Tennyson's Idylls and the Weird Battle of the West


And Arthur said, 'Behold, thy doom is mine.
Let chance what will, I love thee to the death!'
To whom the Queen replied with drooping eyes,
'King and my lord, I love thee to the death!'
And holy Dubric spread his hands and spake,
'Reign ye, and live and love, and make the world
Other, and may thy Queen be one with thee,
And all this Order of thy Table Round
Fulfil the boundless purpose of their King!'

I recently finished reading most of the Idylls of the King. I say most of because my Norton Critical Edition of his poetry comes lacking four of the Idylls. I find that annoying. It doesn't have "Gareth and Lynette," "The Marriage of Geraint," "Geraint and Enid," and "Balin and Balan." That's a lot of the book! The editor apologizes, excusing himself on the basis of economic need. As this is a volume interested in presenting the work of Tennyson with a focus on his thoughts, and not on the works for their own sake, that can be understood. Nevertheless, the necessity is tragic.

I am very fond of Tennyson's poetry, and reading it was a great adventure. I first took it off the shelf because Laura Ingalls Wilder recalls reading the Lotus Eaters when she was a young girl in one of the Little House books. I kept reading it because he wrote about King Arthur. I love the stories of King Arthur, and Le Morte D' Arthur was really an amazing book (well, the Senegral was).

Anyway, I have come to very much enjoy reading Tennyson. In some ways, the Idylls read to me (especially the first and last) as if they were another attempt at English epic poetry. The Arthur stories would be a good source, but even by the time of Tennyson that age was long past. In another way, Tennyson is fascinating because he plugs the gap for me (somewhat) between the late Romantics and T.S. Elliot. He was still young when Lord Byron died, an event that so impressed itself upon his person that he went out into the moors and scratched on a rock with a knife: "Byron is dead", and so is another age after this age with which I personally am very familiar. The Idylls were finished in the 1870s, and there is interesting poetry still between Elliott and the 1870s, but it still fills in a bit of my unfinished education.

The editors in the critical edition draw heavily from notes by Tennyson about the allegorical purpose of the Idylls. In this way, the more interesting Idylls are clearly the later ones, for in the later Idylls Tennyson meditates on the rise of materialism, darwinism, and the decline of Christianity and idealism. In one way, the death of Arthur and the destruction of the Round Table is seen to be the destruction of an age of high idealism. The table is a group of knights that are all besworn to high purposes, and must keep them. But the sin of Lancelot and Guinevere (shown in this account to be an explicit denial not only of traditional and proper morality, but of the very table and nation's order as well) drives a wedge into the integrity of the table.

This turns out to be very pessimistic. Can any ideal be perfectly kept? Is there room for grace?

There is room for grace, but it won't necessarily keep us from the terrible consequences of our sin here. Arthur shows us the image of grace when he forgives Guinevere in the abbey to which she's run after the affair's found out by Modred. The Idyll "Guinevere" tells of the disollution of the Round Table in civil war between Lancelot and Arthur and then Arthur and Modred, through her eyes, from a distance and only second hand. But the Idyll ends with Arthur coming in through the gate of her abbey and forgiving her, urging her to repent so that they can be reunited in heaven, and going off foreknowingly to his death.

Justice is kept in the war with Lancelot, but grace is granted to Guinevere. I am not sure that I understand the implications of that.

I especially like that Idyll because it's got some great descriptive poetry. For example, there are these lines that follow Arthur's forgiveness of Guinevere. Guinevere has been lying on the floor, too ashamed to look at Arthur, during his speech to her. Now he is leaving, having blessed her. She hasn't even seen him yet.

Then, listening till those armed steps were gone,
Rose the pale Queen, and in her anguish found
The casement: "peradventure," so she thought,
"If I might see his face, and not be seen."
And lo, he sat on horseback at the door!
And near him the sad nuns with each a light
Stood, and he gave them charge about the Queen,
To guard and to foster her for evermore.
And while he spake to these his helm was lower'd,
To which for crest the golden dragon clung
Of Britain; so she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel's, but she saw,
Wet with mists and smitten by the lights,
The Dragon of the great Pendragonship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.
And even then he turn'd; and more and more
The moony vapor rolling round the king,
Who seem'd the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.

Doesn't that make you shiver? The martyr is going to his death, leaving this world forever, but Tennyson thinks, finding a better one yet. And then, he'll come back. To which I can only say, the sooner the better.

Does the poem have a practical application (Torrey's so habituated me to ask)? The question to me is this: What do we do when Arthur dies?

That's what Sir Bedivire wondered, too, being the lone Knight of the Round Table left.

"Ah! My Arthur, wither shall I go?
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 have been not since the light
That led the holy Elders with the gift of myrrh.
But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the might world'
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

Arthur answers him from the barge that's taking him to Avalon:

"The old order changeth yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself; what comforth is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! But thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men etter than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

I believe we are now firmly within that era which is ushered in by the death of Arthur, though the paynims are not yet finished with their plunder. As the last rays of the west illumine the beautiful creations of the west, those that are left and are faithful must still pray. Here's the interesting thing about what Arthur says, he doesn't condemn outright the inevitable new pagan order. Arthur says, God's going to show himself differently now, also.. pray! So, as the Christian era goes out and the new materialism comes in (so perfectly inevitably) we should pray. Good, but I think they should also fulfill their vows, and maybe, just maybe it is Tolkien who is right, not Tennyson.

Let me explain what I mean:

An interesting question that this brought up in my mind, also, was the relation between Tolkien, Lewis and Tennyson. Tennyson of course predated them by many years, and the critics were very harsh on him during their formative years, but it seems difficult for me to imagine that this work did not have a very strong impact on both of their writing, because they are interested in myth and fairy stories. And the spirit of Tennyson's Idylls reminds me of the spirit of some of their storiers some what. But most of all, I wonder about Tolkien. Here we have a king going off into the myst to fight a final deadly battle (a pyrrhic victory) in the West. Arthur's lost is parralleled by Aragorn's victory. Is the mind of Tolkien, being more Christian, thus more optomistic? Is Tolkien, in part, penning the Lord of the Rings as a literary reply to Tennyson's work?

I wish that Tolkien had wrote in an epic style of blank verse, because it really is enjoyable to read. Not that I mind his prose, though. I really do like it.

Anyway, if anybody knows of any papers that treat on this subject, let me know, I'm curious.