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Vrije bewerking van de legende van Koning Arthur en de ridders van de Ronde Tafel, waarbij in vier delen het leven van koning Arthur wordt beschreven: zijn jeugd bij zijn pleegvader, zijn leertijd bij tovenaar Merlijn, zijn koningschap en zijn dood.
wandering_star: I thought of making this recommendation when reading the magical education section of The Magicians, which reminded me of the first book of The Once and Future King. But the wider idea - that magical powers can't stop us from making stupid human mistakes - is also relevant to both books.… (meer)
Arthur wordt als baby door Merlijn naar Ector gebracht om daar te worden opgevoed. Merlijn komt als leraar in het kasteel van Ector als Arthur en Kay, de zoon van Ector, de leeftijd bereiken dat zij wat meer onderwijs moeten hebben. Vooral Arthur heeft de aandacht van Merlijn, maar Arthur vindt eigenlijk dat ook Kay recht heeft op die aandacht. Arthur krijgt door Merlijn inzicht in het leven van verschillende diersoorten, doordat hij in die dieren wordt veranderd. De wijsheid die hij zo opdoet, gebruikt hij als hij het zwaard uit de steen trekt en daardoor wordt hij tot koning uitgeroepen. Arthur is lang koning van Grammarije, en al die tijd probeert hij een nieuw soort rijk te stichten. Niet meer het recht van de sterkste, maar hij laat zijn ridders eerst voor de waarheid strijden en op zoek gaan naar de graal (die alleen door de zuiverste ridders te vinden is). Als dat uiteindelijk toch weer op partijen en oorlogen uitdraait, moet de wet onrecht bezweren. Hij gaat daarin zover, dat hij zelfs zijn echtgenote naar de wet wil veroordelen als daar, door haar liefde voor Lancelot, reden voor is. Ook tot Arthurs vreugde, is Lancelot er op tijd bij om Guinevere te redden. Uiteindelijk legt koning Arthur het af tegen zijn zoon Mordred, die door White als een soort Hitler wordt afgeschilderd. Een verhaal dat als een soort sprookje begint met alle avonturen bij de dieren en zo, maar dat tragisch eindigt, omdat er blijkbaar geen manier is om een echte duurzame vrede op aarde te krijgen.
Deze versie van de Arthur saga is gebaseerd op de oorspronkelijke kronieken van Sir Thomas Mallory maar op eigen, karakteristieke wijze herschreven door Terence White. Als ik een vergelijk moet maken qua stijl, dan doet dit boek me heel sterk denken aan de manier van schrijven van Terry Pritchard. Denk dus aan een mengeling van Monty Phyton, Godfried Bomans, Pritchard. ( )
't Is niet zo maar gewone grond. Bos, lucht, of waterbaan, Maar 't magische eiland van Merlijn. Waar u en ik heengaan
Hij dacht even na en zei: 'Ik heb de Dierentuin voor velen van mijn patiënten van nut gevonden. Ik zou mijnheer Pontifex een curcus over de grote zoogdieren voorschrijven. Laat hem niet denken dat hij ze als medicijn inneemt...'
Opdracht
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For J.A.J.A.
Eerste woorden
's Maandags, 's woensdags en vrijdags was het kanselarijschrift en Summulae Logicales en de rest van de week was het de Organon.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.” “That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.” “I shouldn’t mind.” “Wouldn’t you? Wait till it happens and see.”
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
"Which did you like best," he asked, "the ants or the wild geese?"
"Yet here I am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians would call a traitor—because, by calling names, they can score the cheap debating points. And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds."
"You have become the king of a domain in which the popular agitators hate each other for racial reasons, while the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt. Unless you can make the world wag better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless series of petty battles, in which the aggressions will either be from spiteful reasons or from sporting ones, and in which the poor man will be the only one who dies. "
"The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards."
Few people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as the members of a ruling caste which is being dispossessed.
Arthur's feelings completed the misery of the court. He, unfortunately for himself, had been beautifully brought up. His teacher had educated him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of man from fish to mammal—and, like the child in the womb, he had been protected with love meanwhile. The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living—without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness. Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of vices. He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or for torturing his wife. He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things.
Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected. He was only a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having.
When Lancelot saw her waiting for him at the table, with Arthur beside her, the heart-sack broke in his wame, and the love inside it ran about his veins. It was his old love for a girl of twenty, standing proudly by her throne with the present of captives about her—but now the same girl was standing in other surroundings, the surroundings of bad make-up and loud silks, by which she was trying to defy the invincible doom of human destiny. He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth—the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here—what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with the eyes alone. They said: Don't look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in the prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age.
One explanation of Guenever, for what it is worth, is that she was what they used to call a "real" person. She was not the kind who can be fitted away safely under some label or other, as "loyal" or "disloyal" or "self-sacrificing" or "jealous". Sometimes she was loyal and sometimes she was disloyal. She behaved like herself. And there must have been something in this self, some sincerity of heart, or she would not have held two people like Arthur and Lancelot. Like likes like, they say—and at least they are certain that her men were generous. She must have been generous too. It is difficult to write about a real person.
Lovers were not recruited then among the juveniles and adolescents: they were seasoned people, who knew what they were about. In those days people loved each other for their lives, without the conveniences of the divorce court and the psychiatrist. They had a God in heaven and a goddess on earth—and, since people who devote themselves to goddesses must exercise some caution about the ones to whom they are devoted, they neither chose them by the passing standards of the flesh alone, nor abandoned it lightly when the bruckle thing began to fail.
"Because a man can push you off a horse with a stick, it doesn't mean he is a better man than you are."
"When you are a king you can't go executing people as the fancy takes you. A king is the head of his people, and he must stand as an example to them, and do as they wish."
"Civilization seems to have become insane," she said.
"War is like a fire, Agnes. One man may start it, but it will spread all over."
He saw the problem before him as plain as a map. The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing. Frontiers were imaginary lines. There was no visible line between Scotland and England, although Flodden and Bannockburn had been fought about it. It was geography which was the cause—political geography. It was nothing else. Nations did not need to have the same kind of civilization, nor the same kind of leader, any more than the puffins and the guillemots did. They could keep their own civilizations, like Esquimaux and Hottentots, if they would give each other freedom of trade and free passage and access to the world. Countries would have to become counties—but counties which could keep their own culture and local laws. The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined. The airborne birds skipped them by nature. How mad the frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly.
There would be a day—there must be a day—when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, just as the world had none—a table without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.
Laatste woorden
Bid voor Thomas Malory, Ridder, en zijn nederige discipel die nu zijn boeken vrijwillig terzijde legt om voor zijn geslacht te vechten.
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
These editions of The Once and Future King do not contain The Book of Merlyn. Please do not combine with the editions that do contain The Book of Merlyn.
Vrije bewerking van de legende van Koning Arthur en de ridders van de Ronde Tafel, waarbij in vier delen het leven van koning Arthur wordt beschreven: zijn jeugd bij zijn pleegvader, zijn leertijd bij tovenaar Merlijn, zijn koningschap en zijn dood.
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Google Books — Bezig met laden...
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The Once and Future King Group Read: General Thread
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