Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V6"

George MacDonald - "Heather and Snow"

Sarah J Richardson - "Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal"

J. Henri Fabre - "The Mason bees"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Literary and Philosophical Essays

V >> Various >> Literary and Philosophical Essays




The tale of Kilhwch and Olwen, the most extraordinary of the
Mabinogion, deals with Arthur's struggle against the wild-boar king
Twrch Trwyth, who with his seven cubs holds in check all the heroes
of the Round Table. The adventures of the three hundred ravens of
Kerverhenn similarly form the subject of the Dream of Rhonabwy. The
idea of moral merit and demerit is almost wholly absent from all
these compositions. There are wicked beings who insult ladies, who
tyrannise over their neighbours, who only find pleasure in evil
because such is their nature; but it does not appear that they incur
wrath on that account. Arthur's knights pursue them, not as
criminals but as mischievous fellows. All other beings are perfectly
good and just, but more or less richly gifted. This is the dream of
an amiable and gentle race which looks upon evil as being the work
of destiny, and not a product of the human conscience. All nature is
enchanted, and fruitful as imagination itself in indefinitely varied
creations. Christianity rarely discloses itself; although at times
its proximity can be felt, it alters in no respect the purely
natural surroundings in which everything takes place. A bishop
figures at table beside Arthur, but his function is strictly limited
to blessing the dishes. The Irish saints, who at one time present
themselves to give their benediction to Arthur and receive favours
at his hands, are portrayed as a race of men vaguely known and
difficult to understand. No mediaeval literature held itself further
removed from all monastic influence. We evidently must suppose that
the Welsh bards and story-tellers lived in a state of great
isolation from the clergy, and had their culture and traditions
quite apart.

The charm of the Mabinogion principally resides in the amiable
serenity of the Celtic mind, neither sad nor gay, ever in suspense
between a smile and a tear. We have in them the simple recital of a
child, unwitting of any distinction between the noble and the
common; there is something of that softly animated world, of that
calm and tranquil ideal to which Ariosto's stanzas transport us. The
chatter of the later mediaeval French and German imitators can give
no idea of this charming manner of narration. The skilful Chretien
de Troyes himself remains in this respect far below the Welsh story-
tellers, and as for Wolfram of Eschenbach, it must be avowed that
the joy of the first discovery has carried German critics too far in
the exaggeration of his merits. He loses himself in interminable
descriptions, and almost completely ignores the art of his recital.

What strikes one at a first glance in the imaginative compositions
of the Celtic races, above all when they are contrasted with those
of the Teutonic races, is the extreme mildness of manners pervading
them. There are none of those frightful vengeances which fill the
Edda and the Niebelungen. Compare the Teutonic with the Gaelic
hero,--Beowulf with Peredur, for example. What a difference there
is! In the one all the horror of disgusting and blood-embrued
barbarism, the drunkenness of carnage, the disinterested taste, if I
may say so, for destruction and death; in the other a profound sense
of justice, a great height of personal pride it is true, but also a
great capacity for devotion, an exquisite loyalty. The tyrannical
man, the monster, the Black Man, find a place here like the
Lestrigons and the Cyclops of Homer only to inspire horror by
contrast with softer manners; they are almost what the wicked man is
in the naive imagination of a child brought up by a mother in the
ideas of a gentle and pious morality. The primitive man of Teutonism
is revolting by his purposeless brutality, by a love of evil that
only gives him skill and strength in the service of hatred and
injury. The Cymric hero on the other hand, even in his wildest
flights, seems possessed by habits of kindness and a warm sympathy
with the weakv. Sympathy indeed is one of the deepest feelings among
the Celtic peoples. Even Judas is not denied a share of their pity.
St. Brandan found him upon a rock in the midst of the Polar seas;
once a week he passes a day there to refresh himself from the fires
of hell. A cloak that he had given to a beggar is hung before him,
and tempers his sufferings.

If Wales has a right to be proud of her Mabinogion, she has not less
to felicitate herself in having found a translator truly worthy of
interpreting them. For the proper understanding of these original
beauties there was needed a delicate appreciation of Welsh
narration, and an intelligence of the naive order, qualities of
which an erudite translator would with difficulty have been capable.
To render these gracious imaginings of a people so eminently dowered
with feminine tact, the pen of a woman was necessary. Simple,
animated, without effort and without vulgarity, Lady Guest's
translation is a faithful mirror of the original Cymric. Even
supposing that, as regards philology, the labours of this noble
Welsh lady be destined to receive improvement, that does not prevent
her book from for ever remaining a work of erudition and highly
distinguished taste. [Footnote: M. de la Villemarque published in
1843 under the title of Cantes populaires des anciens Bretons, a
French translation of the narratives that Guest had already
presented in English at that time.]

The Mabinogion, or at least the writings which Lady Guest thought
she ought to include under this common name, divide themselves into
two perfectly distinct classes--some connected exclusively with the
two peninsulas of Wales and Cornwall, and relating to the heroic
personality of Arthur; the others alien to Arthur, having for their
scene not only the parts of England that have remained Cymric, but
the whole of Great Britain, and leading us back by the persons and
traditions mentioned in them to the later years of the Roman
occupation. The second class, of greater antiquity than the first,
at least on the ground of subject, is also distinguished by a much
more mythological character, a bolder use of the miraculous, an
enigmatical form, a style full of alliteration and plays upon words.
Of this number are the tales of Pwyll, of Bramwen, of Manawyddan, of
Math the son of Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor Maximus, the
story of Llud and Llewelys, and the legend of Taliessin. To the
Arthurian cycle belong the narratives of Owen, of Geraint, of
Peredur, of Kilhwch and Olwen, and the Dream of Rhonabwy. It is also
to be remarked that the two last-named narratives have a
particularly antique character. In them Arthur dwells in Cornwall,
and not as in the others at Caerleon on the Usk. In them he appears
with an individual character, hunting and taking a personal part in
warfare, while in the more modern tales he is only an emperor all-
powerful and impassive, a truly sluggard hero, around whom a pleiad
of active heroes groups itself. The Mabinogi of Kilhwch and Olwen,
by its entirely primitive aspect, by the part played in it by the
wild-boar in conformity to the spirit of Celtic mythology, by the
wholly supernatural and magical character of the narration, by
innumerable allusions the sense of which escapes us, forms a cycle
by itself. It represents for us the Cymric conception in all its
purity, before it had been modified by the introduction of any
foreign element. Without attempting here to analyse this curious
poem, I should like by some extracts to make its antique aspect and
high originality apparent.

Kilhwch, the son of Kilydd, prince of Kelyddon, having heard some
one mention the name of Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, falls
violently in love, without having ever seen her. He goes to find
Arthur, that he may ask for his aid in the difficult undertaking
which he meditates; in point of fact, he does not know in what
country the fair one of his affection dwells. Yspaddaden is besides
a frightful tyrant who suffers no man to go from his castle alive,
and whose death is linked by destiny to the marriage of his
daughter. [Footnote: The idea of making the death of the father the
condition of possession of the daughter is to be found in several
romances of the Breton cycle, in Lancelot for example.] Arthur
grants Kilhwch some of his most valiant comrades in arms to assist
him in this enterprise. After wonderful adventures the knights
arrive at the castle of Yspaddaden, and succeed in seeing the young
maiden of Kilhwch's dream. Only after three days of persistent
struggle do they manage to obtain a response from Olwen's father,
who attaches his daughter's hand to conditions apparently impossible
of realisation. The performance of these trials makes a long chain
of adventures, the framework of a veritable romantic epic which has
come to us in a very fragmentary form. Of the thirty-eight
adventures imposed on Kilhwch the manuscript used by Lady Guest only
relates seven or eight. I choose at random one of these narratives,
which appears to me fitted to give an idea of the whole composition.
It deals with the finding of Mabon the son of Modron, who was
carried away from his mother three days after his birth, and whose
deliverance is one of the labours exacted of Kilhwch.

"His followers said unto Arthur, 'Lord, go thou home; thou canst not
proceed with thy host in quest of such small adventures as these.'
Then said Arthur, 'It were well for thee, Gwrhyr Gwalstawd
Ieithoedd, to go upon this quest, for thou knowest all languages,
and art familiar with those of the birds and the beasts. Thou,
Eidoel, oughtest likewise to go with my men in search of thy cousin.
And as for you, Kai and Bedwyr, I have hope of whatever adventure ye
are in quest of, that ye will achieve it. Achieve ye this adventure
for me.'"

They went forward until they came to the Ousel of Cilgwri. And
Gwrhyr adjured her for the sake of Heaven, saying, "Tell me if thou
knowest aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken when three
nights old from between his mother and the wall." And the Ousel
answered, "When I first came here there was a smith's anvil in this
place, and I was then a young bird; and from that time no work has
been done upon it, save the pecking of my beak every evening, and
now there is not so much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet
all the vengeance of Heaven be upon me, if during all that time I
have ever heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless I will
do that which is right, and that which it is fitting I should do for
an embassy from Arthur. There is a race of animals who were formed
before me, and I will be your guide to them."

So they proceeded to the place where was the Stag of Redynvre. "Stag
of Redynvre, behold we are come to thee, an embassy from Arthur, for
we have not heard of any animal older than thou. Say, knowest thou
aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken from his mother when
three nights old?" The Stag said, "When first I came hither there
was a plain all around me, without any trees save one oak sapling,
which grew up to be an oak with an hundred branches. And that oak
has since perished, so that now nothing remains of it but the
withered stump; and from that day to this I have been here, yet have
I never heard of the man for whom you enquire. Nevertheless, being
an embassy from Arthur, I will be your guide to the place where
there is an animal which was formed before I was."

So they proceeded to the place where was the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd.
"Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, here is an embassy from Arthur; knowest thou
aught of Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken after three nights
from his mother?" "If I knew I would tell you. When first I came
hither, the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men
came and rooted it up. And there grew there a second wood; and this
wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered stumps? Yet all
this time, even until to-day, I have never heard of the man for whom
you enquire. Nevertheless I will be the guide of Arthur's embassy
until you come to the place where is the oldest animal in the world,
and the one that has travelled most, the Eagle of Gwern Abwy."

Gwrhyr said, "Eagle of Gwern Abwy, we have come to thee an embassy
from Arthur, to ask thee if thou knowest aught of Mabon the son of
Modron, who was taken from his mother when he was three nights old."
The Eagle said, "I have been here for a great space of time, and
when I first came hither there was a rock here, from the top of
which I pecked at the stars every evening; and now it is not so much
as a span high. From that day to this I have been here, and I have
never heard of the man for whom you enquire, except once when I went
in search of food as far as Llyn Llyw. And when I came there, I
struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would serve me as food
for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I was scarcely
able to escape from him. After that I went with my whole kindred to
attack him, and to try to destroy him, but he sent messengers, and
made peace with me; and came and besought me to take fifty fish
spears out of his back. Unless he know something of him whom you
seek, I cannot tell who may. However, I will guide you to the place
where he is."

So they went thither; and the Eagle said, "Salmon of Llyn Llyw, I
have come to thee with an embassy from Arthur, to ask thee if thou
knowest aught concerning Mabon the son of Modron, who was taken away
at three nights old from his mother." "As much as I know I will tell
thee. With every tide I go along the river upwards, until I come
near to the walls of Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong
as I never found elsewhere; and to the end that ye may give credence
thereto, let one of you go thither upon each of my two shoulders."
So Kai and Gwrhyr Gwalstawd Ieithoedd went upon the shoulders of the
salmon, and they proceeded until they came unto the wall of the
prison, and they heard a great wailing and lamenting from the
dungeon. Said Gwrhyr, "Who is it that laments in this house of
stone?" "Alas there is reason enough for whoever is here to lament.
It is Mabon the son of Modron who is here imprisoned; and no
imprisonment was ever so grievous as mine, neither that of Lludd
Llaw Ereint, nor that of Greid the son of Eri." "Hast thou hope of
being released for gold or for silver, or for any gifts of wealth,
or through battle and fighting?" "By fighting will whatever I may
gain be obtained."

We shall not follow the Cymric hero through trials the result of
which can be foreseen. What, above all else, is striking in these
strange legends is the part played by animals, transformed by the
Welsh imagination into intelligent beings. No race conversed so
intimately as did the Celtic race with the lower creation, and
accorded it so large a share of moral life. [Footnote: See
especially the narratives of Nennius, and of Giraldus Cambrensis. In
them animals have at least as important a part as men.] The close
association of man and animal, the fictions so dear to mediaeval
poetry of the Knight of the Lion, the Knight of the Falcon, the
Knight of the Swan, the vows consecrated by the presence of birds of
noble repute, are equally Breton imaginings. Ecclesiastical
literature itself presents analogous features; gentleness towards
animals informs all the legends of the saints of Brittany and
Ireland. One day St. Kevin fell asleep, while he was praying at his
window with outstretched arms; and a swallow perceiving the open
hand of the venerable monk, considered it an excellent place wherein
to make her nest. The saint on awaking saw the mother sitting upon
her eggs, and, loth to disturb her, waited for the little ones to be
hatched before he arose from his knees.

This touching sympathy was derived from the singular vivacity with
which the Celtic races have inspired their feeling for nature. Their
mythology is nothing more than a transparent naturalism, not that
anthropomorphic naturalism of Greece and India, in which the forces
of the universe, viewed as living beings and endowed with
consciousness, tend more and more to detach themselves from physical
phenomena, and to become moral beings; but in some measure a
realistic naturalism, the love of nature for herself, the vivid
impression of her magic, accompanied by the sorrowful feeling that
man knows, when, face to face with her, he believes that he hears
her commune with him concerning his origin and his destiny. The
legend of Merlin mirrors this feeling. Seduced by a fairy of the
woods, he flies with her and becomes a savage. Arthur's messengers
come upon him as he is singing by the side of a fountain; he is led
back again to court; but the charm carries him away. He returns to
his forests, and this time for ever. Under a thicket of hawthorn
Vivien has built him a magical prison. There he prophesies the
future of the Celtic races; he speaks of a maiden of the woods, now
visible and now unseen, who holds him captive by her spells. Several
Arthurian legends are impressed with the same character. Arthur
himself in popular belief became, as it were, a woodland spirit.
"The foresters on their nightly round by the light of the moon,"
says Gervais of Tilbury, [Footnote: An English chronicler of the
twelfth century.] "often hear a great sound as of horns, and meet
bands of huntsmen; when they are asked whence they come, these
huntsmen make reply that they are of King Arthur's following."
[Footnote: This manner of explaining all the unknown noises of the
wood by Arthur's Hunting is still to be found in several districts.
To understand properly the cult of nature, and, if I may say so, of
landscape among the Celts, see Gildas and Nennius, pp. 131, 136,
137, etc. (Edit. San Marte, Berlin. 1884);] Even the French
imitators of the Breton romances keep an impression--although a
rather insipid one--of the attraction exercised by nature on the
Celtic imagination. Elaine, the heroine of Lancelot, the ideal of
Breton perfection, passes her life with her companions in a garden,
in the midst of flowers which she tends. Every flower culled by her
hands is at the instant restored to life; and the worshippers of her
memory are under an obligation, when they cut a flower, to sow
another in its place.

The worship of forest, and fountain, and stone is to be explained by
this primitive naturalism, which all the Councils of the Church held
in Brittany united to proscribe. The stone, in truth, seems the
natural symbol of the Celtic races. It is an immutable witness that
has no death. The animal, the plant, above all the human figure,
only express the divine life under a determinate form; the stone on
the contrary, adapted to receive all forms, has been the fetish of
peoples in their childhood. Pausanias saw, still standing erect, the
thirty square stones of Pharse, each bearing the name of a divinity.
The men-hir to be met with over the whole surface of the ancient
world, what is it but the monument of primitive humanity, a living
witness of its faith in Heaven? [Footnote: It is, however, doubtful
whether the monuments known in France at Celtic (men-hir. dot-men,
etc.) are the work of the Celts. With M. Worsaae and the Copenhagen
archaeologists, I am inclined to think that these monuments belong
to a more ancient humanity. Never, in fact, has any branch of the
Indo-European race built in this fashion. (See two articles by M.
Merimee in L'Athenaum franfais, Sept. 11th, 1852, and April 25th,
1853.)]

It has frequently been observed that the majority of popular beliefs
still extant in our different provinces are of Celtic origin. A not
less remarkable fact is the strong tinge of naturalism dominant in
these beliefs. Nay more, every time that the old Celtic spirit
appears in our history, there is to be seen, re-born with it, faith
in nature and her magic influences. One of the most characteristic
of these manifestations seems to me to be that of Joan of Arc. That
indomitable hope, that tenacity in the affirmation of the future,
that belief that the salvation of the kingdom will come from a
woman,--all those features, far removed as they are from the taste
of antiquity, and from Teutonic taste, are in many respects Celtic.
The memory of the ancient cult perpetuated itself at Domremy, as in
so many other places, under the form of popular superstition. The
cottage of the family of Arc was shaded by a beech tree, famed in
the country and reputed to be the abode of fairies. In her childhood
Joan used to go and hang upon its branches garlands of leaves and
flowers, which, so it was said, disappeared during the night. The
terms of her accusation speak with horror of this innocent custom,
as of a crime against the faith; and indeed they were not altogether
deceived, those unpitying theologians who judged the holy maid.
Although she knew it not, she was more Celtic than Christian. She
has been foretold by Merlin; she knows of neither Pope nor Church,--
she only believes the voice that speaks in her own heart. This voice
she hears in the fields, in the sough of the wind among the trees,
when measured and distant sounds fair upon her ears. During her
trial, worn out with questions and scholastic subtleties, she is
asked whether she still hears her voices. "Take me to the woods."
she says, "and I shall hear them clearly." Her legend is tinged with
the same colours; nature loved her, the wolves never touched the
sheep of her flock. When she was a little girl, the birds used to
come and eat bread from her lap as though they were tame. [Footnote:
Since the first publication of these views, on which I should not
like more emphasis to be put than what belongs to a passing
impression, similar considerations have been developed, in terms
that appear a little too positive, by M. H. Martin (History of
France, vol. vi., 1856). The objections raised to it are, for the
most part, due to the fact that very few people are capable of
delicately appreciating questions of this kind, relative to the
genius of races. It frequently happens that the resurrection of an
old national genius takes place under a very different form from
that which one would have expected, and by means of individuals who
have no idea of the ethnographical part which they play.]

III

The MABINOGION do not recommend themselves to our study, only as a
manifestation of the romantic genius of the Breton races. It was
through them that the Welsh imagination exercised its influence upon
the Continent, that it transformed, in the twelfth century, the
poetic art of Europe, and realised this miracle,--that the creations
of a half-conquered race have become the universal feast of
imagination for mankind.

Few heroes owe less to reality than Arthur. Neither Gildas nor
Aneurin, his contemporaries, speak of him; Bede did not even know
his name; Taliessin and Liwarc'h Hen gave him only a secondary
place. In Nennius, on the other hand, who lived about 850, the
legend has fully unfolded. Arthur is already the exterminator of the
Saxons; he has never experienced defeat; he is the suzerain of an
army of kings. Finally, in Geoffrey of Monmouth, the epic creation
culminates. Arthur reigns over the whole earth; he conquers Ireland,
Norway, Gascony, and France. At Caerleon he holds a tournament at
which all the monarchs of the world are present; there he puts upon
his head thirty crowns, and exacts recognition as the sovereign lord
of the universe. So incredible is it that a petty king of the sixth
century, scarcely remarked by his contemporaries, should have taken
in posterity such colossal proportions, that several critics have
supposed that the legendary Arthur and the obscure chieftain who
bore that name have nothing in common, the one with the other, and
that the son of Uther Pendragon is a wholly ideal hero, a survivor
of the old Cymric mythology. As a matter of fact, in the symbols of
Neo-Druidism--that is to say, of that secret doctrine, the outcome
of Druidism, which prolonged its existence even to the Middle Ages
under the form of Freemasonry--we again find Arthur transformed into
a divine personage, and playing a purely mythological part. It must
at least be allowed that, if behind the fable some reality lies
hidden, history offers us no means of attaining it. It cannot be
doubted that the discovery of Arthur's tomb in the Isle of Avalon in
1189 was an invention of Norman policy, just as in 1283, the very
year in which Edward I. was engaged in crushing out the last
vestiges of Welsh independence, Arthur's crown was very conveniently
found, and forthwith united to the other crown jewels of England.

We naturally expect Arthur, now become the representative of Welsh
nationality, to sustain in the Mabinogion a character analogous to
this role, and therein, as in Nennius, to serve the hatred of the
vanquished against the Saxons. But such is not the case. Arthur, in
the Mabinogion, exhibits no characteristics of patriotic resistance;
his part is limited to uniting heroes around him, to maintaining the
retainers of his palace, and to enforcing the laws of his order of
chivalry. He is too strong for any one to dream of attacking him. He
is the Charlemagne of the Carlovingian romances, the Agamemnon of
Homer,--one of those neutral personalities that serve but to give
unity to the poem. The idea of warfare against the alien, hatred
towards the Saxon, does not appear in a single instance. The heroes
of the Mabinogion have no fatherland; each fights to show his
personal excellence, and satisfy his taste for adventure, but not to
defend a national cause. Britain is the universe; no one suspects
that beyond the Cymry there may be other nations and other races.