“The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer” – existentialist elegies?
(both poems appear in the so-called Exeter Book, a collection of various Old English poems from late 10th c. now housed in the Exeter cathedral library)
1. Think of the idea of separation and exile, being alone as one’s conscious choice. What are the positive aspects of such a state? The following statement has been used by a critic to describe Seamus Heaney, a contemporary poet writing in English. What positive aspects of displacement does it speak of? Can it be related to the Old English poems?
“Displacement [i.e. leaving one’s home place, both metaphorically and literally] is the necessary ground upon which to find or to found one’s place.” (Stan Smith about the poetry of Seamus Heaney)
2. The idea of “fate” (Old English wyrd, related to Modern English “weird”) in these poems. What is it like? – can it be controlled in any way? – is it a trace of the fatalism and insecurity of those times?
3. Life as a metaphoric voyage across the mare vitae i.e. the sea of life – what caused it in “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”? – are the reasons for it different in any way? – what is that voyage like in the two poems? – what are the representations of the natural world? – are they different in the two poems?
4. Earthly exile Christian perspective on life? the question of wisdom? – what are the differences in the search for one’s lord or one’s place on earth by the narrators of “The Wanderer” and “The Seafarer”? – what does it mean for them to belong (to someone or to a place)? – what does it mean for them to be ‘lordless’? – who accompanies the Wanderer and the Seafarer? – is the voyage a blessing? – what is their attitude to the idea of “revealing one’s heart”?
5. Transitoriness (passing away of things and people) a moral teaching? – what is the idea of human fragility in both poems? – why is the world presented as ‘old’ in both poems? – the concept of the ‘good name’ – does it resemble the heroic perspective? – the life on land and the life on the sea – how are the two compared in the two poems?
6. The poems of conflicts? What do you think of the following conflicts or relationships between the following concepts in the poems?
– man vs. nature or the external world – man and the internal / external exile
– man vs. himself
– man and the memory
– man vs. other people
– man and an exemplum [an example, a moral lesson]
– man vs. God (out of all three)
– man and the quest (the quest for what?)
7. The art of poetry / the poetry of the senses – how is it realized in the two poems?
8. The inspiration of Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae (Consolation of Philosophy) behind all these poems, a philosophical work by Boethius written in about the year 524 AD. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West in medieval and early Renaissance Christianity. Consolation of Philosophy was written during Boethius’ one year imprisonment while awaiting trial, and eventual horrific execution, for the crime of
treason by Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great . Boethius was at the very heights of power in Rome and was brought down by treachery. It was from this experience he was inspired to write a philosophical book from prison reflecting on how a lord's favor could change so quickly and why friends would turn against him. It has been described as “by far the most interesting example of prison literature the world has ever seen.” Boethius wrote the book as a conversation between himself and the Queen of Science, Lady Philosophy. She consoles Boethius’ failed fortunes by discussing the transitory nature of earthly belongings, and the ultimate superiority of things of the mind, which she calls the “one true good." She says happiness comes from within, something that Lady Fortune can never take away: “Why, then, O mortal men, do you seek that happiness outside, which lies within yourselves?” Boethius’ work was translated into Old English by King Alfred himself (or at least so he claims in the proem.)
9. Some instances of historical exiles
One would probably not be very far from the truth claiming that the early history of Germanic nations or tribes is largely based on journeying. Some of it might have or indeed was caused by being exiled. Here’s a handful of examples:
• Possibly the most notable example of exile as a conscious choice, very similar to the one presented in “The Seafarer” can be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the entry for the year 891:
Old English: Þrie Scottas comon to Ælfrede cyninge on anum bate butan ælcum gereþrum of Hibernia þonon hi bestælon forþon þe hi woldon for Godes lufan on elþiodignesse [exile] beon hi ne rohton hwær… þus hie wæron genemnde: Dubslane 7 Maccbethu 7 Mælinmun.
Modern English translation: Three Scots came to King Alfred [the Great] in a boat without a rudder from Ireland, whence [=where] they had stolen away because they wished to be in a foreign land, they cared not where, for love of God… Their names were Dubslane and Macbeth and Mælinmun.]
• The exiling side might change into the exiled over the ages yet the pattern was always there. A 7th century example of it is supplied by Bede in Historia Ecclesiastica…in the account of a Cadwalla, an exiled youth of the house of Wessex, who regained power, lost it and was exiled again only to come back and crush his opponents.
• The situation where a chieftain [=the leader of a tribe or a Scottish clan], a king-to-be or even a king was an exsul was not infrequent among Scandinavians or the early English. The anonymous Vita Sancti Neoti mentions King Alfred as one in the famous tale of the King and the burnt cakes.
• Another conspicuous English royal example is Edward the Confessor, the last king of the Wessex dynasty who spent twenty-seven years on an exile in Normandy, a fact which had momentous consequences in 1066.
• Similar cases could be found in the history of Scandinavian kingdoms, in the figures of Norwegian jarls of royal descent and later kings of Norway, Olaf Tryggvesson (995-1000) or Harald III, nicknamed Hardraade (the Ruthless), (1047-1066). Both of them spent much of their lives abroad, Olaf ravaging and plundering England before ascending the throne, whereas the career of Harold constituted of his service to Byzantine emperors, military campaigns in Sicily or Bulgaria, securing the Norwegian crown as well as his final and fatal attempt to conquer England.
• Entire countries were inhabited in the course of the exiles’ search for new homelands. Just as the beginnings of the white Australia are connected with the outcasts driven out there, so were the beginnings of the Scandinavian Iceland around 860 AD. The men who are believed to have been the first permanent settlers in Iceland, Ingolf and Hjörleif, had been exiled from Norway after a series of murders there.
• Eirik the Red, the son of a Norwegian outcast, Thorvald, and the father of the first European explorer of North America, Leif Ericsson, was himself pressured to flee from Iceland following the manslaughter committed by him and sail towards a mysterious land, which he named Greenland, to set up the earliest Scandinavian settlements. The intricacy of relationships of the times or simply the lack of appropriate sources make it occasionally rather difficult for historians to distinguish between the exile proper, that is an enforced abandoning of one’s native land and the exile which resembles rather an operation supposed to facilitate profit for the exiled. The truth must have been that the two types were not mutually exclusive, many an expedition could be called deliberate exile, or deliberate search, probably mostly for goods to improve the standards of living but also the search, the quest for the new, the curiosity leading to gaining knowledge about the world and an insight into oneself.
10. If you are interested do look at The Wanderer Project website set up by Dr Rick McDonald (several translations are available – notice the possible differences in the meaning of the poem) http://research.uvsc.edu/mcdonald/wanderweb/index.htm
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