John M. Hill - The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf: Arrivals and Departures

I wish to thank the several organizers of various sessions on Beowulf and Old English Literature in the recent past, where sections of this study first appeared as conference papers. They would include John D. Niles and Allen Frantzen. Marijane Osborn deserves special mention for inviting me to speak at the Davis Medieval Colloquium, where I was well received and where I met a number of fine students flourishing under her tutelage.

A portion of appeared in a somewhat altered form in Beowulf in Our Time: Teaching Beowulf in Translation. I am grateful to Mary K. Ramsey, who edited that volume, and to the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, for permission to republish from this Subsidia, vol. 31, of the Old English Newsletter.

I am enormously indebted to Suzanne Rancourt, of the University of Toronto Press, for immediately seeing value in my approach to the dramatic masterpiece that is Beowulf. The anonymous readers for the press were also very encouraging, generous in their praise, and quite insightful in their commentary. The Narrative Pulse of Beowulf is all the stronger for their help. Clare Orchard, the manuscripts copy editor, deserves a case of whatever is her favourite libation. She is superb. Among the presss other editors, I should note that Barb Porter has been meticulous in her instructions and genial in her postings.

Finally, I sadly regret that Stephen O. Glosecki, eaxlgesteallan minum, is not here to tell me what is good and what needs more work. After terrible battles with the cancer demon, he has gone to Valhll where, after sword play by day, I trust he now enjoys boar flesh and goat mead in the evening. In my own good time I hope to join in such feasting and even in the reciting of song. Steve has translated Beowulf into his own, stirring verse, such as this: Nevertheless, our wielding God, / Victory-Giver! Let him avenge himself; / with blade well edged was he brave alone; and this, Ignoble deed! Death is better / than life without honor for any warrior! Good from long ago, Steve had honour. Death came too soon.

There is much to be said for large-scale, structural views of Beowulf, beginning with Tolkiens view of the famous poem in two balanced parts (representing an opposition of ends and beginnings, youth and age, and first achievement and final death); or we might consider a three-part division, as say, H.L. Rogers, Kathryn Hume, John D. Niles, and others have suggested, focused on the three monster fights; or else, more capaciously, Gale R. Owen-Crockers three movements and a coda fixed to the still points of four funerals from which thematic patterns radiate within elliptical structures. In story-line terms, that is, in ongoing, consequential narrative development and closure, the poem in fact clearly has two parts: the extended account of the Danish dynasty, beginning with Scyld Scefing and his departure, then Heorots founding, Grendels monstrous arrival, his repeated raids and years of night-time squatting; then Beowulfs arrival, his defeat of the monsters, his departure and triumphant return home: end of part one. We then have the final thousand lines or so about the awakening of the dragon, the approach and fight, and the sad aftermath. But large divisions of this sort fail to appreciate the narrative pulse scene by scene of the poem, which in fact carries right across the dragon divide to the very end, this second part of the poem seeming to many readers a falling off structurally. However, Beowulf is in fact a strongly narrative poem, contrary to Tolkiens sense, using Klaebers phrase, that it lacks a steady advance.

Above the level of stylistic variations and patterns, however described whether we note chiastic structures, envelope patterns, ring patterns, interlace effects or digressive jumps ahead and invited recollections of past kings and events, with both forward and backward

When we consider Beowulfs departure from his people, the Geats, and his arrival on the Danish shore, we are actually in the process, a deeply social and always edgy process, of various arrivals. We are familiar with much of this; indeed most readers can readily list eleven or twelve scenes of notable arrival or departure, such as Beowulfs arrivals at the beach and in Heorot, Grendels burst into Heorot and his mortally wounded departure, then the mother monsters sudden appearance and flight, Beowulfs departure into the lake and then his return, his leave-taking from Hrothgar, and his homecoming; then in part two the dragons arrival, Beowulfs departure to seek the dragon, his arrival at the flame-emiting mound, and then his final departure as he confers war-band leadership upon Wiglaf. Although major scenes and rounded actions, these do not in themselves establish a steady, narrative pulse. At best they periodically pop up, however memorably, every 390 lines or so if we average them out across the poem. But when we highlight more than twenty scenes of arrival or departure, including approaches and returns or exits within some of them as in Wealhtheows movement away from, and then back to, Hrothgar after presenting the cup to Beowulf, and then Hrothgars eventual exit; and when we consider the re-entrance of an already established character as when Hrothgar and Wealhtheow approach Heorot, or when Beowulf enters Heorot the morning after scheres death, or when Beowulf arrives home, then the pulse of arrivals and departures notably quickens as it contracts between them, giving us such scenes on average every 150 lines. However, before moving in detail and at length into the poems dramatic scenes, it is helpful to set out in overview first the many tensions or expectations that arise, and then the general sequencing of arrivals and departures from the beginning to the end of the poem.

Arrivals, especially unanticipated ones, are electric with possibilities, with unexpected surprises ranging from the pleasant and desired, the tense and potentially dangerous, to the terrible and unwished for. Expectations might be exploded; prospective trouble might erupt at any time. Beowulfs arrival on the beach is especially electric potentially promising, potentially threatening, as are his successive arrivals at Heorots portal, inside before Hrothgar and then on the meadbench among Hrothgars retinue. Many more scenes of arrival will follow, as will scenes of departure. Departures are often auspicious, full of promise and hope, although they can also signify terrors monstrous flight. The latter clearly is the case for Grendels departure after the fight, for his mothers retreat and, although still ominous, for the momentarily resting, perhaps regrouping dragon. Each human departure involves an enlargement of possibility, at least locally, with Beowulfs departure from the Danes being the most expansively promising in the poem. Even Beowulfs departure from the Geats the first time has an auspicious feel to it, wise men having read Beowulfs deep luck in their casting of signs. And his mood-darkened departure to fight the dragon, while heavy with the facts of night-time fury, has some promise in that an enraged Beowulf has armed himself carefully and the dragons treasure is a mixed prospect to contemplate.

In all those moments either positive or negative outcomes are possible, indeed sometimes intertwining or sometimes just lurking as potential, either menacingly or frustratingly. They inform the social action of the poem even as the many arrivals and departures create its overall and variable narrative pulse. Some of this is unexceptionable, of course: the arrival of angry or aggrieved monsters is in effect the arrival of terror, their defeat or their departure something either to celebrate or contend with. But warrior arrivals and departures turn out to be socially complex affairs, not easily predictable or conventionally scripted. Therein lies their drama.