Declarations of Unknowing in Beowulf

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Declarations of Unknowing in Beowulf

Alexandra Bolintineanu1

Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract In Old English homilies, declarations of unknowing—assertions that nohuman being exists who can know something—usually refer to God, heaven, hell, orthe afterlife. In contrast to this traditional usage, Beowulf contains four formulaicdeclarations of unknowing, all proclaiming mysteries inaccessible to humankind.But three of these declarations are not about the divine or demonic; they are aboutmonsters. This paper investigates the Beowulf -poet’s reworking of a widespreadtopos , the declarations of unknowing, against the background of the homiletictradition. By tracing the poem’s insistent presentation of monstrous spaces asmysteries, the paper reframes the longstanding scholarly conversation about themonsters’ and the monster mere’s sources and analogues within Beowulf ’s widerspatial poetics.

Keywords Declarations of unknowing Unsagbarkeitstopos Beowulf Otherworldly spaces Spatial poetics Old English homilies Old English

After Scyld Sceng’s death in the beginning of Beowulf , his people pile his shipwith treasure and give their dead king into the sea’s keeping. As he drifts away fromthe Danish shore, he slips away from human territory, from human control, and sofrom human knowledge. The poet reects on the uncertainty of Scyld’s destination:

& Alexandra [email protected]

1 Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 125 Queen’s Park, 3rd Floor, Toronto, ONM5S 2C7, Canada

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NeophilologusDOI 10.1007/s11061-015-9472-2

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Men ne cunnonSecgan to soðe, selerædende,Hæleð under heofenum, hwa þæm hlæste onfeng. ( Beowulf , ll. 47b–49) 1

Throughout the poem, such declarations of unknowing—resembling the declarationabout Scyld Sceng in wording, syntax, even metrical structure—proclaim thatGrendel’s whereabouts, Grendel’s parentage, and Grendel’s habitat are beyond thegrasp of human knowledge. Similar declarations of unknowing and inexpressibilityoccur throughout the Old English corpus, asserting that no human being can knowor express the theological mysteries—God’s being and blessings, the joys of heavenand the sorrows of hell, the divine presence in the world. Remarkably consistent inphrasing, context, and theme, the declarations are not only theological proclama-tions; they are intentional evocations of wonder. In homilies and religious verse,

they work in concert with local rhetorical ornamentation and wider thematicconcerns to accentuate the pairing of mystery and awe (Bolintineanu 2015 ; Tristram1978 , pp. 107–108; Wright 1993 , pp. 146–156). In contrast to this traditional usage,the Beowulf -poet commandeers the form and the resonances of these declarationsfor a very different poetic purpose. Beowulf contains four formulaic declarations of unknowing, all proclaiming mysteries inaccessible to humankind. But three of thesedeclarations are not about death, or the nature of God, or any of the other theologicalsubjects that such declarations usually mark out as mysterious and metaphysicallyremote. They are about monsters. The Beowulf -poet takes over a traditional trope of

wonder, detaches it from its theological context, and instead uses its affectiveresonance, its association with wonder and dread, to evoke the otherworldliness of Beowulf’s monsters and their habitats. To examine the Beowulf -poet’s strategy, thisessay rst establishes a baseline of declarations of unknowing at their mosttraditional, as they appear in the homilies and religious lyrics, and then exploreshow Beowulf both co-opts and transforms the topos and its traditional resonances. Inso doing, the paper not only traces a widespread, polymorphous Old English trope,but also intervenes in the longstanding conversation around the monster mere in Beowulf . The paper argues that the Beowulf -poet evokes wonder and terror byplacing monsters in spaces that are secret, unstable, and unknowable, in theirgeography, ethnography, metaphysics, and cultural afliation—secret and unsta-ble even when the secrecy must transgress narrative logic. This poetic strategy shedslight on the longstanding scholarly debate over the monster mere’s sources andanalogues: the ambiguity of the mere’s lineage ts into the consistent cultivation of spatial indeterminacy and unknowing as sources of wonder and dread. Thissustained poetic strategy for creating spaces of wonder and dread, presentthroughout the poem, is most explicit in the declarations of unknowing.

Examples of such declarations of unknowing appear throughout Old Englishhomilies and poetry. Consistently, in homilies and poetry alike, declarations of unknowing mark out the supernatural: God, Heaven, Hell, the Devil, the miracles of saints. Usually beginning with the phrase ‘‘nis … (n)ænig man’’, they are statements

1 Men cannot truly say, hall-counsellors, heroes under heaven, who received that cargo. Fulk et al.(2008 ). All references to Beowulf are to this edition (hereafter, Beowulf ); all translations are my own.

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that ‘‘no human being exists’’ who might know or express the mystery, or that themystery is beyond the measure of human beings to know or express. In Wulfstan’shomilies, such declarations refer to Christ’s divinity, the torments of hell, and theglories and joys of heaven (Bethurum 1957 , pp. 157–166, ll. 125–127 on hell’s

torments; ibid. ll. 152–155 on heaven’s joys and glories). In the Vercelli Homilies ,declarations of inexpressibility and unknowing refer to the devil’s arrows of temptation, the joys of heaven, and the torments of hell (Scragg 1992 , Vercelli Homily IV , l. 315, Vercelli Homily IX , ll. 15–17, ll. 106–107). In the Blickling Homilies , they refer to the miracles performed by God through St. Martin and to themercy and love of God towards humankind (Morris 1867–1868, The Life of St. Martin ll. 150–154, Blickling Homily VIII ll. 115–121). 2

Far from being throwaway ourishes, these formulaic statements are integratedin the homilies’ rhetorical programme. Vercelli Homily IX , with its three

declarations of inexpressibility, exemplies this integration. Inexpressibility is its‘‘dominant rhetorical mode’’ (Wright 1993 , p. 145), and its three declarations–aboutheaven’s joys and hell’s torments—t into this wider programme of representing thesupernatural by measuring it against the overwhelmed human condition. The rsttwo declarations assert that Heaven’s joys transcend the limits of the human mindand expression:

Nis þonne næniges mannes gemet þæt he mæge asecgan þara goda & þarayðnessa þe God hafað geearwod eallum þam þe hine luað & his b[eb ]oduhealdan willað & gelæstan (Scragg 1992 , Vercelli Homily IX , ll. 16–18).

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For ðan we sculon ure sawle georne tilian 7 hy geornlice Gode gegearwian. Nemæg þonne eall manna cyn mid hyra wordum ariman þa god þe God hafaðsoðfæst um sawlum geearwod togeanes for hyra gastlicum worcum (ibid, ll.59–62).

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Both passages play up the causal relationship between good deeds on earth andheavenly bliss in the world to come. The rst does so by juxtaposing exhortationand declaration; the second, also by repeating key words and connecting themthrough alliteration. ‘‘Gegearwian’’ (‘‘to order or prepare’’) describes both what the

faithful must do to their souls to ready them for God, and what God does in creatingthe joys of the afterlife. The repetition of ‘‘georne,’’ ‘‘geornlice’’ (‘‘zealously’’)intensies the focus on this spiritual preparation, both semantically (in that itdenotes the emotional intensity necessary to this act of preparation) and aurally (inthat it creates an alliterative bridge between the two instances of ‘‘gegearwian’’).Even as the declarations invoke the divine by placing it beyond human language orknowledge, they also place it within human access. Even as they assert that human

2 See Bolintineanu ( 2015 ), for a more in-depth treatment of homiletic and poetic declarations of

unknowing.3 It is not within the measure of any man that he may express the good things and the joys that God hasprepared for all those who love him and desire to keep his commandments.4 Therefore we ought to cultivate our soul with zeal and zealously prepare it for God. Then no one of allhumankind can narrate with their words the good that God has prepared for the faithful souls for theirspiritual works.


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words cannot utter God’s mercies, the declarations also assert that human lives livedin obedience to God’s commandments may enter into these mercies.

After this twofold evocation of heaven, the inexpressibility topos surfaces in thehomily’s subsequent enumeration of the likenesses of hell. The rst four

likenesses—exile, old age, death, burial—annihilate aspect after aspect of theearthly human person: exile wipes out the social person, taking away wealth, socialposition, and happiness (ll. 85–89); then old age diminishes the physical personsense by sense and faculty by faculty, taking away, among others, the capacity for‘‘gerade spræce’’ (speech, l. 93); then death further deprives a person of theirphysical surroundings, as it ‘‘swyrceð him fram þæs huses hrof ðe he inne bið’’(‘‘the roof of the building in which he lies is obscured to him,’’ l. 99) 5 ; then burialdraws that gurative roof in even closer, and abandons the body to worms andputrefaction (l. 102). Used as a gurative representation of hell, the gradual

diminishing and eventual annihilation of the earthly human person perpetuates theinitial declarations of inexpressibility, as both tropes represent the supernatural byshowing how it overwhelms the human condition. The crescendo of sufferingevoked by hell’s likenesses culminates in the fth likeness, torment. At thisrhetorical climax, another declaration of inexpressibility appears:

Þonne is þære ftan helle onlicnes tintrega genemned, for ðan þænne nisnænig man þæt mæge mid his wordum asecgan hu mycel þære ftan helle saris. 7 þeah.vii. men sien, 7 þara hæbbe æghwylc twa 7 hundsiofontig gereorda,swa feala swa ealles þysses middangeardes gereorda syndon, and þonne syþara seofon manna æghwhylc to alife gesceapen, 7 hyra hæbbe æghwylcsiofon heafdu, 7 þara heafdu ælc hæbbe siofon tungan, 7 þara tungena ælchæbbe isene stemn e, 7 þonne hwæðre ne magon þa ealle ariman helle witu(ibid., ll. 106–113). 6

The impact of the declaration of inexpressibility is deepened by the elaborat econceit that follows it, a form of the Men with Tongues of Iron motif (ll. 107–113). 7

The hyperbolic imagery (seven men with seventy-two languages, etc.) rendersconcrete the assertion of inexpressibility that introduces it: the hell whose likenessesin the earlier enumeration annihilate one human capacity after another hereexplicitly annihilates human speech—even human speech hyperbolically raised tomonstrous proportions—by the sheer magnitude of its torments. As in the earlierevocations of heaven, the declaration of inexpressibility depicts hell’s metaphysicalotherness by showing how it overpowers human capacities. As in Vercelli Homily

5 For this translation, see Scragg ( 1992 , p. 187, note to l. 99).6 Then the likeness of the fth hell is called torment, because then there is no man who is able to declarewith his words how great the fth hell’s pain is. And even if there were seven men, and each of them hadseventy-two languages, as many as all the languages in this middle earth, and then if each of those sevenmen were created to eternal life, and each of them had seven heads, and each of the heads had seventongues, and each of the tongues had an iron voice, and then nevertheless they would not be able todescribe the torment of hell.7 Wright ( 1993 , pp. 146–156). For further discussion of traditional motifs in Vercelli IX’s description of hell’s pains, and these motifs’ development in Old English and Irish literature, see Wright ( 1993 ,pp. 106–175). For stylistic analysis of these motifs in Vercelli IX, see also Zacher ( 2009 , pp. 173–179).And for discussion of the seventy-two languages topos, see Sauer ( 1983 ).

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IX , the declarations of unknowing spread through the Old English homiletic andpoetic corpus, maintaining a striking stability in verbal form and content, in theirconsistent focus on depicting the supernatural as it overthrows human knowledgeand language (Bolintineanu 2015 ).

The relationship between Beowulf and the homiletic tradition is widely debated,most notably over the monster mere’s relationship to the hell-scape of BlicklingHomily VII, but also over other passages which show clear parallels to homileticlanguage, but whose authenticity to the poem is contested on metrical grounds( Beowulf , ll. 175–188, ll. 3062b–75; Orchard 2001 , pp. 151–167, traces thecontroversial passages’ links to the homiletic tradition and summarizes thelongstanding scholarly debates around them). Yet even if passages drawing onthe homiletic tradition are late scribal additions to the poem, their presence suggeststhat Beowulf’s scribes and readers understood and experienced the poem with the

homiletic tradition as a powerful element of their verbal and cultural landscape;homiletic language and habits of thought inuenced the poem’s reception andtransmission, and its phraseology inltrated the poem’s fabric. Foley ( 1990 , 2003 )and Amodio ( 2005 ) theorize that in Old English, as in other tradition-basedliteratures, tradition forms a cognitive and emotional matrix for a poem’scomposition and reception: that is, tradition acts as ‘‘the silent partner’’ to everyact of poetic creation and poetic reception (Foley 1990 , p. xv), so that phrases ormotifs occurring in a text bring along not just themselves, but their longstandingassociations. In literate as well as oral contexts, traditional elements may be long-

lived and polymorphous, yet maintain—as do the declarations of unknowing— aconstant cargo of meaning and affective resonances through a variety of contexts. 8

Whether the Beowulf -poet was steeped in the homiletic tradition—so much so thatits phraseology ‘‘leaked’’ into the poem, to use Foley’s phrase ( 2003 )—or whetherthe poem’s scribes and readers were, the tradition is part of the poem’s receptionand transmission and provides a powerful matrix through which the poem wasexperienced and understood.

The homiletic declarations of unknowing and inexpressibility are recalled by allfour declarations of unknowing in Beowulf . The Beowulf declarations’ grammar isslightly different (they are statements that men do not know, rather than that no manexists who might know or express), but their implications are similar: all four afrmlongstanding communal unknowing. Yet only one, the declaration about Scyld,points into the declarations’ traditional domain, the afterlife; the remaining threerefer to the habitats of monsters.

The rst of them concludes Scyld Sceng’s funeral, already quoted above. As hispeople give their dead king into the sea’s keeping, the poet reects on their inabilityto know Scyld’s destination (cited above). The second declaration concerns thewhereabouts of Grendel, as the monster begins to prey on the Danes:

8 This longevity of traditional elements is demonstrated by Frotscher, who traces the ‘‘economicmetaphor of violence as nancial transaction’’ (exemplied by the phrase ‘‘you’ll pay for it’’ as a promiseof violent revenge), primarily in Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic literature, but with examples fromHomeric Greek and Virgilian Latin to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and English-language popular culture of thelate twentieth and early twenty-rst centuries ( 2013 ).


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Men ne cunnonhwyder helrunan hwyrftum scriþað ( Beowulf , ll. 163–164). 9

The third and fourth declarations appear in Hrothgar’s description of the monster-

mere. One disclaims knowledge of the identity of Grendel’s father:

No hie fæder cunnon,Hwæþer him ænig wæs ær acennedDyrnra gasta ( Beowulf , ll. 1355b–57) 10

The last declaration asserts general ignorance of the depths of the monster-mere:

No þæs frod leofaðGumena bearna þæt þone grund wite ( Beowulf , ll. 1366–1367). 11

The rst two declarations are introduced by a half-line formula, ‘‘men ne cunnon,’’followed by an object clause that explains the subject of their ignorance. The third isa variation of this formula: it is likewise introduced by a half-line, with the samenegative knowledge verb (‘‘no … cunnon’’) and with a subject that likewise refers tothe generality of humankind (the pronoun ‘hie’ refers to the ‘‘foldbuende,’’ the land-dwellers of the previous half-line. The present tense here indicates not the eeting,

current moment, but ‘‘perpetual truths which are, and will continue to be, relevant’’(Kessler 2008 , p. 22). Like those in the homilies, these declarations of unknowingstate not only that certain things are mysteries under specic historical circum-stances, but that they have been mysterious for a long time and are so still, becausetheir nature places them beyond the range of human understanding. The fourthdeclaration uses a different verb (‘‘witan’’), and generalizes the lack of knowledgethrough a slightly different formulation: instead of simply asserting that no oneknows the subject, as in the other declarations in Beowulf , it denies, like thehomilies, the existence of any potential knowers among humankind.

Of these declarations, the one about Scyld is most in keeping with the homileticand poetic tradition. The journey of Scyld’s dead body into the sea parallels the journey of his soul into death; the uncertainty of his geographical destinationaccordingly suggests the hero’s unknown fate after death. This unknowing may be afunction of the observers: that is, Scyld’s eschatological destination is unknownbecause the hall councillors who ponder the matter are pagan; just as theirdescendants, in Grendel’s time, do not know God, so they do not know whathappens to the soul after death (Orchard 2001 , pp. 238–240; Stanley 1963 , p. 72). Inthis interpretation, Scyld’s Danes are in the same predicament as the councillor of King Edwin in Bede’s famous sparrow-story. The councillor advises King Edwin to

9 Men do not know where those skilled in the mysteries of hell glide in their courses.10 They [land-dwellers] do not know whether any father had ever been conceived for him among thesecret spirits.11 No one lives among the children of men so wise as to know its bottom.

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adopt Christianity because it offers a more satisfactory metaphysics than theirpresent faith:

‘Talis,’ inquiens, ‘mihi uidetur, rex, uita hominum praesens in terris, ad

conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residentead caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidemfoco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omniaturbinibus hiemalium pluuiarum uel niuium, adueniens unus passerum domumcitissime peruolauerit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliudexierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur,sed tamen paruissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hiemein hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec uita hominum ad modicumapparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Un de sihaec noua doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda uidetur.’ 12

Words of unknowing (‘‘incertum’’, uncertain; ‘‘ignoramus’’, we do not know) framethe natural imagery that suggests unknowing. In Bede’s view, the archetypal paganstance on ‘‘what went before, or what is to follow’’ is one of emphatic unknowing,much like the stance of the Spear-Danes on Scyld’s mysterious origin and equallymysterious destination. James W. Earl pushes the analogy further, describing theScyld episode as ‘‘a poetic variation on Bede’s parable of the sparrow’’ and arguingthat ‘‘[t]he world of the parable is the world of the poem [ … ]. The transcendent issimply unknown, everywhere bordering the world of the known as the ocean

surrounds the earth.’’ (Earl 1994 , pp. 71–73). The sea, in Earl’s analogy, is like thewintry world that surrounds the lit, re-warmed hall in Bede’s parable: itsymbolizes what is beyond communal wisdom, or at least (in Bede’s view) beyondcommunal wisdom without the benet of Christian doctrine.

Alternatively, Scyld’s destination after death is doubtful because of his owntheological status. The Beowulf -poet describes Scyld’s life i tse lf as a model of heroic pagan kingship and Scyld’s funeral as a pagan ceremony. 13 At the same time,Scyld is also an instrument of God’s providence: he founds a royal dynasty for thehitherto lordless Spear-Danes, and his son, as the poet notes, is sent by God ‘‘folcesto frofre’’ (‘‘as a comfort to the people,’’ l. 12b) (King 2003 , pp. 460–464). GivenScyld’s double role (both as pagan king and as agent of Providence), his destinationafter death is similarly ambiguous. 14

12 ‘‘The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, liketo the swift ight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with yourcommanders and ministers, and a good re in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevailabroad; the sparrow, I say, ying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, issafe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of yoursight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains

something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.’’ (Colgrave and Mynors 1969 , II.xiii.)13 Owen-Crocker ( 2000 , pp. 27–42 and 116–133), describes pagan archaeological parallels to thefunerals in Beowulf; see also, however, Cameron ( 1969 ), identifying the Latin life of St. Gildas, datedbetween the ninth and eleventh centuries, as a striking Christian parallel.14 On the pessimistic side, see Stanley ( 1963 ) and King ( 2003 ). On the optimistic side, see Brodeur(1959 ), Chadwick ( 1912 ), Phillpotts ( 1928 ). Frank ( 1982 ) highlights a disjunction between Alcuin’s


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But an even simpler interpretation of the passage is possible: Scyld’s destinationis unknown neither because Scyld’s people are pagans, n or because he is: but ratherbecause he is a human being setting off into death.

15This, after all, is the

epistemological stance of the poem Maxims II , which proclaims that God alone can

know the destination of the soul’s journey after death (Krapp and Dobbie 1931 –1953, v. 6, pp. 56–57). In the world of Maxims II , everything has its place: the gemmust dwell in the ring, the dragon in a barrow, the sh in the water, the king in thehall, the monster alone in the fen. The poem is a series of proverb-like assertions of the places and properties of things. But in this orderly world, the place of the deadremains mysterious:

Meotod ana watHwyder seo sawul sceal syððan hweorfan,

And ealle þa gastas þe for gode hweorfaðÆfter deaðdæge, domes bidað 60On fæder fæðme. Is seo forðgesceaftDigol and dyrne; drihten ana watNergende fæder. Næni eft cymeðHider under hrofas, þe þæt her for soðMannum secge hwylc sy meotodes gesceaft, 65Sigefolca gesetu, þær he sylfa wunað ( Maxims II , ll. 57–66). 16

The poem’s form emphasizes mystery. Alliterating near-synonyms, ‘‘ digol anddyrne’’ (secret and hidden), insist on secrecy to the point of pleonasm. 17 Spatialimagery reinforces the otherness of the afterlife: no witnesses return to the concrete‘‘roofs’’ of the living from the abstract, unknowable ‘‘dwellings’’ of the blesseddead. The formulaic half-line, ‘‘Meotod ana wat’’ (God alone knows), is echoedonly four lines later as ‘‘drihten ana wat’’ (the Lord alone knows). The envelopepattern reinforces the exclusivity of divine knowledge. It also deploys the numinousresonances of a traditional verbal motif: as Paul Cavill notes, in Old English poetry,maxims that begin with the formulaic ‘‘God/Meotod/Dryhten ana wat’’ (God/theRuler/the Lord alone knows) all assert God’s exclusive knowledge ‘‘of why, when,and how death will come, and what will happen afterward’’(Cavill 1999 , pp. 53–54).So a poem that articulates communal wisdom ends by asserting that communalwisdom cannot chart the afterlife; a poem so concerned with the places of things

Footnote 14 continuedrigour and the Beowulf -poet’s sympathetic, lovingly detailed depiction of the culture of his pagancharacters; Anlezark ( 2006 ) emphasizes that Scyld journeys ‘‘on Frean wære’’ (into the Lord’s keeping,27b). Though the Danes ‘‘cannot truly say’’ who receives Scyld, the poet can, and does (285–286).15 This attitude appears not only in Maxims II , discussed below, but also in Juliana , where Cynewulf expresses a similar uncertainty about the journey of his own soul after death (ll. 699a–700) (King 2003 ,

p. 471, n. 45).16 God alone knows where that soul must afterwards travel to, and all the spirits that go to God, after thedeath-day, await judgment in the Father’s protection. The future condition is secret and hidden; the Lordalone knows, the saving Father. No one returns again this way under roofs, who can here truly tell peoplewhat the Ruler’s creation is like, the abodes of the victorious people, where He Himself dwells.17 For the uses of dyrne in Old English literature, see Lerer ( 1991 ).

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ends by refusing to ‘‘place’’ the dead. The human soul in Maxims II awaits judgment‘‘on fæder fæðme’’ (in the Father’s embrace), just as Scyld Sceng travels ‘‘onFrean wære’’ (in the Lord’s keeping), but for both souls, their ultimate destinationremains mysterious. Unknowing marks the border between the world of living

human beings and the other world, the world of God, of heaven and hell and theirinhabitants, of the dead in the afterlife. Scyld’s last destination is unknown becausedeath is unknowable.

All of these interpretations place Scyld’s last sea-journey within the tradition of the declarations of unknowing described thus far: declarations that use mystery tomark something that belongs to the ‘‘other world,’’ to an eschatological reality thattranscends the human world and the capacities of human knowers. The declarationsof unknowing that describe the monsters deploy the same language of mystery, of communal unknowing: not in reference to the eschatological, not in reference to

God or the joys of heaven or the torments of hell, but in reference to creatures whosethreat against the human world is so fearsome that only the eschatological cansuggest the sheer magnitude of wonder and dread that these creatures evoke. Likethe declaration of unknowing about Scyld’s sea-funeral, the declarations of unknowing that describe the monsters are similarly embedded in the poem’sgeography. All three declarations refer to the monsters’ resistance to humanunderstanding, and all three are surrounded by descriptions of the monsters’ habitat.One appears shortly after the initial account of Grendel’s depredations. Thoughearlier the poet describes the Danes inspecting Grendel’s tracks, he reects that

(ac se) æglæca ehtende wæs,deorc deaþscua, duguþe ond geogoþe,seomade ond syrede; sinnihte heold,mistige moras; men ne cunnonhwyder helrunan hwyrftum scriþað ( Beowulf , ll. 159–164). 18

The declaration follows a description of Grendel’s domain that denes that domainnot so much geographically as atmospherically. It is the domain of night, of mist onthe moors. The declaration makes explicit what the imagery suggests: that thedening characteristic of monster-space is not any topographical marker or anyphysical boundary, but darkness, concealment, resistance to human knowing.

The remaining two declarations are similarly bound up with the home of monsters. Both of them are embedded in Hrothgar’s vivid and detailed descriptionof the monster-mere. The rst disclaims human knowledge of Grendel’s paternity;the second denies human knowledge of the geography of the monsters’ home. Thedescription that surrounds them amplies the force of these declarations, asnarratorial stance, repetition, and imagery reinforce the sense of secrecy:

18 But the formidable one, the dark death-shadow, was persecuting warriors and youths, hovered andensnared [them]; he held the endless night (or: the sinful night), the misty moors; men do not know whichway those privy to hell’s secrets glide in their courses. See Hill ( 1971 , 379–381), Greeneld ( 1977 –1978,44–48), and Hill ( 1979 , 271–281), for a discussion of this passage; my translation reects both theirarguments.


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Ic þæt londbuend, leode mine, 1345selerædende secgan hyrdeþæt hie gesawon swylce twegenmicle mearcstapan moras healdan,ellorgæstas. Ð æra oðer wæs,

þæs þe hie gewislicost gewitan meahton, 1350idese onlicnæs; oðer earmsceapenon weres wæstmum wræclastas træd,næfne he wæs mara þonne ænig man oðer;þone on geardagum Grendel nemdon

foldbuende; no hie fæder cunnon, 1355

hwæþer him ænig wæs ær acenneddyrnra gasta. Hie dygel londwarigeað, wulfhleoþu, windige næssas,frecne fengelad, ðær fyrgenstream

under næssa genipu niþer gewiteð, 1360od under foldan. Nis þæt feor heononmilgemearces þæt se mere standeð;ofer þæm hongiað hrinde bearwas,

wudu wyrtum fæst wæter oferhelmað.

þær mæg nihta gehwæm niðwundor seon, 1365fyr on ode. No þæs frod leofaðgumena bearna, þæt þone grund wite;ðeah þe hæðstapa hundum geswenced,heorot hornum trum, holtwudu sece,

feorran geymed, ær he feorh seleð, 1370aldor on ofre, ær he in willehafelan [beorgan]; nis þæt heoru sto w!

MS missing word ( Beowulf , ll. 1345–1372). 19

19 I heard land-dwellers, my people, hall-counsellors, say this, that they saw such two such mightyborder-walkers hold the moors, alien spirits. Of them one was, as far as they were able to tell mostcertainly, in the likeness of a woman; the other wretched one trod the tracks of exile in the form of a man,except that he was greater than any other man. Him the land-dwellers called Grendel in days gone by;they do not know of a father, whether any was ever begotten before him among the hidden spirits. They

inhabit the secret land, wolf-cliffs, windy headlands, fearful fen-path, where the mountain-stream goesdown under the darkness of the headlands, water under the ground. It is not far from here, by the count of miles, that the mere stands; over it hang frosty trees, woods fast of root cover the water. There may beseen, each night, a fearful wonder (or: a harm-wonder), re on the water. No one lives among the childrenof men so wise as to know its bottom. Though the heath-stepper, the hart strong in horns, hunted by dogs,should seek the forest, having ed far, he would rather give up his life on the bank, than go into save hishead. That is not a pleasant place!

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Especially at the beginning of the speech, Hrothgar maintains a distance betweenhimself and his description’s subject. He declares his knowledge is hearsay, and theword order reinforces this: the ‘‘ic’’ of the narrator is separated from the verbs thatindicate his contact with the subject (‘‘secgan hyrde’’) by the threefold reference to

his source (‘‘londbuende, leode mine, selerædende’’). Even these reported sightingsof the monsters are tentative and qualied: Grendel’s mother is not a woman, she is‘‘idese onlicnæs’’ (‘‘the likeness of a woman’’), and even that is only ‘‘þæs þe hiegewislicost gewitan meahton’’ (‘‘as far as they could most certainly tell’’). Grendelhimself, likewise, walks ‘‘on weres wæstmum’’ (‘‘in the form of a man’’), and againthat is qualied by an exception—‘‘næfne he wæs mara þonne ænig man oðer’’(‘‘except he was bigger than any other man’’). Hrothgar’s initial uncertainty shad esinto downright mystery. Grendel’s father, or potential elder siblings, are unknown. 20

The monsters’ kindred are ‘‘dyrnra gasta’’ (‘‘hidden spirits’’), just as the land where

the monsters live is ‘‘dygel’’ (‘‘secret’’); alliteration emphasizes and pairs the twonear-synonyms, accentuating the insistence on secrecy. Even the shape of thetopography suggests concealment. Every element of the landscape—darkness, cliffsand earth, the frost-covered forests—is shaped to descend towards and cover thecentral element of water. Even the image of the hunted stag, not willing to hide itshead in the uncanny lake, suggests the potential for concealment even as it sovehemently rejects it. 21 Subsequent landscape description maintains the sense of secrecy. Later, so does another monster-habitat, the dragon’ s barrow. Just as thepath to the Grendel-mere is ‘‘uncuð gelad’’ (a strange path), 22 so the way to the

dragon’s lair is ‘‘eldum uncuð,’’ unknown to men, and the dragon’s lair itself uctuates between being known and being hidden; the poet presents the domains of monsters as ‘‘enigmatic and uncertain locations’’ (Michelet 2006 , p. 82).

This presentation is artful and emphatic, but it is not consistent (Magennis 2006 ,p. 142). When Beowulf and warriors follow the bloody track of Grendel’s mother,the way to the monster-mere is hard and strange (ll. 1409–1412). Yet earlier in thepoem, after Grendel’s defeat, the warriors who likewise follow the bloody track of Grendel to the lake experience a ‘‘gomenwaþe’’ (joyful journey, 854) along paths

20

See Fulk et al. ( 2008 , p. 200). Lines 1355b–1357a can be paraphrased either as ‘‘they [the Danes]knew of no father, whether any [father] was engendered before him [Grendel] among the hidden spirits’’or, alternatively, as ‘‘they [the Danes] knew of no father, [nor] whether any [siblings] were engenderedbefore him [Grendel] among the hidden spirits.’’ In both cases l. 1356 is a declaration of unknowing,either reinforcing the mystery of Grendel’s father, or referring to additional mysterious siblings.21 The missing word in line 1372b has been variously emended as ‘‘helan,’’ ‘‘hydan,’’ and ‘‘beorgan’’; seeOrchard ( 2001 , pp. 47–48) for a summary of the scholarship. While Klaeber’s edition supplies‘‘beorgan,’’ I have selected ‘‘helan,’’ as suggested by Gerritsen ( 1989 , pp. 451–452) and Bammesberger(1992 , pp. 250–252); their emendation ts what is paleographically likely, ts into the sound-playpatterns of the passage, and also ts into this theme of secrecy.22 The description of the way to the monster-mere as ‘‘enge anpaðas, uncuð gelad’’ is a striking parallel

between Beowulf and Exodus : in the latter poem, the path through the Red Sea that God opens up to theIsraelites is likewise described as ‘‘enge anpaðas, uncuð gelad’’ ( Exodus l. 58). For early discussions of the relationship between the two poems, see Klaeber ( 1918 , pp. 218–124) (in which Klaeber argues thatExodus precedes and has inuenced Beowulf ); as well as his later article, Klaeber ( 1950 , pp. 71–72) (inwhich he argues for the opposite). For a recent discussion of the matter, and for a comprehensive list of parallels between Beowulf and Exodus , see Lynch ( 2000, pp. 171–256, 262–264, 272 ) (cited in Orchard2001 , pp. 166–167).


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that are, at least at times, ‘‘fægere’’ and ‘‘cystum cuðe’’ (‘‘lovely’’ and ‘‘known to begood,’’ ll. 866–867). This inconsistency illustrates ‘‘the essentially expressionisticnature of landscape in the poem’’ (Magennis 2006 , p. 142). Warriors undertake therst trip in a celebratory mood. The bloody track they follow is proof and reminder

of Grendel’s defeat, and so the landscape they traverse is accordingly pleasant,hospitable to such civilized human activities as horse-racing and story-telling. Incontrast, the second journey follows a track limned in human blood, a reminder of past loss and future menace:

Ofereode þa æþelinga bearnsteap stanhliðo, stige nearwe,

enge anpaðas, uncuð gelad, 1410

neowle næssas, nicorhusa fela.He feara sum beforan gengdewisra monna wong sceawian,oþþæt he færinga fyrgenbeamas

ofer harne stan hleonian funde, 1415wynleasne wudu; wæter under stoddreorig ond gedrefed (ll. 1408–1417). 23

Reecting the travellers’ state of mind, the landscape of their journey and of their

destination is wild, frightening, and infested with monsters; in Hrothgar’s earlierdescription, the landscape is rendered in a wealth of scenic details—hardly any of which appear on the rst journey—recalling the Avernian landscapes of classicaltradition or the hellish landscapes of Christian eschatology. As with the physicaldetails of the landscape, so with the secrecy of the monsters’ habitat. Once Beowulf has killed the last of the lake-monsters, the secrecy built up earlier lifts as well:

Ferdon forð þonon feþelastumferhþum fægne, fold weg mæton,

cuþe stræte (ll. 1630–1634).24

In mood, vocabulary, and alliteration, the passage echoes the earlier homecomingfrom the mere, after Grendel’s defeat. In both passages, the path of joyous return isdenoted by the poetic compound foldweg (path or road), a word that does not appearelsewhere in Beowulf ; this path, too, is described in both passages as known,familiar, and reliable.

23 Then the son of princes went over the steep rocky slopes, narrow trails, narrow paths where only onecould go at a time, an unknown way, steep crags, many homes of water-monsters. He went before with afew wise men to examine the territory, until he suddenly found mountain trees leaning over a hoary stone,a joyless wood; water stood below, bloody and disturbed.24 They went forth from there on the walking-paths, glad in spirits, traversed the land-way, the knownpath.

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Hwilum heaþorofe hleapan leton,on geit faran fealwe mearasðær him foldwegas fægere þuhton,cystum cuðe (ll. 864–867). 25

The parallels in phrasing between the two passages underscore the parallels innarrative context. After Beowulf kills each of the monsters, their habitat transitionsfrom the unknown to the familiar: not because the Danes nally learn the waythere—after all, they had known the way already on the earlier journey—b utbecause mystery is no longer needed to suggest the presence of fearful monsters. 26

Beowulf’s successful foray against Grendel’s mother contradicts even the decla-rations of unknowing. No one lives wise enough to know the lake’s depths, yetBeowulf plumbs them all the way to the monsters’ lair. Grendel’s ancestors are

mysterious to dwellers in the land, yet Beowulf returns from the lake with a swordhilt that testies to the fate of Grendel’s ancestors in the Flood. Grendel’smovements and whereabouts are unknown or unknowable to humankind, yetBeowulf nds the place he died, the last place he moved to under his own power;what is more, the hero then carries Grendel’s head to the surface, shifting Grendel’slast whereabouts into familiar communal space. Mystery surrounds the monsterswhile they threaten humankind, a mystery evoked through geographical detail anddeclarations of unknowing. This mystery vanishes from their habitat with theirdeath.

The treatment of mystery sets the Beowulf -poet’s declarations of unknowingapart from their conventional usage in Old English literature. In Old Englishhomilies, where most declarations of unknowing occur, they describe theeschatological, and the sheer magnitude of its difference from mortal humanexperience. In poetry, the usage of these declarations is wider, but still connected tothe numinous: in addition to describing the eschatological, declarations of unknowing also signal divine agency in moments of human history or in aspectsof the natural world. In contrast, in Beowulf , declarations of unknowing apply tomonsters. These declarations do not necessarily mark out a metaphysical gap, or

even satisfy narrative logic. Instead, in concert with other poetic strategies, theymake an affective statement rather than a theological one. They signal the utteralterity of the monsters, the profound gap between them and human normality.Exploiting the conventional resonances of the topos , the declarations of unknowingalign the monsters with God, death, and the afterlife, with eschatological realitiesbeyond the limits of mortal human reason and experience, not in order to suggestthat Grendel or his mother are ends or denizens of the afterlife, but to suggest thatthe monsters and their spaces are as far away from normal human experience asheaven or hell, and that consequently the emotional response to them ought to be

similar: wonder, awe, dread.25 At times the battle-brave let their bay steeds leap, go in a race, where they thought the land-ways fair,known to be good.26 See also Amodio ( 2005 , p. 67), describing a different Beowulf episode where details are not governedby narrative logic, but by the traditional associations that these details carry into their narrative context.


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The declarations of unknowing are consistent with the Beowulf -poet’s treatmentof the monsters throughout the poem. In Beowulf , the monsters are insistentlymysterious, resistant to being known or categorized. Throughout the poem, the veryterm ‘‘uncuþ’’ (strange, unknown) appears chiey in association with Grendel and

his kin (Orchard 2001 , p. 110). The very rst concrete detail of Grendel’s physiqueappears only at his last attack on Heorot: as he comes into the hall, his eyes glowwith a ‘‘leoht unfaeger’’ (an un-lovely light, ll. 726–727). While he is alive and well,Grendel is a nebulous presence; only after his defeat does the poet reveal suchconcrete physical details as the tough, scaly skin and the iron-hard nails of hissevered arm (Neville 1999 , p. 80).

Indeed, Grendel is as hard to pin down ontologically as physically: he has beenclassied, among other things, as a demon, a draugr (an Old Norse reve nant), adescendant of Cain and the wicked antediluvian giants, and a human being. 27 Most

recently, Megan Cavell analyses Grendel as a literary cyborg, whose body exists ina liminal space between the natural world and the world of artifacts (Cavell 2014 ).The mystery that so insistently surrounds Grendel heightens the monster’s horror. 28

The mystery extends to the monsters’ habitat. The rst descriptions of Grendelreinforce the link between the monster and his habitat: the poet calls Grendel‘‘mearcstapa’’ and ‘‘sceadugenga’’ (‘‘border-stalker,’’ l. 103, and ‘‘shadow-walker,’’l. 703), including in his appellation the territory of mist, darkness, and liminalspaces that Grendel inhabits. This domain of monsters is in erce opposition withthe world of humankind, of the radiant hall Heorot. 29 Nevertheless, the border

between the two worlds is shifting and unreliable. In Grendel’s approach to Heorot,the eerie, inhuman landscape seem s to encroach upon human space, extending allthe way up to the door of the hall. 30 On several occasions the monsters’ footprintsoutside the hall are a visual reminder that any boundaries between the two worldsare permeable. Even when topographical marking and ceremonial behaviour appearto delimit one world from the other, that delimitation is not clear-cut. Right by themonster mere there is a grey stone. Swisher and Cooke identify the ‘‘harne stan’’ (l.887), the hoary stone, as a formulaic boundary marker between the human worldand the realm of monsters. They note that such a stone marks not only the mereinhabited by Grendel and his monstrous kindred, but also the dragon’s barrow; andoutside Beowulf , a hoar stone appears in the Visio Sancti Pauli , just above thehellish place of punishment, and in Andreas , just before the entrance into the city of

27 For an in-depth survey of Grendel’s taxonomy and the scholarship underlying each of these categories,see Orchard ( 1995 , pp. 152–168), and Neville ( 1999 , pp. 78–80).28 Alain Renoir describes the dynamics of terror and mystery in Beowulf , particularly in the famous sceneof Grendel’s approach to Heorot; he memorably calls Grendel ‘‘a hair-raising description of death on themarch’’ ( 1962 , pp. 88–106). Michael Lapidge examines the role of mystery in the horrifying effects of Grendel himself ( 1993 , pp. 373–402).29 For a summary of the scholarship that delineates this contrast between the world of monsters and theworld of humankind, see Michelet ( 2006 , p. 76). Michelet, however, disagrees with the prevailing view,arguing instead that these worlds are deeply interconnected and ‘‘the only clear distinction establishedbetween chaos and order is that made by the characters themselves’’ (p. 91). This current study dwells,like Michelet’s, on the porous boundary between realms, but does not de-emphasize the essential contrastbetween them.30 Beowulf ll. 702b–716a; for further analysis, see especially Renoir ( 1962 , pp. 154–167).

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the cannibalistic, devil-ridden Mermedonians (Swisher 2002 , pp. 133–136). Theseparallels suggest that the ‘‘harne stan’’ is a marker separating human from monstrousspaces. In Beowulf , this separation is reinforced by ceremonial behaviour: as theDanish and Geatish warriors pass the ‘‘harne stan,’’ they blow the war-horn as if

announcing their entry onto another’s property, according to Anglo-Saxon law(Cooke 2003 , pp. 298–299). But the poem shows that the boundary between therealms is not precisely drawn: even before the hoary stone, the warriors cross a wild,frightening landscape inhabited by monsters ( Beowulf , ll. 1408–1411). Wherever aboundary or demarcation—verbal, geographic, or behavioural—appears to separatethe two worlds, the poem proceeds to blur that boundary. The monster mere itself isas mysterious and polyvalent in terms of lineage and nature as Grendel himself: itechoes descriptions of hell from Christian visions of the afte rli fe, but alsodescriptions of infernal or hostile landscapes from classical literature. 31 The monster

mere, with its accumulation of fearful traits and its diversity of literary echoes, maynot add up to a coherent geography; but it is coherent, in terms of literary strategy,with the Beowulf-poet’s depiction of monstrosity and monstrous space throughoutthe poem. As Jeffrey Jerome Cohen ( 1996 , p. 6) notes, monsters are ‘‘disturbinghybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in anysystematic structuration … the monster [is] a form suspended between forms thatthreatens to smash distinctions.’’ And like monsters, the medieval wonder responseitself is linked to blurred categories and permeable borders, being ‘‘triggered mostfrequently and violently by … events or phenomena in which ontological and moral

boundaries are crossed, confused, or erased’’ Bynum ( 2001 , p. 69). Beowulf ’s poeticsof otherworldly spaces aligns along several aspects with wonder’s resistance toknowledge and categorization. In Beowulf , the one consistent thing about themonsters’ habitat is its inconsistency—its spatial indeterminacy, reinforced throughsecretive geography and porous boundaries, and further emphasized by the space’skaleidoscopic and fragmentary reections of diverging sources and traditions.

The declarations of unknowing form a coherent part of this spatial poetics. Theyexplicitly, gnomically state the mystery and instability of monstrous spaces thatelsewhere, through visual and kinaesthetic detail, create their wonder andotherworldliness through map-resistance and unstable geographies. Focusing onthe poem’s geography, Alfred Hiatt observes that the maps used by editors of Beowulf to illustrate the poem—especially those maps with any pretension togeographical accuracy, which attempt to pin the poem’s space onto the geographyof Scandinavia and Great Britain—are misleading about Beowulf ’s spatial poetics(Hiatt 2009 , pp 11–40). Instead of the holistic and visual spaces of twentieth-centurymaps, Hiatt suggests that the poem’s space grows out of ‘‘interrelations of differentpeoples, and the frequent movement between past, present, and future times.’’ Butwhat Hiatt perceptively terms ‘‘the absence of geography in either a modern ormedieval sense from the poem’’ is also a disturbing presence. While the Beowulf-poet does not create a coherent geography, the very incoherence of the poem’s

31 Striking parallels have been adduced on the one hand between the monster mere and the geography of hell as envisioned in Blickling Homily XVI; on the other, between the monster mere and numinouslocales in classical literature. For recent overviews of, and interventions in, the debate, see Orchard ( 2001 ,pp. 132–136), Anlezark ( 2006 ), Magennis ( 2006 , pp. 133–141).


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geography is a sustained and powerful effect, a spatial indeterminacy thatconsistently marks out the habitations of monsters and separates these habitationsfrom human spaces and human life. The four declarations of unknowing, with theirtraditional connections to the metaphysically other—God, heaven, hell, and the

afterlife–are deliberate refusals to anchor the poem’s monsters within a widergeography: statements, indeed, that such anchoring is impossible within the limits of human experience. The declarations of unknowing rmly place the monsters outsidethat metaphorical warm, bright hall of mortal human life, traversed so briey byBede’s sparrow as it ies from darkness into darkness.

Acknowledgments My thanks to Andy Orchard, Antonette diPaolo Healey, Suzanne Conklin Akbari,and Mark Amodio, who generously commented on my dissertation, on which this article is based; toAlexandra Gillespie, whose insightful observations improved the larger argument of which this essayforms a part; and to the anonymous reviewer of this essay, whose comments and queries improved the

clarity of this article.

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Declarations of Unknowing in Beowulf