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The Harmony of Structure: the Earthly Paradise

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The Harmony of Structure: the Earthly Paradise CHAPTER I THE HARMONY OF STRUCTURE: THE EARTHLY PARADISE In the following analysis of The Earthly Paradise I shall try to show first what was Morris's purpose throughout the composition of the work, and secondly, what was his actual achievement, with its significance for English poetry. In bringing together in The Earthly Paradise stories and legends from various cultures and various periods, Morris did not set out to point the contrast between the classical, the medieval and the saga methods, which could have been done only by a strict preservation or reproduction of the methods of each type. He aimed rather at showing the contribution of each tradition to the common literary fund of Western Europe — especially of English literary tradition — as it crystallised towards the end of the Middle Ages, in the time of Chaucer, as he says explicitly himself, if not indeed — as internal evidence may perhaps lead us to conclude — during the century of Caxton and Malory, just after Chaucer's death. In the light of more discriminate modem examination of the Middle Ages, we may incline to think that the atmosphere which Morris evokes in The Earthly Paradise is that of the very end of the Middle Ages, just before Renaissance classicism was to make familiar a different, more scholarly attitude towards classical tra­ dition, and to render less easy the acceptance of popular traditional forms and methods (cf. infra pp. 26-7). Morris was thus deliberately returning to the historical moment at which he considered the national cultural tradition had last existed in a pure form unspoilt by the "pride of pedantry"9 which he judged guilty of divorcing culture from the mass of the nation. "It was the scholar's art as against the people's art that aroused his criticism."10 There have been a number of attempts by contemporary purists to show that Morris's conception of the various cultures and periods in which he was interested and in which he sought to interest his readers, was incorrect and invalid.11) But while it is useful to contrast Morris's conception of classical myth and northern saga with what more recent research has discovered in these fields, it is unhisto- rical to condemn Morris purely in the light of that research. Certainly the more scientific attitude towards Germanic and Scandinavian literature owes an incal- 13 culable debt to Morris himself, because Morris was the first great poet in England who threw the whole of his weight behind his enthusiasm for saga literature; while his translation of the Odyssey shows his clear recognition of the need to get as close as possible to the Greek epic itself without the impediment of "classicist" accretions. In other words, if it is to admitted that present-day interpretations of saga and epic are closer to the original in spirit than Augustan or Romantic interpretations, then William Morris must be recognised as one of the first writers to attempt such a realistic approach. His service in this respect to our comprehension of medieval life and even to medieval studies could hardly be exaggerated. Thus in order to assess his achievement historically we must com­ pare it not with what present-day writers have done, but with what his contem­ poraries were doing. It is not my intention to carry out such a detailed compa­ rison here, but rather by careful and detailed analysis of Morris's work, to lay a basis for such a comparison. Robert Graves in his preface to The Golden Fleece12 stresses the need for a historical novelist to make it clear "at what vantage-point of time he is stand­ ing", and himself adopts in this book' the view-point of the second century B. C. In this same preface Mr. Graves criticises Morris's treatment of the same legend in the Life and Death of Jason, in which Morris adopts the "fantastic" 4th-century account which takes the Argo up a Russian river on her return journey. This leads Mr. Graves to condemn Morris as a "pre-Raphaelite roman­ tic", who, "the more mysterious and even nonsensical he found a legend, the more poetic he considered it."13 However, in this choice Morris was merely being extremely consistent in carrying out the plan he had conceived. The Life and Death of Jason was originally planned as part of The Earthly Paradise, and The Earthly Paradise is fairly definitely set in time — towards the end of the 14th century, in fact, and all the tales are told, as they might well have been told in the circumstances he imagined. Precisely such a version of the Medea legend might conceivably have been told by the inhabitants of Morris's Atlantis, whom he imagined to have come originally from Greece; or equally well it might have been told by the 14th-century Scandinavian Wanderers. Even the orienta­ tion towards the North is consistent with Morris's plan of unifying the Medi­ terranean, the Asian and the Northern cycles of .ales and myth. Although at a first glance, The Earthly Paradise might seem a haphazard collection of all kinds of tales and legends, it is in fact based on a historical conception of litera­ ture. While Morris's historical sense became stricter after he became a Marxist, it was even in this earlier work a fundamental characteristic, and represents in fact the first stage of Morris's lifelong attempt to sum up for his own day the cultural heritage of the past. The Earthly Paradise consists of twenty-four tales of varying origin, of varying length and told in various metres, set in the framework of the tale of the 14 quest for happiness on earth, which ends with the recognition on the part of the Wanderers that old age has come and life is over for them, while happiness is no nearer than before. The tales are told in the comparative haven of the unknown land in the West, where they have been received in peace and friendship by the inhabitans, far-off descendants of the ancient Greeks. Two tales are told for every month, one by the Elders of the land, one by the Wanderers. For the sake of easy reference, we may indicate the different parts of the poem as follows: The- Apology, the Prologue, the Link Narrative, the Link Lyrics, the Tales, the Envoi. The "Apology" (Morris presents these six rhyme-royal stanzas without any title), has given us the most familiar of all Morris quotations, lines which have unfortunately only too often been taken uncritically as summing up all we need to know about William Morris: the refrain — "The idle singer of an empty day" — and the first lines of the fourth stanza — "Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?" But is the argument of the poem adequately grasped, if we identify Morris himself with this attitude? In the first verse, the poet disclaims his authority to write of the full meaning of life — "Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing" — and in this and subsequent stanzas underlines the "idleness" of his poetry — "these idle verses". Yet we should beware of condemning Morris on these grounds as having delibe­ rately turned to romantic poetry and dream,* as Thompson condemns him. This is to be regarded rather as a piece of severe self-criticism, on the part of a poet who was, as his subsequent poetry shows, at this period endeavouring to find adequate means of expression in English poetry for his thoughts as well as his dreams — those deeper thoughts which he was still trying to formulate in Love is Enough and Sigurd the Volsung. Yet even in disclaiming his power of "setting the crooked straight", Morris is implying that "escapist" poetry is not altogether adequate, and casts an almost ironic light on "us poor singers of an empty day." The fourth verse would seem to imply that there might conceivably be a "due time" even for the dreamer of dreams. This verse is indeed full of ambiguities, for we need not suppose that the poet is really content with the fact that his "murmuring rhyme Beats with light wing against the ivory gate" — and what, too, is this ivory gati? Surely the use of the expression means that the poet condemns those who stay in the sleepy region behind it, even though it is his own "not too importunate" tale that lulls them? The image in the fifth verse, of the wizard who showed at Christmas time through three windows the different seasons of the year, "While still, unheard, but in its wonted way, Piped the drear *) Thompson represents the development between the Gumevere period and The Earthly Paradise as a deliberate turning to dream, expressing the "disillusion" of the poet (cf.p.143, 149, 150). But the earlier method, though forceful, could not express the completer view of life which Morris now tried for, 15 wind of that December day", is a clear enough indication that the poet is con­ scious of some direr reality beyond his tale. In a sense, the "Apology" is a confession or rather accusation of failure — of the failure of English poetry in Morris's time. In spite of the fact that up to the date of The Earthly Paradise and beyond, Morris conceived his "warfare against the age" within the limited terms of contemporary bourgeois intellectual and family life, and the artistic and cultural standards demanded by the best form of this life, he, like most of those touched by Pre-Raphaelitism, was aware that "the age" would not be defeated by this type of warfare alone.
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