Droctulft

This piece was originally published on 11/04/20

Jorge Luis Borges's Story of The Warrior and the Captive (Historia del Guerrero y la Cautiva) presents the figure of Droctulft, a Lombard who was "loyal to his captain and his tribe, but not to the universe." Having marched south from his forested homeland, the sight of the walls of Ravenna, which he had come to destroy, so moved him that he abandoned his friends to protect the domes and arches of this foreign town. Caros contempsit. Borges was moved by the "secret impulse , an impulse more profound than reason", which prompted Droctulft, and the captive to whom he is compared, to abandon his home and tribe, and protect the crumbling remains of Rome.

I find the image evocative because it presents a challenge. Droctulft made his choice; what about you? Should, or even could, you sacrifice everything you know because of one numinous moment? The choice provides meaning; in making it, you have become captain of your soul. Making a decision to convert to an alien culture makes it impossible to justify one's beliefs through epistemic luck; instead, your customs and actions become your own responsibility. Furthermore, he had no need to convert: Droctulft was already part of a great movement - what could be bigger than a barbarian invasion? Rather, he joined a better movement, making a judgement about the relative merits of Lombard and Roman culture. In that sense, he reminds me of Western converts to Islam or Buddhism - except with the awe, the humanist grandezza, which is central to classical culture.

Borges, however, was making a more complicated argument than that. He juxtaposes Droctulft to the English captive, and in doing so denies value judgement, or cultural imperialism. His story isn't an ode to Rome; instead, his focus is on the transition. Perhaps he's interested in acceptance, or, more accurately, connection. In both stories, the characters straddle their two worlds. The Englishwoman devours the spilt blood of an animal, yet while her face is tanned, her hair is blonde, and her eyes grey; the Dales and the Pampas are combined in one body. Droctulft's memory is preserved in the Latin of his epitaph, "words which he would not have understood"; and yet beyond that couplet all that we know of him was written by a Lombard. Droctulft's choice is diluted, no longer absolute.

Perhaps we have misunderstood Droctulft's choice. Rather than choosing between his tribe and Rome, he chose between the tribe and the universe. Unmooring himself, he drifts freely, for Droctulft the Lombard could never have been at home in Ravenna; he couldn't even read his own tombstone. The captive's hair remains blonde, for all her wearing Indian blankets. Is it possible to be loyal to the universe, if you have no home in it? Can you have the general without the particular? I'm reminded of David Goodhart's concept of Somewheres and Anywheres; despite the manifest problems with his theory, which is Droctulft? Was Droctulft the Lombard, or a Mongolian horseman scything into China, a Somewhere? And if you could choose to be either, which would you be? 

Borges isn't historical - he makes the past into literature, turning Droctulft the man into a generic type, reflecting his story onto that of the captive, and even confusing Paul the Deacon with the far inferior Peter. Context and specifics are unimportant to him generally, yet nowhere more so than in this story. I, however, am historical, and thus want to connect Borges's Droctulft with that of Paul the Deacon. Reading his text, Historia Langobardorum III xviii-xix, a different warrior emerges. We realise that Borges really did create a Droctulft sub specie aeternitate; his Droctulft is a literary character, not a historic figure - and not even the literary character presented by Paul. This is the crucial clause: he abandoned the Lombards cum occasionem ulciscendae suae captivitatis repperit (when he got the chance to take revenge for his captivity). Thomas Hodgkin, writing in 1895, took this to mean that Droctulft had been captured by the Romans, and, on his release, took vengeance on his countrymen who had failed to rescue him. This reading is not beyond question; Hodgkin made a number of fanciful inductions, even going so far as to imagine Droctulft's dreams. One might try to interpret his captivitas as a metaphor for the state of savagery, a cage of dark pines and darker customs - that, however, wouldn't fit the tone of Paul's matter-of-fact account. On the other hand, maybe Droctulft was imprisoned by his own people, and broke away as a rebel, finding allies among the Romans; or perhaps he was released by the Romans only on the condition that he join them. If the girl from Yorkshire moved into captivity, Droctulft moved out of it. But once we perceive a secondary motive, Droctulft no longer presents such an evocative image; the purity of his choice between cultures holds a significant part of the appeal. 

Droctulft's revenge stirs no hearts; Borges would not have written about a betrayed, angry, or even selfish warrior. Part of the pathos in his conversion is that one feels he is joining the losing side: he's fallen in love with arches on the brink of collapse, a city under siege. His sole motivation is the magnetism of Roman culture. His captivity destroys that illusion. Yet it also, I think, destroys Borges's conceit that the two stories are two sides of the same coin. The comparison fails when one considers consent: the English girl was taken by Indian tribesmen, and if Droctulft was driven out by his own people, or escaped captivity only on the condition that he joined his captors, then neither of these figures present us with an example we might emulate. Indeed, the transition of the English girl was never what was evocative about her; it's her adoption, her submersion, into Indian culture which makes her image powerful. Yet Borges felt that they were consenting to their transition - he talks about "the figure of the barbarian who embraces the cause of Ravenna and the figure of the European woman who chooses the wilderness." Perhaps, instead of a story about choice, Borges has written a homily on acceptance, of making the best of things, whether or not they went as planned. 

Droctulft, it seems, did make the best of them; his memorial used to endure outside the Basilica of San Vitale, the great octagonal church in Ravenna. If he ever did choose to abandon his tribe for the universe, his epitaph applauds that choice:

Clauditur hoc tumulo, tantum sed corpore, Drocton;

Nam meritis toto vivit in orbe suis.

Cum Bardis fuit ipse quidem, nam gente Suavus;

Omnibus et populis inde suavis erat.

Droctulft is buried in this tomb, but only his body, 

For through his deeds, he lives on across the world.

He was originally a Lombard, a Suavian by birth,

But he became suave to all peoples. 

Or, if you prefer Hodgkin's sense of poetry:

Droctulft here lies; his body, not his soul;

Droctulft, whose fame doth round the wide world roll.

Though leagued with Bardi, Suavia gave him birth,

And suave his mood to all men upon earth. 

His memorial, then, inspired another barbarian to adopt Rome. On Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned the greatest warlord in Europe's history Emperor of the Romans. Seven years earlier, construction had begun on a great chapel in Aachen, and Charlemagne, impressed by the Byzantine refinement of Ravenna, ordered its foundation to be based on the same pattern found in San Vitale. If we seek a conclusion to Droctulft's tale, we might look to Charlemagne's own burial there in 814; two barbarians, who fell in love with Rome, memorialised by an octagonal church. It would be more accurate, however, to consider Charlemagne's exhumations, by Otto III, Barbarossa, Frederick II, and others; fifteen hundred years after his death, Droctulft continues to fascinate.