Volume 6 Number 4 Article 3 10-15-1979 Elements of the Idea of the City in Charles Williams' Arthurian Poetry Mariann Russell Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Russell, Mariann (1979) "Elements of the Idea of the City in Charles Williams' Arthurian Poetry," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 6 : No. 4 , Article 3. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol6/iss4/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Sees Williams’s Arthurian poems as a dialectic with a pattern of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, the last related to the idea of coinherence. Examines Williams’s characteristic image of the City as it appears in the Arthurian poems. Additional Keywords The City in Charles Williams; Coinherence in Charles Williams; Williams, Charles. Arthuriad; Williams, Charles. Arthuriad—Moral and religious aspects; Mary Janis Johnson This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol6/iss4/3 Elements Of The Idea Of The City In Charles W illiam s' Arthurian Poetry By Mariann Russell It has been noted by Charles Moorman1 among within,Williams envisioned "a form of poetic others that a variation of the theological idea life which acts through the earlier myth of verse" of the City of God appears as a motif and image in (Poetry at Present, p. 170). He noted with approval certain novels of Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, William Butler Yeats' use of mythology: "...he has and J. R. R. Tolkien. This same idea appears in renewed in us the sense of great interior possi­ Williams' Arthurian poetry. Before a discussion bilities by his use of the traditions of magic and of the specific embodiment of the idea in the poet­ faerie, and made his own verse tremble with their ry, a very brief discussion of Williams' idea of imagined presence" (p. 69). It is not surprising the City would be helpful. therefore that Williams selected the Arthurian myth as material for his own greatest poetic effort. The particular idea of the City used by the novelists was first and most highly developed by The Grail quest had previously been discussed Charles Williams. Williams, an essentially eclec­ in Arthur Edward W aite's The Hidden Church of the tic w riter, derived his idea chiefly from classical Holy Graal. Williams had read the book, and it is expositions of the Christian idea of the City. fairly certain that some roots of his later system While the protean idea of the City has found dif­ can be found in the doctrine of Waite and his ferent expressions in different ages, it has re­ school. It is also fairly certain that Williams' tained certain essential elements: a chosen com­ Arthurian myth owes something to Waite even though munity, the world in which the community finds the exact nature of- the debt has not been deter­ itse lf, and the relationship between the chosen mined. A detailed account of sim ilarities between community and the world. Waite's and Williams' treatments is not particular­ ly relevant here, but there are certain aspects of (In the Bible, the idea was first developed in W aite's discussion that may illuminate the scheme the Jewish idea of a chosen people and city. In of Williams' poetry.5 the Pauline sections, the Jewish Idea was continued and spiritualized in the Christian Church with its W aite's intention had been to outline a mysti­ bond of charity, while the Apocalypse provided a cal interpretation of the Grail quest: "Over the significant image of the idea. Although Augustine's threshold of the Galahad Quest we pass as if out of City Of God gave the idea cosmic significance, the worlds of enchantment, worlds of faerie, worlds medieval notion of Christendom, variously expressed of the mighty Morgan Le Fay, into realms of alle­ in such works as the German Arthurian romances and gory and dual meaning, and then--transcending D a n te 's Monarchy, tended to confine the idea to allegory--into a region more deeply unrealised..."6 particular historical embodiments.) In Waite, the meaning of the Grail is attributed easily and without particular distinction to the Charles Williams endued these classical exposi­ individual mystical quest, to the "Hidden Church" tions with his own concerns with perichoresis, of the adepts, to the Church as a whole, to humanity coinherence, substitution, and impersonal love as as a whole, to the universe, and to the principle he changed the theological idea into an archetypal idea of relationship or coinherence which he found of the universe. Waite further defines the Grail in the Trinity and in all creation. To Williams quest as a "reintegration of secret knowledge be­ fore the Fall" and as the Way which passes through these themes held a poetic intensity since these very term s--perichoresis, coinherence, and sub- illumination to sanctity to ecstasy. This kind stitution--were part of his attempt to capture and of mystical interpretation explains Waite's emphasizing such elements as the identification of communicate the moment-to-moment living of doctrine. the Grail quest with a "higher meaning of the Williams' Arthurian poetry, notably Taliessin Eucharist," the removal of the Grail more than through Logres and The Region o{ the Summer Stars, the actual Grail quest, the Castle of the Grail is one attempt to communicate the same experience at Corbenic as a "House of Souls" and the "Earthly in p o e try . Paradise," and Sarras as a city of initiation and station in the Grail quest. Sir Galahad is Charles' Williams' notion of poetry as "making almost a personification of the Grail as intruding in words" would seem to preclude any simple com­ elements of the Arthurian romance are seen stric t­ munication of religious feeling. In poetry, re­ ly in terms of the quest. Perceval, Bors, Elayne, ligion must appear as mythology: "If poetry is to and others are interpreted in terms of the quest refer to 'Scripture texts' it must make of them a as Arthur recedes to the background. Even the poetic experience; if poetry is to thrill us with Round Table becomes an adjunct to the Grail quest. Baptism, it must make Baptism part of its own W aite's treatment of the legend with his "implicits" mythology."3 In his observation of modern poetry, of spiritual realities illustrates myth or legend Charles Williams found this view confirmed; he saw used primarily for its spiritual significance.7 spiritual realities being introduced into poetry through myth--Greek, Norse, Celtic, or Christian. Charles Williams thought enough of The Hidden In speculating about the distinctive verse form of Church and The Secret Doctrine in Israel to make a world in which "all strangeness, most adventures, Waite's acquaintance and later to join his Order and in a growing sense all space, must be found of the Golden Dawn. Although Charles Williams 10 (like Yeats before him) seems to have outgrown state of coinherence. In fact, coinherence tends the "Holy School," he retained an interest in to become the true subject of the' narrative as, the occult imagination. He allowed it a "kind in retelling the Arthurian myth, Williams sees of poetic vision" and admitted the validity of in it the failure and achievement of coinherence. "a certain imagination of relation in the universe," The "vertical structure" of Williams' narrative if, as he says, "only to pass beyond it."9 is formed by the dialectical movement of good, Like Waite, Williams saw in the old tale of ad­ anti-good, and their coinherence while the "hori­ venture "im plicits" of his experience of Chris­ zontal structure" is composed of the union of tianity and used the Arthurian material "not so the secular tale of Arthur and the Christian Grail much to tell a story or describe a process as quest as a myth of the attempted reconciliation of express states or principles of experience ."10 the larger worlds which these two sets of tales He could say, therefore, in an interpretation of r e p r e s e n t . 19 The poetic definition of this attempl his Arthurian myth: ed union involves other and more specific images of union. The tale of Arthur becomes the story Well then--Logres is the world before it is of the coinherence of good and evil, of vice and in order, and Arthur is man coming in it. virtue, of persons in a community, and of com­ The establishment of the Kingdom is the munities with each other seen against the back­ establishment of man, and the Table is--or ground o f th e c o in h e re n c e o f man and God in th e are--the qualities and capacities of man.