Arthurian Poets: Charles Williams (Arthurian Studies, 24)

by David Llewellyn Dodds (Editor)

I believe this volume will give to scholars of Williams expanded vistas from which to view his work, and to the general reader glimpses of Camelot'. MYTHPRINT Includes Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars - complex and haunting works which constitute the major imaginative writings about the Grail this century in addition to much previously unpublished material. Charles Williams's two cycles of poems, Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars, constitute the major imaginative work about the Grail of the 20th century. Williams's vision of spiritual reality is expressed through symbols of great originality, and the complex patterns of sound and haunting rhythms make his poems deeply rewarding.In this new edition David Dodds collects together for the first time twenty-four of Williams's earlier poems on Arthurian themes, many never published before. They are from Williams's collection The Advent of Galahad, which both grew into and gave way to the Taliessin cycle. There are also later poems showing this transmutation in process, and fragments, designed to form a sequel to The Region of the Summer Stars, which appear for the first time. Besides the publication of this important new material, the present edition will serve to introduce new readers to the magic of these rich and lyrical pieces, which evoke a spiritual world in keeping with the highest ideals of Arthurian literature. DAVID LLEWELLYN DODDS, of Merton College, was a Rhodes Scholar and Richard Weaver Fellow. He has lectured in English at Harlaxton College, worked at the Houghton and Regenstein Libraries, and is now Curator of C.S. Lewis's house, The Kilns. He is currently working on a complete critical edition of Charles Williams's unpublished Arthurian poetry and prose. Other poets in this series: Edwin Arlington Robinson; A.C. Swinburne; William Morris & Matthew Arnold.

312 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 1991

Reviews

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been reading and rereading Charles Williams's Arthurian poetry since I was but a lad, as published in Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars , and collected by the Christian publisher Eerdman's in a single volume, along with Williams's unfinished essay about the history of the Arthurian story, and an essay about the two poetry by C.S. Lewis. The latter was incredibly useful

Here we have, once again, those two collections ... and they make up only about half the poetry in this volume. I bought it in 1998 in Oxford, and have been poking at it since; recently I decided to just bloody read the thing through, and I did, one poem per night.

I'm not a big poetry buff. I like it, but I find it hard work to read. But some poets are worth it, and Williams is one of them. Of the poets I know well, he (in the poems of TTL and TRotSS ) most resembles T.S. Eliot -- but not all that much, mostly in their being structurally very much influenced by High Modernism; but they are also very much influenced by older poetic traditions.

One of my favorites, "Taliessin's Song of the Unicorn," is very conservative in form: 36 lines of (usually) four stresses each, in ABABCDCD etc. rhyme, and all making one long, but beautifully formed, sentence.

There is not even a pretense of being accurate to one historical period. Williams mingles about a thousand years of history into a single lifetime, one huge mishmosh, to produce the effect he wants. In his ahistoric period, the Byzantine Empire (which was never called that; it was the Eastern Roman Empire) seems to fall to the Muslims, but at the same time holds sway over all Europe, even theoretically as far as Logres (which is the name of England in these poems). Europe and the Middle East are shown in the endpapers as a map overlaid with the image of a nude woman, with her head at Logres, her clasped hands at Rome, her navel at Byzantium, her genitals at Jerusalem, and her feet off the bottom of the map. Far away, at the Antipodes, a headless emperor walks on the water at P'o-lu, surrounded by his octopoid court. (And if anyone thinks that's a wee bit racist ... well, they're probably right.)

All is ordered by God through the Emperor and the Pope. Arthur is called to drive the "pirates" (i.e., the Danes) out of Logres, and King Cradlemas the luxurious out of Camelot (which is "London-in-Logres"), and prepare the way for the Second Coming by way of returning the Holy Grail from its place at Carbonek. But Arthur's pride gets in the way, as does his unknowing incest with his sister Morgause, which results in the birth of Mordred. So does the adulterous love of Lancelot and Guinevere; and so does the Dolorous Blow, struck by Sir Balin le Sauvage at Carbonek, when he seizes the Spear that pierced Christ's side and, with it, wounds the thigh of King Pelles, bringing a wound that can be healed only when a true knight achieves the Grail quest. (In the end, it is achieved by Galahad, but he is significantly accompanied by Percivale and Bors -- only one of whom will return to Camelot, and that only after the great battle of Arthur and Mordred.)

Yada, yada. I could go on for days about what this stuff "means." But what about the poetry?

The poetry in the two original collection is quite beautiful, at times reaching to heights of linguistic glory I have never seen in any other poet, save Shakespeare and Dante. He uses many different tropes and schemes; a good number of the poems are in nominally blank verse, but with fascinating rhythms and liberal use of internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance, and the like.

But that, as I say, is only about half the poetry in this volume; in fact Part I.

Part II begins with a large number of earlier poems -- from the late 1920s -- in a somewhat more stilted style, grouped as "The Advent of Galahad;" four "intermediate" poems; and finally a set of seven "Poems after Taliessin Through Logres , most of which are fragmentary. It is not clear, at least to me, whether some of them were written before or after the final assemblage of TRotSS .

Dodds provides a general Introduction, and Introductions to the various sections of Part II, which are scholarly without being unnecessarily difficult for the lay reader.