ABSTRACT

With the appearance of Grendel the presentation immediately becomes more complicated, soon somewhat confused as well. In the section 86-114 we run into a double opening, 86 ff. and 99 ff.; Grendel is introduced twice. Anyone who does not consider things of this kind as a matter of course in epic will not be able to resist the impression that the poet here ceases at one stroke to narrate well; he loses the thread, indeed, it is as if he wanted to lose it. The observation that an [‘one’] (100) in the old language did not necessarily indicate a new character is of little benefit, as it may also indicate one already introduced; the whole connection seems counter-productive. Why does it not simply say: ‘Then one began to do evil deeds’—? Why instead of this: ‘So the retainers lived happily in splendour, until’—? What is the point of this quite arbitrary interruption of the sequence? The explanation in lines 90b-98 is not able to excuse this, on the contrary, makes bad worse. It is very striking in itself that the summary of a song of creation is given as exemplification of the singing which daily filled the hall. This certainly does not fit with the overall character of Beowulf, even if we entirely ignore passages like 175 ff. But

from elsewhere’], with Rieger [1871], much better than ellengæst [‘mighty spirit’].) The less suitable the connection 99 ff., Swa ða drihtguman [‘So the retainers’], the more necessary it would have been to speak directly again of Grendel’s anger or the manifestations of it.—Lines 105-114 are above all suspect because of their content. In context they do not really make a disturbing intervention; but they do hold up the progress of the representation in an unbearable way-and to what end? To tell us about Cain and his crime and the punishment which came upon him for it, and about the monsters that descend from him [a note suggests orcneas in l. 112 may be a mistaken form of Corpus Glossary orceas]. I consider it impossible that this section could have originated in the still-reproductive epic; with Müllenhoff [1869], Ettmüller [1840], and the majority of commentators I see here an interpolation made with pen in hand.