Hoy hemos sabido que ya nos habíamos despedido para siempre, sin saberlo, de nuestro querido amigo Eustoquio Molina. Le echaremos en falta cada día. Cada día es ese día en el que nunca sabes si has visto a alguien por última vez. A esas personas con quienes te tratas a diario cada día, un día más que de repente es el último día para cualquiera de nosotros.
Ahora @TwitterEspana bloquea a la asociación de víctimas del terrorismo @CovitePV y a su presidenta Consuelo Ordoñez. No he oído que hayan bloqueado nunca a un terrorista como Otegui ni retirado ni en activo. O se están volviendo locos o es algo peor. https://t.co/bCHVcLaB5O— Hermann Tertsch (@hermanntertsch) 29 de septiembre de 2018
🏛 Sánchez y sus socios separatistas y populistas tumban nuestra ley para acabar con las barreras lingüísticas en el empleo público. El sanchismo impide la igualdad entre españoles que hoy ha defendido brillantemente @Tonicanto1. pic.twitter.com/BlT8CiQoPt— Albert Rivera (@Albert_Rivera) 25 de septiembre de 2018
(From George Sampson's Concise Cambridge History of English
Literature, 3rd ed.).
XII. THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND
The mystery of Arthur's end is not darker than the mystery of his
beginning. While the ancient tradition is everywhere, the facts and
records are nowhere. The earliest English Arthurian literature is
singularly meagre and undistinguished. The romantic exploitation of
"the matter of Britain" was the achievement, mainly, of French writers,
and, indeed, some critics would have us attach little importance to
British influence on the development of the Arthurian legend. The
"matter of Britain" very quickly became international property—a vast
composite body of romantic tradition, which European poets and
story-tellers of every nationality drew upon and used for their own
purposes. Arthur was non-political and could be idealised without
offence to any ruling family. The British king himself faded more and
more into the background, and became, in time, but the phantom monarch
of a featureless "land of faëry". His knights quite overshadow him in
the later romances; but they, in their turn, undergo the same process
of denationalization, and appear as natives of some region of fantasy,
moving about in a golden atmosphere of illusion. The course of the
story is too obscure to be made clear in a brief summary which must
necessarily ignore the hints and half-tones that count for much in the
total effect, and which can take no account of French, German and
Italian contributions to the legend. Old English literature, even the Chronicle,
knows nothing whatever of Arthur. To find any mention of him earlier
than the twelfth century we must turn to Wales, where, in a few obscure
poems, a difficult prose story, and two dry Latin chronicles we find
what appear to be the first written references, meagre and casual, but
indicating a tradition already ancient. The earliest is in Historia
Britonum, which, as we have seen (p. 9), dates from 679, though the
existing recension of Nennius was made in the ninth century. The
reference of Nennius to Arthur occurs in a very short account of the
conflict that culminated in Mount Badon, usually dated 516, though some
would put it as early as 470. Gildas, who was a youth in 516, also
mentions Mount Badon; but the only hero he names is "Ambrosius
Aurelianus". In Nennius the hero has become "The magnanimous Arthur",
who was twelve times victorious, last of all at Mount Badon; but he is
a military leader, not a king—or, perhaps, as the anthropologist Lord
Raglan thinks, "a god of war".
The poems of the ancient Welsh bards have been discussed almost as
fiercely as the poems of Ossian; yet there is no doubt that together
with much of late and doubtful invention they contain something of
indisputably ancient tradition. But the most celebrated of the early
Welsh bards know nothing of Arthur. Llywarch Hên, Taliesin and Aneirin
(sixth or seventh century?) never mention him; to the first to Urien,
Lord of Rheged, is the most imposing figure among all the native
warriors. There are, indeed, only five ancient poems that mention
Arthur at all. The reference most significant to modern readers occurs
in the Stanzas of the Graves contained in the Black Book of
Caermarthen (twelfth century): "A grave there is for March (Mark),
a grave for Gwythur, a grave for Gwgawn of the Ruddy Sword; a mystery
is the grave of Arthur." Another stanza mentions both the fatal battle
of Camlan and Bedwyr (Bedivere) , who shares with Kai (Kay)
pre-eminence among Arthur's followers in the primitive Welsh fragments
of Arthurian fable. Another Arthurian knight, Geraint, is the hero of a
poem that appears both in The Black Book of Caermarthen and in
the Red Book of Hergest (fourteenth century). One of the
eighteen stanzas just mentions Arthur by name. The Chair of the
Sovereign in The Book of Taliesin (thirteenth century)
alludes obscurely to Arthur as a "Warrior sprung from two sources".
Arthur, Kai and Bedwyr appear in another poem contained in The
Black Book; but the deed celebrated in the almost incomprehensible
lines of this poem are the deeds of Kai and Bedwyr. Arthur recedes
still further into the twilight of myth in the only other Old Welsh
poem where any extended allusion is made to him, a most obscure piece of
sixty lines contained in The Book of Taliesin. Here, as Matthew
Arnold says, "The writer is pillaging an antiquity of which he does not
fully possess the secret". Arthur sets upon various expeditions over
perilous seas in his ship Pridwen; one of them has as its object the
rape of a cauldron belonging to the King of Hades. Ancient British
poetry has nothing futher to tell us of this mysterious being, who is,
even at a time so remote, a vague, impalpable figure of legend.
The most remarkable fragment of the existing early Welsh literature
about Arthur is the prose romance of Kulhwch and Olwen,
assigned by most authorities to the tenth century. It is one of the
stories that Lady Charlotte Guest translated from the Red Book of
Hergest and published in The Mabinogion (1838). Of the
twelve "Mabinogion", or stories for the young (the word has a
special meaning but is loosely used), five deal with Arthurian themes.
Two, Kullwch and Olwen and The Dream of Rhonabury, are
British; the other three are based on French originals. In The
Dream of Rhonabury, Arthur and Kai apper, Mount Badon is mentioned,
and the fatal battle of Camlan with Mordred is referred to in some
detail. The Arthuro Kullwch and Olwen bears little resemblance
to the mystic king of later legend, except in the magnitude of his
warrior retinue, in which Kai and Bedwyr are leaders. Arthur, with his
dog Cavall, joins in the hunt for the boar Twrch Trwyth through
Ireland, Wales and Cornwall, and his many adventures are clearly relics
of ancient wonder-tales of bird and beast, wind and water. The wild and
even monstrous Arthur of this legend is equally remote from Nennis and
from Malory; but the charm of the story is someething that the
long-winded Continental writers could not achieve.
The serious historian William of Malmesbury, who wrote a few years
earlier than Geoffrey of Monmouth, refers to Arthur as a hero worthy to
be celebrated in authentic history and not in idle fictions. He adds,
"The sepulchre of Arthur is nowhere to be seen, whence ancient ballads
fable that he is to come." Plainly, Arthur was already a popular
tradition. The transformation of the British Arthru into a romantic
hero of European renown was the result of contact between British and
Norman culture. No doubt the Normans got their first knowledge of
Arthurian story from Brittany; but the real contact was made in Britain
itself, where the Normans had succeeded in establishing intimate
relations with the Welsh. Thus the true father of the Arthurian legend
is Geoffrey of Monmouth. How much he derived from ancient sources we
shall probably never find out; but we can reasonably assume that he did
not invent the fabric of the story, however fancifully he embroidered
it. And, after all, the real point is not how much he invented, but how
he used his matter, historical or legendary. Geoffrey had the art of
making the improbable seem probable, and his ingenious blending of fact
and fable not only gave his book a great success with readers, but made
Arthur and Merlin the romantic property of literary Europe. So it has
been urged thet we shoul take Geoffrey's compilation, not as a national
history, but as a national epic, doing for Britain what the Aeneid
did for Rome, and finding in the mythical Brutus, great-grandson of
Aeneas, the name-giving founder of the British state. In such a story
all the legends have their natural place. Geoffrey's History is
thus the first Brut—for so in time the records of early British
kings with this mythical starting-point came to be called. The first
few books of Historia Regum Britanniae relate the deeds of
Arthur's predecessors. At the close of the sixth book the weird figure
of Merlin appears on the scene, and romance begins to usurp the place
of sober history. Arthur is Geoffrey's hero. He knows nothing of
Tristam, Lancelot or the Holy Grail; but it was he who, in the Mordred
and Guenevere episode, first sugggested the love-tragedy that was to
become one of the world's imperishable romances.
In the Latin Life of Gildas written at about the time of
Geoffrey's death there is a further interesting allusion. Arthur is
described as being engaged in deadly feud with the King of Scotland,
whom he finally kills; he subsequently comes into collision with
Melwas, the wicked king of the "summer country" or Somerset, who had,
unknown to him, abducted his wife Guenevere, and concealed her in the
abbey of Glastonia. This seems to be the earliest appearance o the
tradition which made Melwas (the Mellyagraunce of Malory) an abductor
of Guenevere. Some of the Welsh traditions are used in Peacock's
delightful story The Misfortunes of Elphin, Melwas and the
abduction both appearing.
The value of the Arthurian story as matter for verse was first
perceived in France; and the earliest surviving standard example of
metrical narrative or romance derived directly or indirectly from
Geoffrey is Li Romans de Brut by Wace, who, born in Jersey,
lived at Caen and Bayeux, and completed his poem in 1155. Some of the
matter is independent of Geoffrey's History. Thus, it is Wace,
not Geoffrey, who first tells of the Round Table. The poem, 15,000
lines long, written in lightly rhyming verse and in a familiar
language, was very popular. Wace's Brut, possibly in some form
not now existing, or in some blend with other chronicles, provided the
foundation of Layamon's Brut, the only English contrubution of
any importance to Arthurian literature before the fourteenth century;
for, so far, all the matter discussed is in Welsh or Latin or French.
Layamon added something personal to the essntially English character of
his style and matter, and he gives us as well details not to be found
in Wace or Geoffrey. Thus, he amplifies the story of the Round Table
and narrates the dream of Arthur, not to be found in Geoffrey or Wace,
which foreshadows the treachery of Mordred and Guenevere, and disturbs
the king with a sense of impending doom. Layamon's enormous and uncouth
epic has the unique distinction of being the first celebration of "the
matter of Britain" in the English tongue.
Not the least remarkable fact about the story of King Arthur is its
rapid development as the centre of many gravitating stories, at first
quite independent, but now permanently part of the great Arthurian
system. Thus we have the stories of Merlin, of Gawain, of Lancelot, of
Tristram, of Perceval, and of the Grail. A full account of these
associated legends belongs to the history of French and German, rather
than of English, literature, and is thus outside our scope. In origin
Merlin may have been a Welsh wizard-bard, but he makes his first
appearance in Geoffrey and quickly passes into French romance, from
which he is transferred to English story. Gawain is the hero of more
episodic romances than any other British knight; when he passes into
French story he begins to assume his Malorian (and Tennysonian)
lightness of character. He is the hero of the finest of all Middle
English metrical romances, Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight,
and, as Gwalchmai, he plays a large part in the story called Peredur
the Son of Evrawc, included in the Mabinogion. Peredur is
Perceval, and the story comes from French romance. The love of Lancelot
for Guenevere is now a central episode of the Arthurian tragedy, but
Lancelot is actually a late-comer into the legend, and his story is
told in French. The book to which Chaucer refers in The Nun's
Priest's Tale and Dante in the famous passage of Inferno VI
is perhaps the great prose Lancelot traditionally attributed to
Walter Map (see p. 21). The Grail story is another complicated addition
to the Arthurian cycle. Out of the quest for various talismans, no
doubt a part of Celtic tradition, developed the story of Perceval, as
told in French and German romances; and the "Grail", a primitive
symbol, proved capable of semi-mystical religious interpretation, and
came to be identified with the cup of the Last Supper in which Joseph
of Arimathea treasured the blood that flowed from the wounds of the
Redeemer. The story of Tristram and Iseult is probably the oldest of
the subsidiary Arthurian legends, and we find the richest versions in
fragments of French poems and fuller German compositions. The English
literature of Tristram is very meagre. The whole story bears every mark
of remote pagan and Celtic origin. Finally, as an example of how
independent legends were caught into the great Arthurian system, let us
note the Celtic fairy tale of Lanval, best known in the lay of
Marie de France (c. 1175), a fascinatingly obscure personality
who, possibly English, wrote in French. And as a postcript we may note
that the sceptical twentieth century has nevertheless not lagged behind
the Middle Ages or the Victorians in its devotion to King Arthur, as
witness the Arthurian trilogy Merlin, Lancelot and Tristram
(1917-27) by the American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson, the reshaping
of the Grail legend in John Cowper Powys's Glastonbury Romance
(1933), Charles Williams's Taliessin through Logres (1938) and The
Reign of the Summer Stars (1944), and T. H. White's
trilogy The Once and Future
King (1958), which inspired the American stage and film success Camelot.
In th' oldë dayës of the King Arthoúr,So let us believe with the poets, and leave the British Arthur in his unquestioned place as the supreme king of Romance.
Of which that Britons speken greet honóur,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye;
The elf-queen with hir joy companye
Dauncëd ful ofte in many a greneë mede.
