volume 1.1, 2000
Gabe Christian Foreman - The Shape of the Unspoken
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
-T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
The adversarial relationship between Grendel and Beowulf suggests more than a conflict between man and monster. Their struggle embodies an ongoing tension between speech and silence that resonates through the whole poem. More specifically, the confrontation pits the assertions of speech--that the world is dividable into separate definable objects, and that there are meaningful relationships between those objects--against a backdrop of silence which, subtly but insistently, challenges those assertions.(1) In Beowulf, I will argue, Grendel is that silence and Beowulf is his enemy primarily as one who speaks. It is necessary first to establish speech and silence within a more comprehensive framework, and to apply that framework to a study of Grendel and then Beowulf himself.
In Beowulf, the spoken word is used repeatedly by the characters to confirm identity and establish intent. In "Speech as Gift in Beowulf," Robert E. Bjork addresses the importance of this process, the highly-meaningful exchange of words, by noting (and exploring the fact in detail) that, to an Anglo-Saxon audience, words are objects. The trade of words stands equivalent to the exchange of gifts which is vital to the survival of the community (994-5). Given its social importance, any serious attempt to understand speech must take into account its more mechanical details. The intention of the speaker and the process of understanding must be included as sub-social factors driving the exchange. Speech act theory provides the best basis for such exploration.
First of all, it is one of the fundamental tenets of speech act theory that, aside from the grammatical and logical content, an utterance must satisfy certain conditions in order to convey meaning. The conditions are shared between the speaker and the hearer and concentrate on the act of communication as it exists in time and space. It is not enough for a speaker merely to intend a certain meaning and to phrase it with appropriate words; rather, the speaker's intentions are satisfied in the understanding of the hearer.(2) Essentially, a successful speech act depends on the meaning of the speaker's utterance being understood by the hearer. In other words, speech cannot have meaning in a vacuum; the utterance intends to impart its meaning in the hearer.(3) However, the speech act model leaves an important space for uncertainty: it is possible that the speaker will not know if his utterance has been successful if the hearer does not provide verification that he has been understood. Silence (or the equivalent absence of a confirming gesture, like a nod, a shake of head, a frown of disapproval, etc.) leaves the speaker uncertain of the final status of his "intention." Unlike an explicit acceptance or denial, answering a statement with silence does not implicitly affirm the role of speech as a "vehicle" for meaning; instead, silence can put the role of speech as such a vehicle into question.(4) In such cases, the speech act is exposed in its narrowest sense, as just an act, and worse, as an act that has failed. As a consequence, the spoken word becomes no more meaningful than any other sound since it communicates nothing.(5) Silence becomes the avatar of the inexpressible, undercutting the speaker's attempts to establish meaning.
This basic conception of speech as something applied to silence has strong implications when applied to Beowulf. The position of this paper is to apply the same significance of spoken language to Grendel's character in order to draw out the significance of his silence.(6) In Beowulf-criticism, there has been little attention given to Grendel's lack of speech,(7) but at the same time, considerable effort has been expended to show that the monster possesses human characteristics.(8) This is a strange state of affairs and ultimately a contradictory one, for the more human Grendel is, the more inexplicable becomes the fact that he does not speak. For this reason, Grendel's monstrosity may be seen as deriving from his silence; indeed, his form itself, together with the role he occupies in the poem, can be assessed as resulting from his silence. In a reversal of Bjork's formula of word-as-object, the physical form of Grendel is as indistinct and amorphous as silence is to speech.
The first introduction of Grendel illustrates his mysteriously indistinct role in the poem. The passage is worth some close attention since Grendel's inclusion seems, at most, to lie tangent to more important issues, namely the celebrated creation and the final destruction of the Danish hall, Heorot. The passage demonstrates the monster's ambiguous position as one who destroys but is not responsible for ultimate destruction. Indeed, this introduction provokes the troubling, ongoing question of why Grendel is even in the poem at all.
Sele hlifade
heah ond horngeap, heašowylma bad
lašan liges; ne węs hit lenge ža gen
žęt se ecghete ažumsweorum
ęfter węlniše węcnan scolde. (81b-85)(9)
[The hall towered, high and wide-gabled, waited for fires, hateful flame; (but) it was not yet near that the sword-hate of kinfolk, as a result of deadly enmity, must arise.]
From the very outset of the poem, it is made explicit that Grendel is not a factor--at least not in any direct way--in the destruction of Heorot. "Ecghete"(84a) clearly has nothing to do with Grendel, since he fights only with his hands. The hall will be ruined by the later excesses of kin-fighting, man against man, not through the attacks of Grendel who is treated as an outsider. As such, he is introduced only as a (perhaps rightfully) disturbed neighbour. Indeed, Grendel's role in the poem springs from the creation of the hall rather than its destruction.
Ša se ellengęst earfošlice
žrage gežolode se že in žystrum bad
žęt he dogora gehwam dream gehyrde
hludne in healle. (86-89a)
[Then, the powerful creature painfully endured a time of distress, he who dwelled in darkness, heard joy loud in the hall.]
Because knowing that the hall will be destroyed by men so seriously defuses the potential threat of Grendel, it is especially strange and perhaps important that we are made aware of that from the first several lines. Of course, in the lines following this passage, the monster establishes himself as a violent and volatile force by attacking the hall and devouring some inhabitants but the audience (or the reader) of the poem is already aware that Grendel will be stopped before he can deal complete destruction. The issue at hand is not whether or not he will be contained, but how it will happen. For instance, in his role as a "manscaša" ("wicked ravager")(712a), Grendel will simply have to settle for the mediocre goal of some short-term terror since we know that total calamity, the destruction of the hall, has already been denied to him. Unlike the dragon, who is a true hall-destroyer,(10) Grendel can exact only a limited degree of havoc. Within the poem then, Grendel's role becomes more complicated and delicate than the total devastation presented by the dragon: it hovers between finite distinctions, like the monstrous and the human, and really between verbal definitions themselves. Throughout the poem as a whole, Grendel often portrays the gray area between utter success and pure failure, making him into a symbol of anxiety to those like Beowulf who, as we shall see, want things to make sense.
As the poem progresses and more is revealed about Grendel, he actually becomes less distinct in his role as adversary to the Danes and Beowulf. For instance, his initial crime seems to be one of association, having been committed not by himself but by his legendary ancestor, Cain, who "žęs že he Abel slog" ("because he slew Abel") (108b) was forced from the world of men. As a piece of biography, it bears an uncomfortable similarity to the tainted lineage of our hero, Beowulf, as revealed by Hrothgar: "Gesloh žin fęder fęše męste, / wearž he Heažolafe to handbonan / mid Wilfingum" ("By fighting, your father brought about the greatest feud. He became the hand-slayer of Heatholafe among the Wilfings")(459-61a).(11) Both Beowulf and Grendel bear the burden of their forefathers' actions; if Grendel is to be marred by the deeds of his ancestor, it is difficult to regard Beowulf as unstained. Furthermore, it is not random aggression but retaliation that results in Grendel's first murders, crimes committed as his apparent homeland is encroached upon by a troupe of loudly-singing, hall-building Danes. Therefore, at least part of his ambiguity derives from the fact that he is not wholly dismissible as evil and that he shares notable characteristics with the men who oppose him. For these reasons, he is difficult to identify beyond the most arbitrary of designations, and even these are often ambiguous. Katherine O'Keeffe notes that even within Hrothgar's account of Grendel, three epithets make Grendel a "spirit," four make him a man, two make him a "recognizable monster," and the rest of his terms can be applied to "any hostile agent"(486). Crucially, this shiftiness puts Grendel between many concrete identities,(12) demonstrating the confusion that results from his silence; speech provides a necessary confirmation, even if only to confirm that supposed enemies are actual enemies. As a result, the uncertainty of his identity, lineage, and motives--all deriving from his silence--makes Grendel's very existence indistinct. If he were more explicitly an adversary, one who registers his intentions through some form of declaration, like Unferth to Beowulf for example, it would be difficult to imagine him remaining so stubbornly amorphous. Speech offers at least that much certainty: Grendel blocks this entire knowledge-building process by not participating in it.(13)
Even Grendel's physical description is indistinct; he is verbal silence translated into shape. Appropriately, his form is associated with scenes of clouds, shadows, and darkness. He comes from "under misthleožum" ("under misty-slopes")(710b) and has "wod under wolcnum" ("journeyed under clouded-skies")(714a); he is simultaneously engulfing and sprawling. Specifically, we are told that he "com on wanre niht / scrišan sceadugenga" ("came in dark night to wander, the shadow-walker")(702b-3a). He is the mystery, the potential danger, and the plain uncertainty of shaded places. Even the ordering of the sentence creates a sense of vagueness. "Scrišan" is already a "shifty" verb semantically, ranging from the deliberate "to stalk," through the exploratory "to wander," extending to the decidedly ephemeral and non-human "to glide"; by preceding its subject here, it creates a "wandering" before there is something to "wander." Although such syntax is not uncommon, it has an unsettling effect here. When the subject turns out to be the "shadow-walker," only the most limited clarity is added to the scene.
In the battle for Heorot, the threat of Grendel is actualized: temporarily he succeeds in pulling Beowulf "under sceadu" ("under shadows")(707b) as the differences between the two combatants are dissolved; during the fight, the human and the monstrous converge.(14) Katherine O'Keeffe notes that past interpretations of the terms applied to Grendel leading up to and including this scene such as "rinc"(720b), "aglęca"(732a), "feond"(698b), "se scynscaža" rather than "se synscaža"(707a), have made many translations misleading: editors tend to make him seem more explicitly monstrous or demonic than the original text suggests; similarly, ambiguous references to Beowulf are instead usually given something of the semantic range of "warrior" or "hero" (O'Keeffe 484-6). I agree with O'Keeffe that rather than being flattened, the ambiguity of the passage should be relished--it is here that the entropy which is Grendel dominates the story--since it heightens the point of contact between mankind and its own darker elements (489). However, to diverge from that argument, these darker elements do not need to stop at reflecting the capacity for violence and voraciousness that is in the human heart. The ethical issue can become an epistemological one. What was once fixed--or known--now slides. When the two wrestlers become one form, presumed values about the confrontation collapse to a common denominator of almost meaningless equality. It is not merely the definition of "humanity" that is at stake here, but on a more basic level, the whole possibility of knowing becomes uncertain. In other words, it is not only that Grendel exposes an ethical dilemma, exploring the defining line between man and monster, but that definitions themselves, and thus the utility of speech, are cast into doubt. It is the threat of an unintelligible world that is being realized.(15) Demonstrating this, Grendel and Beowulf lose their difference when they are locked in combat.(16) Furthermore, the shifting points-of-view throughout this scene from Grendel (720-36a), to Beowulf (736b-45a), to an ambiguous viewpoint (745b-66b) and even to those outside the hall (767a-790) add to the sense of disorientation.
When relating his fight with Grendel to the Geats, Beowulf recalls that the battle had occurred "syššan heofenes gim / glad ofer grundas" ("after heaven's gem glided over the grounds") (2072b-3a). It may be for more than poetic reasons that Beowulf did not simply say "at night" since he regularly associates light with what is cleanly-defined and therefore good. For example, after the confusion and fighting with sea-monsters during his swim with Breca (much of which occurs in the murkiness of an underwater environment), Beowulf welcomes the sunrise, where "leoht eastan com / beorht beacen godes" ("light came from the East, a bright beacon of God") (569b-70a). Goodness, for Beowulf, is in direct opposition to mystery.(17) The sun reorients Beowulf within both a spiritual and geographic landscape, annihilating shadows of uncertainty, and like a verbal explanation, it gives objects definition. On the other side of the spectrum, it is appropriate that Grendel, as a "sceadugenga," also "godes yrre bęr" ("bore God's anger")(711b). When explaining to Hrothgar why he has come, Beowulf announces that he had heard that the hall was "idel ond unnyt syššan ęfenleoht / under heofenes hašor beholen weoržeš," ("idle and useless after evening-light was hidden under heaven's vault was hidden")(413-4). When Heorot is removed from God's light it becomes "idle and useless." Beowulf is as affronted by the prospect of a useless hall as by the monster that brings it about. It presents a revealing arrangement of priorities within Beowulf's mind: if the word "hall" as applied to Heorot is to define a place where there is no safety for its people, then the word itself is "idle" to its own definition. Grendel must be killed to prevent the hall from having no purpose. It is the potential absurdity that is the real enemy, to which Grendel is merely an incidental or symbolic harbinger. By undermining the security of language and the social links it provides, Grendel (and silence) isolates every man from others, leading to the break down of normal society and creating the purposelessness that Beowulf finds in Heorot.(18) In contrast, Beowulf is most heroic when he is most decisive, cutting through the fog and fear arising from the monster, restoring Heorot to the concrete security of words.(19)
Although they share a degree of similarity that is most obvious when they are locked in battle, the two adversaries remain antithetical to one another. It would be overstated to suggest that Grendel is almost entirely human or Beowulf is a thinly-disguised monster because until that battle, speech marks them as firm opposites.(20) The silence of Grendel is countered by Beowulf's verbal clarity. Language is the point at which their similarity breaks down and forms the epitome of their difference. Where Grendel's mind presents a world of formless possibility with his silence, Beowulf's presents a world of facts with his words. Where Grendel baffles, Beowulf simplifies and reassures. Even if it is unclear whose "fingras burston" ("fingers burst")(760b) during the fight,(21) it is very clear whose arm has been fastened to the rafters. In a grisly display, Beowulf's dismembering of Grendel marks very clearly the difference between the two fighters: like silence Grendel engulfs those he defeats, leaving no trace behind (Near 325), and Beowulf reduces his opponents to simpler elements, displaying them as signs (essentially, like words).(22)
Since the name "Grendel" was presumably given by the Danes as a label to the phenomenon that was plaguing their people, it is reasonable that it would carry some etymological weight in itself.(23) In his introduction to Beowulf, F.R. Klaeber notes several potential etymological sources. The most likely one seems to be the Old English "grindan" ("to grind"), making Grendel into a "destroyer"(xxviii-xxix). This seems apt, considering that the Danes are painfully aware of the monster's physical attacks. However, Klaeber notes two other possibilities which would emphasize Grendel's form over his deeds. The first is from the Old Norse "grindill" which is "one of the poetical terms for 'storm,'"(presumably derived from "*grenja" ["to bellow"]); and the second derives from "grand," meaning the "bottom (ground) of a body of water"(xxviii-xxix). Interestingly, both "storm" and "bottom of a body of water" have a shapeless quality that could at least contribute to an understanding of Grendel as that which is shapeless and who happens to be a destroyer. Apart from the possible pun with "grindan," the image of the storm and the sea-floor could carry images of destruction in their own right, especially to a culture quite conscious of the dangers of sea travel. In any case, Grendel is given a proper name to bind amorphous characteristics under a single identity. Grendel's name is applied from the outside because he cannot, or chooses not to, say who he is. It is unclear where the knowledge that Grendel is a descendent of Cain has come from; perhaps, he is only given that infamous lineage because he does not offer a contrary one. By not declaring his genealogy, he is tagged with the most notorious line of descent possible. Thus, his silence breeds an evil in itself and his name may be an attempt to consolidate this evil into one form.
When the Geats arrive, the community of Heorot is in stasis. The constant fear of Grendel has numbed the Danes, making not only the hall but the community "idel ond unnyt" ("idle and useless")(413a). Grendel creates a sense of anguish among the Danes (and the poem's audience) because his attacks are both persistant and inconclusive: Hrothgar seems immobile, prepared to "singala seaš" ("brood endlessly") while, at the same time, the monster's raids show no signs of ceasing on their own. Furthermore, the audience bears the additional knowledge that kin-fighting, not Grendel, will ultimately destroy the hall (83b-5), making the function of Grendel at this point in the narrative that much more unfathomable.
It is from this mire of uncertainty that Beowulf saves the Danes as well as the poem's audience through gifts of words. Beginning with his arrival on the Danish coast, Beowulf speaks heroism (Bjork 1011). The poet tells us "werodes wisa wordhord onleac" ("the company's leader unlocked his word-hoard")(259). He is a true benefactor, a giver of words. Repeatedly, Beowulf is called upon to state his intentions and his forthright replies always please his listeners. He lays down sets of decisive possibilities with his speech and makes an inexplicable situation finite and comprehensible. For instance, in Heorot, he tells Wealtheow quite plainly that "ic gefremmen sceal / eorlic ellen ošše endedęg / on žisse meoduhealle minne gebiden" ("I must perform noble valour or meet my death-day in this meadhall")(636b-8). By projecting the future so intelligibly, mapping it so precisely, Beowulf verbally presents a future to the Danes; it is an act that gives credibility back to words.(24) The chasm of Grendel's silence, the uncertainty, is crossed by the bridges of Beowulf's confident assurances. Even if Beowulf were killed, it is nicely accounted for in his frank projection. It works; the poet tells us that "žam wife ša word wel licoden / gilpcwide Geates" ("the woman well liked those words, the boast of the Geat")(639-40a). Soon the hall is cheered by Beowulf's heroic statements, even before he has provided any heroic deeds, but this joy is fragile, lasting only as long as speech is maintained. This passage is, throughout, a revealing one and is worth closer examination:
Ža węs eft swa ęr inne on healle
žryšword sprecen, šeod on sęlum,
sigefolca sweg ož žęt semninga
sunu Healfdenes secean wolde
ęfenręste; wiste žęm ahlęcan
to žęm heahsele hilde gežinged
siššan hie sunnan leoht geseon meahton
ožše nipende niht ofer ealle
scaduhelma gesceapu scrišan cwoman
wan under wolcnum. (642-51a)
[Then it was again as before, inside that hall brave words spoken, nation in happiness, the sound of glorious people, until presently the son of Healfdene wished to go to evening-rest; and knew that the adversary to that high-hall planned an attack since they could look upon the sun's light only until darkened night came over all, shapes of concealing shadows came to stalk, dark under clouded skies.]
What begins as a joyful scene, reminiscent of the happier past, soon erodes back into fear. Most fittingly, the transition is a vague one. When Hrothgar turns his mind toward sleep, the awareness of Grendel returns. When Hrothgar drifts mentally from the "žryšword sprecen" ("brave words spoken")(643a) around him, it is unclear whether the fears about Grendel are his own or if they are shared by those around him. Silence brings a blend of obscurity and fear. Furthermore, if Hrothgar's worried thoughts are shared, it is unclear whether they are shared by words or by the spreading of a silent awareness through the hall. On top of this, neither Grendel nor night is actually being described; they are being imagined as impending facts only. In this way, Grendel's effect precedes his attacks. Indeed, the last lines of this passage literally describe the coming of night, not Grendel, though the two have become almost interchangeable.
When thoughts of Grendel begin to encroach, it becomes increasingly difficult to visualize what exactly is occurring. The action becomes almost ephemeral. For instance, with the verb "scrišan" ("to glide/ stalk")(650b) and the recent reference made to the "ahlęcan" ("adversary") (646b), it becomes very difficult to separate Grendel from the night that he occupies. The uncertainty at work here is a case in point: they are amorphously fused. This possibility emphasizes the fact that Grendel (and presumably all monsters) act as pronouns for human anxieties and concepts. Viewed as such, perhaps it should not be surprising that Grendel's influence persists long after he has officially died. Grendel is the uncertainty of lengthening shadows, and the ability to conceal any number of things.
Although a significant portion of Beowulf's heroism is verbal, he does not always dictate the future with such fine detail. When he announces in Heorot that "gęš a wyrd swa hio scel" ("fate goes always as it must")(455b), it seems that his bravery is mostly an appropriation--through speech--of events beyond his control. This is a less comforting form of bravery perhaps, more of a denial than a confrontation, but it nonetheless forms a large part of his heroism. By saying that whatever will happen is what will happen, Beowulf claims that all outcomes are as they should be, but more importantly, he plants that reality in words. There are no surprises, and even if there is no meaning apparent, there is underlying meaning in "wyrd" because Beowulf says that there is. His credibility makes it believable. Furthermore, when he relates the story of the fight with the sea-monsters, Beowulf adds to this theory. He states that "wyrd oft nereš / unfęgne eorl--šonne his ellen deah" ("fate--as a rule--saves the undoomed nobleman whenever his courage be mighty")(572b-3). In effect, he elaborates on his earlier statement by asserting that whatever does happen is not only accounted for but is proper and perhaps deserved. "Wyrd" then is the word that explains not only why things happen, but why everything happens. In fact, it is such a comprehensive statement that it has virtually no meaning. Nevertheless, through these interesting statements, Beowulf asserts the supremacy of words over silence. It is a thin appropriation that can last only as long as his credibility and his heroism.
The "thinness" that his words acquire begins to plague Beowulf through the second half of the poem. The decisiveness of his speech, and thus his affirmative attitude, are plainly absent. Upon hearing that his own hall is razed, we learn that the king's "breost innan weoll / žeostrum gežoncum swa him gežywe ne węs" ("breast welled inside with dark thoughts, such as was not customary to him")(2331b-2).(25) The reaction is much like Grendel's own fear when he finds he is caught in the grip of stronger hands "ne węs his drohtoš žęr / swylce he on ealderdagum ęr gemette" ("nor was his situation there such as he had ever met in his days of life")(756b-57). The positions have been completely reversed. Beowulf's decisive hold on Grendel is broken, and the hero finds himself caught in the grip of a world he cannot understand. He has taken doubt, mystery, and possibility the very staples of Grendel's form and of silence into his mind. Now, instead of being a "wordhoard" to be "unlocked" (259b), Beowulf's chest "wells inside with dark thoughts" (2331). Sadder and wiser, Beowulf recognizes the possibility of defeat and of potential meaninglessness. After the dragon mortally wounds him, Beowulf echoes the speech that Hrothgar had made when tormented by Grendel in Heorot, with much of the same forlorn tone. Hrothgar had said of his kinsmen that "hie wyrd forsweop / on Grendles gryre. God eaže męg žone dolsceašan / dęda getwęfan" ("fate swept them into Grendel's horror. God easily could that hinder the deeds of that rash foe")(477b-9). Beowulf pursues a similar line with Wiglaf: "ealle wyrd forsweop / mine magas to metodsceafte / earlas on elne; ic him ęfter sceal" ("fate swept all of my kinsmen to their destined end, noblemen in deed; I must go after them")(2814b-6). The essential change in Beowulf is the acceptance that he shows. Rash prediction and boasting have been replaced with resignation. He is on the other side of Wyrd, the more passive side(26): where young Beowulf pronounces the truth, announcing defiantly that "gęš a wyrd swa hio scel" ("fate goes always as it must")(455b), now we are told by the poet that when the old king dies "him of hręšre gewat / sawol secean sošfęstra dom" ("from his breast proceeded his soul to seek the judgement of the firm in truth")(2819b-20a). Truth is out of the range of words; it is something to be found only out there, in death. Beowulf's realization of this idea epitomizes the lingering effect of Grendel in the poem, that things are never as certain as they may seem in words. Even after his death, Grendel's silent and shapeless form moves under and away from definitions, constantly overturning the certainty of knowing. Far more damaging to truth than a direct rebuttal, silence denies the method along with the argument: spoken truth met with silence becomes worse than relative; it becomes private and absurd, the utterings of one voice alone.
The manifest shapelessness of Grendel derives from his verbal silence and the general epistemological chaos that it represents. It is not merely that Grendel merges the characteristics of man and monster, but that such a merging can take place at all which provokes a primaeval, preternatural terror: he undercuts fixity. Literally, Grendel is the embodiment of uncertainty. Therefore, it is not only that Grendel brings evil into humanity that makes him feared, but that he may bring humanity into the amorphous and meaningless: "Leave your words behind, they cannot help you here." Grendel inspires that basic, animal fear that the world is, at its core, unintelligible. Taken more symbolically, Grendel is that fear, gathered loosely under a name, and loosely personified. With an undeniably human motive, Beowulf seeks to impose order on the world by making it wholly intelligible. Grendel shifts from this, and says nothing, and perhaps takes a few backward steps, before moving off like mist on the heath; he reminds Beowulf that such order is always an imposition, and perhaps never more than a human fantasy.
Trent University, Ontario
© Gabe Christian Foreman, 2000
Notes
I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to Sarah Keefer for her generous help and advice in the preparation of this essay.
1. In his "Letter on Humanism," Martin Heidegger stresses, in more existential terms, the importance and power of what lies beyond the limits of language: ". . . if man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless. . . . Before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say. Only thus will the preciousness of its essence be once more bestowed upon the word, and upon man a home for dwelling in the truth of Being"(199).
2. Searle 48.
3. Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations contains a similar argument. Wittgenstein argues for the logical uselessness of a "private language," a language used and understood by only one person (sec. 269-75).
4. In The World of Silence, Max Picard makes positive mention of the "uselessness" of silence. He suggests that silence "interferes with the regular flow of the purposeful. It strengthens the untouchable, it lessens the damage inflicted by exploitation. It makes things whole again, by taking them back from the world of dissipation into the world of wholeness. It gives something of its own holy uselessness, for that is what silence itself is: holy uselessness"(19).
It should also be noted that there has been considerable work done on classifying different
types of silence. See, for example, Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and its Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1995) and Lisa Block Behar, A Rhetoric of Silence and Other Selected Writings. (New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1995). For the purposes of this paper, the type of silence referred to is restricted to that which has just been set forth: specifically, this silence marks the absence of an affirmation to the act of speech, thereby putting the role of the spoken word as a conveyer of meaning into question.
5. I am using Searle's basic constituent for linguistic communication: fundamentally, language requires a particular communicative intention in its production and a similar attitude in its reception, or else it is not language. Essentially, language is not accidental (16-7).
6. On the grammatical aspects of this merger, see Dieterich.
7. Michael R. Near does make significant reference to the fact that Grendel does not speak but towards a different end. In "Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Intrusion of Literacy," as the title suggests Grendel's silence is evidence of an inward-turned mind, one turned away from the community of voices in favour of the private thoughts of literacy. The silence that I am trying to depict is found in the opposite direction so that spoken word is not being outmoded, but undone from within. Silence, is more of a challengeto speech--and to the implicit epistemological claim behind every utterance: that it can claim meaning beyond itself--than a consequence of literacy. Rather than intruding from the outside, this threat, epistemological skepticism, has underlied speech all along.
8. The degree of humanity in Grendel has been much discussed. See, for example Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe's "Beowulf, Lines 702b-836"; for Grendel distinguished in his humanity from the other monsters, Eugene Green's Power, Commitment, and the Right to a Name in Beowulf; or for a survey and summary on various works on the subject, Wayne Hanley's "Grendel's Humanity Again."
9. Taken from Mitchell and Robinson's Beowulf. All translations are my own.
10. See Kroll, 127. She contrasts the dragon with Grendel by noting that, unlike Grendel, the dragon "fights indiscriminately against all" and is "morally and politically neutral" as a result.
11. See Kroll, 121.
12. For a thorough list and comparison of their terms applied to Grendel (with note given to their general disparity) see Tripp's "Grendel Polytropos."
13. See also Near, 325.
14. Eric Wilson suggests that Grendel is "a living example of the loss of distinctions that arise in collective violence; he is both human and monster, a force of chaos who annihilates order and reduces differences to undifferentiated gore" (15).
15. The idea of an unintelligible world is reminiscent of Tolkien's references to the reality of the Northern Cosmos and its impact on humanity: Beowulf is "a man at war with the hostile world and his inevitable overthrow in Time" (67) who can offer only "absolute resistance, perfect because without hope" (70).
16. Girard suggests that "it is not the differences but the loss of them that gives rise to violence and chaos . . . this loss forces men into a perpetual confrontation, one that strips them of all their distinctive characteristics in short, of their 'identities.' Language itself is put in jeopardy." (51).
17. For the same idea of evil associated with mystery, see Duncan's "Epitaphs for Ęglęcan."
18. See also Near for an elaboration on the "strangely inert" character of Heorot (325-6).
19. Kroll, 124: Beowulf and Grendel are "most like each other and most monstrous when directly opposed."
20. See also Near, 326.
21. Seth Lerer notes the parallel relationship between Grendel's dismembered limbs and the story that Beowulf delivers to Hygelac: that is, both are a "tame reminder of horror" (740).
22. The phrase 'fingras burston' is unsupported by a genitive to indicate whose fingers are bursting. The passage runs 'męg Higelaces . . . upslang astod / ond him fęste wišfeng; fingras burston' ('Higelac's kinsman ... stood upright and grasped him firmly; fingers burst')(758b-760).
23. On the etymological significance of proper names in Beowulf, see Harris' "Hands, Helms, and Heroes."
24. See also Bjork, 1005.
25. Numerous studies make reference to Beowulf's general confusion and recognition of one or another form of a "morally ambiguous, fallen world" in the second part of the poem: see Wilson 25-6.
26. Eric Wilson notes that "the most violent is the most favoured by wyrd" (19, 26), so that a more introspective Beowulf, the wise ruler of the second half of the poem, can no longer find comfort in rash confidence and bold declarations.
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