TTL 1: “Prelude” — by Crystal Hurd

Here is Post #1 in the Series on Taliessin through Logres! Please visit the INTRODUCTION to this series first.

Today’s post is about the “Prelude,” and it is by Crystal Hurd.

Dr. Crystal Hurd is an educator, writer, poet, and researcher. She lives with her husband and four dogs (among them “Jack” and “Lucy”) in southwest Virginia. Her interests include reading, writing, photography, and immersing herself in anything associated with England (especially Doctor Who). Over the past decade, she has read and researched both biographical and rhetorical aspects of C.S. Lewis, fully endorsing his integration of faith and intellect. Her dissertation applied Transformational Leadership theory to the life and works of Lewis. Hurd works for the non-profit organization Develop Africa mentoring young women in Sierra Leone and Kenya. She is a staff writer for the art/faith blog All Nine Muses. You can visit her website at http://www.crystalhurd.com.

1. PRELUDE

Those of us who have studied Charles Williams for any length of time are aware that Williams was an…interesting sort of fellow. The Oddest Inkling site has done a marvelous job introducing the world to Williams and his peculiar stance on various issues, including Romantic Theology. He was seen as an outlier by many, someone on the margins of literature, yet securely subscribed to the ideas of the literary elite.

That is to say: Williams was a genius. Take a good look at “the company he kept.”  A quick investigation reveals that Williams was acquainted with some of the best and brightest of his generation – C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield as Inkling associates, but also T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, W. H. Auden, and many, many others. Williams did not befriend these luminaries simply because he worked in publishing or because he was a nice guy; Williams was a brilliant, talented, and fascinating individual. His work illustrates this.

Williams had been working on Arthurian poetry for a while. He was disrupted by other projects, but came back to them each time. In his biography of Williams, Grevel Lindop quotes from a letter from William to Anne Bradby (editor) providing a description of the project:

Palomides in a cycle of Arthurian poems was to pass from Dualism – which was Good and Evil, but as much as sensations as morals – […] to the Unity of Mahomet and Allah… -and so on to Iseult and Christendom and Logres, where one might very well symbolize the unity of life by marriage, so that all the Saracenic femininities become one, by the operation of the will. Since I darkly begin to believe that the operation of the will is necessary for this work, & that most of us do not achieve it because our will never operates. (235)

Before we dive in, let’s take Williams at his word. Dualism (and his larger theme of spirituality) is the anchoring theme throughout the Prologue. Focusing on the Arthurian legends, Williams hopes to show us how fragile we are, how we oscillate between peace and war courtesy of the “Twins” — Good and Evil. It is a character’s choice of Good and Evil that creates the crux of the story, and, as several players rise and fall throughout the Prologue, Williams continually guides us back to this primary conflict. This presentation is wrapped in a robe of gorgeous language — metaphors, assonance, alliteration. It’s a beautiful package. As Sørina suggests, the first reading should be strictly for aesthetic appreciation. Dissecting it too soon will steal the beauty away, which is a great shame for such a magnificent piece. Williams is channeling the old poets — Virgil, Homer, and the like — to a startlingly accurate degree. His reproduction of style hearkens back to the Greek and Roman tradition, and, I would dare say, of all of the Inklings, he is the best example of the great poetic standards that defined classical literature.

This dualism is present from the first lines of the Prologue. The aim of the Prologue, as Sørina mentions in her introduction, is to explain the “political and spiritual situation in which CW’s Arthurian mythology takes place.” Moslem storms Byzantium and the troubles begin. The issue derives from poor leadership –- “the blind rulers of Logres” whose tendency towards rationality places Byzantium in peril. Taliessin is our narrator, taking us through the chronology of events which culminates in Arthurian conflict. Williams introduces us right away to the contrasting concepts of dark and light. Taliessin is a “druid” who serves as a poet. With his harp in tow, he travels throughout the land, describing its lush landscape while outlining the various leadership changes (and spiritual changes) catalyzed by Christian reformation.

Let’s pause and examine some of the beauty of Williams’ verse:

“Bold stood Arthur; the snow beat; Merlin spoke:
‘Now am I Camelot; now am I to be builded.
King Cradlemas sits by Thames; a mask o’ergilded
Covers his wrinkled face, all but one eye.

Cold and small he settles his rump in the cushions.
Through the emerald of Nero one short-sighted eye
Peers at the pedlars of wealth that stand plausibly by.
The bleak mask is gilded with a maiden’s motionless smile.

The high aged voice squeals with callous comfort.
He sits on the bank of Thames, a sea-snail’s shell
Fragile, fragilely carved, cast out by the swell
On to the mud; his spirit withers and dies.”

(from “The Calling of Arthur”)

First off, read these lines to yourself. Read them aloud. Let them roll off of your tongue like a rehearsed and adored poem you were taught as a child. Notice the alliteration emphasized in italics:

Cold and small he settles his rump on the cushions.           
Through the emerald of Nero one short-sighted eye
Peers at the pedlars of wealth that stand plausibly by.
The bleak mask is gilded with a maiden’s motionless smile.

Williams presents an oxymoron in “callous comfort” and a few stanzas later uses the phrase “brick and pickle” (assonance). Sonically, these lines are incredibly pleasing. It’s difficult to keep the history straight because you are tangled in the revelry of language.

Chronologically, Lancelot and Gawaine arrive and Cradlemas is defeated. Virgil also appears after the battle (which is important because Taliessin is a poet). He is seen “leaning” and Taliessin feels “the deep breath dragging the depth of all dimension.” Arthur is crowned the new king. Of course, we know how it all turns out. Peace and goodness reign until Guinevere eventually sows destruction by fooling with Lancelot. Virgil passes — the poet, the voice of warning. When Taliessin returns from a sea voyage, he finds Arthur flanked by his wife Guinevere and half-sister Morgause (King Lot’s wife). The legend follows that Arthur has affair with Morgause and fathers a bastard son Modred (Mordred) who eventually kills Arthur. Thus the child foreshadows the end of Camelot (“Arthur tossed loves with a woman and split his fate”).  Darkness enters with Arthur’s sin:

“Over Camelot and Carbonek a whirling creature hovered
As over the Adam in Eden when they found themselves uncovered,
When they would know good as evil; thereon it was showed,
But then they must know God also after that mode.”

Morgause is painted as a dark figure, and their unborn child will deliver death and destruction:

“The child lies unborn in the queen’s womb;
Unformed in his brain is the web of all our doom,
As unformed in the minds of all the great lords
Lies the image of the split Table and of surreptitious swords”

(from “Lamorack and the Queen Morgause of Orkney”)

Williams continues to illustrate how bad decisions and corrupt individuals slowly dismantle the once-glorious Camelot. Taliessin, concerned for the state of affairs, warns of a darkening tone:

when words
escape from verse they hurry to rape souls;
when sensation slips from intellect, expect the tyrant
…
We have taught our images to be free; are we glad?
Are we glad to have brought convenient heresy to Logres?

from “Bors to Elayne: On the King’s Coins”)

Lord Balin the Savage is “through-thrust with a causeless vigil of anger” while “the king in the elevation beheld and loved himself crowned.” Williams varies his line length before the “Ascent of the Spear” to express Taliessin’s slow rise of panic and confusion. He, the poet, believes that these signs are harbingers of demise; he fears what is coming. Taliessin then finds a girl tied to the stocks as punishment. She admits that she is there “for taking a stick to a sneering bastard slut, a Mongol ape, that mouthed me in a wrangle.” Taliessin begs for mercy and asks to unlock the stocks. Illustrating Christ’s forgiveness, Taliessin releases her: “Let come the fellow whose duty unlocked the stocks’ bar: is it ours to undo the fetter whereto the world’s order consigned its own disordered mind?” Later, Taliessin travels to the rose garden, where he finds “the feminine leadership of Logres, the queen Guinevere, talking to Dindrane, Percivale’s sister; beyond, as the ground-work she was and tended, a single maid hardened with toiled on the well-gardened roses.” As mentioned in Sorina’s introduction, the province is interpreted gynomorphically; thus, the image of woman is a deep undercurrent in Taliessin’s narrative.

During the prologue, we travel through substantial conflict, but redemption is coming. Galahad’s arrival is imminent, and hope is blooming with a promise of restoration. The Prologue presents a brief history, but places the rest of Taliessin through Logres firmly in context. Williams’ poetry is absolutely stunning, and carries the story with such skill, such beauty, that one cannot help but turn the page and begin “Taliessin’s Return to Logres.”