Chapter 13

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

W ithout question, the m ost controversial yet persistent effort to assign a

generic label to O ld English poem s has been the identification o f ‘elegies’

associated w ith lam ent and longing for a lost past.1 Despite com m on know l­

edge that this designation g rew out o f nineteenth-century nationalism as

part o f an ‘often idealized and rom anticized picture o f pre-Christian German

life’ ,2 and despite repeated admission that the label is technically and histor­

ically inappropriate for the O ld English poem s in question, this generic

distinction has steadily grow n rigid in critical and editorial practice.3 In

part, critics have sidestepped the inherent problem s o f this label b y expand­

ing from ‘elegy ’ as a poetic term to the idea o f an ‘elegiac m ood’ , defined

long ago as ‘the sense o f the vanity o f life, the m elancholy regret for departed

glories’ , and this idea has gradually extended to a general association with

lam ent and nostalgia.4 The odd result is that the m ore doubtful the Old

English genre becam e, the m ore flexible and disparate its definitions, so

that - despite nearly a century o f study and m uch evidence to the contrary -

the nine poem s nam ed as elegies by Ernst Sieper in 1915 are still considered

to determ ine the field: The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin, The Wife’s

Lament, Deor, W ulf and Eadwacer, The Husband’s Message, Resignation and

1 I w ould like to thank the Council for Research o f the University o f Rhode Island for funding that helped enable the research for this essay.

2 G reen (ed.), Old English Elegies, p. 15. See also the overview and critique b y Mora, ‘Invention o f Old English Elegy’ ; and Bloomfield, ‘Elegy and the Elegiac M ode’.

3 H ence anthologies and editions w ith titles such as Martin G reen ’s Old English Elegies, R oy F. Leslie’s Three Old English Elegies and Anne Klinck's Old English Elegies. Both G reen and Klinck provide overview s o f the debate: see G reen’s Introduction, and Klinck, pp. 6, 223-5, and her ‘O ld English Elegies as a G enre’ . Orchard reasserts this generic grouping in 'N ot W hat It W as’ .

4 Ker, Medieval English Literature, p. 51, quoted b y Tim m er in his often-cited ‘Elegiac M ood in O ld English Poetry’, p. 33. T im m er argues that only The Wife’s Lament and W ulf and Eadwacer are true elegies, but that the ‘elegiac m ood’ , which he defines broadly, is often expressed in Old English epic, especially Beowulf (p. 41).

332

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

The Riming Poem.5 A ll o f these poem s appear in the fam ous Exeter Book, the

first anthology o f poetry in English, and together w ith Beowulf (which is

often said to contain elegies and/or to be elegiac) they include the m ost

stu d ied O ld English texts.6

It is no surprise, then, that the ‘elegiac m ood’ attributed to these poem s is

commonly said to characterize O ld English poetry m ore generally, even if the

terms ‘elegy’ or ‘elegiac m ood' are not used. Indeed, Old English literature is

routinely characterized as backward-looking, nostalgic, gloom y and pre­

occupied w ith loss, suffering and contempt for the world. The effects o f this

dominant characterization are rarely addressed: it orients Old English litera­

ture to an imagined Germ anic past, and it encourages a series o f false binaries -

such as Germanic/Christian, oral/literate - which likewise follow the

patterns o f early nationalist and ethnic desire for isolable Germ anic origins.

Recent w ork based upon current theories o f nostalgia tends to nuance these

binaries, but redoubles the insistence upon a fixed backward gaze, suggesting

that the poetry offers 'nostalgia for a past that is unbroken, inhabitable,

articulate and contiguous’ , or that O ld English literature is 'haunted by the

spectre o f a heroic past that is always absent, a tradition that has been created

by the poets and that is continually m ourned by the poetry’ .7 Desire for such a

past is m ore characteristic o f the criticism than the poetry, how ever, and

ultimately the constitution o f a backward-facing Anglo-Saxon England has

facilitated the periodization o f English literary history at the year 1066, as well

as the isolation o f ‘pre-Conquest England’ from accounts o f historical change.8

T o suggest that Anglo-Saxon literature is ‘tinged w ith longing and regret’ , and

implies ‘a connection to an unknowably ancient past, lost to m em ory, but

5 Sieper, Altenglische Elegie, cited in Mora, ‘Invention o f O ld English Elegy’ , p. 130. Green (ed.), Old English Elegies, considers eight o f these poem s (excluding The Riming Poem), and Klinck (ed.), Old English Elegies, covers these nine, as do Greenfield's ‘O ld English Elegies' and Conner’s ‘Old English E legy’ . In Sources and Analogues, Calder and Allen provide a section for ‘The Elegies’ listed as these nine, even though they are clearly sceptical o f the category. In ‘N ot W hat It W as’ Orchard lists these nine as ‘elegies identified’ (pp. 104-8).

6 O f the many discussions o f elegy and Beowulf, see, e.g., Fell, 'Perceptions o f Transience’ , pp. 181-3; Greenfield, ‘Old English Elegies’ , p. 142; Green (ed.). Old English Elegies, p. 15; and Orchard, ‘N ot W hat It W as’ , pp. 108-9.

7 Liuzza, ‘T o w er o f Babel’, p. 14; Trilling, Aesthetics o f Nostalgia, p. 6. M uch recent w ork on nostalgia is m otivated by B oym ’s Future o f Nostalgia. Descriptions o f the past in Old English poem s are sometimes future-oriented in B oym ’s sense. H ow ever, I find the term nostalgia inappropriate for O ld English poetry, both because it entails a focus upon mourning that distorts the poetry, and because it inevitably collapses into the stereotypes I discuss above.

8 O n the positioning o f Anglo-Saxon England as *before history’ and outside the history o f medieval Europe as it pertains to m odernity’ , see Lees and Overing, Before History, Before Difference”.

333

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

enshrined in song’ ,9 is to extend the legacy o f w hat Linda Georgianna aptly

identifies as ‘the ideology o f a transhistorical “Englishness” traceable to the

Anglo-Saxon past and dependent upon an almost m ystical link between

ethnicity, language, and nationality’ .10 It is not a coincidence that the

literature o f a ‘period’ constituted to such ends continues to be described

as suffused w ith ‘elegiac sensibility’ and 'w istful contem plation o f past

glories lost' - despite our know ledge that Anglo-Saxon authors w ere literary

experim enters and innovators w ho, w orkin g in several languages, engaged

and influenced the dynam ic o f Christian literary, historiographical and exegetical thought.11

T he parameters o f this literary history can nonetheless point the way to

rethinking the temporality o f these poems as w ell as their relationship to other

Old English literature. Critics w ho acknowledge the problems o f ‘elegy’ as a

category and yet wish to keep it tend to compensate by defining the genre in

extremely general terms, suggesting, for example, that ‘the central preoccupa­

tion o f the elegies as a group [is] the problem o f man in his time’, or that in the

Old English context ‘elegy’ refers to ‘a broader notion encompassing both

reflective and lyrical elements’ .“ Critics o f all persuasions have noted the strong

affinities o f these poems to other Old English literary 'genres’ , especially the

riddles, wisdom poetry (such as Maxims, Fates of Men) and homilies, as well as to

specific poems not counted in the group, such as The Dream of the Rood, The Order

of the World and the poetic signatures o f Cynewulf. Cutting across this critical

discourse, then, is a persistent attention to the poetry’s concern with tempor­

ality, to the qualities o f its personal, or ‘lyric’ voice, and to the tensions between

this personal voice and enigmatic, gnomic and didactic elements. Also well

recognized is the poetry’s self-conscious references to poetic composition and to

the conditions o f its ow n writing. Taken together, these attributes provide a

useful starting point for approaching these and related poems, which are not

backward-looking, world-rejecting or nostalgic in any sense. Indeed, many of

these poems undertake a study o f just such an attitude, and, with a finely

calibrated sense o f multiple temporalities, place it in quotation marks.

9 Orchard, ‘N ot W hat It W as', p. 101.10 Georgianna, ‘C om ing to Term s', p. 43. Generation o f an ancient, heroic past was also

part o f the larger fabric o f Orientalism: see Frantzen, Desire for Origins', and, generally, Said, Orientalism. Claims for an ancient Germ anic heritage nonetheless continue, or revive. See, for example, J. Harris, ‘Nativist Approach to Beowulf. For an excellent demonstration that the idea o f ‘Germanic legend’ is 'ours, not theirs’ , see Frank, ‘Germanic Legend'.

11 Quotations from Orchard, ‘N ot W hat It W as', pp. 101, 102.12 G reen (ed.), Old English Elegies, p. 23; Klinck, ‘O ld English Elegies as a Genre', p. 129.

334

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

The poem s I consider here study the nature o f tim e and contem plate basic

teinporal questions about narrative strategy and poetic com position: W hat

are the necessary conditions for beginning a narrative (whether personal or

collective)? H o w can one situate a speaking voice in a m oving field (that is, in

transient time)? W hat is the significance o f representing the past (especially

with respect to the future)? Anglo-Saxon poets grappled w ith these questions

in theological and philosophical terms, and some o f their answers - or m ore

precisely the limits to the possibility o f answering - are plotted in the

structure and the lexical interplay o f these poem s, w hich I w ill call 'lyrics’

in the capacious sense o f that term .13 T h e issue o f transience is central to

these poem s, but that is not to say that they therefore reject w orldly

experience or that they lon g nostalgically for a lost past. T o the contrary,

these lyrics offer their representations o f w orldly experience as essential

matter for the meditation necessary to the com position o f a steadfast mind

capable o f discerning and resisting evil, and thus o f achieving salvation. The

hoarding and representation o f such experience offers a means o f countering

transience, acquiring wisdom , and com ing to term s w ith the coursing o f

time and events.

Transience and experience

The Wanderer often stands as em blem atic o f O ld English ‘e legy ’ . T h e speak­

er’s statements that he is an exile w h o has lost his lord and the jo y s o f the

mead hall, his reflection upon m aterial prosperity in the form o f an ubi sunt

catalogue, and his culm inating exhortation to seek rew ard in heaven, have

suggested a pattern o f lam ent and consolation that has been m apped upon

other lyrics. T ogeth er w ith The Seafarer and The Ruin, The Wanderer has long

been an often-anthologized favourite, m uch b eloved for its evocative

poignancy. T h e unusual Riming Poem, b y contrast, w ith its difficult, inno­

vative vocabulary and form , has garnered little attention and is rarely

anthologized. Y et w ithin the Exeter B ook it stands on equal footing w ith

the m ore popular poem s, and according to m ost criticism it generalizes a

conventional ‘elegiac’ them e. Because it seems topically generic, narrates

the full course o f a life, and takes poetic language as one o f its ow n topics,

The Riming Poem offers an unusually rich resource for approaching tem por­

ality in O ld English lyric.

13 See ‘Lyric’ in Preminger and Brogan (eds.), New Princeton Encyclopedia o f Poetry and Poetics.

335

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Like The Wanderer and The Seafarer, The Riming Poem employs a first-person

narrator w ho tells o f joys and sorrows and concludes with a homiletic

exhortation. It differs, however, in its less personal voice and, as its editorial

title indicates, its extravagant rhyme. Pushing language to the limit, The

Riming Poem combines a com plex scheme o f internal and end-line rhyme a

demanding pattern o f alliteration, and, as James Earl phrases it, ‘p layfu lly

erudite obscurantism '.'4 Once considered inscrutable nonsense, this poem is

n o w appreciated for the com plexity o f its technique, understood in the context

o f Latin hym nody, Celtic and Norse verse and Anglo-Latin poetry, each of

which also em ploys exuberant rhym e and/or w ordplay.’5 W hat emerges from

debates about sources and influences is that, considered within its multilingual

literary context, The Riming Poem is not at all bizarre; it only seems so when

judged from the perspective o f O ld English verse interpreted as rigidly tradi­

tional. Its very existence in the Exeter B ook speaks to the literary milieu of

som e Anglo-Saxon poets and their ambitions for the vernacular.

The compass o f The Riming Poem is the compass o f a life. Its first thirty-two-

line section, in past tense, paints the speaker’s aristocratic youth as a profusion

o f wealth and joyfu l but unreflective activity, brim m ing w ith high praise,

prancing horses, swift ships and well-com posed song. This first section then

pivots with a m ore reflective ten-line section evaluating this proud, youthful

state o f mind bolstered by success and friends. The second half shifts suddenly

w ith ‘N u ’ [Now] to the present tense and to the aging speaker’s altered state of

mind: he is distressed, joys have fled, bitterness sets in and death approaches.

Like the first section, this one builds towards an emphasis upon poetic

composition that, as w e w ill see, is also the writing and culmination o f the

speaker’s fife. The final ten lines shift again to reflection, reassessing the

speaker’s dejection and closing w ith a homiletic confirmation o f hope and

glory. In form at The Riming Poem is riddle-like. Its opening w ith ‘Me’, its

am biguous language, and its juxtaposition o f tw o states o f existence are very

similar, for example, to Riddle 26, in w hich the speaker recounts that it was

deprived o f life, its skin converted to vellum and its pages transformed into a

precious book. Shifting at the halfway point to the present tense with ‘N u’ , the

riddle then speaks as a Gospel book and explains its salvific virtues. In both

poem s bodily transformation results in qualitative change relating to

14 Earl, ‘Hisperic Style’, p. 189.15 See Lehmann, ‘Old English “Riming Poem "’ , pp. 437-41; 'Introduction' to Macrae-

Gibson (ed.), Riming Poem; Earl, ’Hisperic Style’ , pp. 187-91; Klinck (ed.), Old English Elegies, pp. 40-1. Lehmann, Macrae-Gibson and Earl offer translations; Earl gives the fullest account o f the poem ’s artful irregularities.

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

salvation - in The Riming Poem a change in state o f mind, in the riddle a change

in spiritual value - and in both it is reflection upon the materiality o f writing

that creates an T sustainable across multiple states o f being, and across time,

'phis attention to writing and to the generation o f the poem ’s ow n voice is one

tneans o f validating and supporting the shift, as I explain below , from personal

narrative to com m unal lesson.

From the start The Riming Poem calls attention to issues o f language and

narrative, both by disrupting lexical and grammatical expectations, and b y

addressing the temporal problem o f narrative beginning. Its opening lines

intertwine the creation o f the universe w ith the birth o f the speaker:

Me lifes onlah se ]ois leoht onwrahond pæt torhte geteoh, tillice onwrah. (1-2)

Here are tw o translations:

[My life He lent who light insent,Founded the firmament with fair intent.]

[To me he offered life who showed forth the light, showed it forth in excellence and shaped its brilliance.]16

These translations diverge because they take different approaches to the play

o f geteoh’ , w hich could be either a noun meaning ‘matter, material’ or a verb

from geteon [to draw forth, produce].17 Thus ‘geteoh’ references the impossi­

bility o f pure beginning b y capturing stasis and m ovem ent in a single word.

This tension betw een substantive form and verbal action mimics the temporal

paradox (or mystery) o f G od ’s generative word: G od is atemporal and

unchanging, yet w ith Creation initiates time and change. Beginning requires

difference and m ovem ent, hence transience.18 The relation o f beginning and

transience is underscored in The Riming Poem’s first line w ith ‘onlah’ [lent],

which is cognate w ith lœne [on loan], the most com m on w ord in O ld English

for fleeting time and the temporariness o f worldly things.19 The opening ‘Me

16 Quotations o f the Old English are from M uir (ed.), Exeter Anthology, by line number. Unless otherwise noted, translations are m y own. Translations above are by Earl, 'Hisperic Style', p. 188, and Macrae-Gibson (ed.), Riming Poem, p. 31. Translations o f The Riming Poem vary widely, in part because o f its ambiguities, and in part because it is often suspected o f textual corruption and thus frequently, but differently, emended.

17 For discussion o f geteoh', see Macrae-Gibson (ed.), Riming Poem, p. 38; and Muir (ed.), Exeter Anthology, vol. 11, pp. 570-1.

18 The Advent Lyrics, which open the Exeter Book, similarly focus upon the m ystery o f beginning, exemplified b y the problem o f Christ’s being co-etem al with, yet bom of, G od the father, something ‘no man under the sky’ can explain. See especially Advent Lyrics, in M uir (ed.), Exeter Anthology, vol. 1, pp. 214-23.

19 See Fell, ‘Perceptions o f Transience’ for extensive discussion o f Irene.

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

lifes onlah’ [To me he loaned life] thus recognizes mortality - the end is

already in the beginning - but rather than mourning, the poem ultimately

celebrates the space o f life.

The m om ent o f birth/creation in the first line o f The Riming Poem arcs

across its narrative, and connects through the use o f an envelope pattern to the

speaker’s im pending death in line 70, the only other line in the poem to begin

w ith ‘M e’. Here, the speaker turns to the digging o f his grave:

M e ¡3set w y r d gew aef, o n d g e h w y r f t fo rg e a f,

jjaet ic g r o fe graef, o n d f>aet g r im m e g ra sf

fle a n flaesc n e m seg. (zo -za )

[F o r m e wyrd w o v e th is, a n d g ra n te d th is co u rse

th a t I e n -g r a v e a g r a v e a n d th a t g r im g r a v e (o r sty lu s)

fle sh c a n n o t fle e .]20

This passage explicitly connects the writing o f the poem to the life and body of

the speaker, but inverts their temporal trajectories. The grave-digging is a

scene o f engraving or writing - simultaneously the etching away o f the human

body and the writing o f the poem . Editors usually em end the second 'grasf in

line 71 to ‘scrsef [cave] to avoid repetition. But the poet frequently repeats

words, and in fact does so in the poem ’s opening tw o lines (each ending in

‘onwrah’), to which these lines allude. This emendation, m oreover, cuts short

the sustained onom atopoeia o f alliterating gr words as they grate deeper and

deeper, and it eliminates part o f the play on grafan [to dig/engrave] and grcef

[grave/stylus].“ The im age o f a stylus carving out a grave as it carves into

flesh (the flesh both o f the page and o f the speaker, whose life becom es the

poem ) w ell suits the lines to follow, which describe a w orm eating, batding,

piercing the dead body: ‘ o {j jaaet beo]D Jaa ban an’ [77; until there is bone,

alone’].“ The end o f the carving is the ending o f the life story, which,

20 For reasons explained below , I leave ‘w yrd ' untranslated.21 For words from A to G, see DOE; from H to Y, see Bosworth-Toller. For the many

references throughout The Riming Poem to w riting and books, see Earl, 'Hisperic Style', pp. 192-3.

22 The half-line 'an' is usually considered defective, and hypothetical text supplied. H ow ever, I agree w ith Macrae-Gibson that ‘this representation o f the final reduced state o f man, beyond even the devouring worm s, b y a half-line reduced almost to nothing, i f indeed a scribal error, must b e one o f the happiest in the history o f poetry’ (Riming Poem, p. 54). I therefore om it M uir’s supplied 'gebrosnad on’ . Focus on the body as food for w orm s connects this poem w ith the ‘Soul and Body’ poem s, although it differs from them in tone and in the unity o f material and spiritual (body and spirit) in this poem 's ‘m e’ .

338

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

p aradoxically, is now profuse and full on the flesh o f the page, as open to the

b o o k w o rm as to the hungry eye.23

I This written life - or m ore precisely the gathered and figured experience o f

a life - provides the foundation for contemplating m ortality as w ell as its

relationship to fame. O nly w hen the life is complete, literally taken to the

point o f decomposition until it has reached a point o f singularity with ‘an’

[alone], does the poem take a broader perspective on the m om ent o f death and

the composition o f ‘fame’ :

ond aet nyhstan nan nefne se neda tanbalawun her gehloten. Ne bip hlisa adroren. (78-9)

[and at the last, unless the necessary be evilnothing ruinous has happened here; nor is fame perished.]24

Unless the necessity o f death is itself an evil (and the implication is that it is

not), the body dies but fame stands fast; in fact, death opens the very

possibility o f fame and o f the poetry that celebrates it - as w e w ill also see

in The Wanderer and The Seafarer.

At this point, too, The Riming Poem shifts to the plural w ith ‘U ton’ [Let us]

for a closing exhortation resem bling those o f the Old English homilies. The

relation betw een lyric and hom ily turns on exemplarity, the notion that a

singular experience can offer a general lesson, one that can be assimilated by

others and endure over time. T h e singular becom es generalized through

‘fame’ , which marks, as Roy Liuzza observes, 'the relationship between

culture and tim e’ .25 Saints and heroes are the most obvious exem plary figures,

but Old English lyrics suggest that exemplarity is m ore w idely achievable,

particularly as, or through, poetry. The lyrical epilogues and runic signatures

of the poet ‘C yn ew u lf, for example, link the exem plary lives o f saints to

riddlic versions o f the poet’s ow n nam e.26 In each case, C yn ew u lf comments

upon his w riting process, his didactic purpose, and his hope for salvation.

Likewise, The Riming Poem and m any other lyrics address poetry’s role in

negotiating the difference betw een singular experience and general lesson

through their explicit reflections upon poetic composition and/or writing, the

means o f representation by w hich the singular is made accessible to thought.

23 Exeter Book Riddle 47 refers w ith irony to a bookw orm ’s ability to ingest a holy book, yet receive no benefit from it.

24 I have rejected Muir’s emendation o f the manuscript’s 'her' to ‘paer’ .25 Liuzza, ‘Beowulf. Monuments, M em ory, H istory', p. 95. Liuzza is here speaking o f dom

[fame] in the poetry.26 ’C y n e w u lf is so called for the runic signatures w oven into the epilogues o f four poems:

Fates o f the Apostles, Elene, Christ II and Juliana.

339

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Ultimately, in The Riming Poem w orldly experience is not rejected- jt

becom es a poem that testifies to 'hlisa' [fame, glory], and is the basis of

thinking one’s ow n existence in time and in the face o f death. 'H er th

poem s insists, 'sindon miltsa blisse’ [82b; Here are the joys o f mercy] - that is

here in contemplating the experience o f a life, and here in this poem .27 Far from

looking backward and confirming lament, the poem offers its ow n writing as

the reverse o f a life to death process, as testimony to the potential honour of a

life and thus the possibility o f salvation. M ost editors em end the poem 's ‘her

in line 82 to ‘p x r , assuming that in a Christian exhortation joys can only be

heavenly. But in The Riming Poem and even m ore explicitly in The Wanderer

meditation upon w orldly experience is precisely w hat allows for the steadfast­ness o f mind necessary to attain salvation.

The experience contem plated in The Riming Poem m ust be considered as

‘experience’ in the strong sense o f the w ord as it relates to ‘experim ent’ - it

does not confirm or replicate past form s, b u t cuts its ow n passage, as a trial

or an event. Experience in this sense is directly related to the issue o f earthly

transience, a fundam ental concern o f O ld English poetry, and it is thus

w orth considering in som e detail. Experience as I am discussing it here

happens in ‘real tim e’ , so to speak; it is b y definition im possible to predict,

fully prepare for, or control. If w e w ere to have full control over a situation,

nothing could actually happen: w e w o u ld sim ply repeat past determina­

tions. By definition, then, experience is constituted precisely b y what

exceeds control, intention, and prognostication. For this reason, too, experi­

ence cannot be repeated - it can only ever b e happening. The sense that the

singularity o f a particular hum an life is directly tied to such experience,

necessarily transient and never fu lly controlled or replicated, is w hat con­

nects the po etry ’s focus upon transience to its concern w ith wyrd, which is

usually translated as ‘fate’ even though the sense o f predeterm ination often

associated w ith ‘fate’ is n ot suitable for wyrd. As B. J. T im m er observed long

ago, wyrd usually glosses n ot Latin fatum but fortuna ‘to express “that which

happens to us in our life,” the events o f our lot, life ’ .28 I w ill discuss wyrd

27 N ote the similarity to the opening ‘H er’ o f Anglo-Saxon Chronide entries, which is likewise spatio-temporal.

28 Tim m er, 'W yrd in Anglo-Saxon Prose and Poetry’ , p. 129. H e is here discussing Alfred’s translation o f Boethius, but his general argument and examples sustain the sense of wyrd as ‘event, lot, that w hich happens’ . W hile I do not agree w ith all o f Tim m er’s condusions, his survey is thorough and useful. In their edition o f The Wanderer, Dunning and Bliss observe that 'Latin fatum is the neuter past partidple o f fari "speak” ; wyrd is related to the stem o f weordan "becom e". W hereas “Fate” is “what has been spoken" (by som e superior power), wyrd is by etym ology m erely “w hat comes to pass’" (pp. 71-2).

340

further b elo w w ith respect to individual poem s, b u t for n o w w ill simply

Oote that wyrd is never reducible to m ere chance or accident any m ore than

•t ¡5 to predeterm ination. N or is wyrd meaningless; rather, it is irresolvable

{0 structures that generate meaning. It identifies w hat is specific to a

particular life, a singular path o f experience, and ultim ately the specificity

0f that life's ending in death.poems such as The Riming Poem and The Wanderer ponder the nature o f

transience and wyrd together w ith their relationship to the inevitability o f

death, but this is not to say that they either lament the w orld ’s passing or

reject the w orld in contemptus mundi fashion. T o the contrary, these poems

elaborate a tem porality that resists, or w orks to suspend the m ovem ent of,

transient time b y gathering the experience o f a life, like a hoard, and taking it

as the substance o f meditation. N ever immediately graspable or presentable,

experience can only be figured in language retrospectively, and its expres­

sion in language provides the substance for meditation even as it comprises

the poem. M nem onic but not nostalgic, such m editation offers a means for

grasping tim e in its transitoriness, for thinking the disappearance o f one’s

own experience as it happens, and for registering it in a w a y that yields

wisdom. As w e w ill see, The Wanderer quite explicitly discusses this tem poral

relation; The Riming Poem, on the other hand, performs it. Its constant rhym e

and quick, regular m etre speed the poem forward, yet this m ovem ent is

resisted b y the p oem ’s arresting w ordplay and contorted syntax, generating

tension betw een the rushing m ovem ent o f transient tim e and the suspense

of that m ovem ent. The W ife’s Lament and W ulf and Eadwacer, discussed

further below , likew ise perform experience - w ith W ulf and Eadwacer, for

instance, em phasizing separation w ith a series o f isolated half-lines.

Similarly, The Riming Poem’ s language does not sim ply narrate but rhythm i­

cally and onom atopoeically perform s m oods and m otions - w hether the

joyful prancing o f horses, the sw ift skim m ing o f a ship, or the solemn

digging o f a grave. The poem thus enacts the very life experience about

which it tells, even as it em erges as poetic experience for its readers.

Hoarding and meditation

The opening o f The Wanderer raises all the issues o f experience, singularity,

wyrd and tem porality that I have discussed thus far, and that are also important

to poems such as The Seafarer, The Dream o f the Rood and The Ruin. I therefore

consider it in som e detail:

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

341

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Oft him anhaga are gebided, memdes miltse, jaeah jae he modcearig geond lagulade longe sceolde hreran mid hondum hrimcealde sae, wadan wraedastas - wyrd bid ful ared.

[Often the singular man experiences favour, the mercy o f the lord, even though anxious in spirit he must for a long while across the water-ways stir with his hands the ice-cold sea, traverse paths o f exile; wyrd is greatly ared.]

As often noted, the verb gebidan (line i) ranges in sense from 'remain, stay

dwell; wait, await’ to ‘expect; experience, endure’ , and thus seems to raise

difficulties for interpretation w ith regard to tem porality.29 Does the ‘anhaga’

w ait for, or expect, ‘are’ (honour, favour, m ercy, property)? O r does he

already dwell in/experience ‘are’?30 I suggest that i f w e consider gebidan in

terms o f ‘experience’ as I discuss it above, its various senses are not at odds

here. T o dwell or remain, as in m odem English ‘abide’ , is never a condition of

stasis; it is always open to contingencies, to em erging conditions, to experi­

ence as it happens. Thus ‘to abide’ is also to ‘bide one’s tim e’ , to wait, to

remain expectant. The point is not that there are only contingendes, that there

is no stability or control, but rather that dwelling in honour, favour or mercy is

never static: it m ust necessarily be a condition o f expectation, open to the

future. The verb gebidan indicates predsely this open temporality o f experi­

ence, abiding in expectation.

It is possible, o f course, to guard against contingency, to maximize safety by

living cautiously like the The Seafarer’s land-dweller, ‘bealosijja hwon, / wlonc

ond wingal’ [28b-9a; w ith few grievous journeys, proud and wine-flushed], in

a state o f unreflective ignorance similar to that described in the first half o f The

Riming Poem. The land-dweller thus does not know ‘hwaet ¡Da sume dreogaS /

¡De ¡Da wrtedastas widost lecgaQ’ [56b—7; w hat those perform (or endure),

those w ho furthest traverse the paths o f exile]. Those most exposed to and

reflective upon experience, like the speaker o f The Wanderer, or those who

29 O n gebidan, in addition to DOE, see Dunning and Bliss (eds.), Wanderer, pp. 41-2, and M uir (ed.), Exeter Anthology, vol. 11, p. 503, and citations therein.

30 W hether ‘are’ refers to ‘Christian’ grace or m ercy, or to the favour o f a 'secular' lord, has been a matter o f debate. The debate itself makes little sense, since it has long been obvious that the interchange o f vocabulary referring to G od ’s pow er and that o f aristocratic lordship sustains and legitimizes both. For discussion, see Orchard, ‘Re­reading The Wanderer’ .

342

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

deliberately risk such exposure, like the speaker o f The Seafarer, best exemplify

the connection betw een experience and the singularity o f a life. Thus it is an

‘anhaga’ w ho is the subject o f experience in The Wanderer. Usually translated

as ‘solitary being’, the poetic w ord ‘anhaga’ references figures w ho are excep­

tional, singular in thought and resolve - Andreas as he proves invulnerable to

the dem ons’ attack, the Phoenix as it flies o ff from the crowd, B eow ulf as he

returns alone across the w ater after the death o f H ygelac (in a passage that

emphasizes B eo w u lfs repeated risk-taking and exceptional courage).31 In

contrast to the profuse and noisy w orld o f The Seafarer’s land-dweller, the

locus o f the wise speakers in The Wanderer and The Seafarer is the em pty sea, so

that, as Patricia Dailey suggests: ‘As an exterior that returns as the most

interior o f spaces, it marks limits in space and limits within a su b ject. . . and

like the space o f the poem, it suspends the time o f realities and the space

associated w ith it.’32 The Wanderer’s ‘anhaga’, like the speakers o f The Seafarer,

The Wife’s Lament, W ulf and Eadwacer and even Widsith, lives as an exile

maximally exposed to experience, his singularity intensified, shimmering as

poetry.

The singularity o f the ‘anhaga’ links to the final clause o f this opening

passage: ‘w yrd bid ful ared’ . T h e form ‘ared’ (alternative spelling arced) is

not securely attested, but it derives in any case from the verb arcedan, w hich

ranges in sense from ‘arrange, settle, determ ine’ to ‘interpret, explain,

solve’ . Based on the first sense, this line is usually rendered 'fate is w holly

inexorable’ or ‘ (his) fate is fu lly determ ined’ .33 But arcedan is cognate w ith

reed - ‘counsel’ or ‘w isdom ’ - and its connotation ‘to determ ine’ entails

com ing to a determ ination b y virtue o f careful thought and interpretation.

According to this sense, the action o f ‘ared’ can be attributed to the

‘anhaga’ , w hose singularity and experience enable him to com e to a w ise

determination about wyrd. Similarly, the related verb aredan has the sense

o f 'to discover, find’ as w ell as ‘to m ake ready, prepare, com pose (one’s

mind, thoughts)’ . Thus in the O ld English version o f B oethius’ Consolation of

Philosophy, W isdom states: ‘A c ic ondraede J?aet ic J>e laede hidres Jridres on jta

pajjas o f j)inum w ege, Ipxt 5u ne maege eft jrinne w eg aredian’ [But I fear

that I w ou ld lead you hither and thither onto those paths aw ay from yo u r

31 For extended discussion o f ’anhaga’ /'anhoga’ , see Dunning and Bliss (eds.), Wanderer, pp. 37-40.

32 P. Dailey, ‘Questions o f D w elling’, pp. 191-2.33 See, e.g., Mitchell and Robinson (eds.), Guide to Old English, p. 283; Muir (ed.), Exeter

Anthology, vol. n, p. 503; and Dunning and Bliss (eds.), Wanderer, p. 72. For thorough discussion, see Griffith, 'Wyrd hid fu l arced’ .

343

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

w ay, so that yo u m ight n ot again figure out y o u r w ay].34 In the prose

preface to Pastoral Care, arcedan is the verb A lfred tw ice uses to describe

the ability to understand w ritten English (‘Englisc gew rit araeden’),35 and in

Apollonius o f Tyre, arcedan consistently refers to w ise interpretation:

Apollonius receives the riddle from Antiochus, contem plates it, and ‘mid

G odes fultum e he J>aet sod araedde’ [with G od ’s help he interpreted the

truth].36 A lthough rare in the poetry, arcedan there consistently refers to

understanding and interpretation: Daniel, for instance, could ‘bocstafas /

araedde and arehte’ [decipher and interpret the w riting].37 For the ‘anhaga’

o f The Wanderer, ‘w yrd bid fill ared’ does not confirm an inevitable or

predeterm ined fate, w hich in any case, as M ark G riffith notes, w ou ld suit

neither the context w ithin the poem nor Christian doctrine.38 Rather, I

suggest, this clause references the relation b etw een the ‘anhaga’s excep­

tional status and his grasp o f wyrd; by virtue o f his experience and wisdom,

he has com e to term s w ith wyrd, and can decipher w hat to others m ay seem

m ysterious, like a riddle. I f Boethius’ Consolation o f Philosophy is at w ork in

this poem , as often suggested, the ‘anhaga’ is similar to the w ise m an who

keeps earthly things in perspective and thereby m axim izes his free w ill. For

him wyrd is ‘determ ined’ only in the sense that he has com e to a determ i­

nation regarding the events o f life, and the depth o f his understanding

enables him to becom e ‘snottor on m ode’ [m a; w ise in mind] - a man

able to convert experience into wisdom .

The Wanderer insists that such conversion o f experience into w isdom is

possible only i f one gathers the experience o f a life, like a hoard, and takes it

as the substance o f m editation.39 H ere and throughout m uch O ld English

poetry, the figure o f the hoard corresponds to a repository o f thoughts and

em otions, com parable to a poetic ‘w ord-hoard’ , as the speaker o f The

Wanderer em phasizes after he declares his solitude:

34 See Godden and Irvine (eds. and trans.), Old English Boethius, vol. i, p. 372, lines 82-4.35 Alfred, Pastoral Care, vol. 1, p. 7, lines 13, 17.36 Goolden (ed.), Apollonius o f Tyre, iv.19.37 Daniel, lines 739b-4oa in Krapp (ed.), Vercelli Book. Cf. ‘N e m ihton araedan runcraeftige

m en / engles aerendbec’ [733-48; nor could m en skilled in mysteries understand the angel’s message]. Th e verb aredan is also rare in the poetry, but w hen used it consist­ently means ‘to discover’ .

38 Griffith, 'Wyrd bid fid arced’ , pp. 148-9. Griffith suggests the translation ‘one’s lot is highly ordered’ , w hich for him indicates that one’s lot is not com pletely determined. I have follow ed his finding that ‘fu l’ is an intensifier, rather than an adverb m eaning ‘fully’ . In considering the connotations o f arcedan, Griffith mentions but dismisses, w ith little explanation, the sense ‘to decipher’ as found in Daniel, line 146.

39. The Wanderer has long been understood as addressing the meditative process. See the discussion in Dunning and Bliss (eds.), Wanderer, pp. 80-1.

344

Ic to soJ>e wat Jjset bi]a in eorle indryhten jjeaw Jsaet he his ferblocan fteste binde, healde his hordcofan, hycge swa he wille.Ne maeg werig mod wyrde wiSstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.Fordon domgeome dreorigne oftin hyra breostcofan bindad fteste. (nb-18)

[I know in truth that for a noble man it is a virtuous practice that he bind fast his thought-enclosure, guard his hoard-coffer, think as he will.The weary mind cannot withstand wyrd, nor can a disturbed mind offer help.Therefore those eager for fame often bind sorrow fast within the breast-chamber.]

The ceaseless churning o f wyrd can overw helm the w eary or disturbed mind,

the mind that simply allows itself to be pushed along w ith the flow o f events,

never able to gather itself, to reflect or meditate. Against this possibility, those

eager for fame hoard their experiences, which register here as emotions, in

the ‘ferblocan’ , ‘hordcofan’ or ‘breostcofan’ - all kennings for the breast as the

locus o f thought.40 M alcolm Godden suggests that both The Wanderer and The

Seafarer distinguish between the mind as an agent o f em otion and an ‘I’ that is

the subject or agent o f thinking, and that the mind is an ‘inner s e lf that the

f ‘conscious self cannot penetrate’ but m ust hold captive.41 The mental pro­

cesses described in the poetry are clearer and less dichotom ous than this,

however, if w e consider them in terms o f temporality: the mind experiences

thoughts and emotions in transient time, and these thoughts and emotions are

not graspable in themselves; rem em bering (thus representing) and reflecting

upon such experience is what constitutes the ‘I’ w ho speaks the poem and w ho

understands the need for hoarding and meditation. Such binding or hoarding

of experience contrasts w ith - indeed counteracts - the binding nature o f

sorrow (‘sorg’ , 39-40), w hich the speaker treats as a form o f turbulence that,

like binding w aves (‘wajoema gebind’ , 57), can overw helm or oppress an

unfortified mind.

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

40 See Jager, ‘Speech and the Chest’ . For analysis that considers poetic terms for ‘mind’ in the context o f w ork by Alcuin, Alfred and Ailfric, see Godden, 'Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’; see also Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies.

41 Godden, 'Anglo-Saxons on the M ind’ , p. 292.

345

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

H olding silent, then, is not a m atter o f forced isolation or fearing reprisal,

as Nicholas H ow e has suggested.42 Rather, it is a position o f strength, as the

p oem ’s closing exhorts: ‘ne sceal nsefre his torn to rycene / beorn o f his

breostum acyjaan, nemjae he aer ¡aa bote cunne’ [ii2b-i3; a man m ust never

too quickly declare his g rie f from w ithin his breast, unless he know s the

rem edy beforehand]. T he w ord hot connotes architectural restoration as well

as 'rem edy’ / ‘cure’ , suggesting, like The Riming Poem, m ovem ent towards a

position o f restorative w isdom analogous to the secure repository o f a

hoard - a thought-hoard as w ell as a word-hoard. The hoard m ust be

unlocked, o f course, i f there is to b e poetry, pedagogy and exemplarity,

b u t these can only be legitim ate after lon g contem plation and attainment o f

w isdom . Thus in the lyric epilogue to Elene, C yn ew u lf relates that he is old

and frail, and that he w orked his poetic craft through long nights o f study

and struggle, until G od granted him a glorious gift and 'bancofan onband,

breostlocan onwand, / leoQucrasft onleac’ [1249-503; unbound m y bone-

chamber, unfastened m y breast-enclosure, unlocked the art o f poetry ’]. Such

unlocking o f the hoard is both the becom ing o f the poem and the foundation

o f curative w isdom .

T w o lyrics that are instructive for the w ay they do not offer them selves in

term s o f hoarding and do not m ove from singular experience to general

lesson are The W ife’s Lament and W ulf and Eadwacer, both dramatic m ono­

logues in a w om an ’s vo ice.43 The W ife’s Lament narrates a story o f forced

separation and exile that continues into the present, and as she sits weeping,

the poem gives form to her grief. Like the speaker o f The Wanderer she tells

o f exile and a sea journey, yet her story remains personal, and the familiar

m etaphors o f binding and enclosure maintain a strong literal sense: she is

confined to an ‘eordscraefe’ [28, 36; earth-cave], and her m isery in harsh

surroundings prevents any respite from the longing that grips her. The

poem ’s closing resonates w ith early sections o f The Wanderer, w hich empha­

size the binding nature o f sorrow:

A scyle geong mon wesan geomormod, heard heortan gejioht, swylce habban sceal blijje gebaero, eac {ion breostceare,sinsorgna gedreag . . . (42—5a)

42 N. H ow e, 'Landscape o f Anglo-Saxon England', pp. 103-4. His suggestion that the seascape poetically expresses the withheld thoughts, how ever, is productive.

43 The speakers’ gender is indicated b y several feminine inflections. See Klinck (ed.). Old English Elegies, pp. 47-54.

346

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

[Ever must the young man be mournful in mind, hard-hearted in thought, just as he must have a cheerful demeanour, as well as an anxious mind continuous troubles . . .]M

Yet this poem offers no reflective distance from such grief, and its ending with

the w ord 'abidan’ emphasizes the open-ended, potentially overwhelm ing

aspect o f experience: 'W a bid {jam {je sceal / o f langojae leofes abidan’

[52b-3; W oefu l it is for those who, in longing, m ust await a loved one].

T he enigmatic W ulf and Eadwacer likewise remains focused on the pain o f

separation, reinforced by the repeated half-line 'Ungelice is us’ [3, 8; It is

different for us] which, w ithout an accompanying b-verse, both states and

performs the poem ’s sense o f pain and isolation. The speakers o f these two

poems refer to their matter as ‘giedd’ [riddle, song], and their lyrics comprise a

sheer outpouring o f sorrow and unresolved separation - there is no turn to

reflection upon experience, no shift to the plural, and no discussion o f their

own writing, with the telling exception o f W ulf and Eadwacer’s concluding

suggestion that it is not composed, its parts never joined: ‘baet m on ea{je

tosliteb {jaette naefre gesom nad waes - / uncer giedd geador’ [18-19; That may

easily be tom apart w hich was never united - our song together]. These

plangent lyrics certainly evoke empathy for the experience they express, but

they do not offer themselves as exemplary: they remain singular. N ot coinci­

dentally, these are tw o o f the Old English poem s that have remained most

mysterious to critics.

Composition, imagination, representation

The idea that binding one’s thoughts is a prerequisite for meditation and thus

a sound mind has a striking parallel in G regory I’s w ell-known Regula pastor-

alis, translated into English b y King Alfred, and this passage helps to clarify just

what is at stake in The Wanderer. H ere, the mind o f one w ho cannot remain

silent flows aw ay from itself like water, unable to return. It thus loses itself and

becom es vulnerable,

forbaembe hit [mod] bib todaeled on to monigfealda spraeca, suelce he self hine selfne ute betyne from baere smeaunga his agnes ingebonces, ond sua nacodne hine selfne eowige to wundigeanne his feondum, forbaembe he ne bib belocen mid nanum gehieldum nanes faestenes. Swa hit awriten is on

44 These notoriously ambiguous lines have been interpreted both as empathetic descrip­tion and vengeful curse. See Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems, pp. 149-207.

347

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Salomonnes cwidum Same se mon se Se ne maeg his tungan gehealdan sie gelicost openre byrig, Saere Se mid nane wealle ne bid ymbworht.

[because it [the mind] is divided into too much diverse speaking, as if he had shut himself out from the meditation of his own mind, and so exposed himself naked to the wounds of his foes, because he is not enclosed in the hold o f a fortress. As it is written in the proverbs o f Solomon, the man who cannot hold his tongue is most like an unprotected city, with no surrounding walls.]45

Counterintuitively, this passage suggests that those w h o do not w all in their

thoughts and feelings are shut out from their ow n minds. The failure to create

a ferdlocan, or ‘thought-enclosure’ , is itself a form o f closure, a preclusion of

self-reflection that in turn leaves one open and vulnerable.

This association o f humans and walls has m any ancient antecedents, and as

Edward Irving observes, it suffuses Old English poetry. In The Seafarer and The

Wife’s Lament the image o f a storm battering the sea-wall interchanges with

the emotional strain o f events, and in The Wanderer and The Ruin this continual

stress is in tension w ith the binding and bound nature o f walls.46 In The Ruin,

the process o f binding w ith rings and w ire refers am biguously both to the

creative mind and to the m aking o f a wall, w hich is bound together w ith metal

strips, or rings. I offer a rather literal translation in order to keep the ambi­

guities visible:

mod mo[nade m]yne swiftne gebrsegdhwastred in hringas, hygerof gebondweallwalan wirum wundrum togaeadre.47 (18-20)

[the astute mind urged a swift purpose,firm in rings the resolute mind boundwall supports with wires wondrously together.]

T he act o f binding necessary for creating a w ondrous structure corresponds to

the act o f binding that constitutes a mind stable enough to generate wisdom,

and to the binding o f words that constitutes p o e try 48 Here, binding is

creativity. M oreover, as Ruth W ehlau points out, this creative binding o f

45 Alfred, Pastoral Care, vol. 1, p. 277, lines 14-21, contractions expanded; text slightly emended. For m ore extended discussion o f this passage, see K. Davis, 'Time, M em ory, and the W ord H oard’ (forthcoming).

46 Irving, Jr/Image and M eaning in the Elegies’ .47 Line 18 is damaged and weallwala is otherwise unattested. For discussion, see Muir (ed.),

Exeter Anthology, vol. n, p. 702; and Klinck (ed.), Old English Elegies, pp. 214-15.48 Th e similar descriptions for binding walls and binding poetic words are often noted.

Both Irving, Jr (‘Image and Meaning’) and P. Dailey ('Questions o f D w elling’) reference it in proximity to this passage.

Old English lyrics: a poetics of experience

walls and poetry also parallels the act o f G od’s creation.49 For example, The

Order o f the World - a little-studied lyric about the writing o f poetry - suggests

that a thoughtful man should inquire about the m ystery o f creation, and

‘bewriten in gewitte wordhordes craeft, / festnian ferSsefan, Jaencan for6

teala’ [19-20; write in his mind the craft o f the word-hoard, fasten his thought,

think forth well]. Such passages, not infrequent in Old English lyric, em pha­

size that the mind, like a poem , is com posed - bound and fabricated, as is

a wall.This association o f m ind and poem connects directly to the lyrics’ fre­

quent references to the relationship b etw een transience and a solitary being.

As I have suggested, the singularity o f each hum an life - the particular events

o f a life, or wyrd - lodges in experience, and yet this experience, transient by

nature and thus never graspable as present, exists only as recalled and

represented. For this reason, a viable mind relies upon representation o f

that w hich is always disappearing, and this representation in turn calls

upon language and the im aginative faculties that generate poetry. The

Wanderer recounts m em ories o f people, relationships and things as the

matter for ‘m editating deeply’ ('deope geondpenceQ’ , 89b) and becom ing

'wise in m ind’ ('ffod in fer8e’ , 90a), but it also emphasizes, as does The

Seafarer, that these m nem onic im ages are the w o rk o f w hat w e w ould call

imagination.50 The Seafarer fam ously places im aginative capacity and rhet­

orical play at the centre o f the speaker’s account o f his solitary life at sea,

showcasing the m ind’s ability to think m etaphorically, to put one thing in

the place o f another:

par ic ne gehyrde butan hlimman sae,iscaldne wseg. Hwilum ylfete songdyde ic me to gomene ganetes hleopor,ond huilpan sweg fore hleahtor were,maew singende fore medodrince. (18-22)

[There I heard nothing except the roar o f the sea, the ice-cold way. Sometimes the swan’s song I made into my amusement, the gannet's cry and the curlew's call in place o f the laughter o f men, the singing o f a gull in place of mead-drink.]

49 W ehlau, 'Riddle of Creation’ , esp. pp. 33-7.50 For discussion o f imagination in these poem s and their relation to Latin passages by

Alcuin and Am brose on the m obility o f the faculty called mens or animus, see Clemoes, 'Mens absentia cogitans’ .

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Such imaginative play seems but a preparatory exercise for the excursion in

the centre o f the poem, w hich reverses the anthropomorphizing o f birds as the

speaker’s ow n spirit takes flight:

Forjson nu min hyge hweorfeô ofer hrejoerlocan,min modsefa mid mereflodeofer hwæles efiel hweorfeô wide,eorjsan sceatas, cymeô eft to megifre ond grædig, gielleô anfloga,hweteô on waelweg hrejser unweamumofer holma gelagu. (58-64a)

[And so now my spirit circles above its breast-enclosure,my mind together with the sea’s flowroams widely across the whale’s realm,to the ends o f the earth, comes back again to meravenous and greedy, the lone-flier calls out,urges the spirit hastily along the whale’s wayover the sea-flood.]

T he fruit o f these excursions, o f course, is the matter o f the poem - its

evocative survey o f dazzling cities and blossom ing groves, its intense descrip­

tion o f fierce cold and icy storms, its traversal across tim e to the Roman and

other ancient empires, and their decline.51 The poem ’s affirmation o f imagin­

ative pow er validates the ‘greedy’ spirit's mastery o f this expanse, a w orld o f

historical, geographical and emotional experience similar to the complete

account o f a life in The Riming Poem. Negotiating betw een singular experience

and the general lessons o f hom ily, this affirmation and this historical sweep

underwrite the speaker’s shift to the plural with ‘Uton’ [Let us] for the closing

exhortation.

Here too, as in The Riming Poem, The Seafarer reaches for completeness by

tracing things to their very ends - the decline o f empires, the ways people die,

and (in the future) the end o f the world. Again like The Riming Poem, but also

like the Old English Soul and Body poems, the speaker thinks beyond death in

order to contemplate life:

Ne mæg him jponne se flæschoma, [sonne him pæt feorg losaô ne swete forswelgan ne sar gefelan,ne hond onhreran ne mid hyge jsencan. (94-6)

51 The mention o f 'caseras' [Caesars] in line 82 clearly references Roman and/ or other ancient imperial powers, the narrative o f which w ould have been familiar from Orosius’ History Against the Pagans or the Alfredian translation o f it, as w ell as from works b y Bede and Isidore o f Seville.

350

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

[Then his body will not be able, when it loses its life, to swallow sweet things, nor feel pain, nor move a hand, nor think with the mind.]

Imagining even the end o f imagining, this passage attempts completeness in a

manner akin to negative theology. Through its effort to grasp and represent

the w hole o f a life as w ell as its parallel in the w hole o f creation, The Seafarer,

like so m any other Old English lyrics, not only gathers experience as the

matter for meditation, but also offers its ow n com position as a means o f

contemplating mortality and its relationship to fame. The body, like experi­

ence, is transitory, and com ing to terms w ith this transience on earth requires

the accumulation o f deeds that can be considered as exem plary and w ill

therefore endure as praise am ong those living afterwards (aeftercwejaendra /

lof lifgendra lastworda betst’ , 72b-3a], It is not that experience or the body are

rejected, but rather that they cannot be grasped or possessed as such, and

therefore can only endure through representation, like the ‘sodgied’ [i; true

song] that The Seafarers speaker tells o f himself. In an important sense, it is

literary narrative - whether poetry, prose hagiography, etc. - that produces

the exemplary life. Only poetry, how ever, does so through the judicious

binding o f words that simulates both Creation and the composition o f a

resolute mind.

The role o f im agination in negotiating betw een experience and rep­

resentation is foregrounded as w ell in The Dream o f the Rood, 5 2 Like m any

other lyrics, this dream vision begins b y noting the speaker's solitude - he

experienced this vision w hile other ‘voice-bearers dw elled in sleep'

(‘sydjaan reordberend reste w unedon', 3) - and it em ploys language o f

enclosure and architecture: the cross is ‘bound around w ith light' (‘leohte

bew unden’ , 5b), ‘encased in go ld ’ (begoten mid go lde’ , 7a), reaches to

the ‘corners o f the earth’ (‘foldan sceatum ’ , 8a) and unites ‘all glorious

creation’ (‘eall jaeos maere gesceaft’ , 12b). Like other lyrics, too, this poem

is self-reflective; indeed, dream visions by nature address the topic o f

literary creation, in that they frame, and their speakers narrate, a story

generated or experienced b y the mind in an excursion similar to that o f the

soaring spirit in The Seafarer. As is often the case w ith dream visions, The

Dream o f the Rood makes this self-referentiality explicit w hen the cross

commands the dream er to tell others about the vision - in other words,

to com pose the poem:

52 Krapp (ed.), Vercetli Book.

35i

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Nu ic jse hate hæleô min se leofa,]aæt ôu ¡sas gesyhôe secge mannum, onwreoh wordum pæt hit is wuldres beam, se ôe ælmihtig god on prowode for mancynnes manegum synnumond Adomes ealdgewyrhtum. (95-100)

[Now I command you my beloved man to inform men about this vision to reveal in words that it is the tree o f glory upon which the almighty god suffered for the many sins of mankind and for Adam's ancient deeds.]

C om in g from deep w ithin the poem , in the voice o f the sacred vision-

object itself, this com m and governs the tem poral sequence o f the entire

narrative, beginning w ith the speaker's opening 'H wæt! Ic swefna cyst

secgan w ylle ' [1; Listen! I w ill tell yo u the best o f dreams] and extending

to the closing prayer for redem ption. Thus the com m and binds together

the dream fram e and the vision, even as it unites the speaker’s voice with

that o f the cross.

The correspondence betw een the speaker and the cross is one o f the most

familiar features o f this poem : both are w ounded and stained as unwilling

persecutors o f Christ, both are transformed, and both are voices o f redemp­

tion. This doubleness connects to the poem ’s riddlic nature: like Riddle 26

discussed above, The Dream of the Rood centres on a speaking object whose

voice unites tw o otherwise incom patible states o f existence. Just as the voice

o f Riddle 26 refers to itself as both a living animal and a Gospel book, so the

voice o f the cross refers to itself as both a tree grow in g at the edge o f a forest

and a jew elled cross; in both cases, this bodily transform ation results in

qualitative change relating to salvation. Such poetic doubling is emphasized

throughout The Dream o f the Rood. As the dream er beholds the cross, for

exam ple, it is som etim es soaked w ith blood, som etim es adorned with

jew els, opposed physical states that, in theological terms, coexist within

the object at all times. Just as The Seafarer showcases the m ind’s ability to

think m etaphorically, to put one thing in the place o f another as simul­

taneously the same and different, so The Dream o f the Rood demonstrates the

necessity o f this im aginative capacity to the speaker’s identification w ith the

cross and his ability to im agine his ow n participation in salvation history.

This history, like wyrd, is never fully determ ined or foreclosed: it is entwined

352

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

with hum an agency, both political and intellectual, and thus guarantees an

open future.53

Finally, the closing frame o f The Dream of the Rood turns to the relation

between exemplarity and transience. The dreamer’s identification with the

cross mediates his concern w ith fame. Just before com m anding the dreamer to

tell its story, the cross declares that because o f its role in the Crucifixion it w ill

now be honoured by all creation and can heal those w ho are awed by it. In the

closing frame the dreamer echoes the cross’s words: ‘Is m e nu lifes hyht / ¡3act

ic jaone sigebeam secan m ote / ana oftor Jaonne ealle men, / w ell weorjaian’

[i26b-9a; It is n ow m y life’s hope that I might seek the tree o f victory m ore

often than all men, honour it well]. T he honour, o f course, resides in the

poem, and only at this point does the dreamer declare that he hopes ‘daga

gehwylce hwaenne me dryhtnes rod, / ]ae ic her on eordan ser sceawode, / on

Jjysson lasnan life gefetige’ [136-8; each day for w hen the cross o f the lord,

which I saw here on earth, will fetch (me) from this transitory life].

Transience and history

Transience, then, is the basis o f fame and o f poetry, the m ovem ent that opens

narrative, the occasion for imagination and representation - and these are also

the conditions for thinking historically. As W alter Benjamin put it, ‘The w ord

“history” stands written on the countenance o f nature in the characters o f

transience.’54 Old English lyrics usually incorporate history through formal

elements, such as the ubi sunt catalogue or meditation upon rain, which enable

a shift from contemplation o f personal experience to that o f generations past.

The ubi sunt catalogue was long a favourite o f poets and homilists for its

treatment o f transience and for its openness to rhetorical invention and

variation.55 The Wanderer contains the most extensive ubi sunt catalogue in

Old English poetry, spoken b y a man ‘w ise in mind’ (‘frod in ferSe’ , 90a) as he

contemplates the ‘wealsteal’ [foundation] o f an ancient ruin and remembers

battles o f the distant past:

Hwaer cwom mearg? Hwaer cwom mago? Hwaer cwom majDjjumgyfa? Hwaer cwom symbla gesetu? Hwaer sindon seledreamas?Eala beorht bune. Eala bymwiga.

53 See further K. Davis, Periodization and Sovereignty, chap. 4.54 Benjamin, Origin of German Tragic Drama, p. 177.55 See DeSciacca, Finding the Right Words, pp. 108,137. As is w ell known, the ubi sunt m otif

derived mainly from Isidore o f Seville’s Synonyma.

353

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

Eala Joeodnes Jarym. Hu seo Jarag gewat,genap under nihthelm, swa heo no waere. (92-6)

[Where has the horse gone? Where has the kinsman gone? Where the treasure- giver?

Where has the banquet-place gone? Where are the joys o f the hall?Lo the bright cup. Lo the armed warrior.Lo the ruler’s power. How the time has departed,grown dark under the helm of night, as if it never were.]

Such contemplation upon the remnant o f an ancient foundation opens the

topic o f history. It is not that ruins signify a lost history; to the contrary, ruins

generate historiography. Their fragmentation and their silence allow the

postulation o f the present, or as Michel de Certeau explains, they provide

‘the place for a discourse considering w hatever preceded it to be “dead” . , .

Breakage is therefore the postulate o f interpretation (which is constructed as

o f the present time) and its object (divisions organizing representations that

m ust be reinterpreted).’56 T he past is made relevant through its postulation as

past to a present that is constituted as such through historical interpretation.

Thus the ruined foundation prom pts The Wanderer’s ubi sunt catalogue,

a gathering o f people, relations and things offered as com parable to those

experienced in the speaker’s personal life. This catalogue likew ise com ­

prises a thought-hoard available for m editation, b u t on a historical scale.

Like The Riming Poem and The Seafarer, w hich pare living experience down

to the verge o f non-existence, or like the Soul and Body poem s that speak

from beyond the grave, The Wanderer gestures towards a com plete hold on

past time by im agining its extinction: ‘Hu seo Jarag gew at . . . swa heo no

waere’ [H ow the tim e departs . . . as i f it never w ere].57 T he speaker places

this disappearance o f tim e in the context o f the transitoriness o f all things,

and ultim ately the end o f the world: ‘eal Jus eorjaan gesteal idel weorjaecY

[110; the foundation o f this entire earth w ill becom e empty]. O n ly then, just

as in The Riming Poem and The Seafarer, does the poem m ove to its closing,

hom iletic exhortation. Exem plarity becom es generalizable only w hen it is

abstracted, or in C erteau ’s term s, m ade ‘dead’ , and thus available for

interpretation.

56 Certeau, Writing o f History, p. 4.57 The Wife’s Lament similarly describes the bond between the lovers 'swa hit no Wiere’

[24b; as if it never were], but without a turn to meditation. For perceptive discussion of this passage and o f time in The Wanderer and The Seafarer, see Bately, ‘Tim e and the Passing o f T im e’ .

354

Dcor similarly offers a catalogue, a compilation o f legendary and historical

figures whose tragic existence in the distant past exemplifies transience itself,

with each b rief narrative culm inating in the refrain bees ofereode, Jaisses swa

mseg’ [From that it passed away, so it m ay from this]. T h e syntax o f this

refrain Is notoriously difficult; its subject is left unstated, but ‘Joses’ and

pisses’ are likely ‘genitives o f point o f tim e from w hich ’ .58 In any case, the

poem’s emphasis is on the past as past, w ith the series o f remembrances

leading to a contem plative scene rem iniscent o f The Wanderer’s closing.

A sorrowful figure sits w ith darkened mind, but is then able to perceive in

transience the potential for change in b oth grief and prosperity. Reflection

upon representations o f past events enables his grasp upon the coursing o f

time and his ow n position in it. Deor then turns to the transitory position o f

the scop him self, and thus - like so m any Old English lyrics - addresses the

conditions o f its ow n creation. Just as the passing o f tragic figures enables

their representation and interpretation, so the scop, as he know s from his

own stories, is founded upon transience.

Passages such as ubi sunt catalogues and contemplations o f ruin have been

caught betw een tw o opposing critical paradigms: one that finds contem pt for a

mutable w orld in which any sort o f earthly futurity is meaningless, and one

that finds nostalgia and an oppressive sense o f loss. These interpretations miss

both the providential and the historical aspects o f the lyrics, w hich neither

reject nor long for the past. T o the contrary, their contemplation o f transience

founds their w ork on the relationship o f mind, imagination, representation

and salvation. These poems eschew nostalgia for its capitulation to wyrd, but

they value crafted representation o f the past as past, w hich - like representa­

tions o f personal experience - allows for communal as w ell as personal

meditation, necessary conditions for the steadfastness o f mind required to

attain salvation.

The short, fragmentary poem The Ruin has been the principal focus o f

attention to ruins in Old English poetry, and m ost critics recognize it as

celebratory o f form er splendour, rather than as nostalgic.59 This is the case

not just because the poem appears to end optimistically, but because it

consistently emphasizes the parallel, as noted above, betw een the artistic

58 This is Bruce Mitchell's suggestion. For discussion, see Klinck (ed.), Old English Elegies, p. 160; and M uir (ed.), Exeter Anthology, vol. 11, p. 599.

59 See, e.g., M uir (ed.), Exeter Anthology, vol. 11, p. 699; Treham e (ed. and trans.), Old and Middle English, p. 84; and P. Dailey, ‘Questions o f D w elling’ , p. 185. Trilling, Aesthetics of Nostalgia, grants that the poem does not end in nostalgia (pp. 53-4), but nonetheless suggests that 'the speaker’s gaze upon the w all is suffused w ith a nostalgic m elancholy’(P- 56).

Old English lyrics: a poetics o f experience

355

K A T H L E E N D A V I S

creation o f form er builders and the composition o f the poem, w hich in this

case is also the com position o f a past that is celebrated, not mourned. 'Wraetlic

is ]aes wealstan - w yrde gebraecon [i; W ondrous is this wall-stone, broken by

wyrd’] the poem begins. N o other Old English poem captures quite so

precisely the foundational nature o f transience - to life, narrative, experience

history, and an open future.

Chapter 14

Literature in pieces: female sanctity and the relics o f early wom en’s writing

D I A N E W A T T

Credimus autem multo plura quam reperiantur extitisse, que aut ex illius eui torpentium scriptorum negligentia nequaquam litteris man- data fuerunt, aut descripta paganorum rabie ecdesias ac cenobia depopulante inter cetera perierunt.

Goscelin of Saint-Bertm, Miracvla sancte /Etheldrethe

[And we believe that there are many more (miracles) than are now to be found, which through the carelessness of the sluggish scribes o f that age were never committed to writing, or were recorded but have perished among other things when the fury o f the heathen laid waste to churches and monasteries.]

It is the sound of memory at work, creating a necklace o f narrative.Jane U rquhart, The Underpainter, p. 9

W om en's literary historiography

Literary histories o f English w om en ’s writing have, traditionally, had little

time for the early medieval period. Early medieval w om en are excluded from

teleologies that celebrate the em ergence o f authorship and literature, under­

stood in specific and restrictive terms, and that only acknowledge certain

narrowly defined forms o f textual production. T hey are om itted from linear

temporal paradigms that already struggle to accommodate the vernacular

visionary writings o f the later m edieval period and the devout poetry o f the

Renaissance, but which incorporate far m ore easily the dramatic texts o f the

seventeenth century and the prose writings o f the eighteenth and nineteenth.

One example o f such an exclusive literary history is The Norton Anthology of

Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and

Susan Gubar, n ow in its third edition (2007). W hile m ore self-consciously

1 In Goscelin, Hagiography o f the Female Saints o f Ely, pp. 98-9.

357