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Wednesday
In yesterday’s post I contended that Grendel’s Mother (GM) was at work in the Middle East—which is to say, I saw her grief-fueled revenge working itself out in the seemingly never-ending blood feud between Israelis and Palestinians. While GM is an archetypal account of such violence, the poem also provides down-to-earth examples of deep grudges leading to bloodshed, despite truces meant to keep the peace.
The incident described is a Dane-Frisian/Jute battle, followed by a truce that is then broken, that bears more than a little resemblance to the situation in the Middle East. While versions of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians goes back thousands of years, it began to take its present form when the state of Israel was formed. As Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post reminds us, thousands were
forced to flee their homes and native villages amid the bloody Israeli expulsion campaigns that followed the country’s creation in 1948. Hundreds of Palestinian towns were wiped off the map, while thousands of Palestinians were killed in numerous documented massacres carried out by Israeli troops and paramilitary organizations.
Whatever the sins of the past, however, one can’t fight forever the battles of the past if one is to move forward—one must come up with new arrangements to deal with the new reality—and there have been multiple attempts since Israel’s founding to arrive at various peace agreements. Some of these have been very intricate, such as dealing with the various holy sites in Jerusalem. But just like Grendel’s Mother, who “brooded on her wrongs,” there are always parties willing to blow up any truce arrived at.
The story of Finn and Hengest, which the bard recounts to the Danish court, parallels the Israeli-Palestinian situation only too well. The Danes and the Frisians/Jutes, who are perpetually at war, have attempted to use a diplomatic marriage to end hostilities: the Danish king Hnaef’s sister, Hildebuhr, is married off to the Frisian king Finn, with whom she has a son. Beowulf will later remark that diplomatic marriages seldom work, and he proves to be right here as Hnaef attacks Finn. The subsequent battle is a draw although both Hnaef and Hildebuhr’s son, fighting on opposite sides, are killed. The story as we have it starts at this point, with an accounting of the violence and killing:
Hildeburh
had little cause
to credit the Jutes:
she lost them both
on the battlefield.
She, bereft
and blameless, they
foredoomed, cut down
and spear-gored. She,
the woman in shock,
waylaid by grief
Hoe’s daughter—
how could she not
lament her fate
when morning came
and the light broke
on her murdered dears?
And so farewell
delight on earth…
Because neither side prevails and because the Danes (apparently because of the winter weather) can’t return home, Finn sets up a delicate balancing act to keep everyone from each other’s throats:
So a truce was offered
as follows: first
separate quarters
to be cleared for the Danes,
hall and throne
to be shared with the Frisians.
Then, second:
every day
at the dole-out of gifts
Finn, son of Focwald,
should honor the Danes,
bestow with an even
hand to Hengest
and Hengest’s men
the wrought-gold rings
bounty to match
the measure he gave
his own Frisians—
to keep morale
in the beer-hall high.
The Jutes and the Danes then swear oaths to maintain the arrangement:
Both Sides then
the Danish
sealed their agreement
with Oaths to Henges t
Finn swore
openly, solemnly,
that the battle survivors
would be guaranteed
honor and status.No infringement
by word or deed,
no provocation
would be permitted.
So, separate but equal living quarters and an even distribution of gifts. What could go wrong? The Danes, we are told, are unhappy with the situation but must accept it, given that “their own ring-giver”
was dead and gone,
they were leaderless,
in forced allegiance
to his murderer.
Finn is only too aware of how the situation can blow up. All it takes is for one of his men to taunt a Dane for the fighting to recommence. One thinks of the sometimes seemingly tiny things that have set off triggered violence in Israel and Palestine over the years:
So if any Frisian
stirred up bad blood
with insinuations
or taunts about this,
the blade of the sword
would arbitrate it.
The Danish warriors now spread through Friesland in a situation not unlike Jewish settlements on the West bank. Note that the Danes carry their grieving with them:
Warriors scattered
to homes and forts
all over Frieslandfewer now, feeling
loss of friends.
Meanwhile Hnaef’s second-in-command, Hengest, must live in Finn’s hall. He too broods:
Hengest stayed,
lived out that
resentful, blood-sullen
winter with Finn,
homesick and helpless.
We are told that he longs for vengeance and “to bring things to a head.” All it takes is for one of his men to drop a sword in his lap and for a couple of others to remind him of old grievances:
So he did not balk
once Hunlafing
placed on his lap
Dazzle-the-Duel,
the best sword of all,
whose edges Jutes
knew only too well
And:
after Guthlaf and Oslaf
back from their voyage
made old accusation:
the brutal ambush,
the fate they had suffered,
all blamed on Finn.
And then you have the blood lust that we are seeing in far too many, for those who want to “exterminate” (Sen. Marc Rubio’s word) all of Gaza to those cheering on the terrorists:
The wildness in them
had to brim over.
The hall ran red
with blood of enemies.
Finn was cut down,
the queen brought away
and everything
the Shieldings could find
inside Finn’s walls —
the Frisian king’s
gold collars and gemstones —
swept off to the ship.
So are the bard’s Danish auditors—remember, this is a poem inside Beowulf—horrified by Danes breaking a truce and slaughtering Frisians? Hardly:
The poem was over,
the poet had performed, a pleasant murmur
started on the benches, stewards did the rounds
with wine in splendid jugs…
I wonder if there will be, if not pleasant murmurs, at least tacit approval of the declaration by Israel’s Defense Minister, as reported by the Washington Post column:
In an address Monday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he had ordered “a complete siege” on the territory where Hamas first emerged and now operates. Gallant went on to invoke rhetoric that rights groups claimed what amounts to announcing war crimes. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant said of Gaza. “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
In a fine blog post, Yale historian Timothy Snyder points out the danger of such thinking. It’s not just that it dehumanizes a whole population but it’s what the terrorists want:
Classically, a terrorist provokes a state in order to generate so much suffering among his own people that they will take the terrorist’s side indefinitely.
Snyder points out that, for this reason, the 9-11 terrorists ultimately achieved their aim:
9/11 was a successful terrorist attack because we made it so. Regardless of whether or not its planners and perpetrators lived to see this, it achieved its main goal: to weaken the United States. Without 9/11, the United States presumably would not have invaded Iraq, a decision which led to the death of tens of thousands of people, helped fund the rise of China, weakened international law, and undid American credibility. 9/11 was a contributing cause to American decisions that caused far more death than 9/11 itself did. But the point here is that 9/11 facilitated American decisions that hurt America far more than 9/11 itself did.
Beowulf understands the toll that blood feuds take on society, which is why (as I explained in yesterday’s post) he has to reach down into a deep magic to stop GM-style retribution from engulfing the Danes. He doesn’t flail with an impotent sword but invokes a warrior ethos from the golden age before the flood. I don’t see such leadership coming from Netanyahu and Gallant, and those who want more bloodletting only make Grendel’s Mother more powerful.
After Grendel’s Mother kills Hrothgar’s best friend, the king essentially wants to curl up into a ball. “Rest, what is rest, sorrow has returned,” he moans. Throughout the epic, that are instances of kings who become so discouraged by violent death that they retreat from the world, becoming human dragons. But if we are to honor (and save) life, we need to resists our urge for revenge—or inner Grendel’s Mother—and face our challenges with a Beowulfian clarity of mind.