Some of the themes of the poem noted by the critics include the balance between creation and destruction in the poem (the promise of paradise and the threat of the flood), man’s inherent need to praise God, the contrast between obedience and rebellion, the figurative connections between Old and New Testament concerns (for example, the sacrifice of Isaac reflecting the murder of Abel and the crucifixion and redemption of Christ), the importance of property and kinship ties in creating stability, the difficulty of discovering the truth in a world of appearances and disguises, and the relative innocence and guilt of Adam and Eve (see Fulk and Cain, 206–23, for a summary). On this last point, Eve’s wacran hige, which has often been translated as “weaker mind,” is now much debated. Chance argues for translating OE wac as “‘more yielding’ or ‘more pliant’ or ‘more wanting in courage, or mental or moral strength’ as in manly strength” (1986, 74), and Robinson argues for a translation of “soft, pliant, yielding,” in line with Old High German and Old Saxon forms (1994, 124–27).
The relation of the two parts of the poem, now known as Genesis A and Genesis B, is complex. Lines 235–851 in the Old English (225–942 in my translation) have different linguistic features and poetic styles, including a large number of long lines in Genesis B (which accounts for the greater number of lines in my translation). In 1875, Sievers pointed out the differences between the two portions of Genesis and surmised that the central passage (now called Genesis B) was translated from an unknown Old Saxon source that was later discovered in 1894 in a Vatican manuscript. The Old Saxon poem is included in Doane’s edition of Genesis B in The Saxon Genesis. Doane argues that the translation, or more properly “transformation,” of Genesis B and its insertion into the existing poem, Genesis A, probably took place in the late ninth or early tenth century (1991, 47 ff.). The composition date for Genesis A cannot be precisely determined, but Doane argues for sometime between 650 and 900 (1978, 36). Parts of Genesis A seem to have been revised at the point of the insertion of Genesis B (see Doane, 1978, 35–36, and 1991, 48). Doane (citing Evans) notes that Genesis B “is not a translation or paraphrase [of The Saxon Genesis] but an explanatory renarrativization, a haggadah,” explaining that “the first substantial episode we have, the Fall of the angels … has no direct biblical counterpart (though it goes back ultimately to certain biblical verses (Genesis 6.2–4, Isaiah 14.12–15, Apocalypse 12.9, etc.), but was, of course, a well-established traditional topos indispensible in Christian preaching and commentary” (1991, 93). Many details of Genesis B draw upon biblical passages but expand them or differ from them in significant ways. For example, Doane notes the following differences with respect to the Fall:
In Genesis B the Prohibition against eating of the Tree of Knowledge is given to both Adam and Eve, not Adam alone; the unbiblical Fall of Satan, providing the efficient and formal causes of sin, filled with dramatic speeches, is placed between the Creation of Man and the Fall of Man; Adam and Eve are tempted not by Satan or a snake, but by Satan’s messenger who enters a snake’s body; the tempter approaches Adam first, and failing, tempts Eve; Eve is tempted by being told that the command not to eat has been rescinded; Eve’s tempter appears to her as an “angel of light”; when she eats, Eve has an “angelic” vision; all this action is revealed in or accompanied by elaborate psychologically motivated speeches; Adam reproaches Eve and then acknowledges his guilt; Adam and Eve repent before they are reproached by God who does not appear to Adam and Eve after their sin. (1991, 94)
Fulk and Cain point out that “unlike his nameless counterpart in Genesis A, Satan is individualized in Genesis B by his heroic speeches to his fallen comrades, speeches that are Miltonic in their stoic commitment to resistance and vengeance,” noting further that “the sentiments and diction may be explained as heroic conventions, but it remains remarkable that the poet, like Milton, chose to narrate these events from Satan’s point of view, placing God in the inscrutable distance” (113–14). Doane points out that the end of Genesis B has a tone “reminiscent of the ending of Paradise Lost, with its tentative quietness and a sense of an ending that is a new beginning” (1991, 302). Milton wrote about Anglo-Saxon matters in his History of Britain and was a friend of Junius, so he may well have known about the Old English poem, yet most authorities acknowledge that the “Old English influence on Milton’s epic remains impossible to prove” (Fulk and Cain, 228). It is remarkable that Milton’s verse in Paradise Lost is heavily alliterative; and often because of the presence of a weak foot in the poetic line, it can be scanned as both iambic pentameter and as a loose form of strong-stress, alliterative verse. This is clear, for example, in the opening lines, scanned below in both ways. In the first example, the weak foot in each line appears in italics; in the second, the stressed syllables that alliterate are underlined:
Scanned as iambic pentameter
Of mán’s first dísobédience, ánd the frúit
Of thát forbídden trée whose mórtal táste
Brought déath intó the wórld and áll our wóe
Scanned as OE-style strong-stress verse
Of mán’s fírst disobédience, and the frúit
Of that forbídden trée whose mórtal táste
Brought déath into the wórld and áll our wóe
My own experience as a translator leads me to believe that there is some connection in terms of form, characterization, and narrative thread between the two poems.
There are a number of gaps in the poetic text of Genesis, either because of missing manuscript pages or inexplicable omissions in the narrative. Where these gaps are short and simple, I have sometimes filled them in with brackets by drawing upon the Vulgate Bible. Where longer passages are lost, I have tried in a similar fashion to give a poetic indication in brackets of who is speaking or what the situation is when the narrative or dialogue takes up after a lacuna.
Genesis A
It is right to praise the Lord of heaven
With wise words and loving hearts.
He is almighty, infinite, eternal, abiding—
Source and Shaper, Guardian of glory,
King of all exalted creatures, Lord of hosts. 5
He exists before beginning, beyond ending.
Righteous and steadfast, he will rule forever
The embracing expanse of high heaven,
Its length and breadth, its range and reach,
First established for the children of glory, 10
The guardian angels, the hallowed host,
Who held a bounty of brightness and bliss
Through the emanating might of their bold Maker.
The triumphant angels raised glad-hearted hymns,
Loving their Lord, living in his light. 15
Their being was bliss. Their glory was great.
They knew no sin, conceived no crime—
Their hearts and minds were wholly with God.
They praised and revealed only righteousness
In their home in heaven, manifesting truth— 20
Until some unwise angels fell into error,
Seduced by pride and perversity into rebellion
Against God by their arrogant leader.
They lost the Lord’s love and their own good,
Turning from friends to fiends, from bliss to bale. 25
That band of traitors shamelessly boasted
That they intended to section off and share
God’s glorious mansion, ration its rooms,
Brashly apportion its brightness and beauty.
That idea undid them. Their thoughts were thieves, 30
Their words were wounds. The unruly rebel
Who conceived that crime thirsted for power,
Weaving a web of pride and presumption,
Urging his unholy band to embrace envy
And seize their freedom from the holy tyrant 35
Who ruled the realm. He wanted a home
With his own bright, breathtaking throne
In the northern r
egions of heaven’s kingdom.
Then God responded with righteous wrath
Against those angels he had gracefully created 40
In beauty and bliss. He shaped a space
For that proud traitor, a place of torment,
A renegades’ realm, a howling hell—
Deep, enduring, dark, despairing—
Filled with flames, blood-red and biting, 45
Saturated with bitter, singeing smoke,
And the chilling clutch of intense cold.
Then over that eternal prison of pain,
He set an endless, brooding horror,
A monstrous terror, harsh and howling. 50
Those angels brashly rebelled against God;
Those devils reaped the reward of the damned.
The ravaging demons desired a kingdom—
They imagined it easy, underestimating God,
Who stifled their hopes of sharing his power 55
By raising his hand against their arrogance.
He defeated his enemy, crushing their courage,
Punishing their pride, abolishing their bliss.
In his sovereign strength, he ordered them out
Of their home in heaven—his wrath, their ruin. 60
So our Creator thrust out the throng
Of unthriving angels, twisted traitors,
Who traveled endlessly an exile-road,
Lamenting their loss, keening for their crime.
Their boasting was blistered, their pride punctured, 65
Their dreams debunked, their beauty destroyed.
Those malevolent demons lived in misery,
Drinking down sorrow, feasting on woe.
They had gone from angels to outcasts,
Laughing little at the horrors of hell. 70
They dwelled in darkness, defiled, defamed,
Caught in the clutch of deathless terror—
Suffering exile for their strife against God.
Then fellowship was once again restored
In heaven where peace and promise prevailed, 75
And the Lord of hosts was loved by his thanes,
That faithful band of unfallen angels,
Gathered in glory, bound in bliss.
All enmity was outlawed, all strife sequestered,
All dissent delivered to an everlasting doom, 80
When the rebel host was expelled from the light
And love of God. After the fiends’ fall,
There were empty thrones throughout heaven,
Seats of grandeur and glory, waiting for other
Inhabitants to occupy since the fallen angels 85
Who betrayed their trust were disbanded, disowned—
Discovering their demon-selves in hell’s dungeon.
Then our Lord meditated in his infinite mind
How he might resettle the lost lands
Of the overthrown angels, bring a better host 90
Than those boasters and brazen unbuilders
To the now empty thrones. So God ordained
In his endless imagination and sustaining strength
That he would shape a brave new world
Under heaven’s roof for creatures to come, 95
An expanse of air and earth, sea and sky,
A realm called paradise for a race of people
Who would take the place of the fallen angels,
Who rebelled against glory and were gathered up
And expelled into darkness, hurled in the abyss, 100
Where nothing existed in that unshaped space,
That untouched time. The void was desolate,
Dark and deep, empty and idle,
Fruitless and fallow, unmade, unmoving.
Resolute and righteous, God began to gaze 105
Into the empty clutch of unfolding creation,
Powering possibilities according to his plan.
That cheerless abyss of never-ending night
Was next to nothing till the mighty one made
A wondrous world from the dark wasteland 110
With his shaping word. The King of glory
First created heaven and earth, laying out the land,
Lifting up the sky. He was the boldest of builders,
Surest of shapers, Maker unmatched.
But the verdant sweep could not be seen— 115
The plains of earth were not green with grass,
The seas were not yet shimmering blue—
And blackness shrouded the curve of creation.
Then the bright spirit of heaven’s Keeper,
Our Shaper and Sustainer, arose endowing 120
Life over the deep, out of the abyss.
The bold Lord of angels, Bestower of life,
Commanded brightness born in the void,
And the light shone forth as God had said,
So his will was realized, his purpose fulfilled. 125
Then the Lord triumphant, our radiant Ruler,
Divided light from darkness over the waves,
Separating the space into radiance and shadow.
He called each force of creation forth
With his wondrous word, giving each its name. 130
The light he called “Day,” beautiful and bright,
And the Lord was pleased with his first day’s work.
His light created and constrained the shadow,
Sometimes defining or deepening the shade,
Sometimes dispelling it, driving it into darkness. 135
When time transpired and the spirit of making
Moved over the material of middle-earth,
The Lord made evening and in its wake,
A sweeping darkness he named “Night,”
Shaping and separating Day from Night, 140
So that ever after they should come and go,
Always one hard on the heels of the other.
After the first night came the second day,
When the Lord of life made the heavens,
Fashioned the firmament separate in the sky 145
From the great waters covering the earth.
He lifted a part of the broad sea
Into the vast expanse of sky, raising a roof
Over middle-earth with his shaping word.
Then the glorious morning of the third day 150
Arrived on earth, a shimmering brightness
Over an endless flood. There was no dry land
Till the Lord of angels commanded the waters
To keep confined to bed and stream,
Running in river-roads from land to sea. 155
The endless oceans gathered and held,
Created and constrained by the word of God.
The sea was separated from the dry land.
So the Shepherd of life gazed at the ground,
Wide and dry, and named it “Earth.” 160
He bound the waves, brought them to the shore,
Making the strand, the sea’s landed edge.
* * *
It did not seem right to the Ruler of heaven
That Adam should remain alone in paradise,
Sole keeper and caretaker of his new creation, 165
So the Lord almighty, high King of heaven,
Source and Shaper of light and life,
Created a helpmate in the form of a woman,
A beautiful wife for his beloved Adam.
He drew her substance from Adam’s rib 170
While the man was safe in the arms of sleep.
He felt no pain, no rip of rib,
No broken limb or bloody wound.
The Lord of angels drew the burgeoning bone
From his unwounded body and wrought a woman, 175
Breathing into her flourishing form
The breath of life, her immortal soul.
Their spirits quickened—they were like angels,
Adam and Eve, bride and groom,
Born immediat
ely into bright youth, 180
Entering Eden through their Maker’s might.
They knew no evil, felt no enmity,
Suffered no sin. Their minds were meant
To follow faithfully God’s commands.
Their hearts burned pure with the Lord’s love. 185
The happy-hearted King of the world’s creatures
Then blessed the first man and woman,
Mother and father of mankind, saying:
“Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth with offspring.
Gather your children in the green garden, 190
Your sons and daughters. Cherish your family.
You shall have dominion over all the earth
And the salt-seas. Enjoy the land’s harvest,
The sweet song of birds, the fish of the ocean,
The cattle in the fields, the beasts in the wild, 195
Whatever walks on the land or swims in the sea,
Flies in the air or burrows in the ground—
Every living mystery is made for you.”
Then our Lord saw the wonder of his works,
The fruit of his labors, the quickening of creation. 200
Paradise was a glorious guest-house filled
With the shape and spirit of God’s intentions,
Glorious bodies with a natural grace.
Water rose from deep well-springs
To saturate the land, sustaining life. 205
Rain-clouds did not yet roam the skies,
Sweeping storms across fields and plains,
But the earth was still alive with crops,
Vital with verdant shoots and leaves,
Bright blooms muscling toward full fruit. 210
Four great rivers ran out of paradise,
Separated and sustained by the Lord’s power,
Fed by the well-springs at the heart of Eden,
Where a radiant fountain ascended in the air.
The Complete Old English Poems Page 11
