man, time, and apocalypse in "the wanderer", "the seafarer", and...

Man, Time, and Apocalypse in "The Wanderer", "The Seafarer", and "Beowulf"Author(s): Martin GreenSource: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 74, No. 4 (Oct., 1975), pp. 502-518Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27707954 .

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MAN, TIME, AND APOCALYPSE IN THE WANDERER,

THE SEAFARER, AND BEOWULF

Martin Green, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Florham-Madison Campus

One of the most poignant aspects of The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and

Beowulf h the way these poems present the plight of man in time.1 All

three of the poems put man in a landscape that reflects the ultimate

futility of attempts to erect bulwarks against the pressure of transitory time. All things, the poems stress, have their end and pass away; all

things fall before the relentlessness of time, especially man, the most

transitory and ephemeral of all things. This shared concern for the

ultimate passing of things locates these poems in a poetic tradition

conventionally called elegy. But the concern for passing things is also

expressed in Old English literature in the poems and homilies on

Judgment Day, which provide striking imagery of the sweeping away of the things of this world by the power of God. Together, the imagery of elegy and the imagery of doomsday define for Old English literature

what Frank Kermode has termed "the sense of an ending."2 But as

Kermode suggests, there is a more intimate relationship between these two concerns for final things.

Kermode maintains that the confrontation with time is one of man's

recurring and persistent problems. Men are born into "the middest" of

time and they also die, as Kermode puts it, in mediis rebus (p. 7). Our

need is for concord, for connection to what has come before us and

what will come after. Men thus seek patterns and create "fictions" to

give order and meaning to the otherwise disordered and meaningless flow of time.3 The most striking of these is the "fiction" of apocalypse; for not only does apocalypse create the kind of concord between

beginnings and endings which gives "meaning to lives and to poems"

(p. 7), but, Kermode further asserts, apocalyptic ways of thinking underlie many of our attitudes toward time. An independent examina

1A shorter version of this paper was delivered at the Seventh Annual Conference on

Medieval Studies, sponsored by the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University, 2

May 1972. 2Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York,

1968).

3Following Hans Vaihinger (The Philosophy of As If [London, 1924]), Kermode defines

"fictions" as "mental structures" that the psyche weaves to preserve itself in a world of

contradictory sensation.

502



Man, Time, Apocalypse in Wanderer, Seafarer, Beowulf 503

tion of apocalyptic tradition reveals the validity of Kermode's stimulat

ing thesis, especially for Old English poetry.

1

Apocalypse is a complex tradition with roots in the prophetical books of

the Old Testament, with sources lying perhaps ultimately in the myths of ancient Persia, and with a variety of themes and images given further

development in Christian canonical, apocryphal, and patristic litera

ture.4 The dominant concern of apocalypse is, obviously, the end of the world and the natural and man-made cataclysms

to occur at the end of

days; its most familiar imagery is the horror and terror of a world

dislocated and doomed?the perturbations of the natural world, the

decay of society, the disruption of human relationships, the multiplica tion of evil, and the loosing of demons, spirits, and monsters into the

world of men?the signs and portents which the apocalyptic writers

insisted must precede the intercession of a divine agent into the flow of time. For the men of the early Middle Ages, the figures of apocalypse

were a conventional, yet still powerful, way of assessing the reality they knew. Any disruption of the order of

things, any disaster?an earth

quake, an invasion of hostile heathens, or the appearance of won

derous signs in the sky?could be seen as an indication of the immi nence of the final doom.5 The persistence of such thinking suggests to

Kermode that apocalypse touches a deep level of the psyche; moreover, it seems to me that apocalypse articulates much of what the

early Medieval world felt about the course of the world and the direc tion of history.6

4The literature on apocalypse and eschatology is enormous in amount. Two of the most useful treatments of the Jewish tradition are D. S. Russell,The Method and Message of Jewish Apocalyptic (Philadelphia, 1964), and S. B. Frost, Old Testament Apocalyptic: Its

Origins and Growth (London, 1952). A survey of Jewish and Christian tradition may be found in H. H. Rowley, The Relevance of Apocalyptic: A Study of Jewish and Christian

Apocalypses from Daniel to the Revelation, rev. ed. (New York, 1955). 5See, as good examples of the connection between catastrophe and approaching

Judgment, the Peterborough Chronicle entry for 793 and Alcuin's letter to Bishop Higbald of Lindisfarne in the same year; both are reprinted in English Historical Docu ments 500-1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (London, 1955), pp. 167 and 755, respectively.

6For Kermode's term of "fiction" may be substituted the more familiar usage of the word "myth." Russell (pp. 104-106) points out that accepting apocalypse as a genre is

fraught with difficulties due to the eclectic nature of the tradition and the differences in detail among the various books. Frost suggests that the most convenient way to treat

apocalyptic is to regard it as the mythical form of eschatological thought. It is in this sense that I use the term in the singular in this paper. In Anatomy of Criticism (1957; rpt. New

York, 1966), Northrop Frye uses the term apocalyptic to describe one of two "undis

placed" or basic mythic structures that underlie literary imagery (pp. 139 ff.). But Frye's usage of the term is somewhat idiosyncratic and does not fully account for the features of

apocalypse discussed by Russell and Frost. For an attempt to use apocalypse to define the



504 Green

Although the imagery of eschatological events looms large in

apocalypse, it is the relationship of the eschaton to an historical con

tinuum that defines the essential apocalyptic view of time. For the

apocalyptic writers, history is Heilsgeschichte and time is linear, and thus

the final event in time is conceived of working itself out of a divine plan.

Putting it another way, the end is implicit in the beginning. Further, the

apocalyptic writers are concerned not only with mapping out what the future holds in store but with demonstrating the necessity of the future in terms of what has gone before in time. Consequently, the apocalyptic

books are given over to elaborate schemes of history, beginning with

creation and moving through the significant events in the past that

foreshadow the ultimate redemption to be wrought by God at the end

of time.7

The psychological function of this historical concern is to give mean

ing to the present, for, paradoxically, it is the present which is the chief

interest of the apocalyptic writers. For them the present is a time of

crisis and unmitigated evil which can only be understood in light of an

imminent fulfillment of the promise of salvation which their historical

surveys have shown to have existed through time. More crucially, the

apocalyptic writers feel that the future is the present; their present time

is the last time, and the cataclysms and portents they so copiously

catalogue are felt to be happening in full view of men, although only the apocalyptic writers have had the benefit of revelation which pro vides the key of understanding. The writer of II Baruch sums up this

view of the present and its relation to the future, if not with succinctness

then with concreteness and urgency:

The consummation which the Most High will make is very nigh, and his mercy that is coming and the consummation of his

judgment is by no means far off. . . .

For all the healthinesses of this time are turning to diseases,

And all the might of this time is turning to

weakness, And all the force of this time is turning to impotence,..

.

And every vain splendour of insolence of this time

is turning to voiceless ruin. . . .

(II Baruch 82:2; 83:10-14)

essential qualities of a Medieval poem, see Morton Bloomfield, Piers Plowman as a \\th

Century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, N.J., 1961). 7This historical concern is most noticeable in I Enoch, II Baruch, and II Esdras, which

divide history into periods or ages of various lengths; but it is also implicit in the pattern of the four empires in Daniel and Revelation. The texts of Enoch, Baruch, and Esdras can be found in Vol. 11 of R. H. Charles, ed., The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old




Echoing this passage is the invocation to the Book of Revelation which

stresses the urgency and imminence of what will come to pass and

suggests that it may indeed be coming to pass already: "Blessed is he

that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy . .. for the

time is at hand" (Revelation 1:3). Still more simply put is the assertion

of Jesus reported in John 4:23: "the hour is coming and now is."

"The hour is coming and now is": although it is found in the least

apocalyptic of all the Gospels, no phrase more aptly sums up the

apocalyptic sense of the urgent present than this one. The paradoxical

language of this formulation establishes a link between the "now" of the

present with the "then" of the future; and since the future expectation is one which has been anticipated through history, the present is linked

also with the "then" of the past. This linking is what Kermode calls

concord?the present is brought into significant relationship with the

past and future. Looked at in another way, the paradox transforms the

moment of the present into what can be conveniently called an

apocalyptic moment, a moment in which the past and the future are felt

to impinge relentlessly, and, perhaps more

important, a moment

when the future is felt to be fulfilled in the present.8 Such, I should like to suggest, is the sense of time in The Wanderer, The

Seafarer, and Beowulf. The two dramatic lyrics by the nature of their

form tend to focus on moments of time rather than sequences of

events. They are about moments of crisis in an individual conscious

ness. Although Beowulf is narrative and epic in scope, it too, as Tolkien

observed, is about moments: two moments in a great hero's life, one in

youth and one in old age.9 If we look at the over-all pattern of imagery in the poems, we see men "in the middest" of an historical continuum.

This pattern would not be sufficient in itself to call their moments

apocalyptic, but in the richly figurative language of these poems is

imagery which parallels the characteristic imagery of apocalypse and

which provides a framework for the dilemma of men in time reflected

in the poems.10

Testament (Oxford, 1913); all citations of these apocalypses in this paper refer to this text.

II Esdras is also known as IV Ezra.

8My term is a modification of a phrase used by Rudolf Bultmann in History and

Eschatology (Edinburgh, 1958). 9J. R. R. Tolkien, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," Proceedings of the British

Academy, 22 (1936), 245-95, as rpt. in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. Lewis

Nicholson (Notre Dame, Ind., 1963), p. 81.

10The theme of doomsday in Old English literature has been generally treated by L.

Whitbread, 5GD5L (Halle), 89 (1967), 452-81, and in earlier studies by Waller Deering, The Anglo-Saxon Poets on the Judgment Day (Halle, 1890), and Gustav Grau, Quellen und

Verwandtschaften der ?lteren germanischen Darstellungen des j?ngsten Gerichtes (Studien zur

englischen Philologie, 31 ) (Halle, 1908). Hugh Keenan's "The Apocalyptic Vision in Old



5o6 Green

II

The dominant problem for the central figures of The Wanderer and The

Seafarer is locating their lives in a meaningless present. For both of

them, the present is marked by a consciousness of passing time, a

consciousness reflected in the adverbial phrases that echo through their speeches: geara geo, on

geardagum, uhtna gehwylce, ealra dogra

gehwam, and oft. Of the two, it is perhaps The Wanderer s problem in time

that is more distinctly felt and movingly expressed. Passing across a

landscape both alien and barren, the eardstapa searches for the comfort

and security he once knew in the hall of a lord whose death sent him

into exile in a never-ending winter of discontent. The Wanderer's

present misery, recounted in the first forty lines of the poem,11 is

deepened by the memories of the past, the memories of the joys of the

hall. The Wanderer sees the past literally as a kind of golden age of

security and bliss, in contrast to the bitterness and loneliness of the

present days on the rime-cold sea. The past was joyful and rich, the

present is painful and abject, and the future is, at best, uncertain. The

overwhelming impression created by the imagery of the poem is of a

man trapped in the present, trying to peer into the future for what is

essentially a recovery of the past. In the first half of the poem (through 1. 58), the Wanderer seems to be attempting what Mircea Eliade calls an

eternal return; an attempt, founded on an

assumption of cyclical time,

to recover an archetypal past.12 For the eardstapa, however, the future

appears to be an extension of the present, a future without a visible end

and without meaning. While in The Wanderer the juxtaposition of past joy and present

misery indicates a break between past and present, in The Seafarer there is no disjunction in time. The Seafarer's present is the same as his past;

his life on the sea?the painful and heavy days?has been going on for a

long time. The opening lines of the poem stress the continuousness and

repetitiveness of that life; the use oiOft characterizes the situation of

the speaker in time. No memories of a joyful past interrupt the days and nights

as the Seafarer, surrounded by ice, sea, and seabirds, ex

periences the biting cold of winter, the hot cares around the heart, and

the grinding of hunger within. In the first part of both poems, the sense of time is personal to the

English Poetry," Diss. Tennessee 1968 (DAI, 30 [1969], 1138A), argues for the impor tance of apocalyptic concerns for Old English on a different basis from the present study. 11 All line references to The Wanderer and The Seafarer are to the text of the Exeter Book

edited by G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III (New York,

1936). Line references to Beowulf are to the 3rd ed. of Fr. Klaeber (Boston, 1950). 12Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, trans. Willard R.

Trask (1954; rpt. New York, 1959).




speakers; they are concerned with their own place in the flow of time. The imagery of the second half of both poems, however, places their

plight in a larger and more general context. The Seafarer's meditation on the coming of spring and the Wanderer's contemplation of the ruined wall link the situation of the speakers to larger movements of historical process. Both passages summon up elegiac remembrances of

things past, but at the same time go beyond being merely elegiac. The Seafarer's meditation begins with the image of the blissful life

on land which stands in contrast to the hard life at sea. This contrast, the equivalent of the Wanderer's contrast between the joys of the hall and the pains of exile, may be the Seafarer's personal recollection of

previous events in his own life standing in juxtaposition to his present,

although it is not necessary to insist on this reading. The fairness of the

city is associated with the coming of spring and the blossoming of trees and plants:

Bearwas blostmum nima?, byrig faegria?,

wongas wlitigia?. . . .

(Seafarer, 48-493)

But the imagery of the cycles of nature, the never-ending pattern of

spring following winter, gives way to the idea that time is not cyclic and

static but linear and transitory. The blossoms indicate that the "woruld

onette?" (1. 49b) and the speech turns from a celebration of renewal

and continuity to a lament over decline and decay:

Dagas sind gewitene, ealle onmedlan eor?>an rices; naeron nu

cyningas ne caseras

ne goldgiefan swylce iu waeron,

J)onne hi maest mid him maerjsa gefremedon ond on

dryhtlicestum dome lifdon. (Seafarer, 80D-85)

While the passage explicitly looks back?back to a past of glory and

richness, a past dominated by heroes, kings, princes, and givers of

gold?it can be seen to look implicitly ahead, for the decline from the

golden age of heroic society is an indication of the weakening of

creation and suggests the nearness of the end of time. The logic of this

association of ideas can best be understood by a brief look at the

apocalypses of II Esdras and II Baruch which provide significant

parallels to the structure of ideas in The Seafarer. Both Esdras and Baruch begin with the apocalyptist's concern for

man's meaningless present, and his consciousness of the glories of the

past, which have been swept away in the confusion and strife of history.

Esdras is visited by an angel to whom he addresses a series of theodical

questions in an attempt to reconcile God's providence and mercy with

the despair and injustice he sees around him. The angel's reply echoes



5o8 Green

the reply of God to Job: God's power is greater than man's knowledge and his ways are

mysterious. The angel then gives an elaborate recount

ing of history revealing the design hidden in it but also showing the

inherent evil in man despite God's beneficence. The increase in evil in

the present is explained by the weakening of creation which in turn

points to the end of time, for "the weaker the world grows through age, so much the more shall evils increase upon the dwellers of the earth"

(II Esdras 14:15-16). But the eschaton will be God's ultimate demonstra

tion of his beneficence and mercy, and the multiplication of evil will

continue only "until the threshing floor come" (II Esdras 4:30). In

contrast, for Baruch man is not inherently evil; rather, man's nature is

defined by his transitoriness and his fleetingness on the scene of his

tory, an existential situation that reduces every human action to

meaninglessness. Baruch asserts that "as the breath ascends involun

tarily and again dies, so it is with the nature of men, who depart not

according to their own will, and know not what will befall them in the

end" (II Baruch 14:10-11). Thus, Baruch asks, "for what profit is

strength that turns to sickness, / Or fulness of food that turns to famine, / Or beauty that turns to ugliness

. . ." (II Baruch 21:14). Both books,

however, share the feeling that "the youth of the world is past, / And the

strength of creation already exhausted, / And the advent of the times is

very short" (II Baruch 85:1o).13

Although these passages from Baruch and Esdras come from scat

tered places in the books, they define in a concise way the essential attitudes and ideas in these works, all of which find expression in The

Seafarer. Like Baruch, the Seafarer contemplates the instability of man's life and the uncertainties of the world:

Ic gelyfe no

J)aet him eor?welan ece stonda?.

Simle ]3reora sum Jringa gehwylce,

aer his tid [daege]14 to tweon weorjse?, adl o\)\)e yldo olplpe ecghete

.... (Seafarer, 66D-70)

And, as for the two apocalyptic writers, for the Seafarer "dagas sind

gewitene" and the world grows old like a man:

13J. E. Cross, in "Aspects of Microcosm and Macrocosm in Old English Literature"

(Studies in OE Literature in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. Stanley B. Greenfield [Eugene, Ore., 1963],pp. 1?22), has well documented the patristic tradition of the daily decline of the world. Cross mentions the passage in Esdras as expressing this belief, but he does not

think that the idea is widespread in apocalyptic tradition. While it is not explicitly stated in

many other apocalypses, it is, however, an idea that is implicit and important for the

conception of the tradition. 14I have adopted the emendation of the MS tid aga suggested by Ida L. Gordon in her

edition of The Seafarer (London, i960).



Man, Time, Apocalypse in Wanderer, Seafarer, Beowulf 5?9

Blaed is gehnaeged, eorJ)an indryhto ealda? ond seara?, swa nu monna gehwylc geond middangeard.

Yldo him on fare?, onsyn blaca?,

gomelfeax gnorna? ....

(Searfarer, 88b-g2a)

Several other lines in the Seafarer's speech connect even more closely

to the ideas of apocalypse. The decay of the heroic ideal of the past is

marked by an inversion of the order of relationships between weak and

strong, an order of relationships deemed "natural" in ancient society:

Gedroren is J)eos dugu? eal, dreamas sind gewitene, wunia? J)a wacran ond {)as woruld healdaj), bruca? ?nirh bisgo. (Seafarer, 86-88a)

In Baruch, such an inversion is further indication of the nearness of the

end, a further "sign of the times," for in the last days "The Mighty One

will bring over the earth and its inhabitants / . . . perturbation of spirit

and stupor of heart. . . / And the mean shall rule over the honorable, / And those of low degree shall be extolled over the famous, / And the

many shall be delivered into the hands of the few" (II Baruch 70:2-4). In a more radical formulation of this idea, the Gospels announce the

kingdom of God for the poor in spirit and the meek who "shall inherit

the earth" (Matt. 5:2-5).

The Wanderer's lament over the ruined wall suggests the same

double sense of time as the Seafarer's meditation; it too calls up image ry of a lost heroic past and has connections to apocalyptic modes of

thought which by implication summon up remembrances of things to come. The wall, "wundrum heah wyrmlicum fah" (1. 98), is like many such ruins that dot the landscape "missenlice geond f)isne mid

dangeard" (1. 75). Standing in solitary isolation, beaten by winter

storms, the wall guards the remains of men who once inhabited the

building it once enclosed. The men have been victims of the pressure of

time and of the uncertainties that can carry men off against their will:

duguj) eal gecrong, wlonc bi wealle. Sume wig fornom, ferede in for?wege,

sumne fugel oJ)baer

ofer heanne holm, sumne se har? wulf

dea?e gedaelde, sumne dreorighleor

in eor?scraefe eorl gehydde. (Wanderer, 79D-84)

J. E. Cross has argued that this passage is related to several traditions

of eschatological speculation. Most obviously, the passage is related to the Gifts of Men motif found elsewhere in Old English poetry, and

Cross traces this theme to the Parable of the Talents and its patristic glosses. Cross also sees a

relationship between the lines in The Wanderer



510 Green

and Revelation 20:13 which, in its description of the dead rising from the Sea, was the key

text in many patristic commentaries on resurrec

tion and the ways in which body and soul would be reunited at the final

Judgment.15 In the context of the poem, however, the imagery is connected to eschatological concerns more directly than Cross's tracing of possible sources indicates, as passages from two apocalypses make clear.

In Baruch, in the passage outlining the inversion of the hierarchy of human relationships cited in connection with The Seafarer, the

apocalyptist continues his recounting of the signs and portents of the end:

And when these things . .. have come to pass,

Then shall confusion fall upon men, And some of them shall fall in battle, And some of them shall perish in anguish, And some of them shall be destroyed by their own.

(II Baruch 70:6-7)

A passage in the Prophetiae Sibyllarum provides a starker and more concrete version of this topos :

.. . and all shall be unburied and vultures and savage beasts of the earth

shall devour the flesh of some. And when these things are fulfilled, the

giant earth will devour the relics of the dead. And it shall be unsown and

unplowed, proclaiming in its misery the corruption of myriads of men.16

While these passages talk of ruin in a general way, the physical ruin

of a building has an apocalyptic context. This can be seen in a config uration of associations in The Wanderer which is analogous

to a config

uration of associations in apocalyptic tradition. E. B. Irving has dis

cussed the metaphoric relationship in Old English poetry between halls and the societies that built them. Halls are the center of human activity in the comitatus, and they are the symbols of the social order, for, as

Irving notes in his discussion of The Ruin, the imagery of a hall con

structed out of rings and wires serves to indicate the function of the hall as container and boundary of human activity. The rings and wires of

the hall also suggest metaphorically the gold rings and treasures that

define social relationships by binding men to a lord.17 In The Wanderer,

15J. E. Cross, "The OE Poetic Theme of'The Gifts of Men,' "Neophil., 46 (1962), 66-70, and "On The Wanderer, Lines 80-84," VSL ?rsbok (1958-59), 75-110.

16Prophetiae Sibyllarum, Bk. Ill, 11. 642-47. The Jewish and Christian Sibyllines are

included in Charles' edition of the Old Testament pseudepigrapha from which this

passage is quoted. 17E. B. Irving, "Image and Meaning in the Elegies," OE Poetry: Fifteen Essays, ed. Robert

P. Creed (Providence, 1967), pp. 153-67.




the ruined wall is the appropriate symbol of the collapse of the eardsta

pa's hopes and dreams* the symbol of the world he has lost and seeks to

retrieve. As Mircea Eliade has shown, in primitive societies the erection

of a tribal hall is regarded as a microcosmic re-creation, a ritual re

capitulation of the divine ordering of the cosmos.18 The hall is thus the

literal and symbolic center of the world. One need only think of the

erection of Heorot in Beowulf and the song of Genesis which inaugu rates it to be aware of this symbolic association.

If the erection of a hall recapitulates creation, then it is not too big a

leap to suggest that its destruction could be seen as a symbol of cosmic destruction or de-creation, the kind of destruction prophesied in

apocalypse. In some of the apocalyptic books?Daniel, Esdras, and

Baruch, for example?this is indeed the case: in these instances, how

ever, the temple of Solomon is the embodiment of the symbolism. In the period which saw the emergence of apocalyptic literature, the

temple was the focal point of all the religious and national aspirations at

stake in the Jewish struggles against domination by hostile Gentile

empires. Daniel's vision of the "abomination of desolation" in the

temple (in Chs. 8:12-13, 9:26-27, and 12:11-22), an allusion to the

attempts of Antiochus IV Epiphanes to convert the temple to a place of

worship for Zeus, figures prominently as a sign of the nearness of God's

judgment against the enemies of Israel, and as one of the events that must occur before the end. In Baruch, the destruction of the temple by the Chaldeans is the prelude to the final onslaught against Israel which

will be followed by God's intercession and the rebuilding of the temple in the Millennial Kingdom. The importance of the temple in the

scheme of Jewish eschatological thought is carried over into Christian

tradition in the Gospels when, in the eschatological discourse, Jesus

prophesies that not one stone of the temple will be left standing at the

end of days and cites Daniel's "abomination of desolation" as authority (cf. Matt. 24:1-2, 15).19 Although temple and tribal hall may seem

separated by a great distance of cultural space, they are both versions of

the same archetype, and thus the Wanderer's glimpse of the ruined

microcosm of man's world can be seen to be pointing from the im

mediate present to the future, a foreshadowing of the doom to occur at

Judgment Day. For him the ruin is a sign that "J)es middangeard / ealra

18Mircea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism, trans. Philip Mairet

(1961; rpt. New York, 1969), pp. 37-57. 19For a differing interpretation of the ruin as apocalyptic symbol, see Hugh Keenan,

"The Ruin as Babylon," TSL, 11 (1966), 109-17. Keenan's interpretation is criticized by

James F. Doubleday, "The Ruin: Structure and Theme," JEGP, 71 (1972), 369-81. See

also n. 21 and n. 22 below.



512 Green

dogra gehwam dreose? ond fealle]?" (11. 62D-63). One final parallel, more immediate to The Wanderer, supporting the connection of ruin and the end of the world, is found in documents of the eighth century, one of which asserts : Mundi terminum minis crescentibus appropinquantem indicia certa manifestant.20

m

The present for the Wanderer and the Seafarer is thus given a sense of utmost urgency by the intimations of apocalypse which surround them.

In the midst of an historical continuum they sense the nearness of the

future and turn their attention from the doomed world of man's

present to the eternality of God's fcestnung of heaven where, in the

words of the Seafarer, "we ham agen." As in The Wanderer and The

Seafarer, in Beowulf the personal situation of man in time is placed in a

larger context of history. But in contrast to the two lyrics whose sense of

the past is expressed in most general terms, Beowulf'is more explicitly marked by an historical consciousness. The Germanic history and

legend interlaced throughout the narrative is but one sign of this

consciousness; the allusions to Scriptural history in the poem provide an even larger historical framework against which (or in the midst of

which) Beowulf is seen in action. The allusions to Genesis in the description of the building of Heorot

(11. 90D-98), in which the poet links the erection of the greatest of mead-halls to the divine act of cosmogony, and the more subdued allusions to Genesis in the description of Hygelac's hall (11. 1925-29)21 define one pole of the historical continuum. At the same time, the poet intimates the eventual doom of the two halls (both to be destroyed by

fire) and thus connects the two halls in their role as microcosmic

symbols to the destruction of the world. The imagery of other doomed

20Quoted from a chronicle of the monk Marculfe by H. Focillon, LAn Mil (Paris, 1952), p. 50. Eschatological imagery in The Wanderer has been discussed previously by Bernard F. Hupp?, "The 'Wanderer': Theme and Structure,"JEGP, 42 (1943), 518-38, and G.' V.

Smithers, "The Meaning oiThe Seafarer and The Wanderer," MJE, 26 (1957), 137-53, and 28 (1959), 1-22, 99-104. See also R. F. Leslie, ed., The Wanderer (Manchester, 1966), pp. ?s"- . . .

21This imagery in Beowulf has received much attention recently. Edward B. Irving deals with it in A Reading of Beowulf ([New Haven, 1968], pp. 89-90), as does Paul

Beekman Taylor in "Heorot, Earth, and Asgard: Christian Poetry and Pagan Myth" (TSL, 11 [1966], 119-30). The connection of Hygelac's hall to cosmogonie myth can be

more clearly perceived in light of Alvin A. Lee's suggestion (in The Guest Hall of Eden: Four

Essays in the Design of Old English Poetry [New Haven, 1972]) that Old English accounts of creation often describe Eden metaphorically as a city or guest hall. The image of the

world as a building is central to Caedmon's Hymn and is implicit in the opening lyric of the Advent sequence (Christi). My own observation of this point was made before I read

Lee's study.



Man, Time, Apocalypse in Wanderer, Seafarer, Beowulf 5J3

halls?in the Finn episode, in the Last Survivor's speech, and in the Old Father's Lament?further reinforces the sense of inexorable move

ment of time to the ultimate o? p t of apocalypse.22 The descent of Grendel and his mother from Cain further links the

events in the poem with events in Scriptural history recounted in the

early chapters of Genesis. But as Irving notes, it is characteristic of the

poem to look back and forth from the present to past and future,23 and

thus Grendel and his mother can be seen not only connected to legends of Genesis (including the story of the flood alluded to in the description of the wondrous sword hilt Beowulf finds in their cave) but to the myth of apocalypse.24

In apocalypse the ultimate expression of the world moving to its end

is the appearance of monstrous beasts. In the Judaic tradition, the beasts are the symbols of the enemies of Israel, the successive empires which have conquered and subjugated the people of God. In the

merging of political and religious concerns characteristic of apocalyptic literature, the enemies of Israel become the enemies of God himself.

Beyond the level of politicoreligious metaphor, the beasts are striking symbols of the physical breakdown and disorder of a world nearing its

end. They represent the darker forces of nature wreaking havoc and

chaos in the human world, forces that are implacable, motiveless, and

beyond human control. The intimate relationship between these levels of response is revealed in the associated imagery of the apocalyptic books. The beasts are often linked to natural settings, either bodies of

water (such as the sea in Revelation 12) or wastelands, and their coming is often associated with the fall into apostasy. In Revelation 12:4, the

appearance of the beast from the sea is the cause of despair which in turn causes men to fall into apostasy, to "worship the dragon [i.e., Satan] which gave power unto the beast." In Esdras 5, the recounting of the signs of the last times includes apostasy, the defeat of the powerful, the emergence of Antichrist ("one who the dwellers do not look for"),

22Irving, A Reading of Beowulf, p. 36.

23Irving, A Reading of Beowulf, pp. 199-200. Irving feels that this looking back and

forth is more pronounced in Part Two of the poem. 24In "Beowulf and the Book of Enoch" (Speculum, 45 [1971], 421-31 ), R. E. Kaske notes

an interesting parallelism between the conception of the Grendel cynn and the treatment

of the Giants of Genesis 6:4 provided in Enoch, a fragment of which survives in a Latin MS possibly of eighth-century English provenance. Kaske further suggests that the tradition of apocryphal apocalypses may provide clarification of the unusual Old Testa

ment atmosphere in Beowulf. Although this is an intriguing argument and one with which I partially agree, evidence for knowledge of the apocryphal apocalypses in Anglo-Saxon

England is scanty, as Kaske admits. For a different analysis of the connection between Grendel and the Giants of Genesis, see Margaret E. Goldsmith, The Mode and Meaning of Beowulf (London, 1970), pp. 110 ff.



514 Green

and the movement of wild monsters from their wasteland haunts to the

world of men. II Baruch 27 echoes this last sign of Esdras when it is

predicted that a sign of the end will be the coming of a multitude of

spectres and attacks by night demons (Shedim).

Although Grendel does not resemble in physical form the grotesque,

hybrid beasts of Daniel and Revelation with their lion heads, serpent bodies, eagle wings, and numerous horns, he fits the paradigm of the

apocalyptic beasts in general terms. He is the enemy of men and God

(godes ansaca); he is associated with apostasy; he has connection to the

forces of the physical world (he is, like beasts mentioned in Enoch,

Baruch, and Esdras, a denizen of dark woodland, fen, and mere); his

evil is without rationale or motive. In other words, like the apocalyptic

beasts, Grendel becomes a physical projection of the world in a state of

imminent collapse, and it is this level of symbolism that gives to

Beowulf s battle against him its intensity and urgency.25 The pattern of history from creation to doomsday suggested in the

imagery of Heorot, Hygelac's hall, and Grendel is carried over into Part

Two of the poem, this time embodied in the figure of the dragon. Like

Heorot and Grendel, the dragon connects the events in the poem to an

historical continuum. Although Heorot and Grendel hark back to

cosmic and Biblical beginnings in their connection to Genesis, the

dragon's historical dimension is more circumscribed, but it is still sig nificant. Ancient beyond measure, the dragon has been guarding the

treasure hoard for three hundred winters, a span which may be re

garded either literally or as an indication of indeterminate age. The

treasure is even more ancient; it is described as cergestreona (1. 2232b) and longgestreona (1. 2240b) and it was buried ongeardagum (1. 2233a). In

the same way that Grendel and Heorot point ahead to the future as well as back to the past, the dragon anticipates things to come as well as

recalling things which have passed. On one level of association, the

dragon's destruction of the Geats' hall and his killing of their king open the way to the ultimate collapse of the Geats as a nation. The destruc

tion of the microcosmic center of the Geats associates the dragon with

apocalyptic events. Standing at the center of Part Two, and presiding over the ultimate destruction of man's world, the dragon of Beowulf

25The characterization of Grendel draws from numerous sources and traditions, and I

doubt if any one interpretation can be said to encompass all of his complexity. My own

view is meant to suggest one further possibility without ruling out others. Irving inter

prets Grendel as an embodiment of the negative of human social attributes, while

Goldsmith sees him as a kind of psychomachia figure externalizing what she feels to be the

sins of the Danes?their pride, their contentiousness, and their avarice. These interpre tations can be encompassed in the apocalyptic myth, for, on the level of psychological symbolism, the apocalyptic beasts represent the shadow side of the human psyche.




has reminded more than one reader of the dragon of apocalypse, al

though this identification has not been universally accepted.26 The cause of disagreement about the significance of the dragon lies

in the generality with which the dragon is portrayed in the poem, and

the absence of any specific language to connect it to the apocalyptic beast. On the basis of the paradigm of the apocalyptic beasts given in

connection with Grendel, however, it should be obvious that the dra

gon shares the same attributes as the beast of Revelation. On the

level of archetypal response the connection between the two dra

gons is a reasonable and inevitable one. Further, the cluster of

associations in which the dragon figures in Beowulf particularly its connection with the treasure, has apocalyptic parallels.

The treasure is associated with the fate of the Geats in two major ways. First, its burial and the imagery of desolation and loss called up in

the Last Survivor's speech are the symbolic burial of the Geats and the

surrogate elegiac lament for their passing. Second, the treasure is

connected to eschatological concerns by the obscure reference to the

fact that the hoard is cursed until doomsday. This reference has

perplexed many readers of the poem, but a treasure connected to

doomsday in the apocalypse of Baruch offers at least a partial clarifica

tion of meaning. In Baruch, on the eve of the Chaldean destruction of

Jerusalem, an angel descends to gather up the treasures of the temple, and, observed by Baruch, buries them with an invocation strikingly reminiscent of the Last Survivor's invocation of "Heald \>u nu, hruse"

(1. 2247): "Earth, earth, earth, hear the words of almighty God, / And

receive what I commit to thee / And guard them until the last times / So

that, when thou art ordered, thou mayst restore them..." (II Baruch

6:8-9).

The temple treasures symbolize the unity and solidarity of com

munal life, as does the temple itself, and its burial and the ensuing destruction of the temple evoke from Baruch a lament which stresses

26Goldsmith's is the most recent attempt to link the dragon to the beast of Revelation.

Her argument also involves a whole patristic tradition linking the dragon to concupis cence, making it into another psychomachia figure parallel to Grendel. Goldsmith em

phasizes, however, that Beowulf fails in his battle against the dragon because he has

succumbed to the temptations of the flesh he was warned against in Hrothgar's sermon.

Her argument is not altogether supported by the text, however. Irving's interpretation of

the dragon tries to avoid the question of religious overtones by seeing the dragon strictly within the context of the poem and its heroic values; but his reading is not as convincing as it is in the case of Grendel. Daniel G. Calder ("Setting and Ethos: The Pattern of

Measure and Limit in Beowulf, "

SP, 6g [1972], 35) also rejects the association of the

dragon and the apocalyptic beast and sees it as "an elemental force of evil unleashed in

the universe, totally beyond and separate from the merely petty evils of aggression and

revenge symbolized in the Grendel tribe."



516 Green

the barrenness and ruin of the present in contrast to the joy and

richness of the past. The temple, the center of religious and national

life, will no longer be the place for offering the first fruits as it was in the

past, and its destruction is the source of such bitterness that the fruits of

the vine and the harvest are no longer a source of consolation:

... O Earth, wherefore givest thou thy harvest fruits?

Keep within thee the sweets of thy sustenance?

And thou, O Vine, why further dost thou give thy wine?

For an offering will not again be made therefrom in Zion,

Nor will the first fruits again be offered. . . .

(II Baruch 10:9-10)

While the lament in Baruch uses the familiar Biblical imagery of

pastoral life, it is similar in associations to the Last Survivor's speech which also looks at the joy of the past and the barrenness of the present in light of cataclysmic events. The treasure in Beowulf d\so symbolizes the life in community, and its burial the end ofthat life. Without men to

possess the rich ornaments, they lie tarnished and useless, and the

lament at their burial calls up images of the activity of the comitatus

with which the treasure was associated on geardagum, activity which has now ceased (11. 2260D-66).

Although the similarity between Baruch's lament and the Last Sur

vivor's speech may be merely fortuitous, the similarity does suggest the

association of treasure and the sense of doom. In Baruch, however, the

treasure is to be restored along with the temple in the Millennial

Kingdom, while in Beowulf the treasure is exhumed to be burned along with the hero in his funeral pyre. But the burning of treasure also has an apocalyptic association as the Old English Judgment Day poems

make clear. In the rune passage that ends Cynewulf s Ascension poem (Christ II), the burning of the treasure is the central symbol of the doom

of the world (a motif found as well in Christ HI):

?>onne fraetwe sculon

byrnan on bade; blac rasette?

geond woruld wide. Wongas hreosa?,

burgstede bersta?. Brond bi? on tyhte, aele? ealdgestreon unmurnlice,

gaesta gifrast, Jsaet geo guman heoldan,

penden him on eorJ)an onmedla waes.

(Christ II, 807D-14)

The fire of Beowulf s funeral and the fires which anticipate it in the

poem (particularly the one at the funeral of Hnaef and his kin in the

Finnsburg digression [11. 1114-24]) are described in imagery reminis cent of the fire of doomsday. Thus, it seems to me, the motif of treasure

links the events in the poem with eschatological events and stands as the



Man, Time, Apocalypse in Wanderer, Seafarer, Beowulf 5J7

central symbol of the doom that hovers relentlessly over the final

portion of the poem.27 One further association of images remains to be explored. The

desolation and ruin called up in the Last Survivor's speech is echoed in the Old Father's lament (11. 2443-59), a passage which does much to further the doom-filled mood of the last portion of Beowulf ] The two

passages are further linked by the imagery of ruined halls implied in both. In the Old Father's lament, that imagery is the natural accompan iment and expression of the parental grief occasioned by accidental fratricide. In Baruch, in the same passage as the burial of the treasure, there is a lament for the anguish of parenthood, for in the last times those who have sons shall bury in grief (10:15). A variation of this

topos in Matthew 10:21 provides an even more striking parallel to the

language of Beowulf': "And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death . .. ." Finally, in the litany of doom recited by Wulfstan, the theme of fratricide takes prime place :

... on JDysan earde waes, swa hit {tincan maeg, nu fela geara unriht fela 7 tealte getryw?a aeghwaer mid mannum. Ne bearh nu foroft gesib gesibban t>e ma J)e fremdan, ne faeder his bearne, ne hwilum beam his agenum faeder, ne broJ)or o?>rum .. ,28

Fratricide and internecine strife are recurring themes in Beowulf par ticularly in the legendary history which forms a background to the events in the poem and in the Biblical allusions to Cain. They are also, it is clear, of prime concern in the apocalyptic signs of the times. If it is not

pushing the point too far, one can see other motifs in the Germanic

history likewise being encompassed in the pattern of apocalyptic signs?the rise of nation against nation, the fall of empires, the general

widespread treachery and deceit?the cataclysms and horrors that are man-created and that, in the apocalyptic scheme of things, are the

inevitable accompaniment to the natural disasters of earthquake, fire, and flood and the horror of the apocalyptic beasts.29

27In "Beowulf and the Plundered Hoard," a paper read on the same panel as this paper (see n. 1), Willem Helder offered an interpretation of the treasure based on exegetical commentaries on eschatological motifs in the Gospels in which the treasure figures prominently. For example, Matthew 6:19 ff. links the treasure with eschatological con

cerns, and other passages in the New Testament equate Christ's coming at Judgment with a thief in the night. Helder demonstrates a connection between these ideas and

suggests that Beowulf s taking possession of the treasure is not an act of concupiscence (pace Goldsmith) but an imitatio Cristi.

2SThe Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), p. 269. 29It has been suggested that the bleak ending of Beowulf owes more to the Germanic

conception of the doom of the gods than to Christian ideas of apocalypse: John Halver

son, "The World of Beowulf,"ELH, 36 (1969), 601 ff; Calder, p. 36. But Ursula Dronke, in "Beowulf and Ragnar0k" (Saga Book ofthe Viking Society for Northern Research,! y [1969],



518 Green

The parallels to apocalyptic imagery I have been suggesting in The

Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Beowulf underscore "the sense of an end

ing" that readers of the poems have always felt but have not been fully able to articulate. The imagery of apocalypse functions in the

background of the poems to bring into relief the human events in the

foreground; we are constantly being reminded of the order of the

world as the apocalyptic mind conceived of it, moving with utter reso

luteness to its climax.The three central figures in the poems are men at

moments of crisis?both physical and spiritual?suspended in poetic time and space between what has occurred and what is yet to be

fulfilled. And, as in the apocalyptic scheme of time and history, the

poems see an intimate relationship between what was, what is, and what

shall be. I have called the figures "men in the middest"; but more

literally they can be seen as men at the end of time, for one feels that

there is not much time left until the ultimate moment when all things shall have their end. For the three figures, "the hour is coming and now

is," and their motivations and actions in the poems are responses to the

existential crisis of man in time thus defined.

302-25), points out that the vision of Ragnar^k is not as bleak as Halverson and Calder

suggest, and G. Turville-Petre (Myth and Religion of the North [London, 1964], pp. 281 ff.) notes that the Eddie versions of the doom of the gods may have been influenced by Christian conceptions. This suggests to me that arguments based on a categorical opposi tion between Christian and pagan world views are questionable at best: see Taylor, "Heorot, Earth, and Asgard,"passim, and William A. Chaney, "Paganism to Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England," Harvard Theological Review, 53 (i960), 197-217. Margaret E.

Goldsmith ("The Christian Perspective in Beowulf," in the Brodeur Festschrift [see n. 13],

p. 89) sees the ending o? Beowulf as apocalyptic in a Christian sense, but draws unneces

sarily harsh conclusions about Beowulf s character. Halverson's and Irving's view of

Beowulf s heroism as consisting in doing what he has to do in a finite world seems to me

the most judicious view of the poem; this view is not inconsistent with Christian ideals and

is reinforced by the apocalyptic imagery.



man, time, and apocalypse in "the wanderer", "the seafarer", and...

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