the fantasy of the East that informs the Solomon and Saturn poems seems to respond to anxieties about a symbolic lack, particularly anxieties about the symbolic identity of the English people (119).
This fantasy functions by disguising or compensating for a kind of cultural anxiety about the newly unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom. By displacing lack into the field of the foreign Other, and by appointing Solomon as the corrector of Eastern error, the Solomon and Saturn poems disguise the fact that error and lack are endemic to the West as well (119).
One of the most striking features of Saturn’s book riddle and his comment about books in the exchange that follows is his use of physical, oral metaphors to describe books and their uses (121).
Wisdom is instead a property of the book itself (121).
these metaphors of consumption suggest an unusual understanding of books, and one which Solomon does not seem to share (121).
Saturn’s book riddle and the comments it elicits draw a contrast between two attitudes toward learning: one which values knowledge as a possession and fetishizes books as containers of knowledge, and one which values wisdom as the basis of right thought and the path to salvation and prizes books as the beginning of wisdom (121-22).
particularly inadequate about Saturn’s choice of metaphors is that it emphasizes the status of books as containers of knowledge and con- fuses the container with its contents (123).
Saturn searches for truth, but what he ‘tastes’ in both passages is not truth itself, but the object he assumes will contain that truth – the book (123).
if Saturn is unable to find ‘truths collected’ (so e samnode) (9a) in the books he says he has tasted, that is because his search stops short of the truth itself and focuses on possessing and consuming the physical object that represents it (123).
The logic of this substitution of the container of knowledge for knowledge itself bears a resemblance to the logic of the fetish as a substitute object (123).
Solomon . . . consistently emphasizes the function of books, rather than their form (125).
the two distinct views held by Solomon and Saturn on this subject can both be understood as characteristically Anglo-Saxon views. Saturn’s fetishistic desire to possess books and their contents could be associated with the Anglo- Saxons of an earlier period . . . and represents an attitude toward learn- ing which the poet might like to dispel and from which he might wish to dis- sociate himself and his people. On the other hand, Solomon’s understanding of books as necessary tools for gaining and reinforcing knowledge but not magical bearers of wisdom is an attitude which the poet might wish to promote (126).
Saturn’s consumption of books but lack of wisdom and inability to use his knowledge productively in a social context is reminiscent of the ninth-century decline of learning and waning of religious communities about which Alfred writes in his preface (128).
The consumption of books – collecting, reading, even producing them – does not make one wise unless one is able to apply the knowledge gained from them (128).
Thus, the metaphor of consumption suggests both the empty esteem of containers of wisdom without wisdom itself and the dissolution of the social bonds that shared knowledge is capable of producing (128).
he rewrites history by displacing the lack of wisdom from the Anglo-Saxon past onto the foreign space of the East (129).
phantasmatic linkage of lack of knowledge, divine retribution and political disaster (129).
Solomon and Saturn II neutralizes the threat presented by a lack of knowledge by displacing that lack into a foreign space and by associating it with a pagan people (130).
Nothing that man creates, no matter how glorious or how stable it might appear, endures by its own power. The example of Babylon here, in the context of a Christian history of the world, particularly suggests the transitory nature of all worldly kingdoms, as well as of the rulers who govern them (134).
While it was once the site of arguably one of the greatest of human constructions – the Tower of Babel – it is in this passage reduced to a dwelling for monsters where only the signs of martial conflict indicate that men had ever been there. Just beyond this scene lurks the possibility that the same fate could befall the English kingdom. What allows this anxiety to be expressed is the fact that it is displaced into the fantasy space of the East (135).
In this case, the displacement of ephemerality into the East shores up the identity of the English kingdom as comparatively unified and secure, unlikely to be torn apart by God’s vengeance (135).
Thus, while the fantasy that makes ephemerality a property of the pagan East rather than the Christian West serves to reinforce English identity, it also allows anxiety about the fall of cities to return in the form of the monstrous (135).
Solomon discovers this creature [Vasa Mortis] and has it imprisoned in the East. In doing so, he enacts on a literal level the process whereby the ephemerality of the world is ejected into and loosely confined within the space of the Other (136).
a fantasy through which a sense of permanence, moral certainty and sagacity is imparted to the notion of being Western and specifically English – is a fantasy which contains its own negation (138).
to be too proud of one’s achievements and to imagine too readily that they are built on solid ground is truly to test the might of the Lord (138).
The debate between Solomon and Saturn in this poem largely coheres around issues of the stability of kingdoms, the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, and the efficacy of faith – issues which were both central to English cultural identity in the mid-tenth century and potential sources of anxiety. By allowing the reader to displace any such anxieties onto the figure of Saturn and confining any lack of stability, knowledge or faith within the remote space of the East, the poem serves to support a sense of English identity, encouraging the reader to identify with Solomon’s ideals and behaviours and to reject those of the foreign and pagan Saturn (143).
If both poems present the East as a degraded space – ephemeral, unstable, and lacking somewhat in wisdom – it is precisely this degradation that allows the English reader to view his own culture as whole – its cities and kingdoms enduring, its knowledge complete, its faith sustaining (143).