$l S;r

Longman Literature in English SeriesGeneral Editors: David Carroll and Michael Wheeler

Lancaster UniversitY

For a complete list of titles see pages viii and ix

English LiteraturebeforeChaucer

Michael Swanton

>l>Itttll-

LongmanLondon and New York

$"* PrAr

+2.

104 ENGLISTT t-rrERA'I'uRE ItEFoRE cHAUCER

(Paris 1844-90), xrvn, cols 1155-56

f\g. M)

Compare Bruchstil&e-d_es Euangeliums,und der Apokalypse des Perrus, edited bv e

Xi#*g:'fr::I;::?i);ly",iir!$,:i;'.T'Tltii::'i',il,;x.'):;,iln*l"tChaptet 4

The Ruin of Time

The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Ruin, and The Phoenix

introduction of Christianity did not so much replace the native mode

43. H. Logeman, L'lnsrription Anglo-saxonne du Reliquaire de la vraie croix au T.t^- .t'Eglise des SS. Mithel-et-Cudule i Bruxelles (Gheni. tgst); ,nd .o-ir." i"+"j,tl.d'Ardenne, 'The Old Enslish [nscriotion on rh" n.".".t" r-.^""' ;:^;,-,::.''.I'U.t;i;3:i;*i'$1fi"d*n Inscription on the Brusseli Cross', El3lish t;;;;,:ii

44. There are Latin cross riddles by Hwrtberht. Abbot of Monkwearmouth-Jarrowfrom 716, and Tatwine, Mercian Archbishop of Lanterbury lrom 73,l t^ :r!*:::;':"!:""rii:;!:::::ij:::a;'r,i;;{i b,i:;:'.".'iL..:,,:,;i,J8ijj':,tianorum, Series Latina, cxxx,r,(Turnholt. I96g), pp'nO.-iZlj-,

^ii;;h:;; :;r;:OJd English Exerer Book which might be resolvej ihrr, ..n. nos. 30- 55 nrr: -.whichthenowerof.^"..i,;""^^.;c..ll',^}L-:L--..lwhich the power of speech is specifically attribured ,. ";;i;";;;i .,i_I".I"Ieatures (The Exerer Boo&, editei by Krapp and Dobbie, pp. f eitl.';r;::,jii.Others from the Exeter Book colleciion, ho*.u.., like no '5i, .Ur,,..'"g_r"".r'i,i;

no.72,'spear' , afford a better structural analogy to the words oiil ;;;;;i;li"*tell much the same hisroru

-.h".*, living in tt""'f"...i, ihey had b... .r; ;;;'ilJfashioned by men tor a particular prrpS* iiutj.. ;;. ;;?. 232_33).45. Compare ,n.lfric, The Homilies of the Anglo_Saxon Churth, edited by B. Thorpe(London, 184H6), n, p. 306.* l:,*::;-F:::itio Euangetii secutlllty Lutan,g{i1ga by c. Schenkl, Corpus srriprorum

f:'!,';f1':':: !::':::i::::;:!!,) (Le'\pzi,;.:s04';,p^. iil;;'er*:;:,i;:U::,,l_r",*H"u:,"1;!j^?LTf!]I-.:ft:l,lq :" ,h; f."i "?'s"i"-""'z.-i.-rl lliriliT;?::::I::!::!'.::9ll Ll1pri"r r ro66;.,0 23.' t".;.;i;;;r;";;;;'.,;;;:j,'J;

:::,::q::l-:::Try Northumbrra, c;",,o"1i_eld".;;,;,p;;;;:';;;;;ffi.t,,1;,illl;:'I}H' Y:::':":,'::.lj'::l1'lf l::lir", b',"': .,ir,ig, hr, :r:l' il , ;;;;."irBeckwith, Iuory Caruings in Early ltiediual Englond tL",r?",r, i;;;;,;p: ii'i ,H,

ithought respecting man's view of himself and his place in the order ofings, as present an authoritative and systematic framework for his

47. As in the line of Fortunatus,s hymn ,Vexilla Regis,, .regnavit a ligno Deus, (OpcraP.o.et.ia, editedby F. Leo, Monumenta Cermaniae H"istorita,A"rr"*)'i)iqr;r;;r;;, r"(1)(Berlin,.1881),p.3a0 16); comparethetextusrercprusof psalm95. r0,.dominusregnavit a ligno'.48. Cynewulf s Elene, edired by Gradon, second edition.49. Bruchstiltke des Euangeliums, editetl by Harnack, p. 11.50. Compare Augustine, De Caterhizatdit Rudibus, edited byJ. _p. Migne, patrolosiaLatrna,(Paris, lB4+9O), xr, colsJlTC Alcuin. Disptutatioir'phrtorir)-Ziiiirlrr,'rtr'i,in Rhetores Latini Minores, edrted by Halm, pp. 55.5_50, passim.51. The cross traditionallv conveys the soul to heaven; compare W. Bousset, .platons

weltseele und das Kreuz christi', zr*riyiliirlir)euustamentlkhe wissenschaJt unddie Kunde des (Jrchristentums, U (1913),2i3.

srance. The sentiments so graphically voiced by Edwin's.*orynrort adviser (see above, p. 9), are taken up by the author of an

' separable dramatis personae, the introduction of a second voicc clocs ttotnecessarily indicare the presence ofa second speaker rathcr tllarr ,litit'rcut

ilr aspects of a single complex persona. The picture presented is activcit, rather than static, the separable elements of personal expericncc altd

philosophic reflection reconciled, offering a profoundly moving vicw ofthe human condition.

.i.r I The poem opens with a dramatic statement encapsulating the sub-l,, sequent movement contained within the body of the poem:

Ofthimanhaga aregebide6,Metudes miltse, peahpe he modceariggeondlagulade longesceoldehreran mid hondum hrimcealde se ,wadan wreclastas. Wyrd bid ful arcd. (ll. 1-5)

IOften the solitary man will experience grace, the mercy ofGod, eventhough for a long time, anxious in spirit, he must stir with his hands the ice-cold sea, travel the paths of exile over the watery way. Fate is utterly fixed. ]

ff1ril

xtiltilttIiliilllHr

td, ,rit;ilr l

ifll

106 ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER THE RUIN oF TIME 107

lv to the fears of actual experience but in fulfilling a fundamentalc role, since the traveller, whether exile or pilgrim, is removed

,lhi, .o.rr.*t and, deprived of his defensive network of reliance, isa"r"d ,t once vulnerable and open. The individual is more amenable

ii'rrgg.rri"", m_ore prepared to admit the truth of his condition, whenif.;ir'the comfortable, or compromising, support of familiar circum-

i'i1,,,,i "*

the anhaga, if not literally identified with, is an emphatic referentiitr rt. eardsrapa whose voice makes up the body of the poem. But whereas'ii.-uoi.. of D"o. or Widsith speaks from a known historical and'geogrrphicrt settinS, precise and recognizable, albeit fictive, the ethopoe-i.-irrrra.t.. p".tori is located in no particular time or place' The

: narrarive voicewhich speaks.forcibly, movingly-and credib.ly,:,:.-1:l::l..,1,ihdt"td"r, experience, remains nevertheless 'representative', its facelessi,*ality enduing it with- strength and applicatign, Relyililg,to ?".

p=t vriirl image, the face he adopts may be that of the individual reader,,

.r. of marrkind. However, it is soon clear that the particular circutnstancerl ieading to the speaker's condition was the violent dispersal of a comitatus.' with the death of its leader:

., , Swa cweb eardstapa earfepa gemyndig,iL''' wraprawdsleahta, winemrgahryre- 01.G7)r, [Thus spoke the wanderer, remembering hardships, thc slaughtcrorrs. ittacks ofenemies, the fall ofloving kinsmen.ll

The Wanderer-figure proceeds to exPatiate on his own pcrsotral cx-perience of loneliness in a reflective and expansive manner - thc intrg-iuction of the first person claiming immediacy, authenticity, andadditional sympathy in so far as the depth of his misery and hardship isexacerbated by the fact that the audience receives this account of hiscondition in what are likely to be relatively comfortable and securecircumstances.

'Oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwYlcemine ceare cwiPan; nis nu cwicra nanpeichimmodsefan minnedurresweotuleasecgan'. (11.8-11)

['l have often had to bewail my sorrow alone at each dawn; there is now noone living to whom I dare openlyspeak my heart'. ]

What makes the speaker's suffering intolerable is not mere hardship - inan age when material want, hunger even, must have been comnronplacc-but desperate loneliness. It is the fact that, friendless and lcadcrlcss, thcrc

L

The gnomic mode is established by the.characteristic use of of, the third,p..rJ, singular and the present tense, I concluding with a iol.*.r

.niioreboding half-line exclaiming on the inexora.bility of fate: Wyrd bia jiared, a famiTiar stoical statement reflecting the view of one whosi primaryexperience of the world is that life is often disappointing, alwiys un_certain. His anxiety is repeatedly stressed: modeearig, ror^r*orio,wintercearig (11.2,20,24). The definitive condition.*pr.rr.d is that of alexile, the sorrows and hardships bo_rne by one deprived of the security ofthe hall and the companionship of his feilow rnen. At once literal andfigurative, the uncertainties of life outside the loeus comitatus _ ri; ;;:known but undoubtedly harsh region from which the sparrow came andto which he will come again

- supplies a ready correlatiie for that which

is beyond worldly experience. The figure of ihe exile haunrs the Anglo--Saxon imaginarion as a constant nagging fear of rhe possibility, Jr.nlikelihood, of the dispersal of the .o*itrt,r. co.r.qu.ri on internal dis_sension or external attack. Since one's place in the hall is what gives one'slife significance and meaning, to be diprived, for whaterr.. .J"ror, of .pl..g..l that society, is the ultimare;atastrophe that might befal anindividual. ourside those known bonds lay ,., lli.r, and hoitile world inwhich even the best of men might well be incapabre of establishing newrelationships. The lonely man was nor yet imbued with the romant; aurathat a.later age might ascribe to him. The solitary outsider was not jusr tobe pitied, but distrusted: the wolfs-head oi the outlaw esp'ecialryshunned. There were all sorts of reasons for being in the state oiexile-not all of them the result of innocent misfortune. In real life a man mightbe exiled from society for all sorts of wickedness, like the west Saxon kingand_ war-leader Sigeberht, ultimately driven out inro the wealden foreststo.die violently and alone in the miserable events leading up ro the coupd'6tat at Merton (see above, p. 8). In riterature the list

"r-*rit.a exiles isheaded by Cain, his brother's slayer, condemned by God himself to beshunned (see above, p. 83), and from whom were descended a whorebrood of outcasr monsters,, hobgoblins, and trolls, most notably s."*"r.opponent Grendel himself 'who bore God,s anger, (see aborre, p. 56).But the role of exile was not unfamiliar to the heroes of .o.ri.rrrpo...yliterature

- a

'waldere or Hengest -

who either find rhemselves ."1.a ,,some stage in their personal history, or act out their adventures far froml.T:. The persona adopted by r\e poet-figure himself _ Widsith bydcfinition and Deor by history

- is charact*eristically that of the lone

wa'dcrcr. This was not peculiar to the Germanic consciousness alone,btrt ariscs narurally from the prevailing conditions of warfare,".i.iy i"north-western Europe; incontemporary Latin and celtic eleg;., tt..,rir..is frcqucntly that of an cxile who iorrt."rt, his former t

"ppli.r, *irr, ii,prcscnt miserable condition.2 Thc persona is onc with *hor" concerns therudic.ce might readily identify: foiccfur nor onry by reason or..r.."iniing

:f il:r,r:aiilr l'i

!lil'r".'.dl:,t

.{l:1:iit-rt

i

,r'tl:i

It ,

:lil'i

il,

i

irl

108 ENGLISH LITERATIJIIE BEFr>RE CHAUCER

[]irIt;l

;l

,l

iirll'

,ilil

ilri

---.>

is now no one in whom he can confide. which is the occasion of his speecfu-

and our poem. His grief is such as to demand urterance (indeedparadoxically we cannot know of it otherwise). Yet,ironically t. i, w.t'iaware of the classical virtue of reticence in face of adversity:

'Ic to sope watprtbipineorle indryhtenpeawprt he his ferdlocan frste binde,healde his hordcofan, hycge swa he wille,. (ll.1l_14)['l know, ofcourse, that it is a nobre virtue in a man to bind fast his breast,keep his heart in check, whatever he may feel'. ]

.

But mere stoicism proves inadequate, as the very existence of the poembetrays.-So desperate is he to have someone ro share his life tt.t rr!

-ittpersonify even sorrow. itself as a companion _ cruel .o-prrry _ ,h.g.nomic formula again in-viting sympathetic assent: wat se pi cuinad huslipen bid to-tg

-t_o geferan [He who tries knows how cruel 'i, ;;i;. .companion] (ll 29-30). ljnderscoring the actuariry of indivldual ex-perience, the effect of gnomic generaiizatio.r, no lers forceful for alr its

universal application, in no way dissipates the personal intensity of thestatement, but rather achieves simultaneous immediacy and'generalvalidity, at once emotional and intellectual, with , g..rr.. .lii_- toauthority than the speaker's

_

ex,perience alone. Th"ere devel;;; ,singularly convincing portrayal of suffering mankind, invested *'ith ,w-ealth of realistic imagery. The v/anderer's"condition i, .."ur.Jbf *.yof concrete details; his decidedly break landscape

- windswept headiands,frozen seas, and harsh weather * is not merely the experientirt *rt.i* orhuman hardship bur the appropria-t.

-.trphori.al expression.irpi.*rfdesolation: his spirit being no liss frozen than his surroundings, rr[.i""asoul in the grip of winter, uintercearig (1.24). The speaker f..i iir.,r"lirobe

- as at a literal level he is

- all it ,",

- and a cruel ,." i, lr.

-Wi"r,e-ventually'sorrow and sleep togcther bi,d the wretched

-r"' 1il.:++01,the expected relief of even temporary oblivion is disturbed uy ii. a..r-that he is back once more with his beloved leader, engaged 1, ;i. ;;;._monies of hall-life

- the dreadful rearity to which h.

"#rf".r. ""if -"a.worse by the tantalizing nature of his dream:Donne onwrcneO eft wineleas guma,gesihO him biforan fealwe we gas,bapian brimfuglas brrdan fepia,hreosan hrim ond snaw hagli gemenged.Ponne beo6 py hefigran heortjn benn-e,sare rfter swrsne. Sorg bid geniwad. (11.4150)

THE RrJrN oF TrME 109

lThen the friendless man wakes up once more, sees before him fallow waves,lea-birds bathing. spreading their feathers, frost and snow falling mingledwith hail. Then the heart's wounds are the harder to bear, sore in the wake ofloved ones- Sorrow is renewed.]

Finally, in a fine t.cuch of psychological realism, the Wanderer's mind/es way to hallucination. The pain of deprivation is such that he isir/en to're-create in his mind the joys of his past life - not the indulgent

eia of comfortable retirement, but torturing remembrance, ai'nt fantasy. The Wanderer eagerly greets the old friends that heare before his eyes - only to find their images fade on the drifting: 'The company of fleeting figures brings no familiar songs, andlwdlvtg' r J

*i.ty is renewed' (11.54-55). However the mind may t'*'ist and turn,

iiltselfwhich, like man, seems to be falling into the sere- the significance ofitiwhich is signalled by the opening conjunction, Forpon:

,'Forponicgepencannemrg geondpasworuldfor hwan modsefa min ne gesweorce

,i' honne ic eorla lif eal geondpence,hu hi frrlice flet ofgeafon,modge magupegnas. Swa pes middangeardealra dogra gehwam dreoseb ond feallep'. 01.5&_63)

['Therefore I cannot think why in the world my heart should not grow dark,when I really think about the life of men, how suddenly they relinquishccl thcfloor ofthe hall, brave warrior-thegns. Just so this middle-earth day by daydeclines and decays'. ]

Here the poet draws on more than merely the pathetic fallacy. It was acommonplace to contemporary thought that the world as it neared thcmillennium would show clear signs of decline ifnot ofactual decay. Quiteevidently things were not what once they were. All over western Europelay the tangible ruins ofa once-great civilization: towns, villas, and publicbuildings lying desolate and empty. The persistent human instinct that agolden age iay somewhere in the past, here corroborated by the witness oftheir eyes, was underlined by elaborate academic analysis. Of the sevenages of man since the time of Creation, five, up to the aPpearance ofChrist on earth, had passed and man was now living in the sixth whichitselfwas hastening on to its end when, with all the terrors of eschatology,the last trump would sound and Judgement Day, the end of the world,would arrive. The physical substance of the world, no less than man, wasinvolved in a process of real and inevitable decay prior to destruction.Man was bound to undergo this process of decay primarily bccausc ofhis

110 ENGLISH LITERATURE I]EFORE CHAUCER THE RUIN oF TIME 111

i,'

first fall from grace and his expulsion from Eden. Since this ex^pulsion,man as an exile on earth, bound to labour and go in sorrow, was fo16sd 1awander through rhis transitory vale of tears unril one day he would beable to re-enter his true, heavenly home.3

A further Forpon sequence marks a decisive shift from narrative rodidacric rone. The intensely personal lamenr of th^e solitary is finallyresolved by a degree of philosophic detachment from his'individualcircumstances, remarking how men do not recognize the true signifi.rn..ofever-present decay until the reflection ofthe years makes it I p...on.trather than rational exo.erience

- acknowledged pathei mathos

- it.-o.o-

verbial truism that wisdom comes only with sufiering:o - r

Forpon nc mrg wearpan wis wer rr he agewinrra drl in woruldrice. 01.64-65)

IA man cannot become wise, therefore, until he has had his share of wintersin the kingdom of the world. ]

The poet goes on to list sorid pragmatic sententiae -

the crassic stoicalresponses to the human situation, the need to display fortitude andmoderation in life

- in an anaphoric sequence of the type:'..rot too X, irortoo Y', spreading over lines 6ffi9. Expiessing the experienti"r *irio* of

maturity rather rhan rhe trimm,er,s self_apology, this philosophi. ,trr,.. i,linked wirh the eventual fate ofthe *hol. *oIlJ; fo. th. p."d;;;;, ;.are told, will recognize an ultimate pattern in his experien.., ,rrti.ip"ir.rgthe appalling scene of a total Doomsday wrstera.rd. The world rshastening to its ruin, just as now at random, individual ruined halls rnarkthe transience ofhuman glory: the fall not only ofindivia"l r".trrr.r, irtthe ruin ofsociety intimatery associated with ihe desolation

"r", frryr.acontext:

Ongieran sceal gleaw hrle hu grstlic bidponne eall pisse worulde wela weste stonded,swa nu missenlice geond pisne middangeardwindc biwaunc weallas stondap,hrinrc bihrorcne, hrydge pa ederas.Woria

112 ENGLIsH LTTERATURE gEFoRE cHAUCER

The initial sequence iremizes particular things which men have held dearand which have passed away, things not important in themselves but forwhat they symbolize, grrphtcelly representing,rh.e losr age_._significantlyrhe poer chooses ro employ not the classical formula Hwir bib[Where are . . .] but Hwer cwom . . . [What have they_co-. roli fi.unvoiced answer is, of course, they have all come to nothing, fo..u..y_thing passes

- the less acceptable aspect of Deor', co.rrolatoiy ,rn,r-]

fhe"poet then passes o., to ir-..rr the loss "f a.igi;i" ; ;i#;il:l:sive list, moving from tangibles ro, a grearer intingibiriry; ,il rr io.tlnot

merely the cup but he who enjoyed ir -

and his gloiy. The final p"ierln,summary serves to question the ultimate reality of things, r..ogrirr,i-fth.illusory narure of both man's works ,nd mrn', affectiJns, aairgli[3,n.wanderer's dream-companions. But if alr the past has come r"'""rli"g,:::.:,T:j*, reality of what does ,,o* .o-. in its ptace i, ."Oil.i,ft

ond pas stanhleopu stormas cnyssad;hridhreosende hrusanbinde6,wintres woma; ponne won cyme6niped nihtscua norpan onse.rie6hreo heglfare hrlepum on andan. (11.101_05)

IStorms beat upon the ruin; falling snow, thc tcrror olwinter, fetters thcearth; then comes darkness, the sli_adow ofnight sprcaris gloo,rr, ,..a, i.o,,the north fierce hailstorms to the distrcss of men. ]

Picking,up and developing several of the images of the first part of thepoem, and thus universalizing the experience ofihe i.rdi.,,id"rl fti;J;;.,the final r?t:-:ir represenrs not one wallowing in self_pitf ;;;;1.quietude of dignified self-rearization, aware of his"place *'rtl -",rl'r.flux of the world's being. Transcending the grim experience of his indi-

vidual_plight, the [/anderer moves f.ori signiof physical airrotutiorr-io,metaphysical understanding co.clucli,g *irh r, echo of the doom_lade,line 74.

Eall is earfoOlic eorpan rice;onwended wyrda gesceaft weoruld underheofonum.Her bi6 feoh lene, her bid freond kne,her bid mon irne, her biO mag lene.Eal pis eorpan gesteal idel weorpe6. 01. 106_10)

!f1111rtrinS,i1 the kingdom ofthe earth is full ofhardship; the decree offatemakes mutable the world beneath the heavens. H.re *."lih i, eph.;;i, -'here friends are epheme-ral, here man is eph.-.."[-h.r. *o_.., i,ephemeral. The whole foundation of rhii ea.th wiil b..o-. aIr"il*.1

.THE IIUTN OIi'I'IME

13't

re consolation exisrs in acknowledging the generai condition. one way.-*,n, w i t h. p e r s o n a l g r i e f i s t " f ' : l

t ll-' : f 'l ffi tl ll . ll ^l': -"f:' "^' -'i' X-].-Jr.n"u"r, that our lot is not unique but part of the natural order. And

|"i'in.^ Jffect of the consolation is the converse of Deor's propagandistic,'-

--

. ' D^-L .L^ rv/^-r--^- .-t rL^ l^-,.1"-.^- ^f ..,L;.1" L- i"i;ffi ;-hings pass'. Both the Wanderer and the landscape of which he isi;il,;ii- ,r. *"rely symptomatic of the present decline and latent but certain,'Iiri.u.rlo" of mankind and all his works. The burden of the poem is that",iljrdo* begins only as man comes to realize his part in the transitoryj|1;;;.. of thlngs. Such wisdom may bring about acknowledgement, itiiiry ."." bril.rg about resolution; l:,' U,*1" T:: thilC:,lt l::-":: 1]$l|'ifr*gr pass. It is r.rot until the Wanderer has run the gamut of

iiritopJ.ri".ss rhat hc can properly learn the n9i1l of ryin - mutability andii.,liir.rri.".. - the lesson that it is adversity which brings about wisdom,{,j,, il"*i"g him to transcend merely material, earthly values, and to resolve

t., for himself the limitations of the human condition. Once we can face withI resolution the transitoriness ofeverything around us, everything we most

value, then we can acknowledge even the terrifying fact of ultimatemutability, the ruin of the world and the dissoiution of Creation itselL ltis the burdcn of thc Wandercr's final eschatological vision, implicitlypresent in thc body of the poem, that the eternal remains - that whichstands beYond mutabilitY.

And so at the end, the poet turns to God - his point of departure et thcbeginning of the poem - briefly, but in metrically expandcd, longcr eltdmore dignified lines, to draw the poem to a conclusion. Thc firt:rl wordsof the pocm rcvert to the two-line framework and offer rrot so ttttttlt :tttalternativc to paticnt suffering - which is itself a Christian virtttc" btrtthe hope of aclclitional spiritual security - an echo of the opening wortls olthe poem, are ,gebided are sece6, emphasizing the movclllcl)t ltrortt :tformerly passivc to a now active involvement:

Wel bi6 Pam Pe him are sece6,frofre to Frder on heofonum, prr us eal seo

frstnung stondeO. (ll. 1 1+15)

Ilt will be well [or him who seeks grace, solace from the Father in heaven,where abides security for us all. ]

A syntactic parallel over lines 712-74: Til bip se pe . . . Wel bid pam pe . ,underscores the virtue of the new faith while acknowledging thetraditional heroic virtues offortitude and resolution propounded by thegleaw hele. The courageous man is called fortunate since he is armedagainst sorrow by fortitude, whereas the truly blessed has the addedsolace of security in heaven. The religious potential minimaliy stated inthe opening and closing lines, remains quite undeveloped. The author isapparently not concerned to develop any clistinctivt'ly (lhristiarr

114 ENGLrslr t.rrEllATUttE tsEFoRE cHAUCER THE RUrN oF TIME 115

affirmation of faith; his conclusion is seemingly almost incidental. d14the body of the poem is set firmly within the matrix of earthry d..i;;;.-

However, the further implications of this two-line framework are ex_tensively developed in The Seafarer, a poem that has much in .o*r*nwith The wanderer, emerging from much the same culturar landscape.Similar in length, it employs the same ethopoetic {.yi.:,- exploring amoral theme through the expressed experience of an individ,rrl p..ron.,An anonymous voice makes much the same complaint, depictedin simi-lar circumstances

- experiencing physical and mental distress. Alone in aharsh environment he seeks some-kind of consolation. But tt,.r. tt.

similarity ends; the efGct and resolution of his complainr are quitedifferent. The wanderer's authenricity is convincingly bur implicitlydeveloped literally and psychologically in the body of the poem. Thevoice of the Seafarer claims explicit personal veracity for his tale ofsuffering from the very beginning:

Mrg ic be me sylfum so6gied wrecan,sipas secgan, hu ic geswincdagumearfodhwile oftprowade,bitre breostceare gebiden hrbbe,gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela,atol ypa gewealc. (11.1-6)

[l can tell a true tale ofmysell] speak ofjourneys, how I have often sufferedtimes ofhardship in days oftoil, endured bitter anxiety at hcart andexperienced many an anxious lodging on board ship, the dreadful rolling ofwaves. ]

The speaker goes on to porrray a graphic picture of the harsh andhazardous conditions of the night-warch ar the ship's prow tossing by thecliffs, outwardly his limbs fettered by frost, inwardly hot at the heirt withs.rges of anxiety 01.7-11), for in addition to physical exhaustion aspiritual hunger for securiry rears the sea-weary spirit (11.11-r2). Like rhewanderer, the Seafarer also treads the paths of exile, cut off from kins-rnc, (11-15-16). In both cases the drear and desolate environment is anappropriatc objective correlative for the speaker's inner state. But the twospcekcrs' :rttirLrdcs to their suffering are different. The wanderer-figurer('scnts his rnatcrial dcprivation not so much for itself but for whit itrrl)rcs('r)ts

- thc ernptincss and desolation of life cut off from personal

rt'l.rti.rrships. Thc Seafarcr, on the other hand, seems to find significanceirr thc f;rr:t.f physical hardship of itsclf, which is merely made worse byl:r.k trl-,c.rrrparri.,ship. I)cscribing his experience wholly in terms ofplrysic:rl wrcrchcd.css, thc speaker lays considerable stress on the bodilytlist'.rrfirrt ol-cxposurc to the storms of winter; he is nipped with frost onrrrr ir.c-r-.kl sca, hu,g around with icicles, pelted wlih hail (ll.&-17).

Although naturally the company of men ishe describes. we feel that this exacerbates

absent in the circumstancesthe speaker's plight rather

',i:i'thr., represents its direct cause'

i,.,, Prr ic ne gehyrde butan hlimman sre,

\, dyde ic me to gomene, ganetes hleopor.1 ond huilpan sweg fore hieahtor wera,

mrw singende fore medodrince.Stormas prr stanclifu beotan, prr him stearn oncwrdisigfepera; ful oft Prt earn bigeal,urigfepra; nrnighleomrgafeasceaftig ferO frefran meahte. (11.18-26)

[There I heard nothing but the roar of the sea, the ice-cold wave. At timesI would take the song of the swan as my entertainment, the cry of thegannct and thc call ofthe curlcw in placc ofhuman laughter, the gull'ssinging in placc ofthe drink ofnrcad. Thcre storms beat upon rocky cliltiwhere the tern, icy-feathered, answered thern; very often the eaglescreamed around, wet-feathered; no protective kinsman could conr{irrt tllcwretched spirit. ]

'We seem clearly to be among those early Saxorrs whorrr tlrt' ( l:rlloRoman poet Sidonius describes as being 'inurcd to tlrc h;rrtlslrrp ol'tlrt'iea and shipwreck

- for whom the dangers of thc dcclr rrt'rro( t;rstr,rl

acquaintances but intimate friends'.7 Whereas The Wandttr'.s controllrrrg,motivation is the contrast between present miscry and past h:rppirrcss,the decisive contrast for The Seafarer is that betwecn thc hardship ollifi'at sea and the luxury of life on land. Twice it is emphasized that thoscliving in comfort on land, proud and flushed with wine, wlonc ond winsal,can know nothing of the miseries endured by one who lives the lifc ofthe Seafarer (11.12-15, 27-29). Now with the scenc sct and oursympathy engaged, the narrator can afford to move into a paradoxicalextension of his thesis, marked by a correlattve Forpon sequence . It isapparently a direct consequence of the acknowledged suffering involvedthat the Seafarer feels led to embark on his journey:

Forpon cynssa6 nuheortan gepohtas prt ic hean streamas,sealtypa gelac sylfcunnige

-

mona0 modes lust mrla gehwylceferb to feran, prt ic feor heonanelpeodigra eardgesece" (11.33-38)

116 ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER

INow therefore, the thoughts ofmy heart are stirred to explore the high seas,the surging of salt waves, for myself- the yearning of the spirit time andagain urging the soul to set out, so that I may seek out an alien land faraway.l

Just as his body is tossed by the waves (cnossian,l.8) so his mind is now .itossed by conflict (cnyssan,l.33). Curiously he seems deliberately to have labandoned the comfort and security of his homeland to seek out the.,;uncertainties and hostility of an alien country. Whereas the Wandererrails against his circumstances but comes to recognize suffering as a fact"riof life and achieves self-awareness on that account, for the Seafarer :physical hardship

- less grief than pain

- is apparently worth explorarion

for its own sake. Although the Seafarer's tale has hitherto been expressed r

in the past tense (unlike the Wanderer's continuous present), it is a futurejourney he now anticipates, willingly submitting to hardship and pain forreasons that are not yet apparent. There is no stated rationale for theconsiderable physical risks involved

- neither commerce, piracy. or

pilgrimage -

nor yet the tourist's delight in foreign travel for its own sake.Despite cold and hunger, the acknowledged hardship of life ar sea, he hasdeliberately forsaken the laughter of men and the drink of mead in favourofthese crying, wheeling sea-birds. And he adds to boor the corollary thatthose who remain on land can know nothing of such hardship

- con-

cluding, somewhat curiously at first sight: 'Therefore my heart now urgesme to make trial of the high seas, the tossing of rhe waves' (11.33-35). Hefeels a lust, a longung, to go. Now this is very curious, unless the speaker iseither a masochist or schizophrenic

- neither of which would be

acceptable in a literal appreciation. The Forpon sequence is simply inex-plicable until we enter the affective perspective, when it becomes com-pletely logical at a thematic level. The Wanderer's mere passive res-ignation is turned into an active contempt for the world. The Wanderer'sstatement of pathei mathos, 'wisdom through suffering', is taken onedreadful, yet logical step further

- in the classical ascetic response to

hedonism: 'If wisdom comes rhrough suffering, then we should seek tosuffer'. The Wanderer comes to acknowledge the illusory nature ofmaterial pleasures; the Seafarer will actively seek to shun rhe source of allworldly affections. Unlike the Wanderer, the Sealarer-persona undergoesa structural rather than psychological development.

A further Forpon sequence makes it clear that the journey involved inany case is not quite so straightforward as it might seem:

Forpon nis prs modwlonc mon ofer eorpan,ne his gifena prs god, ne in geogupe to prs hwrt,ne in his drdum to prs deor, ne him his dryhten to prs hold,prt he a his srfore sorge nabbe,to hwon hine Dryhten gedon wille. 01.3H3)

,rilrii

ii

rilil

THE RUIN OF TIMF

r [For there is no man on earth so bold in spirit, nor so generous with his gifts,. nor so vigorous in his youth, nor so courageous in his deeds, nor with a lord

so gracious to him, that he is never anxious in his seafaring, as to what theLord will send him.l

that more people than just the persona of the poem are engagedis seafaring. Many, perhaps all, men are involved in the journey of

the voice speaks -

men who have all the social attributes: generos-:.daring, and enjoying gracious lords. Not all need be like the narrativeiiona, bereft of these things, although as an exemplum, his particularightis the more instructive. The parallel over lines 41-43 employing thei6td dryhten in its two senses of earthly leader and heavenly Lord makes

point. What the Seafarer's voyage has come to represent is theight and narrow way, full of physical and mental sacrifice, which

.ilds to heaven. 'He will have no thought for the harp, or ring-giving, northe pleasure of a woman, nor worldly hope

- not about anything else

,#hate,rer, but only the surging waves' (11.44-47). Accepting the words oflehrirt which promised a hundredfold recompense to those of his adhe-

ii' m who relinquish the world: property, kinsmen, wiG, to follow him[,;(I_r4atthew 19" 28-29), the insular Church, Celtic and Saxon alike, wouldi,iibcommend the virtues of a literal exlle pro amore ileo. Voluntary exile was',i familiar ethic in secular life; the bond of personal loyalty might require'd man to accompany even an unworthy earthly leader into exile during a,low ebb in his fortunes,8 so that to follow his heavenly Lord into exilc _to

l,,,be despised for his sake -

was not quite so alien as it mighr seem. Fori.many it would be sufficient to withdraw from the world into one or orher, of the burgeoning eremetic communities,e but others who must nccds

make their metaphors a reality would embark on a genuine penitentialvoyage. lo

The preparation of one's soul for its final pilgrimage of death was besrundergone by the endurance of hardships here on earth

- and at its

clearest of the hardships of exile willingly undergone for the love of God.The journey of exile itself could be regarded as a sorr of 'pilgrim'spfogress'through which the lonely sufferer might approach the kingdomof heaven. 1 1 And in fact such peregrini pro amore deo were common enoughfigures of the contemporary scene. Of course many people did engage inpilgrimages ofthe conventional type for what they took to be the good oftheir souls, but the motivation was not of itself some experience at adistant shrine, but the inevitable hardships involved, voluntarily under-gone for spiritual ends. Diagnostic is the case of three men washed up onthe Cornish coast in 891 who claimed to have underraken theirjourney ina small coracle, without any means of 'human steerage' because theylonged, for the love of God, to be on a foreign journey

- they cared not

where.12 This strong physical compulsion must have provided the moti-vating force for so many of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic missions to the

I18 ENGLISH LITERATURE I]EFORE CHAUCER

Continent at this time. The peregrinus then, actual or figural, leaves hishomeland to live for a period, or for the remainder ofhis life, in a strangecountry, as an alien in the land. And as an alien he links naturally wit\Adam, whose exile from Eden marked the beginning ofearthly afllictionfor men, and with a whole host of scriptural figures who had undertakcnjourneys in faith which might be interpreted figuratively

- like Noah's

voyage though which he became an heir to righteousness, or Abraham'swanderings in the desert

-

and ultimately with all who 'confess that theyare strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and declare that they seek abetter country, that is a heaveniy' (Hebrews 11.7-16).

Now the narrative voice of The Seafarer may well have been visualizedas that of an actual peregrinus figure,r3 but contemporary epistemologywouid treat fact and figure in a manner so close as to imply that one wasno more than an aspect of the other. What appears to be a concretereferent, like the persona of the Seafarer here, may prove to be no morethan the description of a mood. There existed the common platonictendency to experience a stimulus simultaneously under its separableaspects, each discrete, independent, and self-authenticating, but at thesame time forming part of some transcendent whole. Its literary exposi-tion is neither realistic nor strictly allegorical, but the development of avividly imagined situation to figure forth with immediate concrete forcethat abstract doctrine or experience which motivates the poem'sstructure. The development ofinterpretative biblical literature of the typeof Exodus allowed that any serious poetry might be allusive, symbolic,enigmatic, in which the reader is led to seek out covert significance. Sowhile there is no extant evidence for the interpretation of other thanexplicitly religious writings in this manner, some part of the audience,conditioned by this all-pervasive and infectious mode of visualizing theworld, must always, as now, have been ready to discover in the lines arneaning partl pris. While no exclusive meaning can be allotted to a poemwithout explicit signal of any kind, in the case of The Seafarer this proves areasonabie critical stance to adopt in view of both the strong imageryinvolved, and the need to explicate an otherwise di{Ecult structure. Thesea-journey represents a forcible life-metaphor in itself; nothing morelonely

- except it be a sparrow in the darkness

- than a ship at night alone

on the sea, where mist and snow serve merely to disrupt preconceptionsof time and space. But through poems llke Exodus a whole range ofseafaring imagery

- foreign to biblical thought but adopted from Hellenistic

elements in the early Church -

had bcen given specific religious associations(see above, pp. 92-93). At lcast part of the contemporary audicnce wouldreadily identify the stormy sea of Matthew 8. 23-27 as a familiar syrnbol forthis world, and thc ship as an allegorical portrayal of the Church, ortropologically as thc (lhristian faith, in which thc faithful Christian wascarried thror-rgh thc unccrtaintics of this world.la

Tr rE RUrN oF TrME 119

Once this aspect of the Seafarer's role is identified, its subsequent,ilaboration, ptzzling at a literal level, is more readily explicable. In,returning to the theme of his voyage, the speaker emphasizes that hisvearning is increased at the very moment the pleasures of the world are atih.i, *ot, desirable:

, : Bearwas blostmum nimad, byrig frgria6,r';' wongas wlitigad; woruld onetteo;ealle Pa gemoniad modes fusnesefan to siPe Pam Pe swa Pencedon flodwegas feor gewitan. (11.48-52)

IThe woodlands put forth bL:ssom, adorning cities, making beautiful theplains; the world quickens; all oIwhich urges the eager of mind and spirit toajourney, him who thus thinks to travel far upon the seaways. l

With the passing of winte r, nature is no longer an affliction in itself, butapparently a causc of distress in iis vcry allurement - puz.zling to thoscaccustomed to think of spring only as the harbingcr of plcasant, sunrlydays. But if, at a literal level, the world cluickcrrs, rcviving as tltc lt'uvcsand flowers spring forth, figuratively it also hastcrrs towrtrtls its trltrrrt:rtcend; the eschatological implications of the seasolr arc (-()Inrrr()rrpl.tr-t' trrDoomsday literature,ls the flower of thc ficld:r farrrili:rr syrttt,ol ol lro(ltearthly decay and individual death flob 14. 2;JaIucs, L l().-l l; r l't'tt r I24).The disturbing paradox is redoubled as the note of thc t:ttckoo sorrrrtlsa sombre note of doom, a bird of lament anticipating only dcetlr :rrrtljudgement:16

Swylc geac monad geomran reorde;singed sumeres weard, sorge beodedbitter in breosthord. (11.53-55)

ISo also exhorts the cuckoo with its melancholy voice; summer's watchmarrsings, warns of sorrow, bitter to the heart. ]

Any difficulty we might experience with this unexpcctccl shockir.rg alter-native is explicitly anticipated by thc poet:

Prt se beorn ne wat,sefteadig secg, hwrt pa sume dreogaApe pa wrrclastas widost lecga6. (11.55-57)

[That man, the fellou'blessed with affluence, does rrot krrow wlr;rt sorrc.lthose cndure who so widcly follow the paths ofcxilc. ]

I2O ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER

The first half of the poem concludes with an identification of 3hsexistence of men on land, as not merely transitory but dead in contrastwith the life of men at sea - which, as in Exodus, is the way of therighteous: Forpon me hatran sind Dryhtnes dreamas ponne pis deade liJ, Ieneon londe ['Thus the joys of the Lord give me more pleasure than thisdead life, transitory on land'] (11.6446).

Thereafter through the second half of the poem rhere needs no furtherreference to the sea, since the metaphor has achieved its purpose inconveying the notion of movement in life, and the need for sufferingto enter a state of grace. Nevertheless, the exhortations of the later,didactic half of the poem: the exhortation to fear God, be humble, andtake thought of our ultimate destination, has its basis in the harshexperience dramatically enacred in the mimetic half; of being at themercy of wind and weather, and feeling the insignificance andpowerlessness of humanity when faced by the elemental forces of nature.

The poet goes on to adduce a direct moral from the acknowledgedmutability of the world to which all things are subject, in age indeventual decay. Since nothing lasts and death comes to every man, weshould seek to win a more certain glory than mere wealth. The sequenceof thought is clearly adopted from the sententiae of contemporary secularverse intended to encourage a young man to deeds of courage by meansof the assertive paradigm which n.rns: 'death is inevitable, therefore soact against foes as to win glory, the praise of men', seen for example inthe closing words of Beowulf (above, pp. 6G61). The poet begins with aminimal feint towards the heroic posture (11.72-74), but then develops areligious redaction with some loss of brevity, but no less force, thus:'death is inevitable, therefore perform such deeds against the devil as togain eternal glory, the praise of angels for ever' ([.74n0). This is noless a heroic assertion than that with which the heroes of secular storyfaced a hostile world (see above, pp. 6!66, below, pp. 172-74). In theCrdmonian manner the poet employs vocabulary with known heroicresonance, identifying those who dwell in the halls of heaven as thecomitatus of the Lord: ecan lifes hleil, dream mid dugepum (11.79-30). TheLord envisaged is apparently less the biblical Jesus than the war-leaderof the Dream-poet (see above, p. 98).

There follows a narural reflection on the decline of the world, thedecay of earthly things matching mankind's own age and debiliry,similar in some respects to that stated in The Wanduer, but a lesspersonal, lengthier rationale of worldly degenerarion:

Tr rE turN oF -rrME 121

Dagas sind gewitene,ealle onmedlan eorPan rices:nearonnucyningas necaserasnegoldgiefan swYlceiuw&ron'ponne hi mrst mid him mrrpa gefremedonond on dryhtlicestum dome lifdon.Gedroren is peos dugu6 eal, dreamas sind gewitene;wunia6 pa wacran ond pas woruld healdap,brucad purh bisgo. Blrd is gehnrged,eorpan indryhto ealdad ond seara6,swa nu monna gehwylc geond middangeard. (11.80-90)

[Times have changed, and all the pomp of the kingdom of the world; thereire now neither kings nor emperors nor givers ofgold like there used to be,when they performed the greatest deeds of glory among themselves and livedin most noble renown. This whole company has lailen, the pleasures havedeparted; the weaker remain and possess the world, occupy it by toil. Thesplendour is humbled, earth's majesty is growing old and withering, just aseach man now does throughout the middle-earth. ]

The parallel to what went before is emphasized by the redeployment ofthe key rerms dugu6, dream, and bled (11.79-80, 86-88). The Wandcrcr'sanguish at individual loss, acceptable merely because universal, is nowexplicitly rationalized: it is a degenerating world, in which man ancl thcworld of which he is merely part are linked in a post-iapsariar) statc.

One's natural wish to honour the dead - 'to strew the gravc with gold'in the Beowuifian manner (11"97-102) cleariy is pointless in facc of thcawesomencss of God, when, as the Wanderer pointed out, gold arrd gold-giver, warrior and weapon, moulder together (see above, pp. 111-12)The Crdmonian Creator holds firm the fate not merely of individuals butearth and sky. In the face of universal mutability, only thc vcry foolishwill not be in awe of a God who holds stable even the earth's foundationsand may give no less stability to the heart (gestapelade, gestapelad, ll.l04,108). In extending the point, the poet shows that the seafaring metaphoris not quite forgotten: Stieran mon sceal stronguffi mode, ond pet on stapelumhealdan [A man must steer a wilful spirit and keep it fixed on stablepoints] (1. 109); and he concludes with the direct exhortation: 'Let us takethought where our home is, and how we may come there' 01. 117-18).The final implication of the Seafarer's journey is of journey's end,whether envisaged as the haven of Christ and Paradise or merely deathand the grave.l'The concept ofajourney ofdeath is an archetypal Indo-European one, and certainly not unfamiliar to those early Anglo-Saxonswho consigned their heroes to actual ships for what they took to be theirfinal voyage from this world to the next (see above, pp. 4, 51).18

In both Wanderer ar,d Seafarer the exilic theme is linked dramatically

I22 ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER

and philosophically, literally and symbolically with the explicit or im_plicit contemplation of a ruin: an appropriate stimulus to reflection sin6sit represents the abnegation, enforced or voluntary, ofall those features oflife the hall-building symbolized, and thus leads directly to the journey,actual or figural, in search of an alternative. This archetypal i^"ge.ecu.s'in extenso in a poetic fragment found in the same manuscript as the formertwo poems, and known appropriately as The Ruin. lt has much in com_mon with the two poems previously considered, but is apparently quitedistinct, (in the admittedly mutilated form in which it survives), in_asmuch as it is presented not mimetically but objectively, dealing solelyand protractedly with the one image, and in the impersonal voice. In_stead of forming part of the psychological serting for the snottort musings-

like the bleak weather, part and parcel of the Wanderer-persona'sinterior landscape, or the sophisticated doctrinal rationale of the Sea-farer

- we are left to point the implications for ourselves: that all the

works of men, and most graphically their material monuments, aresubject to the same destructive imperative. But we are presented withneither the direct admonition of The seaJarer nor the immediate personallament o{ The wanilerer. The narrative voice of rhe Ruin is never intro-spective; rather than speak of its own circumstances, it concentrates onthe demise of past generations and the vanity of mankind's belief in itssuperiority to fate. This desolate theme does not impinge upon thecondition ofthe narrative voice; we feel no real sense ofregret or nostalgiafor past glories.

Any critical evaluation of the poem is necessarily tentative in view ofitsincomplete state, although paradoxically it is this very incompletenesswhich lends a special attraction to rhose who might appreciate The Ruinas a poem of re-enactment, in which not merely the imagery but itsbroken syntactic structure endorses its theme and deepens iti presentsignificance. The ruined state of the poem, far from obstructing ourappreciation of it, only corroborates the truth it imports. Here is animpressive, beautiful, and complex construction, carefully and cleverlyput together- but itselfin the very ruined state it seeks to expound. It ispossible to enact the deconstruction of the building into its ionstituentelements, block by block, each image or syntactic unit supporting andholding together the construction

- except that it is now dilapidated

-

and the manuscript a ruin of tumbled blocks of masonry and phrases -the poem falling into fragments of description and commentary. Con-

versely and paradoxically, however, there is as one moves through thepoem a sense of building and growing, of the massiveness of thi con-structions before the mind's eye simultaneous with the tragedy of theirfallen state. Most appropriately as the poem falls finally inio incoherentlacunae, the last recognizable phrases are ofapproval:

THE RUrN oF TIME 123

i, -.-PerPabaPuwrronponnets. . .

prt is cynelic ping,huseb... .burg... (11.499)

[. . . then, where the baths were . . It is a splendid thing, how thecity. . .l

.th. poet'r theme is the recurrent one of the impermanence ofboth thenrks of man, and man himself. The first sentence sets the tone, con-

the conflict and concern of the body of the poem: the utterlyible transience ofeven the greatest earthly glory:

Y/rctlic is pes wealstan, wyrde gebrrcon;burgstede burston; brosnaO enta geweorc.

Ilt's remarkable, this masonry, broken by fate; the precincts ofthe city havecrumbled; the work of giants is in decay.)

The significant juxtaposition is present in the opening line. The masonry

,;]4ime cause for wonder and dismay -

substantial and tangible evidence fori,declining standards - material corroboration of the unsatisfactoriness of

liiresent times, beyond which we instinctively identify a golden age ofmaterial and moral security. Our awareness of the ewesomesophistication of those who went before provokes an almost religioussense of the inferiority of later generations, whose talents seem fewcr,whose achievements seem the lesser, whose very stature is the lessspectacular with the passage of time.le Giants no longer bestride the

r' world as they seem always to have done in former times. The earlyAnglo-Saxons very clearly felt themselves living in a degenerate age,when scattered around them lay the mute monuments to a once-great

: civilization -

roads, canals, cities, fortresses -

which they might admireand utilize, but which they could not emulate.

The fact that like the ruin which stimulated the Wanderer's reflection,eald enta geweorc (1.87), this ruin is said, conventionally enough,2o to be thework of giants, reflects more than mere reverence for the greatness of thepast. Any human response to such giants is necessarily ambiguous. 'Weare naturally in awe of their potential and evident power. Yet despite,and perhaps because of their awful might, are they not unnatural? Andwas it not giants who for so long warred against God, and whom hedestroyed in the Flood for their wickedness

- part of that monstrous

progeny of Cain, the offspring of evil spirits coupling with mortalwomen.2' It was the sons of Cain whose pride would cause their cities

-

,ii l,ti iriil;riI iii:.ii:jli 1:i:rr

tr

,ililliil:; lrr tr,,i i:

'iirl,ir,j,ii,i

,

l,i

l,itrl

L, I

riJt'l',i i'r,,li

.l,.ij.'1rti:1,

,..;i:r.i J

,Jl.:ll.:jr, 'rii.i.,. i.ll

,1

iijtijl, I

fi;!i ;ij,i lLli lll:i;i rl,il,iJ,'lij,iiii,i i:i tit' l!

ii.ii.iirr

: ,ii;ii

iil+'

LI

l

l

i,

iil

,ii

ril

tx

l,i

Itr

124 ENGr-rsr r Lrr EnA'r'urlE IEFOnE cl TAUCER

Babel, Sodom, and Gomorrah -

to be overturned by the hand of God andto remain desolate for generation after generation (Isaiah 13. 19-22). Butas the Church Fathers pointed out, 'while Cain built a city, Abel was apilgrim and built none

- for the city of the saints is above'.22 It may well

be that the failure of these walls to withstand fate is to be regarded as aninevitable corollary of their origins.23

The poet goes on to enumerate features reminiscent of the great Romancities referred to by Bede in his description of Britain, great towers andthe firmest of locked gates:24

Hrofas sind gehrorene, hreorge torras,hrungeat berofen, hrim on lime,sceardescurbeorge scorenegedrorene. (11.3-5)

IThere are tumblcd-down roofJ, t()wcrs in rtrins, gatcways brokcn in, lroston the mortar, a gaping tilercovcr, rcnt arrcl collapscd. I

The cinematographic shilt in perspective from large panorarna to srnalldetails is significant, sincc it is the detail which focuscs the sentimcnt ofthe whole, in a scnsitive material awarcness. ln The Wanderer's bleaklandscape it was merely appropriate to find 'frost on the walls' (11.7G77);here it is specifically said to be the lamous Roman mortar that the frostseeks out, hrim on lime (1.4)

- the dcstructive agent attacking the cement of

civilization itself, dentist-like , probing vulnerable fissures. Mostobviously the lines contain a number of startling contradictions, listingbuilding units that ironically fail to serve their purpose

- a fundamentally

disturbing reversal of function. The neo-Platonic Christian notion ofreality as an absolute conception held permanently within the mind ofGod, could find little to admire in that which had forsaken the shapeassigned to it. The palace was beautiful only as a palace; as a ruin itceased to be so. Decay could only diminish its ideal form

- not lead to a

secondary stage of existence which might claim significance and beauty ofitself. The concept of 'pleasing decay' would have been meaningless.Only a later age could come to appreciate a ruin on account of itsintrinsic beauty, or as the venerable relic of some golden age, irrevocablylost, but for which the learned might feel a kind of academic nostalgia.

The image of the ruined hall was no mere literary device. Abandonedand ruined buildings overgrown by brambles were a common feature ofthe European landscape during these years. The incidental des-tructiveness of the Viilkerwanderungzelr and the internecine warfare ofheroic society will have meant that the face of Europe was littered withruins, the present insecurity of the countryside vesting the strongholdwith greater significance, and its loss the more poignant. But despitcspecific detail, the effect of T'he Ruin is unlike that of the carly excidio

TnE riurN ()F TIME 125

tradition in which the poet laments the downfall of a particular patron'sdvnasty and the concomitant ruin of its seat, as when for exampleVenantius Fortunatus laments the fall of the house of the Thuringianprincess Radegunde25 or Llywarch Hen speaks of the fall of lJrien'silheged,26 both of which, having respect to personal loss, have more incommon with the lament of The Wanderer. The Ruin has still less incommon with the later type of encomium r.rr&is intended to enhance theDrestige of a living town, like Alcuin's celebratory poem on his homeli,y o? York27 or the vernacular poem on the site of Durham"28 Thepicrure depicted in this poem seems to reflect an intermediate phase in*hi.h fo.-.r Roman cities and great villas, although appreciated bytheir Germanic successors, were falling into inevitable decay - not as thedirect consequence of any one particular violent event, but simply aspart of an inexorable process inherent in the nature of the world. Withihc scvc.rth and eighth centuries the engineering skills necessary tomaintain thc adrnircd technology were no longer available, 'those whomight cffcct thc rcpairs having fallcn', betend crungon (1.28). It is clear thatmen woukl vicw thc rcrnaitrs of llon-ran l]ritain: finc ptrblic btrildirrgs,hot baths, statuary, mosaics, and frcscocd walls, with intcrcst; thcinhabitants of Carlisle proudly showcd visitors tlte trt;tssivt' Ilottt:tttfoundations of their city walls.2e As latc rs tlrc tw('llilt tt'rtlttty .rrr(rquarians like Gerald of Wales could point to sttl.rst:ttttt:tl rt'ttt.tirts ol .tlegionary fortress like that at Caerleon-on-(Jsk, rc:rtlily irlcrttilyrrrl', tlrt'siies of temples, baths, and theatres.30

But whether the ruin described by the poet is a corn[)()sit('()r l,(n('r.rlpicture, or recalls the particular details of some knowtt sitr: likc l(orrr.rnBath, specific identification is merely adjacent to our apprcci:ttion ol tlrcpoem it provoked. Although without the claim to that inncr vcrar:ity of-which the Seafarer's sodgied speaks, it proffers, ltke The Wandercr, rtapparent location and relationship to external facts sufficient to itspurpose. But although dispassionately observed, with a degree of impcr-sonal objectivity, the poet's theme has recognizable moral irnplicationswhich could scarcely have been lost on a contemporary audience: thecollapsed walls intimately linked with the collapse of a whole socialstructure. The fabric of society, like that of the building, is bestunderstood in dissolution, just as the nature of men is best revealed inconditions of stress. As with The Wanderer, the parallel between the fateof the city and those who built it is explicit: both are brought low bytime, the great leveller:

Eorbgrap hafadwaldendwyrhtan, forweorone geleorene,heard gripe hrusan. (11.6-8)

''t,rl',1,

:i,

it

liiir

,il

ir,

il:

1t

,{iiiiiltilii'iiil

iil

126 ENGLTsI{ LTIERAI'uttE BIiFoI{E cHAUCER

IAn earthy grasp, the cruel grip ofthe ground, has hold ofthe noble builders,perished and gone. ]

the linkage of rhyme emphasizing the point that both buildings and theirbuilders are subject to the same process of decay: gehrorene srcrenegedrorene . . forweorone geleorene (11.3, 5, 7).

However, if personal loss gave cause for personal lament, the detachedobserver might find such calamity a genuine, if somewhat curious, causefor consolation. Ambrose, for example, finds himself innured to thethought ofhis own puny mortality when contemplating 'the corpses of somany towns'.31 But Christian thinkers would recognize in this part of alarger deterministic pattern. Just as in biblical times God had destroyedBabylon and the cities of the plain for their moral degeneracy, it is theburden of Gildas's Liber de Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae that the des-truction of the cities of Roman Britain

- first by pestilence and then by

the 'valiant Saxons' -

came about as a direct consequence of theirinhabitants' depravity, their ruins remaining as witness to God'svengeance.32 In the view of Augustine, God had allowed the Goths tosack Rome

- his 'city of the world', founded as it was in fratricide, as

distinct from the 'city of God'- in order first to chastise his people beforeconsoling them.33 But further, the fall of Rome and Roman civilizationwas part of a wholesale systematic explanation for the rise and fall ofcities and empires which offered an academic explanation for worldlydebility and decline. Christian historians conventionally divided thehistory of the world into a fixed number of ages, commonly six from thctime of Creation to the present. The sixth age which had begun with thcIncarnation and would end with the coming of Antichrist andJudgementDay, was equated with the Roman Empire

- under which they still

considered themselves in some way to be living. In fact Roman civiliz-ation had long ceased to exist, in all but name

- a necessary intellectual

contruct. It was this imperial world to which the barbarian kings believedthemselves heir, adopting its material insignia and ceremony (see above,p. 3). Alcuin and others would speak of the'renovation'rather than the'imitation' of Rome,3a flattering Germanic emperors with the thoughtthat they were the direct successors of Constantine and Augustus. Eng-lish sovereigns would eventually trace their lineage through Brutus tothose who fought at Troy (see below, p. 175), but motivated more byhistorical sentiment than accuracy since chronological distance arguedagainst the probability of continuity. In the meantime it remained undis-puted that men were living in what was the last age of the world andcould look for no improvement until the coming of the kingdom of God.If the world was falling into decay, this was merely an expected sign thatthe end of thc world was at hand. Small wonder that the visible ruins ofthe Roman world especially should be linked with millennial expec-

:lli'

liit tiillr

l:' li:'j'i

:

',,:1.:':

I ,il

i i'l: .::

.I

..n.: i::l

ir: Ifll:i:'1l:,,::..i r;'

-l.l:,.il.i i.

.r ir r: rl

I1:'

THE llurN oF TIME 127

,, mdons; had not Christ himself foretold ofjust such fine buildings that nott or. ,ro.r. would be left upon another - their ruin presaging the kingdomfi',, b.a (Luke 21. 6)?3s In the religious imagination, the contemplation ofl#rcent ruin^leads naturally enough to reflection on the wasteland ofil,i,,bo"t"tdrY.'u!i.,,,,. But whether or not analysed in such academic terms, the ruin in-ir,61itaUly provokes a penitential response; whether regarded as a specific

[1],] tot"" of divine wrath or merely an example of mortal vanity, its very1i,,dilapidation gives occasion for reflection, its grandeur compelling at oncerr both a sense of our own diminished stature - and a human curiositas -

wonderment at the technical virtuosity of the lost master-builders:

: . . . Iamrindumbeag,'r,. modmonade myneswiftnegebrcgd;i hwrtred in hringas, hygerofgebond, weallwalan wirum wundrum togrdre. (11.17-20)

.1

,, [. . a plaster circle stimulated the mind and prompted a swift idea;ingenious in making chains, the resolute man wonderfully reinforced the

;- foundations with wire. ]

The poignant relationship between present decline and former glory ismade by a constant movement between past and present tcnscs, a con-trolled chronological plaitwork weaving backwards and forwards in tintcso that past and present are simultaneously before our cycs, scrvilrg t()emphasize both the contrast and continuity of decay. Thc vcrtr:rl cchobrosnad, brosnade (11.2, 28) points to the fact that buildings havc ttot onlyfallen in the past, but are still doing so, 'kingdom after kingdorl' (1.10),and presumably will continue to do so 'until a hundred gcrrerations willhave passed' 01.8-9) - perhaps a reference to an apocalyptic futurc timeand if so the only such reference in the entire poem

- and thereforc

significant in a work so intimately concerned with the nature of timc. Thedream-likejuxtaposition of what used to be with what now is, allows usto glimpse glittering activity imaginatively reconstructed within andbeyond the rubble:

Beorht wrron burgrrced, bumsele monige,heah homgestreon, heresweg micel,meodoheall monig mondreama full,oppetpetonwende wyrdseoswipe. (ll.2l-24)

[There were splendid city buildings, many bath-houses, en abundance oflofty gables, a great tumult ofwarriors, many mead-halls filled with humanrevelry

- until mighty fate changed that. ]

128 ENGLIsH LITERATURE BEFoRE cHAUCER

The echo of crungon over lines 25-28 makes explicit the link between thebuilding and builder, and the facr that rhey succumb to the r"m. fat",both inevitably fall to the earth and are enveloped in its

-grarp. natl'inexorably sharters (1. 1) and changes (1.24) both material and rpxp:bringing a continuous change over all things

- and will of course contilnu

to do so until the end of the world-The contrast that is present in the time-slips is no less present in the

physical details, the focus shifting alternately from a large panoramicperspective ro pathetic details marked throughout by the symparhericimmediacy of the demonsrrative'this. . .'. The grey and rusty lichenclinging to this decayed wall (11.9-10) is in marked contrasr ro thegleaming armour and glittering treasure of those who occupied the'bright fortress' (11.34-37), symbols oftheir active enjoyment ofits wealth(cf. Beowulf, above, p. 57). The presenr frost on the towering walls (ll.3_4)is at odds with the warm baths welling hot at its heart (11.3&-41)

-

curiously reminiscent of the Seafarer-persona, fettered with cold withoutand surging with heated emotion within (see above, p. fla). The referenceto heated baths: 'There the baths used to be . . .'- but are ofcourse nolonger- is perhaps more than merely wistful at a time when bath-houses,much like modern massage-parlours, were associated in the public mindwith sexual licence. In the same way, when those who formerly enjoyedthe cities are described as wlonc onil wingal [proud and flushed with wine](1.34), it might recall similar words traditionally used of others prior tosudden destruction

- like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah

(Cenesis A,1.2581) or the hosts of Assyria (ludith,1l.16, 26), (see above,pp. 77 f, below, p. i56). ln The Seafarer (1.29) the same collocation is usedto describe those who luxuriare in the 'dead life'of the city-dweller, know-ing nothing ofthejoys ofthe Lord (see above, p. 120); and it is charac-teristically used of the carelessness of men on the eve ofJudgement D^y.r,But any attempt to foist too narrow a single 'meaning'on to the poem isunrewarding; further meaning is available rather than required. At atime when the divorce between concept and appearance, abstract andparticular, had not yet come about, the Old English elegists' naturalmode of expression seems to be instinctively figurative, anticipating onthe part ofthe audience a sophisticated appreciation ofliteral experience,readily accepting the interpenetration of concrete and abstract withoutthe need for active homiletic explanation.

When occasionally the Old English poer does venture into an indis-putably allegorical mode, the verbal signals are quite explicit, the ex-plication elaborate and precise. It may not be insignificant that in-variably in such cases he is drawing directly on eastern sources. Althoughthe westem world seems not yet to have adopted the Hellenistic habit ofattributing Christian sens to secular literary themes, where for exampleOrpheus with his lute recalls the musician David, or Odysseus fastened

THE turN oF TIME 129

mast becomes an equivalent of Christ fastened to the cross,38 therethe attractive possibility of extending to other parts of God's

the method by which the Bible's inner truth was revealed, forcourse the activity of the Logos was also to be seen in his material

ion. The same Alexandrian strain of thought in the Church whichsponsored the polysemous approach to scriptural criticism could

a Platonic view of the world in which religion and nature werextricably wed. Since all creation was avowedly an expression of itstor, the natural world was charged with significance, and if properly

we might identify the divine thought of which it was the materialtron.

ri,,,,In the same manuscript as contains The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The|,Rain are found the remains of a three-part physiologus or moralized,,'bestiary

- an originally East Mediterranean genre which became ex-

' .ceprionally popular in later medieval times - in which the significantcharacteristics of a variety of natural phenomena: animals, birds, and

li:, even trees or stones, are briefly described, and their 'moral' significance, subsequently expounded. The Panther is described as a creature gentle to

ii,,rll rrrr. the dragon, his implacable foe; having eaten his fill hc rctrcats tolii' a secret lair where he sleeps for three days before waking with mclodior'rs, sounds and delicious fragrance. This it is made clcar (Swa ,r, 1.55)';represents Christ in death, burial, and resurrection. T'he Whalt, on th

130 ENGLISIT LITEnA'I'uttE lttit:()ltE (IHAU(lER

employing pagan myths for the dissemination of Christian doctrine.alAnd indeed the phoenix myth had been used in this way since earliesttimes

- a natural parallel for the resurrection symbolism, and one readily

taken up by Western writers like Venantius Fortunatus and others.a2Lactantius's poem tells of a terrestrial paradise located far off in the

East, a level plateau untouched by the violence ofeither Deucalion's floodor the fires of Phaeton; nothing harmful, either physical or moral, is to befound there. A single fountain called'the well oflife'flows twelve times ayear, irrigating and making fruitful the whole land. A tree bears fruitswhich never fall. The only creature to inhabit this paradise is thephoenix, a unique bird, which reproduces itself by its own death. Eachdawn the bird

- an acolyte of Phoebus

- plunges into the waters of the

fountain twelve times and then sits in the tree to await the beams of therising sun. It greets the first rays with a song unequalled by the song ofthe nightingale or the music of the muses. It applauds the sun's advanceby flapping its wings three times and is then silent. After a thousand yearsit leaves the plateau and seeks a grove in Syria (Phoenicia) where, securein a palm tree, it builds what is to be both a nest and funeral pyre fromvarious exotic scented woods and spices. It anoints itself, and dies. Heatfrom its body kindles a fire which reduces nest and corPse to ashes" Theashes weld together in the form of a seed from which emerges a wormwhich in turn changes into a chrysalis. When fully formed the phoenixbursts anew from its shell just like a butterfly. Nourished on nothing savesips of ambrosia, it comes to maturity and flies back to its natural abode.First, however, it encloses the remains of its old body in an ointment ofbalsam, myrrh, and frankincense, whichit carries to the city of the sun(?Heliopolis) offering it on the altar there. The whole of Egypt comes tomarvel at the bird and carve its image in marble; the day is given a newtitle in honour of the event. The phoenix then flies through heavenaccompanied by a flock of birds made up from every species, assembledwithout fear, but they are unable to accompany it the whole way, and itreturns to its homeland alone. ln conclusion, it is said that the mysticalbird is ncithcr malc nor female; its only venereal pleasure is death

-

through which, by thc gift of the gods, it gains eternal life"Llkc The Drum of- the Rood or, less directly, The Seafarer, the poet breaks

his rrratcrial into two parts, first telling his story -

a reworking ofL:r

1t

I 132 ENGLIST{ I-rrEnA'r'unE BEF()RE criAUcER

This physical blandness is necessarily far from picuresque; the nobleplateau is quite featureless: there are no hills and dales; no rocky cliffsrear aloft'as with us' (11.21-23). The moral dimension is no less anodyne:

Nisprronpamlonde ladgeniblane woP ne wracu, weatacen nan,yldu ne yrmdu ne se enga dcadne lifes lyre ne lapes cymene synn ne sacu ne sarwracune wedle gewin ne welan onsynne sorg ne slrp ne swar leger. (11.50-56)[There is in that land no hateful foe, no weeping nor anxiety, no sign ofgrie{ no senility nor disease, no painful death nor loss oflife, no onset ofanything hateful, nor sin nor srrife, nor anxious misery, not the struggle ofpoverty nor lack of wealth, not sorrow nor sleep nor dire illhess. ]

The list -

not dissimilar from John's account of the New Jerusalem(Revelation 21.4) -

is rather curious inasmuch as it is specifically deniedthat any man can live there to discern either good or ill. The frame ofreference is inevitably one of human experience. The poet concludes witha collocation reminiscent o f The Wanderer, 1.39 (sec above, p. 1 08), declar-ing that there is not even any need for sleep ro ravel up care

- by way of

which thought he returns to the perennial concerns ofthe northern world:

ne wintergeweorp ne wedra gebregdhreoh under heofonum, ne se hearda forstcaldumcylegicelum cnyse6enigne;prr ne hrgl ne hrim hreosad to foldanne windig wolcen, ne prr wrter fealleplyfte gebysgad. (11.5742)

[no winter storm nor fierce, deceiving weather beneath the heavens, no hardfrost to afflict anyone with freezing icicles; neither hail nor sleet is there tofall to earth, nor windy cloud, nor any tr:rrent of water driven by the wind. ]

Anything positive tends to be seen in terms of the artificial (wretlic-e,11.63,75, 294, 307), an eastern marvel, like the gem-like blossoms whichnever wither and fall and fruits that are perperually fresh (11.34-39, 74-77) * exotic concepts acceptable ro rhe oriental habit of mind, but whollyalien to the pragmatic Wanderer-sensibility whose fundamental experi-ence of material reality is its transience.

The description of the mythical bird in this setting is progressivelymodified in human rather rhan ornithological terms" The phoenix is not

'I rrt nurN ()r j'ftMl-t 133

Ultimately in terms more associated with the Lord of The Dream of theRooil, than with any bird, however remarkable, it is said to be 'war-brave'

heaporoJ, a'bold warrior', gudJreca (11.228,353), although there is noouestion of any hostility to be overcome. nor e ven untoward circum-slances which might prove the occasion of boldness. In a wholly morearumated picture than that in Lactantius, the bird gazes across the waterin eager anticipation of, not Phoebus nor Aurora, but (cf. Exodus,above, p. 88), 'God's candle . ancient work of the Father, . . . theradi^nt symbolof God' (11.91-96):

Tungol beoP ahyded,gewiten under wabeman westdrlas on,bideglad on drgred ond seo deorce nihtwon gewite6. Ponne waPum strongfugel feprum wlonc on firgenstreamunder lyft ofer lagu loca6 geornehwonne up cyme eastan glidanofer siOne sr swegles leoma. 01.96-103)

IThe stars are hidden, gone below the weves in the regions of the west,quenched by the dawn, and the dark gloom ofnight is gone. Then the bird,powerful in flight, proud in its plumage, gazes eagerly at the ocean, acrossthe waters beneath the sky, until the light of the firmament comcs glirling upfrom the east over the broad sea. ]

Irrelevant to question that this sea should be when nowhcrc is it suggt:s-ted that thc phoenix's homeland is an island, or in any wayassociated with the ocean. Sufficient only that, in common with

physicallyExotlus or

thc

likenedbe, in

The Seajarer, thc sun, bright token of God, should run its coursc ovcrsea-ways: 'tossing ocean' and 'salt streams' (ll. 115, 120).

The song with which the phoenix now welcomes the sun isneither to the nightingale nor the pagan muses but is said tophrases reminiscent of Crdmon's Creation-Hymre, simply the most won-derful song heard since the foundation of the world (11.12&-31), superiorto a variety ofnamed instruments, or the voice of man, or the wings of aswan, 'or any of the joys which the Lord has created for men's cheer inthis mournful world' 01.138-39).

Eventually -

and somewhat curiously in a world not subject to thealllictions of old age

- the phoenix grows elderly, having 'endured a

thousand years of this life'. No mention is made of the logical necessityfor his determination to enter a world where death holds sovereignty. In-stead, like a Beowulfian adventurer, he seeks out a spacious realm, a widekingdom, side riei (1.156) where, anticipating his later acclaim in youthfulrestoration (11.3350, he lives in the world for a time as a prince surroun-ded by a flourishing comitatus 01.16}.65). But eventually, since he must

'unique', Lat. unica (Carmen,l.31) but like the Wanderer, 'solitary', anhaga(perhaps 'resolute', see above, p. 105) and bold in spirit, deormod (U.87-S8).

134 ENGLISII LITERATURE BEFc;RE CHAUCER

go to meet his death alone, 'the pure one' hastens to a deserted spot tomake the elaborate preparations for his obsequies (11.167f). Then:

Donne wind liged, weder bid frger,hluttor heofones gim halig scineO,beo0 wolcen towegen, wrtra PryPestille stonda6, biP storma gehwylcaswefed undcr swegle, suPan blicedwedercondelwearm, weorodumlyhted,6onne on pam telgum timbran onginneb,nestgearwian" 01.182-89)

[When the wind drops and the weather is fair and the holy, brightjewel ofheaven shines, when the clouds are scattered and the raging ofthe waters iscalmed and every storm beneath the firmament is stilled, when from thesouth the warm candle ofthe sky gleams, sheds light on nations, then itbegins to build in the branches, to prepare a nest. ]

The destruction of the phoenix is modified so as to accommodate rheDoomsday convention. .W'hereas the Lactantian bird dies first and thenburns

- the corpse mysteriously self-combustible

- here death comes with

the fire, explicitly kindled by the heat of the sun, a cleansing con-flagration. Unlike Lactantius's phoenix however, the Old English birddoes not 'commend its spirit' (Carmen,1.93); the poet chooses to ignore thepossibility of a perhaps over-facile reference to the death of Christ (Luke23. 46), preferring instead the traditional native notion ofthe journey ofdeath', although rather awkwardly in this case, the bird'settling down'roit as if for an uncomfortable train-journey: Sited sipes fus (1.208). Thedescription of the pyre is full of phrases reminiscent of the funeral of aBeowulfian hero: 'when fire devours the transient body; its life, thedoomed one's hoarded spirit, passes on its way . . . the abode ofthe war-brave destroyed by flame' (ll.2l9-21,227-28).

The description of the birdls regeneration is far from direct. The OldEnglish poet abandons what would have been a familiar butterfly image,the metamorphic sequence of caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly (Carmen,11.102-{8) in favour of a scarcely credible progression: apple, worm,fledgling. The worm is said, naturally enough, to emcrge from an apple-like mass, splendidly gleaming from the shell, sriro;lsrylle (1.234), but thcnwithout any intermediatc transition sirnply grows into somcthing likc aneagle's chick

- a bizarrc proccss whir:h takcs placc, not inapproprietcly,

'in the shade'(11.234-35;.++ '.,',," epple rnight wcll rclatc to tlrrt whichAdam and Evc afc (cf. 1.403) sincc it was tlrcir origirr:rl sirr th:rt lctl toChrist's corning irrtr> thc worltl, btrt erry srrch lirrk is insrrltit:icrrtlysignallcd. Arrcl thc rrotirr (llet tllc epplc is sirrrrrlt:rrrcotrsly tlrc rrrcarrs bywhich both cvil :rnd tll('rcsurr('('tctl ctttcr thc licltl rc

136 ENGLISH LITERA"I.URE IJEFORE CHAUCER

heart' , geomormod, the resurrected phoenix, like a favoured prince, is saidto be 'young in the courts' , giong in geardum (11.353-55; cf . Beowulf,1.131.

The myth concludes with the comment that God alone knows what sexthe bird is, avoiding the Lactantian assertion that it is happy in lackingsexual intercottrse (Carmen, 11.16M5)

- rather curiously in view of the

contemporary academic obsession with virginity and the monasticassumption that it was tentamount to a guarantee of eternal life

- in

favour of the doctrinal comment that 'He is himself both his own dear sonand dear father, and likewise the heir of his own old relics' (11.374-76).

At this point the author's dependence on his Latin source ends, but heconcludes the first, narrative, part of his poem with a simple twelve-lineexplanation of its significance in the bestiary manner. This points not toany parallel with Christ, but with the resurrection of man in general.

Pisses fugles gecynd fela gelicesbi pam gecornum Cristes pegnum. (11.387-88)

IThe nature of this bird is very much like the chosen, the servants of Christ.l

It employs imagery familiar from The Seafarer:'Thus it is that each of theblessed chooses for himself through dark death eternal life after painfulexile, the reward of everlasting revelry in the heavenly homeland',(11.3810.

But the phoenix narrative has bccn far lengthicr and more cornplexthan that of the conventional bestiary, and permits more sophisticatedexplication. The poet now retraces the allegory, making explicit whatwas formerly only implicit, While avoiding the abrupt bipartite divisionof the bestiary form, it remains nevertheless a necessarily repetitivcextrapolation affording intellectual rather than aesthetic pleasure. Thepoet reviews various elemcnts of the story with difhring emphasis so asto explore in turn a tropological interprctation in which the good manbuilds a nest of faith, en allcgorical in which the phoenix and itsfollowers represent Christ and thc (lhurch, or an anagogical referringto the general resurrection at Judgerment Day. Beginning with a newintroductory formula: Habbap we geasmd . . . (1,393), he refers brieflyto Adam and Eve, whose 'busy teeth' (1.407) led to their expulsionfrom paradise

- identified implicitly with the phoenix's 'holy plateau'

(halga wong), -

firmly closed to them until the advent of Christ shouldopen it once more to the holy (11.393-423). Then with a repeatedformula of explanation: Is pon gelicast, pes pe us leomeras weordum secgadonil writu cypad IYery similar to this, according to what the scholars tel]us in their pronouncements and make known in their writings](11.424-25),the migration of the old and weary bird is likened to ourforebears' long journey into the world to suffer the persecution of

,.lti ,-: palignant monsters (11.424-_/t2). It is now clear, at a symbolic level,..|,.,"1 why the inviolate phoenix should have been referred to in warlike' l . . ,..rrrt, although the phoenix, like Christ, was not expelled from..''; :1, ;;;;. but uirdertak.i to .rt., the world voluntarily. The lofty tree

'i ,'...' in which the phoenix builds its nest and funeral pyre is now identifiedi',:, as the place in which the holy have their habitation, secure in the Lord,

.'i ".,.

unharmed by the ancient enemy despite all perils: a hea beam (l-447)'

'. . '', which might well recall the cross of the Dream-Poet (see above, pp-

i '. t 930. There follows a series of strangely mixed metaphors. The nestt'

'. ,hr, the 'warrior of the Lord' (11.452, 471) builds is constructed from

! ' ' eood deeds: hcrbs which make a habitation in the heavenly cityj :i [U.++:-401, until interrupted by the warrior -

Death, 'greedy for

l'HE TIUIN oI''I'IME I37

i lil ilr,rght"., armed with weaPons', wiga wcelgifre wepnum gepryped{ l (1.486). At Doomsday 'the true King of victories, the Lord of many a{ .1. . comitatus, will hold a synod', sigora Sodcyning seonop gehegan, dugudaI ..:, Dryhten (11.493-94). With the cleansing firc of judgement, the bird'sI i, sisnificance (fu.gles tacen, 1,510) shall be recognized by all men, whoseI ;,:'-. .--Lr-.

-.-.-,:-,.. .,-- ^-rL.,-^.1 ,,^ 1,.,, rL- -.-,,-,1^l 1-l-.i"r .-.1 -^--i,,1 i-r^i i;' ea-rthly rcm.rirrs arc gathcrcd up by the asccnded Christ and carried intoI, :.; C"a't prcscncc where, perfumed with the herbs of thcir good dcctis,{ '.:. wlitige gtwyrtal (1.543), thcy will join the heavenly chorus.I . At this point, with a rrthcr abrupt intrusion of tltc nrrr,ttivt' vortt',

Nc wcnc Prs rnrgprt ic lygewortlurn

rlda cynnesleo6 sornnigc,

l

I

i

I

t,

i,

I

ri

i

'lil

:1

,

,li,:'ii

l,

writc woO

t'f

ii

it

i

i

i

I

[.iijii11riii lii rhl

ii

i'

I

ili

ll

l

ill

I

l

i

138 ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER

seventeen-line coda invoking the praise of God, and toppling intomacaronic half-lines alternately English and Latin, which serves merelyto confirm its lettered stance.

The received narrative clearly did not readily lend itself to systematicfourfold exposition. Flexible rather than disorganized in the retelling, itsintellectual elements do not precipitate but interpenetrare in a complexplaitwork of recurrent images and themes that intertwine and develop,requiring a greater intellectual mobility than poetic sensibilities migLtallow. The poet's energetic and eclectic imagination crowds the poeticidiom in academic licence. The result is neither bestiary nor allegory, butrather a meditation on the theme of resurrection employing a variety ofequations in a more casual network of associations than might normallyappeal to precise minds

- with few explicit or consistenrly maintained

boundaries to enhance its intellectual appeal.

Notes

1. Compare The Fortunes of Men and Maxims I, passim, in The Exeter Boo[, edited byG. P. Krapp and E. v. K. Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (London,1931-53), m, pp. 154-43.

2. Compare F. J. E. Raby, A Hi*ory oJ Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages (Oxford,1934), y passim', P. L. Henry, The Early Englkh and Celtic Lyric (London, 1966),passim.

3. See generally, J. E. Cross, 'Aspects of Microcosm and Macrocosm in Otd EnglishLiterature', Comparatiue Literature, 14 (1962), 1-22. The concept ofthejourney oflife and death, ultimately biblical (Hebrews ll. 11-16, and compare Matthew 7. 13-14), was thoroughly absorbed by the Old English poet; compare Cuthlac B,11.1076-80, Juliana, 11.699-703, Vainglory, 11.5,+-56, Maxims I, 11.77-78, Riddles,xrnr, ll.5-6, etc. (Exeter BooA, edited by Krapp and Dobbie, pp. 80, 133, 148, 159,204). Compare generally, G. V. Smithers, 'The Meaning of The Seafarer and TheWanderer', Medium Euum, 26 (1957), 1,37-53;28 (1959), 1-22.

4. Compare the proverbial Maxims II, 11.11-12, 'The old man is wisest with theexperience of years behind him who has suffered much' (Tfte Anglo-Saxon MinorPoems, edited by G. P. Krapp and E. v. K. Dobbie, The Anglo-.Saxon PoeticRecords (London, 1931-53), vr, p. 56; or its corollty inPreceprs, 1.54, 'seldom doesa wise man rejoice free from sorrow' (Exeter Book, edited by Krapp and Dobbie, p.142).

5. See generally, J. E. Cross, "'Ubi sunt" Passages in Old English - Sources andRelationships', Vetenskaps-Sorietetens i Lurul Arsbok (1956), 25-l+ -

6. Compare Bede, 'the apostleJames prohibits us from complaining to our fellows inadversity', Super Epistolas Catholicas Expositio, edited byJ.-P. Migne, PatrologiaLatina (Paris, 1844-90), xcur, cols 38f.

Tt{.E nurN oF TrME 139

. :l . Epistulae et Carmiru , editedby C . Ln{ ohann, Monumenta Getmaniae Histoica , AuctorumAntiquissimorum, vrrl (Berlin, 1887), p. 132.

g. Compare the dismal fate of Cumbra in the events leading up to the coup d'6ut atr. Merton (Two oJ the Saxon Chronitles Parallel, edited by J. Earle and C" Plummer

(Oxford, 1892-99), 4 pp. 4647). For some examples of political exile at this date, seeEnglkh Histoid Documents, c. 50b1M2, edited by D. Whitelock, second editiont. (Lordot, 1979), pp. 24-25.

. 9. Bede, himself a convinced and lifelong monk, expresses himself as uneasy for thesecurity of the State when so many young men were abandoning the practice of armsin favour of the contemplative life (Betle's Iiclesiastical H*tory of the English People,edited by B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1%9), pp. 560+1).

10. For the native backgromd to this movement, see Henry, Earty Englkh and Celtic Lyrk,especially pp. 181-92.

11. CompareAugustine, DeDoctinaChristiana, editedbyW. M. Green, CorpusScip-torum Ecdesiuticorum l-atinorum, rxxx (Vienna, 1963), p. 10; see also the referencescited by G. Ehrismann, 'Religionsgeschichtliche Beitrige zum germanischen Fnih-christentum', Beitrrige zur Ceschichte der deutsthen Sprache und Literatur, 35 (1909),2(D-39; and Smithers, 'The Meaning of The Seafarer and The Wanderer' , passim.

72. Two Saxon Chron., edited by Earle and Plummer, r, p. 82, rr, pp. 10H5.13. Compare D. Whitelock, 'The Interpretation of Tlre Seafarer', in The Early Culturts ol

Notth-West Europe, edited by C. Fox and B. Dickins (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 261 12.14. Compare pseudo-Bede, In Matthaei Euangelium Expositio, cditctl by

.f ,-l). Mi1irrt.,Patrologia lttita xa\ (Paris, 1844-%), col. 43.

15. See, for example, the Doomsday sermons n The Blickling Homilirs, cdrtul by llMorris, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 58, 63, 73 (London, 1{37,1{t{)), pp.56-59; or ,F-lfic, The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Churth, edited by R, 1-horpc(London, 184M), 4 pp.614-75.

16. Compare Cuthlac A,1.744, in Exeter Boo&, edited by Krapp and Dobbie, p. 70; Alcuin'sVersus de Cuculo, in Montmenb Cetmaniae Histoiu, Poetae l-atini Aevi Carolini,I, editcd

, by E. Dtimmler (Berlin, 1881), pp.269-70; and generally, Henry, Early English andCehk Lyriq p.74.

17" The image is developed elaborately by Cynewulf in the Doomsday conclusion toChrist il, which had not employed such terms in the body ofthe poem: 'the plains shallpass away, the stronghoids of men burst asunder in ruins; and the fire shall fare forth toconsume all the ancient treasures which men in their pride hoarded on eerth. . . Nowit is as if we were travelling in ships upon the flood of coid waters, voyaging in oceansteeds, vessels upon the wide sea. The flood is perilous, rhe waves very great, thebillows windy over the deep road on which we are tossed through this changeful

. world- Hard was the wayfaring before we won to land over these stormy waters; buthelp comes to us

- God's ghostly Son

- who leads us to the haven ofsalvation. . . . Let

us therefore fix our hope in that haven that the sovereign ofthe skies prepared for us,the holiness of heaven, when he rose to hi