I should perhaps explain a couple of things from my last post. Things that I forgot to do as footnotes at the time.
'Old man' was Phillip Glasier's nickname for George Lodge, not mine. Phillip had a painting of a gyrfalcon, some 3' x 2' at least, hanging on his lounge wall, and had known Lodge since the '20s, I believe. Lodge, with his knowledge and practice of falconry, was perhaps the finest painter of birds of prey that any century has produced; in a few lines he could capture the essence, the 'jizz', of any captive falcon, so much so that you could identify it by name.
(If you want to see what PG had on his wall go here and scroll down to the first 'Xmas card'. It's essentially the 'same' picture but in winter instead of summer.)
Lodge was a highly accomplished landscape and wildlife artist but only excelled at birds of prey; I only wanted the volume of raptors from Bannerman's monograph. Sadly, from my point of view, I could not afford the whole set of 12 and baulked at breaking a complete collection for the sake of my own personal 'wish list', although the assistant was willing to do so. The set, to the best of my recollection, was on a shelf about 10' from the floor and was well over £300! (And there was no way it would end up in my overnight bag; even if it would fit! And I could carry it. It's a long way from Inverness to London!)
Winkler's collection of the drawings of Albrecht Dürer is unique; hence the price. Published in Berlin between 1936 and 1939, the original plates, and a few of the actual drawings, were destroyed in the allied bombing raids. Only facsimiles of the original books (4 in all) are available now and, in essence, are illegal, infringement of copyright. The books share pride of place with my signed copy of 'Sketches and Studies...' (no 415 of 500) by Ray Ching.
I was singularly disappointed with the April Fools pranks this year; or at least the 50 or so that I heard about. I spent the first hour of that day pinning paper fish to the backs of hapless shoppers in Tesco as they queued for the checkout. (Poisson d'Avril; look it up on Wiki!)
I have recently been re-reading Mallory's 'Tales of King Arthur' (Caxton, the famous printer was responsible for calling it 'Le Morte d'Arthur') and something struck me as slightly strange. In contrast to Mallory's original tales, synthesised around 1470, late twentieth century and early twenty-first century renditions of the tales centre not on the once and future king (a steal from Mallory, 'Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus') but on his mentor, Merlin. From (Lady) Mary Stewart's trilogy, Robert Nye's ribald and bawdy 'autobiography', the recent BBC TV 5 season series and the mini-series in the late '90s (in which Arthur scarcely appears at all), Merlin is the main attraction.
Part of Arthur's fall from 'grace' must I fear be laid at the door of scholarship. While Arthur was firmly trapped in the medieval prose of Mallory, the poesie of Chretien de Troyes and the epic poetry of Wolfram von Eschenbach, he could be seen by later generations as being locked into the code of chivalry and the concepts of courtly love and the search for the Holy Grail. As scholarship on mid to late Anglo-Saxon and Welsh literature improved and the roots of the tale, whether based on fact or not, extended deeper and deeper into the past, the 'magic' of Arthur's reign was somehow lost, or at least dimished. It is not difficult to conceive that, outside of a few isolated incidents where the waves of Angles, Saxons and Jutes were halted for a time, there was little organised resistance to the invasions from the east. At best, it seems likely that any historical 'Arthur' would have been confined to Wales and the west of Cornwall since that is where traditionally the Britons had retreated to following the Roman invasion by Claudius in 43AD. By the time of the Roman wirhdrawal in about 410AD, the majority of England was Romano-British and, as far as it is possble to glean from what sources remain, Gildas and possibly Nennius and, later, Bede, what had been the province of the Emperor via his Governer, had fragmented into petty kingdoms.
If Arthur is to be thus removed from 13th and 14th century tales when Christendom reigned supreme and replanted into an earlier century when the spread of Christianity was patchy at best, then the bulk of the Arthurian legend, the quest for the Holy Grail, was likely to be fictitious; the tale of Launcelot and Guinevere was simply a rehashing of the triangle between Mark, Tristan and Isolt and therefore there isn't a lot left except a round table and Merlin the Magician.
It is, I think, not beyond the bounds of conjecture to see in Merlin's ascendency, the legacy of the late '50s resurgance in 'magic'. and the 'supernatural' in the form of one 'man'; Gandalf. In many ways, Gandalf plays exactly the role of Merlin to Aragorn's Arthur; he provides wisdon, counsel and the odd piece of magic along the way. While Aragorn is the kingly, courageous face of the victory, as Frodo is the face of the little, common man, so Gandalf is the face of the Maia, the angel, the miracle worker; the wielder, like Merlin, of a power beyond understanding.
Interestingly enough, Tolkien wrote an (unfinished) alliterative poem concerning the Arthurian legend in the early '30s. It appears to have been abandoned after ;the Hobbit; was published and work started on 'Lord of the Rings'. It is due for publication in late spring 2013 (edited, as always, by his son Christopher).
Finally a small quiz. Answers on a postcard please to the usual address:
1. Why do we never get an answer when we're knocking at the door?
2. How many roads must a man walk down before he is called a man?
3. If not now, when?
4. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck?
5. If it takes 10 men, 10 hours to dig a trench 20m long, 1m wide and 2m deep then how many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
6. Why does it take her so long to get ready to go out?
7. Why, why, why, Delilah?
8. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
9. Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?
10.Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa?
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