Skip to main content

Guinevere and Julia: The Platypus Reads Part CCX

Connections are forged at the oddest moments.

We were discussing Tennyson's Guinevere, part of his larger work Idylls of the King, in class today and focusing in on Arthur's final speech to Guinevere.  After painfully listing every consequence of her sin, Arthur pardons and forgives the Queen, affirming that he loves her still and hopes to see her in paradise.  In the meantime, however, even if he should win his war with Modred, he tells her that they can never be together again lest the kingdom thinks that the king's justice can be set aside for family loyalty.  It's a harsh sort of self-limiting that strikes one as quintessentially Victorian: duty before love and all that.  Stuffy.  If we read Tennyson correctly, it's not, but an odd way of seeing that struck my mind today as we were discussing: I thought of Charles and Julia's pact in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited to never see each other after they become convinced of God's existence.  Call Waugh what you will, I don't think he can be accused of being a stuffy old Victorian.  Still, he requires the same earthly renunciation of his leading couple in the middle of a thoroughly Modern novel.  In Waugh's case, it's not the corruption of a kingdom that's at stake but the corruption of personal integrity and belief: I we believe that the world happens to be a certain way then, like it or not, we must live in accordance with that way or be crushed.  That is a change, but rather one of emphasis, I think, then substance.  Both authors challenge us with the idea that some things might be more important than our temporal "happiness," that living in the real world might cost us something tangible.  G.K. Chesterton, though no fan of Tennyson (perhaps because he was too close to him in time and space), states this case positively when he talks of "the right of a man to be held to his oaths" in Orthodoxy, that it's a necessary part of all romance and adventure that we not be allowed to weasel out every time our beliefs land us in hard places.  Art is limitation, whether we're aesthetes, adventurers, or the builders of Camelot, and all three authors seem to be saying that it is our willingness to be bound by morality, even when it hurts, that makes the art in life possible. 
Labels:

Comments

Jessica Snell said…
". . . it's a necessary part of all romance and adventure that we not be allowed to weasel out every time our beliefs land us in hard places."

Ooh. I must remember this when I write.
10:56 PM
James said…
Hurray! Glad that was helpful. Thanks for the link too. I Hope the writing continues to go well. The race for first Torrey Fiction writer is still on, is it not?
8:15 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

The Platypus and Theological Localism

My wife and I were listening the other day to Dr. Fred Sanders give a paper of California Theological Localism.  It was one of the more technical pieces we've heard from him, and it was fun to stretch our brains a little.  If I understand it right, the main idea of Theological Localism is that place matters and will shape the theology of its inhabitants in certain ways.  This could be seen as determinative, or merely as fodder for apologetic engagement, both of which Sanders rejects as insufficient or problematic.  What exactly is wanted seems to be a theological engagement with place, specifically California, in a way that Sanders and company feel has been neglected.  If that's not clear, the fault is mine as a listener or a writer. Of course, the idea of a theology of place caught my attention and my immediate response was "someone should do this for New England."  New England, after all, is its own peculiar place with, by American standards, a long, va...
6 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more