Source of book: I own this
I think that it is pretty difficult to match Shakespeare when it comes to incredible writing in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), but after him, I would say that the most beautiful writing in that form belongs to Milton, Frost, and Tennyson, in no particular order. Exhibit A for Tennyson, is, of course Idylls of the King.
My introduction to Idylls was in high school - we read “Gareth and Lynette” as part of English 12. I rather enjoyed the experience, and thus jumped at the opportunity to a used Heritage Press hardback a good number of years ago.
After that, however, it sat on my shelf, waiting to be read. I kept saying I would do so, but always ended up reading some other poetry. Well, I finally did it - I read it cover to cover, luxuriating in Tennyson’s gorgeous and elegant poetry. Of all the tellings of the Aurthurian legends, Tennyson’s goes down the easiest, delicious from start to finish.
Tennyson was fascinated with King Arthur from his childhood, and intended for decades to write something epic about the stories. But he eventually realized that the times had changed. The great epics felt dated, and the unquestioning hagiography of the great heroes no longer possible. So instead, he wrote a series of poems in the Idyll form - a shorter (although still plenty long) poem with nature as the background - with a sadness at their heart. Thus, the descriptions of the natural world become as important - or even more important - than the great deeds of the heroes, and even from the beginning, there is the knowledge and grief that Camelot never was able to fulfill its aspirations.
While Tennyson based his stories on the old legends - primarily Sir Thomas Mallory’s retelling combined with the Mabinogion - he makes some changes to suit his purpose. I am sure there are Arthur fanatics who obsess over all the differences, but I am content just to roll with each version as equally valid.
Both the source material and Tennyson’s retelling have issues, from our modern perspective. The Age of Chivalry has been idolized for centuries, but over the last century or so, has come in for criticism. Perhaps the best of these approach the stories from the margins - letting women, the impoverished, and social outsiders tell the story.
From my own perspective, the central culture of honor and violence sounds increasingly silly as I get older, so I think this time I had to work a bit harder to immerse myself in the language without paying too much attention to that nagging feeling that maybe Camelot would have gone better with, say, a university, rather than the endless jousting. Okay, and maybe I have spent too much time with Mark Twain…
Before getting into some quotes, I wanted to note some things that stood out to me in this reading.
First, yes, “Gareth and Lynette” is still the best of the sections. Their banter as she slowly comes to realize he is a true knight, and not just a scullion, is still humorous and touching. And Tennyson’s change to the story - that Gareth and Lynette end up together, rather than Gareth and Lyonors, seems fitting.
This is the one story that feels truly innocent and happy as well. Their love is believable, and noble. In contrast, the story of Geraint and Enid has jealous obsession and fairly cruel behavior, making the reconciliation at the end seem forced and unsustainable.
A second observation is that Tennyson, more so than Mallory, has a problem with women in general, and specifically the various women in the Arthur legends. Even Lynette is a bit of a shrew, and every other female character ends up somewhere as a contributing cause to the fall of the Round Table.
The thing is, Guenevere is in an impossible situation: she is pledged to Arthur, who she has never met, and falls in love with Lancelot on the trip to meet him. If she had agency (which women have not often had in the past, particularly upper class women) she could have refused Arthur and taken Lancelot. But, well, she didn’t have that choice.
The advantage that the older tellings of the tale have is that they can come from the perspective of the Romance. Before I started this blog, I read a fascinating book by C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love. In his more professorly role, he explores the Medieval romance and the conventions that governed it.
Specifically in connection to the Lancelot/Guinevere love story, theirs fits perfectly. True romantic love - voluntary, passionate, inspiring - must be adulterous in that genre. Marriage was for alliances and status and whatever. But brave knight would do brave deeds for his lady…who was married to someone else.
So of course Lancelot, the greatest of the knights (and not a cold fish like Arthur) would aspire to love the greatest woman in the land. Thus, I got the vibe when I read Mallory years ago that the blame for the fall of Camelot was more on Modred than Guinevere or Lancelot. Arthur seems to care little about his wife’s affairs until he is derided as a cuckold.
In Idylls, Tennyson seems to place nearly all the blame on Guinevere, some on Lancelot, and the rest on women like Vivien and Ettare who are complicit in the adultery.
I believe that the root of this problem is in Tennyson’s era. The Victorian Era was a time of social change, wherein women were increasingly relegated to domestic duties, as their traditional professions were industrialized and men left their farms for urban jobs. In response, the Victorians placed women on a pedestal, making them “angels” - paragons of purity and spirituality. But woe to them if they fell.
Thus, Guinevere’s all-too-human passion becomes more than just a human failing - she has failed in her sex’s duty to the state and to society. Her duty - her function, her role - was to be a fount of spiritual support to Aurthur, to devote herself to him completely, emptying herself of all else.
One wonders too how much the Victorian anxiety over early feminism and gender role reversals (not limited to Queen Victoria, one must admit) played into Tennyson’s view of women undermining Camelot by stepping out of their lane.
Okay, so yes, this is a lot of criticism. And yes, I am no fan of Victorian gender roles, for many reasons. And yet, I still love Victorian literature, for all its reflection of its time.
Idylls of the King also has a deeper, and more profound meaning than these flaws would suggest. The Victorian Era, particularly in Imperial Britain, was one of optimism and faith in progress. But as the century progressed, some cracks were starting to show. The poets saw them first, in my opinion, which is why Tennyson in particular took an elegiac tone in this work which is as much about his own time as the past.
Arthur’s vision for his England transcends the ordinary. He aims not merely to defeat the Romans and subdue the heathens, to round up the thieves and brigands and marauders. He seeks to establish a kind of utopia, an ideal society, where justice and peace prevail.
He fails, of course - humans have yet to fully succeed, even as we work to make things better than they are.
This ultimately is the sadness at the heart of Idylls. The noble Arthur, assisted by Merlin, creates a temporary heaven on earth - the magical Camelot. But even he, and those loyal to him, cannot sustain things, and entropy wins out in the end.
The flaws that doom Camelot and the Round Table turn out to be the usual human weaknesses. Pride, of course. And also jealousy, cruelty, stupidity, stubbornness. And, let it not be overlooked: the vicissitudes of fate. Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot are all bound together by a fate they cannot alter. And those in their orbit as well: Elaine, who dies of love for Lancelot; Tristram and Isolde, also unable to be together in love; Merlin, whose foolishness ruins him. The list goes on.
This is ultimately the tragedy in all tragedy: a combination of our own weaknesses and cruel fate brings the best of humanity down in the end.
Thus, we are left with the longing for what might have been. In Camelot, Victoria’s England, and our own time.
The thing that makes Idylls the magnificent work it is, however, is Tennyson’s incredible skill at poetry. Reading this work aloud (and you should) is so delightful that it makes everything sparkle.
The work opens with Guinevere, not Arthur, by the way - a portent of the themes to come later.
Leodogran the King of Cameliard,
Had one fair daughter, and none other child;
And she was fairest of all flesh on earth,
Guinevere, and in her his one delight.
After Aurthur comes on the scene, he rallies the Britons to his quest of utopia and a good society. At the end of his speech, he gives a line which will recur in a very different context and thus meaning at the end of the book.
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new…”
At this point, change is optimism. The old have grown too frail and weak to defend the kingdom against marauders, and the new guy, Arthur, is going to go kick some butt and take names.
Fittingly, the next section is Gareth and Lynette, with poor Gareth being kept at home by his mother. We first see him watching a spring flood, and a tree that is swept away.
O senseless cataract,
Bearing all down in thy precipitancy -
And yet thou art but swollen with cold snows
And mine is living blood: thou dost His will,
The Maker’s, and not knowest, and I that know,
Have strength and wit, in my good mother’s hall
Linger with vacillating obedience,
Prison’d, and kept and coax’d and whistle to -
Since the good mother holds me still a child!
Good mother is bad mother unto me!
So, as we know, his mother only lets him go if he will disguise himself as a peasant and work in the scullery. Which he does, to her surprise.
Another great scene is where Arthur is judging disputes and righting wrongs. A woman comes and presents her plea: Arthur’s father stole their family land after they refused to sell it to him.
And Arthur, “Have they pleasant field again,
And thrice the gold for Uther’s use thereof,
According to the years. No boon is here,
But justice, so thy say be proven true.
Accursed, who from the wrongs his father did
Would shape himself a right!”
This is something to think about when we consider the wrong our fathers did to the enslaved. We ourselves may not have done that wrong personally, but perhaps we should consider that we invite a curse for shaping our “right” out of the wrongs our ancestors did. And remember that reparations are hardly a new idea - the Arthur legends are merely one old source for the axiom that justice requires restitution.
I do want to quote a bit of the wit between Gareth and Lynette.
“Ay, knave, because thou strikes as a knight,
Being but knave I hate thee all the more.”
“Fair damsel, you should worship me the more,
That, being but knave, I throw thine enemies.”
Also of note is that, as Lynette finally sees the light, and apologizes, Gareth demonstrates what I consider to be a true manly virtue, a sign of the greatest strength.
“Good sooth! I hold
He scarce is knight, yea, but half-man, nor meet
To fight for gentle damsel, he, who lets
His heart be stirred with any foolish heat
At any gentle damsel’s waywardness.
Shamed? care not! thy foul sayings fought for me.”
Don’t waste time on the stupid stuff people say. Let your actions talk, and ignore the haters. Only half-men need to bother noticing ignorant words.
The story of Geraint and Enid is achingly sad, as their troubles are entirely avoidable. Geraint, hearing the rumors of Guinevere and Lancelot, decides that perhaps Enid is corrupted by her friendship with Guinevere, and is likely unfaithful as well. Enid deserves none of this suspicion, of course, but is puzzled to find her husband is now treating her differently. Naturally, she becomes sad, which confirms his suspicions.
While he that watched her sadden, was the more
Suspicious that her nature had a taint.
Tennyson gives an aside on the sad situation:
O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves,
By taking true for false, or false for true;
Here, thro’ the feeble twilight of this world
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach
That other, where we see as we are seen!
The story of the brothers, Balin and Balan, who never do figure out how to think before acting rashly, is also all about failing to distinguish true from falsehood. Arthur gives them a lecture, which, unfortunately, doesn’t take.
“Rise, my true knight. As children learn, be thou
Wiser for falling! walk with me, and move
To mosaic with thine Order and the King.”
I’ll mention another line that appears in the episode about Lancelot and Elaine. Arthur runs across a pair of skeletons - two brothers had fought and killed each other. There is a crown, for one of them was a king. Arthur takes the crown, but decides it really isn’t his to take for himself alone.
“These jewels, whereupon I chanced
Divinely, are the kingdom’s, not the King’s -
For public use: henceforward let there be,
Once a year, a joust for one of these.”
It’s a common thread in Arthur’s enlightened rule, that the king serves the country, not the other way around.
Elaine’s story is one of the sadness of fate. She loves Lancelot, but he cannot return her love. At least that kind of love.
And love her with all love except the love
Of man and woman when they love their best,
Closest and sweetest…
Yeah, unrequited love drives a lot of literature, doesn’t it? What might have been had Lancelot loved Elaine. But he didn’t. Just like Guinevere couldn’t love Arthur.
Her journey done, glanced at him, and thought him cold,
High, self-contain’d, and passionless, not like him,
“Not like my Lancelot.”
The passing of Arthur concludes the story, as usual. It seems particularly senseless in this reading. Literally everyone except Sir Bedivere ends up dead, and many by friendly fire in the thick fog that covers the battlefield. Again, failure to see, or to refrain from acting before knowing, causes the tragedy.
There is a great line at the beginning of the section, which is worth quoting.
That story which the bold Sir Bedivere,
First made and latest left of all the knights,
Told, when the man was no more than a voice
In the white winter of his age, to those
With whom he dwelt, new faces, other minds.
That line, “no more than a voice in the white winter of his age” is just superb.
Arthur’s passing is made all the more sad by his realization of the depth of his failure. Those fighting on both sides were originally his people. This is no invasion from outside, but the self-destruction of civil war.
Ill doom is mine
To war against my people and my knights.
The king who fights his people fights himself.
And they my knights, who loved me once, the stroke
That strikes them dead is as my death to me.
Again, Aurthur’s greatness in Tennyson’s version isn’t about his strength in battle, but in his endless love for Britain, and his loyalty to his people, itself a form of unrequited love.
The ending returns to the beginning again.
“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”
A bit different from the optimism of the beginning, but also perhaps more deeply true.
As a final bit to mention, the edition I have has illustrations of the characters by Robert Ball. I think he does a particularly fine job of bringing out the personalities.
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