The Columbia History of British Poetry (4 page)

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Authors: Carl Woodring,James Shapiro

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BOOK: The Columbia History of British Poetry
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Page 9
The parallel verbs
swigað
and
swogað
, so alike in sound, so contrary in meaning, outline the central paradox of the riddle: the existence of a creature, wrapped round by raiment, that is silent when earthbound and melodious when carried aloft. The poet sets his alliterating syllables free, to follow their nature or to divine some hidden truth, and uncovers a correspondence between name and essence, word and thing, a link more secure than he could have foreseen: a swan (
swan
) is destined to make melody (
swinsiað
), to soar aloft, because, as modern etymological science confirms, the two words are cognate, sharing the same Indo-European root. If the poet knew the traditional Latin etymology deriving
cygnus
'swan' from
canendo
'singing,' the more graceful convergence of
swan
and
swinsian
would have seemed to confirm the fitness of his native tongue to discover truths, to be an instrument of prophecy. A swan, the poet seems to be telling us, is most genuinely a swan when it is a "
traveling
spirit." Old English verse was constructed so that the "head-stave"the alliterating word in the second half-line, here
ferende
was not only a peak of metrical and rhetorical emphasis in the verse but also a key sense word.
A simple swan riddle introduces us to the visible world of nature, of impersonal order; a more complex riddle, something closer to the emblematic vision or poetic parable, would point to an area of experience not so accessible to the senses. Other Old English verse portrays a soul (
gæst
) slipping out of its fleshly raiment and journeying (
ferende
) to a city of perpetual song; Job, one poet says, composed a "song" depicting Christ as a "bird," whose flight up to heaven and down to earth represents the Ascension and Incarnation. The riddle poet does not explicitly say, with Yeats, "Soul clap its hands and sing"; but his swan, enfolded by formulaic half-lines, seems to be following a pattern long known to the imagination.
Our ignorance is great. A historical tour of Old English poetry is prohibited since no one can tell when, where, by whom, and under what circumstances the key texts were composed. Critics traditionally concentrate on a small group of poems regarded, for no good reason, as the heart of the literary canon: six short (
The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Dream of the Rood, The Battle of Maldon, Cædmon's Hymn, Deor
) and one long (
Beowulf
). But Old English poetry, like some architecture, gains from being taken in large doses. This chapter groups the extant verse under three broad headingsmythological, heroic, and wisdom poetryglancing at the remaining monuments from this vantage and
 
Page 10
that, rather like a guide in Rome trying, in the time allotted, to make a dead past mean something to the living.
Mythological Poetry
The vision of the world enshrined in the mythological poetry of the Anglo-Saxons is generally dark: stories of deceit, cruelty, captivity, war, disease, corruption; then, suddenly, momentarily, God's hand is revealed and the world is washed in light. The poets used their skill with words to depict this cosmic chiaroscuro, God's mighty acts illuminating human history from Creation to the Last Judgment. Although Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are towering figures, the poets hint that they are still understudies, each performing the part of an unavoidably detained main actor; the climax, God's rescue of Israel (i.e., humankind), is reached with the arrivalin the Gospelsof the hero of the story.
The recorded beginning of Old English mythological poetry, Bede's famous story of Cædmon, the illiterate seventh-century laborer who lived near the monastery at Whitby, is also the only near-contemporary account of an Anglo-Saxon oral poet. Bede tells how Cædmon used to leave the feast when the harp was handed round for each reveler to sing to it in turn. One night, having bolted from the party and gone off to the cowshed, Cædmon received in a dream the gift of poetry. There was, of course, a catch: the award could be used only for devout purposes, for versifying the scriptural narratives read to him by the monks: Genesis, Exodus, and "many other stories of the Holy Scripture."
Cædmon is also an end: we shall never know what songs the feasters sang the night he left the banquet early. Perhaps the mythological poetry we have was composed to satisfy a felt need, an Anglo-Saxon audience's craving for what it once had. The
Beowulf
poet imagines what a pagan Danish minstrel around
A.D.
500, singing of the origin of the world, would have sounded like: "He said that the almighty made the earth, the beauty-bright land, with water surrounding; he set, the glorious one, the sun and moon, lamps as light for land-dwellers, and he adorned the surfaces of the earth with branches and leaves; life too he created for each of the kinds that five and roam." Cædmon's nine-line
Hymn
, drawing on the opening of Genesis and envisaging God making heaven as a roof for mankind, then "middle-earth," shows a family resemblance.
 
Page 11
More than a third of extant Old English poetry is based on the Bible, and more than three-quarters of this group narrate or meditate upon Old Testament books. The first of the four "poetic codices" to be publishedMS Junius XI, named after the Dutch scholar who printed its contents in 1654is sometimes referred to as the Cædmon manuscript, a title based on the now discredited belief that its verse was the work of Cædmon. The first poem in the codex,
Genesis
(2936 lines), is made up of at least two works,
Genesis A
and, incorporated into it at lines 235851,
Genesis B
, an Old English rendition of an Old Saxon poem. The poems
Exodus
(590 lines), based on chapters 1319 of the biblical book, and
Daniel
(764 lines), paraphrasing chapters 14 of its scriptural source, follow. Other Old Testament poems are, in the Exeter Book,
Azarias
(191 lines), an expanded and more explicitly Christian version of the songs of Azariah and the three children in
Daniel
; in the
Beowulf
manuscript,
Judith
, a 349-line fragment based on the Vulgate text of the Book of Judith (the equally apocryphal legends judged uncanonical by the Church are treated under "heroic poetry"); in the Vercelli Book,
Homiletic Fragment I
(47 lines), an expansion of part of Psalm 27; and in the Paris Psalter, poetic versions of Psalms 51151 (5039 lines). Smaller Old Testament pieces include the riddling
Pharaoh
and
Lot's Daughters
in the Exeter Book; a versification of Psalm 50 in Cotton MS Vespasian D.vi (157 lines); and poetical fragments of psalms in MS Junius 121 and in Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter. In addition, allusions to Old Testament story occur in nonscriptural verse such as
Beowulf
and the so-called
Menologium
.
Old English poems on New Testament themes do not paraphrase the Gospels or recount stories such as the coming of the Magi or the marriage at Cana; they meditate instead on the five big "leaps": the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Harrowing of Hell, Ascension, and Last Judgment. This body of verse includes, in MS Junius XI,
Christ and Satan
(729 lines); in the Exeter Book, the three
Christ
poems (1664 lines), covering, respectively, the coming of Christ, his ascension, and judgment; and in the Vercelli Book,
The Dream of the Rood
(156 lines). A number of smaller pieces (e.g.,
Lord's Prayer, Creed, Gloria
) also treat New Testament material.
The degree of dependence upon the scriptural text varies greatly, even within a single poem.
Genesis A
, regarded as a fairly faithful rendering, follows the sequence of the biblical book down to Abraham's attempted sacrifice of Isaac (the proper place to end, as the story was
 
Page 12
seen to foreshadow God's sacrifice of his only son in the New Testament). Episode by episode, sometimes in poetry of notable grandeur and luminosity, the audience is shown faith rewarded and disobedience punished, the world made and unmade again. Wordplay and other rhetorical devices highlight events of figural importance, especially those involving Noah and Abraham, the two pre-Mosaic beneficiaries of God's covenant with man. The wars of Abraham inspire some fine vernacular battle poetry. When the patriarch, trusting in God, achieves a great victory over the armies of the north, nine words of the Latin Bible ("with retainers he rushed upon the enemy by night and attacked them") are expanded into a full-scale conflict, attended by dark ravens, ring-adorned swords, noise of shields and shafts, and "sharp spears gripping unlovingly under the clothes of men." Old English poetic diction does not seem at home with scriptural sheep and mountains, bread and wine, cities and gardens, bride and bridegroom, cinnamon and honey. At the end of the biblical story of Judith, her rewards are the bedclothes and pots and pans of Holofernes; in the Old English
Judith
, she inherits his sword, armor, and helmet.
Anglo-Saxon "attitudes" are also operative on the losing side. The vengeful fallen angels in
Genesis B
demonstrate loyalty to their leader, defiance of the enemy, love of freedom, and hatred of servitude. Satan, the world's first rebel, is as heroic and unbowed as his counterpart in
Paradise Lost
. Because Milton's work appeared some twelve years after the publication of the Cædmon manuscript by Junius, whom Milton knew, critics still speculate whether he knew the Old English poem.
Exodus
lingers in the mind as the alien, the oddly shaped and worded stranger haunting the halls of Old English poetry. Its diction seems more allusive and learned, its syntax more wrenched, its layering of meaning deeper than that in the other scriptural poems. The epic "plot" of
Exodus
is the myth of deliverance itself: the escape from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea (with two flashbacks to Noah and Abraham), and the destruction in its waters of the pursuing Egyptians. The final scene depicts the Israelites on the far shore, sharing out the spoils of warEgyptian necklaces, ancient armor and shields, gold and precious cloth (a scene that serves as a model for the Christian appropriation of pagan literature).
Cycles of pride and downfall inform the narrative of
Daniel
, the last Old Testament poem in MS Junius XI. At the center of the Old English poem are the songs of Azarias and the three children in the fiery
 
Page 13
furnace; these canticles, asking God for deliverance and, in consonance with all creation, praising him, were used in the liturgy as set hymns of praise, comparable to the Psalms.
The metrical version of Psalms 51150 in the Paris Psalter, the longest "poem" by far in Old English, is also the least read and admired. Yet the psalter was the biblical book most often copied and memorized in Anglo-Saxon England. The Old English poetic rendition uses heroic diction with noticeable reluctance, thereby distancing itself from the tradition embodied in the Junius XI paraphrases, and it is the only Old English poem provided with a facing Latin version in the same manuscript.
Like most poetry on New Testament themes, the verse collection that goes under the name of
Christ and Satan
follows no particular scriptural text; the gospel story is there, but the poet is forever abandoning narrative for exegesis and exhortation. Images of light and darkness play against each other; the laments of the fallen angels, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Last Judgment are featured; and hearers are urged to shake off the taint of evil and show themselves on the side of their rescuer.
The three Christ poems that open the Exeter Book all have learned sources, which they edit, embroider, and elucidate freely.
Christ I
(lines 1439), densely metaphorical and allusive, is based on a series of antiphons sung on the days before Christmas.
Christ II
(lines 440866) follows loosely the last part of an Ascension Day sermon by Gregory the Great. Christ, a triumphant war leader who has harrowed hell, is shown entering into his own city; to celebrate his victory, he distributes rewards to his followers: a catalogue of his "gifts" (the various spiritual and physical endowments of men) is then supplied. The poem concludes with a reference to the coming day of judgment, and the name Cynewulf spelled out in runes (probably the poet, perhaps the last reviser, or even a patron).
Christ III
(lines 8671699), based on a sermon by Caesarius of Arles, is full of fire, blasts of wind, and startling noise, like the doomsday it portrays. After the sinful are swallowed by hell, the poet turns to the blessed enjoying the perfect weather of paradise, a garden painted by many poets since.
The Dream of the Rood
is the earliest extant example in any European vernacular of a dream vision poem. It is also one of the most appreciated, studied, and anthologized of Old English poems, appealing to modern tastes in its emphasis, not on human guilt and pain, but on divine forgiveness and generosity. The poem has no definite source, and

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