Envy

In off the moors, down through the mist-bands
God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping. (Beowulf 710-11)

This has got to be one of the best lines from Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. One can almost see a huge misshapen form lurching across the cold moor; the wafting mist now concealing, now half revealing the monstrous descendant of banished Cain.

Who is Grendel? Grendel is the rapacious envy of man given living shape. He cannot stand the happiness of others in the mead-hall. If he cannot share it, he must destroy it.

Lord and Thane

The relationship of the Christian to Christ is often portrayed as that of a servant to a master. The parallel is good and true, but for those who find the metaphor of slaves either stale or repellent, consider this description of old Germanic kings and their followers taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature:

When a warrior vowed loyalty to his lord, he became not so much his servant as his voluntary companion, one who would take pride in defending him and fighting in his wars. In return, the lord was expected to take care of his thanes and to reward them richly for their valor; a good king, one like Hrothgar or Beowulf, is referred to by such poetic epithets as “ring-giver” and as the “helmet” and “shield” of his people (25).

Abrams, M.H. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors 7th. ed. W.W.Norton and Co. 2001

The Search for a Soul

“Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, read Undine: that is a fairytale.... and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.” --George MacDonald (23)

Naturally, when I read this in George MacDonald's essay "The Fantastic Imagination," I knew that I would have to read this “most beautiful” of fairytales. "The Fantastic Imagination" is MacDonald's attempt to say a little bit about what a fairytale ought to be. Not what a fairytale is, for that task is too difficult; as MacDonald says: “I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face” (23).

Since a fairytale is so hard to describe, MacDonald directs his readers to the lengthy tale of Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouquee. I googled it and read its entire 55 pages at Project Gutenberg. If you plan to read it there you need not read any further here since what follows is just a short summary of some of the important highlights of the tale.

A wandering knight, bewildered by a fierce storm, stumbles upon a fisherman's cottage where he meets the young and beautiful Undine. The fisherman explains that his foster-daughter mysteriously appeared at his cottage years before when she was a toddler. The truth of the matter is that Undine is a water-nymph in human form seeking a soul. She learns that only by loving a mortal can she gain the soul that no water-spirit has. Needless to say, she comes to love the knight and they are soon married. “Through love Undine had won a soul, which is indeed the gift of God to every mortal” (25).

But this is not the end of the story. Undine's powerful uncle Kuhleborn does all he can to destroy her love and make her return to her watery home. In an eerie parallel to the Prince of the Power of the Air, Kuhleborn says of himself: “I am free as the wild birds of the air to go hither and thither as I will” (30). He laughs mockingly when Undine cries out that, “I no longer wish to have aught to do with you!” (30) Rather than going away, he plagues Undine and the knight Huldbrand more fiercely. On top of all their other trials the lady Bertalda begins to drive Undine and the knight apart. Finally, at the instigation of Kuhleborn, the knight breaks his promise to his wife and speaks harshly to Undine. At this, Undine must leave him and return to her ocean home. “There will I live, loving, sorrowing, for into the depths of the blue sea will I carry my new-won soul” (28).

The knight sees too late his error and only at his own death, when Undine's tears fall so heavily on his heart that it breaks, does he realizes that "he had never loved any one in all the wide world as he loved Undine" (53). The wild water-nymph who found a soul when she found love and who always tried to protect her knight in life, melted into a stream at his grave while it was said by the villagers that, “the little crystal stream, was none other than Undine, poor forsaken Undine, who thus surrounds and protects Huldbrand, her beloved” (55).

Friedrich de la Motte Fouquee. Undine. Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=240839&pageno=1

George MacDonald. "The Fantastic Imagination." The Gifts of the Child Christ: Fairytales and Stories for the Childlike. ed. Glenn Edward Sadler. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan. 1973.

Literature in the High Middle Ages

This post and the last one are parts of a paper on the intellectual and artistic achievements of the High Middle Ages I worked on in my Western civ. class. I included the missing footnotes in my last post in case anyone cares. This fragment ends somewhat abruptly because it was part of a longer essay I worked on. You'll just have to use your imagination to envision a nice concluding paragraph that wraps the topic up.

The High Middle Ages also placed great importance on books. Medieval historian C. S. Lewis shows that culture in, “the Middle Ages depended primarily on books. Though literacy was of course far rarer then than now, reading was in one way a more important ingredient of the total culture.”1 Literature from the past—particularly Greek and Latin—was looked upon reverently by the authors of the Middle Ages. Consequently, they modeled much their own work on previously written manuscripts. They embellished familiar stories, expanded on old subjects, and wrote down the legends of their fore bearers. To lend credence to their writing, authors from the Middle Ages would often claim they got their subject from an “auctour”--an author from Greek or Roman antiquity.2

The greatest work of literature from the High Middle Ages shows this tendency. The Divine Comedy of Dante not only borrows from earlier authors but goes to the extreme of actually including the Roman poet Virgil as one of the Characters who inhabit the Inferno. All the other characters Dante meets on his dream journey are also from history or legend. There is ample space in this huge poem about the after-life to retell the well-known stories of the people he meets.

One of the most easily recognized types of literature from the High Middle Ages is the epic romance. The tales of King Arthur and the Round Table are the most famous of these. Again, the earliest authors of these stories, such as the Frenchman Christien De Troyes, did not try to claim credit for inventing the tales but tried to show that they were ancient histories with just a little embellishment. The Arthurian stories were picked up by numerous authors in the middle ages. Intellectual property rights were not what they are today nor was this "plagiarism" seen as anything but flattery. Besides the “Matter of Britain” dealing with King Arthur, numerous other romances of chivalry were written. The “Matter of France” is another cycle of stories dealing with another king; this time the French Charlemagne. Called “chanson de geste,” these epic poems written by mostly unknown authors extolled the mythical exploits of Charlemagne against the Muslim invaders of Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The Song of Roland written around 1100 3 retells the simi-historical ambush on Charlemagne's rear-guard in the pass of Rounceval.

In Northern Europe a similar body of national epic literature was being developed during the same period. The German Nibelungenlied has been compared to The Song of Roland or even the Greek Iliad.4 The tragic death of Sigfried and the terrible revenge of his wife Kriemhild set among the forests and mead-halls of Germany has been the inspiration for stories and operas even into recent times. This corpus of German literature borrows from the same legends as the thirteenth century Eddas and tales of Scandinavia.

An important development in literature during the High Middle Ages came with the troubadour poets. The troubadours wrote and performed lyrical songs--often about love. Practicing a form of oral literature, delivered much like the famous bards of antiquity, troubadours usually had a rich patron who payed a troubadour to entertain his guests although some troubadours were nobles themselves. An important aspect of troubadour poetry that is characteristic of the literature of the High Middle Ages was “courtly love.” This term is both a literary and a real life characteristic of the period. The literary meaning is a lyrical poem written to an idealized lady whom the poet loves. But C. S. Lewis points out that this poet, “is no light-hearted gallant: his love is represented as a despairing and tragical emotion.” (sic)5

1. C. S. Lewis. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. (Canto Books, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). 5

2. Ibid. 5

3. Jackson J. Spielvogel. Western Civilization: A Brief History, 3rd. ed. (Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005). 166

4. Arthur Thomas Hatto, editor. The Nibelungenlied. (Penguin Classics, Penguin Books, 1669). 8

5. C. S. Lewis. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. (Oxford University Press, 1968). 3

A More Reflective Reflection On Gosta Berling's Saga.

The preface to Gosta Berling's Saga, which I did not read until completing the book, hits one of the things I found at fault in the story. Only, the preface writer does not think it a fault that the story teaches,

“that people do not act according to opinions or principles, but are driven by inner irrational forces. Thus, in all our confrontations in life, our actions are always unpredictable” (Preface V).

Yet I wonder if this analysis is not also simplistic. Lagerlof perhaps knows that these are not “irrational forces” when she presents a character like Sintram, the devil incarnate.

Overall I had a bad feeling about this story that went beyond the stereotypically inferior 19th century writing style. But there are so many characters and situations that I am having trouble putting my finger on specifics. Could it be that Gosta makes one irresponsible selfish decision after another? Maybe, but there is goodness also; goodness and innocence in the Countess Elizabeth, flings of nobility and selflessness in Gosta and sometimes a clear path of honesty stretching through the pages. Countess Elizabeth's soliloquy says much of this unpredictable conflict typical of the entire book. She thinks of Gosta as a man,

“able to do all, as mighty in good as in evil, a man of great achievements.... A hero, a hero! Created different, of different clay from other men! The slave of caprice, of the desire of a moment, wild and fearful, but the possessor of a furious strength, fearing nothing” (139).

Now I submit it to you: is that the description of a hero or a villain? Or is it perhaps the description of all humanity, poised by our choices (not “caprice” or “irrational inner forces”) to either rise above our lower nature or sink further into it.

Lagerlof, Selma, Trans. Tucker, Lillie. Gosta Berling's Saga. Penfield Press, Iowa City, 1997.

A Saga and a Story

Before this month I had only really read two Nobel Prize winning authors: Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Rudyard Kipling. As of two days ago I can now count four. Still, not a very great number for one who professes an interest in literature. (Hey, they only started giving prizes in 1901 after all). Actually, it's worse than that. I didn't read any of the four because they received the Nobel Prize; I could care less. Besides being Nobelists, Both Selma Lagerlof and Sigrid Undset are Northern European authors. Again, I could probably count on two hands the books I've read from that part of the world. There are, however, more similarities than these between Lagerlof's Gosta Berling's Saga and The Bridal Wreath, first part of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset.

First similarity: they both have the the protagonist's name in the title. Ok, ok, I won't go into that much detail. The major characters themselves, however, are similar in ways and the theme of both stories is love. There is also in both the underlying attempt to understand the meaning of sin and not just its immediate consequences. Kristin Lavransdatter comes to the conclusion that, “much have I done already that I deemed once I dared not do because 'twas sin. But I saw not till now what sin brings with it—that we must tread others underfoot” (214). Turning to Selma Lagerlof, I never was sure if she sincerely meant what she had to say on this topic and others in her 1891 Gosta Berling's Saga.

Which brings me to one of those risky judgments on literature. Which of these two was best? I would say Kristin Laveransdatter although I have not read parts two and three and don't plan to surf over to Amazon immediately to order them. Yet if I found them at a thrift store I would buy them, which I can't say the same for of other books by the author of Gosta Berling (Yes, I already did pass up another Selma Lagerlof at a thrift store). The Swedish Lagerlof has an irritating style of musing on characters and events. This monologue with exclamation points makes up most of the book but it just sounded like filler to me. Plus, as I mentioned before, I could not always tell if she really believed what she was writing. The Norwegian Sigrid Undset, on the other hand, has (at least in translation) a good prose enriched with simple but detailed descriptions and smooth dialogue. Along with this superior style, Undset's presentation is both more realistic and, I think, more insightful.

Undset, Sigrid. Trans. Archer, Charles. Kristin Laveransdatter I: The Bridal Wreath. Alfred Knopf 1923. Vintage books 1987.