The Matter of Britain: Cheer Up, We are Doomed

Last updated on: October 22, 2016 at 9:21 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The Matter of Britain: Cheer Up, We are Doomed 2016-10-22T09:21:47-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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The Matter of Britain, the story of King Arthur, has defied great story telling. There are good books about Arthur, Once and Future King is the best, and even a classic, L’Morte d’Arthur, but the story is better than any of the books. Of films and television we should not speak given the generally horrible quality of the product except to say that The Sword in the Stone is a pleasant little film made while Walt Disney was dying, Search for the Holy Grail is funny, and Excalibur nearly (but not quite!) unwatchable. The rest of filmed Arthur ranges from fun schlock through mere schlock to offensive schlock. Given that Parsifal is the last opera Wagner finished before dying, one could conclude that dealing with Arthur is fatal. Correlation in two cases is not causation, however! The classic comic strip Prince Valiant has good moments and is lovely to look at, but the need to keep the series going caused story telling quality to decline over time. When Tolkien decided to create an English epic, he wisely avoided the story of Arthur and created his own world.

The story is magnetic, but like Atlantis, best told in few words. There is a reason that the images from the childhood books of King Arthur are better (always) than the prose. The story is an image: an icon of a King.

At heart, the story of Arthur is about the last chance of civilization and how that chance failed. In its oldest form, Arthur is a war leader or king who leads Roman Britain in one last stand against barbarian invasion. This moment of peace fails and a British dark age begins. All else, including the tales of chivalry and the love triangle introduced later between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot, fall into this story of hope crushed.

Like a tale set on RMS Titanic, another story better than any rendition in existence, nothing can go right in the days of Arthur. The ache of hope that is doomed is the chief feeling of Arthur and a wish that somehow the story might end differently. Any attempt to make it end differently, to introduce some false note of cheer as the near-miss musical Camelot does, is to betray the story.

The story is hard, cruel, and utterly unsentimental. The best perish and worst win. Nothing human can endure and even the greatest victory like that Arthur won on Mount Badon will not produce immortal change. This doom grinds up any other story inserted into Arthur’s struggle: there is no romance here, just a flower that blooms when summer is over and just before bitter winter comes.

The Matter of Britain in its oldest form is an icon story: a picture that can lead us to heaven. It is an icon in words, but like a painted (or as the Orthodox sometimes say “written”) icon, there are few distracting details. In the best icons, we see what must be seen and then the image is silent.

Anything added to that outline will be deformed by it into a mere repetition of the deeper image. So it is with the Matter of Britain: Roman Britain was falling to barbarians, Arthur came and won a great victory, but hope was lost in the end.

Plato was one great Western writer capable of creating such icon stories. Tolkien was inspired to create by the image of a great wave sweeping away a powerful land. Plato invented the Atlantis myth in his Timaeus and elaborated on it in the “unfinished” Critias, but the details are not what captures, not what makes Atlantis a true story. Swollen pride, hubris, is laid low in a single day when Zeus speaks the word of doom. That is the story of Atlantis, the rest is incidental. These single image stories are so powerful that it is nearly impossible to do anything with them.

The difference between Atlantis and Arthur is instructive. The moral of the Atlantis story has been told in many cultures: the proud are cast down quickly, but great works go down with them.

The Matter of Britain is different, because Arthur fails precisely because he is good. Every elaboration on the Matter of Britain attempts to soften this blow, tries to add a sin to Camelot . . . to cheat the story by showing why Arthur had to fail, but the icon story is harder than any attempt to placate us. Arthur’s story is more deadly than Plato dared to tell. Arthur failed, because Arthur was good and this side of Heaven the good will always fail. Time is God’s severe mercy on our flawed works.

This is very Christian and only Christians can tell this truth, because the good news of Jesus makes the truth bearable. Arthur must fail, but Jesus will not fail. The Once and Future King is Jesus and any image of Jesus in this life must die in order to live. We are always losing, goodness fails, beauty is marred, and truth is twisted, but His Kingdom was, is, and is coming. We are losing, but not lost.

On the other side of a dark age, there is a rebirth. That rebirth will also be corrupted and great victories will be (seemingly) for nothing, but in the context of Christendom . . . all is well. The fundamental truth is that if we side with the good, we will be martyrs. Our hope can never be in short-term victory, because our hope will cheat us.

Win at Badon and sweep the Saxons to the sea and the Saxons will return tenfold when you are gone. There is no longterm victory against the shadow of that Hideous Strength until Jesus comes.

So is this despairing? It is joyful. We know, in our hearts, that our victories are partial and our best is not good enough if we are all there is, was, or ever will be. The good news is that in God nothing good is ever forgotten, lost, or unimportant. The victory of Arthur over barbarism lives even if it comes to be forgotten (like so many human deeds have been), because God knows.

The story of Arthur is a tragedy like every human life, but a tragedy set in a divine comedy. As a result of this freeing truth, we can be happy with our modest progress, with muddling through, and take the pressure off ourselves. We are not grand, victorious, or doers of immortal acts ourselves, but God makes it so. History vindicates nothing, because history has no soul, but God is a person and God saves the just.

Thank God.

Recently people have been telling me “we are doomed” and my thought has been: “What is new?” Of course, we are. Do they think our present leaders (even in the Church?) are greater than Arthur? Arthur could not do more than hold off the night in his time, but if Clinton or Trump or some other leader wins, then all will be well?

Badon’s victory will end in Britain’s defeat. The greater Arthur is, the harder will be his loss and we will lose him. So cry if you wish, but I intend to look to Heaven, do my duty, trust God, and tell the truth. I will build what I can because it is jolly and will help for now, not because evil will be defeated for all time. Let’s have a party and light a torch against the night, because the news is bad but the truth is good. We are not in it to win it in this life: we all end dead. Yet the old rogue Malory gets one thing right, his great icon story: Hic iacet Arthurus rex quondam rexque futurus,

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