Beowulf

A recent reading of Beowulf inspired this piece.  Grendel is in 'process'.

The sculpture is 20" high, 12" wide, 8" deep.
It is composed of (all found): a shaving brush, the pelvic bones of a porcupine, gold foil from Chanukah gelt, rusted bottle caps, a bowl of roofing nails, door bolt, leather glove, driftwood, an old book, bones. screws, and bark.
This essay accompanies the piece:

Reflection in a Pool of Blood on Beowulf

David Neufeld

Today, Beowulf presents as a story of intolerance.  Substitute any two nations or cultures that cannot get over killing each other.  It all starts with a drunken party.  Grendel can’t sleep.  Grendel kills Geats. Beowulf kills Grendel; Mom gets mad; Beowulf kills mom; a third, unnamed monster (named in the, as yet undiscovered, last-will-and-testament of Grendel’s mom) kills Beowulf.  What was gained? 

It could also be a balance-of-power story.  The Geats (Executive) get too powerful and the Grendel clan (Congress) counterbalances.  A Jungian view might call it a denial of the Shadow.  But who is the shadow? The Geats or the Monsters?  I see a multiplayer video game here.

Beowulf holds its own for sheer graphic detail rivaling modern sci-fi horror.  The scenes of carnage and of burning bodies infuse the senses with ripped tendons, sizzling, popping, barbecue, and Geat sashimi.

What struck me from the start was the Christian hybridization of the Norse world.  The written version appears centuries after the time of events and celebrates an entire lineage.  Shield was an orphan, Moses-like, set adrift as a baby.  The brutal hierarchy in which kings proved themselves in battle and amassed treasure through plunder has been glorified, while Cain’s hoard embodies evil.  The grand mead hall, throne room, becomes their cathedral of excess, is defiled when Grendel repeatedly comes calling and is left vacant until what, the second coming? Was this an early incursion of Christianity into Norse culture?  Was it an attempt to overwrite Norse mythology in the same way that Christianity overwrote, Aztec, Roman, and Greek mythology?  It aligns with the Christian take on good and evil: Good is Us; Evil is Them.   It is so easy to call one, ‘God cursed’, ‘Malignant by nature”.

I also noticed that the story lays out genealogy in a biblical way: Sheild begat, begat, begat, and then there was Beowulf.  The oral tradition of repetitive phrasing confused me the first couple of times I listened to it though I should have been sharp to that.  Old oral tradition is based on multiple tellings in which the audience finds pleasure in knowing the story and is also culturally connected to the story.  I saw Chris O'Donnell as young Beowulf, Russell Crowe as old Beowulf, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Hrothgar.  Andy Serkis, I imagine, would do Grendel justice.

Given their barbarity, I didn’t feel sorry for the Geats.  “Courage and greatness, wrecker of mead-benches, that was one good King?”  Bull!  It was almost as if Grendel, who was bothered by their noisy parties, was within his rights.  This may be me projecting.  I am forced to ask from whom the Geats got their treasures and what bloody hall was left behind when they exited.  I began to wonder whether they were, in a sense, feeding Grendel gold and jewels when they piled the ship of a dead king with riches during the funeral rites, like chumming for monsters. 

The overall plot echoes Tolkien’s writing although, as celebrated as this is, I am tempted to parody this tale.  The telling by Seamus Heaney sounded like the warriors were, ‘Geeks’, their hall, a ‘Meat Hall’, and their neighbors across the water, ‘Bright Dames’.  A bit Monty-Python-esque when Beowulf says, “It’s only fair that I take off all my armor and lay down my sword and fight the bastard (or bitch) bare handed!”  How macho is that?

In the end, it’s just a bloody mess.