In “Pelleas and Ettarre” the storm of corruption culminates, whirling the sweet waters of young love and faith (the very life-spring of the world) out from their proper channels, sweeping them into mist, and casting them in hail upon the land. A scarcely-concealed harlot here rides splendid to the Court, and is crowned Queen of Beauty in the lists; the lust of the flesh is all but paramount. Then comes in “Guinevere” the final lightning stroke, and all the fabric of the earthly life falls smitten into dust, leaving to the soul a broken heart for company, and a conviction that if in this world only it had hope, it were of all things most miserable.
Thus ends the “Round Table,” and the story of the life-long labour of the soul....
There remains but the passing of the soul “from the great deep to the great deep,” and this is the subject of the closing idyll. Here the “last dim, weird battle,” fought out in densest mist, stands for a picture of all human death, and paints its awfulness and confusion. The soul alone, enduring beyond the end wherein all else is swallowed up, sees the mist clear at last, and finds those three crowned virtues, “abiding” true and fast, and waiting to convey it to its rest. Character, upheld and formed by these, is the immortal outcome of mortal life. They wail with it awhile in sympathy for the failure of its earthly plans; but at the very last of all are heard to change their sorrow into songs of joy, and departing, “vanish into light.”
Such or such like seems to be the high significance and under-meaning of this noble poem,—a meaning worthy of the exquisite expression which conveys it and of the wealth of beauty and imagery which enfolds it.
But nothing is more remarkable than the way in which so much symbolic truth is given without the slightest forcing of the current of the narrative itself. Indeed, so subtle are the touches, and so consummately refined the art employed, that quite possibly many readers may hold there is no parable at all intended. It is most interesting, for instance, to note the thread of realism which is preserved throughout, and which, whether intentionally or not, serves the double purpose of entirely screening any such symbolic under-meaning from all who do not care to seek it, and also of accounting naturally for all the supernatural adventures and beliefs recorded in the story itself.
Thus, in “The Holy Grail,” the various apparitions of the mystic vessel are explicable by passing meteors or sudden lightning flashes seen in a season of great tempests and thunderstorms—first acting on the hysterical exaltation of an enthusiastic nun, and then, by contagion from her faith, upon the imaginations of a few kindred natures.
Again, in the “Coming of Arthur,” the marvellous story of his birth, as told by Bleys, might simply have been founded on a shipwreck when the sea was phosphorescent, and when all hands suddenly perished, save one infant who was washed ashore.
Or, again, in the same poem, the three mystic Queens at the Coronation—who become, in one sense, so all-important in their meaning—derive their import in the eyes of Bellicent simply from the accident of coloured beams of light falling upon them from a stained-glass window.
May I, in conclusion say how happily characteristic of their English author, and their English theme, seems to me the manner in which these “Idylls of the King” have become a complete poem? It brings to mind the method of our old cathedral-builders. Round some early shrine, too precious to be moved, were gathered bit by bit a nave and aisles, then rich side chapels, then the great image-crowded portals, then a more noble chancel, then, perhaps, the towers, all in fulfilment of some general plan made long ago, but each produced and added as occasion urged or natural opportunity arose. As such buildings always seem rather to have grown than been constructed, and have the wealth of interest, and beauty, and variety which makes Canterbury Cathedral, for instance, far more poetical than St. Paul’s—so with these “Idylls.” Bit by bit the poem and its sacred purport have grown continually more and more connected and impressive. Had Tennyson sat down in early youth to write the symbolic epic of King Arthur which he then projected, his “Morte d’Arthur” is enough to show how fine a work might have resulted. But, for once, at any rate, the interposing critics did art good service, for they deferred till the experience of life had given him, as it were, many lives, a poem which could not have been produced without wide acquaintanceship with the world and human nature. We should never otherwise have had the parable “full of voices” which we now fortunately possess.
THE END