GENESIS B

GENESIS B

I was somewhat intrigued when Hal invited me to participate in a panel on Genesis B because I believe that Genesis B should not be separated from Genesis A. The poem Genesis has come down to us as a single composition and deserves to be read as such. Removing B from A may provide us with an interesting exercise in source study or character development, but it runs the risk of doing so to the detriment of our understanding of the Genesis poem, and even of the Junius manuscript of which it is an integral part. One of the things that makes clear the unity between the poems and parts of poems is the complete planning and partial completion of the outline drawings that were to run throughout the manuscript and which would have served to highlight connections (similarities and differences) between at least the first three poems, as those drawings that were completed, help to unify Genesis A and Genesis B.

As I am an art historian, my contribution to this panel will focus on the drawings. I use the word drawings (rather than illustrations, pictures, or miniatures) very deliberately for three main reasons. First, that is what they are, pen and ink drawings, and medium makes a difference to the work an image doesjust as it makes a difference whether a text is written as prose or poetry. Second, because the drawings are as much a part of the manuscript as the text, they should be included in our discussion of how the poem works. And finally, drawing is the art form which is most closely linked to writing both in its execution (it is formed from the unique marks of a hand on vellum), and in its ability to convey narrativeespecially a dramatic one. A line is dynamic and carries movement in a way that a wash of colour or field of gold leaf cannot. Before getting back to Genesis, let me just read you a quote from the contemporary artist Avis Newman taken from the catalogue of an exhibition of drawings that she curated at the Tate Britain. For Newman, drawing evidences the materialization of an act of consciousnesswhen a gestural act embodies an act of thought In the inscriptive act of drawing there exists the shadow of our ambivalent relation to making marks, before the time when image and text are differentiated to go their separate ways. And when one looks at a drawing, there is the consciousness of the ghost of the text in the image; the inscriptive nature of the activity holds the two in suspension, irrespective of what is being drawn [Our]thoughts float between reading and perceiving (p. 72)

Newman is speaking here of post-Renaissance drawing, but her observations are, I believe, equally valid for the tenth or eleventh century. In looking at the Junius 11 drawings thought does float between reading and perception, not just because there is an accompanying text, but also because of the similarity of colour, and of the ability of drawing to convey gesture, glance and movementto convey a story even if that story is simply the trace of a creative act. The effect is even more pronounced when the boundaries between writing and drawing are as permeable as they are in Junius 11 (creation of eve).

Though some scholars (mostly notable Tom Ohlgren and myself) have explored the unity of the Genesis poem and drawings, the prevailing view, exemplified by the work of Barbara Raw, still focuses on isolation and the boundaries established between Genesis A, Genesis B, and the drawings. The recent Muir digital facsimile, for example, consistently describes Raws view as the most compelling and authoritative. According to this view, Genesis A, Genesis B and the drawings form three awkwardly integrated narratives. Evidence of this is found in the fact that the drawings are not literal illustrations of the accompanying text. Details occurring in the text of Genesis B (Satans halo or diadem, and other details of the fall of the angels, [fall 1]) are included in the drawings accompanying Genesis A. The conclusion is that the drawings were copied from an Old Saxon exemplar with relatively little concern for how they relate to this particular text. This is, however, exactly the use of detail that I have argued helps to unify the poem by providing references forward and backward between its constituent episodes. We might not yet be aware of the foreshadowings as we read through this part of the poem, but we remember them when they reappear in Genesis B. What we remember as we read/see can also be linked to memory as a theme within the poem, especially in Genesis B where what is or is not remembered (a command is a command, for example) has consequences. Satan remembers heaven before his rebellion and fallthe memory is part of the motivation for his revenge against Adam and Eveand, having seen the heaven he conjures in words, we do the same. It is for us as for him a remembered place, a sign of loss, even though we can, as he cannot, turn back to this page.

Genesis B is also about boundaries, their establishment, maintenance, and most of all transgression. In Genesis A there are spatial and temporal divisions established between heaven and hell, the days of creation [creation 2], heaven and paradise [creation of eve], but there is overlap, movement, and a lack of closure between and amongst these spaces. Hell [fall 1] for example, in the drawing of the first fall of the angels in Genesis A is an open mouth that contains but does not as yet confine Satan within it as it does in the drawings accompanying the second fall of the angels in Genesis B. [fall 2 & 3] Hell, famous for its immeasurablity and formlessness in the Junius 11 poems at this point is becoming a visibly claustrophobic and imprisoning spacea space that is difficult to leave, but less difficult to enter. The two different depictions of the fall of the rebel angels, fall A and fall B, [falls 1 & 2], while united through iconographic detailsmost notably the hell mouthare also different and reflect differences in these two sections of the poem. In the drawing of the first fall (on the left) the battle in heaven takes precedence over the fall and torment of the angels. Only the lower third of the page is devoted to the fall of the angels, and the emphasis is on their falling, or having been cast out, and on the transformation of the once beautiful Lucifer into the hideous Satan in the centre of the bottom register. The accompanying poem provides a detached third-person account of the events focused again on the casting out:

Our Creator then shoved and cut off that presumptuous race of angels from heaven, traitorous troop. The Ruler sent the rebellious army on a long journey, miserable spirits. Their pride was shattered, boasts broken, glory abased, beauty humbled. Thereafter they rested in dark misery, the journey did not give them cause for loud laughter, but they remained weary in hell torments, and knew darkness, sorrow and pain, suffered torment covered in darkness, terrible retribution because they had began to fight against God (lines 6577).

Peace in heaven is then restored.

In the second fall (on your right), the focus shifts to the difference and distance between heaven and hell. In heaven all is peace and serenity, and no notice is taken of the chaos below; while in hell we now see fire and torment, not just the fall. We also now see demons with more markedly human bodiessignified by their acquisition of genitalia. Completely cut off from heaven by fortified walls, a monstrous mouth and a field of stars, Satan now turns to look back up at heaven, a pose that is in perfect accord with his growing sense of loss and of anger. Increasingly [fall 2 & 3] confined within his new kingdom (note the increasing number of chains), Satan now speaks of his confinement (and his chains), and plots his revenge against Adam and Eve. The drawings, like the poem, move us increasingly closer to Satans plight (note also here his very human face and torso) [fall 3 close up], before moving us out again following Satans words through a series of open mouths [messenger 3a, 3b, 3c]. The kingdom of heaven at this point has been permanently lost. It does not reappear in the drawings. Like the poem, the drawings of the fall of Adam and Eve centre on the encounters and dialogues between the figures, and the discord and isolation [Adam and Eve together and apart] that the false words of the tempter and the disobedience of Adam and Eve bring about until, like Satan they too are cast out of paradise and confined within architectural wallsalbeit of a more luxurious kind than those surrounding hell [birth of Abel]. Paradise again becomes a loss and a memory. Trees dont reappear until we get to the story of Noahs drunkenness.

Far from being an interpolated patch, the B section of the Genesis poem provides a complex and nuanced transition from heaven to earth, from Creation (with a capital C) to creation, from the work of God, to that of man and woman, and it enacts that transition through human speech and human actions. As such, it becomes a story in which we actively take part rather than one to which we passively listensomething that the action and immediacy of the drawings help to convey. The effectiveness of the poem as a whole to draw us into its story was not lost on someone (possibly the 2nd artist), who added himself as a sketch observing God from outside the circles of Creation on page 7 [page 7]. He may be little more than a doodle, but even a doodle takes possession of space. As Finnegan noted, the figure mirrors us, he observes as we observe, but he has also placed himself outside of Creation, a potentiality waiting to be written (or drawn) into the unfolding Genesis story. A ghost of the text in the image.

Another thing to think about with respect to the ghost image is sight and vision. They are important themes throughout the poems, and they are important in England as witnessed by the Fuller Brooch and the Alfred Jewel. Embodied eye is raised up to the awaited vision of Godthink about Christ and Satan and the being taken up to heaven to become part of the heavenly chorus surrounding Christ there. Here the eye of a creator as yet unformed observes Creation in a foreshadowing of that final event. Hell mouth, false languageconsumption in hell, consumption of apple that opens hell for humanity.

lfric sees gendered bodies as separating fallen man from the angels in heaven.

Raw sees the paired trees as evidence of an original in frieze form, but they are a part of the story (tree of knowledge/ tree of life).

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