In his introduction to his collection of early English poems, Michael Alexander makes this statement: “There is no reason to suppose… that what Time has spared is necessarily the best.” (9) *
The context for his statement is the paucity of literature that survived the millennium since people spoke Old English. As Alexander notes, the surviving literature can be found in just four manuscripts. Some of that writing found in those books is familiar to almost everyone because Beowulf is part of English literature curricula, and the story has been movie-ized. (In an age of Marvel and DC heroes, Grendel’s slayer fits well in the mix of super-humans) Anyway, Beowulf is among the very few Anglo-Saxon works to survive the ravages of time. Given the physical state of surviving books, their scantiness is no mystery. One of those surviving four tomes, the Exeter Book, was abused: Its front cover was used as a cutting board and a mat for beer steins, and its back 14 pages were burned through by a brand.
So, Time has not been kind to Anglo-Saxon literature. But, ultimately, Time isn’t kind to anything, is it? We don’t know what literature we don’t know because it was lost through either purpose or accident, and those Anglo-Saxon products of the intellect aren’t the only lost representations of the past. The scrolls in the Great Library of Alexandria, for example, were subject to “book burning.” We’ll never recover those ancient lost works.
We might like to believe that our “wisdom,” the defining characteristic of a species called sapiens, would have made us caretakers of the written word; but that belief runs into the historical reality that someone or some group used a brand to destroy those last pages of the Exeter Book, and someone else used the book as a coaster for a mug of beer. And, as we have recently seen by the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS, wanton vandalism of the past still pervades the behavioral tendencies of sapiens.
But maybe losing the pages of the past is the way of the world. Nature set the pattern of losing the past long before humans penned or even inscribed their thoughts and then turned to destroying what they wrote. The history of life is a series of losses. Mother Nature wrote her tale in fossiliferous sedimentary rocks, and her story is a biased record at best because of its lost pages, the layers of rocks long lost to an unrelenting, albeit unconscious, destructive power like erosion. Time has allowed by chance only remnants of both natural and human histories, though the latter had some human curators that exhibited a sense of preservation.
Possibly because of losses, we have a tradition of thinking that survival alone imparts wisdom or that in surviving, the survivor has somehow picked up by static electricity, osmosis, or adhesion some gem of thought or truth that is worthy of continuance. It is that tradition of thought that equates age with wisdom and that intimidates the young as they face their teachers or political authorities. But as Michael Alexander—probably no relation to the Alexander for whom Alexandria was named—notes, “what Time has spared” isn’t necessarily the best.
No one has to accept the wisdom filtered from the past, and no one has to accept the “wisdom” of those who simply survived longer than the contemporaries of their youth. As we learn by experience, grey hair could just as easily cover a head of foolishness as it could cover one of wisdom. It’s a lesson that every generation learns on its own, a lesson that somehow gets lost before the ensuing generation comes of age.
Because so much is lost, there always remains so much to be found. Wisdom is independent of its potential to survive the ravages of time; it belongs to the truly wise in any generation. Think before you follow.
Alexander, Michael, Translator. The Earliest English Poems. London. Penguin Books, 1966.
The context for his statement is the paucity of literature that survived the millennium since people spoke Old English. As Alexander notes, the surviving literature can be found in just four manuscripts. Some of that writing found in those books is familiar to almost everyone because Beowulf is part of English literature curricula, and the story has been movie-ized. (In an age of Marvel and DC heroes, Grendel’s slayer fits well in the mix of super-humans) Anyway, Beowulf is among the very few Anglo-Saxon works to survive the ravages of time. Given the physical state of surviving books, their scantiness is no mystery. One of those surviving four tomes, the Exeter Book, was abused: Its front cover was used as a cutting board and a mat for beer steins, and its back 14 pages were burned through by a brand.
So, Time has not been kind to Anglo-Saxon literature. But, ultimately, Time isn’t kind to anything, is it? We don’t know what literature we don’t know because it was lost through either purpose or accident, and those Anglo-Saxon products of the intellect aren’t the only lost representations of the past. The scrolls in the Great Library of Alexandria, for example, were subject to “book burning.” We’ll never recover those ancient lost works.
We might like to believe that our “wisdom,” the defining characteristic of a species called sapiens, would have made us caretakers of the written word; but that belief runs into the historical reality that someone or some group used a brand to destroy those last pages of the Exeter Book, and someone else used the book as a coaster for a mug of beer. And, as we have recently seen by the destruction of Palmyra by ISIS, wanton vandalism of the past still pervades the behavioral tendencies of sapiens.
But maybe losing the pages of the past is the way of the world. Nature set the pattern of losing the past long before humans penned or even inscribed their thoughts and then turned to destroying what they wrote. The history of life is a series of losses. Mother Nature wrote her tale in fossiliferous sedimentary rocks, and her story is a biased record at best because of its lost pages, the layers of rocks long lost to an unrelenting, albeit unconscious, destructive power like erosion. Time has allowed by chance only remnants of both natural and human histories, though the latter had some human curators that exhibited a sense of preservation.
Possibly because of losses, we have a tradition of thinking that survival alone imparts wisdom or that in surviving, the survivor has somehow picked up by static electricity, osmosis, or adhesion some gem of thought or truth that is worthy of continuance. It is that tradition of thought that equates age with wisdom and that intimidates the young as they face their teachers or political authorities. But as Michael Alexander—probably no relation to the Alexander for whom Alexandria was named—notes, “what Time has spared” isn’t necessarily the best.
No one has to accept the wisdom filtered from the past, and no one has to accept the “wisdom” of those who simply survived longer than the contemporaries of their youth. As we learn by experience, grey hair could just as easily cover a head of foolishness as it could cover one of wisdom. It’s a lesson that every generation learns on its own, a lesson that somehow gets lost before the ensuing generation comes of age.
Because so much is lost, there always remains so much to be found. Wisdom is independent of its potential to survive the ravages of time; it belongs to the truly wise in any generation. Think before you follow.
Alexander, Michael, Translator. The Earliest English Poems. London. Penguin Books, 1966.
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