Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

Now, this does not surprise us, but remember that the poem was written at the end of the seventh century or, according to the scholars, the beginning of the eighth, and it is full of sentiment for the natural world. This sentiment does not appear in other literatures until much later. One often says, too hastily—because in addition to
Beowulf
, there is also Shakespeare—that this sentiment for nature is the same as the romantic sentiment. In other words, the same as in the eighteenth century, about ten centuries after
Beowulf
. The truth is that there are books, notable books, in which the natural world as we feel it now makes no appearance. And to turn to the most famous example, I believe—I don’t know if I am certain—I suspect that in
DonQuixote
, it does not rain a single time. The landscapes described in
Quixote
have nothing in common with the landscapes of Castile: they are conventional landscapes, full of meadows, streams, and copses that belong in an Italian novel. On the other hand, in
Beowulf
, we sense nature as something fearsome, something that is hostile to man; the sense of night and darkness as fearsome, as it surely was for the Saxons, who had settled in an unknown country whose geography they discovered only as they were conquering it. Undoubtedly, the first Germanic invaders had no precise idea of England’s geography. It is absurd to imagine Horsa or Hengest arriving with a map. Completely unbelievable. We don’t even know if they would have understood
Beowulf
, which is written in a very contorted language and is full of metaphors that, undoubtedly, were not used by the Anglo-Saxons in their spoken language. In any case, these metaphors never appear in their prose. And in the Scandinavian Norse regions, those most closely connected to the Saxons, we find a very marked and deliberate division between prose, which can be very eloquent and full of pathos, but is very simple, and the language of poetry, which is filled with kennings, the name for those metaphors that, as we have seen, reached an extraordinary level of complexity.
    So, King Hrothgar rules over Denmark. Naturally, nobody thought of empires at that time; the idea of empire is totally foreign to the Germanic mind. But he was a prosperous king, a victorious, opulent king, and his court’s jubilant celebrations—one of the metaphors for the harp is “wood of joy” or “party-wood”—upsets Grendel, who attacks the castle. The fable is poorly wrought, for at the beginning we have a very powerful king, and then this same king and his vassals and his troops, the only measure they take is to pray to the gods, to ask for help from their ancient gods, Odin, Thor, and the others. The poet tells us that all their prayers were in vain. The gods have no power at all against the monster. And thus, improbably, twelve years pass, and every few nights the ogre breaks down the castle’s double doors—there were no other doors—enters, and devours one of the men. And the king does nothing. Then news of the ogre’s attacks spreads. The ogre is gigantic and invulnerable to all weapons. The news reaches the neighboring country of Sweden. And in Sweden there is a youth, a prince, Beowulf, and throughout his childhood this prince has shown himself to be clumsy, slow, but he wants to gain fame with a great feat. He has already fought in a war against the Franks, but this isn’t enough for him, so he departs in a boat with fourteen companions.
    Naturally, the poet makes the sea stormy, so that the trip won’t be easy, so it will be difficult, and Beowulf lands in Denmark. The king’s sentinel comes out to greet him, an aristocrat like Beowulf, a prince. Beowulf says that he has come to save the country and is received courteously by the court. There is one character, however, who questions Beowulf’s personal courage, so Beowulf proposes a kind of contest, a swimming race, which improbably lasts ten days, a competition against another famous swimmer named Breca. The two swim for ten days and ten nights. They fight against sea monsters, who drag Beowulf to the bottom of the sea, where he kills them with his sword or chases them away. Then he surfaces, keeps swimming, and wins the race.
    Now, we find ourselves up against a modern custom, a modern prejudice that distances us from the poem. Today we say, or better, we have the idea, that a brave man should not be a braggart. We think that all bragging is like that of the
Miles Gloriosus
,