Introduction: Approaching Monsters

Summary

A MONSTER SPEAKS

The fragmentary Ruodlieb, an epic poem probably written by an eleventh-century German monk, includes a remarkable verbal exchange between the eponymous hero and a captive dwarf. The hominoid begs to be freed, promising to lead Ruodlieb to hidden treasure, and frames his plea in terms of the unreliability of human speech:

Absit, ut inter nos umquam regnaverit haec fraus;

non tam longaevi tunc essemus neque sani.

Inter vos nemo loquitur, nisi corde doloso.

Hinc nec ad aetatem maturam pervenietis;

pro cuiusque fide sunt eius tempora vitae.

Non aliter loquimur, nisi sicut corde tenemus,

neve cibos varios edimus morbos generantes,

longius incolomes hinc nos durabimus ac vos.

Far be it that such fraud prevail among us dwarves!

For then we would not be so long-lived or so healthy.

Among you, no one speaks unless deceitfully;

And therefore you will not attain a ripe old age.

Each man's life span accords with his fidelity.

We speak not otherwise than we hold in our hearts,

Nor eat the various foods that bring on illnesses;

And therefore we stay sound much longer than you do.

The English translation distinguishes between “dwarves” and “man” for the sake of clarity, but masks the ambiguity of a speech that alternates between collective terms, such as cuiusque and eius, and the contradistinctive “us” (nos) and “you” (vos). If uncertainties in the Latin phraseology mirror the ontological ambiguity of the dwarf, the accusatory “you” clearly implicates all humans as liars. Even if the dwarf exaggerates his point in hope of gaining his freedom, he offers a utopian vision of truthful speech that is only possible for those who are not human. Far from casting the dwarf as a monstrous Other, this passage effectively imagines an inversion of the traditional Christian hierarchy of being, at the top of which man exercises dominion over all earthly creatures, for the dwarf provides a human with a moral lesson. Indeed, the dwarf keeps his word by showing the exiled knight the location of the treasure and then predicts that Ruodlieb will marry Heriburg. In short, this monster offers the knight much.

We might regard the Ruodlieb episode to be an exceptional case, for it runs counter to the negative connotations surrounding dwarves found elsewhere in medieval culture, including the visual arts. The south tympanum of the cathedral of Orense, for example, shows the dwarf Marcolf conversing with King Solomon.