAFARER

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,

Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days

Hardship endured oft.

Bitter breast-cares have I abided,

Known on my keel many a care's hold,

And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent

Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head

While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,

My feet were by frost benumbed.

Chill its chains are; chafing sighs

Hew my heart round and hunger begot

Mere-weary mood. Lest man know not

That he on dry land loveliest liveth,

List how I, care-wretched, on ice-cold sea,

Weathered the winter, wretched outcast

Deprived of my kinsmen;

Hung with hard ice-flakes, where hail-scur flew,

There I heard naught save the harsh sea

And ice-cold wave, at whiles the swan cries,

Did for my games the gannet's clamour,

Sea-fowls, loudness was for me laughter,

The mews' singing all my mead-drink.

Storms, on the stone-cliffs beaten, fell on the stern

In icy feathers; full oft the eagle screamed

With spray on his pinion.

Not any protector

May make merry man faring needy.

This he little believes, who aye in winsome life

Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,

Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft

Must bide above brine.

Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,

Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then

Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now

The heart's thought that I on high streams

The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.

Moaneth alway my mind's lust

That I fare forth, that I afar hence

Seek out a foreign fastness.

For this there's no mood-lofty man over earth's midst,

Not though he be given his good, but will have in his youth greed;

Nor his deed to the daring, nor his king to the faithful

But shall have his sorrow for sea-fare

Whatever his lord will.

He hath not heart for harping, nor in ring-having

Nor winsomeness to wife, nor world's delight

Nor any whit else save the wave's slash,

Yet longing comes upon him to fare forth on the water.

Bosque taketh blossom, cometh beauty of berries,

Fields to fairness, land fares brisker,

All this admonisheth man eager of mood,

The heart turns to travel so that he then thinks

On flood-ways to be far departing.

Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,

He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow,

The bitter heart's blood. Burgher knows not--

He the prosperous man - what some perform

Where wandering them widest draweth.

So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,

My mood 'mid the mere-flood,

Over the whale's acre, would wander wide.

On earth's shelter cometh oft to me,

Eager and ready, the crying lone-flyer,

Whets for the whale-path the heart irresistibly,

O'er tracks of ocean; seeing that anyhow

My lord deems to me this dead life

On loan and on land, I believe not

That any earth-weal eternal standeth

Save there be somewhat calamitous

That, ere a man's tide go, turn it to twain.

Disease or oldness or sword-hate

Beats out the breath from doom-gripped body.

And for this, every earl whatever, for those speaking after--

Laud of the living, boasteth some last word,

That he will work ere he pass onward,

Frame on the fair earth 'gainst foes his malice,

Daring ado, ...

So that all men shall honour him after

And his laud beyond them remain 'mid the English,

Aye, for ever, a lasting life's-blast,

Delight mid the doughty.

Days little durable,

And all arrogance of earthen riches,

There come now no kings nor Cæsars

Nor gold-giving lords like those gone.

Howe'er in mirth most magnified,

Whoe'er lived in life most lordliest,

Drear all this excellence, delights undurable!

Waneth the watch, but the world holdeth.

Tomb hideth trouble. The blade is layed low.

Earthly glory ageth and seareth.

No man at all going the earth's gait,

But age fares against him, his face paleth,

Grey-haired he groaneth, knows gone companions,

Lordly men are to earth o'ergiven,

Nor may he then the flesh-cover, whose life ceaseth,

Nor eat the sweet nor feel the sorry,

Nor stir hand nor think in mid heart,

And though he strew the grave with gold,

His born brothers, their buried bodies

Be an unlikely treasure hoard.

Mermaid: Pisces In Pieces

Rough draft.

Broken mermaid.

Clumsy maker; broken piece.

Should I fear a curse?

I'd meant well, meant better, meant best . . . but couldn't quite pull that off.

I felt regret; I feel regret.

Nick Drake plays in my head.

If you don't know, well, check out Nick Drake's "Five Leaves Left" and Sinead Lohan's "No Mermaid." Both albums, both CDs, should astound you.

Old rhyme:

"The head understands

What the heart won't.

Which is wiser?"

(Actually, I made that up in 2008, but it feels old, feels like an echo, feels dependent on my own antecedents, my own past reading.)

Older rhyme (and this is truly old, no rhetorical trick):

"Mind must be the firmer, heart the more fierce,

courage the greater, as our strength diminishes."

--"The Battle of Maldon" . . .

The Anglo-Saxon heroic poem, Crossley-Holland translating.

And, yes, I connect such a passage, such a poem, to efforts in clay, to efforts in the studio, to efforts in the classroom, to efforts in life, life itself. And, like the doomed warriors of the poem, I have my faith in perseverance.

So far, I've never quite succeeded at conveying or in capturing the beauty before me, in holding such beauty firmly enough to present it to you, or to anyone, at least not in clay, and that saddens me.

And so, in a melancholy mood, I replay Drake's "Five Leaves Left," and I try harder, the next time clay is at hand.