Professor Borges - A Course on English Literature

defeats are better than victories for poetry. Let us consider, as one example, the famous
Chanson de Roland
, one of the great poems of French literature, whose subject, as you well know, was a defeat of the rearguard of Charlemagne’s army by a group of Basque mountain dwellers, who figure as Saracens in the poem.
    In
TheAnglo-Saxon Chronicle
, written by the monks of several monasteries, one can read that in the last decade of the tenth century—in approximately the year 990, I do not remember the exact date—Olaf Tryggvason landed on the east coast of England and went to find Byrhtnoth, the earl of the town. 1 The Vikings demanded that he pay them a tribute. So, what did he do? He refused to pay the tribute. This all happened along the banks of a river that is today called Blackwater. Combat ensued between the Vikings, who were the leading warriors and sailors of the era, and a small group of militiamen. The Saxon militiamen were defeated by the Vikings, and soon thereafter, the king of England, who was named Æthelred, and later nicknamed “the Unready,” agreed to pay the Danes an annual tribute, and the government continued to collect it for a long time after the threat of Viking invasions had already passed. 2
    It appears that the poet witnessed the battle firsthand, probably as one of the combatants. This can be deduced by the abundance of specific details. In the Middle Ages, circumstantial details were never invented. Now, they are used by all and any novelist, and any journalist. At that time, people thought differently; they thought platonically, allegorically. The abundance of circumstantial details in “The Battle of Maldon” is proof of its authenticity—or rather, nobody would have thought to invent them. The ballad has preserved several features of ancient Saxon epic poetry. For example, the characters talk too much—they make little speeches that are somewhat implausible in the middle of a battle.
    Also preserved are certain formulas from ancient epic poetry, formulas we already saw in “Finnsburh” and in
Beowulf
. In general, the language is oral and colloquial and, even more important, we feel that everything recounted in the ballad is true. Things could not have happened in any other way, unless we imagine there was at the time a brilliant and anonymous novelist. But in general it is assumed, and can be felt throughout the story of the ballad, that things had to have happened that way, or at least that is how they were recounted afterward among the people. There is a French anthology published by Aubier that contains a map of the battle. And with this map we can follow the various alternatives of the battle, or rather the combat. The word “battle” is too big for Maldon.
    Unfortunately, the poem is only a fragment. We don’t know how the poet started or how he ended, but most probably he began by saying, “I will tell of what happened in Maldon” or maybe “I was there,” or something of the sort. The fragment begins with the words “
brocen wurde
,” “was broken.” And we’ll never know what was broken. We don’t know if it refers to a siege or the men who remained there. Then the narration begins, but we don’t know who the subject is. We imagine it to be the earl, because he orders his men to fall out, to spur their horses on, to whip their horses so they will advance. He is obviously speaking to a group of warriors, who were probably peasants, fishermen, woodsmen, and among them are the earl’s guards. Then the earl tells them to form a line. Far off, they will see the tall boats of the Vikings, those boats with the dragon on the prow and the striped sails, and the Norwegian Vikings, who have already landed. Then there appears in the scene—because this poem is very beautiful—a young man, whom, we are told, is
offan mæg
, “of the family of Offa.” Now, as Offa was the king of one of those small English kingdoms, we suspect this might not mean Offa himself, but rather that the man was from that kingdom. The Kingdom of Mercia, I think it was. And this young man is, as we can see, a young aristocrat passing through; he is not thinking about war because he has a falcon on his fist; that is, he is doing what is called falconry. But when the earl issues these orders, the young man understands that the lord will not abide cowardice, and he joins the battle. And something happens, something that is realistic and has symbolic value, something a movie director would