The thing about studying Beowulf for years and years in a wild-eyed novelist->translator fashion is that basically, everything political right now looks very Beowulfian, and I am waiting for a dragon to get up in it, but it might be 50 years.
I mean, seriously, all these things are built on Beowulfian themes. Monsters are coming. Heroes are here. Build the wall. Oh no! Breached wall! Kill the monsters! And their kids! They want our gold, our blood, our bodies! We need a hero! A guy with brass balls!
That hero, because he sounds confident, certain & thus heroic? We’ll give him all the power. He’ll be a good king. Never mind the things we know about good kings we’ve had before & how they lost their shit once they had all the power. Give that dude the power! Let’s see!
As humans, I say as someone whose been throat deep in the folkloric and mythological history of story, we have a consistent many thousand year tendency to mistake arrogance for accuracy. And so we elect these guys. Give them the power. And are shocked when they Heremod out.
It is not a new thing, the granting power to narcissists. It is, in fact, a huge part of myth. Narcissistic personality disorders are easily mistaken for heroic personalities. In times of fear and nervousness, humans go for narcissistic leaders because they look like saviors.
Beowulf doesn’t go Heremod, but he does go to war, solo, against a dragon, as an old man, because he doesn’t think anyone else is up to it. Do we have modern equivalents of this behavior? Can we expect narcissistic old men in power now to go hard at the ill-advised? Yep.
And in truth, it makes perfect sense, if you’re a powerful narcissist, to go hard at legacy projects. Those projects, whether they are dragon-slaying or the smashing of unions, live on after you, confirming your badassery and making your story stay lit for a thousand years.
It doesn’t matter if you’re the guy who took down America. You’re the guy who took down America! If doesn’t matter if you’re the guy who took down the UK. You’re the guy who took down the UK! You did a dragon. Bring out the hoardgold. Light that pyre. Tell that story.
So, what’s the dragon? What’s the thing that, at least, slays the slayer of society, shifts the power to something new? I wish I knew. In Beowulf, the dragon is an older story. It’s the story that came before these fuckers started sword-shaking. So what’s the older story here?
The civilizations being challenged by these narcissistic leaders have questionable underpinnings themselves. It’s not as though “America” didn’t need to be punctured and reacalibrated. What built America? Slavery and genocide. And other things too, but those? Need recognizing.
Same with Great Britain, of course, colonialist ingredients, catastrophic world implications. There are dragons, but the Narcissistic Old Man Leaders of America & the UK? Claim they’re going at dragons, but the dragons they’re going for are actually just their people.
I don’t know what any of the answers are here. In Beowulf, the dragon, bearer of ancient traditions, hoarder of cursed gold, prehistoric fury, kills Beowulf even as she is killed by Beowulf & his right hand man. Modern times ensue. Blood is the bridge between eras.
At the end of the poem, we learn that everyone’s coming for the newly unprotected Geats, but they mourn slowly, building, by request, a lighthouse to let mariners know Beowulf Was Here. If I were writing the poem, I’d end in overturn. But I didn’t. Now? Maybe that’s the story.
In the Beowulf poem, though, there are moments when characters warn each other against becoming narcissistic leaders. These aren’t moments of major action. They’re the moments when old kings speak fears to young warriors, telling them “don’t let your story be that you were bad.”
Maybe, I say right now, having read this poem a hundred times, gnashing over why it’s still here, why it’s canon, why we care, this is the real story. That story is the only lasting weapon against evil. That story, good story, can flare across the night sky & change how it looks.
And so, as always, I’m thinking about which story is the light, whether designed or innate, lighthouse or dragonfire. I’m thinking about how to change all the stories to arrive at one that can keep going viably toward good in this century. What kind of heroes we need to create.
Large groups of heroes. Daily, prosaic heroes, story shaping shifters of civilization. The antidote to solo heroes in the Good King tradition. Those solo heroes, even in the Beowulf poem, written a thousand years and more ago, often get it wrong.
If you want to read my thoughts on Beowulf in artistic format rather than thread, The Mere Wife, an adaptation of Beowulf set in contemporary American suburbia, is in paperback now, and my new translation of Beowulf comes out from @mcdbooks @FSGOriginals in August. 🐉
Here’s the cover of my new Beowulf translation, coming from @FSGOriginals/ @mcdbooks/ @fsgbooks in August 2020 & @scribepub in the UK/Australia. Designed by Keith Hayes. As for the contents, I can only say, it ain’t your daddy’s Beowulf. You can preorder now, ARCs coming soon! 🐉 
