Since I’m trusting that you don’t mind my mixing things up here, I decided to test you a bit.

Today’s post is about Beowulf.

I mentioned this to one of my friends. ”Beowulf?” she asked, doubtfully.”Sure.”"This isn’t one of your devotional posts, is it?”"No. No, it isn’t,” I admitted.”Then what would you call it?”Perhaps “non sequitur”?I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not sure how to categorize this post. I was just thinking about it, so if you feel like reading about Beowulf, read on.As you probably noticed, a movie about Beowulf has been released.Please note: I haven’t seen it.But every time I caught the preview, I thought back to my first exposure to that early epic poem. I may have read it in Miss Flint’s Senior English class in high school, but I’m not sure. What I remember clearly was reading it for Professor Edelen’s History of English Literature course in college.Professor Edelen pointed out how much was left to the imagination when it came to the monster, Grendel. Instead of detailed description, the author built suspense and tension by focusing on his approach–his footsteps. Grendel strode…he trod…he marched across the moors….and his footsteps approached….closer….and closer….Professor Edelen pulled out two old drawings or etchings and snapped one up as if to startle us–it was an artist’s depiction of the terrifying Grendel that looked something like this.”Does this frighten you?” He asked. He walked around the room showing it to us. “Or, how about….this one!” It may have looked something like this, I can’t remember. It doesn’t really matter, because the point was made.Yawn.Those etchings were lame, especially to 20th Century students like ourselves. But Dr. Edelen argued that even at the time that the etchings were created, they were far less effective than the poem itself. More terrifying than a pen-and-ink Grendel was the Grendel in our heads, the one we imagined when we heard his approach. In the end, the strength came from what was left out of the text.Our own minds, Dr. Edelen concluded, could conjure up a monster far more petrifying than anything a person could draw. By leaving Grendel’s form and figure fairly vague and investing instead in the element of suspense–those approaching footsteps–the author of Beowulf created one of the most effective monsters in English literature.A few years later, I caught a special on PBS that reinforced this same principle. They used movie clips to make their point.One example was a scene from the film “Dr. Zhivago” when a bloody massacre is shown, but not directly. Instead, the viewer experiences it primarily through Omar Sharif’s eyes as they react in horror to the scene he watched unfold. We hear cries and clashes, swords clanging, horses neighing and clomping. Yet we don’t actually see the gorey process, the killing itself–it’s left to our imagination, which can fill in all the blanks more efficiently than cinematic special effects.Then there’s “Jaws.” The mechanical shark is not nearly as frightening as the steady approach of the fin with the pulsing music building tension.Or “Jurassic Park.” The vibration of the approaching footsteps caused the water in the glass to ripple. Fear builds with the drumming boom, boom, boom of the Grendel-ish T-Rex on the loose.Our own primal fears are fed by suspense, and our imaginations may be capable of creating creepier, more terrifying monsters than those thought up and given digital form by the visual effects crew of a movie set.So I thought of all of that when I saw the trailer. And I wondered what Grendel would look like. I wondered if I would be scared.Just as the film was about to be released, I read a review in the New York Times. The writer, Manohla Dargis, as if expanding on Dr. Edelen’s lecture, wrote:

The reader’s imagination, of course, has long been one of the banes of cinema. Any filmmaker who takes a stab at literary adaptation has to compete with those moving pictures already flickering in our heads, the ones we create when we read a book. The solution for many filmmakers is to try to top the reader’s imagination or distract it or overwhelm it, usually by throwing everything they can think of at the screen, including lots of big: big noise, sets, moves, effects, [and] stars.*

I wasn’t surprised to read the report on Grendel.

Grendel isn’t remotely scary, but he looks pleasingly disgusting, like a stringy, chewed-up cadaver with snake scales and a suggestion of [actor Crispin Glover’s] own beak.

Yawn.The filmmaker’s Grendel may be disgusting, but he “isn’t remotely scary,” because they left nothing to the imagination.Since its release, other people are saying that the special effects and 3-D make for a spectacular film experience. It’s sure to be a fun outing for viewers who like that sort of thing. And men will probably get some kind of sick enjoyment out of viewing Angelina Jolie’s character, a monster who, as Dagnis explains, “rise[s] from the vaporous depths naked and dripping liquid gold.”I seriously doubt I’ll ever see that movie. I’ll miss out on all the zing-zang 3-D Imax magic. I won’t get to see the stringy, pleasantly disgusting digital rendering of Grendel.That’s just fine. I’m not too interested. But I was thinking that Dr. Edelen might have gone, just to see. Just to compare. Just to know without a doubt that the steady beat of footsteps marching through the rhythm of ancient epic poetry still trumps technology.