Platypus of Truth

   Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere: 'Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go? As Arthur prepares to leave this world for Avilion, Bedivere rightly asks what his role will be now that his king is gone.  Though this is a moment of defeat and not one of triumph, we should still see parallels with the disciples and Christ.  In this case, Bedivere is asking the departing Christ figure for a commission.  We may see his question as equivalent with the disciples’ questions before Jesus’ ascension: “Will you at this time restore the kingdom” and “What about him (ie. what will John’s fate be?).”  If Bedivere is having doubts at this point, the apostolic witness records that some of them continued to doubt even as the gathered to watch the resurrected Christ ascend. Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes? For now I see the true old times are dead, When every morning brought a noble chance, And every chance brought out a noble knight. Such times ...

   And answer made King Arthur, breathing hard: 'My end draws nigh; 'tis time that I were gone. Make broad thy shoulders to receive my weight, And bear me to the margin; yet I fear My wound hath taken cold, and I shall die.' Now that Bedivere has passed the test of obedience he can fulfill Arthur’s words: “ For thou, the latest-left of all my knights,/In whom should meet the offices of all .” Bedivere has “upheld” Arthur from the beginning when he fought in the Twelve Battles and defended him against accusations before King Leodogran.  It is fitting that he should now uphold him in a literal fashion as well.  This scene is also interesting given its parallels with J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Return of the King” where Sam bares Frodo up the slopes of Mount Doom.  In addition, in each story we see an object of mystic power that must be cast away, into water or lava, in spite of its obvious attractions.    So saying, from the pavement he half r...

    Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought; But when he saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His palms together, and he cried aloud:    'And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost for ever from the earth, Which might have pleased the eyes of many men. Arthur as a “saint” should have appropriate holy relics, but every relic risks becoming an idol.  Arthur’s mission was to point men to God, not thrill them with baubles, however costly.  As all the old certainties are upset, Bedivere is clutching at straws.  The irony is that Arthur is not even dead. What good should follow this, if this were done? What harm, undone? Deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against...

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: 'The sequel of today unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep--the men I loved. I think that we Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. Arthur tells Bedivere that his life’s work has been destroyed in the destruction of the Round Table.  Arthur has himself participated in this destruction thus siding with his duty as king over the love of his work.  Even though Arthur expresses no doubts that he has done the right thing, he still mourns the passing of his work and the individuals who participated in it.  This completes Arthur’s realization in the outset of the poem that: “For I, being simple, thought to work His will,/And have but stricken with the sword in vain;”.  Arthur knows now that he cannot build the K...

   Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere, And whiter than the mist that all day long Had held the field of battle was the King: Tennyson gives us another picture of Arthur as Leodogran’s “phantom king.”  Bedivere stands with Arthur at the last, like John at the crucifixion, and so is able to record a true testimony of Arthur’s final words and deeds.    'Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world, And wastes the narrow realm whereon we move, And beats upon the faces of the dead, My dead, as though they had not died for me?-- O Bedivere, for on my heart hath fallen Confusion, till I know not what I am, Nor whence I am, nor whether I be King. Behold, I seem but King among the dead.' The “great voice that shakes the world” is in a literal sense the sound of the surf (“and rolling far along the gloomy shores”).  Figuratively, it may be the voice of Death or Time, “the voice of days of old and days to be.”  Looking at the bre...

   Then rose the King and moved his host by night, And ever pushed Sir Modred, league by league, Back to the sunset bound of Lyonnesse-- A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, And the long mountains ended in a coast Of ever-shifting sand, and far away The phantom circle of a moaning sea. Moving at night, Arthur enters into the dream-like world of Lyonnesse where time and reality begin to break down.  This is Arthur’s crucifixion and, like Christ’s crucifixion, it becomes an event that transcends time and re-orders past and future events around it like the hub and spokes of a wheel.  Arthur has now firmly passed into that place where History and Myth meet.  There the pursuer could pursue no more, And he that fled no further fly the King; And there, that day when the great light of heaven Burned at his lowest in the rolling year, On the waste sand by the waste sea ...

  Then, ere that last weird battle in the west, “The last weird battle in the west” or “the battle in the west” will become a recurring motif in both “The Passing of Arthur” and “To The Queen.”  Merlin has already predicted this battle in “Merlin and Vivian” where he gave it the ominous title of “world war.”  With Arthur’s Camelot serving as an allegory for Victoria’s England, these passages then become arrestingly prophetic as we remember the destruction of the Victorian achievement on the fields of France in World War I.  Beyond this, Arthur’s last battle takes place in the west, not the north as in Nennius, and thus plays into Tennyson’s seasonal and day imagery.  Throughout “The Idylls of the King” we find Tennyson playing with the seasons, the hours of the day, and time.  The whole work moves through the seasons from spring to winter.  Arthur wages twelve great battles and there are twelve idylls, one for each hour of the day (there are none for ...

I've just wrapped up Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" with my seniors.  As I have quite number of thoughts to share, I thought I would try something rather ambitious.  I am going to attempt over the next few posts to gloss final poem in the series "The Passing of Arthur."  We'll see how it goes. That story which the bold Sir Bedivere, First made and latest left of all the knights, Told, when the man was no more than a voice In the white winter of his age, to those With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds. The opening of “The Passing of Arthur” stands in marked contrast with the previous idyll “Guinevere.”  In “Guinevere” we see both Arthur and the Queen passing into myth while the opening to “The Passing of Arthur” claims to be an eye-witness testimony.  In his role as the last eyewitness to great events that are rapidly passing into myth, Bedivere serves as a sort of John the Evangelist.  John sets down his account to save a historical Jesus f...