Көне ағылшын поэзиясы: "Вульф пен Эадвакер" жұмбағы

Old English poem

"Wulf and Eadwacer" (, approximately ADDwatcher) is an Old English poem in alliterative verse of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and (in speculation on the poem's pre history) as a song or ballad with refrain. The poem is narrated in the first person, most likely with a woman's voice. Because the audience is given so little information about her situation, some scholars argue the story was well known, and that the unnamed speaker corresponds to named figures from other stories, for example, to Signý or that the characters Wulf and Eadwacer correspond to Theoderic the Great and his rival Odoacer. The poem's only extant text is found at folios 100v 101r in the tenth century Exeter Book, alongside other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.

The speaker of the poem is arguably separated from her lover and/or husband, Wulf, both symbolically and materially ('Wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre' [Wulf is on an island, I on another]), and this separation is seemingly maintained by threat of violence ('willað hy hine aþecgan' [they will want to ?seize him]), possibly by her own people ('Leodum is minum swylce him mon lac gife' [it is to my people as though someone will give him/them a gift/sacrifice]). Crying out in her sorrow for her lover, she longs for him to take her in his arms ('þonne mec se beaducafa bogum bilegde' [then/when the battle bold one laid his arms around me]). She finds comfort in his coming, but it is also bittersweet ('wæs me wyn to þon, wæs me hwæþre eac lað' [there was joy to me in that; it was also hateful to me]). She then addresses 'Eadwacer', who may be her husband or her captor, and she appears to identify their 'whelp' ('Uncerne earne hwelp' [our wretched whelp]), generally understood to metaphorically imply 'child' and possibly a reference to the child's being the 'whelp' of a man named 'Wulf'. She describes this child as being taken off 'to the woods' (to wuda).

Proposals regarding its heritage prior to inscription in the Exeter codex are consequently many and various. The inclusion of a refrain in the text of the poem may support an originally non English origin, as the refrain is not conventional to the Old English elegy or to any other known Old English poetical form. Among proposed explanations for this anomaly, a Scandinavian inspiration for the Anglo Saxon text offers one possible solution to this problem, and has similarly been considered as an explanation for its difficult language, but this theory, as with most others on the poem's prehistory, can only be regarded as hypothetical given lack of substantive corroborating evidence. The suggestion is that the poem derives from some interpretation of the Wayland story; that the woman is Beadohilde, Wulf is Wayland, and Eadwacer her angry father. This episode is also discussed in the poem Deor.

Even though the poem is a mere nineteen lines there are many differing interpretations, not least because the poem contains several obscure words and some ambiguous grammar. One interpreter considers that the word Eadwacer in the poem is not a proper noun, but a simple common noun which means "property watcher". This brings the characters in the poem from three to two, the speaker and her lover, Wulf. If one adopts this interpretation then her exclamation ("Do you hear me, Eadwacer?") could be meant to be sarcastic or a calling out of his manhood. She is saying that his long absences have made him anything but a protector to her and their child whom she worries about. Using this interpretation, the speaker's use of irony when speaking of her lover makes the last two lines make sense. The speaker may be saying that Wulf has been her lover and her child's father, but has never treated her as or actually been her husband. Therefore, the complications of their relationship is easily unbound. However, this seems to be more easily done by Wulf than the speaker herself (Adams). While debatable among scholars, some argue the character of Wulf is the speaker's child and not her lover. In this instance, she could be lamenting after her son, hoping that he was safe, or mourning his death. One scholar says:In Wulf and Eadwacer a woman finds herself in a situation typical of Old English poetry, torn between conflicting loyalties. Many commentators see this particular situation as a sexual triangle, with Wulf the woman’s lover and Eadwacer her husband. If so, then Wulf and Eadwacer is not typical, because most Old English loyalty crises occur within the family group It is true that romantic or sexual love was not the literary commonplace before the twelfth century it has been since; other loves took precedence The situation in Wulf and Eadwacer is far more typically Anglo Saxon than as usually interpreted, if the speaker is understood to be the mother of the person she addresses as Wulf, as well as of the 'whelp' of line 16. His argument that Wulf is actually the narrator’s son gives a different depth to the elegy—it becomes a poem of mourning for her son that seems to be exiled or dead.

'Wulf', by Kevin Crossley Holland, published in The Battle of Maldon and Other Old English Poems (1965). 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by Michael Alexander, published in The Earliest English Poems (1966). Craig Raine, in Rich (London: Faber, 1984), p. 27. 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by Fiona Sampson, published in Folding the Real (2001). 'Love's Medium', by Bernard O'Donoghue, published in Outliving (2003) to celebrate the marriage of two of his ex students, Elanor Dymott and Simon Marshall. 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by Paul Muldoon, published in The Word Exchange: Anglo Saxon Poems in Translation (2010). 'Four Departures from Wulf and Eadwacer', by Vahni Capildeo, first published in Utter (2013). 'Wulf and Eadwacer/Daylight is Our Evidence', by Kerry Carnahan, published in the Boston Review (2017). Carnahan uses the poem to explore the terror of white nationalism and violence against women. 'Wulf and Eadwacer', by Miller Wolf Oberman, published in The Unstill Ones (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 6 8 and 57 'From WULF', by Rowan Evans, published in Reliquiæ (2017). M. L. Martin, W & E (Action Books, forthcoming), with excerpts published in several journals, including Waxwing (2018), Brooklyn Rail : In Translation (August 2018), and Columbia Journal (2019).

Wulf by Hamish Clayton, published by Penguin New Zealand (2011). Wulf tells the story of 'Wulf and Eadwacer' interwoven with that of Ngāti Toa chief Te Rauparaha. The poem is featured heavily in After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry (2014), reflecting the book’s themes of impenetrability, loneliness and love.

'Wulf and Eadwacer' by American neofolk band Blood Axis, released on their album Born Again (2010).