Glossing Tennyson: The Platypus Reads Part XCVII

   Then loudly cried the bold Sir Bedivere:
'Ah! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go?

As Arthur prepares to leave this world for Avilion, Bedivere rightly asks what his role will be now that his king is gone.  Though this is a moment of defeat and not one of triumph, we should still see parallels with the disciples and Christ.  In this case, Bedivere is asking the departing Christ figure for a commission.  We may see his question as equivalent with the disciples’ questions before Jesus’ ascension: “Will you at this time restore the kingdom” and “What about him (ie. what will John’s fate be?).”  If Bedivere is having doubts at this point, the apostolic witness records that some of them continued to doubt even as the gathered to watch the resurrected Christ ascend.

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.

Bedivere draws an explicit link between himself and the apostles by paralleling Arthur’s Camelot to the miraculous and world-changing period of Jesus’ life.  We can also hear, however, a genuine and familiar nostalgia for a vanished youth.  How many of us have found on going off to college, or graduating from college, or having to step down and retire that “the true old times are dead”?

But now the whole Round Table is dissolved
Which was an image of the mighty world,
And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.'

Bedivere’s real fear is not only of abandonment, but also of not being understood.  He is a man who has outlived his own times.  We may recognize in this the fear of the artist: that the day will come when he still wishes to create art but cannot be understood by the new generation and so passes into incoherence and futility.  This may have been a real fear for Tennyson as we get a sense throughout the “Idylls of the King” that the promising Victorian society that he grew up in was shifting and passing into the decadent and troubled world of the Edwardians and the final collapse in “that battle in the West,/Where all of high and holy dies away.”

   And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:
'The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Arthur makes his farewell speech.  There is no “Great Commission” to carry the idea of Camelot out into the world as in latter versions of the legend.  Indeed, as Arthur, who has been the Christ-figure throughout the work, prepares to leave the world he must at last relinquish his role as Christ-figure as well.  Instead of imitating Christ in commissioning Bedivere to carry on Arthur’s work, the king explicitly forbids him to and tells the last knight instead to put his full confidence in the sovereignty of God.  We have here the fulfillment of the “Time” and “Seasonal” imagery that dominates so much of the “Idylls of the King.”  God is here revealed as the Lord of Times and Seasons directing history to its great and predestined end.  Because God has made change integral to his purpose for humanity, we are also warned against trying to preserve specific customs and eras past their appointed time.  In a world where sin is rampant, all the works of man are eventually eaten up by the flaws within them and God must remove them in judgment lest a “good custom” become an evil one.  It was a stern warning to the Victorian order and is a stern warning to our own as well.  An Arthur that does not recognize his mortality and relinquish his role as Christ-type in due season becomes an idol that must be smashed.

Comfort thyself: what comfort 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.

Arthur draws Bedivere and the reader’s attention to the fact that he is not Christ but a mere man and that God and not man is the ultimate judge of a person’s life.  Indeed, since no person’s life work is unmarred by sin and human weakness each human must place his trust in God to purify his work and give it any eternal meaning.  Arthur confesses his own weakness and inadequacy by asking Bedivere to pray for him while at the same time affirming his faith in God and the power of prayer.

For what are men better 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?

Tennyson uses Evolution as a metaphor throughout the work.  Here, however, he makes a clear distinction between man and beast.  Man is the animal that can have a personal relationship with his creator and with his neighbor.  When we forget that, we “real back into the beast” and are no longer men.  This theme can be found in elsewhere in George MacDonald’s “The Princess and Curdie” and C.S. Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew” and “The Last Battle.”

For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

In an age of doubt, Tennyson gives us a radical picture of God’s commitment to the world he has made.  The preoccupation with God’s connectedness to history, and particularly to human suffering would become a driving force in Twentieth Century theology ultimately leading to the unorthodox ideas of process theology and pantheism.  What exactly Tennyson means by this image, beyond what is stated above, is unclear.  Given the context of the metaphor, the “golden chains” seem to be human prayers.  If so, are we to understand that human prayer somehow binds God to the world?  On the other hand, is Tennyson asserting that prayer binds the world to the God from which its own evil has estranged it?

But now farewell. I am going a long way
With these thou seest--if indeed I go
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)--
To the island-valley of Avilion;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea,
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.'

Avilion is here pictured in a way that is reminiscent of Dante’s Purgatory and the Greek Hesperides.  The doubt that clouds Arthurs mind again reminds us that he is merely human and cannot with absolute certainty foretell what lies on the other side of death.

   So said he, and the barge with oar and sail
Moved from the brink, like some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs. Long stood Sir Bedivere
Revolving many memories, till the hull
Looked one black dot against the verge of dawn,
And on the mere the wailing died away.

Tennyson links the funeral boat explicitly with a dying swan.  As noted earlier, this is an image that repeats itself in Tolkien.  Bedivere, in watching Arthur’s departure, mirrors the disciples watching Christ ascend into heaven.

   But when that moan had past for evermore,
The stillness of the dead world's winter dawn
Amazed him, and he groaned, 'The King is gone.'
And therewithal came on him the weird rhyme,
'From the great deep to the great deep he goes.'

The “weird rhyme” is that given by Merlin in answer to Queen Bellicent when she inquires into the truth of Arthur’s birth.  Bedivere hears it at King Leodogran’s court in “The Coming of Arthur.”  Whatever Arthur’s origins, the prophesies regarding him have been fulfilled.  Bedivere, like the apostles, will be left in the coming years to ponder the meaning of this and then attempt to articulate it to a new generation.

   Whereat he slowly turned and slowly clomb
The last hard footstep of that iron crag;
Thence marked the black hull moving yet, and cried,
'He passes to be King among the dead,
And after healing of his grievous wound
He comes again; but--if he come no more--
O me, be yon dark Queens in yon black boat,
Who shrieked and wailed, the three whereat we gazed
On that high day, when, clothed with living light,
They stood before his throne in silence, friends
Of Arthur, who should help him at his need?'

With Arthur removed, Bedivere is now called upon to place his own faith in the three queens; Faith, Hope, and Love.  This was the condition of the apostles after Jesus’ ascension and the condition of all Christians this side of Death or the Escaton.

   Then from the dawn it seemed there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.

Tennyson tells us that Arthur passes into “the East, whence have sprung all the great religions of the world.”  Using explicitly Biblical imagery Tennyson goes on to explain “A triumph of welcome is given to him who has proved himself “’more than a conqueror.’”

   Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
Even to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year.

Arthur’s vanishing into light symbolizes his acceptance into the presence of God.  As the apostle says: “God is light; in Him is no darkness.”  The new year symbolizes the new generation and the new era that has come.