A chara, - Having now taught the old English epic poem Beowulf at Trinity for over 30 years, I warmly welcome the renewed interest in it inspired by the championing of the poem by Seamus Heaney and the promise of his forthcoming translation. But I would not wish readers of The Irish Times to suppose that it is aptly characterised as a work of "barbaric splendour" (An Irishwoman's Diary, April 13th).
Beowulf is a poem of great sophistication and profound wisdom, and the poet is ever mindful of the customs of peoples and the courtesies of kings and queens. The poet emphasises the need to foster good relations among neighbouring peoples (e.g. Danes and Geats), to avoid rash military expeditions (e.g. the Geats against the Frisians), to endure sorrow with dignity and patience when no obvious remedy is to hand, and to guard against arrogance in the exercise of royal power. Above all, he holds out a warning against the futility of the code of vengeance.
Beowulf ends with the exile and humiliation of the Geatish people as the price they have to pay for the indomitable will of their heroic king. The world of the poem is one subject not merely to wyrd or fate, but to the power of God. The poet asserts in his grim and unrelenting way the triumph of good over evil, but he is not so simple-minded as to identify goodness and evil as such with mere human protagonists (let us say, a Tony Blair and a Slobodan Milosevic). If we want a spectacle of barbarism we shall find it not in the great English epic poem, but in the bombing of the peoples and territory of Yugoslavia and in the exodus of the Albanian refugees from Kosovo. - Is mise,
Gerald Morgan, FTCD, School of English, Trinity College, Dublin 2.