Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles
translated by a. m. juster
toronto, 173 pages, $29.95
The riddle of Samson’s strength, the riddle of the eagle’s way with the sky and the ship’s way with the sea, the riddles in royal dreams of Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar, the riddle of things hidden since the world began, the riddle of a temple that can be destroyed and yet rebuilt in three days. Riddling runs like a seam of gold through the rock of the Old and New Testaments. The mystery and praise of creation and sub-creation that we find in the books of the Bible emerge again as bright knowledge in Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles, poems of the seventh-century Aldhelm, noble and bishop and poet and saint. Translated by poet A. M. Juster from Aldhelm’s Aenigmata, these poems suggest that all things possess a mystery. Salamander and raven, candle and cauldron find their secret wonders revealed in riddle. (How appropriate, then, that A. M. Juster is also a riddle, a pen name for a man who has held two very different public roles.)
Despite the homely reputation of the riddle, sparkling beauty makes an appearance in these rhyming iambic-pentameter lines. Take this mysterious, paradoxical collision between weighty and weightless: “For I command cold metals’ airy track.” Dark and light, ethereal and material jostle in lovely ways: “Since birds and shadows each retain a claim”; “For I will hide in star-borne nests at night”; and “I’m jammed by mobs of stars on Heaven’s peak.”
