Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Monster slayer

New buzz about Beowulf attests to epic poetry's power to comfort in scary times.

By Roy Peter Clark, Special to the Times
Published November 25, 2007

Never in a thousand years could I have imagined using the names Beowulf and Angelina Jolie in the same sentence. But there it is.

The Anglo-Saxon epic hero meets the voluptuous actressin the digitized cinematic incarnation, now in theaters, of the 3,182-line Old English poem. A single, singed manuscript survives from about the year 1000.

I spent many an hour in a graduate school library trying to decipher Beowulf from its original language, what we now call Old English, which to us looks and sounds as foreign as any Germanic or Scandinavian tongue.

A century ago, Beowulf was considered by scholars as little more than a linguistic curiosity, a text to be mined for insights into the origins of our language. It took J.R.R. Tolkien to revive interest in the epic in a now famous 1936 essay,"Beowulf:The Monsters and the Critics." Tolkien, whose own heroic fiction shows the influence of Beowulf, argued that it deserves critical attention as poetry, a work of art.

Tolkien, of course, would one day become famous, not for his scholarship, but for the creation of the imaginative universe in The Lord of the Rings. Although many Americans know the Rings trilogy from the Peter Jackson films, the adventure of hobbits and wizards, the ultimate confrontation of good and evil, was initially influenced by Tolken's time on the battlefields of World War I and later inspired by England's experience in World War II.

Though Tolkien's work never turns into an allegory, it is easy enough for readers to identify the Shire with England and the hobbits with the plucky wartime Brits. The dark, evil forces of Sauron, maker of the rings, look a lot like the Third Reich. And the alliance of men, hobbits, elves and dwarves suggests the armies that combined to destroy Hitler and his Nazi gangsters.

If Tolkien's work is a reflection of his time, I'm tempted to link the recent revival of the Beowulf myth to our time. There must be something going on early in the new millennium that would inspire the creation of not one, but two Beowulf movies; not just a graphic novel for young readers, but also a video game; and not just another literary translation, but perhaps the greatest of all time, written by Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

A green-eyed monster

To get at the key link between the years 1000 and 2001, I'll offer a brief tour of the Beowulf story: A powerful king named Hrothgar builds a great hall in what is now Denmark. The hall attracts a group of warriors. In exchange for their loyalty, the king offers them shelter, weapons, treasure, food, strong beer and song.

All this is threatened by a monster named Grendel, an outlier descended from the race of Cain. In the swamps and hillsides he is driven to rage by the joyful sounds of the hall, attacks in the night, red eyes ablaze, and devours as many as 30 warriors at a time, decimating the forces of the king.

All seems lost until Beowulf arrives from what is now Sweden. With his own band of retainers he offers his help to Hrothgar. In a great hand-to-hand battle, Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm, and eventually kills him. Grendel's mother, played by the de-lip-cious Ms. Jolie, seeks revenge. Beowulf kills her in her creepy underwater lair.

After great celebration, Beowulf returns home. The poem moves forward in time until we find Beowulf an old king in his own land. A dragon, angered by a theft of his treasure, attacks and kills Beowulf, but not until the dragon himself is defeated. The poem ends with Beowulf's funeral.

The lasting legacy

The character and motivation of the monster Grendel are what gives this story its 21st century relevance. The other two monsters seek revenge, for lost life and lost treasure. But Grendel's motives are more modern. He is alienated from and angered by the beauty, joy, the creative energy of civilization.

In this early passage, the anonymous poet establishes some of the key themes:

The fortunes of war favoured Hrothgar.

Friends and kinsmen flocked to his ranks,

Young followers, a force that grew

To be a mighty army. So his mind turned

To hall-building: he handed down orders

For men to work on a great mead-hall

Meant to be a wonder of the world forever . . .

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,

Nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him

To hear the din of the loud banquet

Every day in the hall, the harp being struck

And the clear song of a skilled poet

Telling with mastery of man's beginnings,

How the Almighty had made the earth . . .

Think of Hrothgar's great hall as the Twin Towers, and think of Grendel as representing the violent hatred, the fanaticism that brought it down. The Danes have their heroes and demons, and we have ours. Osama bin Grendel.

It's only natural for us, at times when civilization seems at risk, to turn to story and poetry for consolation. The Anglo-Saxon poet was called a "scop" (pronounced shope), a shaper. In the passage above the poet plays the harp and sings of God's creation. God is described as the Shaper of the world. Even as King Hrothgar is the shaper of the hall, the architect of a civilization that will eventually be destroyed, not by monsters, but by human hatred, bloodlust and revenge. The great hall is gone, but the monster is dead, and a thousand years later, the words of the poet live on.

Roy Peter Clark is senior scholar at the Poynter Institute. He has a Ph.D. in medieval literature and is the author of the book "Writing Tools."

[Last modified November 21, 2007, 12:26:08]