Steve Van-Hagen
reviews
by
Meirion Jordan
Meirion
Jordan, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection for Regeneration’s preceding volume, Moonrise, is from an intellectually eclectic
background – he won the Newdigate Prize while studying for his first degree in
Mathematics at Somerville College, Oxford, before moving to UEA to complete a
Masters, and then a PhD, in Creative Writing. It is unsurprising, therefore,
that he has produced an eclectic, undeniably unusual and rewarding second
collection of poetry.
Regeneration
(2012) is immediately striking for its material appearance and organisation. As
one reviewer (Jacqui Kenton at New Welsh
Review – see http://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=292) has already
observed, Regeneration is ‘tête-bêche,
with the White Book and Red Book at each end and upside down.’ These
two-collections-in-one which meet in the middle reference two medieval (fourteenth-century)
manuscripts, Llyfr Coch Hergest (The Red Book of Hergest) and Llyfr Gwynn Rhydderch (The White
Book of Rhydderch), important sources for the tales of the Mabinogion. As Jordan argues in
suggestive prefaces to both Books, the collection aims not at retelling the
tales of the fourteenth century, but at exploring how they establish a dialogue
with our own culture. The collection seeks, therefore, to address the ways in
which the (sometimes distant) past continues to erupt problematically and
polemically into our present. As Jordan argues in the preface to The Red Book,
he does not ‘seek to unravel the difficulties of [the eleven stories of the
Mabinogi’s] composition, transmission and literary context’ but rather contends
that:
Poetry is concerned most
fundamentally with meaning and interpretation, and that implies in turn that this
book is in some way turned towards those present in this imprecise, difficult
dialogue: you, reading, and myself, shepherding this writing to your senses as
best I can … These poems are an attempt to strike up a personal conversation
with those worlds, whose vitality remains tangible … just as the tales
themselves were an attempt to find conversation with other people and their
perplexing, marvellous lives. The Red and White Books themselves have come to
rest, in archives, well guarded and away from the mainstream of culture; these
poems are nonetheless a reminder that their presence is still felt, and that
like all other secondhand or discarded books they were once participatory
acts.’ (p.8)
The
prefaces are lengthy, and one wonders if they do not risk contradiction; by insisting
so explicitly that the text seeks to avoid imprisoning us in meaning, we are
inevitably left wondering why we are not allowed just to read the poems and so
establish this for ourselves. Nonetheless, The Red Book tells us – invites us
to participate in – tales of Arawn, the God of the Underworld (in the poem
‘Arawn, lord of Annwn’); Rhiannon, daughter of Hefaidd Hen, Lord of the
Underworld, who was cruelly tricked into thinking that she had killed and eaten
her only son Pryderi (in ‘Rhiannon’s gossips’, ‘Rhiannon in old age’ and ‘The
birds of Rhiannon’); Branwen (in ‘Branwen’s Starling’), daughter of Llyr / Lear,
sister of Bran and half-sister of Efnis(s)ien, who was married to Matholwch,
King of Ireland, and tamed a starling to send a message to Bran in Britain to
come and fetch her when she was struck by the cook while serving in Matholwch’s
kitchens as a punishment for insulting the Irish people; Efnis(s)ien the
Unpeaceful, Branwen’s afore-mentioned half brother, who mutilated the Irish
horses in retaliation for not being consulted about Branwen’s marriage, causing
Bran to offer the cauldron of rebirth to the Irish in compensation (in the poem
‘Efnisien’); Heilyn, the son of the Lord of the Dead, Gwynn ap Nudd (in
‘Heilyn, son of Gwynn’); Manawyddan, Rhiannon’s second husband (in ‘Manawydan
in Lloegr’); Olwen, daughter of Yspaddaden the Giant, and Culhwch, her suitor
(the son of Celydodon Wledia, and nephew of Arthur), whose completion of the thirty
nine impossible tasks necessary to win Olwen will cause the death of Yspaddaden
(in ‘Olwen’ and ‘Culhwch’ respectively); Gereint, who refuses to listen to his
wife Enid’s warnings because he wrongly thinks she weeps for the loss of
another lover (in Gereint ac Enid’); and Blodeuwedd, the flower bride of Llew,
who falls in love with the hunter Granw Pebr and plots her husband’s death, for
which she is turned into an owl (in ‘Blodeudd’).
As
even this brief introduction suggests, much of The Red Book is concerned with
sadness, mourning, longing and regret, with the passing of time and the
processes of memory and reflection, and yet with the paradoxically
life-affirming effects of reading about this subject matter. Appropriately
enough for a collection about the recurrence of myths and their continuing
ability to speak, even centuries – millennia – after their inception, the
penultimate poem of The Red Book, ‘The birds of Rhiannon’, refers to the harbingers
of otherworldly bliss who render their dead auditors unaware of the passing of
time. ‘For the myth moves in cycles’, we are told at the start of the second
stanza,
III.
But
you will not. Your lungs
echo
the forward motion
of
time, shaking the heart’s seconds
beat
upon beat. If the small space
that
is forever this now,
or
this, or this, in the god’s eye
is
precious; how more so
in
yours. You will not return
unless
they call, to take and give.
For
the living, however, time does pass. Unlike the beheaded Bran and others who
hear the birds of Rhiannon beyond death, outside time, as we hear the myths we
make and remake their meanings anew, signalling that we, and the stories, continue
to move chronologically forwards. As the final poem of the Book, ‘Blodeuedd’,
tells us:
But
after the story
the
loose ends
must
spill, flapping
into
the dark:
the
legend stands
white
as a hornbeam
under
the moon,
the
fields and shadows
thickening
with voices.
The
spillage of loose ends continues, ceaselessly; by reading these poems and
remaking the legends for ourselves we too take our places as part of this spillage,
as part of the clamouring throng of voices.
The
White Book deals with the Arthurian legends which may be more familiar for many
readers than the legends in The Red Book. Jordan’s Preface this time links the
themes of Mallory’s version of the Arthurian legend with those of the Mabinogi from which the material of The
Red Book derives. They are linked, Jordan argues, by ‘the same concerns of
issue and generation’ (p.7). In The White Book, however, Jordan hits on a personal
and (for the reader) challenging means of entering into modern dialogue with
his source material. A textual conversation is struck up by means of footnotes
between the tales of Arthurian legend of The
White Book of Rhydderch and the biographies of Jordan’s own family, the
events of the life of Jordan’s recently-deceased grandfather (re)read through
Arthurian precedents.
Like
its Red twin, therefore, the White Book deals with the elegiac, although here
we have the Arthurian story related by each in turn of the surviving actors in Arthur’s
drama. Each defines the departed Arthur, thereby defining and positioning
themselves in relation to his fall in ways that compel us to think about the
possibilities and the limitations of the perspectival. Part I begins with the
first dramatic monologue, an elegy / lament for the dead Arthur, from Merlin.
Next up is Cei (also known as Kay or Cai), Arthur’s foster brother, who is
eager to justify himself: ‘I tell you, I was the first, / and gave my all for
Arthur.’ He speaks of Arthur’s childhood and, famously irascible, makes
repeated requests for forgiveness. Bedwyr (also known as Bedivere), Arthur’s
butler, comes next, eager to speak of Arthur’s ‘years of ... great triumph’,
and yet concluding with discussion of the ‘Poor child. Poor Arthur’, who ‘return[s]
and yet do[es] not return’.
Another
knight, Owain (son of Urien Far and brother of Gwalchmei and Gaheris) is next,
who ‘had my part / in Arthur’s ruin.’ Confession is the keynote here:
Arthur
was our lord, and true,
in our quarrels, our
timely murders;
we who loved Arthur
were his end and ruin.
The
final confession of the monologue is one of betrayal. Owain’s brother,
Gwalchmei / Gawain delivers the next monologue.
One
of the two most eagerly awaited perspectives for any reader already familiar
with the Arthurian narrative, is Gwenhwyfar / Guinevere’s (her name translates
as ‘the White One’). She delivers an anguished, tortured tale of adultery:
... Arthur
was
the one man
I
couldn’t bear to hurt, and whose deep
cold
cauldron
of a body
I
could not love.
Hence,
for any reader already familiar with the narratives of The Red Book, we are
reminded of the cauldron of rebirth gifted to the Irish by Bran (which
Efnis(s)ien eventually sacrificed his life to break). Arthur’s body therefore
becomes the means by which those dead (Arthurian tales?) might be revivified
anew.
Further
monologues follow, from Drystan (also known as Tristan, the nephew of King Mark
of Cornwall, who was second only to Lancelot for strength), Dinadan, Esyllt
(also known as Isolt, the daughter of the King of Ireland who died of a broken
heart because she was too late to save Drystan / Tristan from a poisoned
wound), Elen (also known as Elaine, who rivalled Guinevere for Lancelot’s
affections), Galaad / Galahad (i.e. the son of Lancelot, who eventually found the
grail that his father could not) and Melwas (the other-world King who abducted
Guinevere). Only then, in ‘Le chevalier mal fet’ – ‘the knight ill-made’, a
pseudonym later adopted by Lancelot – do we finally hear from the latter:
I
was that
knight, the ugly,
the ill-made. It is hard
to admit
that I was
there, wearing his skin. Hard
to admit I loved my king
and
Guinevere both, and in my love
I
ruined Britain, man and realm.
Jordan
captures poignantly Lancelot’s conflict, his continuing wish, even as he feels
guilt and remorse for what he has done, that there might be an alternative, if
only in his dreams, to a life of social constraints in which he and Guinevere
can never be together:
Arthur,
I will not ask;
nor
could you give.
But
if there is
some make-believe country –
maybe named Logris –
where
two people
who
are older
than
they dare recall
can live, outside of love
or fellowship, or time,
close
only to each other
and the sea:
let
them be there,
she
turning her head
to
a fair wind,
he
holding her hand.
Let
them go, Arthur,
as
cleanly as Adam through Eden.
The
final poems – the speakers are Medraut (i.e. Mordred) and, in an epilogue,
Morgana – carry the story to its inevitable conclusion, narrating the battle of
Camlan(n) and Mordred’s slaying by Arthur as the former nonetheless deals an
equally fatal blow to the latter. Finally, Arthur makes his final boat journey
to Avalon, tended by Morgana.
Poignant
as Jordan’s reinterpretation of the Arthurian legend is, the tale will be
familiar enough to many. It is invariably the intriguing, enigmatic relation to
the modern double narrative that particularly fascinates. The links between the
Arthurian narrative and Jordan’s personal / family tale are not always easy to
decipher, arguably necessarily so given the positions he adopts in his
prefaces. He claims,
These links between the
overlapping worlds of the text – the personal margin and the entangling ground
of literary tradition – are vital in the process of interrogation ... and
although by refusing to make the precise nature of this contact apparent I have
left some of this interrogation to the reader, I suspect that too much
precision would risk obscuring the reader’s relation to Arthur in favour of my
own. (p.8)
The
‘second’ narrative (co-narrative?) of Jordan’s grandparents is so personal that
one often feels as if one’s intrusion upon it is voyeuristic and illicit. The
footnotes divide broadly into two kinds, the (reasonably) factual, and the
reflective. Linking his deceased grandfather with Arthur straight away by
positioning a first footnote after the word ‘Arthur’ in the ‘Prologue: Merlin’,
this first footnote reads:
1. My grandfather died on the 18th
of February, 2008, not quite 96 years old. It was not a sudden or an unexpected
death; he had been seriously ill for some time before that, and by the end he
was entirely bedridden. His brother had dies a few years before – who, with the
possible exception of my grandmother – was closer to him than anyone. By the
end he had suffered several strokes and his recollection of most things was
poor. The only conversation he could make during the last years of his life
mostly concerned his early life at Pant, above Merthyr, in what must have been
(by my reckoning) the 1920s. (p.13)
The
footnotes slowly disclose more information about Douglas Jones’ life and the
narrator’s relation to him and his legacy. They seemingly become more ponderous,
more cryptic and enigmatic, the tone more discursive; hence, in the final poem,
‘Medraut’, footnote 54 begins, ‘Sometimes the noise deafens us. Our memories
become a small flicker against the white noise that is thousands of years of
wishful, brilliant, heartbroken people straining to make themselves heard’
(p.76). Footnote 55 begins: ‘Sometimes, though, we are lucky, and the small
voice that is the very real world finds us’ (p.79). Finally, as Arthur is
conveyed off to Avalon in Morgana’s ‘Epilogue’, the final footnote has the
final word on the author’s grandfather also:
56. As I say, my grandfather died
on the 18th of February, 2008; but he was born in April, 1914, on
the very edge of the First World War – by which I mean, the root that grows
through him to me there meets other roots, which meet other roots beyond – by
which I mean too, that he still flourishes forwards, into the newest instant of
time. Requiescat in Pace, old boy,
you father, grandfather. And be thou with me. (p.84)
Despite
this, the text is not nearly so crude as to suggest that Douglas Jones was a
latter-day Arthur reborn – or at least not in any literal, clumsy way (at one
point, for instance, we learn that Douglas was a conscientious objector). The
two co-narratives flicker into greater significance as a result of their
intertwining, sometimes illuminating one another in a way that seems overt,
sometimes leaving us none the wiser as to their enigmatic relation. What is
repeatedly suggested to us, however, is that the roots of the narrative of Douglas
Jones’ life were indeed found in Arthur’s. The text’s unusual and inventive revelation
of this discloses surely its greatest aim, which is to prompt us to reflect in
a wider sense on our own cultural roots and on the ways we enter into continual
dialogue with them, endlessly making and remaking the meaning of our own narratives.
Steve Van-Hagen is
the editor of James Woodhouse’s The Life
and Lucubrations of Crispinus Scriblerus: A Selection (Cheltenham: The
Cyder Press, 2005) and the author of The
Poetry of Mary Leapor and The Poetry
of Jonathan Swift (both London: Greenwich Exchange, 2011). His pamphlet
collection Echoes, Ghosts and Others with
Futures Ahead of Them (2012) is available from holdfire press.
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