Showing posts with label Back to the classics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Back to the classics. Show all posts

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Back to the Classics (2): Beowulf

I went to see the new Beowulf movie recently. In 3D at London's Imax cinema it was quite impressive and I do think it captured the feel of an Anglo-Saxon warrior epic, even if it did depart somewhat from the storyline of the poem, composed sometime between the 8th and 11th century - sorry to say the sub-plot of heroes being seduced by an elf-shining Angela Jolie character doesn't feature in the original.
The poem and the film do though both emphasise the centrality of the mead hall, a combination of royal court with drinking, banqueting and music hall. A place of wine, women and song, or mead, maidens and minstrels. We are told that Hrothgar, the king, set his mind on 'a master mead-house, mightier far than ever was seen by the sons of earth'. The hall, 'high, gabled wide' was named Heorot - 'the Hart' or 'Stag', subsequently to be the name of many pubs down to the present day. The monster Grendel was prompted to attack out of jealousy for the pleasures to be had in the mead hall: 'with envy and anger an evil spirit endured the dole in his dark abode, that he heard each day the din of revel high in the hall: there harps rang out, clear song of the singer... So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel a winsome life'. Grendel launches a murderous assault when the Danes after a long night 'outreveled to rest had gone'.
It is probable that an epic like Beowulf was originally recited to music and for the warriors in the poem to pass into the lays of minstrels as heroes was a form of immortality - to be sung about and remembered, as the legendary Beowulf still is over a thousand year of later. But the musicality of Beowulf is not confined to the deeds of harpists and minstrels, but is embedded in its language, especially the kennings - poetic descriptions of the everyday by which, for instance, the sea becomes 'the whale road', 'the swan road' or 'the gannet's bath'. These are the kind of figures that recur in English folk song over the centuries.
Quotes from Francis B. Gummere's translation from the Old English.

Friday, July 20, 2007

Back to the Classics (1): Gilgamesh

Just how fundamental is musicking and dancing to human experience? To be sure, 'music', 'dance' and indeed 'human' have meant different things to people in different times and places, but it is also clear there are continuities across time and space. As one of my favourite DJs might say, let's get back to the classics and have a look.

First up, there's Gilgamesh, arguably the oldest surviving substantial work of literature. Various tellings of this Babylonian epic tale have been found written on stone tablets some four thousand years ago. The story tells of a king who goes on various monster-slaying, goddess-defying adventures in search of the secret of eternal life only to discover the futility of his quest in the face of human mortality.

In this tale, music and dancing are presented as being very much part of the good life. Making offerings to deities and heroes, Gilgamesh presents ‘A flute of carnelian… for Dumuzi, the shepherd beloved of Ishtar'. Another character is tempted into Gilgamesh's city with the promise that 'Every Day in Uruk there is a festival, The drums there rap out the beat, And there are harlots, most comely of figure, Graced with charm and full of delights'.

The most remarkable section for me is where Gilgamesh encounters Shiduri, a goddess who keeps a tavern at the edge of the world. She urges him to abandon his quest and focus instead on human pleasures:

'But you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full, enjoy yourself always by day and by night! Make merry each day, Dance and play day and night! Let your clothes be clean, Let your head be washed, may you bathe in water! Gaze on the child who holds your hand, Let your wife enjoy your repeated embrace!'.

This is timeless advice and arguably still holds true for those fighting today in the land where this story was first written (present day Iraq), as well as for the rest of us.

Quotes from the 'The Epic of Gilgamesh' translated by Andrew George (Allen Lane, 1999)