Beowulf sucks. Next?

[shereads]

I just finished a new translation of Beowulf that won rave reviews from people better qualified than I to judge such things.

I'm sorry, but I can't get past how silly it was.

In between the description of Beowulf's hideous opponent, and the description of the carnage in the aftermath of their battle (the oceans run red with the creature's blood, etc.) there's not so much as a hint of how Beowulf manages to win the fight. He just wins. It's exactly the way my nephew used to tell stories when he was six years old.

Is Beowulf impressive just because someone bothered to write it down? Or is it important because it's the first known attempt to create a superhero for young boys? Or did I miss something?

Any other literary classics that suck? Warnings will be appreciated.

FYI, I loved the Illiad translation quoted in Thomas Cahill's "Sailing a Wine Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Mattered." So it's not as if I'm anti-superhero. I'm just disappointed in Beowulf. Idiot!

 

[Wildcard Ky]

I never cared for Beowulf at all. I haven't read the newest version, but it's still beowulf.

I think Macbeth may be the greatest story ever written. Funny how an author can produce something as good as Macbeth, and as bad as Beowulf. It's kind of like Tolkien with the Hobbit, LOTR, and..................the silmarillion.

Edited to add: The good Dr. M correctly pointed out to me that Shakespeare wasn't the original author of Beowulf. That had indeed slipped my mind. I read a version of Beowulf done by WS many years ago. I was referring to that when I made the comparison. I also admit that I might be totally wrong in my remembrance of this. I'm trying to remember all the way back to high school.

In any event........Macbeth still rocks. Sher, if you want to read a great classic, read Macbeth.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The weird thing about Beowulf is that the poem seems to have been gutted by Christian scribes as it was handed down. Even when I first read it in HS it seems weird to me how you could have all this obviously pagan boasting and drinking and bloodletting, then have these tacked on references to Our Lord and Savior and all that. They just dont make sense. "Beowulf" passed through a lot of hands, and the poem suffers for it.

Another problem is that Beowulf the character is basically an egotistical ass hole. He comes to Whosis's hall looking for nothing but glory. He's not really there to help anyone, and he doesn't care at all when his men are wiped out by Grendel night after night. His only concern is that he makes himself look good at the end.

I remember reading someone's analysis of the poem, and his comments about how this went dead against the Norseman's ethos, in which the Chieftan looks out for his men and they pay him in turn with thier loyalty, but i don't remember what his conclusions were about that. I guess Achilles was somewhat the same, but I don't remember him sitting around drinking while his men were snatched from beneath his nose.

Oh yeah: if we're talking about great literature that sucks, I personally find the ending of Hamlet just ridiculous. How many people die in those two or three minutes? 4? 5? I'm surprised it wasn't just laughed off the stage.

 

[yui]

Reasons why Beowulf might be special special:

Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature.

And if I remember correctly, Beowulf exists in only one manuscript. And, that single copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and the fire which destroyed Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's library.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Reason's why Beowulf might be special special:

Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature.

And if I remember correctly, Beowulf exists in only one manuscript. And, that single copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and the fire which destroyed Sir Robert Bruce Cotton's library.

It's still a great poem too. The B-man might have been an ass, but those rolling Norse alliterations and muscle-bound language are great. And to a HS freshman who had just gagged his way through David Copperfield, Beowulf was like a breath of fresh (and violent) air.

Hey: Heros and Monsters and it's still considered literature? I'll take a dozen.

---dr.M.

 

[carsonshepherd]

John Gardner's book Grendel is something you might like, Doc. Read it?

 

[lucky-E-leven]

I was thrilled to read Beowulf in High School. I got stranded in regular English/Lit classes until my Junior year and moved up into the advanced class where much better Lit was assigned. The shit we had to read before it were considered classics too, but I was horrendously bored with them and glad to get on to something with imagination. It might not be the best book out there but I have fond memories of it. All relative.

*shrug*

~lucky

 

[dr_mabeuse]

John Gardner's book Grendel is something you might like, Doc. Read it?

Yeah. Years ago. I liked it so much that I actually got up in the middle of the night after I'd finished it and mailed it to a friend, all excited.

He thought it was so-so.

There's another ancient Norse saga called (I think) "The Wanderer's Song" where you can feel the poet trying to impose some kind of Christian order on what's essentially still a wild and bloody and pagan world. Some of those Scandinavians didn't really convert to Christianity till like 800 or so. That pagan Europe stuff is very scary. It's really another world.

I've got a CD by a group called the Polish Village Band that does ancient folk-music of Poland, and that's scary too. A lot of eerie screaming and chanting. A lot of dark things in the forests back then.

 

[cloudy]

Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, and Sir Gawain the Green Knight were my favorites in high school, even though the language could be hard to decipher.

Still love them.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Arse. Beowuld is brilliant.

I'm with Dr. M on the language. It makes up for everything - including a hero who puts his armor on to go swimming and takes it off to fight the big bad guy.

I could offer you lengthy suggestions as to why Beowulf fits into the Anglo-Saxon cultural definition of heroic, but who wants to sit through that? I will point out that the bragging makes sense in context. Humility is largely a Christian virtue, and a virtue of more settled times and lands. Beowulf brags because reputation is extremely important in his culture. When many of the neighboring tribes engage in opportunistic raiding, a good king or hero must establish and maintain a strong reputation as a hard man in battle. Otherwise, he'll be under constant attack from those who think him easy pickings. We see similar things in ancient Irish literature, in a culture similarly rife with border wars and raiding parties. Hence their fear of and respect for satirists, poets, and bards. A king who was known as a coward or weakling - accurately or not - would be the logical first choice of every nearby raiding band. If he becomes the target of constant challenges, he's a dead man, and his people go down with him. That's where the bragging comes from, and the intense defense of honor against any slights.

Shanglan

 

[shereads]

I was thrilled to read Beowulf in High School. I got stranded in regular English/Lit classes until my Junior year and moved up into the advanced class where much better Lit was assigned. The shit we had to read before it were considered classics too, but I was horrendously bored with them and glad to get on to something with imagination. It might not be the best book out there but I have fond memories of it. All relative.

*shrug*

~lucky

I'm sorry.



I hate to mess with anyone's fond memories, dammit. I suck.

It's just that there's all this build-up about how powerful and enormous Grendel is, and whatever you think of Beowulf's motives for taking him on (I didn't question that part, Doc; i just assumed he knew his role as a Mythological Hero required him to defeat Evil) there ought to be an Achilles Heel or something that explains how Beowulf, who's just a normal human-sized hero - fighting without a sword to prove his courage - manages a victory over a superhuman giant with vile claws and teeth and knives and swords and stuff.

I wanted there to be a stanza that explained how he won.

Instead, we went from "Yowsa, things looked hopeless" to "And the seafoam stained the beaches red" with the blood of the defeated Grendel.

But how?

Nevermind.

I didn't have that problem with Achilles, because all of those guys had various gods on their side. Whoever's god was most alert or motivated that day, or not hungover from Festivus, was able to award a victory in a sword fight back in Achille's day. Plus, the A-Man was supposed to be part god, I think.

The heel thing was an issue, but at least it explained how he could be killed by an average twit.

I was always fascinated with the antiquities sections of museums, and I wanted to love the Illiad when I was in school, but it just sat there. I don't know the name of the translator who provided the version Cahill refers to in his book, but for the first time, reading "Wine Dark Sea" I understood the Troy story as a human tragedy.

It's so stirring, not because of the scope of the story but because both sides have heros of equal stature, and because Achilles is imperfect. He's cruel in his victory, and only relents when the king leaves the safety of Troy, comes to Achilles' camp in disguise, and kisses the feet of the man who killed his son - in return for the right to bury the body.

Who could imagine a more humble end to a ten-year war?

That's what made me finally fall in love with The Illiad.

It's the human element that's missing from Beowulf. Not a fair comparison, I guess.

Edited to add: Do not, if you value the classics to any degree at all, give in to the temptation to watch Brad Pit as Achilles in Troy. Woof. What a godawful movie.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales, and Sir Gawain the Green Knight were my favorites in high school, even though the language could be hard to decipher.

I love you more now than I ever have.

 

[BlackShanglan]

It's the human element that's missing from Beowulf. Not a fair comparison, I guess.

I think that you are right, and I think that that ties into my post above. Their idea of a hero wasn't the same as ours. In the modern world, tempered by what we know of psychology and also shaped by Christian values, we tend to think of a hero as an ordinary person who manages to overcome difficult challenges through courage and growth and development.

His culture, however, tended to define hero as "person most likely to be able to bring stability to a kingdom in a hostile, claustrophobic world of constant challenges and violent danger." Thus they are less concerned about Beowulf's personality than about his role as a champion and eventually king. He embodies what they are looking for; that just happens to be different to what we look for now, and less focused on emotion and personality. I agree that it can make him less human, but in terms of pure symbol and archetype I still find him interesting.

That, and I'm an absolute sucker for caesura-split alliterative kennings. *swoon*

Shanglan

 

[cloudy]

I love you more now than I ever have.

What can I say? All those manly men running around, with their thanes and thews and slaying the monsters.

*sigh*

 

[BlackShanglan]

What can I say? All those manly men running around, with their thanes and thews and slaying the monsters.

*sigh*

Now that was a good king.

 

[shereads]

I think that you are right, and I think that that ties into my post above. Their idea of a hero wasn't the same as ours. In the modern world, tempered by what we know of psychology and also shaped by Christian values, we tend to think of a hero as an ordinary person who manages to overcome difficult challenges through courage and growth and development.

His culture, however, tended to define hero as "person most likely to be able to bring stability to a kingdom in a hostile, claustrophobic world of constant challenges and violent danger." Thus they are less concerned about Beowulf's personality than about his role as a champion and eventually king. He embodies what they are looking for; that just happens to be different to what we look for now, and less focused on emotion and personality. I agree that it can make him less human, but in terms of pure symbol and archetype I still find him interesting.

That, and I'm an absolute sucker for caesura-split alliterative kennings. *swoon*

Shanglan

There's no excuse for using such language, sir.

Okay, Beowulf didn't need to be human, he just needed to win. Like Republicans. I can understand that. But HOW did he win? He just bit the big guy's finger, as best i could tell, and there was some yowling and bleeding and stuff, and then it was time to party.

 

[BlackShanglan]

There's no excuse for using such language, sir.

Okay, Beowulf didn't need to be human, he just needed to win. Like Republicans. I can understand that. But HOW did he win? He just bit the big guy's finger, as best i could tell, and there was some yowling and bleeding and stuff, and then it was time to party.

I always imagined that he's just got super-human strength. He rips Grendel's arm off after realizing that weapons won't bite him.

Shanglan

 

[dr_mabeuse]

It's been a long time, but wasn't there a bit with Grendel's Mom too?

I seem to remember that Beowulf had to take her on too, and that was a real anti-climax. Did the poem just end there or something?

And doesn't anyone want to stand up for the ending of Hamlet? Or do we all agree that it's just silly?

 

[BlackShanglan]

It's been a long time, but wasn't there a bit with Grendel's Mom too?

I seem to remember that Beowulf had to take her on too, and that was a real anti-climax. Did the poem just end there or something?

And doesn't anyone want to stand up for the ending of Hamlet? Or do we all agree that it's just silly?

There are three main sections in Beowulf. In the first, he kills Grendel. In the second, he kills Grendel's mother. He dives under the lake where she lives and kills her with a sword from her own treasure hoard, which melts from contact with her blood. Given that he thrusts a phallic symbol into her body, liquid gushes forth, and then his phallic symbol melts, I will argue against the idea of an anti-climax on purely Freudian grounds

In the last section, Beowulf slays a dragon and is slain by him. Fans of "The Hobbit" will recognize the story of a thief who steals a gilded cup from the dragon's hoard and rouses its ire.


Hmmm. The end of Hamlet hasn't bothered me as much as the middle. Horrible confusion over the length of time passing, and on the whole it's asking a great deal of the audience to understand how long it's been. The ending does seem a bit of a muddle ... I can't decide if this is a clever commentary on the results of Hamlet's irresolution, or just a balls-up. (Sorry, Mr. Shakespeare. I really think you're brilliant.)

I like "Othello" and "MacBeth" best. To be honest, "King Lear" can get on my nerves - too many madmen. It gets repetitious and, at the worst, silly.

Shanglan

 

[gauchecritic]

. To be honest, "King Lear" can get on my nerves - too many madmen. It gets repetitious and, at the worst, silly.

Shanglan

I shall have to crack your cheeks for that remark young horsey.



So what sort of explanation would like Sher? His vorpal blade going snicker-snack?

 

[BlackShanglan]

I shall have to crack your cheeks for that remark young horsey.

Oh, pease don't throw me in the briar patch.

I will point out that when Akira Kurosawa - no slouch at dramatic construction - made "Ran," he cut down the number of madmen. I'm not alone in this.

Shanglan

 

[BlackShanglan]

His vorpal blade going snicker-snack?

And with his arm / He went galumphing back ...

 

[neonlyte]

At the risk of getting slapped about:

Why spoil a good story by reading it?

I'm not sure we, living in the 21C, have the eyes or ability to read and understand a story written in the 10C, or 11C depending upon whose history you believe, which to best knowledge seems to be the written down version of a tale passed from mouth to ear dating from some three centuries before; a translation at that, and penned by scribes who'd wore the armour of Christianity.

Admire it. Wonder at the uniqueness of its existence. Pour lyrically across its stanzas, but don't expect or demand meaning.

Beowulf is eulogized in English speaking lands, no harm in that, as long as proportion is maintained.

.............Wealth dies,......kinsmen die
.........A man himself......must likewise die;
But one thing I know......which never dies -
.........The verdict on each man dead.
Havamal's Saga


Damn this banning of  

 

[ishtat]

Heros All

I agree with almost everything BS & Cloudy have said about Beowulf ,Chaucer et al. It helps if you can at least have a crack at them in the original language.Very difficult with Old English but very rewarding. A knowlwdge of the history and society of the time also helps . With Beowulf it is essential to discard our Judeo Christian moral frameworks. The toughest guy was chief and he had to let every one else know.

However Lear is great but both Lear and Hamlet in my view are improved with editing.They are just too long .In fact I would guess that very few people have ever seen a performance of either play which has not been shortened

 

[cantdog]

Hallo, ishtat

Since we're talking about classics that suck, Great Ex springs immediately to mind.

Dickens, ick.