beowulf AUTHOR UNKNOWN 0 CIRCA 1000 AD “T


he ravager set to work; seizing a sleeping soldier, he savagely tore at him, gnashed at his bone joints, swallowed huge chunks of flesh, sucked the blood from his veins, and had soon eaten all of the dead man...even his hands and feet.”


It’s hard to believe that the preceding quote, detailing a demon’s attack on a


Scandinavian Mead Hall in almost a “torture porn” fashion, is from the first epic poem in English (transcribed from the rich oral traditions of our past) – a work that’s been mandatory reading in high schools and university literature courses for decades. Then again, if you delve into the beginnings of any art form,


you’ll often find works steeped in the horror genre. The great Greek dramas, from kill-your-own-kids Medea to poke-your- own-eyes-out Oedipus, were all works of horror. One of the first movies ever made was Thomas Edison’s adaptation of Frankenstein in 1910. Medieval European balladry featured Sir Halewyn the Miserable, a supernatural serial killer who enjoyed slicing out hearts with a sickle. So it shouldn’t be too shocking that Beowulf, from which the above excerpt is taken (chapter 11), just happens to be a pure, unabashed horror story. First written down in approximately 1000


AD in Old English – although it’s really English in name only (“monster” is spelled “æglæca“ and pronounced auglatcha) – Beowulf is 3182 verses long and divided into three main episodes, each dealing with the eponymous hero’s triumph over a particular monster, namely Grendel (the aforementioned demon), Grendel’s mother and a dragon. Along the way, sea monsters are also battled, while ogres, elves and giants are alluded to, as well. Initially, to the modern reader, the most striking aspect of the narrative is


the sheer power of its language. But what makes the work resonate so deeply is how the poet adroitly deals with the concepts of exile, revenge, honour, faith, strength, bravery and war. (Grendel, a cannibal and a deformed echo of humanity, is possibly a metaphor for ignoble warfare). Also quite af- fecting is the elegiac ending, which owes itself to the author’s awareness that the Germanic culture of Beowulf is dying. It’s a dense work that utilizes gruesomely intense imagery, and in the wrong


translator’s hands the powerful story can seem simply ridiculous. For instance, “gnashed at his bone joints” has been officially translated as “the bone frame bit,” “bit into his bone locks,” “bit into his bone-lappings” and, astonishingly, “bit his bone-prison.” Consequently, while Beowulf offered a complex world of endless questions for scholars (Who was the poet? Who transcribed it? Where and when was it written down? Is the mix of Anglo-Saxon pa- ganism and Roman Christianity intended or the result of med-


dling/editing?), the poem’s barbaric splendour was on the verge of slipping off into obscurity, and it would have, had it not been for a lecture given in 1936 by an Oxford professor, one J.R.R. Tolkien. He argued that pedantic academics had devoted too much time to gabbing around the poem but had not spent enough time appreciating it simply as the profound work of art it is. His talk gained infamy and, in turn, helped expose the tale to a much wider audience. Beowulf’s lasting influence cannot be understated. Shades of it can be


found in everything from the King Arthur legend to Tolkien’s own Lord of the Rings (the term “Middle Earth” first appeared in the epic poem, and Gollum could pass for Grendel’s cousin), but perhaps more importantly it can be argued that Grendel was the proto- typical boogeyman: a hulking beast against which human weapons were in- effective, who had no qualms about killing, maiming and eating men. Ele- ments of Grendel can be found in a whole host of modern horror villains, from the oversized monsters of creature features to slasher killers, whose innate ability to survive being shot, stabbed, etc., with


little or no damage to their person seems to hearken directly back to Be- owulf’s first antagonist.


Interestingly, for a work painstakingly


copied out manually at the dawn of English, Beowulf is more popular in today’s hyper- kinetic, electronic, acronym-heavy world than it ever was even in its own time, and the multiple modern adaptations bear that out. Benjamin Bagby is internationally


renowned for his live performances where he recites it in the original tongue. Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) wrote a New York Times best-seller based upon it, which be- came the movie The 13th Warrior. Other re- cent film adaptations include one starring


Christopher Lambert (Highlander), one with Sarah Polley (2004’s Dawn of the Dead), as well as the Robert Zemeckis motion-capture version starring Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie. There are dozens of graphic novel versions, and new verse translations continue to make it onto best-seller lists today. It was the first of its kind, it was one of the last of its kind; but first


and foremost, it was, and is, a bedrock horror story. MICHAEL MITCHELL


RM62


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