T. H. White's The Once and Future King falls into this last category. The most important book of 20th century Arthurian fantasy (a sub-genre of fantasy literature), The Once and Future King tells the story of King Arthur, Merlyn, Lancelot, and Guenever, but with modern revisions of the classic tale. The book is divided into four sections. The first, "The Sword in the Stone," was adapted into the Disney movie of the same name (which I haven't seen in a long time).
I'm not familiar with all the details of Arthurian legend, so I can't tell what White has re-envisioned or changed from such "canonical" Arthur texts like Thomas Malory's 15th century work Morte d-Arthur. Some points I'm pretty confident are White's own creation.
Merlyn, for example, while still a wizard, garners much of his power and wisdom from the fact that he lives backwards (albeit still with a very long life span). He grows increasingly younger rather than older. Thus, the future for Arthur is the past for Merlyn, and he knows what has happened in the historical past yet hasn't experienced it. Such "back sight" confuses him now and again.
Arthur's desire to create a just and peaceful society under the rule of law is the thread that pulls everything together. The England of Arthur's childhood is a violent world in which the knights and barons terrorize the lowly serf. The Round Table is Arthur's attempt to harness their violent impulses for good ends. War turns from a gentleman's game (in which poor people suffer the most) into real crusades against tyrants. This aim grows throughout Arthur's reign and culminates in his creation of a coherent law and judicial system which no one, including the king, is above.
Yet it's all nearly undone by the famous love affair between Lancelot and Guenever. Neither intends to hurt Arthur--Lancelot is Arthur's lifelong best friend--yet their relationship turns into a self-destructive tragedy. Mordred, the story's biggest antagonist and Arthur's illegitimate son, exploits their affair out of spite to his father. As the affair is technically treasonous, and the law requires their executions, Arthur's hand is forced to enforce justice against his wife and best friend. Lancelot rescues his lover from the hangman's noose, yet in the process unintentionally slays some of his best friends and greatest supporters.
Peace deteriorates as Arthur's objective commitment to justice and bad blood between the English and the Celts (going back hundreds of years) lead England into civil war between Arthur and Lancelot. Amidst this confusion Mordred (who identifies with his mother's Celtic affiliations) claims that both Arthur and Lancelot have died and declares himself king in England. The book ends with Arthur waging war against his own son. Some hope remains--Arthur commands a page to flee the ensuing battle to safety where he can reinvigorate Arthur's vision for a peaceful, just society--yet the story remains a tragedy.
All of what I've just described was compelling and entertaining. But I'm still not sure if I liked the book. It could have been 200 pages shorter. All kinds of side stories muddled the plot, and at several points I looked forward to getting done with the book so I could move on to something else.
Still, some passages were gems. This one, describing Lancelot's inner guilt from his affair with Guenever right before he performs his long-desired miracle, was my favorite.
Do you think it would be fine to be the best knight in the world? Think, then, also, how you would have to defend the title. Think of the tests, such repeated, remorseless, scandal-breathing tests, which day after day would be applied to you--until the last and certain day, when you would fail. Think also that you know of a good reason for your failure, which you have tried to hide, tried pathetically to hide and overlook, for five and twenty years. Think that you are now to go out, before the largest and most honourable gallery that can be assembled, to make a public demonstration of your sin. They are expecting you to succeed, and you are to fail: you are to publish the deceit which you have practised for a quarter of a century, and they will all immediately know the reason for it--that reason of shame which you have sought to conceal from your own mind, and which, when it has remembered itself in the silence of your empty chamber, has pricked you into a physical motion of your head to throw it off. Miracles, which you wanted to do so long ago, can only be done by the pure in heart. The people outside are waiting for you to do this miracle because you have traded on their belief that your heart was pure--and now, with treachery and adultery and murder wringing the heart like a cloth, you are to go out into the sunlight for the test of honour (542).
No comments:
Post a Comment