The Sea Voyage in Beowulf

In examining this multiform in Beowulf , it is well to recall four basic properties of the Serbo-Croatian epic theme as a comparative background. First,

as would be expected given the colon structure underlying formulaic phraseology in this epic tradition, any verbal agreement among instances of a narrative multiform is expressed largely in terms of whole lines or cola, as in Homeric epic. The entire line and caesura-bound hemistich are thus the "lexical" data of the theme. Second, although narrative sequence seems in all cases to remain almost absolutely constant and to oversee the thematic progress of the story, in rare cases a unit can be transposed, provided that the narrative logic is maintained. Third, verbal correspondence is not of uniform density throughout the theme or from instance to instance; certain motifs are much more stable formulaically than others. Fourth, variation in verbalization of the theme can take a number of forms, among them what may be termed "formulaic variance," in which lines and parts of lines recombine according to systemic principles, and "ornamentation," in which a non-narrative, paratactic gloss not necessary in itself but rather complementary to a necessary element is included.^[10]

The Old English theme is equally dynamic, though in its own tradition-dependent way. Its texture is also uneven, with certain sections exhibiting one level of verbal correspondence and others differing. Although we do not have the luxury of multiple texts provided by the well-collected Serbo-Croatian tradition, the typical scene of the Sea Voyage will help to make this point. The two occurrences of the sea voyage in Beowulf may be rationalized by the motif structure given below.^[11]

The basic narrative structure of the Sea Voyage may thus be represented as a sequence of five elements:

A. Beowulf leads his men to the ship
B. The ship waits, moored
C. His men board the ship, carrying treasure
D. Departure, voyage on the sea, arrival
E. They moor the ship

Within this regular structure are interwoven elements that help to particularize the generic action, to suit the theme to its narrative context. The W motif, "Armor," variable in position, seems to serve as the prerequisite for the X motif, "The coast-guard approaches"; where the latter first occurs, the former closely precedes it. In occurrence #1 above, W introduces X within the E element, and in #2 W is followed by X before the G element. In narrative terms, this means that "Armor" and its consequent can be developed during the mooring of the ship (as in #1) or before Beowulf's men carry the treasure on board (as in #2), in concert with the demands of the situation.

The X motif, most protean of any of the elements, deserves close attention. It concerns an encounter with the guard of whatever coast one lands on or is in the process of leaving, and is applied to at least two distinct characters and situations in Beowulf .^[14] In occurrence #1 the story line calls for an expansion of X into a lengthy exchange between the coast-guard and Beowulf. Working within the traditional idiom, the poet thus accomplishes two things concurrently: he both fulfills the generic thematic conditions and suits the

structure to its narrative environment. Beowulf is forced to identify both his people and his purpose, points of information that arc of course vital to what follows, and the identification proceeds naturally (that is, traditionally) out of the Sea Voyage multiform. This same potential for modification or variation shows up in a different way in occurrence #2, where X occurs three times (X₁ , X₂ , X*; the symbol X* is used to denote a reversal of the more usual action of this motif). In all other instances, the coast-guard approaches the Geats; in occurrence #1 he comes to challenge their disembarkation, and in occurrence #2 (X₁ -X₂ ) he again moves to greet them, though this time in a friendly manner, as the litotes (1982-95) indicates. The harbor-guard of X*, in contrast, has been watching for Beowulf and his men for a long time. He has remained on the shore, waiting for the returning heroes to approach him. While this constitutes a reversal of the encounter, it springs from the same traditional form, the X motif, as do the other cited instances.

The major motifs within this theme, that is, elements A-E, also reveal a certain amount of adaptation to context, although they vary in structural stability. Element A, for example, splits in occurrence #2, enclosing a number of details within a narrative capsule.^[15] One dimension of this division is clear: A₁ mentions nothing about Beowulf's companions, while in occurrence #1 this motif includes both the hero and his men. A₂ thus fills out the element by describing the embarkation of Beowulf's men. Motifs B, C, and D arc quite stable within the Sea Voyage sequence, especially the last of them, which is tightly organized around a three-part series of departure, voyage, and arrival. Two specific features further structure the action of the D motif: (1) the "go until one sees the destination" commonplace^[16] and (2) the notation of wind and the ship's sail. The splitting of E in occurrence #1, like that of A in #2, presents evidence of the pliability of traditional elements, as once again the recurrent generic structure is adapted to the narrative situation.

Taken together, the two instances of the Sea Voyage in Beowulf collectively exhibit a discernible and dynamic narrative sequence , an action-pattern not dissimilar in nature to that found in Serbo-Croatian themes. In applying the first of Lord's criteria to what we have in Beowulf , we seem to have a dose fit: with the exception of the Old English poet's somewhat greater flexibility in motif development,^[17] there is considerable similarity between the Old English and Serbo-Croatian themes in terms of narrative sequence. But what of the second criterion, verbal correspondence ? Are we likely to observe the same dose fit across traditions along the axis of phraseology?

To answer this question we must recall what was discovered earlier (chapter 6) about the tradition-dependent character of the formula in Beowulf , for with that latter principle in mind it is possible to predict another directly related tradition-dependency—the nature of thematic data. First, we cannot expect a large proportion of classically defined whole-line or half-line formulas as verbal correspondence in Old English poetry, since such an expectation presupposes a colonic formula and, as demonstrated earlier, Old English prosody and phraseology are not colonic. Second, what we can logically expect as thematic data are highly variable half-lines that may have in common only their stressed cores. What verbal correspondence exists will thus appear to take the form of single morphs, that is, of roots of words whose systemic context is metrically (and therefore lexically and syntactically) highly variable. This does not preclude formulaic content, as we shall see below, but simply makes it more likely that single words will constitute whatever thematic resonance obtains in the actual phraseology.^[18] Following is a tabulation of the morphs and the few phrases that help to define the Sea Voyage multiform in Beowulf .

A:A₁ , A₂ —none

B:B—none

C:C—sande/sande (213a/1896a), nacan/naca (214a/1896b), stefn/-stefna (212a/1897b)

D:D—Gewat/Gewat (2177a/1903b), wæg-/weg- (217a/1907a), winde/wind(217b/ 1907b), wudu/-wudu (216b/1906b), -sið/siðes (216a/1908a), sæ-sæ- (223a/1908b), bundenne/bunden- (216b/1919a), brim-/brim- (222a/1910b), sund/sund- (223b/ 1906b), flota famiheals/fleat famigheals (218a/1909a), -clifu/clifu (222a/1911a), -næssas/næssas (223a/1912a), up/up (224b/1912b)

E₁ , E₂ :E—sædon/sa le/sale/sælde (226a/302a/1906a/1917a), sid fæpmed scip/sid fæpmd scip (302b/1917), on ancre fæst/once rbendum fæst (303a/1918a), -wudu/wudu (226a/1919a)

W:W—syrcan/-syrcan (226b/1890a)

X:X— weard/-weard/-wearde/-weard (229b/1890b/1900a/1914b)

In addition to items of verbal correspondence among instances of a theme, there exists in Beowulf and other Old English poetry a tradition-dependent, local resonance of morphs that may be called responsion .^[19] Rather than being attached to a certain narrative event or pattern and echoing traditionally against other occurrences of that same event or pattern, these words respond to proximate partners, lexical relatives usually no more than about twenty

lines away, and often much closer.^[20] Although there is no opportunity in the present discussion to do more than suggest the presence of responsion and to list the occurrences in the Sea Voyage theme (see below), I would emphasize its importance to the poetics of Beowulf . For example, many rhetorical figures attributed by some critics to direct borrowing from Latin authors can be derived from the interaction between responsion and other aspects of Germanic verse form.^[21]

If the Beowulfian Sea Voyage and the Serbo-Croatian and ancient Greek themes resemble one another quite closely at the level of narrative sequence, they diverge considerably with respect to verbal correspondence. To be sure, there are some hard lexical data (of similarly uneven distribution) for all traditional themes, but these data take quite different, tradition-dependent forms. The Old English correspondence manifests itself chiefly in morphs in positions of metrical stress, with a less strictly defined, more variable phraseological environment. Occasionally a half-line formula—understood in the classical colonic sense—occurs, but this is relatively rare. What correspondence exists in Serbo-Croatian and Greek, in contrast, consists of lines and cola—that is, of the bound, encapsulated phrases that form in symbiosis with a syllabic and consistently demarcated metric. Neither the Sea Voyage nor either of the other two units is less a theme for its similarity to or divergence from its counterparts, rather, each theme takes shape in a form governed by the prosody of the tradition involved.^[22]

One further example of the Sea Voyage in Beowulf may help both to broaden our understanding of the unit and to point the way toward the aesthetic implications of traditional structures.^[23] Early in the poem, long before Beowulf appears, the archetypal hero Scyld Scefing embarks on a sea voyage, albeit of a significantly different sort. For Scyld the journey is his funeral, the ritual marking his passage from this world to the next. At the appointed time, we are told, Scyld "led his men to the ship" (A, 26-31), with the surviving retainers bearing him according to his previous order. In the next few lines we hear that "the ship waits, moored" (B, 32-33), and that he and his men "board the ship, carrying treasure and armor" (C, 34-48a), the hero being laid by the mast with his grave-gifts and appropriately eulogized by the poet with a litotes. Just as the C element is elaborated with descriptions of the treasure and the hero, so the D element, "Departure, voyage on the sea, arrival" (48b-50a), is correspondingly foreshortened; this is after all no customary Sea Voyage but a ship burial. Finally, instead of the expected form of element E ("They moor the ship"), we hear the agnostic profession of ignorance over Scyld's destination (50b-52):

Men ne cunnon
secgan to soðe,
seleræedend e, hæleð under heofenum, hwa pæm hlæset onfeng.

Men do not know
[how] to say in truth, hall-counselors,
heroes under the heavens, who received that burden.

Whether this particular usage of the Sea Voyage theme was a widely traditional one we shall probably never know, but the recognition of its existence at the root of Scyld's funeral enlarges our notion of thematic morphology and offers a perspective on the poet's art. First, because this narrative structure can be employed in such an (apparently) unusual way, we have more evidence of the Old English theme's consistent narrative pattern and extremely variable phraseology. Complementarily, the referential meaning of the thematic structure—Sea Voyage—imbues the funeral with a significance far beyond the actual event. Not only are the poet and his tradition conceiving of the great hero's departure as a sort of ultimate Sea Voyage,^[24] but the conspicuous absence of the traditional closure in the mooring of the ship powerfully evokes

the cosmic overtones of this last and special journey as well. This view of Scyld's passage from the world is made possible through the metonymic poetics of oral tradition, without whose associative dynamics such a perspective could not be achieved.