Representations of Reality: Homer, Chaucer, Beowulf, and Shelley
That scar –
as the old nurse cradled his leg and her hands passed down
she felt it, knew it, suddenly let his foot fall –
down it dropped in the basin – the bronze clanged,
tipping over, spilling water across the floor.
Joy and torment gripped her heart at once,
tears rushed to her eyes.
This rather poignant scene comes near the end of Homer’s Odyssey, when after his tumultuous voyage Odysseus returns to Ithaka in secret. His old nurse, Euryclea, begins to bathe his feet, believing him to be a mysterious stranger, when suddenly she feels a scar on his leg he has had since childhood and in a wave of joy and torment realises who he really is. This moment is a wonderful example of Homer’s distinctive and elegant style of writing, a style that was one of the seeds whose roots would grow into the many-branched tree of the English language. Forty verses are devoted to the moments before Euryclea discovers Odysseus’ scar, eighty lines to the realisation itself, another forty to the events directly after it. In these eighty intervening lines Euryclea diverges into the story of how Odysseus came by the scar when he was a boy; the details of his uncle Autolycus, the young boy’s arrival, the banquet, the boar hunt, the injury… a contemporary reader might interpret this common Homeric device as a means by which to increase suspense but critic Erich Auerbach argues in his Mimesis that it is in fact to relieve tension. We are drawn into the idyllic tale in a wonderful osmosis of detail.
Homeric verse is defined by its detail. He inserted lengthy personal histories and anecdotes into scenes that lasted mere seconds. Auerbach argues that the genius of the Homeric style becomes even more apparent when it is compared with an equally ancient and equally epic style from a different world of forums: the Bible. The Bible strikingly contrasts with Homer by remaining utterly vague and abstract. Take Abraham’s sacrifice as an example. God supposedly orders Abraham to kill his son to prove his loyalty and obedience. This begins in Genesis with, “And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said to him, Abraham! And he said, Behold, here I am.” Approach this scene from a Homeric perspective and it becomes wildly inadequate. Where are the speakers? Usually man and deity are not physically together but God’s voice must project from somewhere, how? Why? Where?
The biblical stories fervently rely on the fact that they are based on historical truth, an urgent claim that excludes all else, it is so badly in need of interpretation, strangled by doctrine and promise, it demands absolute authority, unlike Homer, who invites us into a pastoral world of ordinary, relatable heroes. The Bible forces us to fit our own reality into its rigid template with rigid laws implied but not explained. And so it seeks to overcome our reality, not enrich it, whereas Homeric verse is simple really, it delights in physical existence and its highest aim is to make that delight perceptible to us. It conceals nothing, it does not claim some sanctimonious evangelical meaning, it is purely and simply art. The words do not become tangled and marred in their own sanctimony, it is poetry for the sake of poetry, whereas the Bible lacks that Homeric eloquence. Homer can be analysed but perhaps not interpreted.
In the same way, Chaucer’s Tales are not smothered and tangled into knots with quixotic claims of absolute morality and self-righteous lessons. Chaucer’s verse is slow and majestic, and he devotes long passages to detailed rhetorical description, to minutiae, all of which leads to the greater achievement being the poetry, the art itself, not any sweeping morals it is trying to enforce. If we were to search for morals we would be disappointed. Consider the plight of Arcite and Palamon in the Knight’s Tale. The two cousins are imprisoned by Theseus, and upon looking out their respective jail cells one morning, both manage to fall instantly in love with a young woman walking in the courtyard, Emelye. Over the next few years, after Arcite escapes and Palamon is eventually released, they both return to claim Emelye, still despite never having spoken a word to her. Theseus discovers them fighting in the woods and calls for a grand tournament, the winner of which will marry Emelye. On the eve of this mighty battle, Arcite appeals to Mars, the God of War, for divine intervention to help him claim victory, Palamon appeals to Venus, and Emelye to Diana. It is Emelye’s impassioned plea for liberty, for independence and free will, that leads to the most moving and human moment in the Tale, the most beautiful poetry. Alas, she is denied her freedom.
Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I
Desire to been a maiden al my lit,
Ne nevere wol I be no love ne wif.
I am, thow woos, yet of thy compaignye,
A maide, and love hunting and venerye,
And for to walken in the wodes wilde,
And noght to been a wif and be with childe.
Noght wol I knowe compaignye of man.
Now help me, lady, sith ye may and kan,
For tho thre formes that thow hast in thee,
And Palamon, that hath switch love to me,
And eek Arcite, that loveth me so soore.
This grace I preye thee, withoute moore:
As sende love and pees bitwix hem two,
And fro me turne awey hir hertes so,
That al hir bisy torment and hir fir,
Be queint, or turned in another place.
The Tales are all about the sheer joy of storytelling, of making magic with words, of captivating and of igniting imaginations, just like Beowulf, another foundation stone in the history of literature and language. The Old English poets were known as “scops” for good reason, deriving from “scieppan”, to make or build. They literally built poetry with the sole purpose of spreading joy. The most moving moment in Beowulf is not in the defeat of Grendel or Grendel’s mother, or even Beowulf’s tragic demise following the showdown with the mighty dragon. Instead, it occurs moments before Beowulf is to face this greatest and most powerful of opponents, the darkest manifestation of humanity’s fears. Whether the dragon is fear itself or an embodiment of human sin and violence does not alter its raw power to enthrall. No, what is far more poignant is Beowulf’s sudden moment of reflection as he reaches the dragon’s barrow. He pauses on the brink of chaos, informs his company he will face the dragon alone, and, a Homeric interlude if ever there was one, becomes lost in poignant contemplation. As Tolkien has argued, Beowulf itself is like one of its own lines written large. That distinctive Old English with the prominent caesura chopping each line in half and the alliterative repetition represents the entire story. The rise and the fall, innocence to experience, like two hinged mirrors. In this frame of profound reflection Beowulf thinks about his foster father, Hrethel, and we learn a truly tragic story that casts the hero in a whole new light. King Hrethel was driven to death by all-consuming grief after his son, Haethcyn, killed his eldest son, Herebauld, in a freak accident involving a misfired arrow. Unable to inflict revenge on a son he could never love as the warrior’s code of vengeance in this heroic age demands of him, he succumbs utterly to his broken heart.
Daet waes feoh-leas gefeoht, fyrenum gesyngad,
hreore hyge-meoe; scedde hwaeore swa deah
aeoling unwrecen ealdres linnan.
Swa bio geomorlic gomelum ceorle
to gebidanne, daet his byre ride
giong on galgan; donne he gyd wrece,
sarigne sang, donne his sunu hangao
hrefre to hroore ond he him help ne maeg,
eald ond infrod, aenige gefremman.
There was no way to pay for a death so wrong,
blinding the heart, yet still the prince
had lost his life, lay unavenged.
So it is bitter for an old man
to have seen his son go riding high,
young on the gallows; then may he tell
a true sorrow-song, when his son swings,
a joy to the raven, and old and wise,
and sad, he cannot help him at all.
With four thousand vocabulary entries in its lexicon for three thousand lines, the Beowulf poet was truly the greatest of his or her time and it is a tragedy indeed that their name and identity has been lost. These Old English scops fused together half-lines by their stressed alliteration. Texture and diction itself suggests meaning, a similar sensory pleasure as poems about the sea that emulate waves. These fusions, creating thousands of variations of a single idea, such as a hilde-leoma or battle-flame for a sword, have been called the very soul of Old English poetical style. Ultimately, Beowulf is an exploration of the human condition itself. The monsters represent the impermanence of human life, the mortal enemy that can strike at the heart of everything we hold dear. The transience of humanity, it is a bitterly poignant and yet preeminently elegant thing. As Tolkien wrote, “Those days were heathen – heathen, noble, and hopeless… The author rehandles in a new perspective an ancient theme: that man, each man and all men, and all their works shall die.”
Chaucer went a step further and revolutionised literature by fusing this polluted and colloquial strange new English language that fixated on epic tales of riotous adventure with the elegant aristocratic Norman French of high society and its stately romance and courtship, and so came the birth of Western literature.
So, by comparing Homeric verse with biblical verse we can identify two contrasting representations of reality. Homer is defined by the externalisation of all detail, perhaps not to build suspense but to relieve tension, to make the heroes relatable, genuine and ordinary, to relish in the pure delight of storytelling by inviting us into their world. There are no claims to absolute morality, no layers upon layers of ambiguity and higher meaning hidden in the abstract, no demands for enlightened interpretation. And this philological evolution informs the whole canon of literature. Take Romanticism. A wonderfully unique period contained in the late 18th century and early 19th century, it was one of intense emotion, a focus on nature, on human perception and imagination, the rejection of political and social repression, powerfully evoking Chaucer’s verse. The fusion of Norman French and West Saxon, romance and epic, humour and colloquialism, those were the ingredients in suffusing those riotous tales with the analysis of emotion. And that is where Romanticism is most powerful, in the analysis of emotion.
One of the most moving and powerful poems of the Romantic period is the ‘Mask of Anarchy’ by Percy Shelley. He was moved to write this beautiful and rousing poem as a result of a riot in Manchester in 1819, despite being in Italy at the time. Indeed, his topic was so raw and controversial it was not published for many years. This riot began as a peaceful demonstration against poverty and a crippled economy in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars at St Peter’s Field, however the cavalry were ordered in and the ensuing bloodbath left fifteen people dead and led to the founding of what would become The Guardian newspaper. This tragedy became known as the Peterloo Massacre, a satirical stab at Waterloo. In 91 vivid stanzas full of the most wonderful imagery, Shelley marks the failure of the government, beautifully conveying the brutal living conditions for the poor and calling for defiance, for courage, for unity and a peaceful revolution in the face of tyranny and injustice. It is the most powerful defence and advocacy of democracy I have ever read. And so I would trace this evolution of literature, of philosophy, and imagination back through the ages to the reign of the classical poets of antiquity. Thank you, Homer.
Let the horsemen’s scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning!
And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew –
What they like, that let them do.
And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration –
Eloquent, oracular –
A volcano heard afar!
And these words shall then become
Like Oppression’s thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again – again – again;
‘Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many, they are few!’
