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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press
ABSTRACT
The paper investigates the parallels between the Old English wisdom poetry and a group of riddles contained in the Exeter Book. Although the riddle form in general as well as the Anglo-Saxon riddles in particular can he identified with broadly understood didactic functions, several of the Exeter riddles appear to be especially interested in the nature of wisdom and in the intellectual game of wits ensuing from it. Moreover, the associations with Anglo-Saxon wisdom literature are not exclusively present on the thematic level of the riddles, but they are also evident on other levels of signification, operating in relation to the entire collection. The Old English riddles, therefore, are not only examples of wisdom literature themselves, but they may also be seen as the evidence for the lack of rigid discrimination between riddles and other, seemingly non-riddlic, poems. What is more, the riddlic element seems to be one of the formative factors among the Old English wisdom literature.
Frige mec frodum wordum. Ne laet binne fero onhaelne,
degol baet bu deopost cunne. Nelle ic be min dyrne gesecgan
gif bu me binne hygecraeft hylest ond bine heortan gebohtas.
Gleawe men sceolon gieddum wrixlan.
[Question me with wise words. Do not let your mind be hidden or keep the secret that you know most profoundly. I will not tell you my secrets if you hide the wise craft of your mind and your heart's thoughts. Wise men should exchange wise sayings (riddles).] (1)
"Maxims I (A)", The Exeter Book, 10th/11th c.
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Gleawe men sceolon gieddum wrixian, says the anonymous author of the Exeter Book "Maxims". 'Wise men should exchange...' gieddum, understood most often as 'wise sayings', although throughout the Old English corpus this word has also been found to denote the concepts whose scope ranges from wisdom and poetry, song and proverb to riddle. Thus this short line directs us to the curious interdependency of all these items in Old English literary heritage, to the fact that the categories superimposed by nineteenth and twentieth century critics are frequently blurred when applied to a particular text. The intention of this paper is to provide some insight into the parallels between the Old English wisdom poetry and the Old English riddle, as well as into a group of gnomic riddles contained in the Exeter Book. I shall attempt to prove that although the riddle form in general as well as the Anglo-Saxon riddles in particular can be identified with broadly understood didactic functions, several of the Exeter riddles appe ar to be especially interested in the nature of wisdom and in the intellectual game of wits ensuing from this interest. Moreover, I intend to demonstrate that the associations with Anglo-Saxon wisdom literature displayed by the riddles are not exclusively present on their thematic level. They are also evident on other levels of signification, operating in relation to the entire Exeter Book collection, not the least of them being the etymologies of the terms denoting riddles in Old English. Therefore the unifying thesis of this paper proposes to look at the Old English riddles as not only examples of wisdom literature themselves, but also as the evidence for the lack of rigid discrimination between riddles and other, seemingly non-riddlic, poems in Anglo-Saxon literature.
Indeed, although the association of wisdom with the riddle form does not strike us now as particularly obvious, it is beyond doubt that the structures which we nowadays predominantly connect with the sphere of childish play originated from a highly utilitarian proto-literature. To a large extent, they were concerned with transmitting and concealing the sacred, the wisdom inaccessible to those unable to decode it. Regardless of the culture in which they were created, riddles, by their very character, are concerned with a subtle game of hiding and unveiling their content. Thus they are secrets open only to those who are able to discover and then apply their codes, in order to disclose their mysteries. And since esoteric knowledge operates on the level of a code which is not immediately evident to the public, the associations between riddles and secret knowledge are not unsound. This perspective recalls Umberto Eco's comment on the nature of early knowledge from his Interpretation and overinterpretation: "Secret knowledge is deep knowledge (because only what is lying under the surface can remain unknown for long). Thus truth becomes identified with what is not said or what is said obscurely and must be understood beyond or beneath the surface of a text. The gods speak (today we would say: the Being is speaking) through hieroglyphic and enigmatic messages" (Eco 1992: 30). The language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England attest to the correspondence between the enigma and wisdom both in the wealth of Old English riddles and in the etymology of the Old English terms employed to denote them.
Even a cursory etymological examination of the origins of the riddle concept in Germanic, Romance and Slavonic languages assures us of two chief roles that riddles must have performed in early cultures, namely that...
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