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Beowulf in performance
Beowulf in performance by Benjamin Bagby
A month ago I went to see Benjamin Bagby, the noted early music specialist, perform the first section of the epic of Beowulf in the original Old English. Rather than just a straight recitation, which is pretty damn boring, Bagby does a full performance in the style of an ancient scop (rhapsode), and he's really damn good at it--between the surtitles and the performance itself he managed to have the audience laughing, and in suspense, at multiple points, which is damn hard to do even when the audience understands the performance language.
It was really cool to hear the text performed; old English, amusingly enough, still has a very few words exactly the same as our modern English, and it sounds a lot like both German and the Scandinavian languages--every so often there came a line I could understand without the surtitles, which definitely gave a thrill. Hearing the entirety of the first section actually also made me aware of the linkages between all three parts; specifically, the long digression towards the end of the first part, after Beowulf has defeated Grendel (spoilers! Grendel dies!), foreshadows the manner of Beowulf's death in the third part. The poem "Beowulf" by Richard Wilbur has also stuck with me in that context, and came back to me. (Yes; I hold to the more modern tripartite structure interpretation, as opposed to the two-part structure championed by J.R.R. Tolkien in "The Monsters and the Critics." The essay is eminently readable and worth reading, however; it's available here.)
I also tend to agree with placing the date of the poem's composition towards the earlier end of the accepted range: i.e. closer to the 8thC CE than the 11th. It's interesting hearing the poem and hearing the new religion, Christianity, coexisting within it with the Viking culture it overlays; the elements aren't in tension, but they remain heterogeneous. I wound up thinking of Tom Palaima's Phi Beta Kappa lecture, in which he argued that the Greek epics and drama represent the culture's attempt to teach people what war is really like, and that with the advent of Christianity it became more difficult to convince people to kill their fellow men, necessitatingthe obfuscation of lying about the true nature of war. It's an interesting argument, and I think it could be adopted to Beowulf too; certainly one hears a lot about the aspects of Christianity that fit in the warrior-honor culture of the Geats and the Danes, and very little about the more radical peace and compassion ideology that also is part of the religion, or at least its texts. Like I said, interesting.
The Roman road also really does stick out in the poem. How is it still paved? Seriously, how?
A month ago I went to see Benjamin Bagby, the noted early music specialist, perform the first section of the epic of Beowulf in the original Old English. Rather than just a straight recitation, which is pretty damn boring, Bagby does a full performance in the style of an ancient scop (rhapsode), and he's really damn good at it--between the surtitles and the performance itself he managed to have the audience laughing, and in suspense, at multiple points, which is damn hard to do even when the audience understands the performance language.
It was really cool to hear the text performed; old English, amusingly enough, still has a very few words exactly the same as our modern English, and it sounds a lot like both German and the Scandinavian languages--every so often there came a line I could understand without the surtitles, which definitely gave a thrill. Hearing the entirety of the first section actually also made me aware of the linkages between all three parts; specifically, the long digression towards the end of the first part, after Beowulf has defeated Grendel (spoilers! Grendel dies!), foreshadows the manner of Beowulf's death in the third part. The poem "Beowulf" by Richard Wilbur has also stuck with me in that context, and came back to me. (Yes; I hold to the more modern tripartite structure interpretation, as opposed to the two-part structure championed by J.R.R. Tolkien in "The Monsters and the Critics." The essay is eminently readable and worth reading, however; it's available here.)
I also tend to agree with placing the date of the poem's composition towards the earlier end of the accepted range: i.e. closer to the 8thC CE than the 11th. It's interesting hearing the poem and hearing the new religion, Christianity, coexisting within it with the Viking culture it overlays; the elements aren't in tension, but they remain heterogeneous. I wound up thinking of Tom Palaima's Phi Beta Kappa lecture, in which he argued that the Greek epics and drama represent the culture's attempt to teach people what war is really like, and that with the advent of Christianity it became more difficult to convince people to kill their fellow men, necessitating
The Roman road also really does stick out in the poem. How is it still paved? Seriously, how?