Platypus of Truth

In later years, did Bedwyr unclose his heart unto an aged brother as 'neath a smoking yew tree the twain reclined in the hour before the Vesper Bell would ring. And that good brother made record of all he learned that bards in after-years wrought into song and story. But one tale did he by word impart unto the father of Aenerin, whose son sang it thus when the the fires were lit in the high halls of Din Eiden, that Saxon fires made a name, and nothing more.  I There was in Gwynedd Vivian, enchantress. Born in battle was she- Blood born- In the sword-storm, in the raven’s feast Bold- she came to Arthur’s high hall. Spell-weaver, she joined with Medraud, King’s bane, unweaver, unnamer. Bold will I make to tell the tale. Bold will I make before the court. Bold will I make before the fire. Bold will I make to sing the song. When in time Vivian went wandering Down hidden paths Seeking secret knowledge, Merlin-masteries, She came, for her steps led her, Unto that tree-fast-prison. Wind....

Pleasant are the meads of Oxenford in Spring where clerks in ancient robes tell tales and dream. And one, whose fathers had been kings, sang this song to deer that grazed. In idle hour, an old Phoenician listening wrote it down, 'twixt thoughts of swaying cedars that are no more. Twelve are the hours of the Day and Night, Twelve the Months of the rounded Year. Twelve are the Apostles of our Christ, and Twelve the Battles of the King.  On Badon's hill did Arthur wear The Queen of Heaven on his shield, Forth in the front of war until "They break," quoth he and Glorious Dawn blazed her corona O're his head: a terror to the sons of Horse Who from the Maiden's image fled. The Cymry ruled for fifty years the Isle of the Britons bless'd, Till Medraud raised his banner 'i the North, and then the Bear came charging forth, to fight and die and live once more When Saxon dragons thunder. These words did Talliesin sing, Wrapped in the splendor of his Dream, While L...

In Fall, the trees from Lyonesse to Logres burn in Autumn flashes. So did the heart of Tristram as singing songs of Lancelot and the Queen he rode, thinking of Fair Isolt who late from Eire did come to Mark, the Cornish King. In the woodland glade at fragrant evening he met Dagonet, Arthur's Fool, skipping as a leaf to the burning music of his addled thought. "Skip ye then to my music, Sir Fool", he cried. And Dagonet did not but listen as the leaves waved and danced. "Like ye not my music," smiled the errant knight. "Ye skip well enough to music half as good." "Oh, thy music is fair enough", quoth the Fool, "But I can make a song as well as thou." And from the broken music of his mind, Dagonet echoed back a shadow of the song that Tristram made: In the pl ume of foaming splendor, past the fecund water reads, Shot the bark of fair Ettaine, Lilly-lady-fair Elaine, Whom the people of that region, Where the lady lost her reason, And ne...

 

 I found Him in the shining of the stars, I marked Him in the flowering of the fields, but in His ways with men I marked Him not... -Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

This post is edited from a letter on Hope Mirrlees' Lud in the Mist First, thanks for passing on "Lud in the Mist". It's the kind of book I'm constantly hunting for and have increased trouble finding lately (Phantasties, Idylls of the King, The Last Unicorn, Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, The Queen of Elfland's Daughter, anything by William Morris, and the short stories of Clark Ashton Smith having already been encountered). There are very few books that I read at a positively leisurely pace for pure pleasure anymore and this was one of them. Second, I'm a historian and connector by nature and training, so I often access a book by linking it in with everything I've already read and letting my thoughts whirl like the music of the spheres. It seems like to immediately jump in to discussing Lud like that does violence to the Art. I feel the same way about Phantastes. I don't even know if Phantastes can be discussed in that way. Hope Mirrlee...

Major Connecticut hero, minor video game character Places can become ways of seeing things, but things can also become ways of seeing places.  I discussed this in regard to books in the previous post , but today I'd like to take a moment and extend the concept to video games. Games can also be a way of seeing.  In fact, we should expect this since video and computer games are primarily a visual medium.  An abnormally frosty morning in North Houston can be transformed for a group of teenage boys just by playing the first notes of the Skyrim theme.  Eyes light up, slack faces crack into a smile, and immediately their imaginations begin to spin.  The chill frost and bleak landscape they were complaining about a minute ago is transformed into a wide world of adventure with a wilderness of dragons.  In my youth, games like Secret of Mana   and The Legend of Zelda   colored the way I saw my surroundings.  Exploring the woods, or canoeing, o...

A way of seeing Places are a way of seeing.  They are a prism, or a lens, through which we view reality.  The places that we live in shape us just as we shape them.  As an illustration of this principle, I've posted pictures from the area where I grew up with the first quotes that came to mind when I sat down to review them.  That's not to say that they're exactly how I picture Minas Tirith, or Camelot, or Rivendell, but that my vision of each literary location takes its color from the basic images of my youth.  Now this can be seen the other way round as well.  Books have colored my sense of place.  There's an extra layer of meaning to all the towns and hamlets of rural new England because they are so "Shire-like".  The Colt Arms factory, even now that its been renovated, will always appear to me through the screen of Osgiliath.  All the Victorian Gothic follies and monuments will forever be hallowed for me by the image of the king . ...

On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And through the field the road runs by To many-towered Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often through the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed; "I am half sick of shadows," said The Lady of Shalott. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalot

And there was no gate like it under heaven. For barefoot on the keystone, which was lined And rippled like an ever-fleeting wave, The Lady of the Lake stood: all her dress Wept from her sides as water flowing away; But like the cross her great and goodly arms Stretched under the cornice and upheld: And drops of water fell from either hand; And down from one a sword was hung, from one A censer, either worn with wind and storm; And o'er her breast floated the sacred fish; And in the space to left of her, and right, Were Arthur's wars in weird devices done, New things and old co-twisted, as if Time Were nothing, so inveterately, that men Were giddy gazing there; and over all High on the top were those three Queens, the friends Of Arthur, who should help him at his need. -Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King

Connections are forged at the oddest moments. We were discussing Tennyson's Guinevere , part of his larger work Idylls of the King , in class today and focusing in on Arthur's final speech to Guinevere.  After painfully listing every consequence of her sin, Arthur pardons and forgives the Queen, affirming that he loves her still and hopes to see her in paradise.  In the meantime, however, even if he should win his war with Modred, he tells her that they can never be together again lest the kingdom thinks that the king's justice can be set aside for family loyalty.  It's a harsh sort of self-limiting that strikes one as quintessentially Victorian: duty before love and all that.  Stuffy.  If we read Tennyson correctly, it's not, but an odd way of seeing that struck my mind today as we were discussing: I thought of Charles and Julia's pact in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited to never see each other after they become convinced of God's existence.  Call...

Reading about the Inklings, the informal literary circle that gathered around C.S. Lewis in the thirties and forties, gradually begins to feel like adjusting the focus on a camera lens.  You start with a single figure in hazy focus, say J.R.R. Tolkien.  Picking up Humphrey Carpenter's biography draws the professor in a few stark lines.  A person, a personality begins to emerge.  To begin to see Tolkien, however, is for others figures to become perceptible on the edges of your vision.  C.S. Lewis enters into the picture, and Charles Williams hovers, indistinct around the edges.  Seeking to know the relationship between the three men better, you may pick up Carpenter's second work, The Inklings .  Suddenly, Lewis and Williams jump sharply into view as characters and Tolkien continues to take on life and weight.  New personages flit through the frame: Hugo Dyson, Humphrey Havard, Dorothy L. Sayers, T.S. Eliot, Warnie Lewis.  Carpenter's Lewis do...

So, when I was in college I spent a semester studying abroad at Oxford.  When I wasn't studying like mad or taking in the English culture, I turned to writing light fiction to pass the time.  On rainy evenings, I would sit down at the keyboard and tap out a few pages to send back to the folks at home.  Now in the midst of the writing, and the studying, and the rain, an idea came to me: what ever did happen to Vivian after she stole Merlin's spell and bound him in tree for all eternity.  Neither Mallory nor Tennyson have anything to say.  What if she was biding her time all those years until Arthur's kingdom fell and she could emerge as a power.  With her magic, the Saxons would worship her as a goddess and she would bring ruin on the isle of Britain.  Of course, she'd have to get her comeuppance in the end and be undone by the very powers she'd summoned.  That was my idea and it went exactly nowhere.  I couldn't write something like that an...

No, the Platypus isn't getting Levitical.  What I do want to talk about, however, is Fritz Leiber's fourth Fafhrd and Grey Mouser volume, Swords Against Wizardry . Having returned from our world, Fafhrd and Mouser seek adventure far from the decadence of native Lankhmar.  In the first story, this means a journey to Fafhrd's northern home and the attempt to scale an unscalable peak in search of jewels.  Along the way they encounter girls (that pernicious habit) and fend off rival adventurers.  Returning to the base of the mountain loaded with jewels, our heroes turn to that city of misadventure, Lankhmar to sell their booty.  This leads into the second story which features our "heroes" trying to sell their loot without losing it to rival thieves.  Along the way they encounter more girls (noting a theme yet?) and end by losing their loot to more cunning and depraved adversaries.  The loss of the loot sends them into the third tale, co-written with Leib...

Hearing recordings of Tennyson read his own poetry or Eliot read his is a bit of a disappointment.  The great artist and the great poems aren't matched with a great performance.  There are some reasons for this.  Tennyson and Eliot were both taught to read poetry for public performance in a style that grates on contemporary U.S. ears.  More than that, though, writing great poetry and performing it are two different skills.  We assume that they go together.  That is our mistake. There are times and places, however, where the need for those two skills to go together is much stronger than it is here and now.  We commonly use a written form of poetry (free-style in Rap and scat in Jazz being notable exceptions) that emphasizes the carefully prepared and polished speech that is to be read, most often silently, by the reader at the time and place of the reader's choosing.  However, there is another way of composing poetry, what A.B. Lord calls "compos...

For those interested in my idiosyncratic gloss of Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur," here are all the links in their proper order: Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII Part VIII

   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...