ABSTRACT

Beowulf is the oldest heroic poem written in a German dialect. In its present form it goes back to the ninth century; the sources from which it may have been composed, perhaps by an Anglian clergyman in Kent, reach back into the sixth century and extend into the fourth. When talking about an ancient German heroic poem we must beware of relating it too closely to the great epics of the Greek nation. At a certain stage of its development the poetic spirit everywhere produces similar creations; but this similarity receives its modification and basic mark of what in each case is original from the characteristics of the individual nation as reflected in the poetry. In this way, for example, many parallels with the Homeric poems may be drawn in our poem too, even down to the single expressions; but the prior conditions, local as well as national, from which alone an Iliad or an Odyssey could emerge, were to be found only in the favoured lands of Ionia. Only under her always happy sky was it possible for such light and bright figures to be created, whose very mightiest deeds through a natural artistic balance remain limited to what is noble and keep the reader from moving beyond the circle of beneficial contemplation. Not so with the poems of the North. Under an almost continually clouded sky, in the midst of a world which is fighting a never-ending war with the forces of nature to make a living or defend what has been gained against the robber who is always ready to attack, press him and kill him-these poems lack that salutary Greek harmoniousness and often move into the monstrous, into what is no longer familiar to humanity, the terrifying land where thought will hesitate to go and feeling be unwilling to stray. Even where the quiet and well-being, fullness and plenty of our Nordic ancestors are being described, the presentation and the impression it conveys differ widely from what is evoked by the description of the same or similar situations in Greek antiquity. To understand this fully we need only compare, for example, the illustrious, peaceful and joyous life in the hall of

strikes us as particularly appealing in the native poetry, however, and draws us back to it continually as to paths long deserted and yet retrodden over and over again, is nothing but the profound quality of German life, which is clearly also part of our spirit and nature, and which in spite of the obscurity of those ancient and often poetically flawed compositions from the most distant centuries makes us recognise the true native manifestation of genuine German feeling and thought.