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enevarimI haven't yet read The Merewife, but I have to say these extracts from a tweet thread are definitely making me more interested in it, and I'm totally on board (even more so having read this thread) for the upcoming Beowulf translation:
Seriously. Go read it. The whole thing. I'll wait.
This is … kind of like reading Tolkien on Beowulf for the first time.
Or like that first term of first-year undergraduate seminars on Friday at 5pm that always ended up in the feeling that my brain had been exploded in several different directions at once.
And it also feels like it recalls the bit at the end of T. H. White's The Once and Future King, where the king, the night before the final battle, summons his page, and
Another story, flaring across the night sky.
Or like Eleventy in The Big Bang:
https://twitter.com/MARIADAHVANA/status/1205702574625587200
Seriously. Go read it. The whole thing. I'll wait.
In the Beowulf poem, though, there are moments when characters warn each other against becoming narcissistic leaders. These aren’t moments of major action. They’re the moments when old kings speak fears to young warriors, telling them “don’t let your story be that you were bad.”
Maybe, I say right now, having read this poem a hundred times, gnashing over why it’s still here, why it’s canon, why we care, this is the real story. That story is the only lasting weapon against evil. That story, good story, can flare across the night sky & change how it looks.
And so, as always, I’m thinking about which story is the light, whether designed or innate, lighthouse or dragonfire. I’m thinking about how to change all the stories to arrive at one that can keep going viably toward good in this century. What kind of heroes we need to create.
Large groups of heroes. Daily, prosaic heroes, story shaping shifters of civilization. The antidote to solo heroes in the Good King tradition. Those solo heroes, even in the Beowulf poem, written a thousand years and more ago, often get it wrong.
This is … kind of like reading Tolkien on Beowulf for the first time.
Or like that first term of first-year undergraduate seminars on Friday at 5pm that always ended up in the feeling that my brain had been exploded in several different directions at once.
And it also feels like it recalls the bit at the end of T. H. White's The Once and Future King, where the king, the night before the final battle, summons his page, and
“Could you understand if I asked you not to fight tomorrow?”
“I should want to fight,” it said stoutly.
“Everybody wants to fight, Tom, but nobody knows why. Suppose I were to ask you not to fight, as a special favour to the King? Would you do that?”
“I should do what I was told.”
“Listen, then. Sit for a minute and I will tell you a story. I am a very old man, Tom, and you are young. When you are old, you will be able to tell what I have told tonight, and I want you to do that. Do you understand this want?”
“Yes, sir. I think so.”
“Put it like this. There was a king once, called King Arthur. That is me. When he came to the throne of England, he found that all the kings and barons were fighting against each other like madmen, and, as they could afford to fight in expensive suits of armour, there was practically nothing which could stop them from doing what they pleased. They did a lot of bad things, because they lived by force. Now this king had an idea, and the idea was that force ought to be used, if it were used at all, on behalf of justice, not on its own account. Follow this, young boy. He thought that if he could get his barons fighting for truth, and to help weak people, and to redress wrongs, then their fighting might not be such a bad thing as once it used to be. So he gathered together all the true and kindly people that he knew, and he dressed them in armour, and he made them knights, and taught them his idea, and set them down, at a Round Table. There were a hundred and fifty of them in the happy days, and King Arthur loved his Table with all his heart. He was prouder of it than he was of his own dear wife, and for many years his new knights went about killing ogres, and rescuing damsels and saving poor prisoners, and trying to set the world to rights. That was the King’s idea.”
“I think it was a good idea, my lord.”
“It was, and it was not. God knows.”
“What happened to the King in the end?” asked the child, when the story seemed to have dried up.
“For some reason, things went wrong. The Table split into factions, a bitter war began, and all were killed.”
The boy interrupted confidently. “No,” he said, “not all. The King won. We shall win.”
Arthur smiled vaguely and shook his head. He would have nothing but the truth. “Everybody was killed,” he repeated, “except a certain page. I know what I am talking about.”
“My lord?”
“This page was called young Tom of Newbold Revell near Warwick, and the old King sent him off before the battle, upon pain of dire disgrace. You see, the King wanted there to be somebody left, who would remember their famous idea. He wanted badly that Tom should go back to Newbold Revell, where he could grow into a man and live his life in Warwickshire peace – and he wanted him to tell everybody who would listen about this ancient idea, which both of them had once thought good. Do you think you could do that, Thomas, to please the King?”
The child said, with the pure eyes of absolute truth: “I would do anything for King Arthur.”
Another story, flaring across the night sky.
Or like Eleventy in The Big Bang:
Well, you'll remember me a little. I'll be a story in your head. But that's okay. We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh? Because it was, you know. It was the best. The daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away.
