Number 27 July 2005

Social Alienation and Re-creation of Community in The Wanderer and The Seafarer

Leta Waugh

Human beings need community. We need to belong – to a place, and to a people. Without this, we are lost, wandering, exiled. This sense of exile is a theme of much Old English poetry and of the elegies in particular, of which The Wanderer and The Seafarer are two. The Old English elegy has been defined as “a discourse arising from a powerful sense of absence, of separation from what is desired, expressed through characteristic words and themes, and shaping itself by echo and leitmotiv into a poem that moves from disquiet to some kind of acceptance” (Klinck 246). In The Wanderer and The Seafarer, the theme of exile from human society is developed through a number of characteristic sub-themes and acceptance is reached not only by a shifting of the speaker’s focus toward eternal things but also by the creating of a new community by means of the very composition and communication of these poems, especially as they would have been communicated within the early manuscript culture of Anglo-Saxon England (Bragg 27).

In order to best understand any work of art, verbal or otherwise, it is important to attempt to place it within the culture that produced it. This is particularly so with regards to a culture as different from our own as was that of the Anglo-Saxons. We, as twenty-first-century scholars and readers, are not the intended audience of these poems. They were not designed for our eyes or our minds; rather, they were intended for the ears and minds of people with a very different world view, and yet with similar underlying needs as human beings.

Much discussion has taken place with regards to the oral versus literary nature of Old English poetry (Benson, Creed, and Foley); however, it is highly probable that, regardless of the means of composition, the communication of poetry in Anglo-Saxon England was largely an oral, group affair. Barbara C. Raw states: “We know that some poems were composed while being recited while others were more probably composed in writing, but in all cases there was the same emphasis on the poem as something to be performed” (5-6). This performance aspect of Old English poetry is tightly intertwined with the closely-knit communal way of life in Anglo-Saxon England: from professional poets and even kings sharing music and poetry in the hall (Beowulf 2105-10 as quoted in Raw 18) to the passing around of the harp at gatherings of workers on monastic estates (Cædmon 18-23), the performance of poetry was a significant, if not central, element of Anglo-Saxon entertainment and community life. In fact, one of the traditional expressions of the loss or waning of that way of life was to comment on the absence of performances of music and poetry (Raw 26-7).

Anglo-Saxon society was also extremely structured in terms of each person’s place within the social order. To be separated from one’s lord, kin, or comitatus was to be severed from the community as a whole, and to be deprived of one’s entire social position and function. The condition of social alienation that, for the modern person, can derive from a number of situations or mental states, for the Anglo-Saxon primarily took the form of exile (Head 35 and Klinck 225-6). Edward W. Said states the following of the condition of exile:

[Exile] is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. … Exiles feel, therefore, an urgent need to reconstitute their broken lives, usually by choosing to see themselves as part of a triumphant ideology or a restored people. … [A] State of exile free from this triumphant ideology … is virtually unbearable. … Much of the exile’s life is taken up with compensating for disorienting loss by creating a new world to rule. (173-81)

This need of the exiled human being to create a new form of community, a new world, is what is depicted in both The Wanderer and The Seafarer. In The Wanderer, the exile is caught between a longing for a former world that can never be regained and an urge to replace that world by searching for a new lord and a new comitatus, whereas in The Seafarer, the yearning to embark on a journey to “elþēodigra eard (a land of foreigners)” (38) suggests a desire not so much for a former world as for a different one where the seafaring soul is understood and has a recognized and valid place. The focus of both poems shifts progressively from the transitory world of their journeys and longings to eternity, where all journeys will be ended and all longings for the self’s “true home” will be fulfilled. Yet both poems also serve to recreate that needed social bonding in the temporal world as they are shared with a community of other ‘travelers,’ both those among whom the poems would originally have been performed and those who have encountered them throughout the centuries.

Within the exile theme, Stanley B. Greenfield has isolated four characteristic sub-themes that are useful not only in “establish[ing] the dimensions of the poetic convention for the theme of ‘exile’” (353) as he was setting out to do, but also in demonstrating the resolution of that sense of exile into one of renewed community and reaffirmed religious faith. Greenfield outlines these four sub-themes (as well as the verse-formulae that signify them, which will not be outlined here as they are not crucial to the thesis of this essay) in the following order: 1) the exile’s status of excommunication, 2) the exile’s deprivation, 3) the state of mind accompanying exile, and 4) movement in or into exile (354-58). For the purposes of this essay, these four sub-themes will be examined in the reverse order.

In both of the poems, there is physical movement in search of a new place of belonging. In The Wanderer, this movement takes the form of wandering both on land and sea and finally ceases as “snottor on mode [gesitt] him sundor æt rune (the one wise in spirit sits himself apart in secret meditation)” (111); whereas in The Seafarer the movement is away from land, and embarking on the sea in search of a new land, “elþēodigra eard (a land of foreigners)” (38). However, along with this sense of physical movement is visible a psychological movement that is also in search of community: the wanderer ‘wanders’ about within his thoughts trying to decide whether or not to share them before finally sitting down and including “ūs (us)” (115b) in his considerations of heavenly things; the seafarer, on the other hand, moves directly toward his audience by immediately announcing the “sōđgied (true tale)” (1b) he has to tell, in a manner similar to his deliberate embarkation on both his seafaring search and his plans for his journey to his eternal “hām (home)” (117b).

As each of the speakers engages in this movement toward re-establishing community, both eternal and temporal, a change is evident in their respective states of mind as well. The speaker in The Wanderer, who begins “earfeþa gemyndig (mindful of hardship)” (6b) and “seledreorig (sad at the loss of a hall)” (25a), becomes still and settled mentally as well as physically as he contemplates the “fæstnung (stability, permanence)” (115b) that eternity will afford; there is also a sense of calm after he has both released his “hrēo hyge (troubled spirit)” (16a) to his audience and realized that decay and death are not only inevitable but also universal. The seafarer’s “longunge (yearning)” (47a) to be away from “þis dēade līf (this dead life)” (65b) begins to find resolution in the contemplation of “ēcan ēadignesse (everlasting blessedness)” (120) and in the admonishing of those who are also on this journey to “hycgan hwr wē hām āgen, / ond þonne geþencan hū wē þider cumen (think about where we may possess a home, and then consider how we may go there)” (117-18).

Significant among the exile’s concerns is a sense of loss, the deprivation not only of his or her position within society but also of many of those benefits which close community includes. The exile finds himself “frēondlēasne (without friends)” (Wan 28a) and “winemgum bidroren (deprived of beloved kinsmen)” (Sea 16a), with “ne nig hlēomga / fēasceaftig ferđ frēfran meahte (no protecting kinsmen who could console my desolate heart)” (Sea 25b-26). Indeed, the speaker in The Wanderer feels that there is “nū cwicra nān/ þe ic him mōdsefan mīnne durre/ sweotule āsecgan (now none living to whom I dare openly speak my heart)” (9b-11a). But in the sharing of his thoughts and in the contemplation of eternal things, the speaker of each poem realizes that he has become not only “frōd in ferđe (experienced in mind)” (Wan 90) and “snottor on mōde (wise in spirit)” (Wan 111) but also part of a group of fellow exiled travelers heading toward an eternal “hām (home)” (Sea 117b). What had been lost in terms of both position and fellowship within the former community has been regained in part by the shifting of the focus to the eternal and the universal.

Thus, the exile’s status of solitude and excommunication becomes changed to one of inclusion within a new community. The wanderer is no longer “ānhaga (a solitary one)” (1) or a “winelēas guma (friendless man)” (45b) but has found a place from which to share the wisdom he has gained and to admonish his fellow travelers how best to behave while treading these paths of earthly exile. The seafarer also reaches this position of admonisher, and encourages his audience that they too, with him, must steer steadily as they travel hām-ward and give careful thought to their journey. Both speakers have now reached the status of inclusion and have achieved identity and obtained voice within this new community of fellow exiles. The “ic (I)” (Sea 1a, Wan 8a) from the beginning of each poem has become “wē (we)” (Sea 117) or “ūs (us)” (Wan 115b), and neither the speakers nor their hearers and readers are left “wadan wræclāstas (to travel the paths of exile)” (Wan 5a) alone.

The presence of these conventional sub-themes of exile in the two poems contributes to the generic quality of the exile figure being presented. As Barbara Raw states, he is “the platonic form, as it were, of exile” (45). Given the oral performance nature of Old English poetry and the rigid structure of Anglo-Saxon society, this conventional presentation and development of the exile theme has a number of effects on the audience. By re-using traditional images and phrases, the poet draws from the collective memory of his audience, increasing the eloquence and power of his message. As Adam Brooke Davis puts it, “the past hearings ring through the present, condition and enrich, enable the song of the moment” (223-24). The hearers are thus prepared for what is coming and are better able to participate in the “event” that Bragg considers the lyric poem to be (18). The traditional presentation of the exile theme also serves to reinforce the social order, in effect reaffirming the exile’s place within the natural order of things. Finally, the use of generic conventions rather than specific details reaffirms the experience of exile as being universal and positions both the exile of the poem and the member of the audience who identifies with him in their proper places within the new “community of understanding” (Head 35) that is created by the experience.

Elizabeth C. Fine and Jean Haskell Speer state: “[t]he principle of performance … is identification, the sharing of identity” and “performance … makes or constitutes cultural identity, as well as imitates it” (9). It is this sharing and making of cultural identity that is taking place in The Wanderer and The Seafarer as the sense of community that is at first lost to the exile is re-created among the hearers. According to Bragg, “a lyric poem [such as The Wanderer or The Seafarer] is not an object, but an event” (18). It is a point of contact between the poet and the audience (whether that audience be a group of Anglo-Saxons gathered together in the hall or a solitary modern reader), in which communication happens and relationship is established. In The Wanderer and The Seafarer, the sense of separation and loss that is such a definitive part of the Old English elegy is overcome, in part, by this very event, by the sharing and reinforcing of it as part of the common experience. Although, as Said states, the “essential sadness [of exile] can never be surmounted” (173), it can be and is shared within the new community that extends across time and expands with each new audience that encounters these timeless poems.

Works Cited

“Bede’s Account of the Poet Cædmon.” Mitchell and Robinson 221-25.

Benson, Larry D. “The Literary Character of Anglo-Saxon Formulaic Poetry.” Foley 227-42.

Bragg, Lois. The Lyric Speakers of Old English Poetry. London & Toronto: Associated University Presses; 1991.

Creed, Robert P. “The Making of an Anglo-Saxon Poem.” Foley 57-70.

Davis, Adam Brooke. “Epilogue: De Scientia Interpretandi: Oral Tradition and the Place of Other Theories in the Graduate Curriculum.” Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies. Ed. Allen J. Frantzen. Albany: State University of New York Press; 1991. 211-14.

Fine, Elizabeth C., and Jean Haskell Speer, eds. “Introduction.” Performance, Culture, and Identity. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger; 1992. 1-22.

Foley, John Miles. “Literary Art and Oral Tradition in Old English and Serbian Poetry.” Foley 337-78.

Foley, John Miles, ed. Oral-Formulaic Theory: A Folklore Casebook. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc.; 1990.

Greenfield, Stanley B. “The Formulaic Expression of the Them of ‘Exile’ in Anglo-Saxon Poetry.” Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry. Eds. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Stanley J. Kahrl. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books; 1968. 352-62.

Head, Pauline E. Representation and Design: Tracing a Hermeneutics of Old English Poetry. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press; 1997.

Klinck, Anne L. The Old English Elegies: A Critical Edition and Genre Study. Montreal & Kingston: McGill – Queen’s UP; 1992.

Mitchell, Bruce, and Fred C. Robinson. A Guide to Old English. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers; 2002.

Raw, Barbara C. The Art and Background of Old English Poetry. London: Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd; 1978.

Said, Edward W. “Reflections on Exile.” Reflections on Exile and Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta Books; 2000. 173-86.

Seafarer, The. Mitchell and Robinson 277-82.

Wanderer, The. Mitchell and Robinson 271-75.

Weil, Simone. Quoted in Said 183.