Source of book: Borrowed from the library
This book was recommended to me by an online friend who is a fellow string player, poetry lover, and philosophical thinker. It was a great recommendation.
Many of us of a certain generation read Beowulf in high school. It is pretty much the OG English literature, and a worthy classic. Since it was written in Old English, which barely resembles its modern child, most of us have to read it in translation. I recommend the Seamus Heaney one as particularly delightful. Tolkien also translated it, and I hear that is good. (Definitely avoid the plagiarized retelling by white nationalist and generally terrible person Doug Wilson.)
Beowulf is an ancient story, and feels even older at times. It conjures up early iron age culture, and the kind of “boozing and fighting” ethos that is a lot more fun in a story than in real life. As an example of both the “monomyth” and the “overcoming the monster” tale, it contains so many iconic elements of stories to come. Among other elements, it has the “rule of three” - the three different monsters the hero must overcome.
The first of the monsters is Grendel, and he is, well, a very interesting monster. On the one hand, he is a prototypical non-human horror show, ugly and stupid and violent. We all know the type, present in pretty much every horror story since the dawn of time. Considering that for much of human history, the wild was full of unknown and hungry creatures, it is no surprise that we can conjure up unhuman horrors to personify our fears.
On the other, however, at some point, the Beowulf story had an anachronistic Christian gloss put on it. (It is disputed whether the writer tried to append this to an older, pre-Christian story, or if a later editor changed a few things.) In any case, while the story is set in Denmark before Christianity came on the scene, it chooses to ascribe Grendel’s history to a story in Genesis. To wit, Cain gave birth to his own race of monsters, of which Grendel and his mother are the last. (You can decide for yourself if this makes any theological sense in light of, say, the Flood…)
Thus, in a very real way, Grendel is the most fascinating character in the story. Who is he? What motivates him? He isn’t just a projection of human fear, but a potential story himself.
This is what John Gardner sets out to do in this book. Tell the story of the first third of Beowulf from the perspective of Grendel himself.
The other thing Gardner did, was to take Sartre’s existentialism and build a character out of it. Because Grendel’s thoughts and motivations are drawn directly from Sartre - in some cases, close to word-for-word.
The third monster, the Dragon (who is essentially a personification of Death in the original) makes an appearance in the book, in a rather fascinating chapter, where he encourages Grendel to embrace nihilism, and devote his life to collecting treasure.
If this sounds academic and dry, it isn’t.
Rather, this book is poetry in prose. Beautiful writing, poetic language and even rhythm - and a bit of actual poetry in passages too. As dark and existential as the book is, it was also an absolute joy to read.
Along the way, Gardner challenges all of the foundational myths of Western culture, from our tribalism and cultural chauvinism to our self-justification for enslavement and colonization. Because Grendel is an outsider, he is able to see through all the lies and flowery poetry to see the raw use and abuse of power by the most heartless and violent of men. (And it is men…)
I wasn’t familiar with Gardner before this, but he turns out to have been an interesting character in his own right. While generally respected as a writer, he greatly damaged his reputation with a book of literary criticism, On Moral Fiction, in which he said some really harsh things about living authors - including greats like John Updike. This was driven in large part by his view that literature needed to moralize, not just portray.
Unsurprisingly, the literary establishment wasn’t too happy about this, and pretty much ostracized Gardner. I suspect Gardner may have been a bit too full of his own ideas to understand and credit competing ones. It is also a bit ironic to me that Grendel itself doesn’t have a clear moral, and in fact encourages one to root for senseless violence.
By the way, that is not a criticism of the book. I think Gardner’s approach is excellent, and makes one think. But I do think he perhaps was a bit sanctimonious about how other authors wrote.
Gardner’s personal life was a bit tumultuous as well, with two failed marriages. He died in a motorcycle crash at the far too young age of 49.
That will serve as an introduction to the book. I did want to highlight my favorite passages, most of which I chose because of the deliciously descriptive and evocative writing. Throughout, the image of a cold, meaningless world, inhabited by human monsters killing each other for useless metal, is brilliantly brought to life.
Stars, spattered out through lifeless night from end to end, like jewels scattered in a dead king’s grave, tease, torment my wits toward meaningful patterns that do not exist.
I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears.
The whole description of humankind is strangely terrifying. Here is a bit of it.
The women worked the ground and milked and fed the animals while the men hunted, and when the men came in from the wolf-roads at dusk, the women would cook the game they’d caught while the men went inside and drank mead. Then they’d all eat, the men first, then the women and children, the men still drinking, getting louder and braver, talking about what they were going to do to the bands on the other hills. I would huddle, listening to their noise in the darkness, my eyebrows lifted, my lips pursed, the hair on the back of my neck standing up like pigs’ bristles. All the bands did the same thing. In time I began to be more amused than revolted by what they threatened. It didn’t matter to me what they did to each other. It didn’t matter to me what they did to each other. It was slightly ominous because of its strangeness - no wolf was so vicious to other wolves - but I half believed they weren’t serious.
Grendel is fascinated by the bard, because he is able to tell lies, to make human violence seem poetic (hey, kind of like the original poem!), and to soothe consciences that otherwise might misgive.
He sings to a heavier harpsong now, old heart-string scratcher, memory scraper. Of the richest of kings made sick of soul by the scattered bones of thanes. By late afternoon the fire dies down and the column of smoke is white, no longer greasy. There will be others this year, they know; yet they hang on. The sun backs away from the world like a crab and the days grow shorter, the nights grow longer, more dark and dangerous. I smile, angry in the thickening dusk, and feast my eyes on the greatest of the meadhalls, unsatisfied.
The chapter where Grendel and the dragon discuss the meaningless of life has so many fascinating lines. The dragon does most of the speaking.
“An angry man does not usually shake his fist at the universe in general. He makes a selection and knocks his neighbor down. A piece of rock, on the other hand, impartially attracts the universe according to the law of gravitation. You grant there’s a difference?”
Hmm, MAGA in a nutshell. Angry at the universe, decides to hit their neighbors…
The dragon advises Grendel that he is in a way, the inspiration for humans. He is the “other” they can look down on, even as he embodies their worst traits. Even Grendel, as disgusted as he is with humans, can’t quite go this far. The dragon’s response is interesting.
“Do something else, by all means! Alter the future! Make the world a better place in which to live! Help the poor! Feed the hungry. Be kind to idiots! What a challenge!”
“My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.”
After this, Grendel again hears the song of the bard, but understands it differently.
He spoke of how God had been kind to the Scyldings, sending so rich a harvest. The people sat beaming, bleary-eyed and fat, nodding their approval of God. He spoke of God’s great generosity in sending them so wise a king. They all raised their cups to God and Hrothgar, and Hrothgar smiled, bits of food in his beard. The Shaper talked of how God had vanquished their enemies and filled up their houses with precious treasure, how they were the richest, most powerful people on earth, how here and here alone in all the world men were free and heroes were brave and virgins were virgins. He ended the song, and people clapped and shouted their praise and filled their golden cups.
Oh god, when I think back on my days in Evangelicalism, and how much of this we did. And how ultimately stupid and un-christian it was, assuming God loved us more than everyone else. It’s embarrassing. This is the Christian Nationalist dream, of course. God is an American. A white American. And if we could just get rid of those other people he doesn’t like, we can go back to being rich and powerful and “free” and heroes in our own story. Sigh.
The book explores some of the side stories in the original, the backstory before Beowulf comes. One of these is the education of Hrothulf, nephew of Hrothgar, who will eventually usurp the throne. Gardner has him learn from a peasant, one who seems a bit more educated than expected.
“To step out of the region of legality requires an extraordinary push of circumstance,” the old man yelled. He was deaf and shouted as if everyone else were too. “The incitement to violence depends on total transvaluation of the ordinary values. By a single stroke, the most criminal acts must be converted to heroic and meritorious deeds.”
Astute readers might recognize a bit of Nietzsche in that idea. And, of course, the way that authoritarians convince otherwise decent people to act in violent and destructive ways.
As the book nears its close, Grendel realizes that his problem is increasingly boredom, tedium, meaninglessness. Nothing matters, nothing changes, there is no thrill left to him. He may be free, but to him, “Tedium is the worst pain.”
Finally, Beowulf comes, and Grendel knows that one of them will end. He also sees, however, that Beowulf will likely be the end of the glory of Hrothgar. The new upstart will seize the glory, and prove the futility of the Scyldings’ religion.
Theology does not thrive in the world of action and reaction, change: it grows on calm, like the scum on a stagnant pool. And it flourishes, it prospers, on decline. Only in a world where everything is patently being lost can a priest stir men’s hearts as a poet would by maintaining that nothing is in vain.
Oof. But it rings true more than I would prefer.
In the final confrontation, Beowulf doesn’t merely physically injure Grendel, he speaks philosophy that taps into Grendel’s greatest fears, his greatest subconscious terror.
A meaningless swirl in the stream of time, a temporary gathering of bits, a few random specks, a cloud…Complexities: green dust, purple dust, gold. Additional refinements: sensitive dust, copulating dust….
In the end, and by that I mean Grendel’s end, and perhaps our own, it is dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We return to the earth, the universe goes on to the last syllable of recorded time.
As I said, it is a beautiful, poetic, disturbing, and thought provoking book. Poetry, as Dickinson said, “tells truth but tells it slant,” and that is how I feel about this book. Don’t take it literally, don’t get bogged down in the specific philosophical ideas. Look at it slant, enjoy the experience, let the words wash over you.
And thank you R.V.S. for introducing me to this book.
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