Beowulf II: The Hero and the Critics

Beowulf, as Tolkien helpfully reminds us in his seminal essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," may or may not have originated as a pagan tale (though it probably did). The text that survives, however, is profoundly Christian in intent, allegorizing and critiquing the pagan culture Beowulf represents even as it celebrates Beowulf's adventures. For Tolkien, then--and most post-Tolkien Beowulf scholars--the poem rose from its dark and savage state as a bawlderized and incompletely Christianized version of an odd Germanic legend to a profound work of art through its contemplation of both the valors and the inconsistencies of the pagan past. Essentially the piece became a document of cultural conversion, an elegy for the best of fallen humanity and its hopeless struggle against evil, as represented by the three famous "monsters." The hero is unashamedly pagan (though in a vaguely Jewish, Old Testament manner), but the tale tries to be a Christian moralization of his "heroic" times (albeit an incredibly subtle and polysemous one.) Thus one could argue that Beowulf is a forerunner of the historical novel, from Sir Walter Scott to Bernard Cornwell, which tries to historicize the past with realistic depictions of its evils while retaining the excitement and semi-allegorical appeal of national heroes, knights and adventures.

The Gaiman/Avary Beowulf script starts firmly at the pagan side of things. From the beginning, we have "Ye Olde Dark Ages," with a cartoonishly almost-naked Hrothgar verbally abusing his wife, and leading his band of merry men in irresponsibly manly life of drinking, fighting, and "fornicating." (I sometimes wonder if the odd choice of the last word isn't an intentional echo of the Old Testament anachronisms scattered throughout Beowulf.) Certainly the points are made with a relatively unsubtle brush but it sets the tone--the CGI images may be gritty and semi-realistic, but the plotting and characterizations will exhibit the clear, colorful delineations of old-school cell animation. And the tone itself is, in its way, quite refreshing. It has been the plague of Medieval-themed cinema of the '90's that every pre-Christian society must fit into the innocent-native Colonial stereotype of Romantic poetry, living at peace and harmony with the spirits of nature. In comparison to previous Beowulf films, at least, the rude, savage, yet undeniably courageous (on the whole) thanes of Hrothgar and Beowulf seem to be depicted with a downright "gritty realism," complicated wonderfully by the nuanced feminity of Hrothgar's wife (who publicly embraces but privately resists her role as "peace-weaver," and whose individuality is grudgingly accepted by the privately-browbeaten Hrothgar.) (About her, and the other women in Beowulf, I could write quite a few pages. But I won't, at least for now.)

Beowulf, of course, is in a category of one. Eschewing the vices and weaknesses of his companions, he seeks only two things: honor and glory. And he always wins--or so he tells everyone. Like Hrothgar, he has a public and private life--while the Finnsburg diversion (i.e. the sea race) is told much as it occurs in the poem, the reader is treated to a different view: an underwater sea-nymph of sorts whose encounter Beowulf apparently finds shameful enough to leave out. And, of course, such a public/private dichotomy becomes most clear in Beowulf's seduction by Grendel's mother, wherein Beowulf chooses external fame and eternal glory over personal internal integrity. (The eternal life and the aglak-wif's sexual allure, we are lead to believe, are almost entirely secondary and incidental to Beowulf's way of seeing things.)

All these considerations of public/private, shame/guilt, &c. are, of course, almost entirely external to the poem Beowulf and the Heroic Age it depicts. Yet they are absolute commonplaces in another tradition--Medieval Christianity. And, lo and behold, mere minutes after Beowulf relates the false version of his encounter with Grendel's mother, we are swept years into the future, out of the dark ages and into the High Middle ages. Beowulf suddenly becomes a Christian King (though privately still quite pagan), living at comfort in a Norman-style castle, crowned and advised by the very Christian monks whose academic teachings his alienated wife embraces as her sole comfort. This is, one feels, a distinctly more comfortable world to live in (particularly if you're a woman, and noble), as well as a more ethical and humane one (Beowulf opens this segment by sparing the life of a coward--an act unimaginable to a pagan warlord but in sympathy with contemporary ethics.) Indeed, in the beauty, grandeur, and majesty of the court and king, we feel very much at home--to the point where this can stand as a substitute for "our world," a humanistic court based on abstract but universally-accepted ideas such as "justice" and "manners," rather than the more natural virtues of "strength" and "ability-to-kill-lots-of-people."

At this point, it was hard to resist a leap of logic. All along, I thought that I'd been watching a film about Beowulf the person. Yet with the conversion to Christianity, the subtle and complicated mix of pagan and Christian, and the emphasis on cultural conversion, something else emerged. Beowulf, the hero of the film, is not the same as Beowulf, the hero of the poem. Nor is he (despite a few vague guestures in this direction) a proposed "real" Beowulf who the poem was based upon. The movie's hero is, in the end, nothing more or less than a symbol of the POEM itself--a work with savage origins, incomplete conversion to Christianity, and a thoroughly elegaic tone contemplating the hopeless but noble attempt to stand alone against the evils of the world.

And yet...Beowulf the king (and thus, the symbol of the entire realm) is not comfortable within his society. Because he knows something that no one else will accept--his righteousness is illusion. The mentor-mentee pattern established with Hrothgar-Beowulf is continued with Beowulf-Wiglaf, and once again the pattern is of cynical age forseeing what innocent youth cannot. Beowulf tries repeatedly to tell Wiglaf the truth--that he didn't conquer the monster but is a monster himself, but Wiglaf refuses to allow his idol and leige-Lord to be so portrayed. And, in the end, Beowulf makes partial atonement by slaying the dragon (alas, without Wiglaf's help)--and realizes that the dragon is his other half. And Wiglaf sees, as Beowulf dies, that all Beowulf tried to tell him was true--and seeks to grasp the false immortality that so captivated Beowulf himself.

Which is, as far as meditations on the evil within all men go, not that spurious a comment--and not as far away from the central themes of the poetry as one might expect. Sure most of the subtle glories and intricate beauties that make the poem such a joy to read has been washed away, but what is left is a revisionist Beowulf that doesn't make a mockery of the poem itself, but instead tries to pull out meaning and reinvent a poem that itself was born in reinvention.

Not a bad days work, for a cartoon of swordplay and bloodshed.

The 101st Post!

And as celebration, I shall send a link to Stephen Fry (i.e. Jeeves, but with a worse haircut, worse clothes and less omnipotence) and Hugh Laurie (i.e. Berty Wooster, I don't care how good an American accent he can put on, he's Berty Wooster) discussing the radical Structuralist view of language.



Only in very small and incoherent terms.

(Click even if you didn't know "structuralist" was a word, have no idea who Jeeves and Bertie are, and think "the code of the Woosters" sounds like a British conspiracy-theory cooking group. You'll thank me afterwards!)

Many, Many thoughts on David Maine

New Testament theology is breathtakingly beautiful, wonderfully paradoxical, calling for such unnatural beauties as a willingness to love one’s bitter enemy and the voluntary sacrifice of a Creator for the redemption of his rebellious creation. But there aren’t any stories, really, other than the one central Gospel of Christ. And when it comes to characters, well, I can count the number of truly vibrant characters on two hands. Peter, of course, in his firm enthusiasm and his broken weakness. Judas is at least interesting—the disciple who refused to learn. Paul has adventures, but it’s always been hard to see his humanity between his superhuman adventures and his insistences that we follow his almost-perfect example.

In the Old Testament, we have something entirely different. The greatest king was famously an adulterer, murderer, and follower of the heart of God. Prophets rage in the wilderness, each speaking and acting in their own way (one—Jonah—living out a near comedy as he seemingly dedicates his life to trying to foil the will of the God who chose him.) A prostitute lies in defense of foreign agents and the New Testament accounts it faith, another woman earns eternal fame by driving a stake through the head of a foreign king. Throughout it all God cares for His people—but the various ways he does it sure seems resistant to any simple encapsulation within a system of theology. This is the world of Story, even if it is part of the Divine History. This is David Maine’s home territory—and it is rather fitting that one of the phrases that most pops up in his stories is the simple caution “make of it what you will.”

The Book of Sampson

When I first finished The Book of Samson, I really didn't know what to ake of it. A month (or so) and another David Maine book later, I still don't know what to make of it.

Well, I do have some ideas, but then I always do (for better or worse):

In the first place, it strikes me as the most unlikely book I've read. Certainly the mythic nature and overall flashiness of the story of Samson has made it a sort of Sunday-School favorite for centuries, but it's not really a story that gets along too well with simple Sunday-school interpretations. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Certainly as a Christian and a fan of literature, the first paragraph (to steal Lewis' description of another unique publication) carries all the surprise and shock of "lightning from a clear sky:"

"This is the story of my life and it's not a happy one. If you wish to read about me you're welcome to but if you're looking for something to give you hope & joy comfort & inspiration then you had best leave off here straightaway and go find something else. My life has an abundance of frustration and pain plus a fair bit of sex and lots of killing and broken bones but it's got precious little hope & joy comfort & inspiration."

Yet a glance at the cover makes it an even more puzzling book: not only is it published by St. Martin's Press in New York, but the author himself wrote this while living in Pakistan with his presumably Pakastani wife (who I mention mainly because she has one of the coolest last names ever--Khan). These facts, of course, certainly have some bearing on a novel whose protagonist has no problem slaughtering a Philistine village in order to keep his drunken word--after all, Jewish law isn't that particular about actions towards foreigners, but is very specific about the importance of dealing faithfully.

Certainly, too, the contemporary applications of the story often jump to the fore. Many of my favorite conversations are between Samson and the Philistine priest who talks to him while awaiting Samson's captivity. The priest emerges (despite Samson's characterizations) as, well, rather more sane than Samson:

"--Yes indeed we shall see. All the highest families from every Philistine town and city will be on hand to watch your execution and all our best military minds as well. And then we shall celebrate your death with a fete unlike any ever known on earth. And then you know what we shall do?"
--March on my people. Slaughter my men and rape the women. Enslave the children & salt the fields fire the buildings & burn the orchards. Erase our very memory.
Tears stung my eyes as I said this. As I saw this.
--How ahh quaint he replied.--But happily how wrong as well. After the fete and the pyre that will carry off your last ashy remains--we shall all go home.
I said nothing to this obvious lie.
--Home to tend our wives and farms he said.--I shall return to the temple in Hebron where I belong. The Ammonites will bring their caravans to our villages. Philistine shall not attack Israelite nor shall Israelite attack Philistine. Our villages will prosper. At first there may be some mutual suspicion as we have little to do with each other but as time passes and our people flourish we shall once again walk side by side. ... At some blurry point in the future all this trouble will be ancient history best forgotten and--listen well--happily consigned to oblivion.
He went away with his lies ringing in my head. Lies of peace and tolerance and brotherhood. And I gnashed my teeth and prayed for the jaws of a rat that I could gnaw through these chains. Then I would show them peace. Show them all the peace of the grave with me standing above them with their blood black on my hands and the hand of none other but the LORD giving me shelter succor and delight."

Of course there's a lot more going on than just the portrait of a lunatic who believes himself God's gift to Israel. The book carries a long ride through various forms of piety, a great deal of savage violence, a couple of love stories, and an ending which, ironically, strikes only the cynical protagonist as a true case of eucatastrophe. But it's a good ride, a thoughtful ride, and at times a wondrous ride--even if it's rather hard to see, even at the end, where it went.

Fallen

The book starts with an old man, weathered by the difficulties of life and the hatred of mankind, who calmly predicts his imminent death to his devoted son. The first section moves backwards through his very troubled life, his equally troubled marriage and father-son relationship, to his long-premeditated murder of his angelic (but not-too-smart) brother Abel. By the last page of the book, time has rewinded not only through the rest of their childhood, but through their (and everyone’s) parents’ harsh struggles to exist in their exile from the Garden of Paradise. All this is shown through the perspectives of four very different characters (Cain, Abel, Adam, Eve), refracted through the rest of a family whose personalities seem to cover the entire breadth of human experience. And always, two themes echo: the broken and savage dignity of man and the inscrutability of the ways of God.

Most of all, the theme of the book seems to be love; and if God’s grace in Christ seems so far away from all the noise and strife as to be nearly invisible, yet each character is painted with love, grace and beauty. There is something Joblike in the simple faith of Adam in the God who exiled him. One feels, somehow in some other circumstances, that there could have been greatness and truth and beauty in the stubborn persistence and deep perception of the first murderer, and even as an exile he is never incapable of love or humanity. The ever-practical Eve has a single-minded determination to raise as many happy and unsoiled children as possible, striving with all her heart to make something like a second Eden for her cursed family. And even Abel, possibly the most difficult character to paint with subtlety, seems just on the cusp of a real, independent manhood (rather than his childish meld of good intentions and self-righteousness) at the moment of his murder. Mixed together, it is a heartbreaking mélange as well as a beautiful meditation on the divine. Cain seems to get the last word (“I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life telling my children how fair you were, and how benevolent and merciful, and how you gave me every blessing in this life. I would tell my children: Yes, my father has some good qualities, but he’s also thoughtless and selfish and unforgiving and hateful and mean. That’s how God treated you.”) But in the end, it is perhaps God’s silence that speaks loudest. Each section ends with a scene which is repeated with a new voice in the next; the last chapter is entitled “The Old Man,” but God’s speech is not to be found in the book, even if at every step it is God’s direct providence that preserves the characters from death.

Yet after doing so much right, Maine seems to inexplicably misplace the core of his tale. If the whole point of a novel entitled “Fallen” is to lament our corrupt stage (which seems a fair assessment), then one would expect the glimpses and memories of the Garden to shine with a heartrending beauty. Instead, Paradise just looks boring.

I can only explain this by theorizing that somehow, Maine is the only Christian author with literary pretensions to have not read any C.S. Lewis*. Instead of Lewis’ talking animals whose companionship mankind has eternally longed for, Maine’s Adam merely has the ability to make animals do whatever he wants (including die on command for food.) Instead of Adam and Eve enjoying God’s company and exercising their minds and wills in divine harmony as sub-rulers of creation, the two just get fat and slow eating the same perfectly delicious berries perfect day after perfect day. (Indeed, Maine’s Eve eats the fruit of the tree partly out of dissatisfaction with the identical daily repetition of the Garden; years later, she rejoices to see how the struggles of toil and labor have toned Adam’s muscles and body so that he looks better than he ever did in Eden.) Worst of all, Maine explains the Fruit not on the basis of the Biblical account, but in terms of the worst of Medieval Gnostic-influenced biases. It is not “knowledge of Good and Evil” that the Serpent promises Eve, but the ability to create. Or, more specifically (though the Serpent avoids details), procreate**. Lewis the reticent English gentleman and bachelor filled his stories with celebrations (even, on one occasion, orgies) of ideal, unfallen sexuality. For Maine the postmodern man of the world, with no inhibitions about exploring realistically many nooks and crannies, wonders and nightmares of human sexuality that Lewis the gentleman never touched upon, Eden stands as a testament that all sex is fundamentally evil. The mind does boggle.

Even with its flaws, Fallen is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Heartrending, faith-filled, offering no explanations for God (other than the sparse few He chooses to give) and much sympathy for his most errant creatures, the book is in turns immensely moving, exceedingly provocative, and a call for humility to anyone who ever thinks they have God figured out. Having read both The Book of Samson and Fallen, David Maine (despite his flaws) has earned a place near the very top of my short living-authors-to-watch list.

*The only other explanation—that Maine *wants* Eden to be boring, falls flat. Eve herself (generally a trustworthy if cynical narrator) declares the Garden to be considerably better than anything else, including sex.

**Admittedly, there are some loose grounds for Maine’s interpretation: in addition to “her desire shall be for her husband” and the introduction of pain in childbirth, there’s always Christ’s words that there shall be no marriage in Heaven. Yet there emphatically *was* marriage in Eden, so Maine’s decision to declare all sex categorically the result of sin seems an utterly unnecessary damper on the longing, incompletion, and fallen-ness that fills the rest of the story.

Christ and Poverty

Holy Father we all want bread,
both from heaven and your fields so green.
I know your grace is man's first need,
but I can no longer hold the pain I've seen.
I am my brother's keeper and that I'll always be.
I'll not turn my back be he stranger or blood
and embrace a life of greed.
I am my sister's keeper
and that I've always been.
Every day I've left her out in the streets
I've turned Christ out again.

-Ballydowse, from "The Land, the Bread, and the People"

What is the compassion of Christ? Am I entirely missing the life of self-sacrifice, of being "crucified with Christ," every time I go out to eat, buy a video game, or pay tuition? Is it possible, given the injustice and inequities of power in the world, to have a vibrant Christian community that exists within the system of America?

There is something deeply profound in the equality underlying the lines "I am my brother's keeper ... / I am my sister's keeper," something that slams straight into the Platonic idea that we all know what is right, if we could just remember it. For there is something incredibly human (in the most positive, image-of-god, dignitati humanis sense of the word) about committing oneself irrevocably to the side of "right," and few things more wrong than the starvation of millions of brothers and sisters merely because they live in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the words of Christ are full of such intentionally provocative and "radical" statements: "sell all that you have and give it to the poor." "I have no mother and father." "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword." It is perhaps these words, more than any others, that lead (for instance) the atheist Denys Arcand to declare Christ "the only irreplacable voice" that he had ever read.

This also flies in the face of virtually any society. Wherever people live, there are inequities, there is injustice. And in order to live their lives in peace and harmony, people count it wisdom to separate themselves from the suffering they see, repeating the phrase "it's not my problem." A foreigner lies wounded at the side of the road, the pharisee walks by nervously on his way to preach about compassion. A nervous Christian in Nazi Germany keeps silent and goes about his business, hoping things will be better.

Or, perhaps, we turn to arts, and justify ourselves by "bringing awareness to the cause." Perhaps, like Lodowick in an early play about Richard III, we say "for fear I should be seen talking with her, I will shun her company and get me to my chamber, and there set down [her tragedy] in heroical verse...which is no doubt as wonderful as the defoliation of a kingdom."

Yet as far as I can tell, there is only one character in Scriptures who seems to advocate the truly revolutionary methodology of converting all excess into alms for the poor--and neither his person nor his motives (in John 12) are what one might expect:

1^(A)Jesus, therefore, six days before ^(B)the Passover, came to ^(C)Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.

2So they made Him a supper there, and ^(D)Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with Him.

3^(E)Mary then took a pound of very costly ^(F)perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

4But ^(G)Judas Iscariot, one of His disciples, who was intending to betray Him, said,

5"Why was this perfume not sold for ^[a]three hundred denarii and given to poor people?"

6Now he said this, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief, and as he ^(H)had the money box, he used to pilfer ^(I)what was put into it.

7Therefore Jesus said, "Let her alone, so that she may keep ^[b]it for ^(J)the day of My burial.

8"^(K)For you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me."

This is, I think, one of the most brilliantly cynical and extravagantly human passages in Scriptures. Mary expresses her love for the man who raised her brother from the dead extravagantly. The perfume she used could have provided a meal for dozens of real, really starving poor people. The person who points this out does so because he wants to enrich himself personally. And Jesus himself, the man who constantly points an angry finger against the hipocracy and greed of the upper class, the man, indeed, who morally and mystically is the poor who are deprived of money because of the perfume, shows only approval for the spontaneous expression of love found in the act.

The poor of the world are real, they can be seen daily on television, testiments to our greed and gluttony. They are our keepers, and we are theirs; while they are starving, the body and testimony of Christ is weakened. A part of my mind, maybe a Judas to myself, constantly whispers that I should show no extravagence, but rather sell everything and give it to the poor, pour myself out until there is nothing left but an empty husk and a testament to my righteousness. (Is this so that it, my pride, can rejoice in my righteousness and faultless virtue, perhaps?) And still Jesus reclines, sharing food with friends, pointing to the fleeting nature of our lives and reminding us that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control start at home, spontaneously, even if they eventually must reach out universally. As much as Christ's love is a challenge and a "stone of offense," it starts with the simplest, most local and intuitive level (John 4:20):

"For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen."


It's not a plattitude that "solves" the issue, but I think it is a tension that every Christian must face--and face with the knowledge that we live by grace, hoping in the forgiveness in the God whose earthly incarnation is the suffering, feasting, drinking, loving, demanding, and forgiving person of Jesus.

"Real" Posts Coming Soon...

...for now I'm just posting the greatest poster ever.





...It's funny because it's so true.

(Thanks to Letters from Kamp Krusty for the link.)