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A revised omnibus edition of White's retelling of Arthurian legends. The first three sections of this book were originally published separately: The Sword in the Stone (1939), The Witch in the Wood (1939; here called "The Queen of Air and Darkness"), The Ill-Made Knight (1940), and the previously unpublished section, "The Candle in the Wind." The Book of Merlyn, written in 1941, was originally intended as the fifth and final book of the saga. It was first published by the University of Texas Press in 1977 and reissued by Berkley, 1978 (pap.). The whole world knows and loves this book. It is the magical epic of King Arthur and his shining Camelot; of Merlin and Owl and Guinevere; of beasts who talk and men who fly, of wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad. It is the fantasy masterpiece by which all others are judged.… (more)
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The book is about questions, I think.
So you find that living a life is playing a game without knowing the rules. And you try to just be friends with the idea that you won't ever find any real answer, or discover any "pure" truth, and that answers may not even be relevant. Maybe you can live, without knowing exactly what's the idea of it. All the while assuming that you are not among the lucky ones who can content thenselves with the somewhat mysterous equation that "life is its own meaning".
Ah, the book. Yes. It is about might, and society, and war and love, and youth and age, about doing the right thing, candles in the wind, passing-on-the-parcel and what-not, and about any human emotion you could think of. Just like every other good book, actually. Except that this one is better. The Once And Future King is impressively well written, as absorbing as it gets and very often very funny. By the way, this is where J.K.Rowling drew some of her inspiration from. A book I would -carefully- compare it to is: Robert M. Pirsig's Motorcycle Diaries.
I should finally mention that The Once And Future King is, as the title hints to, nothing else than story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Anyway!
But it’s also a story of betrayal, of self-delusion and false dreams, and of what happens when we draw lines between what’s yours and mine, between what you are and I am, and when we isolate ourselves from each other by any of the various means at our disposal. It’s a story of what happens to love when we try to divide it.
I was forced to
I don't know. It was an experience, and I'm glad I (was forced to) read it.
Merlin's advice, which I took to
'[Arthur] was a kind, conscientious, peace-loving fellow, who had been afflicted in his youth by a tutor of genius [Merlyn]. Between the two of them they had worked out their theory that killing people, and being a tyrant over them, was wrong. To stop this sort of thing, they had invented the idea of the Table - a vague idea like democracy, or sportsmanship, or morals - and now, in the effort to impose a world of peace, he found himself up to the elbows in blood. When he was feeling healthy he did not grieve much, because he knew the dilemma was inevitable - but in weak moments he was persecuted by shame and indecision. He was one of the first Nordic men who had invented civilization, or who had desired to do otherwise than Attila the Hun had done, and the battle against chaos sometimes did not seem to be worth fighting.' (364)
On the faery folk: 'Fairies are not the kind of creatures your nurse has told you about. Some people say they are the Oldest of All, who lived in England before the Romans came here - before us Saxons, before the Old Ones themselves - and that they have been driven underground. Some say they look like humans, like dwarfs, and others that they look ordinary, and other that they don't look like anything at all, but put on various shapes as the fancy takes them. Whatever they look like, they have the knowledge of the ancient Gaels. They know things down there in their burrows which the human race has forgotten about, and quite a lot of these things are not good to hear.' (101)
White captures both the humor and the pathos of the legend. There were places in the first section, The Sword In The Stone, where I actually laughed out loud. Later in the book, I felt the ache at the inevitability of the downfall of Camelot.
The one real drawback--although an entertaining one--is the caricature of Merlin. He appears to be a lovable hayseed with a bad memory who happens to be able to turn the Wart (Arthur) into different kinds of animals during his education. We experience none of the wizard's real power of presence.
I've read the book four times and still find it entertaining.
This is a sad, sad, sad, sad book. And also very funny. The first book is the funniest, and then they get sadder. It's like White took the Malory Morte d'Arthur and sucked all the silly stuff out of it so what's left is the essence of the
And it was written at a horribly sad time. After two World Wars, things weren't looking too bright around Europe and that outlook colors EVERYTHING that was written at the time. In fact, this reminds me strongly of C.S. Lewis, of The Lord of the Rings, of every book in which writers tried to reconcile the horror of the recent past with the hope for the future.
Example:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn..."is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails.
"You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
Arthur begins as an eager boy, and ends as an ever-hopeful but misguided ruler who refuses to see the sin that's taking place under his nose. Lancelot is forever undermined by the path down which love has taken him. Galahad's virtue is so rarified that he has to be removed from this world. Merlyn - oh, I wish we'd had more of Merlyn - is living life backward and understanding it forward, possibly the worst tragedy that can happen to any man.
Tragedy and hope: ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 20th century. If you want to understand it, read this. Read The Lord of the Rings. Read C.S. Lewis. Read Ray Bradbury. From our age of small wars and nameless terrors, look back and try to understand how writers used a familiar past to understand a terrifying present, and did it with a sense of humor that we just don't have.
This is one of those books that demands to be re-read. But will I ever have the courage?
First, there is "The Sword in the Stone," a marvelous boys' book, a tale of growing up, a
Then there is "The Queen of Air and Darkness," a rewrite, or condensation of the first sequel, "The Witch in the Wood," which I've never read. This book contrasts darkness and light chapter by chapter, with hilarious buffoonery from King Pellinore, and sad, sorrowful tales of the children of Morgause . . . who in the end ensorcles the young King Arthur (yes, these are Arthurian tales; didn't I mention that?).
Next is the tale of courtly love . . . that is, adultery, the grandest tragic adultery of all, that of Gwynevere and Lancelot. A sad tale, very well done.
And then it all raps up, perhaps a little too hastily, in "The Candle in the Wind." Arthur, dying, finally understands the lessons Merlyn had been trying to tell. Rarely has a book's explicit lesson been worth a wade through fiction. In this book, it is. White has a message, and it increases, rather than detracts, from the tragedy of his book. Indeed, the tragedy really is that Arthur learns too late.
And thus, this fantasy proves as realistic as any other, more realistic than most, for the tragedy is the tragedy of most in life. Too many of us learn too late. The greatest lessons are hard. And they rub against the grain of our natures.
You will weep for Arthur. More than once, in this once and future book, but, in a sense, the tears may also be for yourself, and all humanity.
Just possibly.
The worst is definitely The Ill-Made Knight, the third book - which is a ill-made mixture of childish simplicity with adult themes, and feels plain odd. The books leaves all character development of its two main protagonists (Lancelot and Guenevere) for the fourth book, barely features Arthur at all, rushes past the deaths of some of the key knights, has none of the madcap creativity of the early books, and tries to do moralising and irony in the same breath.
However, you can't not love the collection as a whole, given the strengths of other books. White's textual richness is his main success, and the way he illuminates the 'dark ages', making it feel fizzing with life. Also: is there a more euphonic title than 'The Once and Future King'. Beautiful.
The first of the four individual works, "The Sword in the Stone", is the best of all four. White's writes wonderful characters, especially young Arthur (aka Wart), in well-rounded depth. The narrative flow of this work is the best of any of them and sets up the reign of Arthur that makes the reader look forward to seeing what happens next. Unfortunately in "The Queen of Air and Darkness" the characters are not well rounded and the narrative aimlessly wanders between England and the Orkneys without connecting the two until the last chapter when an evil scheme comes to fruition that the reader did not know what actually happening. The third and longest of the individual works, "The Ill-Made Knight" focuses on an ugly Lancelot, his love affair with Guinevere, and the knightly exploits of the Round Table. While this individual work is somewhat engaging, White emasculates Arthur both physically and mentally that continues into final individual work, "The Candle in the Wind", while other characters aren't even given much depth or story arc.
Throughout the entire writing, White injects himself and modern day elements throughout the entire book making it hard for the reader to keep to the narrative flow and maintain a "suspension of disbelief". Another unfortunate decision by White was to insist his story was real history of a part of the medieval era then mention "the supposed Henry III" or "the supposed Richard the Lionhearted" throughout. Also White assumed that his readers were versed in Thomas Malory's "The Death of Arthur", which I must admit a half century ago might have been the case, nowadays readers ironically look to "The Once and Future King." And there were White's tangents, whether it was philosophy or history, that were beautifully written but had no bearing whatsoever on the plot or characters or anything else he had just written about before he went down those literary side roads.
Upon completing "The Once and Future King", I can see why many people enjoyed it and rated it highly. However, I personally can't ignore narrative stumbles or downright tangents that made three-quarters of the book harder to read than the section covering "The Sword in the Stone". My advice before reading T.H. White is to read Malory's book first and be prepared for references from the 1930s to the late 50s, or you'll be taken aback.
Except for the first part, this is not an easy read at all, and re-reading it after decades I certainly notice it's combination anti-fascist/anti-anarchist message much more than I did in the 60's or 70s. It is full of cleverness, and there are action scenes, but mostly there are dialogs - between Arthur and many others, among the Morgause's sons, between Lancelot and Guenever, and others, only occasionally in the midst of action. A brilliant section deals with the quest for the Holy Grail by having the surviving questors relate their tales, directly of indirectly to Arthur and Guenever and indicating the effect these tales have on Arthur. Still I am not and never have been happy T.H. White's Arthur of simple slow thought any more than I like other author's gay or bisexual Arthur. All of the other characters given any portion of dialog, and the young Wart are well, are well done.
So when I read this long ago the take away seemed to be look what good and just times we live in now - but just now it seems like the candle is truly in danger of going out.
This is on mly re-read list (along with 'Gone With the Wind', 'Hawaii', and most of Steinbeck -- the books I would take with me to that fabled Desert Island -- and like
And now, knowing how anachronistic this re-telling of the tale is, I
I know, I know, that Arthur was probably an anglicized Roman general, but the depth of feeling and heights of joy and despair just reflect so much better the heights and depths of the Dark and Middle Ages.