Tolkien's Beowulf: A Man of the Twilight

[Dear Faithful Substack Reader, as always, a huge thanks for reading me. I’m so deeply grateful. As it turns out, I’m currently somewhere very high in the air (8 miles high?), between Detroit and Atlanta. I’m heading to a conference on classical education. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be lecturing on the intersection of myth and history. I’m pretty excited about it.

I’m also really excited to announce that one of two forthcoming books, Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of the West, is now available for preorder at Amazon. We even have a cover—it’s gorgeous!—and everything. You can pre-order here. Please do consider pre-ordering a copy. My press, Encounter, has put a great deal behind the book, and I’m extremely appreciative of what they’ve done.

Ok, heading into Atlanta. Blessings, Brad]

J.R.R. Tolkien’s numerous—and now, thankfully, available—lectures on the medieval epic poem, Beowulf, pop as well as dazzle his audience in fascinating ways. No sentence is without insight, and no paragraph is without some unique revelation about Beowulf’s significance and relevance—to his own world and to our own. The poem is not only perfectly coherent as a poem and as a story, but it was also written by “a single hand and mind”^[1] Drawing upon the work of his friend and fellow parishioner, Christopher Dawson, Tolkien thought the poet a member of the first generation of Christian converts, written at “the time of that great outburst of missionary enterprise which fired all England,” having at the end of the enterprise, the greatest of all Englishman, St. Boniface.^[2]

The Beowulf poem, Tolkien stressed, is fundamentally about the very nature of heroism and all of the good and the bad that might surround the heroic. Beowulf is, of course, a “noble pagan.” In such a consideration, innumerable questions arise. Is the hero brave? Is he a leader? Does he serve God or against God? Does he advance only his own will, or does he take into account God’s grace? Are the hero’s retinue there to serve him or the good of the realm or the realm of God? Even in his bravery, does the hero cause more damage to his society than peace would have? Can true heroism even exist in a Christian world of grace, or must it always reflect—in good and bad ways—its heathen and pagan roots?

Not surprisingly, especially given its origins in the Anglo-Saxon Middle Ages, the poem is as solidly pagan as it is solidly Christian. “The author of Beowulf was not a heathen, but he wrote in a time when the pagan past was still very near,” Tolkien explained, “so near that not only some facts were remembered, but moods and motives.”^[3] That the poem emerges in the nexus—a moment of profound transition—between pagan and Christian Europe only makes it more intriguing, as it offers us an insight not only into Christianity and paganism, but to that all-too-fleeting moment of overlap, conflict, and assimilation.

One finds the Christian element, most blatantly in the monsters of the poem, Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and the dragon. The former two, at least, come from the monsters, giants, and half-men that have plagued the world since the Curse of Cain. Though Beowulf challenged openly the three most hostile monsters, others lurked in this medieval tale: necromancers, orcs, barrow-wights, and undead. Some of these, such as the necromancers would have been plain, wicked Gnostics. Many of these creatures, the poet left vague—not because of any censorship that might have accompanied the arrival of Christianity, but because he believed the monsters and allied creatures were all simply tricks and “deceits of the Evil One.”^[4] Each foul beast was merely a part, an illusion, or a brief manifestation of the head of Demons. Quite real, but not worth invoking in the tale.

Tolkien is worth quoting at length here on the nature of the enemies.

 The Old English féond on helle is a very curious expression. It implies, of course, that Grendel is a ‘hell-fiend’, a creature damned irretrievably. It remains, nonetheless, remarkable; for Grendel is not ‘in hell’, but very physically in Denmark, and he is not even yet a damned spirit, for he is mortal and has to be slain before he goes to Hell. There is evidently a confusion or twilight in the thought of the poet (and his age) about these monsters, hostile to mankind. They remain physical monsters, with blood, able to be slain (with the right sword). Yet already they are described in terms applicable to evil spirits; so here (*102) gǽst.7 Whether féond on helle is due to a kind of half-theological notion that one of the accursed things, of misshapen human form, being damned carried their hell ever with them in their hearts and spirits—or whether it is due to taking over a ‘Christian’ phrase carelessly (féond on helle just = ‘fiend, devil’)—is difficult to decide. The latter would demand that Christian phraseology was already well-developed and fixed when Beowulf was written. The phrase went on. In Middle English fend in helle is still used just as ‘devil’. Wyclif uses fend in helle of a very living and bodily friar walking about England. (It is to be remembered that féond properly = ‘enemy’ only, and still when undefined bears that sense in Beowulf.)^[5]

By tracing the monsters back to Cain, Tolkien brilliantly noted, the Anglo-Saxon nobility and aristocracy could claim to be rightful heirs of the Old Testament. Perhaps, as Tolkien wrote, the Beowulf poem served as a type of lost chapter from Genesis.^[6]

After all, Tolkien reasoned, the Christian Logos could permeate and transcend time, enlightening all men—past, present, and future—perhaps evil, too, might invade much of reality from the past to the future. Even better, perhaps some of the pagans who had yet to encounter formal Christianity, such as the Danish king, Hrothgar, might be saved in a full Christian sense as well.

Yet, Tolkien warns, much of the story is ahistorical. While, like the Arthur story, Beowulf as a man as well as the elements of the plot, probably did have some historical truth to them, the figure of Beowulf in the poem comes from the Otherworld, the realm of Faerie.

 It had two fundamental materials. ‘Historial’ legend and Fairy Story. The ‘historial legend’ is derived ultimately from traditions about real men, real events, real policies, in actual geographical lands—but it has passed through the minds of poets. How far the historical realities of character and event have been preserved (more than some suppose, I fancy) in this way is a different question. The Fairy Story (or Folk-tale if you prefer that name) has at any rate been altered: for in this case it has been welded into the ‘history’.^[7]

Elements of Faerie, Tolkien argued, appear throughout the poem, but they have rather skillfully been interwoven into actual real world historical descriptions. The Faerie is also artfully obscured by references to Beowulf’s family and homeland and through the incorporation of Baltic folktales and folktale settings. It had two fundamental materials. “‘Historial’ legend and Fairy Story. The ‘historial legend’ is derived ultimately from traditions about real men, real events, real policies, in actual geographical lands—but it has passed through the minds of poets,” Tolkien claimed. “How far the historical realities of character and event have been preserved (more than some suppose, I fancy) in this way is a different question. The Fairy Story (or Folk-tale if you prefer that name) has at any rate been altered: for in this case it has been welded into the ‘history.’”^[8]

Given its epic nature, the Beowulf poem also drew from other mythologies circulating in its own time: the Roman Aeneid; the Norse Volsunga; and the Germanic Niebelungleid. Even the pagans, after all, believed in evil and the eternal death of the damned. There was, in summary, a sort of fusion of many things.

It is plain that the whole business of fusion, at the upper or mythological end—where contact was closest, Scripture itself being more ‘mythological’ in its mode of expression—was intricate. But this at least we can say: the fusion (at any rate, that which we find in Beowulf) is certainly not that of a pagan who remembers a few items from early sermons. It is the product, as I have said elsewhere,49 of deep thought and emotion. It is indeed the product of learning, of a man or men who could read Scripture, who had with their eyes read the Latin words: Tubalcain qui fuit malleator et faber in cuncta opera aeris et ferri—and Gigantes autem erant super terram in diebus illis [Genesis iv.22 and vi.4]. (The very word gígant is derived from Latin and equated with eoten and ent.) ^[1]

Tolkien thought that the poets style of incorporation best reflected the homiletic style of the same period.^[2]

The Beowulf poet also successfully employs the quasi-Christian, quasi-pagan medieval notions of the “wyrd,” the strange, unnatural, or supernatural event.^[3] As always, the wyrd—such as the three witches who appear in Shakespeare’s Macbeth—effectively serve to ask questions about the nature of free will and fate. The wyrd offers the reader a possible explanation—without actually rendered a judgment—as to the necessary sequence of events. All of this, Tolkien argued, allowed for both the weaving and spinning of tales. Again, he is worth quoting at length.

Let us take one prime point: weaving. Though related activities, weaving and spinning are quite distinct operations (of wholly different imaginative suggestion). What is more: weaving needs a more or less elaborate machine (loom) and tools; it was not a specially female operation—it remained largely a masculine craft down to Bottom and beyond. The picture of three old sisters sitting at a loom (or three looms?) to determine the length of a man’s life cannot have been a primitive notion. On the other hand spinning (the production of threads) was far more ancient, and was specially associated with women (as still the ‘distaff side’ and ‘spinster’ remind us). [The Greek names of the Fates (Moirai, Latin Parcae) were Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Clotho is ‘the Spinner’ who spins the thread of life;] Lachesis ‘allotting, lot’ is this thread’s determined length; but Atropos [the ‘unturnable’] simply represents the inexorability of the allotment, which no human will can alter. In any case the allegory deals primarily with length of human life, and is not a general ‘historical’ allegory at all. We do not know about ancient Italic ‘mythology’. But the Italic ‘weaving’ words do not appear ever in any such area of thought. The literary uses are derivative from Greek. Latin Parca was originally singular. According to Walde, with probability, it is the name of a divinity concerned with birth (parere)—the ancestress, so to say, of the fairy godmother at christenings!^[4]

Echoing Tertullian’s famous comment, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?,” Tolkien rhetorically asked “What has Ingeld to do with Christianity?” ^[5] Ingeld, it must be noted, is a character (though a minor one) in the Beowulf poem. The poem, it seems, much like Greek philosophy preparing the way of Christ for the Jews, prepares the way of Christ for the noble barbaric pagans of the Middle Ages, creating a sort of fusionism and “via media.” ^[6]

As the poet reminded the reader and listener, though, even the wyrd is governed by God. As such, Tolkien brought his students back to the very notion of the Christian will and God’s grace in the story of Beowulf. The hero came from the pagan world and would, for the most part, remain in that pagan world. Yet, his gifts—of strength, spirit, and fortitude—were the gifts of the Christian god, whether Beowulf allowed this or not. This spoke to a society that had recently adopted Christian beliefs and morality while still holding on to its recent noble traditions of class and honor.^[7] As a representative of the older tradition, Beowulf is still proud and self-confident, not unnaturally in one so indomitable, but he is aware of God,” Tolkien assured his audience. “You will observe that though he is eager for glory, and the approbation of good men, self-aggrandisement is not his main motive. He may earn glory by his deeds, but they are all in fact done as a service to others.” ^[8]

If there was real historical figure who most closely represented the best of Beowulf, caught between ancient and medieval as well as between pagan and Christian, Tolkien stated, it was King Alfred the Great. “Nobody would have better understood or been better able to play Hrothgar’s part than Alfred—who won his mother’s praise for poemata saxonica—the lays of his northern heroic fathers—and yet felt himself almost alone in the Dark Age, attempting to save from the wreck of time some sparks surviving from the Golden Age, from Rome and the mighty Cáseras and builders of the fallen world.”^[9]

Such men, Tolkien concluded, as Alfred, Beowulf, Wiglaf, and Hrothgar, lived in a fascinating period, one of the most fascinating in world history. In their world was immense darkness, but also sharp light.

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^[1] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 307.

^[2] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 308.

^[3] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 243ff.

^[4] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 268-269.

^[5] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 328.

^[6] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 329.

^[7] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 272.

^[8] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 274.

^[9] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 350.

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^[1] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 170.

^[2] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 171.

^[3] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 150.

^[4] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 172.

^[5] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 158-159.

^[6] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 161.

^[7] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 205.

^[8] Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 236.