The Dissolution of Being in the Narcissus Myth

“Being” tends to be an extremely problematic term especially in twenty-first century philosophical and academic discourse. But in the artistic frame of the Narcissus myth, at least, the topic of ontology is chiefly explored through the characters of Echo and Narcissus. They are, in fact, presented at first sight as two distinct and antithetical beings, but they have foundationally similar, unconscious desires. Echo’s desire for union with Narcissus and Narcissus’ desire for union with his own reflection express their deeper, unconscious desires for a unified, complete Self; the failure to achieve such a union results in the dissolution of their beings. The psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan will help us understand the complex relationship (or lack thereof) between the two characters and that which they have with their own Selves.

Lacan provides us with three major theories on the ego, the relationship between the Self and the Other, and desire. Lacan’s fundamental notion on the ego is the ego’s illusory nature. D’Alleva explains that “for Lacan, the ego – the sense of self as coherent, rational actor expressed in the word ‘I’ – is nothing but an illusion of the unconscious”[1]. Moreover, Lacan theorises that the unconscious is structured like language: it is composed of an arbitrary chain of signifiers and signifieds. For Lacan, then, “the process of becoming a ‘self’ is the process of trying to stabilize the chain of signifiers so that meaning – including the meaning of ‘I’ – becomes possible”[2]. With the arbitrary processes of the unconscious in motion, the individual is thus left with the illusion of the “I”, the ego.

The subject’s sense of the Other, according to Lacan, is created when the subject, as an infant, realises that it is separate primarily from its mother, then eventually from the rest of the people around it. The individual’s sense of Self, following the stage of sensing the Other, is brought about in the “Mirror Stage”, a stage wherein a baby sees itself in the mirror, and, seeing its own reflection, creates a concept of its own Self. Such a perceived concept is what Lacan calls a méconnaisance, a misrecognition; for the Self identified in the mirror is only an ontological illusion of the unconscious. The mirror image is what Lacan calls the “Ideal-I”, the ideal sense of Self with which the subject attempts to reconcile the reality of its own self-perception.

Lacan also theorises about the inherent sense of absence in the unconscious. Richter explains that “the sense of absence can take the form of mere lack (manque) or need (besoin), which force the psyche to make demands, or it can take the higher form of desire (désir)”[3]. The solution for the individual’s sense of absence is language: “Lacan says that language is always about loss or absence; you only need words when the object you want is gone”[4]. Language is an attempt to retrieve what is unconsciously absent – it is the bridge that connects the Desiring to the Desired. If language, then, is the noumenal link between the desiring subject to the desired object, the performative and phenomenal expression for desire is the Gaze[5]. D’Alleva says that “according to Lacan, we try to give structure and stability to our illusions, our fantasies of Self and Other, via the Gaze”[6]. The Gaze is, in other words, the medial point between the subject’s self-perception and its Ideal-I wherein the subject’s desire may be apprehended.

Lacan’s theories come into a strong interplay upon contact with the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Our route to unfold the discoveries from the interplay is to examine the stories individually but comparatively, with the overall context of the myth as a guide, and the direct and indirect implications of Lacan’s theories as instruments for insight.

In the myth of Echo and Narcissus, Echo is presented as a personification of her name. She is described in the myth as “a strange-voiced nymph…who must speak / Unless another speak”[7]. Her curse seals her fate as an echoing character: “All she can do is double each last word, / And echo back again the voice she’s heard”[8]. Echo is accordingly a “subject” in Žižek’s sense of the term. Žižek posits that “the subject’s elementary, founding, gesture is to subject itself. . . The subject’s activity is, at its most fundamental, the activity of submitting oneself to the inevitable”[9]. Echo’s curse, in line with a Žižekian perspective, is a curse of eternal verbal passivity. And cursed to be an echoing subject, she is subsequently deprived of a complete sense of Self. What she becomes is a mere signifier, devoid of the meaning and essence that the signified Other, whom she echoes, embodies.

With the absence of a complete sense of self, Echo consequently desires the Other. According to Richter, “it is in the true desire –  for an object that is itself conscious and can desire us in return – that higher forms of self-consciousness arise”[10]. In Echo’s desire for the Other there is thus an underlying, ontological desire to complete her Being. If Echo is a Žižekian subject, then Narcissus, in Echo’s perspective, is her corresponding object: “that which moves, annoys, disturbs, traumatizes”[11]. His presence moves Echo into desire. Narcissus is a threefold object: he is Echo’s desired object inasmuch as he is the object with which Echo may achieve the completion of her sense of Being. He is, however – and more importantly – the Lacanian objet petit a, the unattainable object of desire, the object that thus “disturbs”, if not “traumatizes”, Echo.

Narcissus’ rejection and mockery of Echo leads to the literal dissolution of her Being. The myth recounts that “shamed and rejected. . .Her body shrivels. . .Only her voice and bones are left; at last / Only her voice”[12]. Echo’s relationship with Narcissus is a case of the Other responding to the subject with rejection. Echo fails in her to achieve a union the Other, a union which would otherwise have completed her Being, attaching a meaningful Signified to her empty identity as a Signifier. Echo’s body eventually disintegrates, and what is left is only her voice, a signifier of her identity. What is thus most tragic about Echo’s dissolution is that ultimately her story emphasises the ironic and profound emptiness of her character as a Signifier: not only is she deprived of a Signified to give her meaning, but what remains in the end is only a signifier of her Being-as-Signifier[13].

Narcissus, in turn, represents – to borrow a Lacanian term – a “fragmented body”[14] – or, in other words, a fragmented self. In the myth, he is introduced with a question from his mother to Tiresias: “Would he long years and ripe old age enjoy?” to which Tiresias replies, “If he shall himself know”[15]. The prophecy is eventually followed up with a curse granted by Nemesis: “So may he love – and never win his love!”[16] The curse marks Narcissus’ unconscious sense of absence; what he lacks is the perfect self, the Ideal-I. The existence of Narcissus as a character is fated with the curse of an elusive Self, the desire for the illusory Ideal-I. His desire is manifested through his Gaze, as indeed D’Alleva suggests about the action: “we reveal what we desire through the Gaze”[17]. Narcissus is doomed to spend his living moments gazing at his own reflection, desiring a theoretically impossible union with the Ideal-I. Thus, in a Lacanian point-of-view, the character of Narcissus is essentially fixated in the Mirror Stage.

Narcissus’ curse and eternal struggle in the Mirror Stage is brought about by an encounter with an Other, a “scorned youth”[18]. Squillace clarifies Narcissus’ situation for us: “The curse of self-love alights on Narcissus, in fact, from the mouth of a rejected male suitor, by the addition of whom to the traditional story Ovid suggests that what the youth spurns is not Echo per se . . .but any contact outside the circle of himself”[19]. In other words, Narcissus’ futile chase for the Ideal-I is brought about by his rejection of the Other. The concept of the Ideal-I is what Žižek calls the “transcendental I”, a “purely formal function which is neither noumenal nor phenomenal – it is empty, no phenomenal intuition corresponds to it”. Indeed, for Narcissus the Ideal-I is a transcendental illusion manifested in his own reflection. Narcissus, it is said in the myth, “could not clasp himself”[20]. He fails to realise the futility of his actions, and the narrator of the myth notes the dramatic irony: “You simple boy, why strive in vain to catch / A fleeting image? What you see is nowhere; / And what you love – but turn away – you lose! / You see a phantom of a mirrored shape; / Nothing itself”[21]. The curse upon Narcissus works psychologically and ontologically; a theoretically unified Self might have been achieved by him through a union with the Other, but in his rejection thereof he is left with a phantom image with whom union is impossible. What Narcissus consequently experiences is the dissolution of his Being. The myth marks that he is “by love wasted”, until eventually there is “but no body anywhere; / And in its stead they found a flower – behold, / White petals clustered round a cup of gold!”[22] As in the case of Echo, we see a dissolution of the body in Narcissus’ story. What remains is a flower, a signifier of Narcissus’ character. It is an ultimate dissolution of Being: the Signified ceases to exist, and even its signifier is transformed into a symbol, a thing so far removed from the Real in the mimetic order of things. The essence of Narcissus has been dissolved, and what remains of him no longer bears any semblance to his essence.

The two intricately related stories of Echo and Narcissus contain tragic accounts of the unbridgeable boundary between inherent absence and unreciprocated desire. Both characters seek a union that would give them a complete sense of Self and Being, but their failure to do so proves devastating. Echo and Narcissus seem at first to be antinomic characters, and such a perspective may justify the reason for their isolated deaths wherein they dissolve ununified with the other. But even in binary oppositions, theses and antitheses, a synthesis may be produced – unfortunately for the two characters no such synthesis is yielded.

[1] p. 96, Anne D’Alleva, Methods & Theories of Art History (Laurence King Publishing, 2012), 96-105.

[2] D’Alleva ,96.

[3] p.1112, Jacques Lacan, The Mirror Stage in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter (Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007), 1111-1128.

[4] D’Alleva, 97.

[5] The Gaze, capitalised, is “the process of looking” (D’Alleva, 104).

[6] 104.

[7] Lines 425-427, Ovid, Metamorphoses in The Oxford Anthology of Roman Literature, eds. Peter E. Knox and J.C. McKeown (Oxford University Press 2013), 274-188.

[8] Ovid, 441-442.

[9] p. 17, Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006).

[10] Richter, 1112.

[11] Žižek, 17.

[12] Ovid, 467-473.

[13] I have capitalised the words Signifier and Signified when they directly refer to the characters in the myth; lower cases implicate everything else.

[14] Lacan, 1126.

[15] Ovid, 416-417.

[16] Ovid, 479.

[17] D’Alleva 104-105.

[18] Ovid, 478.

[19] xxiii in Ovid, The Metamorphoses edited by Robert Squillace (Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005).

[20] Ovid, 505.

[21] Ovid, 508-512.

[22] Ovid, 573, 595-597.

ALIENATION, MOURNING, AND MELANCHOLIA IN ELIOT’S “PRELUDES” AND “PRUFROCK”

Two of the most fundamental and universal issues of existence and ontology concern the relationships of individuals with their own Selves and those they have with other human beings. Upon entering a new and unprecedented age – an age of profound skepticism and cynicism – the modernists encountered challenges of a new front; with the façades and pretenses of the humanistic ideals of previous ages having fallen apart, there remained an anxiety of facing the emptiness of the human “Being”. There is a fear that humanity has become as cold and empty as the concrete buildings that surround it. The individual’s alienation from one’s Self and from human fellowship are themes that T.S. Eliot explores in “Preludes” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. In “Preludes”, the speaker presents the people of his (or her) city to be unaware of their alienation from their sense of humanity. Being conscious of such an alienation, he, as an observer, is in turn depicted to be in a state of mourning. The speaker in “Prufrock”, to a more personal degree, is shown to be aware of his own alienation from the world, and such a self-awareness manifests itself through his state of melancholia.

Sigmund Freud’s work on Mourning and Melancholia (1917)[1] distinguishes for us the differences between the two terms. “Mourning,” Freud writes, “is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one.”[2] In melancholia, “one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost, and it is all the more reasonable to suppose that the patient cannot consciously perceive what he has lost either.”[3] “In mourning,” Freud puts in another way, “it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself.”[4] It appears, then, that mourning according to Freud is a condition whereby an individual is in a position of being inside looking out, and in melancholia the individual is outside looking in. The mourning subject is thus in a state of extrospection, and the melancholic subject in a state of introspection[5].

In the “Preludes”, we are presented with a speaker and his/her omniscient observations. The first two movements however do not immediately indicate the presence of an interactive speaker – a first-person narrator in particular – as they seem to be fragmentary descriptions of city life by a third-person, uninvolved narrator. In fact, it is not until the third movement that the pronoun “you” is mentioned, and the possibility of the Preludes being a dramatic monologue, when taken as a whole, comes into play. But the “I” that appears in IV.10 and the idea that the “I” is interacting with “these images” (IV.11) contextualise the previous passages. They become the speaker’s very observations of the city, its atmosphere, and its people.

And what does the speaker observe? He notes the presence of “burnt-out ends of smoky days” (I.4), “withered leaves” (I.7), “vacant lots” (I.8), “broken blinds” (I.10), and a “lonely cab-horse” (I.12). The adjectives attached to the speaker’s descriptions mark a sense of absence, decay, and isolation that pervades throughout the city. If we take the descriptions further as Symbolistic[6] imageries, they become indicative of the internal emptiness of the city’s inhabitants. Indeed, when the speaker begins to observe the “you” of the third movement, he/ she draws the readers (to whom “you” is possibly referring), and consequently the whole of humanity, into the city space and the poem’s artistic frame. What we have then is a totalising and omniscient observation of modern humanity by the poem’s speaker.

The modern human being here is alienated from its sense of humanity. We see a soul “trampled by insistent feet / At four and five and six o’clock” (IV.3-4), unnoticed by people during the business of rush hours. The human Soul, far from being sublime, is “constituted” by a “thousand sordid images” (III.5,4). The only feeling beings are the personifications of evening and morning in the first and second movements. Termed by Montgomery as “collectives”[7], the entities of evening and morning are the only ones conscious of the sceneries in the respective movements, collecting “the small world of each consciousness.”[8] Such an observation of modern humanity’s condition draws the speaker into a state of mourning. He “clings” to “fancies that are curled around these images” (IV.10-11) – his observations – in an attempt to hold onto “the notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing” (IV.12-13). This “thing” is the lost sense of humanity of the speaker’s community: the city for him has become “poor and empty”[9] – and so have its residents. The speaker is unable to redeem this lost and fragile “thing,” and thus ironically comforts himself with the idea that “the worlds revolve like ancient women / Gathering fuel in vacant lots” (IV.15-16). The courses of human actions are as vain and absurd as the attempts to gather fuel in empty spaces.

In “Prufrock,” the speaker is conscious of his own alienation from the world. Prufrock’s state of alienation is immediately set up in the poem through the epigraph from Guido da Montefeltro, wherein he implies that Dante will not be able to return to the human world. Juxtaposed into the poem, the epigraph subsequently reflects Prufrock’s own isolation from the human world. “Do I dare / Disturb the universe?” (45-46)[10] Prufrock asks. Indeed, he is a character hesitant to impose the footprints of his essence – his actions – upon the universe. He frequently repeats the question “Do I dare?” and asks moreover with the same frequency, “How should I presume?” He opts to remain as an observer, unnoticed, as he is in “the room” where “women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo” (13-14). Prufrock adds that he “should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas,” (73-74) marking his extreme displacement from human society. Here he is not only non-human (he is depicted through the synecdoche as something like a crab) but he is more importantly situated far away from the business of the modern city, scuttling unnoticeably in the still waters. He sees the “mermaids singing,” but they sing “each to each” (124). He understands his complete exclusion, and simply says, “I do not think that they will sing to me” (125). He settles on being one who merely observes them, seeing the mermaids “riding seaward on the waves” (126). Prufrock’s isolation and exclusion put him in the position of an unnoticed observer, but eventually he becomes seemingly comfortable with it.

Nevertheless, Prufrock’s alienation and isolation drive him into melancholia, a condition characterised by “an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale”[11]. He knows that he is “no prophet” and such a fact is “no great matter” (83). He describes himself as a man of high class, possessing a “morning coat” (42) and a “necktie rich and modest” (43), but after having “seen the eternal Footman hold [his] coat, and snicker” (85) – an image of Death awaiting – is made afraid of Death’s insubordination; the illusion of security his class offers him no longer seems to him believable. Prufrock also admits that he is “not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be” (111), but he quickly moves into further diminishing his status to “an attendant lord” (112) and eventually to “the Fool” (119). Ultimately all the walls that Prufrock raises to protect his ego break down, and all that is left is someone who, despite his sophistication, fails to break through the boundaries of the “formulated phrase,” and who, consequently, becomes himself formulated, paralyzed and unable to do anything about his isolation.

What we have then in “Preludes” and “Prufrock” are characters who deal, directly or indirectly, with alienation, but who ultimately are unable to do anything about it. They enter a state of mourning or melancholia, but their conditions prove to be paralyzing. Being in such dispositions, they position themselves to be mere observers of the alienation of others or the isolation of themselves. They deprive themselves of fruitful human interactions, but perhaps in invoking the readers in their use of the word “you,” they are seeking companionship with and, ultimately, empathy from the readers.

 

[1] Taken from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volue XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258.

[2] p.243

[3] p. 245

[4] p. 246

[5] And indeed, Freud remarks that “the disturbance of self-regard is absent in mourning” (p.244) as mourning does not concern the ego as much as melancholia.

[6] For a brief overview of the Symbolist movement, see Sam Phillips,. …isms: Understanding Modern Art. (New York: Universe Publishing, 2012), 18-19.

[7] Marion Montgomery, “Memory and Desire in Eliot’s ‘Preludes’ in South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 38, No. 2 (South Atlantic Modern Language Association, 1973), 63.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Freud, 246.

[10] All references to “Prufrock” taken from T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in The Longman Anthology of British Literature, eds. David Damrosch and Kevin J.H. Dettmar (Pearson Education, Inc., 2010), 2287-2291.

[11] Freud, 246.

WRITING AND EXISTENCE IN MARTIN AMIS’ MONEY

Martin Amis opens Money with the following inscription: “This is a suicide note. By the time you lay it aside…John Self will no longer exist. Or at any rate that’s the idea. You can never tell, though, with suicide notes, can you?” With such a statement, Amis immediately puts into perspective the idea of death – but it is an idea that is subsequently superimposed with doubt. “Will John Self die?” the reader may ask. Or to be more specific: “Will John Self cease to exist?” In a novel that contains John Self’s past-tense narrative of what to him is his ever-dynamic present, his neverending “now”, these are questions that the readers are supposed to keep in mind upon reading the beginning all the way to the novel’s ending. Indeed, Money, as a suicide note, depicts John Self’s retrospective attempt to establish, through the reader, an existence that will survive his future inexistence. The novel, in this light, captures the totality of John Self’s essence as he writes and narrates events of his life to the readers. Jean-Paul Sartre’s work, Why Write?, and Peter Brooks’ work on Freud’s Masterplot will help us further understand and explain John Self’s search for such an existence.

Brooks states that “ultimately…the passion that animates us as readers of narrative is the passion for (of) meaning”, which passion “appears to be finally a desire for the end” (1162). This end, for Brooks as it was for Freud, is death. It is the final stroke of death that gives completion and meaning to the life that precedes it. “All narration is obituary in that life acquires definable meaning only at, and through, death”, says Brooks, connecting literary narratives with life and death (1163). As such, literary narratives are rendered incomplete, fragmentary, and meaningless without their appointed endings. Brooks points out that beginnings “presuppose the end” (1163),  and readers, upon reading a narrative’s beginning, assume a desire for its end. Amis taps on this expectation of death and endings, and the meaning which these bear with them, when he marks Money as a suicide note and announces, however ambiguously, John Self’s future inexistence.

Money thus becomes what Sartre would call an “appeal” by the writer to his/ her readers. In the preface to Why Write, Richter explains: “We who know that the physical world we animate with our perceptions will go on darkly after we are gone must write to make something that will survive us” (660). According to Sartre, the process of writing stems from a writer’s need to remain essential in a future wherein he no longer exists. In writing, the writer “meets everywhere only his knowledge, his will, his plans, in short, himself” (Sartre 663). The writer leaves an implant of his/her essence in the written word – a legacy that survives the writer even when he/she is gone. Ultimately, Sartre explains: “Since the creation [the written work] can find its fulfillment only in reading, since the artist must entrust to another the job of carrying out what he has begun, since it is only through the consciousness of the reader that he can regard himself as essential to his work, all literary work is an appeal” (665). “To write”, Sartre concludes, “is to have recourse to the consciousness of others in order to make one’s self be recognized as essential to the totality of being; it is to wish to live this essentiality by means of interposed persons” (670). Thus, in writing –a process that appeals to the reader’s sense of freedom to read –  the writer relays his/her being through the reader and the reader’s process of reading, and with this process of reading, the existence of the writer lives on.

 

The writer in the artistic frame of Money is John Self. The novel is an account of John Self’s experiences, conversations, and other such interactions that help readers construct a view of his character. Self’s is the main authoritative voice in the novel, and it is primarily through his own recapitulation of his own actions and conversations where we may form opinions about him. There is very little informative self-reflection and there are only very few instances where Martin Amis breaks the artistic frame to explain the dramatic ironies that concern John Self. What we have, then, is a first- person past-tense narration of Self’s experiences. In this perspective, moreover, John Self may be seen as writing in retrospect, with an end in mind even from the beginning of the novel.

The end of the novel contains the narrative of Self’s near-death experience, and the end of John Self’s narrative expresses the extra-narrative note of Martin Amis whereby “John Self will no longer exist”. Such an ending affects the overall tone of Self’s narrative. His narration thus ceases to be a mere retelling of events in his life, but, with the threat of inexistence and nothingness in the novel’s Beyond looming over his existence as a charcter, becomes an appeal. The narrative becomes Self’s appeal for a connection with the readers through his writing. In fact, Amis notes: “To whom is the note addressed? To Martina, to Fielding, to Vera, to Alec, to Selina, to Barry – to John Self? No. It is meant for you out there, the dear, the gentle”. Self’s writing, in turn, becomes a space wherein he can write out the essence of his character, so that he no longer remains simply as a voice, but becomes a being whose essence and experiences are imprinted in what he writes. The novel itself, the “note”, becomes John Self. Amis states that “usually the note is the thing. You complete it, and then resume your time travel. It is the note and not the life that is cancelled out. Or the other way round. Or death. You never can tell, though, can you, with suicide notes”. In our case for the novel, the note is not canelled out: the note becomes the life.

 

As he comes closer to disappearance in the novel, John Self begins to exist not in the past, but in the present, a time between the past and what Richter calls the “as-yet-nonexistent future” (659), the future that will be John Self’s void of inexistence. Self tells the readers: “You know, during that time of pills and booze, during that time of suicide, my entire future flashed through my head. And guess what. It was all a drag! My past at least was – what? It was…rich. And now my life has lost its form. Now my life is only present, more present, continuous present” (392). Here, Self’s present becomes in tune with that of his readers – supposing that they have read his story thus far –  marking the fulfillment of their unity through reading, an achievement which in turn grants security in Self’s existence. With the survival of his existence secured through the process of writing and reading, John Self accordingly “signs off” (392). He says further, “I’m closer to you, I hope, than he’ll ever be” (392). Though the answer to whom “he” might be remains vague, it may be postulated that he is the Self of the past. The Self of the present indeed is closer to the reader than the Self living in the past.

John Self is a memorable character – though not necessarily the most likeable one. But it is also his unique character that draws the reader along through the novel. In this way, his carnivalesque character helps him in his case to find essentiality in his future inexistence by making the readers at least interested enough to see him through the narrative’s end, and, having such an end, give meaning and completion to the life retold in the novel. The novel is John Self’s life, and in the act of opening the book and reading its contents, the readers in their freedom breathe life into its words and pages, giving John Self a voice, a character, and ,ultimately, an existence.

 

 

 

WORKS CITED:

 

Amis, Martin. Money. Vintage, 2005

 

Brooks, Peters. Freud’s Masterplot. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary                   Trends, ed. David H. Richter, 1161-1171. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Why Write? The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends,               ed. David H. Richter, 659-672. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DUSK AND THE UNCANNY IN CONRAD’S HEART OF DARKNESS

The dichotomy of Light and Darkness is noticeably prevalent and all-encompassing in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so much so that the symbolisms and meanings of this antithetical pair may seem at times to fall into ambiguity or to get muddled into complicated significations. Yet the novel remains comfortable with such a situation. Its themes thrive on ambivalence and a tone of seeming uncertainty. What at first glance appears to be a scene of incertitude for characters can turn out to be, after an uncovering of many complex layers, a moment of revelation, self-awareness, or existential understanding. In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the gulf between Light and Darkness – the gulf that harbours the uncanny, the gulf that represents Dusk – is depicted as a zone wherein Marlow experiences self-realisation and enlightenment.

There is in Heart of Darkness a gap in the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This gap is magnified and made observable by the distinct contrast in the representative figures of Light and Darkness, and indeed they are portrayed to be almost archetypal. Kurtz is said to be “claimed” by “powers of darkness” (1989). The darkness embodied in Kurtz is universalised as Marlow describes the last moments of his life: “The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea…and Kurtz’s life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time” (2003). The juxtaposition of these sentences parallels Kurtz’s heart with the “heart of darkness” that is found everywhere from the centre of the wilderness to which the phrase alludes, to the River Thames which it threatens to encompass. Kurtz’s position as a figure that embodies darkness is further solidified when he is described in his deathbed as not being able to see the “light…within a foot of his eyes” (2004). Indeed, his stare “could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness” (2005). The irony of this description is in Kurtz’s inability to see light no matter how wide or universal his stare is. All he is able to see is darkness, and that darkness resides within him.

Inasmuch as Kurtz is unable to see the light, the Intended is ignorant of – if not unable to comprehend – the darkness in Kurtz. She is portrayed as an archetype of light and of what is beautiful, pure, and innocent. Marlow describes her thus: “She struck me as beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression. I know that the sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one felt that no manipulation of light and pose could have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness upon those features” (2007). She has “a pale head”, “fair hair”, a “pale visage”, and a “pure brow” (2007). All these fair and beautiful external features set her up in contrast with the darkness within Kurtz. However, her innocence, her “unextinguishable light of belief and love” (2008), is thought by Marlow to be incapable of understanding or bearing the reality of Kurtz’s darkness. He says that, for her, it would be “too dark altogether” (2010). He thus implies that there is a necessary separation between the dealings of Light and Darkness.

Following Marlow’s logic for separation, it would seem that the Darkness and Light that Kurtz and his Intended signify respectively have between them an unbridgeable gulf. And yet the novel complicates this distinction. Dusk, a time that rests between the bright and dark hours of the day, is depicted in the beginning of the novel with poignancy: “And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men” (1955). It is in the light of this setting sun where the Nellie’s crew go through a contemplative and aesthetic experience: “We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories” (1955). It is also in the climate of this setting wherein Marlow’s narrative is unfolded: not in the brilliance of midday nor in the darkness of midnight, but in the dying light of dusk.

Dusk is the gulf between Light and Darkness, and this gulf may be equated to the realm of the uncanny, the realm of Freud’s Unheimlich. Indeed, insofar as Freud’s concept of the Unheimlich breaks down the binary boundaries between its own essence and that of the Heimlich, so does the concept and imagery of dusk break down the dichotomy of Light and Darkness. This area of the uncanny in the novel breaks down oppositions in such a way that there is certainty to be found in uncertainty and realisation in ambiguity. The gulf of the uncanny, the gap symbolised by dusk, is a dialectical realm wherein the ethos of Marlow’s character attains an understanding of its existence and that of the world and people around him. The culmination of Marlow’s experience, being a character situated symbolically in such a realm, is described by himself as such: “It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light” (1958). In his experiences are fragments of self-realisation, revelations, and understandings, not least of which is his understanding of Kurtz’s darkness and his Intended’s sparkle of sublimity. Marlow also explains to his fellow seamen that “it seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream…No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence” (1973). His contemplations and philosophies, unclear to himself at first, are constantly deconstructed and reconstructed in the course of his journey and his narrative.

Marlow is subsequently elevated into a state of enlightenment. He becomes representative of the individual who beholds the Truth and escapes the Platonic Cave, but who also consequently becomes alienated from his company. By the end of the novel he is said to have “ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a meditating Buddha” (2010). And indeed he has already recognised his isolation in the artistic frame when he states, “We live, as we dream—alone” (1973). Yet this alienation, this dream-like uncanny state of retrospection, allows Marlow to observe and understand the universal darkness while remaining apart from it. He thereby becomes the didactic Individual, a signifier of the Particular marked especially by his contrast with the nameless Others, his fellow seafarers, to whom he shares his profound reflections on Truth and the human soul. In this perspective he is not alone. His life, as in his dream-like narration, is recounted with company. Together, they journey through the river of experience and past memories, with the threat of the looming darkness making their quiet solidarity all the more poignant.

 

Bibliography:

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. The Longman Anthology of British Literature, ed.by K. J.H. Dettmar, Pearson Education, 2010. pp.1949-2010.

An Introduction to Allusions in Beowulf

The Oxford English Dictionary defines allusion as “an implied, indirect, or passing reference to a person or thing” or “any reference to someone or something”. When it comes to literature, however, it becomes a difficult task to avoid accidentally falling into affective and intentional fallacies when exploring whether or not certain words, phrases, or narratives are meant by the author to be distinct and relevant allusions to particular people or events. In works such as Beowulf, moreover, the task of pointing out allusions and understanding their meaning becomes even more difficult due to the obscurity of their context and cultural situations. Nevertheless, what I aim to explore are some allusions to elements present in Old Norse literature which are readily available to us in the text:  elements which we may assume to have been passed down to Beowulf’s author(s) through the culture of the Danelaw.

The Scyldings

One of the most notable of these allusions is that of the Scyldings. A prominent family not only in Beowulf, their stories also appear in Snorra Edda (Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda) and Hrólfs saga kraka (The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki). In the Edda, Skjöldur (Scyld Scefing), the founder of the Skjöldungar (Scyldings), is portrayed as a descendant of the god Óðinn himself. The legends of his descendants are recorded in Beowulf and Hrólfs saga kraka. Being slightly different in perspective to Beowulf, the focus of Hrólfs saga kraka is more so on Hroðgar’s nephew Hrólfur than on himself. Both narratives however include a troll-like being terrorising the halls at nightfall and a hero that comes and eradicates such threats.

Eotenas ond ylfe and gígantas

J.R.R. Tolkien notes in lines 112-113 the author’s use of two culturally different etymological sources to describe the race of Grendel and the descendants of Cain. On the one hand, Tolkien observes the use of gígantas in line 113 as a word borrowed from the Latin version of the Bible. On the other hand, he marks the words eotenas and ylfe in line 112 as distinctly Norse, coming from the words jötnar (giants) and álfar (elves). These words not only depict the author’s blending of pagan and Christian elements into the story of Beowulf, but as cultural allusions they furthermore offer a twofold perspective on Grendel’s background as a fiend – that is, he not only is an enemy of the Christians, being a descendant of Cain and the giants, but also at the sight of the pagan heroes he is considered an outcast of the Norse gods and humanity.

Wæls and Sigemund

The bard in Hroðgar’s hall recounts the story of Sigemund the dragon-slayer in lines 883-915 as words of praise, encouragement, and admonition to Beowulf. Similar narratives can be found in the Snorra Edda and the Völsunga Saga where Völsungur’s (Wæl’s) descendant Sigurður slays a dragon and takes possession of a treasure hoard. Placing these narratives in the context of Beowulf allows its author to portray ironies foreshadowing Beowulf’s death, but also comparative praise, as Sigurður is and will ever be remembered in Northern legend as Fáfnisbani –  the slayer of the dragon Fáfnir – after his death.

Thus allusions such as these allow us to understand more comprehensively the story of Beowulf. They give the text particular shades which reflect dramatic ironies that are not always obvious when the allusions are missed. And although many of these allusions and possibly the text itself are rendered obscure to us as modern audiences, their importance to the Anglo-Saxon audience as antiquarian reflections and contemporary innovations should never be understated, wont as the Anglo-Saxons would have been to do so.

 

 

Works Consulted:

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London:        Harper Collins Publishers, 2014. Print.

— . The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London:                  George Allen & Unwin Publishers, 1983. Print.

 

 

 

 

DUALITY AS A TRAGIC MOTIF IN SHAKESPEARE’S MACBETH

Russ McDonald’s statement that “Shakespearean tragedy depends on a paradox” could not be better suited to any other play than in Macbeth[1]. The actions and the structure of the play hinge on the paradoxes found in accepted truths, language, and signifiers. The theme of duality, in particular, comes into special significance in Macbeth. Shakespeare utilizes duality as a tragic motif in Macbeth; that is, it is used to contextualize and procure Macbeth’s hamartia, and also to lead the hero eventually to his downfall and death. Theories from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” and Sigmund Freud’s “The ‘Uncanny’” would help us further understand the significance of duality in Shakespeare’s play.

The theme of duality is uncannily pervasive in Macbeth,[2] as is depicted in the diction of the characters. The witches “speak in paradoxes: ‘When the battle’s lost and won,’ ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair’ (1.1.4,11),”[3] “Double, double, toil and trouble” (4.1.10). The human characters themselves speak at times through duality if not in paradoxes: “All our service / In every point twice done, and then done double” (1.6.15), “Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell” (2.1.64-65). Macduff, moreover, makes note of “such welcome and unwelcome things at once / ‘Tis hard to reconcile” (4.3.139-140). This extensive use of duality and paradox serves to reflect the play’s consciousness of and emphasis on the arbitrariness of language and words as signifiers.

Indeed, Nietzsche describes words as having “arbitrary assignments…beyond the canon of uncertainty” and “arbitrary differentiations”, explaining that “we believe we know something of the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors of things, which do not at all agree with the original entities.”[4] The human being’s “arrogance associated with knowing and feeling,”[5] as Nietzsche terms it, is tested in Macbeth, where Hecate remarks that “security / Is mortals’ chiefest enemy” (3.5.32). To be secure in the stability of language in Macbeth is to forget that “truths are illusions that have become worn out and sensuously powerless.”[6] Macbeth, who, in the beginning of the play, is “sensitive and aware”[7] of the arbitrariness of language—for in fact he notes that “two truths are told (1.3.128) which “cannot be ill, cannot be good” (1.3.132)—in the end forgets the instability of words and signifiers, that they “speak metaphorically or metonymically to a single aspect of the signified; they cannot convey its essence.”[8] Macbeth perceives the admonitions of the apparitions only in their literal sense, and confidently declares that they “will never be” (4.1.94). He forgets Banquo’s warning that “the instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence” (1.3.123-126). This situation William Scott explains thus: “In becoming a part of the self-deluding show and undoing some literalisms to confirm another, he [Macbeth] skews the boundaries of literal and figurative and of perceiver and perceived, with paradoxical results.”[9] As much as Macbeth, in self-delusion, “skews the boundaries of literal and figurative”, the witches do so as well, if not better, using Macbeth’s ambition-driven over-assurance in language to deceive him who so readily would be deceived. Accordingly, the witches’ use of seemingly impossible predictions and “hopeful messages”[10] effects the dissolution of Macbeth’s awareness of the arbitrariness of language: he who, being unprepared, thus becomes a servant to defect[11]. Hence Macbeth declares ironically that “damned [be] all those that trust them” (4.1.139), not realizing that he himself belongs with the damned.

Macbeth’s defective action, then—his hamartia,[12]—is precisely that he blindly disregards the existence of dualities in the realm of the play. This gives him a false and unhealthy sense of security as, after saying, “I cannot taint with fear…. / The mind I sway by and the heart I bear / Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear” (5.3.3,9-10), Macbeth, in response to the servant’s entry, and in what is consequently an expression of his paranoia, says “The devil damn thee black, though cream-faced loon! / Where got’st thou that goose look?” (5.3.11-12). This sense of security is, in turn, haunted by the duality that Macbeth overlooks, and such effects Macbeth’s tragic recognition and reversal.

Informing and qualifying the notion of this haunting duality in Macbeth is Freud’s concept of the “double”[13]. In Macbeth there can be found characters whom Freud would identify as the “doubling, dividing and interchanging of the self.”[14] In fact, two stages of Freud’s “double” are represented in the play: that which “was originally an insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the power of death,’”[15] and that which, “from having been an assurance of immortality…becomes the uncanny harbinger of death.”[16] The titular character of the play possesses three of these “doubles” in the figures of Lady Macbeth, the witches, and Macduff—and these figures offer Macbeth unique stages of his own recognition and reversal..

Lady Macbeth, as one of Macbeth’s “doubles,” figuratively completes him, exhibiting characteristics and performing actions that are either opposite or almost like his. In Act 1 Scene 5, she calls on the spirits (l. 40) to “take [her] milk for gall” (l. 48), since her husband is “too full o’th’ milk of human kindness” (l. 17). Her apostrophe to night beginning in line 50 of the same scene, resembling that of Juliet’s in Romeo and Juliet[17], is echoed by Macbeth in Act 3 Scene 2 when he calls on, “Come, seeling night” (l. 49). They both find themselves reluctant before the execution of their murderous actions, yet Lady Macbeth’s power over Macbeth’s identity earlier on in the play is such that he attempts to affirm his masculinity through Lady Macbeth so much so that “he sins to win her approbation.”[18] She inevitably corrupts his masculine identity by using it against him during his times of hesitation. Eventually Macbeth becomes “in blood / Stepped in so far that, should [he] wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er” (3.4.137-139). Lady Macbeth realises only too late that “What’s done cannot be undone” (5.1.68). When it becomes her turn to regret the actions of herself and her husband, telling him “You must leave this” (3.2.39), Macbeth only informs her of a forthcoming plan for her to “applaud the deed” (3.2.49). Such has become of the situation of Macbeth’s identity as it relates to Lady Macbeth, that his actions have become mere performances, “deeds”, that need the applause of his one audience, his wife. Her death consequently triggers his speech in Act 5 Scene 5 wherein life is but “a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more” (ll. 24-26) –  a description of life that is very much pertinent to his own.

Realising such a fact, Macbeth “turns unsuccessfully to the witches for the power he needs to make him author of himself.”[19] The witches, who are characteristically duplicitous, symbolise Macbeth’s “double” that is supposed to assure him of immortality. They are beings who may be figuratively associated with Macbeth. Macbeth’s first words “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (1.3.38) echo the witches’ last ones in Act 1 Scene 1 where they say “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.11) Cheung observes this of the witches’ interaction with Macbeth:

Significantly, it is not a surprise encounter but a meeting that is to take place. Already there is a hint of intercourse between the witches and Macbeth, so what seems to be an external temptation also can be interpreted, as many critics have done, as a psychological projection.[20]

The witches not only embody the external “multiplying villainies of nature / [that] Do swarm upon him” (1.2.11), but also they symbolize the internal, “black and deep desires” (1.4.51) already present in Macbeth’s character. Viewing their relationship thus makes it easier to relate such a relationship with Freud’s idea of the double where “the one possesses knowledge, feelings and experience in common with the other.”[21] Indeed, the witches prove to be effective because, according to Scott, “they seemed to have access to the frightening secrets of his heart.”[22] The power in the duality of their nature, being representative of both the external and internal forces of evil that besiege Macbeth, makes it highly difficult for Macbeth to resist the temptation of accessing and utilizing the murderous ambition that their prophecies leave as a readily-available option for him. However, it is exactly this duality in nature that opens up and leads Macbeth to his downfall. He recognises that he has fallen into this pitfall, but only too late: “And be these juggling fiends no more believed / That palter with us in a double sense, / That keep the word of promise to our ear / And break it to our hope” (5.8.19-22).

In the face of this realisation, Macbeth finds himself pitted against Macduff, the “double” who is the “uncanny harbinger of death” for Macbeth. For, being what Campbell terms as a “figure of the tyrant-monster”[23], Macbeth’s presence inevitably calls for “the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence will liberate the land.”[24] And Scotland must needs be liberated from Macbeth, as it is described by Lennox as a “suffering country / Under a hand accursed” (3.6.49-50). Indeed, Macduff becomes for Macbeth “a thing of terror,”[25] who tells him: “Despair thy charm, / And let the angel whom thou still hast served / Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped” (5.8.13-16)[26]. Hence is Macduff qualified to be the nemesis of Macbeth, whereby he is also portrayed as a figure that is the direct opposite of Macbeth, a figure of “the self-creating and invulnerable masculinity that Macbeth cannot fashion for himself.”[27] Macduff’s character moreover serves to haunt Macbeth with the duality that the tragic character forgets persists in the play’s dramatic universe. The very fact of Macduff’s birth and existence, the circumstances of which Macbeth deems impossible, shakes Macbeth out of his self-inflicted tragic delusion and reverses his expectation of the witches’ equivocal prophecy. His death in the hands of Macduff symbolises the taking-over of the “double”: the former, suffering self, represented in Macbeth, is replaced by the projected and more perfect – though not entirely unscathed[28] –  self in the person of Macduff[29].

This ending for Macbeth is not to be restricted with a tragic affect. “Tragedy is the shattering of the forms and of our attachment to the forms,”[30] writes Joseph Campbell. Macbeth, in this light, is at once tragic and liberating. The titular character is tragic because he, blinded by ambition, undermines if not forgets about the existence of duplicity and the prevalence thereof in the world he lives – but on the same note, this selfsame duplicity allows for the liberation of the imprisoned and corrupted self in Macbeth and transfigures it into the more complete, more heroically-realised self in Macduff.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] R. McDonald, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2001), 86.

[2] All quotations from Macbeth are taken from D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare (The University of Chicago: 2013), 710-747.

[3] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakespeare, 712.

[4] F. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 454.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid, 455.

[7] D. Bevington, The Necessary Shakepeare,711.

[8] D. H. Richter, The Critical Tradition, 438.

[9] W. Scott, “Macbeth’s—And Our—Self-Equivocations” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1986), 160-174.

[10] Ibid, 171.

[11] I am referring here to 2.1.17-18: “Being unprepared, / Our will became the servant to defect”.

[12] Russ McDonald reminds us that hamartia would be “a term more properly understood as an error in action rather than as fatal weakness of character”. The Bedford Companion, 88.

[13] Quotes from Freud are collectively taken from “The ‘Uncanny’” in The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, ed. David H. Richter (Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s: 2007), 514-532.

[14]Ibid, 522.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 523

[17] See Juliet’s soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in The Necessary Shakespeare ed. D. Bevington (The University of Chicago: 2013), 3.2.5

[18] D. Bevington, 712.

[19] Ibid, 713.

[20] K.K. Cheung, “’Dread’ in Macbeth” (Shakespeare Quarterly: 1984), 431.

[21] S. Freud, 522.

[22] W. Scott, 170.

[23] The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Joseph Campbell Foundation: 2008), 11

[24] Ibid.

[25] S. Freud, 523.

[26] Macbeth is certainly made terrified by this statement, saying “it hath cowed my better part of man” (5.8.18).

[27] D. Bevington, 713

[28] For Macduff has also suffered loss: the death of his wife and children.

[29] Not coincidentally, Macbeth uncannily tries to refuse killing Macduff: “Of all men else I have avoided thee” (5.8.5). He sees a vision of a more perfect and unsullied self in Macduff – to him, there is something of the uncanny in Macduff, something, according to Freud in p. 526, “familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression.” This more perfect and now-alienated self that Macbeth finds in Macduff he has repressed in his murderous drive towards kingship.

[30] The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 21.

The New Historicist Approach to Beowulf

In his revolutionary essay entitled “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien remarked that “Beowulfiana is, while rich in many departments, specially poor in one. It is poor in criticism” (5). This comment certainly is not true of current Beowulfiana criticism anymore. It is no longer a question of approaching Beowulf as a poem instead of merely as an historical artifact, but a question of what works best in approaching and fully understanding the poem and the themes at work therein. This paper intends to analyze Beowulf through a New Historicist perspective, contextualizing the relevance of the poem’s author, readership, and of Anglo-Saxon England, and through this filter, to furthermore seek out themes and literary techniques that a modern audience may overlook.

The critical theory in question is indeed a useful tool for understanding Beowulf because it requires the readers to not only close-read the text, but also to make relevant cultural connections that would help them grasp the ideals and poetic techniques that the author has craftily weaved into the poem. What then is New Historicism? Stephen Greenblatt, in his introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance explains that

…literary works are no longer regarded either as a fixed set of texts that are set apart from all other forms of expression and that contain their own determinate meanings or as a stable set of reflections of historical facts that lie beyond them. The [New Historicist] critical practice…challenges the assumptions that guarantee a secure distinction between ‘literary foreground’ and ‘political background’ or, more generally, between artistic production and other kinds of social production. Such distinctions do in fact exist, but they are not intrinsic to the texts; rather they are made up and constantly redrawn by artists, audiences, and readers. These collective social constructions on the one hand define the range of aesthetic possibilities within a given representational mode and, on the other, link that mode to the complex network of institutions, practices, and beliefs that constitute the culture as a whole (1445).

In essence, the New Historicists assert that “literature is conceived to mirror the period’s beliefs, but to mirror them, as it were, from a safe distance” (Greenblatt 1444). With regards to Beowulf, this means that a New Historicist reading would necessitate the understanding of the background of the author, his audience, and of Anglo-Saxon society, language[1], and culture in order to fully appreciate the artistry at work in the poem; consequently, the absence of such an undertaking would place the readers in a difficult position where they are lost in vague references to unfamiliar ideals.

Most of the issues faced by modern readers in trying to understand Beowulf are due to the fact that the events depicted and the values that are prized in the poem are so far removed from their understanding of the world. Yet the key here is to understand that “every expressive act is embedded in a network of material practices” (Veeser xi).

The most influential material practices that directly affect major themes in Beowulf are the Christian tradition and the native Germanic heroic values. There is in Beowulf, a fusion “of the old and new”, a blending of ideals from Northern antiquity with Christian virtues (Tolkien Critics 20). These traditions do not, as modern readers might be inclined to suppose, create in the poem binary oppositions that heavily contradict each other, but instead we see “in the figure of Beowulf the heroic ideals of Germanic paganism and of Anglo-Saxon Christendom have been reconciled and fused, so that the hero exemplifies the best of both” (Brodeur 183).

The author and his audience were, without a doubt, Christian. Heather O’Donoghue explains that the “Anglo-Saxon authors were Christians, perhaps mostly clerics, and clerical culture dominated literary production” (11). There is plenty of evidence for this fact even within the text of Beowulf, not the least is the fact that the poet uses the Latin-borrowed term gígantas as one of his many nomenclatures when referring to the race of Grendel[2]. The poet’s audience moreover were “Christians whose conversion was neither partial nor superficial. He expects them to understand his allusions to biblical events without his troubling to be explicit about them” (Whitelock 280). The Anglo-Saxons were a deeply antiquarian people who strongly adhered to their Germanic past[3], and their author was no exception.

The Anglo-Saxons took special pride in their ancestry, and we see this pride expressed in the opening lines of Beowulf: “Hwæt wé Gár-Dena in géar-dagum / þéod-cyninga þrym gefrúnon” [Lo! The glory of the kings of the people of the Spear-Danes in days of old we have heard tell, how those princes did deeds of valour][4] (lines 1-2). E.G. Stanley comments that “the beginning of the poem with its piece of Danish history is relevant to England, to English kings” because “Beowulf could well have written late enough for at least some of the Danes mentioned in the poem to have been regarded by the poet and his audience as ancestors of Anglo-Saxon kings in England” (71). If the poem is read – in either the original Old English or in the translation – merely as an organic unity where external context is irrelevant, then the meaning of the opening lines becomes lost, and the lines may consequently be deemed unnecessary. Seeing the context of the opening lines with regards to the author and the audiences’ background, however, we begin to understand the sentiment that the Anglo-Saxons have felt upon hearing them recited in their mead-halls; their pride in the past and their heroic ancestors are at once invoked and their emotions stirred.

Another aspect of the poem that may be easily missed by a modern audience is the gravity of Hrothgar’s shame after the desolation of Grendel upon Heorot. The poem describes it thus:

Swá ðá mæl-ceare       maga Healfdenes

singála séað;                ne mihte snotor hæleð

wéan onwendan;        wæs þæt gewin tó swýð,

láþ ond longsum

[Even thus over the sorrows of that time did the son of Healfdene brood unceasingly, nor could that wise prince put aside his grief; too strong was that strife, too dire and weary to endure][5] (189-192).

This grief, to a modern audience, would seem to be simply grief on one level: one which Hrothgar experiences because his fellow men were murdered. But to an Anglo-Saxon audience, there is another level. Hrothgar is inconsolable not only because of the deaths of his retainers, but also because he cannot exact wergild, or man-price, from Grendel. Nor could he personally try to seek vengeance against a being as powerful and ruthless as Grendel (Greenblatt et al. 1: 38). Only a hero of Beowulf’s calibre could have defeated such an enemy.

Beowulf’s victory against Grendel meant not only the important preservation of Heorot, it also meant the restoration of Hrothgar’s honour and especially the advancing of Beowulf’s glory. The bard understood the importance of glory in the life of a heroic warrior. In their life in the mortal world, this quest for glory was the warrior’s primary goal. This belief can be exactly paralleled to that of the Anglo-Saxons’ Norse neighbours, a belief that was expressed in their old religion:

Odin came to know that the world would end in a great battle known as Ragnarök, during which the wolf Fenrir would swallow him. His son Vidar would then avenge him. Odin knew the fate of all the gods – who among them would survive Ragnarök and who would not – and also that the universe would be largely destroyed. His foreknowledge in some ways echoes the Norse warrior’s fatalism: death is inevitable, but word-fame lasts forever.

…The Twilight of the Gods is in many ways a metaphor for the personal Ragnarök that each Viking warrior faces when his time comes. His fate was decided long ago, just like those of his gods, and he goes to meet it with a brave heart, although he is spared the burden of knowledge that Odin carried. If it is his time, then he will die and go to wait for the day of Ragnarök. If not, then he can hope that there will be other battles.

It is not hard to see how these beliefs tended to produce fearless warriors who would face any odds and were not deterred by hardship. A hopeless battle was not something to be avoided; it was an opportunity to win undying word-fame in the mortal world and ultimately a place in the golden age after Ragnarök (Dougherty 28, 39).

Consequently, only a glorious and fame-worthy death would give justice to the life of Beowulf. Thus the poet provides Beowulf with his last fight against a dragon, not unlike the fight of the Norse warrior-god Thor against the Midgard Serpent. In very similar ways, they fight to preserve their society but also to secure their legendary status which gives them a place amongst the greatest of Germanic warriors-heroes.

A modern reader unfamiliar with northern medieval culture and beliefs will find it difficult to understand these complex messages within Beowulf. In uncovering these themes and messages, a New Historicist approach will yield the most successful results because it takes into account the history and context of both the author and the work, as well as the critics and readers who deal with them, which factors are of utmost import when dealing with a poem like Beowulf that is comparable to no other.

Works Cited:

Brodeur, Arthur. The Art of Beowulf. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969.    Print.

Dougherty, Martin. Vikings. London: Amber Books, 2013. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance”. The        Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 1443- 1445. New York:           Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2007. Print.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Simpson, and Alfred David. The Norton Anthology of English           Literature. 2 vols. New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 1962-2013. Print.

Heaney, Seamus. Beowulf. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000. Print.

Hill, Thomas. “The Christian Language and Theme of Beowulf”. Companion to Old English         Poetry. Amsterdam: VU UP, 1994. Print.

O’Donohue, Heather. English Poetry and Old Norse Myth. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2014. Print.

Stanley, E.G. “Manuscript – Sources – Audience”. Beowulf: A Norton Critical Editions, 71.          New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1975. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London:         Harper Collins Publishers, 2014. Print.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Ed. Christopher Tolkien.   London: George Allen & Unwin Publishers, 1983. Print.

Tuso, Joseph. Beowulf: A Norton Critical Editions. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,            Inc., 1975. Print.

Veeser, H. Aram. The New Historicism. New York: Chapman and Hall Inc., 1989. Print.

Whitelock, Dorothy. “The Audience of Beowulf”. Old English Literature. Yale UP: 2002.                        Print.

[1] By an understanding of the language I cannot specifically refer to the reader’s actual fluency – translations in hand are useful, but for a more thorough understanding of the poem, a grasp of Old English, however minimal it is, will be greatly insightful.

[2] See Tolkien’s Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, p. 162

[3] Hill, 64

[4] Trans. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, p.13

[5] Ibid p.18

Sellic Work — A Review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Beowulf

Undoubtedly J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf has long been awaited by avid fans and scholars of Beowulf and those of Tolkien himself. For those following the works of Tolkien, his translation is indeed an addition to the vast, mostly posthumous publications the world has already come to love dearly. To the scholars of Beowulf (and Anglo-Saxon literature), it is perhaps another big step into understanding further the themes and the ingenuity of the ancient English works. Any serious student of Anglo-Saxon literature would know of the publication of Tolkien’s lecture Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics. The lecture shed a new light into what had once been a severely understudied area of English literature, and consequently was it thus an obscure path full of misguided criticisms and misinterpretations of Beowulf. Now has come to us once more a work of technical genius and scholarly wisdom, penned by an author so loved and a professor so well-versed in the ancient Germanic texts.

            Many people know of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional works, yet very few know of his scholarly publications or even understand their impact on their respective branches. Long before he was famed as a writer, Tolkien was first renowned as a professor knowledgeable in the different areas of Northern literature. He was also a linguist and a philologist, fluent in diverse Germanic languages, dead and living. His works on Beowulf, then, are written as such by a highly-qualified and moreover passionate individual.

            Critics of course disagree. Tolkien’s writing has at times been judged as crass or stilted; but one may discover neither descriptions generally true in the translation of Beowulf. He has matched with equal skill the technical genius of the original author. And although readers used to verse translations of Beowulf will find it odd that Tolkien’s is written in prose, they may find it excusable upon understanding that artistic detail and precision have been major objectives in Tolkien’s mind as he set out to execute his work. The verse form sacrificed, the compensation then exists in the Shakespeare-like quality of his prose as expressed, I think, in this quote:

 

Then about the tomb rode warriors valiant, sons of princes, twelve men in all, who would their woe bewail, their king lament, a dirge upraising, that man praising, honouring his prowess and his mighty deeds, his worth esteeming – even as is meet that a man should his lord beloved in words extol, in his heart cherish, when forth he must from the raiment of flesh be taken far away. Thus bemourned the Geatish folk their master’s fall, comrades of his hearth, crying that he was ever of the kings of earth of men most generous and to men most gracious, to his people most tender and for praise most eager (lines 2659-2669).

 

More important though than his technical prowess in poetic prose and the Anglo-Saxon tongue (as evidenced in the Sellic Spell), Tolkien provides scholars with insightful commentaries, highly detailed in nature, on particularly important passages of the text (lines 131-150 for example). Revolutionary ideas and theories perhaps previously unexplored or unheard of about Beowulf are aplenty.

What is truly beautiful in this translation is the heartfelt passion J.R.R. Tolkien has weaved into his writings, which is furthermore showcased in his composition of the Sellic Spell and the Lays of Beowulf. Christopher Tolkien was no closer to the truth than when he remarked that ‘the fact that it has remained unpublished for so many years has even become a matter of reproach’. Reproachable it is indeed as all the wisdom instilled in Tolkien’s works on Beowulf have become important cornerstones of that research area; and this translation further asserts Tolkien’s authority on Beowulf, laying grounds for further studies and a deeper understanding on the subject matter. Thankfully it has been published; otherwise the world of English and Anglo-Saxon literature would have permanently lost another portal leading back to the ancient days and its people’s uptake of human existence.