Monday
Last week I wrote about how Dante found comfort in Aeneas’s underworld journey when he found himself exiled and depressed (lost in a dark wood). I now realize that I relate strongly with that reading experience because I similarly found consolation in an ancient epic in my darkest moment.
The time was the weeks following the death of my oldest son from a freak drowning accident. The literary passage was Beowulf’s underwater journey to face Grendel’s mother, an episode that some scholars think was also influenced by The Aeneid. In any case, returning to Beowulf gave me a powerful image for my grief, making it easier to bear.
As I interpret Grendel’s Mother (GM), she is the archetype of vengeful grieving. I also associate the poem’s dragon with grief, seeing the two monsters as coin-side manifestations of the emotion: whereas GM lashes out in hot anger, the dragon withdraws into cold depression. Yet each monster can morph into the other: GM, after killing Hrothgar’s best friend, withdraws into her underwater cave, and the dragon, when aroused, emerges from his cave and burns alive anyone who gets near.
Throughout the poem there are instances of vengeful GM’s (particularly Hengest, who kills Finn) and depressed dragons (particularly the last veteran and Hrethel, who crawls into his bed after losing his eldest son and dies there). Either behavior in an Anglo-Saxon leader would have spelled doom for Britain’s fragile king-dependent tribes.
After Justin’s funeral and the departure of family and friends, I returned to a book I was writing on Beowulf and other British classics. After all, it was summer vacation and one must do something. I still remember the moment when I recognized myself in Beowulf descending through the monster-infested waters. I’m on my own epic journey, I thought, and while I don’t know how it’s going to end, I must become a hero like Beowulf. I must face whatever horror lies within these depths.
Not until years later did I realize that my journey was a metaphorical equivalent of Justin’s own journey into watery depths. At the moment, I was just comforted that I could see myself in the poem’s narrative. I was no longer a helpless victim thrashing around in emotional chaos.
The poet informs us that a deer chased by hounds would rather be torn apart on the shore than leap into GM’s lake. That’s how hard it is to face up to the feelings triggered by loss, and Beowulf proves a hero in his readiness to jump into that lake. The journey is a hard one, however, as GM and other sea monsters strike at his chest armor, which protects the heart. We fear that this organ will fly apart:
Quickly the one who haunted those waters,
who had scavenged and gone her gluttonous rounds
for a hundred seasons, sensed a human
observing her outlandish lair from above.
So she lunged and clutched and managed to catch him
in her brutal grip; but his body, for all that,
remained unscathed: the mesh of the chain-mail
saved hm on the outside. Her savage talons
failed to rip the web of his warshirt.
Then once she touched bottom, that wolfish swimmer
carried the ring-mailed prince to her court
so that for all his courage he could never use
the weapons he carried; and a bewildering horde
came at him from the depths, droves of sea-beasts
who attacked with tusks and tore at his chain-mail
in a ghastly onslaught
The monster is gendered female because such feelings are traditionally associated with women, given that men aren’t supposed to give way to soft emotions. Once in her lair, GM aims her knife at Beowulf’s chest armor. It’s only a matter of time before she will penetrate it:
The sure-footed fighter felt daunted,
the strongest of warriors stumbled and fell.
So she pounced upon him and pulled out
a broad, whetted knife…
Beowulf, meanwhile, finds that conventional sword play doesn’t work on GM. Perhaps resorting to swords is going about business as usual, the way that some, hoping that business as usual will protect them, return to their jobs immediately following a tragedy. All this while, however, GM is pounding at Beowulf’s chest.
Nor can he resort to the strong grip he used on Grendel, which we can think of as firmness of will. In fact, such mental gymnastics are part of the problem. A Vietnam combat vet, knowing of my story, once told me that it took him years before he could face up to the grief he felt over seeing fellow soldiers blown apart, his strong mental shield becoming a PTSD trap. The Beowulf poet, well acquainted with warriors, would have understood this.
What finally works is a great sword, forged by warrior giants in the golden age before the flood, that Beowulf finds in the underwater hall. Since this hall is his own mind, the message is that, deep within us, we have what we need. For Beowulf, that sword is the warrior ethos, which enables him to overcome his grief-stricken psyche. In my case, my giant sword was my need to be strong for my children, my wife, my students, and my friends. It was up to me to be a Beowulf warrior.
Struck with the force of revelation, I went off to read the episode to Julia. I was sobbing so that I almost couldn’t get through it as some deep blockage was released. If this was an epic journey, then I had but to accept it, diving into the waters and riding my sorrow wherever she took me. Grieving now had a shape and it would dispense wisdom along the way.
What kind of man would emerge I did not know. I was just determined that he be more like Beowulf than grieving father Hrethel.
Once the depressed Dante returned to his Virgil, he proceeded to embark on one of the most spectacular journeys in literary history. Grappling with his inner doubts and fears, he emerged, in the end, into celestial light. My own journey has not resulted in The Divine Comedy, but it did make me a better father, a better husband, a better teacher, and a better human being. Above all it made me better able to respond, sensitively and effectively, to the suffering of others.
