Under New Management: Another Note on Purchasing Good-will in Herbert’s “Unkindnesse” (GH #37)

Under New Management: Herbert’s “Unkindnesse”

When I discussed George Herbert’s poem “Unkindnesse” in my last blog, I ran out of room to continue exploring multiplicities of meaning with the phrase “to purchase my good-will” in the last stanza (line 24). (For my overview of the poem and initial discussion of these concluding lines, please see my previous post.)

The words “purchase” and perhaps even “brasse” in the final stanza remind us of the financial imagery used in stanza 3 (and perhaps, with some play on words, in stanza 4) of “Unkindnesse.” So that we can look at the last stanza’s imagery in context, I quote stanzas 3-5 of the poem here:

My friend may spit upon my curious floor:

Would he have gold? I lend it instantly;

                                       But let the poore,

                        And thou within them, starve at doore.

I cannot use a friend, as I use Thee.

When that my friend pretendeth to a place,

I quit my interest, and leave it free:

                                       But when thy grace

                        Sues for my heart, I thee displace,

Nor would I use a friend, as I use Thee.

Yet can a friend what thou hast done fulfill?

O write in brasse, My God upon a tree

                                       His bloud did spill

                        Onely to purchase my good-will.

Yet use I not my foes, as I use Thee. (lines 11-25)

This poem is contrasting the speaker’s treatment of his earthly friends with his treatment of the Lord. In stanza 3, if his friend needs money, he’ll freely lend it. The idea of “us[ing]” (and perhaps usury?) continues in stanza 4 with the word “interest.” Here it means career ambitions: the speaker will freely give up his career position, as with his gold in stanza 3, to lend it to a friend.

A hanging coin indicates what used to be a bank in Renaissance Germany

Yet, Herbert’s speaker has been loath to exercise tangible kindness to God (and to those who represent the Lord, like the ones in need in lines 13-14). In contrast, the last stanza reveals that God the Son has spilled his own blood on the cross to purchase, as I discussed in my previous blog, the good-will of the speaker (his willing consent) or good-will for the speaker (redeemed virtue).  

But wait, there’s more. Back to the financial imagery. A final definition of “goodwill” in the Oxford English Dictionary concerns property and business. Def. 4a. is “Permission to enjoy the use of a property,” while def. 4b. is the purchaser of a business being granted by the seller the privilege of trading as the seller’s successor (to take over the business, if I understand it correctly). In the historical examples given in the OED, the word “goodwill” in both definitions is often preceded by a possessive, as it is in Herbert here (“my good-will”), which is another reason I think Herbert may be playing with the word’s financial connections.

Now, let’s plug these business-related definitions into Herbert’s theological reflection at the end of “Unkindnesse”: If Christ has purchased the speaker’s “good-will,” he now has the privilege of using the speaker’s property, which includes the gold mentioned in stanza 3. Herbert’s speaker no longer has a right to withhold his finances from the Lord.

Furthermore, the speaker’s property includes his body and spirit, as the Apostle Paul states in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: “Know ye not that . . . ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (KJV). The speaker has no right to withhold his heart from the Lord either (lines 18-19). His attitude and feelings (“good-will”) now belong to God.

Herbert’s narrator has been in breach of contract, as it were. Not only has Christ purchased the privilege of using the speaker’s property, but he has also bought out the speaker’s business to take it over, with the deed of sale to be written on a brass plaque.

The Geneva Bible marginalia cross-references 1 Cor 6:20 with 1 Cor 7:23 (“Ye are bought with a price”) and that verse with 1 Peter 1, where verses 18-19 remind the faithful “that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, [such] as silver and gold,” . . . “but with the precious blood of Christ” (KJV). Perhaps Herbert, who believed that “This verse marks that, and both do make a motion / Unto a third,”* exactly describing this kind of chain-referencing, had these Scriptures in mind as he subtly contrasts through his financial imagery the corruptible gold he has refused to offer God and the precious blood of Christ, which was spilled for his redemption.

In another poem from The Temple, Herbert considers “at what rate and price” he has Christ’s “love.”** Here in “Unkindnesse,” Herbert’s narrator might have to relinquish control of his body and spirit, his gold and his goodwill, but the unique “rate and price” Christ paid for these is much, much higher.

* “The H. Scriptures II” lines 5-6

** “The Pearl” line 35

Goodwill Hunting in Herbert’s “Unkindnesse” (GH #36)

[Yes, I'm back! My blog has been in sleep mode for quite a while, and in the meantime I've gotten married, traveled to at least 5 countries, and had some health problems, so it's been an eventful 3 years....]

Goodwill Hunting in Herbert’s “Unkindnesse”

As I was looking over George Herbert’s poem “Unkindnesse” the other day, a phrase in the last stanza struck me as paradoxical. Here’s a summary of the poem (the entire poem appears at the end of this blog post):

After opening by asking the Lord to help him be a better friend, the poet spends the first 4 stanzas comparing the kindnesses he has shown his friends or family to his lack of kindness towards his Lord. He wants to have good intentions toward his friends (st. 1), to protect their reputations (st. 2), to provide financial help for them when needed (st. 3), and to further them in their careers (st. 4). Each stanza concludes with a variation on the admission, “I would not use a friend, as I use Thee.”

This pattern is followed in the last stanza by an acknowledgement that God has done more for him than any of his friends and is, in fact, not only his Friend, but his Savior. Yet the poet continues to treat his Lord worse than any friend and even, he confesses, worse than any foe:

Yet can a friend what thou hast done fulfill?

O write in brasse, My God upon a tree

                                       His bloud did spill

                        Onely to purchase my good-will.

Yet use I not my foes, as I use Thee. (lines 21-25)

In the italicized section, Herbert wants the reminder of God’s sacrifice to be recorded permanently for his own reflection, written in brass: “My God upon a tree / His blood did spill / only to purchase my good-will” (ll. 22-24). But, wait, isn’t goodwill by definition freely given, not bought?

Crucifix in Bayeux Cathedral, Normandy, France

This question led to a bit of digging, first through the Oxford English Dictionary, which confirmed my understanding of “goodwill” as a friendly, supportive, benevolent, or cooperative attitude towards someone, also eagerness, readiness, or “willing consent” (def. 2a-b, 3a-b).¹

William Gouge’s 1622 treatise Of Domestical Duties addresses how servants are directed by Scripture to serve with “Good will. Under which are comprised 1. cheerfulness, 2. readiness, 3. diligence, 4. faithfulness” (The Seventh Treatise: “Duties of Servants” sect. 1, expositing Ephesians 5:5-8).²

If my ready, eager, cooperative, and even cheerful attitude is purchased, is it not then false or forced or tainted? How, then, can it still be called good will? Is there perhaps another way of understanding this, if not paradoxical, at least enigmatic, phrase in Herbert’s poem?

For instance, what if “good-will” is not something the speaker gives, but something that is given to him in this transaction? According to the Herbert concordance, Herbert’s only use of the compound word “good-will” (or “goodwill”) in his writings occurs here, in “Unkindnesse,” so Herbert’s corpus doesn’t help with understanding this particular word choice.³

I propose two options in thinking of “good-will” as something that is purchased for and given to the speaker here. Option 1: Herbert leaves the compound word separated by a hyphen, subtly keeping “good” and “will” separate. “Good” is but a modifier of “will.” Christ’s blood purchased the speaker’s good will, as opposed to his bad will.

John Calvin is helpful for the theology here. J. Todd Billings explains this doctrine from Calvin’s perspective: “Human nature [before Adam’s Fall] was originally good, and the created nature is restored and fulfilled through redemption in Christ,” which “heals and restores the original ‘good will’ and ‘good nature’ of Adam” (Billings 47).⁴ In other words, Christ provided for Herbert’s speaker a redeemed will, replacing his fallen bad-will with a redeemed “good-will.”

Option 2: Christ’s sacrifice purchased the goodwill of God towards the redeemed speaker.  A well-known Scripture verse illustrating this concept of God’s goodwill is Luke 2:14, which I reproduce from the 1560 Geneva Bible, a version Herbert was familiar with: “Glory be to God in the high heavens, and peace in earth, & towards men good will” (my underline). The note on this passage in the Geneva explains better the theology Herbert’s poem may be presenting: “The free mercy & goodwill of God, which is the fountain of our peace and felicity, & is chiefly declared to the elect.”⁵

Because the spilling of Christ’s blood on the cross purchased the speaker, he is one of the elect, and therefore a recipient of God’s goodwill in the sense of favor or  “benevolence” (OED def. 2a.), but also of piety or virtue (OED def. 1). Herbert’s speaker now has the goodness or virtue of Christ, his sin having been traded for Christ’s righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

In whichever of the above senses, Jesus Christ purchased the goodwill of his foes (cf. Romans 5:10), among whom the speaker had formerly been included. How, then, the poem asks, could one who is the recipient of God’s goodwill use his Lord with unkindness?

¹ The Oxford English Dictionary is the most helpful resource for word studies in historical works because it provides dated quotations for minutely categorized uses of a word. This allows scholars of a historical work to check what a word could have meant at a particular time.

² William Gouge was a pastor whose lengthy Of Domestical Duties (in large part a practical exposition of the book of Ephesians) was published in 1622, during the years of Herbert’s career at Cambridge.

³ Di Cesare, Mario A., and Rigo Mignani. A Concordance to the Complete Writings of George Herbert (Cornell UP, 1977).

⁴ Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ, Oxford UP, 2007. Many scholars have demonstrated that Herbert was quite familiar with and influenced by Calvin’s works. Daniel Doerksen’s Picturing Religious Experience: George Herbert, Calvin, & the Scriptures (U of Delaware P, 2011) is particularly helpful. 

⁵ I have modernized the spelling of the Geneva Bible quotes.

A reminder to students (and others) that all written work contained in my blog, unless otherwise indicated, is my intellectual property and to be cited accordingly. Thank you. --JN

“Unkindnesse”

LOrd, make me coy and tender to offend:

In friendship, first I think, if that agree,

                                       Which I intend,

                        Unto my friends intent and end.

I would not use a friend, as I use Thee.

If any touch my friend, or his good name,

It is my honour and my love to free

                                       His blasted fame

                        From the least spot or thought of blame.

I could not use a friend, as I use Thee.

My friend may spit upon my curious¹ floor:

Would he have gold? I lend it instantly;

                                       But let the poore,

                        And thou within them, starve at doore.

I cannot use a friend, as I use Thee.

When that my friend pretendeth to a place,²

I quit my interest, and leave it free:

                                       But when they grace

                        Sues for my heart, I thee displace,

Nor would I use a friend, as I use Thee.

Yet can a friend what thou hast done fulfill?

O write in brasse, My God upon a tree

                                       His bloud did spill

                        Onely to purchase my good-will.

Yet use I not my foes, as I use Thee.

Relational Evangelism & the Great Texts

What works of literature are on your “I really should read” list? Something by Austen, Dickens, or Dostoevsky? Or maybe Augustine, Shakespeare, or Faulkner?

I stare at my copy of Dante’s Vita Nuova and say to myself,” Maybe this summer I’ll finally finish it.”

Ellesmere Chaucer, Huntington Library

What keeps us from reading the great works of literature? Professors in the humanities continue to lament that today’s college students are not only not reading the great books in classes, but they’re seldom taking humanities classes period. Elizabeth Corey in a recent article in First Things attempts to address this major problem of the so-called crisis in the humanities by proposing the partial solution of mentoring and relational “evangelism.”*  

As Corey points out, the great texts are there “ready to be picked up.” In fact, “anyone can read them at any time and, if one is ready, harvest what they have to offer.” Never has this been more true than now, when electronic versions (PDF scans, e-texts, Kindle books) are available to readers 24/7.

Yet, we likely all agree with Corey that “these books are far from easy, and they often quickly end up back on the shelf. I cannot count the number of eager freshmen,” she says, “who have told me they wanted to get a head start on Plato’s Republic before reading it in class. I do not think a single one has ever successfully made it past Book 1. Nor do I blame them” (43).

I suspect that this anecdotal statistic extends to sophomores, juniors, seniors, and even grad students. I dare say it occasionally extends to professors. How many times have I picked up (true confessions) a Great Text for summer reading, whether Homer’s Iliad or William Langland’s Piers Plowman or Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and not finished it? Would I have finished that work had it been required reading for a course or a group? Yes. Would I have finished it had I been sitting under a professor or even been part of a reading group of my peers? Yes, but what’s more, experience suggests that with the guidance of an instructor and/or peers I would have come away with more insight into and appreciation for the work.

This is the point that Corey comes to in her article: “[A]lmost all of us,” she states, “. . . require more than bureaucratic exhortation or the abstract knowledge that the study of humanities is important. More is required even than strong personal desire and a sense of incompleteness.”

“We need a particular person to tell us about a particular book or author or field of study, to demonstrate its significance in practice, to act as a master to whom we can apprentice ourselves,” says Corey. “We must, in quasi-religious terms, be evangelized so that we come to desire what we see and to understand it as beautiful, compelling, worthy of pursuit. We must see why it is worth loving” (43).

I think this is so true, even if there’s not quite the master/apprentice relationship. In my classroom of anywhere from 5 to 30, I am trying to help my students see why the great works are worthy of pursuit and worth loving. How many of them would have picked up Chaucer in Middle English on their own? Answer: maybe 1-2 per large class. And yet so many will come to appreciate and even enjoy reading Chaucer after grappling with the text with guidance, instruction, and discussion.

Milton’s Paradise Lost would not be one of my favorite texts today had I not first read it under the direction and instruction of a good professor. Neither would Laurence Sterne’s 18^th-century novella A Sentimental Journey (a brilliantly tongue-in-cheek work which I now greatly enjoy inflicting on my own students). My hope is that my students will come not only to see why that particular text is worthy of pursuit, but come to desire such qualities in the other things they read.

And according to Corey, this takes a personal connection.

* Elizabeth Corey, “Learning in Love,” First Things (April 2014): 41-46.

“Christmastide”

For Christmas this year, I returned to a few poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti, sister of a famous Pre-Raphaelite painter* and a prolific poet in her own right. Her most famous poem is “A Christmas Carol,” which many know by its first line, “In the bleak midwinter.” However, Rossetti’s lovely poem “Christmastide,” from the 1880s, has also been set to music:**

Love came down at Christmas,

    Love all lovely, Love Divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

    Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

    Love Incarnate, Love Divine;

Worship we our Jesus:

    But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

    Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

    Love for plea and gift and sign.

As often in Christina Rossetti’s religious poems, the words are simple, but the theology may go a bit deeper. At Jesus’ birth, the star marked the place and the angels conveyed the verbal message, but the poet asks in the second stanza what shall be the sign we today use to celebrate Christ’s birth? (“Wherewith” in the 16^th-century Geneva Bible and in Shakespeare is occasionally used to mean “with what?” But it can also be short for “wherewithal,” that is, the means needed for a particular purpose.***)

The poet answers her question in the third stanza: “love” will be that sacred sign, “our token.” A token can be a badge worn to indicate allegiance to a particular person. Scripture indicates that love should be what sets Christians apart and identifies them with the Lord (John 13:35).

A token can also be something to be exchanged for goods or services, and, as the Oxford American Dictionary states, that token is typically given as a gift. Christ was the love of God given to mankind: “Love Incarnate, Love Divine” (line 6): fully man (in a human body) and fully God (divine). This is one gift we can “exchange” for the justification before God that Rossetti alludes to in the last line: “Love for plea” (an appeal or entreaty).

The 3 stanzas of the poem emphasize the “Godhead” (Trinity) we worship, as well as the three “uses” in the last line of the Love/love that came down at Christmas.

Rossetti emphasizes Christmas as a holy season through the old-fashioned word “tide” in her title: “Christmastide” suggests a church feast day.*** Stanzas two and three reflect the communal aspect of a festival day through the first-person plural pronouns: “we” and “our.” Line 10 moves from the previous line’s collective “our” (together, facing outward) to the celebrants’ facing each other and “exchanging” love in the way that congregants exchange greetings. Line 11 then moves back, and further, outward, giving God’s love back to him and extending that love to all mankind (cf. 1 John 4:7-21).

God’s Son, the personification of Love, came down at Christmas, not just to be the center of the beautiful nativity story believers celebrate in crèche and chorus, but to be the gift we lift back up as our plea before God and our sign to all mankind.

*Dante Gabriel Rossetti, painter and poet

**See, for instance, a partial list of settings at http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/love_came_down_at_christmas.htm

***See the Oxford English Dictionary

Herbert’s “Justice” (Part One) (GH #35)

As I was looking for a sample George Herbert poem to practice analyzing with my class this semester, I came across a little-known, short poem called “Justice (1).”* Contrary to what one might expect of a poem by that name, Herbert’s “Justice” opens with the speaker’s complaints about God’s seeming injustice to him. The poem then takes a confessional turn as the speaker realizes that he has been the one acting unjustly toward God:

I cannot skill of these thy wayes.

Lord, thou didst make me, yet thou woundest me;

Lord, thou dost wound me, yet thou dost relieve me:

Lord, thou relievest, yet I die by thee:

Lord, thou dost kill me, yet thou dost reprieve me.        

                           But when I mark my life and praise,        

                           Thy justice me most fitly payes:

For, I do praise thee, yet I praise thee not:

My prayers mean thee, yet my prayers stray:

I would do well, yet sinne the hand hath got:

My soul doth love thee, yet it loves delay.        

                           I cannot skill of these my wayes.

Pre-Raphaelite window, Huntington Library, CA

  

In “Justice (1),” Herbert demonstrates his skill in creating a deceptively simple, yet densely rich, poem about his lack of “skill” in understanding the justice of God’s “wayes” with him.

To begin, the poem is deceptively simple. It’s quite short (12 lines), a majority of the words are monosyllabic, and the frequent repetition of words or phrases adds to this simplicity.

The first stanza, where the focus is on the Lord’s actions (“Lord, thou dost”), contains smooth, winding parallelism in lines 2-5. For instance, the end of line 2 about wounding is picked up at the beginning of line 3, and then the end of line 3 is revisited at the beginning of line 4.** In the italicized portions of both stanzas, each line is divided into half lines via a compound sentence and a comma. (This strong break in the middle of the line is called a “caesura.”)

The repeated beginnings of lines 2-5 (“Lord, thou”) and their interwoven parallel lines create a smooth flow, marred only by the meter of lines 3 and 5. The smoothness of the first stanza suggests that the Lord’s actions have been constant, or at least consistent, toward the speaker. Lines 3 and 5 have in common that they are the “positive” actions of God toward the speaker: relieving and reprieving (as opposed to wounding and killing/causing the speaker to die). Unlike the smooth pentameter of lines 2 and 4, these two lines have an extra syllable. I suggest that Herbert prolongs the lines here to emphasize how God prolongs the speaker’s suffering by offering him times of relief, only to wound him again later.

While the two stanzas may at first glance look similar, there is a significant alteration in form between the two. For instance, while the parallelism and half-lines remain (lines 8-11), the interweaving ceases in stanza 2, where the poet’s focus is no longer on the Lord’s actions, but on his (the speaker’s) own failures. At last, he evaluates himself, his “life and praise” (6). The “straightforward” lines (e.g., “My prayers mean thee, yet my prayers stray” [9]) seem to indicate Herbert’s speaker is finally being “straight,” or honest, with himself: he has not been living up to expectations, and indeed his sense of “justice” has “strayed” (9), or been off the “mark” (6).

I’m only halfway done with my analysis of “Justice (1),” having looked at form, but hardly at content. Like the Psalmist, Herbert’s speaker cries out to the Lord with his grief and his grievances. Living in our finite moment in time, how can we understand the Lord’s greater purposes, His infinite “wayes”? Herbert’s little poem reminds us in those times of trial to “mark” ourselves before we question the appropriateness of God’s justice. ***

To be continued. . . .

  

* Because Herbert gave the same titles to several poems in The Temple, editors have added numerals after the titles (based on the order in which the poems appear) to create a clear differentiation between the poem titles. For instance, Herbert has two poems called “Justice,” five called “Affliction,” and so forth. Sometimes the poems are clearly related, as when “H. Scriptures (2)” immediately follows “H. Scriptures (1),” but sometimes the only relationship might be a loose thematic connection. 

** See Herbert’s “The Wreath” for another example of interwoven lines.

*** Just another reminder to students (and others) that all written work contained in my blog, unless otherwise indicated, is my intellectual property and to be cited accordingly. Thank you.

Science Finally Demonstrates That Reading Great Books Is Good for You

Ah, what would we do without science? Without science, how would we know that boys are different from girls, that parenting is stressful, or that reading good literature improves our imaginative abilities?

Or, as The Atlantic puts it in the title of their October 4^th news article: “Now We Have Proof Reading Literary Fiction Makes You a Better Person.” So, were Aristotle and Sir Philip Sidney right?*

Of course, long-time readers of good literature know that their exposure to “literary fiction” (as opposed to “popular fiction”) has helped develop their ability to imagine what other people in other places, other times, or other situations might experience. This ability to imagine other experiences, and therefore to empathize, is what the researchers of an article published this month in Science Magazine have focused on.

Others have recapped the findings in news articles, so here are links to The Atlantic and Scientific American. In the series of experiments, adults were given readings from what the authors call “literary fiction” (“serious” fiction? what might be contained in a literature anthology?), from “popular fiction” (including formulaic or genre fiction), and from non-fiction. While popular fiction, as Scientific American attempts to explain, tends to “follow a formula to take readers on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and exciting experiences,” good literature makes readers use their imaginations to explore the more complex characters and situations it presents.

I am immediately reminded of C. S. Lewis describing in An Experiment in Criticism the way “unliterary” and “literary” readers read books.

Sir Walter Scott monument, Edinburgh

The unliterary reader (these are his terms) looks for what Lewis calls “the Event,” with a capital “E.” Unliterary readers, says Lewis, “lack the attentive and obedient imagination which would enable them to make use of any full and precise description of a scene or an emotion. On the other hand,” he continues, “they lack the fertile imagination which can build (in a moment) on the bare facts” (chap. 4). In other words, the unliterary reader only wants a swift-moving plot, easy-to-figure-out (formulaic) characters, and an emotional high. The unliterary reader, therefore, has no tolerance either for in-depth description/character psychology/complexity or for that which is not explicitly spelled out and therefore calls for more subtle reading.

The literary reader enjoys the complexities of well-drawn characters and plots, as well as the way in which these elements are conveyed. It’s not that the literary reader doesn’t like the plot points and emotional experiences that come with a good story, Lewis hastens to clarify, but that the literary reader enjoys “the fullness of literary experience” (including elements of style), while the unliterary reader only looks for and enjoys “the Event” (chap. 4).

I notice that Lewis focuses on a developed imagination as one of the key differences in his two categories. It is this imaginative sympathy (or empathy) with others that Kidd and Castano focus on in their article “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind” in Science Magazine. The ability to place ourselves in others’ shoes through an empathetic imagination “is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human societies,” explain Kidd and Castano. And this study demonstrates that the “polyphonic”** nature of good literature exercises our imaginations to develop this skill.

But it is not only our relationships with those in our own society that are at stake. As Lewis reminds us in A Preface to Paradise Lost, it is our experience of our own humanity, as well as our relationship to human history, that can be affected by what we read and the way we read it: “To enjoy our full humanity,” says Lewis, “we ought, so far as is possible, to contain within us potentially at all times, and on occasion to actualize, all the modes of feeling and thinking through which man has passed. You must, so far as in you lies, become an Achaean chief while reading Homer, a medieval knight while reading Malory, and an eighteenth century Londoner while reading Johnson” (chap. 9). Lewis elaborates in other works on why it is good for us to have an understanding of humankind from the past. See, for instance, Screwtape Letters (letter XXVII) and the essay “Learning in War-Time” from The Weight of Glory.

Reading about Kidd and Castano’s research leaves me with many questions: Did they primarily use modern and contemporary “literary fiction”? In other words, might their results be different if participants were given poetry or even prose that pre-dates the psychological novel? After all, complexity of character and scenario have not always been the driving force of good literature. I have not yet finished reading the actual science article (as opposed to the journalistic simplifications), so I may re-visit the topic.

Kidd & Castano’s study shows how good literature can do what popular fiction and nonfiction often can’t. As Lewis stated so well 50 years ago, “[W]e seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. . . . We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own” (Experiment “Epilogue”).

 

So, want to become a better person? Go read some Austen or Shakespeare!

* For instance, Aristotle in the Poetics on the benefits of tragic drama and Sidney in his Defense of Poesy.

** A term they borrow from Mikhail Bakhtin. Lewis had previously compared the many notes and “voices” of more complex musical pieces with the type of literature that a literary reader can enjoy, while an unliterary reader (who is only interested in the “tune”) does not (Experiment chaps. 3-4).  

Protecting Others' Reputations

In reading Beowulf for the umpteenth time to teach it in my survey class this semester*, I am struck yet again by a repeated theme: a good man (or woman) speaks well of others, covering over their weaknesses if needed. In Seamus Heaney's beautiful, although not very literal, translation of the Old English epic poem, he chooses to use the word "courtesy" to describe right behavior (for instance, in line 613 to describe Wealtheow's proper behavior as queen). The word is not an Old English one, and probably conjures up something more like the chivalric court of King Arthur than an Anglo-Saxon mead-hall, but it gets the point across.

inside the little Saxon church at Bradford-on-Avon

I'll cite three instances in the poem of protecting someone's reputation (particularly when there's a weakness to gloss over). The first is when Beowulf is able to defeat the God-cursed monster Grendel when Hrothgar the king (either through his own might or through that of his men) cannot. This could be a "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands" moment (1 Samuel 21:11). But it's not. Instead, the Beowulf poet notes that when the heralds spread the news of Beowulf's conquest of Grendel, "there was no laying of blame on their lord, the noble Hrothgar; he was a good king" (861-2). In other words, they manage to both praise foreign hero Beowulf and protect the reputation of their (the Danes') own king.

The second example is after Beowulf has fought and killed Grendel's Mother. In an effort to make up for insulting Beowulf upon the Geat warrior's arrival in Hrothgar's realm (an example of discourteous behavior), Unferth has lent Beowulf his ancestral sword. This sword, Hrunting, has failed Beowulf in battle--or, rather, regular swords don't seem to work against the scaly skin of these monstrous creatures. Upon return from the (successful) battle, Beowulf doesn't disparage the sword (which would reflect badly on its owner). Instead, he thanks Unferth for the loan. Beowulf "said he had found it a friend in battle / and powerful help; he put no blame / on the blade's cutting edge" (1807-12). In other words, Beowulf tells Unferth, "thank you so much for the help," and leaves it at that. He covers over Unferth's sword's/Unferth's weakness.

The third instance is the one that I'd forgotten about, and that is after what basically amounts to Beowulf's failure in the battle against the dragon. In his old age, and against a fire-breathing foe, Beowulf has found himself outmatched, his own sword this time failing against the dragon's scaly hide. The only reason this foe is conquered is that a young hero, Beowulf's distant cousin Wiglaf, steps up to join in the struggle, plunging his own sword into the dragon's belly (always a more tender spot) and weakening the dragon enough to allow Beowulf's knife to finish the job. Spoiler alert: Beowulf dies from his wounds. Yet, when Wiglaf, immediately afterward, tells what happened in his battle, he puts Beowulf's deeds at the forefront and his own in the background:

. . . God who ordains
who wins or loses allowed him [Beowulf] to strike
with his own blade when bravery was needed.
There was little I could do to protect his life
in the heat of the fray, but I found new strength
welling up when I went to help him.
Then my sword connected and the deadly assaults
of our foe grew weaker, the fire coursed
less strongly from his head. . . . (2874-82)

In other words, Wiglaf subtly protects Beowulf's reputation as the consummate warrior, while Wiglaf is the helper against "our foe." He doesn't emphasize how Beowulf would have been toast (both literally and figuratively) had he, Wiglaf, not joined in the fight.

In these examples of protecting others' reputations, not only am I reminded of the Bible's commands not to gossip or slander (how we tear down others' reputations) (Colossians 3:8), but of the truth that love covers over a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8) and of the exhortation to consider others as better than yourself and their interests before your own (Galations 2:3-4).

How can some people think Beowulf is just a story about fights and feasting with no relevance to contemporary life? . . .

* This is an "old book" that is truly a great work. It gets better and better each time one reads it in that there are more things to notice, to appreciate, etc.