In
Arthur Machen’s 1915 wonder-tale “The Great Return” we hear of
marvelous lights, odors, bell-sounds, Welsh saints, the Rich
Fisherman, and healings, as the Holy Graal is manifest, briefly, in
Wales in the 20th
century. The story needs no detection of “sources” to be
reasonably well understood and enjoyed. However, our enjoyment of it
may be enhanced if we see it – or recognize it – as a “sequel”
to one of the great medieval Arthurian works.
That
work is the Old French prose romance Perlesvaus,
from the early 13 century, which Machen knew in Sebastian Evans’s
1898 translation as The
High History of the Holy Graal.
The Perlesvaus
is a century and a half or more older than Sir Thomas Malory’s
Morte
d’Arthur. Readers
of Machen’s Hieroglyphics
may remember the Morte
as
belonging to a dozen or so literary works cited as examples of “fine
literature,” works of the highest literary art, capable of
conveying “ecstasy,” wonder, beauty, the longing for the unknown.
Machen
also appreciated Evans’s High
History.
In his controversial essay “The Secret of the Sangraal,” Machen
referred to Sebastian Evans as “the
accomplished and admirable, if somewhat archaistic translator of one
of the Romances, to which he gave the title The
High History of the Holy Graal.”
Machen’s friend A. E. Waite wrote, similarly, of the Perlesvaus
as having been “translated into English of an archaic kind,
beautiful and stately, by Dr. Sebastian Evans, a gorgeous chronicle,
full of richly painted pictures and pageants” (in The
Hidden Church of the Holy Graal
from 1910, page 11).
The
“archaic” style to which Machen and Waite refer should pose no
difficulties for readers who can enjoy William Morris’s prose
romances, such as The
Well at the World’s End
and The
Water of the Wondrous Isles.
Perhaps the main thing that takes a little adjusting to is the use
of “and” where modern English uses “if.” The Pre-Raphaelite
quality is signaled before the story’s text commences by Edward
Burne-Jones’s frontispieces.
The
High
History’s
imagined era is the first Christian century (so that a mule that had
belonged to one of Pilate’s soldiers is still alive when Lancelot
and Perceval meet). The Graal is mostly in the background, and there
is no official setting-out of the Round Table knights in quest of it.
At the long book’s end, Perceval lays down his arms and devotes
himself, with his widowed mother and his sister, to the religious
life, and we learn that the Graal will be seen no more.
Before
this happens, though, we have read of the “rich King Fisherman”
and King Arthur has learned that it is God’s will that chalices for
the Mass be of the pattern he is shown and that churches be provided
with bells.
But
Perceval’s mother and sister die, and the moment comes for
Perceval’s departure.
“Perceval
heard one day a bell sound loud and high without the manor toward the
sea. He came to the window of the hall and saw the ship come with
the white sail and the Red Cross thereon, and within were the fairest
folk that ever he might behold, and they were all robed in such a
manner as though they should sing mass.” This sight is accompanied
by a fragrance of supernal excellence; “no savour in the world
smelleth so sweet.”
Perceval
enters the boat and “never thereafter did no earthly man know what
became of him.” In the years that follow, the chapel wherein he
had resided falls into decay. However, one day, two young Welsh
knights investigate the chapel; and they remain there for a long time
as hermits. They have holy deaths and the people “of that land
called them saints”; but they are not named.
Machen
may well have found in such details a number of the germs of his
story “The Great Return.” To them he added his devotion to the
idea of the ancient Celtic Church.
By
the way, Sebastian Evans’s book was there for the three famous
Inklings, too.
Charles
Williams, like Machen an associate of Waite, discusses it in his
unfinished work The
Figure of Arthur:
“[Perlesvaus]
was translated into English [prose] in the nineteenth century by
Sebastian Evans. He was a poet of a certain power, though his
medievalism is of the usual mannered and slightly picturesque kind
common to that period; if not pre-Raphaelite it is at least kindred
to that manner.”
Tolkien
had a copy in his personal library, as we learn in Oronzo Cilli’s
2019 book.
And
C. S. Lewis loved it for years. When he discovered it in his teens,
he wrote to his best friend, “It is absolute heaven: it is more
mystic & eerie than [Malory’s] ‘Morte’ & has [a] more
connected plot.” Almost 30 years later, he wrote to a friend of
E. R. Eddison that The High History
of the Holy Grail [sic]
was among his favorites, in company with Malory’s Morte,
Spenser’s Faerie Queene,
and William Morris’s romances. It’s likely that his weird poem
“Launcelot” is derived from the High
History rather than Malory.
The
High History
is episodic and repetitive, and perhaps not a book I will read twice
in its entirety, but it was exciting to read a little-known book that
mattered to four of my favorite authors. And I wouldn’t have
wanted to miss certain details. One is a passing reference to the
castle of Joseus, the son of King Pelles. Joseus “‘slew his
mother there. Never sithence hath the castle ceased of burning, and
I tell you that of this castle and one other will be kindled the fire
that shall burn up the world and put it to an end.’”
Note
Machen’s
essay “The Sangraal” is quoted here from The
Glorious Mystery (US edition, 1924).
The essay appears in the British volume The Shining Pyramid (1924) under the title "The Secret of the Sangraal."
Nigel
Bryant translated the Perlesvaus
for 1978 publication as The
High Book of the Grail.
A little spot-checking shows differences in some word-meanings,
perhaps due to use of different texts. Evans’s style seemed to me
to fit the matter better than Bryant’s relaxed, contemporary
fashion – and I wanted to read the book known to Machen, Williams,
Tolkien, and Lewis.
I guest-blogged here on 23 Feb. 2016, on “Arthur Machen: The Railer’s Failure in ‘The Great Return.’”
(c) 2019 Dale Nelson
