Jon,
I did urge you rather bluntly to read the poem again but I wasn't throwing
acid in your face. Where is the 'vitriolic explosion' in my earlier reply?
I may have some for you, though, towards the end of this one.
At 12:21 AM 3/7/03, Jon & Anne Weidler wrote:
>My. I did not expect this kind of vitriolic explosion -- Tim asked a
>question about Buddhism and the Wanderer that I tried, in my own
>limited way, to address. Perhaps others noticed: I approached the
>issue in good faith, and his response was entirely inappropriate to the
>tone of my original comment.
>Tim: I apologize for addressing you, and I assure you it will not
>happen again.
Why enter a discussion of the poem with a premature post that begins: "I
don't have my translation handy, but from what I remember of the
Wanderer..." ?
The Wanderer is a poem whose speaker, when he was a young man, lost all of
his friends and kin in a massacre which he could never forget for the rest
of his life. Dislocated he wanders as an exile looking for a place that
will take him in. The memories of that scene overwhelm him every day. What
you remembered about the poem was something about "dualistic metaphysics"
and "mutability". Wouldn't you agree that these are "vague recollections"
? I was suggesting that you read the poem again; otherwise one ends up
discussing the labels on the memory-box.
Weidler:
> If the other members of the list are as offended by my
>offhand comments as youare, I trust they'll inform me. In the event
>that few share your opinion, this spectacle of spleen has been nothing
>but an isolated misfortune, and I'll do my best not to let it ruin my
>day.
>
>Weidler:
>>in line 115, which "faestnung stondeth". Being loaned versus standing
>>fast; that was the entirety of the contrast I wanted to make; a place of
>>suffering where all that is loved can be stolen versus a place of permanence
>>where all that was loved is remembered. My respondent had to blow this
>>all out
>>of proportion, servicing some act in an interior drama. Fantastic new
>>technologies we use, telescoping human grasp while shrinking all sense
>>of proportion, all usefulness of effort.
>>Romano:
>>The poet of The Wanderer, btw, *is* the "original poet"; they're one
>>and the same; The Wanderer is not an oral-lay but a tightly constrained
>>*literary* work that uses the formalities of chiasm and numerical
>>compositional constraint as a sort of checksum to guard against
>>unfaithful transmission in an age when poems were copied out by hand or
>>memorized.
Weidler:
>>[Having been there yourself, I'll take your word for it.]
Well, that's not only a snide comment, but one that doesn't make sense. One
can examine the form of a poem surviving from the Anglo-Saxon period
without having to be oneself almost as old as the Mel Brooks character.
Although you don't have to take my word for anything at all, I did study
Old English for seven years in school and have done an edition of this
poem. The evidence I discuss there calls into question much accepted
opinion about the "orality" of Old English poetry. The assertions I made
above are "new" -- I made them five years ago but it takes a very long time
for anything new to be accepted among Anglo-Saxon scholars, especially when
it would require established scholars having to admit that their own
long-held opinions have been misguided. Moreover, there are only a few
people in the world who are both good enough at Old English AND good enough
readers of poetry to be competent judges of my claims. One of them is David
Howlett (D.Phil. Oxford, editor of the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from
British Sources). Howlett's work has influenced my views of the poem, and
he has let me know that my own work on this poem shed new light on it for him.
Romano:
>>The deciding factor in determining whether a work from this period is
>>'literate' as distinct from and 'oral' is not whether pen and ink were
>>used during its composition, and not whether pen and ink were used in its
>>transmission, and not whether oral-formulae are employed, but the fact
>>that the poem as it stands is a "perfected" work that does not admit of any
>>alteration, loss, or accumulation of new detail without violence to its form.
>>form.
>>[Who said anything about literate, one way or another? Did I
>>ever say the Wanderer wasn't a good poem?
Jon, "literate" is jargon (my apologies) and it doesn't mean "good". I
wrote (and I see now that my fingers garbled the letters) "... 'literate'
as distinct from and [sic] 'oral' ..." Literate vs. oral. You brought
the subject up implicitly when you said:
"One might argue (and many have) that this worldview [i.e.
sufferings we endure here in this land are the consequences of constant
mutability] reflects more of the monastic scribes than it does **the
Wanderer's original poet**" [emphasis and clarification, mine]
Weidler:
>>Every scholar knows that debates exist around the provenance of very old
>>texts, and there's no need acting self-righteous about the suggestion
>>that more than one intelligent mind worked this poem over before it found
>>its way to Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader and onto the world wide web. Big
>>deal. Shakespeare and the Bible aren't immune from textual skepticism,
>>so save your breath about the
>>single author of the Wanderer. It hardly matters as much as your
>>gesticulations insist.]
Actually, Jon, in the context of literary history (such as it is) it does
matter quite a lot. And it matters a lot to me to be able to recover the
work of this poet and demonstrate its formal integrity I spent quite a lot
of effort in supporting my claims (they're set forth in the edition);
Finally, if anyone is "gesticulating", it would be you, who are far too
willing to discuss at length things of which you have no firsthand or
intimate knowledge. You also have done this with respect to Pound. You have
been known to issue a disclaimer to the effect that you haven't read a lot
of Pound's work before you launch into a long theoretical post about
it. Something for you to learn, as an eventual reader of Pound: spouting
second-hand opinion doesn't cut it.
Tim Romano
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