At first glance, it may appear that an Anglo-Saxon poem about Roman ruins would not be the most insightful lens through which to explore human emotion. I would instead posit that the deeply pensive nostalgia found in The Ruin offers us an invaluable perspective on the world in which the anonymous writer imagined themself to inhabit. Found in the 10th Century codex known as the Exeter Book, I believe that this work speaks volumes about the inherently finite nature of human existence.
What is Elegy?
Put simply, an elegy is a poem with a melancholy tone; it often describes themes such as death, lamentation, loss, and other negative emotions. The word itself comes from the Ancient Greek ἔλεγος, which describes the singing of mournful songs. Although the term ‘elegy’ in the modern sense usually refers to later works such as the metaphysical poetry of John Donne in the early seventeenth century, it is nonetheless an accurate descriptor of earlier melancholic works that comprise the subject of this article.
The Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, in which this poem was recorded, is a highly important text for the modern study of pre-Norman England. Likely written sometime in the late tenth century, it remains the largest known codex of Old English poetry. The manuscript is considered to be hugely significant as a corpus of English text and has been designated by UNESCO as ‘the foundation volume of English literature, one of the world’s principal cultural artifacts.’
Anglo-Saxon Melancholia in ‘The Ruin’
The aforementioned Exeter Book contains a wide number of poems on different themes; however, The Ruin is certainly among the most well-known. In forty-nine lines, it describes a set of Roman ruins, likely in Aquae Sulis, the modern city of Bath, contrasting their imagined former glory with their observed state of disrepair. The writer uses poignant imagery to emphasise the place’s sad state, with phrases such as ‘brosnað enta geweorc’, translated as ‘the work of giants is decaying’, providing counterpoint between the skilfulness and might of the long-gone builders, and the decrepit nature of their work centuries later. (On a side note, the word enta, ‘giants’, was adapted by Tolkien as the name of the sentient tree-like creatures, the Ents).
The melancholy tone of the poem reflects the harsh realities of the world in which it was written. The Anglo-Saxon period was, among other things, one of sadness, lamentation, and despair in ways that modern England does not experience. This was a time of war, Viking raids, child mortality, famine, plague, and many other reasons that can explain the sadness of The Ruin. Most importantly, there is a sense in this work of the acknowledgement of backward development; the Anglo-Saxons were aware of their Roman predecessors in England, and there was certainly a feeling that they existed in the shadow of the superior Roman civilisation, the architecture of which this writer knows the current expertise cannot replicate. This architectural knowledge was lost by the Anglo-Saxon period, and I would argue that the writer is fully aware of the relative period of decline they inhabited when compared to the grandeur of Roman expertise.
We know nothing about this writer, not their age, gender, background, or faith (though very likely Christian), and yet their work is relatable; we can see that they experienced the same human emotions that we do today. Surely we can empathise with the writer’s sense of sadness at the decaying present they perceived to inhabit. Their worldview, that of the inevitability of decline, was shaped by the vivid sense of sorrow associated with the dangerous and unstable Anglo-Saxon world.
Nothing Beside Remains
A good proportion of the people reading this article will have encountered the sonnet Ozymandias, written in 1818 by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, largely as a result of its very common inclusion in GCSE English Literature syllabuses. The sonnet deals with the concept of the loss of power, using the example of a crumbling monument to the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II as an example of how, regardless of pride or self-importance, even the greatest leaders and empires eventually fall.
Former grandeur, juxtaposed dramatically with evident present decay, is a theme that links Ozymandias with The Ruin, however the two poems approach the subject in different ways. On the one hand, Shelley invites us to think about Ramesses’ hubris, pointing out the juxtaposition of past haughtiness and assumption of self-perpetuity with the present reality of decay and loss. Conversely, Anglo-Saxon elegies such as The Ruin view this idea more reflectively; decline, in the worldview of The Ruin’s anonymous writer, is an inevitable reality of human development.
The Inevitability of Decline
We can contrast the Anglo-Saxon and, to some extent, Shelly’s, mindset to that of our modern-day society. This Anglo-Saxon writer’s idea that society can decay as well as develop runs perhaps runs counter to our present thinking? With the totality of past societies behind us, and the near-infinite and expansive unknown of the future ahead, surely our current society will not go unchanged in perpetuity. Just like the inhabitants of the ‘Eternal City’, and the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt, did before us, it is easy to convince ourselves that the current state of the world, politically, socially, and architecturally, will last forever. In the same way as the ‘brosnade burgsteall’ (the ‘decayed city’) in The Ruin, and the ‘colossal wreck’ in Ozymandias, our nations, societies, and buildings will one day crumble too, whether that be in ten years or ten thousand (hopefully the latter). This doesn’t seem a very happy view of the future, but to end this article on a more positive note, the anonymous writer of The Ruin would tell us that this inevitable decline is no reason for us to despair. Instead, they would argue that we should reflect on the fact that there is great potential value in reflecting on the finite nature of grandeur.
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