20. Charles Williams, Taliessin Through Logres
This is the first of two volumes which contain all that we have of Charles Williams’ unfinished cycle on the Matter of Britain. Its appearance marked a turning point in some more senses than one. It was the first major work in the author's mature manner. It was the first application of a radically ‘modern’ poetic technique to radically romantic material. And it was almost the first reunion since Greek times of a narrative content with an elaborate lyric form; indeed, it reclaimed for the greater ode its long-lost Pindaric provinces.
The basic elements of Williams’ technique were two: (1) An irregular disposition of internal rhymes and half rhymes. (2) The use of clashing stresses – by which I mean stressed syllables (which are usually long as well as stresses) coming together with no unstressed syllables between them. Spondees and even trimakra abound. It is from these that the peculiar buoyancy of his verse is derived. Thus his music (except once in Palomides before his Christening) is at the opposite pole from Mr Eliot's. In reading Mr Eliot one seems to be listening to a voice that is always on the point of dying away – no poetry can more powerfully convey the sense of stillness, hushed expectancy, vacancy, death. In Williams, on the other hand, we are conscious of soaring energy, as if huge masses were being hurled to great heights, or as if we ourselves were being repeatedly flung up (into sunlight) on the crests of waves. It is the most masculine and arduous verse this century has yet produced. Its severity, when relieved, is relieved not by any of that softness or songfulness which the word ‘lyrical’ suggests to many modern readers, but by a kind of high playfulness. Like most poets he has unconsciously described, at the moment of illustrating, his own qualities –
where you will spoil the whole effect if you do not give full value to the trimakra (‘bright blades shone’ and ‘stripped maids laughed’).
At first sight this book will seem as difficult as Blake. But fortunately the difficulty does not result from a purely private mythology; Malory, Gibbon, and the author's own He Came Down from Heaven will tell us nearly all we need to know. Before M. Vinaver had written on the Arthurian story, Williams had already read it in a sense very different from that of Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites. Arthurian Logres is for him the civilization to which the Grail was offered and which failed (save for the ‘remnant’ symbolised by Galahad) to rise to the occasion, and so dwindled from being Logres into being merely Britain. In order that the Sender of the Grail may also be represented in the poem, Logres is feigned to be a ‘theme’ or province of the Byzantine Empire, and the Emperor symbolises God.
But how did the failure arise? Williams finds the answer in the story of the Fall, interpreted more suo. The Emperor made nothing but good. Man desires to know evil also. But this can only mean to know good as evil (hence ‘the lost name, the fool's shame’ – man's revulsion from his own body), or else to know things that might have existed but did not; those ‘contingent shapes’ which the Emperor knew as possibilities but refused to create. Hence a line which by itself would be sheerly meaningless is for those who have mastered the poem charged with immense and sinister significance. ‘Did you not see’, asks Merlin, ‘the contingent knowledge of the Emperor floating into sight?’
The ultimate subject of the poem is, of course, not Arthur, but Man. It is a picture of human life as Williams saw it – not as Hell (like Hardy), not as a Development (like Bridges), nor as a prologue to heaven-on-earth (like the Marxists), but as a place where the highest established good always invites, and yet in the end always rejects, the descent of a higher good still. Thus the ‘obedience’ of Islam and the ‘fallacy of rational virtue’ in Logres partly express, but for that very reason also resist, the will of the Emperor.
If it be asked why this should be expressed through the medieval legend of Arthur and an unhistorical image of Byzantium, there are answers in plenty. Medieval chivalry and mysticism are themselves the most striking example of the process Williams is concerned with. That great and elaborate attempt at a spiritual civilization seemed, up to a point, to be preparing all the conditions in which the higher good could have descended: but something went wrong. A medieval legend is, therefore, an appropriate, ‘objective correlative’ (as Mr Eliot would say) for the poet's theme. And in this particular legend that theme is already almost expressed – waiting, demanding to be disengaged – in the subtle and tragically intertwined conflict between Carbonek and Camelot, Launcelot and Galahad.
The choice of Byzantium to represent the unmoved centre, the Noumenon beyond all these phenomena, is dictated by a deep necessity in the poet's imagination. Byzantium is associated in everyone's mind with hierarchical rigidity, with ritual and straight lines. It thus responds to a passion for the orderly, the disciplined, and even the geometrical, which led Williams constantly to envisage the good in a ‘Byzantine’ form. If he had been bred (as he was not) on Greek thought from his earliest years he could not have felt more clearly or continuously the hunger of the 
πειρον for πέρας. This is why Logres and, beyond it, the sea-wood of Broceliande come together with the ‘Byzantine glory’ in his poem.
And that also is why the human body has for him such significance; for there he thought one can see geometry in the very moment of turning into life, warmth and fertility in the very act of submitting to measure and definition – can see, in his own words,
Things that are said about a work of this sort – a work which must be either great or an almost total failure – while it is still new are apt to sound very ridiculous even twenty years later. I will confine myself to giving a few of my reasons for anticipating that it will finally take its place among our great poems.
(1) The world into which this poem carries me is emphatically not mine. My admiration is not based on that secret affinity which makes even the first reading of some books feel like a home-coming. It is therefore, in my opinion, more likely to be a just admiration. Taliessin takes me where I never intended to go and where I remain a foreigner: but it takes me. Ecce deus fortior me.
(2) Closely connected with the preceding point is the fact that the poem, once read, lays its images permanently on the mind. The ‘light of flooding seas’ pouring after Taliessin in the wood, ‘Thule, the skull-stone’, the snow falling ‘over brick and prickle’, the heraldic massing of painted metal in ‘The Crowning’, the unicorn's head hanging above two lovers in a forest, the terrible flint shapes of the islands and the more terrible flint face of Morgause – these lie on the memory with the uncompromising solidity of something we have dreamed for ourselves.
(3) The total effect of the poetry is something more and better than any enumeration of its qualities would lead one to predict. You have a severe and hard melody, a philosophical content deep, dark, and searching, and a predominance of images that are either gorgeous or frankly disquieting. And there is very little use made of Nature in her softer and sunnier aspects to relieve all this – always excepting the recurrent image of the human body. How comes it, then, that our actual experience of the poem is full of something I must almost call gaiety, some kind of shy, elusive laughter; angelic rather than elfin laughter, suggesting that neither the tragedy nor the Byzantine splendour (though indispensable) have quite the last word? How, indeed – unless we have here a work which in the long run says exactly what the poet meant and what cannot otherwise be described?
(4) If this poem is good at all it is entirely irreplaceable in the sense that no other book whatever comes anywhere near reminding you of it or being even a momentary substitute for it. If you can't get an orange, then a lemon or a grapefruit will give you a taste that has something in common with it. But if you can't get a pineapple, then nothing else will even faintly put you in mind of it. Taliessin is like the pineapple. You may like or dislike that taste; but once you have tasted it, you know you can get it from no other book in the whole world. It is as unique as Tristram Shandy or the Pervigilium Veneris.
To me, I confess, it seems unlikely that a poem which passes these four tests can be other than good; and if this is at all good, it must be very great indeed. But I must not attempt prophecy. The question will be decided not by us and our kind, but by the unknown young poets who are at the moment finding their feet; maneat nostros ea cura nepotes.
In between reviewing Charles Williams's two volumes of Arthurian poems mentioned above, Lewis completed the third of his cosmic trilogy, That Hideous Strength (1945) which made use of many Arthurian elements. Perhaps the one that meant most to Lewis was his explanation of ‘Logres’. In Chapter 17, part 4, Dr Dimble, the Arthurian expert, explains:
There was a moment in the sixth century when something that is always trying break through into this country nearly succeeded. Logres was our name for it – it will do as well as another. And then, gradually we began to see all English history in a new way. We discovered the haunting . . . How something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres. Haven't you noticed that we are two countries? After every Arthur, a Mordred; behind every Milton, a Cromwell . . . What they mistake for hypocrisy is really the struggle between Logres and Britain.
That Hideous Strength was followed by an invitation to take part in a symposium entitled ‘What France Means to You’ in La France Libre, a magazine published in London with the intention of helping the allies in France. As is seen below in Lewis's contribution to the symposium, Lewis had come to see that each country is haunted by its better self:
What France Means to Me
On m'a demandé d’écrire quelques mots sur la France, et plus particulièrement sur son avenir. Des circonstances futures, nous ne savons rien; et nous ne pouvons imaginer l'avenir d'un être vivant que d'après son passé et son présent. Ce qui me conduit à me demander ce que la France a été pour l'homme. Inévitablement, je pense d'abord à la France médiévale: car c'est au moyen âge que votre nation a exercé sur l’Europe une hégémonie spirituelle que ni elle, ni aucune autre nation, n'a égalée depuis lors. Avant tout, la France représente les Croisades, la Chanson de Roland, la cathédrale de Chartres, le Cycle d’Arthur, l’Université de Paris. Dans tout cela, ce qui frappe, c'est l’éclat: éclat des épées, de la courtoisie, de la logique. En second lieu, je pense à la France « éclairée », celle de Voltaire et des Encyclopédistes. L’éclat en a pâli, mais la clarté demeure. Cette France-là, je la considère un peu comme mon ennemie, mais c'est une noble ennemie; à défaut d'amour, elle m'inspire du respect. Enfin, pour être tout à fait franc avec vous, je pense à une troisième France, celle où les pires cancers du monde moderne ont trouvé leur climat d’élection, celle où adorent flâner les Américains décadents, celle où Edgar Poë passe pour un grand poète, celle des petits « mouvements » vermiculaires, du Dadaïsme, du Surréalisme et des Messes Noires – celle qui au pays même de la Raison a dressé l'idole de la Bêtise.
Il semble que votre être soit double. Sans doute en est-il de même de toutes les nations; je vois qu'il en est de même de mon pays. Derrière l’Angleterre de Sidney, je distingue (hélas!) celle de Cecil Rhodes. Si l'une affranchit les esclaves, l'autre s'engraisse à faire la traite. Nous qui avons failli inventer la Liberté avons aussi péché contre elle plus que presque toute autre nation. Pour vous comme pour nous, le Démon est véritablement l'envers de l’être authentique; il incite les concitoyens de Shelley à la Tyrannie, comme ceux d’Abélard à la Bêtise. L’avenir dépend, pour chacun de nos deux pays, du choix que nous ferons entre notre bon et notre mauvais génie. Est-il trop tard pour retrouver cette autre France, cette autre Angleterre?
Pour les retrouver, il ne suffit pas d'y penser. Ce n'est pas d’«idéal» ni d’«inspiration » que nous avons besoin, mais de simple probité, de charité, de diligence, pour faire face successivement à toutes les tâches qui s'imposeront. Je ne sais si les Français ou les Anglais, ou les Allemands (qui, eux non plus, n'ont pas toujours connu le seul Démon) parviendront à redevenir eux-mêmes. Le salut d'un peuple, comme celui d'un individu, est toujours possible, mais aussi impossible à prédire; car nous avons des volontés libres, et l'avenir reste à faire.
I have been asked to write a few words on France, and more specifically on her future. Concerning future circumstances, we know nothing; and we cannot imagine the future of a living being except according to its past and present. This leads me to ask what France has been for humanity. Inevitably, I think first of medieval France; for it is in the Middle Ages that your nation exerted over Europe a spiritual hegemony that neither she, nor any other nation, has equalled since. Above all, France means the Crusades, the Chanson de Roland, the cathedral of Chartres, the Arthurian cycle, the University of Paris. In all these, what strikes one is brilliance: the brilliance of swords, of courtliness, of logic. Secondly, I think of ‘enlightened’ France, that of Voltaire and the Encyclopédistes. The brilliance has paled, but the clarity remains. This France to some degree I consider my enemy, but she is a noble enemy; in default of love, she earns my respect. Finally, to be entirely frank with you, I think of a third France; here the worst cancers of the modern world have found their chosen climate, here decadent Americans love to loiter, here Edgar Poe passes for a great poet, here are the little vermicular ‘movements’ of Dadaism, Surrealism, and Black Masses – here the very country of Reason has built an idol of Stupidity.
It seems that your essence may be double. Without a doubt it is the same in all nations; I see it even in my own country. Behind the England of Sidney, I perceive (alas!) that of Cecil Rhodes. If the one frees the slaves, the other fattens herself on trafficking them. We who failed to invent Liberty have also sinned against her more than almost any other nation. For you as for us, the Demon is truly the opposite of our authentic essence; he incites Shelley's countrymen to Tyranny, as those of Abelard to Stupidity. The future depends, for each of our two countries, on the choice that we make between our good and evil geniuses. Is it too late to recover this other France, this other England?
To recover them, it is not enough to think of them. It is not an ‘ideal’ or ‘inspiration’ that we need, but simple probity, charity, and diligence to face successively all the tasks which will confront us. I do not know if the French or the English or the Germans (who have not always known only the Demon, either) will manage to become themselves again. The salvation of a people, like that of an individual, is always possible, but also impossible to predict; for we have free wills, and the future remains to be made.