Echoes of Ambrose

Last night at the movies: a daring raid on an 24-hour check-cashing place on Halloween night was planned by a thirtyish Laura Antonelli and a middle-aged Jim Backus, who had the Hawaiian shirt of Thurston Howell III and the mannerisms of a sinister Mr. Magoo. (Actually, Howell doesn’t seem to have worn a Hawaiian shirt. My subconscious may have been confusing him with the Hawaiian Punch guys.)

Antonelli had recruited me for the caper. Also figuring in the plot was a goofy black cat with pipe-cleaner limbs who was the only member of the gang that everyone liked, and a Kelly-green velvet frock-coat that was supposed to be part of someone’s disguise for the robbery. 

Antonelli’s plan-within-a-plan was that she and I would freeze out Magoo with the help of her friend (a Cat People-era Nastassia Kinski), who would pretend to be ill. While he was busy tending to her, Antonelli and I would commit the robbery by ourselves. 

Antonelli was acting crazy while Kinski was off roping Magoo, and I told her I was out. She wanted it too much; she was making mistakes; and I had to figure that, if she was ready to doublecross Magoo, she was likely to do the same to me. 

Antonelli was still trying to get me to change my mind when Kinski, on schedule, faked her illness. Antonelli insisted that Magoo take Kinski to the hospital. Magoo declined, looking on us with a kind of genial malice, and said that Kinski was Antonelli’s friend and she should take her—that he and I had things to talk about.

I figured that Magoo had tumbled to Antonelli’s plan, and I was interested to see what would happen next when I woke up.

Moral of the story: don’t watch two old crime movies before bed. Or: stay asleep longer.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.

I reread more than I read. This has certain bad effects; e.g., the towering stacks of TBR books that constantly threaten to topple over and crush me, which are always growing taller, more numerous, and (if I’m not misreading their expressions) more angry.

I’d like to say rereading has compensating benefits, e.g. a deeper understanding of the texts I obsessively reread. But often my rereads just make me more confused.

Take Beowulf, a text that would be on my always-reread list even if I didn’t teach it twice a year.

Beowulf is already a hero when he lies down in Heorot, King Hrothgar’s famous mead-hall, to await the arrival of Grendel, the manslaying monster. Beowulf has come with his Geatish pals to Denmark specifically so that he can defeat Grendel. He discusses in advance his plans to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the monster, putting aside weapons and armor.

So: why doesn’t he wait by the door?

Beowulf may want to draw Grendel into the hall, not warn him off from the door. But that doesn’t explain what happens next. I’m not trying to roast Beowulf here, by the way, just trying to wrap my head around the scene.

Grendel bursts in, slamming the door of the hall open. He’s come to kill and eat, as he has so many times before.

Beowulf does nothing.

Grendel goes to one of Beowulf’s band of Geatish warriors, a guy (we will later learn) named Hondsciō (“glove”; compare modern German Handschuh “hand-shoe; glove”).

Beowulf does nothing.

Grendel kills Hondsciō and rips him to pieces.

Beowulf does nothing.

Grendel goes to where Beowulf is lying.

Beowulf does nothing.

Grendel grabs Beowulf, and then the fight is on. It’s WWE Raw Is War.

The (surviving) Geats leap up from where they’re lying and try to attack the monster but their swords have no effect. The Grendelkin seem to be immune to ordinary weapons.

Grendel soon realizes he’s out of his depth and tries to flee, but Beowulf won’t let go. Finally Beowulf rips Grendel’s arm off (hand, arm, shoulder), dealing him a mortal wound. Grendel flees back to his underwater lair to die.

The question that constantly bedevils me when rereading this passage is: why does Beowulf wait so long to start doing what he came there to do?

So far, my answer to this question (spoilers: I cannot really answer this question) comes in multiple parts.

The first part is geographical, and hinges on the design of these medieval Germanic halls like Heorot. They’re long buildings with a peaked roof, and a firepit running down the middle.

After the feast, the tables etc would be stacked away (or used as beds?) and the henchmen would sleep in the hall by the firepit.

So the Geats come to Heorot, make a big deal about it being occupied again. (Grendel has been attacking it at night for twelve years, and people had given up sleeping there, lest they wake up dead.) The Geats lie down as if to sleep on either side of the firepit. Maybe Hondscio is on one side of the firepit and Beowulf is on the other. Grendel, like Buridan’s donkey, could go in one direction or the other. Unlike Buridan’s donkey, he’s not going to starve to death while making a decision. He launches himself against Hondscio, and then turns to the guy on the other side, who is Beowulf.

Okay. But this still doesn’t explain why Beowulf takes so long to act. He’s not asleep and he’s not scared (according to the poet). It’s almost as if this is a turn-based game, like chess, and Beowulf has sacrificed a pawn to put the opposing player in an untenable position. That seems to conflict with the magnanimous nature of the hero as the poet represents him, though.

A bookish sort of explanation: Hondsciō’s death is necessary because it prefigures Grendel’s own death. In reparation for the loss of Hondsciō, Grendel loses his hand (along with his arm and shoulder), suffering a fatal wound.

If this seems too academic and tweedy a reading for so savage a poem, I should add that Beowulf himself makes the connection when he’s retelling the tale to his uncle and king, Higelac, back in Geatland (line 2069b-2100). He talks about the hond-rǣs hæleða (“the hand-battle of heroes”) and goes on to describe the death of Hondciō, naming him for the first time in the poem. He mentions for the first time a weird glove (glōf) made of dragon-hide that Grendel had. Beowulf seems to describe Grendel’s habit of putting dead men into the glove. Which is really weird, does not clarify the situation, but does remind me of another mythological situation, where Thor and friends find themselves in a giant’s glove.

Beowulf concludes this part of his humblebrag by mentioning how Grendel’s right hand (swīðre… hand) remained behind in Heorot.

That line from hand to hand connects a lot of dots in the narrative. And maybe that’s enough. Beowulf describes Hondsciō as fey (“doomed”; fǣgum), and maybe that’s enough.

But maybe it’s not. It still doesn’t give a motivation for Beowulf’s odd stillness until he himself is attacked.

I wonder if the answer isn’t hidden inside Grendel’s identity. The Beowulf-poet famously or infamously grafts the Grendelkin onto the family tree of Adam and Eve, tracing their line of descent from Cain the murderer. But the Beowulf-poet is Christian, and this story probably pre-existed the arrival of Christianity in northwest Europe. So what was the pre-Christian identity of Grendel and his mother?

I think they were the restless dead, a perennial affliction in these Nordic stories. (Think of the Barrow Wights from The Lord of the Rings.) Glám, Grendel’s analogue in Grettir’s Saga (chs. 33-35), is one of the walking dead. And Grendel is repeatedly described as a ghost (ellengǣst “bold ghost”, 86a; se grimma gǣst “the cruel ghost”, 102a; wergan gāstes “accursed ghost” 133a).

But Beowulf kills Grendel. Killing someone who’s already dead seems like a definitional impossibility. But it is something that comes up a lot in these stories, and the answer is frequently some kind of mutilation, a practice known as “arm-pitting” (Greek μασχαλισμός). It’s precisely this kind of thing that Beowulf inflicts on Grendel.

But (not to beat a dead horse or monster here) why does it take Beowulf so long to act?

This is where I came in and this is where I go out, I guess, asking the same question. The only answer I can come up with is personal and has to do with nightmares. I don’t know if you’ve ever been attacked by a ghost or a sinister shadow in a dream. It used to happen to me pretty frequently, back when I was able to get a decent night’s sleep. (Deep sleep is a luxury old people have to learn how to do without. If you wonder why the old people in your life are increasingly crazy, that might be one of the reasons.)

When the ghost is coming for you in the dark, it seems to get the first move. You may see it; you may know it’s coming for you. But you can’t do anything about it. There’s a whole branch of magic in Morlock’s world devoted to stuff you can do in these situations. (See “A Stranger Comes to Town” for some practical applications.)

It may be that in the Ur-myth of Beowulf, he was in that nightmare state, watching the ghost approach and unable to stop it.

That’s not the the answer; as is common in myth and storytelling, there isn’t just one answer. But that’s the best I’ve got from this most recent reread.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.