Me and the Bee-Wolf: A Journey Through Time with Beowulf

I.                   What it is: “Beowulf (/ˈbeɪəwʊlf/; Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf] – the ‘wolf of the bees, i.e. the bear) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.

“The poem survives in a single copy in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. It has no title in the original manuscript, but has become known by the name of the story's protagonist. [It is one of the rare Anglo-Saxon survivors of Henry VIII’s rape of the monasteries; other vellum manuscripts were later found being used as leather for shoes. Thanks, Hank.] In 1731, the manuscript was damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London, which was housing Sir Robert Cotton's collection of medieval manuscripts. It survived, but the margins were charred, and some readings were lost. The Nowell Codex is housed in the British Library. The poem was first transcribed in 1786; some verses were first translated into modern English in 1805.” – Wikipedia.

 

II.              Beowulf the Warrior, retold by Ian Serraillier (1954), Illustrated by Mark Severin. This skinny little book is more important than it might appear. It is the first version of Beowulf that I ever read. I think it must have been because of “The Tolkien Reader”; I had heard of Beowulf before, but “Reader” was the tipping point, with its Anglo-Saxon talkifying, that made me try it. And a better introduction to the poem for a young reader there could not be. It is told in unrhyming stressed poetic lines like the original; its illustrations mimic period art; and there is no extraneous “interpretations or opinions” added by the teller. This book, along with “The Hobbit”, Pyle’s “King Arthur” (with Arthurian satellites “The Crystal Cave” and “The Sword in the Stone”) and “The Dark is Rising”, was part of the catalyst that solidified my imaginative matrix in middle school. I have an early picture (early in my drawing as well as in time) where I try to mimic the coiling dragon from the illustrations; on the other side of the paper is a tracing of heraldry shields and terms from the World Book. I bought this copy (from the Lompoc Unified School District, no less) many years later over the internet.

III.           Mrs. Hardcastle’s class in my Junior year (1979) … I remember in her class I also wrote a rhymed-couplet version of Beowulf’s fight with Grendel; I’ve lost that poem, but that’s on me. The only two lines I remember go something like: “Ever did Beowulf clutch his coat,/ Ever did Grendel seek his throat.” That was also about the time I read Grendel, by John Gardner (1971), found in our high school library.

IV.          Beowulf, by Robert Nye. An adaptation and interpretation of the Beowulf story for younger readers. I was first exposed to this book (unknowingly) in my senior year when Mrs. Richardson read us a bit of it for an assignment (without mentioning the author) about re-writing a classic in our own words. Didn’t know it was Robert Nye, whose adult books I discovered in college. Got this edition and recognized it in the first few pages and made the connection. A cover by Jean Leon Huens.

V.              The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. The 1984 Houghton Mifflin Company edition. I got this second-hand copy sometime later, however, being unaware of its publication at the time. The first page seems to be pasted to the book jacket. “The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's scholarly linguistic essays edited by his son Christopher and published posthumously in 1983. All of them were initially delivered as lectures to academics, with the exception of "On Translating Beowulf", which Christopher Tolkien notes in his foreword is not addressed to an academic audience.

VI.          Beowulf, by Jerry Bingham. A 60-page Graphic Novel, (1987), First Comics. I know I didn’t get it that year, but I couldn't pinpoint when I did. A pretty fair adaptation of the saga, but as a graphic novel ... a little turgid.

VII.      Beowulf Penguin David Wright 1957; Beowulf, translated by Burton Raffel, Mentor Classic, 1963; Rosemary Sutcliffe Beowulf: Dragonslayer (1968);  Beowulf Seamus Heaney 1999 Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in Beowulf and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey wrote that if Heaney thought his dialect had somehow maintained a native purity, he was deluded. Beowulf and Grendel … John Grigsby … 2005, posits that Beowulf is based on the memory of an ancient human sacrificial cult (bog burial and all that) that was driven out by the encroaching Northern culture. I never found it particularly enlightening, but then I’m more interested in the literary side rather than any anthropological interpretation. All versions either desired, acquired, or expired.

VIII.   Beowulf: The Script Book, by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, (movie 2008, script 2009) I don’t know if it’s the admixture of another artist, or the difficulty of getting Gaiman’s poetic vision onto a screen, but these efforts, as films, were mediocre at best. Reading the script of Beowulf you get a glimpse of what he was trying for; seeing it dropped like an old horseshoe bare on the screen leaves out the shadows and fog.

IX.           Beowulf: A Translation and a Commentary (together with Sellic Spell), by J. R. R. Tolkien. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. (2014) “It is the long-awaited version of the premier Anglo-Saxon epic by a great scholar of philology best known to the world as one of the greatest Fantasy authors of modern times. As such it may be asked: at whom is this edition aimed? The English scholar, or the fan of speculative fiction, or is it just the enthusiastic reader who wants to tuck into a good version of Beowulf? The answer, I think, is none of these in particular. The person this book will appeal to most is someone with a great interest in Tolkien himself, and the history of his thought and creative processes. Christopher Tolkien, in his Preface, says as much: "The present work should best be regarded as a 'memorial volume, a 'portrait' (as it were) of the scholar in his time, in words of his own, hitherto unpublished." The book itself consists of a prose translation by Tolkien and commentary on the text extracted from a series of lectures; included is Sellic Spell, his imaginative reconstruction of the folk tale that Tolkien suspected lay behind the epic, and a couple of short(-ish) ballad re-tellings of the Beowulf story. For the Tolkien enthusiast and scholar a hearty banquet, for the casual peruser a hard garden in which to find the way. Perhaps the most interesting (and by far the longest) section is the Commentary on elements of the poem itself. It is fascinating to watch Tolkien unpick and unpack the meanings of Anglo-Saxon words and phrases, revealing the implications and thoughts behind such terms as 'wyrd' or 'the whale-road,' of Grendel's relation to Cain and the giants of old, of the glimpses at life lived in another age revealed in simple metaphors like trouble 'denying men the ale-benches,' i.e., the simple pleasures of a stable life. Reading these notes, in the Professor's unmistakable voice, can give you the feeling of actually attending one of his lectures on one of those famous occasions when he turned the classroom into a mead hall. It would not surprise me if scholars of Beowulf would be mining this volume in years to come for insights and inspirations. The icing on top of this rich cake and the part most immediately accessible to the casual reader is Sellic Spell ("Marvellous Tale"), the Beowulf story recast into what Tolkien imagined could be its original fairy-tale mode, followed by the two ballads. It would be easy to imagine the Spell extracted, illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and sold on its own as a children's book. Here we read Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon scholarship, love of fairy stories, and vigorous narrative skills once more combining to bring a "lost tale" to life, and the ballads Beowulf and Grendel and Beowulf and the Monsters are respectable contributions to the growing body of Tolkien's poetry (always underrated, in my opinion). Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is a significant addition to the corpus of Tolkien's work, and a beautiful book to boot, illustrated with three pictures from the author's own hand. As a source of insight into his creation of Middle-Earth it is at the same time peripheral and profound: the occasional reference to his own epic work is only to be found in Christopher's editing hand. But Beowulf and all the traditions behind it were a deep element in the "leaf-mould" of Tolkien's mind, and here you can sniff and handle the soil from which Arda sprang.” – Power of Babel, 2014.

X.              And now, having read Laughing Shall I Die, I find myself wanting two more books, Beowulf and the North Before the Vikings (August 2022) and Beowulf: Translation and Commentary Tom Shippey (August 2023). Shippey’s version is no longer available on Amazon; I may have to get it from the publisher, Uppsala.