A New Edition of Malory's " Morte d'Arthur "
EACH new edition of the Morte d'Arthur must raise again the perplexing question : how has it come about that a formless mediaeval compilation about fantastic characters bent on the pursuit of even more fantastic adventures should continue to captivate hundreds of thousands of readers in our sceptical and scientific age ? Don Quixote succeeded in laying and slaying the ghosts of Amadis and Palmerin in the seventeenth century. How is it that Amadis and Palmerin have survived in the nineteenth century under the thin disguises of Percival and Lancelot ? Where is the secret of this continued vitality ?
, The question is not an easy one to answer. Certainly when William Caxton, the first and greatest of a glorious line of English publishers, decided to print this prose epic, composed from unknown French sources by an unknown English hand, he builded better than he knew. His apparent purpose was only to satisfy a pressing public demand for a particular kind of literature. Unwittingly he was preserving the ideals and the aspirations, and he was preparing the belated revenge, of a downtrodden race. For one thousand years the Celtic peoples had been driven back by their relentless enemies into the Western Isles and mountain fastnesses. The Latin and the Saxon seemed to have had it all their own way. But through the magic of the poet and the bard, the day Of the Celt was coming. It is true that on the lower plane of war and politics the Celt had been finally beaten. He Was, however, to come into his awn in the higher realms of poetry. Slowly but surely the Celt succeeded in imposing his ideal characters, his conception of life and of love on the imagination of all European peoples. Already in the Middle Ages Chrestien de Troyes in France, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Godfrey of Strassburg in Germany had popularized the Arthurian romances. But the Celtic genius was to assert itself much more triumphantly in the nineteenth century in the poetry of Tennyson, of Matthew Arnold and Swinburne, and above all in the music of Wagner.
If we are to accept Renan's generalizations in his memorable Essay On the Poetry of the Celtic Peoples, Celtic poetry has been dominant in European poetry ever since the Renascence. A sceptic, however, might well ask whether too much has not been made by recent critics and historians of the Celtic influence. He might well ask whether scholars have not unconsciously made themselves the tools of subtle political and historical preconceptions. He might further ask whether the whole of our scholarship is not engaged on an even more ItAtryva:hsgtt tahopeless hroi aephe.yl evos .;e investigatorsquest t existence than the taqhneestlassteo fifty ftt yha se years o assumption-? Holy oaGrail. vnr ae been 1 e to discover the sources of the Arthurian Romances, whether in historical fact, or in race or in nature myths, even as African explorers have been trying to trace the sources of the Nile, Are they not misled by a mixed metaphor ? May it not be that no such sources can possibly be discovered and that indeed be urged that Celtic scholars are only following the methods of those Higher. critics who are trying to disentangle the elements of the _Bible,. of -the. _Honaerie-or. Carolingian or Seandinavian Epics. But even if that be so, one might reply that even with regard to the other mediaeval Epic, a new school has arisen which boldly challenge,s and nullffiesthe
results of a hundred years of painstaking investigation. Accord- . - -
mg to_ Professor Bedier, all our researches: into the his* torical
origins of French Epic Poetry- have proved futile. The French epic poems have no historical -origins. They can
only be understood sociologically in terms of the audiences for
which they were _written. They are localized in , time and place. They were composed in the twelfth century for
one definite object. The French jugglers and trouveres were commissioned, in a crusading age, by the abbots of particular miraculous shrines to write stories in honour of particular saints for the benefit of particular pilgrims. Most of the French epics, therefore, are nothing but " Pilgrims' Tales "..with_ as definite and practical a purpose as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Applying the methods of Professor Bedier to the Arthurian Romances one might urge that Malory's Morte d'Arthur is simply the last blossoming of the epic of chivalry in its last stages of decline, and that it was composed at the same time and inspired by the same spirit as the Chronicles of Froissart. Reading concurrently the Chronicles of the immortal Belgian war correspondent and the compilation of Malory, one has an uneasy feeling that the Morte d'Arthur was written for the same public, that it is the outcome of the same conditions and of the same atmosphere, and that it answered the same mentality. I submit those philosophical doubts for what they are worth. But I would not be in the least surprised if in the coming generation some English pupil of Professor Bedier were to propound the same socio- logical explanation, thus undermining the foundations of all our theories on the origins of the Arthurian Romances in general and of the Morte d'Arthur in particular.
This new edition is not only a masterpiece of typography, but also possesses a distinct historical interest. The Morte d'Arthur was the first important commission secured by Beardsley as a black-and-white artist. It might indeed be said, and the present editor himself admits, that the selection of the subject was not entirely fortunate, because Aubrey Beardsley from the beginning was out of tune with his heroes and heroines. The illustrations rather help us to understand the interpreter than to give us a deeper insight into the Morte d'Arthur. A careful examination, however, may reveal that there were closer elective affinities between the artist and the subject than would appear at first sight. Both Malory and Beardsley represent a subtle blend of sensuality and mysticism. Both in a different way are engaged on the quest of the Holy Grail. Both Beardsley and his Celtic heroes and heroines found after their stormy adventures an abiding resting-place in the bosom of the Roman Catholic
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