Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:36:02.817Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Second thoughts on the interpretation of The Seafarer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John C. Pope
John C. Pope
Affiliation:
New Haven, Connecticut
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

My article begins in true medieval fashion with a retraction. A few years ago I argued that The Wanderer and The Seafarer involved two imaginary speakers rather than one. Ever since the publication of this argument I have been assailed by doubts of its validity, not only because most persons whose judgement I trust in such a matter have been either politely noncommittal or vociferously hostile, but because I myself, in returning again and again to the poems, have been less and less convinced that their texts would support my reading. The decisive moment came, I think, when I read P. L. Henry's strong reinforcement, from the Celtic side, of Dorothy Whitelock's view of The Seafarer as the monologue of a religious ascetic who had chosen exile on and beyond the sea for the love of God – a peregrinus pro amore Dei of a sort well known in the British Isles from before Bede's time to Alfred's wherever Celtic Christianity had taken root. In thus returning to Professor Whitelock's interpretation I found myself completely convinced of its superiority. Since that time I have altogether abandoned my former view of The Seafarer, and with it my view of The Wanderer also, and I welcome the opportunity to say so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 3 , December 1974 , pp. 75 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 75 note 1 This is a revised version of a paper read at a meeting of the Old English Group of the Modern Language Association in New York City, 28 December 1972.

page 75 note 2 ‘Dramatic Voices in The Wanderer and The Seafarer’, Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr, ed. Bessinger, Jess B. Jr and Creed, Robert P. (New York, 1965), pp. 164–93.Google Scholar

page 75 note 3 The doubts actually began earlier. My article was submitted to the editors of Franciplegius in November 1962, and a lecture based on it was delivered in Cambridge on 22 February 1963, at the invitation of Professor Whitelock, whose friendly but emphatic disagreement was the earliest warning I received, and among the most disquieting.

page 75 note 4 The Early English and Celtic Lyric (London, 1966; New York, 1967).Google Scholar For an excellent and succinct survey of Irish pilgrimage, see Hughes, Kathleen, ‘The Changing Theory and Practice of Irish Pilgrimage’, JEH 11 (1960), 143–51.Google Scholar

page 75 note 5 ‘The Interpretation of The Seafarer’, in The Early Cultures of North-West Europe (H. M. Chadwick Memorial Studies), ed. SirFox, Cyril and Bruce, Dickins (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 259–72.Google ScholarBoth this article and mine have been reprinted in Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry, ed. Bessinger, Jess B. Jr and Kahn, Stanley J. (Archon Books, Hamden, Connecticut, 1968),Google Scholar and in Old Englisb Literature: Twenty-two Analytical Essays, ed. Stevens, Martin and Mandel, Jerome (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1968).Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 Greenfield, S. B., ‘The Wanderer: A Reconsideration of Theme and Structure’, JEGP 50 (1951), 451–6.Google ScholarEssentially the same interpretation is fully elaborated by Erzgräber, Willi, ‘Der Wanderer: Eine Interpretation von Aufbau und Gehalt’, Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Tbeodor Spira, ed. Viebrock, H. and Erzgräber, W. (Heidelberg, 1961), pp. 57–85.Google Scholar See also the related references in my previous article (‘Dramatic Voices’, pp. 165 and 188–9), and add the two recent editions of the poem, one by R. F. Leslie (Manchester, 1966), the other by T. P. Dunning and A. J. Bliss (London, 1969).

page 76 note 2 Greenfield and Erzgräber have taken lines 1–7 and 111–15 as prologue and epilogue, spoken by the poet. Leslie limits the poet's intrusion to lines 6–7 and 111, those in which the wanderer, as speaker of all else, is identified and described. Dunning and Bliss almost agree but allow the poet to intrude also at lines 88–91 in order to call attention to the wanderer's achievement of wisdom before he launches into the ubi sunt passage, lines 92–110. I much prefer the older view, ably defended by Erzgräber, p. 70, that the wanderer continues to speak, adding a certain objectivity and weight to his own deepest sentiments by representing them as what any wise man who thinks seriously about this life may be expected to say. As for the opening and closing lines, I agree (and have argued) that lines 1–5 are best taken as spoken by the wanderer (though the poet would necessarily concur), but I hesitate to abandon the notion that lines 112–15, with their quiet assurance and their inclusive reference to us, are spoken by the poet (though I think the wanderer, at least in another mood, would concur). Maintenance of the hypermetric form introduced at line III helps to set these lines apart as a kind of epilogue, no matter who is talking.

page 76 note 3 Max Rieger's interpretation of the poem as a dialogue, and his arrangement of it as such, were included in his artide, ‘Über Cynewulf’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 1 (1869), 330–2 and 334–9.Google ScholarKluge, F., ‘Zu altenglischen Dichtungen, I, Der Seefahrer’, ESin 6 (1883), 322–7,Google Scholar differed as to details but agreed that there was a change of speakers at line 33b. Wülker, Richard, Grundriss zur Gescbicbte der angelsächsiscben Literatur (Leipzig, 1885), p. 210, supported the interpretation of sylf in line 3 as the chief evidence for the change.Google Scholar

page 77 note 1 ‘Truly [or possibly ‘And yet’] my heart's thoughts are now urging that I sylf make trial of the high [or ‘deep’] streams, the tossing of the salt waves.’ The minor uncertainties of this sentence (the precise meaning of forpon and bean, and the grammatical construction of heortan gepoblas) have no bearing on the present argument. An adversative sense of forpon (‘and yet’), though not essential, seems logically somewhat superior. See the references in my previous article, ‘Dramatic Voices’, pp. 189, n. 11 and 191, n. 28, and especially, for the adversative sense, Daunt, Marjorie, ‘Some Difficulties of The Seafarer’, MLR 13 (1918), 474ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A later article by Liljegren, S. B., ‘Some Notes on the Old English Poem The Seafarer’, SN 14 (1941–1942), treats forpon on pp. 152–5Google Scholar, and though not very clear lends some support to the adversative sense. My quotations from The Seafarer are from the edition of Mrs. Gordon, I. L. (London, 1960),Google Scholar though I have preferred to print forpon as one word. I also take beortan as a genitive modifying gepobtas, as suggested by the alliteration and the occurrence of the same phrase in other poems, rather than as the object of cnyssað, as Mrs Gordon recommends.

page 77 note 2 ‘Mīn, Sylf, and “Dramatic Voices in The Wanderer and The Seafarer”’, JEGP 68 (1969), 212–20.Google Scholar On sylf, pp. 217–19. Shortly after he had submitted this article, Greenfield learned that I had already abandoned the dialogue idea. He generously suggested that I add my own comment to his artide, but it turned out that the editors had sent the article to press and would not accept an addition.

page 77 note 3 Early English and Celtic Lyric, p. 154.

page 77 note 4 ‘Mīn, Sylf’, p. 219.

page 78 note 1 I agree with Bloomfield, Morton, ‘Understanding Old English Poetry’, Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968), 25,Google Scholar n. 37, that Henry should not have classified The Seafarer as a penitential poem, still less The Wanderer. Only Resignation contains definitely penitential elements.

page 78 note 2 The Blickling Homilies, ed. Morris, R., Early English Text Society o.s. 58, 63 and 73 (London, 1874–1880; reprinted as one volume, 1967), p. 127, lines 1–2.Google Scholar

page 79 note 1 I should include here the sylf in Resignation (or The Penitent's Prayer), line 73, ‘ic … wylle … fundian/sylf to þam siþe’, which Greenfleld (p. 218) tentatively includes under the meaning ‘of my own accord’. The speaker certainly wishes to put to sea by himself though he has no money to buy a boat. In several other passages in the poetry the word suggests independent action or decision. In Genesis A 1572, it is said that the drunken Noah could not ‘hine handum self mid hrægle wryon’ (an example cited by Bosworth, J. and Toller, T. N., An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898)).Google Scholar In Christ III 1140, we read that the veil of the temple ‘sylf slat on tu’. In Riddle 62, 3–4, the subject (a poker?) says, ‘[id] me weg sylfa / ryhtne geryme’. Compare also selfes mibtum (Beowulf 700), selfes dome (Beowulf 895), and several of the compounds of self in the dictionary: e.g. selfdema, selfsceaft, selfwilles. One text actually certifies the sense ‘alone’. Toller, T. N., Supplement to BT (Oxford, 1921)Google Scholar calls attention to three instances in the Old English gloss to Defensor's Liber Scintillarum (ed. Rhodes, E. W., EETS O.s. 93 (London, 1889))Google Scholar where solus is glossed by self, and I have found ten additional instances in the same text, making thirteen in all, which occur (by page and line) at 7,5;32,9 and 16;61,1;62,13; 121,14; 139,7; 141,2 144,11; 183,11; 216,8; and 235,6 and 10. I have not found this correspondence in any other glosses.

page 79 note 2 The first edition, from which I quote, appeared in Ripostes of Ezra Pound (London, 1912), pp. 25–30.Google ScholarThere is a convenient reprint in Selected Poems of Ezra Pound (New York, 1957), pp. 18–21.Google Scholar For a comparison of the printed text with an oral version by Pound, a review of critical opinion and a judicious appraisal of the piece in relation to the original, see Bessinger, J. B., ‘The Oral Text of Ezra Pound's The Seafarer’, Quarterly Jnl of Speech 47 (1961), 173–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 80 note 1 Early English and Celtic Lyric, p 534.

page 80 note 2 Ibid. pp. 58–65.

page 80 note 3 Ibid. p. 156.

page 80 note 4 Ibid. p. 134.

page 80 note 5 Genesis xii. 1.

page 81 note 1 Early English and Celtic Lyric, pp. 29–32, quoted from Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. Stokes, Whitley (Oxford, 1890), pp. 168ff.; the Irish text is on pp. 20ff.Google Scholar

page 81 note 2 Line 49b, ‘woruld onetteð’, ‘the world hastens on’, makes reasonable sense even if it is not interpreted as an allusion to the impending end of the world, as Smithers, G. V. and Cross, J. E. have independently argued that it should be. (See respectively ‘The Meaning of The Seafarer and The Wanderer’, Mæ 28 (1959), 7Google Scholar and ’On the Allegory in The Seafarer’, ibid. 104–5.) Cross's argument, based on Gregory the Great's commentary on the similitude of the fig tree of Luke xxi. 25–32, is particularly interesting and would be persuasive if one could be sure that the poet had encountered this commentary, either directly or indirectly, for it is appropriate enough.

page 81 note 3 ‘Because the joys of the Lord are hotter to me than this dead life, passing away, on land’ (64b–66a). Mrs Gordon puts a mere comma before this clause and, following Professor Whitelock, takes forpon as correlative with the forpon of line 58. I prefer a looser connection, with at least a semicolon preceding the clause, because to anticipate the explanation as early as line 58 is to weaken the immediacy of the vividly imagined passage in lines 58–64a, on which I comment below. The clause beginning at line 64b should come, I think, as an explanation not fully preconceived, but evoked by the intensity of desire that has just found expression.

page 82 note 1 ‘Let us consider where we have our home, and then think how we may come thither’ (117–18). My earlier attempt (‘Dramatic Voices’, pp. 179–80) to treat lines 103–24 as an epilogue spoken by the poet, on the analogy of lines 111–15 of The Wanderer (see above, p. 76, n. 2), must be abandoned for lack of a sufficiently decisive indication of the shift. Line 102 concludes the seafarer's disparagement of the world and its values, and line 103, in hypermetric form, introduces a series of gnomic admonitions before the homiletic close; but there is no ‘swa cwæð’ to mark the boundary, and the passage ending at line 102 lacks the sort of finality that is reached at line 110 of The Wanderer. A similar view of the ending as involving a fading away of the speaker's vigorous individuality is set forth by Calder, Daniel G., ’Setting and Mode in The Seafarer and The Wanderer’, NM 72 (1971), 267.Google Scholar

page 82 note 2 There may be a passing allusion to allegorical voyaging much earlier, in lines 39–43, where the speaker seems to imply that every serious-minded man has a voyage to make, but the negative form of the sentence makes this implication uncertain.

page 82 note 3 ‘Attitudes and Values in The Seafarer’, SP 51 (1954) 15–20.Google Scholar

page 83 note 1 Diekstra, F. N. M., ‘The Seafarer 58–66a: The Flight of the Exile's Soul to its Fatherland’, Neopbilologus 55 (1997), 433–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 83 note 2 ‘Indeed now my mind ranges Out over the confines of my breast, my soul ranges widely with the sea's current over the whale's home, over the reaches of earth, comes back to me ravenous and greedy; the lone flier screams, whets my heart irresistibly Onto the whale's way over the swelling concourse of waters’ (58–64a). The bracketed b in line 63 is not in the manuscript, but the emendation, first made by Thorpe, appears to me right beyond reasonable doubt.

page 84 note 1 For Alcuin, see Clemoes, Peter, ‘Mens absentia cogitans in The Seafarer and The Wanderer’, Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memorj of G. N. Garmonsway, ed. Pearsall, D. A. and Waldron, R. A. (London, 1969), pp. 62–77.Google Scholar The quotations from Alcuin's Animae ratione liber, in prose and verse, on pp. 63–4, are remarkably close in substance to the basic idea of this passage. Diekstra, however (‘The Seafarer 58–66a’, p. 434) quotes a passage from Lactantius, De opificio Dei, cap. 16, which Alcuin's prose version merely repeats, essentially word for word. Clemoes points out that Alcuin's treatise was later used by Ælfric, and it may have been more readily available than Lactantius to the author of The Seafarer, if, as is likely but not certain, the poem postdates Alcuin's treatise. I do not think Alcuin's verse rendering of the idea is sufficiently closer to the poem than his prose to settle the matter; and it is possible, as I have intimated, that the poet came by the idea independently of either of these authors.

page 84 note 2 See the discussion of the possible sources of this passage in Salmon, Vivian, ‘The Wanderer and The Seafarer, and the Old English Conception of the Soul’, MLR 55 (1960), 1–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 84 note 3 Greenfield, Stanley B., The Interpretation of Old English Poems (London, 1972), pp. 43–5.Google Scholar He is inclined to interpret the passage rightly but is puzzled by ‘gifre ond grædig’. Mrs Gordon in her edition has revived the unfortunate notion of Sieper that the anfloga, instead of describing the bird-soul, refers to the cuckoo of line 53. Sieper was misled by the vague resemblance between the singing cuckoo's warning and mournful foreboding and the screaming anfloga's incitement. This unsound and hopelessly confusing identification should be consigned to oblivion.

page 84 note 4 ‘Dramatic Voices’, p. 192, n. 39.

page 85 note 1 King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius's De consolatione philosopbiae, ed. Sedgefield, W. J. (Oxford, 1899), cap. xxii, line 24, p. 50.Google Scholar

page 85 note 2 The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: the First Part containing the Sermones Catbolici or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Thorpe, B. 2 vols. (London, 1844–1846) ii, 280, line 16.Google Scholar

page 85 note 3 The notion advanced by Smithers, G. V., Mæ, 26 (1957), 151,Google Scholar that ‘eleodigra eard’ should be taken to mean ‘the heavenly home (patria) of good Christians (peregrini)’ must be rejected as a primary meaning in view of the general interpretation here adopted. It would not be inappropriate as a secondary meaning, since the heavenly home is certainly the seafarer's ultimate destination; but this becomes clear enough later and to anticipate it now may involve too complicated a mental exercise, since to accept the secondary meaning is to alter drastically the primary meaning already attached to each of the two words.

page 85 note 4 ‘The Wanderer and The Seafarer’, JEGP 4 (1902), 466–7.Google Scholar Lawrence even thought that lines 103–24 might be a fragment of an unrelated poem.