“Noli timere.”
-Seamus Heaney’s last words, sent via text to his wife1.
Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet who, in addition to being a Harvard professor and the recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, translated ‘Beowulf’ in 1999.
“Noli timere” is Latin for “Do not be afraid”. It’s fitting that those were Seamus Heaney’s last words. He was dedicated to encouraging others to find different paths: He asked generations of Irish politicians, both Catholic and Protestant, to “be not afraid” in seeking peace and reconciliation during the Troubles2.
Going forward without fear is also relevant in the context of the Beowulf problem. When we come to a liminal space, a lack of enthusiasm about our current trajectory and the discomfort we feel at the notion of possible change are overcome when we put aside our worry about the unknown.
Previously, we saw a sigmoid function with one overlapping curve, but that was an oversimplification. In reality, our lives are described by a series of overlapping curves, explained in the table below3. Whether we realize it or not, we’ve been stepping from one to the next all along. It’s likely that the first three changeovers have been relatively seamless. They are, after all, what the education system and the workforce do for us rather automatically: Go to school, graduate and get a job, get more experience, perform well, get promoted.
It is at the fourth changeover, from ‘Leading Work’ to ‘Teaching’ that we hit that really big pothole.
If the question posed by ‘Beowulf’ is, “Having once slain monsters, how do we avoid spending the rest of our lives trying to live up to that initial success?”, then the overlapping curves show both where our current journey leads and where the divergent road might take us. We can choose to stay put, but a distinct lack of excitement about the associated prospects are a clear signal that a slow decline, followed by a rapid one, is ahead.
On the other hand, realizing that more of the same isn’t an especially effective recipe for growth, knowing when to step from one track to the next, and understanding that we have the opportunity to transition from doing something for ourselves to being significant in the lives of others mitigates against unproductive longing for glory days.
Beowulf never moved past the ‘Leading Work’ stage. If he had, the answer to the question I posed in the first article in this series would go like this: “Beowulf rode out with his army to find the dragon and when they did, they fought him together.” Instead, the epic ends this way, with Beowulf giving instructions to Wiglaf as he dies: “Tell my warriors to build a great burial mound on the cliffs that stick out into the sea. The sailors steering their ships on the gloomy waters will see it and call it Beowulf's barrow, and my people will remember me.”4
While Beowulf’s legend survives, his legacy died with him - and let’s be honest: Our works may survive centuries, poets can write about our deeds, and future generations might raise monuments to us, but we truly live on in the lessons that we are privileged to teach - by passing on the knowledge we gained at high cost to allow others to start further along that series of overlapping curves than we did.
That is the answer to the Beowulf problem. That is how we avoid Beowulf’s fate.
Afterword.
‘Beowulf’ itself is an Old English epic poem, whose author and exact date of composition are unknown. The poem survives in a manuscript called the Nowell Codex which has been dated between 975 and 1025 AD5. That I sit here in 21st century America and ponder work written by an unknown hand a millennium ago is a source of endless fascination for me.
While many translations are available, the audiobook of the Seamus Heaney translation is, unsurprisingly, my recommendation - for the lucidity of the spoken word, the ease with which the listener can follow the story and plot as well as the quality of the voice recording.
For those interested in further exploring the legend: ‘Eaters of the Dead’ by Michael Crichton is a partial retelling of the Beowulf saga, from the perspective of Ahmad Ibn Faldan, who joins a group of Vikings and their chief, Buliwyf, on a quest to defend Hurot Hall against ‘mist monsters’ or ‘wendol’.
Last, elements of ‘Beowulf’ appear repeatedly elsewhere: The theft of an item from a dragon’s lair - and its repercussions - feature prominently in J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’. Moreso, the concept of continuing on the same path - of the old man going back one last time with varying results - is found throughout literature and media. I’ll make the claim that the character of Sam Damon in ‘Once an Eagle’ by Anton Myrer fits this archetype, as do Gavin Gray in ‘Everybody’s All-American’ and Pete Mitchell in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.
A parting thought: There’s wisdom - universal in nature, timeless and principled - in the written word. ‘Beowulf’ speaks to us because it touches on that shared understanding, and other stories do the same. Regardless of who you are, they offer guidance on how to live. Those lessons may be cloaked in myth, wrapped in story, or woven into an autobiography, but they are there, nonetheless.
Don’t be afraid to seek them out.
Meyer, Robinson. “How so many people got Seamus Heaney’s last words wrong.” The Atlantic. September 4th, 2013.
McDonald, Henry. “Seamus Heaney’s last words were ‘Noli Timere’, son tells funeral.” The Guardian, September 2nd, 2019. www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/02/seamus-heaney-last-words-funeral.
Buford, Bob. Half Time: Moving from Success to Significance. Zondervan Books, 1994.
“Beowulf for Beginners”. University of Aberdeen. https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/disciplines/english/beowulf.
Stanley, E. G. (1981). "The date of Beowulf: some doubts and no conclusions". In Chase, Colin (ed.). The Dating of Beowulf. Toronto Old English Series. Vol. 6. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 197–212. ISBN 0-8020-7879-6. JSTOR 10.3138/j.ctt1287v33.18.