Re: Beowulf, Gilgamesh

--- "L. Manning Vines" <lmanningvines@hotmail.com> wrote:
 
> I'm not sure about this. First, virtually every early literature is
> claimed by someone or other to have had its start in a tradition of sung
> performances, though virtually no early literature presents clear
> evidence of this claim.

I'm not sure where this statement comes from, but in the case of
Anglo-Saxon poetry, it is certainly not true. The tradition of the bard
extends far into recorded history, but even beyond that, the texts offer a
number of linguistic clues that point toward their original oral delivery.

Part of what made these poems interesting to the hearing public was the
*sound* of them. Anglo-Saxons were less interested in rhyming than in
alliteration. The first half of a line was echoed in the second half of
the line in sound, though not necessarily in meaning. Here's the first
three lines of Beowulf in Anglo-Saxon:

Hwaet we Gar-Dena in gear dagum
þeod-cyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

If you could hear it sung, you would fall out of your chair, it's so
gorgeous. If you're interested in hearing a performance, a man named
Benjamin Bagby runs around the world performing Beowulf. There's a real
audio transcript from WNYC's radio archive. You can find a real audio
link on the website:

http://www.wnyc.org/legacy/shows/newsounds/nsmay2002.html

(Go to Clip 6 for "New Sounds," the show on which Bagby appeared.
Unfortunately, it's somewhat buried in there.)

The first word, "Hwaet!" basically means "Listen!" although Seamus Heaney
translates it "So." Either way, it is a call to hear. What follows is
eminently listen-able, or singable. The rest of the line, and indeed
every line in the poem, adheres to strict Anglo-Saxon poetic convention:
ten syllables altogether, with five syllables in each line segment. The
stresses were almost always -'-'- -'-'- in every line.

Why am I explaining this? Because, in order for *Beowulf* to have been
considered good poetry by its listeners, it needed to adhere to these
conventions in nearly every line. But don't forget: the skald who
performed *Beowulf* also needed to remember it.

The way they got around all of this is they created canned lyrics that
they could pull out whenever they needed them to complete a line. These
lyrics were used often in many poems, making it easier for the skald to
remember and perform. Additionally, there were entire sections that were
used and reused, tales of heroism that nearly every hero had as part of
his story.

This is why there are nearly a thousand lines of the epic that repeat
themselves -- it's a three thousand line poem that didn't need to be that
long. This is the strongest linguistic clue that the poem was originally
performed.

Of course, there are those who argue that the person who wrote the poem
down is the same person who wrote it -- that school points to the
perfection in the poetry of the lines that were written down and cannot
believe that multiple skalds and then finally a scribe could have created
something like this together. They prefer to believe in a single author.

The only truth we can be sure of is that there is a single scribe. The
greatest argument against the scribe being the author is the almost
heavy-handed Christian element. In the sections of the poem where the
people of *Beowulf* would have appealed to Woden or any of the other gods,
there are several gawky lines about how the people appealed to their gods
but those gods were no good, so no wonder they didn't get any help. It's
a jarring change, and the most convincing part of the poem that there was
at least one pagan author and a (less-skilled) Christian scribe.

If you're interested in learning more about *Beowulf*, I would point you
to two sources: the Introduction to Seamus Heaney's translation, or the
essay by J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Monsters and the Critics."

Best,
Cecilia.

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Received on Sun Dec 14 14:40:43 2003