C.S. Lewis's Lost Arthurian Poem: a Conjectural Essay Joe R
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Inklings Forever Volume 8 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth Frances White Ewbank Article 2 Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends and The C.S. Lewis & The Inklings Society Conference 5-31-2012 C.S. Lewis's Lost Arthurian Poem: A Conjectural Essay Joe R. Christopher Tarleton University Follow this and additional works at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Christopher, Joe R. (2012) "C.S. Lewis's Lost Arthurian Poem: A Conjectural Essay," Inklings Forever: Vol. 8 , Article 2. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol8/iss1/2 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume VIII A Collection of Essays Presented at the Joint Meeting of The Eighth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM ON C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS and THE C.S. LEWIS AND THE INKLINGS SOCIETY CONFERENCE Taylor University 2012 Upland, Indiana C.S. Lewis’s Lost Arthurian Poem: A Conjectural Essay Joe R. Christopher Tarleton University Christopher, Joe R. “C.S. Lewis’s Lost Arthurian Poem: A Conjectural Essay.” Inklings Forever 8 (2012) www.taylor.edu/cslewis 1 C. S. Lewis’s Lost Arthurian Poem: A Conjectural Essay Joe R. Christopher Tarlton University When C. S. Lewis was waiting for since the passage he quotes about Wace— his first book—Spirits in Bondage—to be “a french clerke, well could he write”—is published, he wrote to Arthur Greeves on from Layamon (presumably quoted in the [2 March 1919]:1 introduction to Lewis’s Wace and Layamon book), so the misattribution is I have Layamon’s Brut [sic] and simply a momentary slip. Wace’s[,] translated in the one These works by these three authors are Everyman volume—or rather the told as histories of Britain—legendary parts of them about the Arthurian histories, of course—beginning with the period. Wace you remember was ‘a coming of the Roman Brutus and his French clerke, well could he write’ followers to Britain. The last two-fifths of who copied Layamon’s poem in Geoffrey’s work narrate the story of King French rhyming couplets, with Arthur, and hence about the same amount more style but less vigour. of the others do the same. Lewis’s copy of (Collected Letters, I, 439-440; They Arthurian Chronicles, Represented by Wace Stand Together 248) and Layamon, is a prose translation from Actually, Lewis’s statement has a factual French into English and a rendition of error and the situation is more Middle English alliterative meter into complicated than he makes it. Walter more-or-less modern English prose of Hooper, one may add, does not catch the those final, Arthurian parts of Wace and error in his notes in the Collected Letters. Layamon. Here is the situation. Three important The stories are not entirely the Arthurian sources are inter-related. same as the major tradition that comes Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote Historia down through Malory. For one important Regum Britanniae [A History of the Kings example, no Lancelot-Guinevere love of Britain] (1137). Contrary to Lewis’s affair occurs. Near the end of the story, statement, Wace, a Norman poet, wrote Arthur is in France, having defeated the his Roman de Brut [Romance of Brutus] Roman Empire’s army in battle and (1155), retelling Geoffrey of Monmouth’s preparing to invade Rome itself, when Latin in his French; Wace was not copying Arthur’s nephew, Modred, at home, acting Layamon. Then Layamon (the “y” should as regent, rebels and Guinevere really be a yogh) translated, paraphrased, (“Wenhaver” in Layamon) has an affair and expanded Wace into Middle English with that nephew. This tradition as Brut [Brutus] (probably 1205). Lewis occasionally is followed in later writings: had to know the temporal relationship for example, in the alliterative Morte between Wace and Layamon—that Arthure (c. 1360) and in Diana Paxson’s Layamon followed Wace, not vice versa— The Hallowed Isle tetralogy (1999-2000). 2 C. S. Lewis’s Lost Arthurian Poem · Joe R. Christopher One might add that Joy Chant did a Celtic- present purposes: “To Philip Sidney,” emphasized re-telling of Geoffrey’s “Ballade on a certain pious gentleman,” history, with this ending, as The High “Sonnet,” “Retreat,” and “In Venusberg” Kings in 1983. (King, “Lost” 195 n15).2 The first two of This background is enough to set these are certainly poems—perhaps the up the next step. In the letter to Greeves later versions of poems—that Lewis quoted above, Lewis also comments that wrote earlier: “To Philip Sidney” in 1916 he did not finish Layamon’s version (CL and “Ballade on a certain pious 1.440; TST 248), but he goes on, still gentleman” in 1917. Probably “Sonnet” is talking about Layamon, to make a one of four sonnets Lewis wrote in the contrast between the treatments of King 1915-1917 period. (For the Arthur’s burial in Malory and non-burial identifications and datings, King, “Lost” in Brut. No doubt, Lewis skipped some of 197-98.) But “Retreat” and “In the material in the middle of Layamon’s Venusberg” seem to have been written Brut (having already read it in Wace’s about the time Lewis was preparing his version)—and hence did not finish it— book for submission, in 1918. The reason but he obviously had read the ending. for this surmise is that the titles do not Lewis writes, loosely paraphrasing a appear in the copies of Lewis’s poems passage from Layamon (Wace and made by his friend Arthur Greeves in Layamon 264): 1917 (see King, C. S. Lewis, Poet, Appendix Six, 308-310). Therefore, they seem to be Brut [. .] knows better [than later productions. Malory about the afterlife of Before a consideration of these Arthur:] ‘They say he abideth in two titles, one further complication needs Avalon with Argante the fairest of to be discussed. King, in that essay about all elves: but ever the Britons think Lewis’s early poems, says that William he will come again to help them at Heinemann twice requested the dropping their need’—a great deal of which I of five poems from the manuscript of copied in a poem rejected by (“Lost” 195 n15). This Heinemann—on whom ten Spirits in Bondage might complicate any discussion of the thousand maledictions. (CL 1.440; five poems just listed: “What were the TST 248, titles of the other five rejected poem?” one William Heinemann was the publisher might ask. But the situation—while who would fairly soon issue Lewis’s book complicated by a missing letter from of poems. Heinemann—is not as murky as that This is the lost Arthurian poem by suggests. What seems to have happened C. S. Lewis. is this: about the fifth of September 1918, And this is all that one factually Heinemann wrote to Lewis accepting his knows about it. The rest of this paper, as manuscript for publication; he said that the subtitle says, will be interwoven with he would go through the manuscript later, conjectures. for he thought a few of the poems were To begin with, Heinemann poorer than the majority and after due rejected five of Lewis’s poems, which he consideration he might suggest a few for considered weak. This is factual. Don W. omission. This is the missing letter, and King, in an essay, quotes the 8 October the reconstruction is based on what was 1918 letter from Heinemann, in which the said in subsequent letters by Lewis. editor has gone through the “revised Lewis wrote his father and Arthur form” of Spirits in Prison (the first title of Greeves about the acceptance of his the book) and suggests five poems for manuscript on 9 September and 12 omission. The titles are important for September respectively. An important 3 C. S. Lewis’s Lost Arthurian Poem · Joe R. Christopher passage occurs in the letter to his father; influenced in his choice of the number by Lewis writes, “Wm. Heinemann thinks it the number of new poems that Lewis had would ‘be well to reconsider the inclusion already sent. His actual words are these: of one or two poems which are not I have read through your ‘Spirits in on a level with my best work’. I perhaps Prison’ again, in its revised form have sent him some new ones as [presumably with the five substitutes for these [. .]” ( 1.396, CL additional poems, which Lewis stress added). Since Heinemann uses a must have sent with suggestions “perhaps” in the letter of 8 October about about their placement], and suggest omitting five poems, that seems to be his the following numbers might be usual diction in writing poets, in order to ommitted [sic], partly because they avoid hard feelings; Lewis picks it up in do not strengthen the book as a this letter and in the subsequent letter to whole, partly because they are less Greeves. Writing to his friend, Lewis original perhaps than the bulk of indicates more fully what has transpired. your work[.] (King, “Lost” 195 n15, He says, stress added). [William Heinemann] writes to say Thus, the sequence of letters makes sense that he ‘will be pleased to become without the assumption of ten poems [the manuscript’s] publisher’. He being dropped. (The appendix lists the adds that it may be well to re- Lewis’s correspondence about Spirits in consider the inclusion of some of Bondage, from submission through the pieces ‘which are not perhaps publication, to indicate the larger on a level with my best work’.