Customer Reviews

Arthurian Poets: Charles Williams (Arthurian Studies)

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Expensive, but worth every penny of it.

For more than 30 years, I've had to treasure my one increasingly worn copy of William's Arthurian poetry like the Grail itself. These poems have been far too long out of print, and this edition, edited by David Llewellyn Dodds, has ended the drought at last.

This collection contains nothing less than what is arguably the greatest English language poetry written in the last century (with the possible exception of T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"). Endlessly rewarding, each new reading uncovers new depths of meaning, new beauties of language, ever greater profundities, and a richer appreciation of the power of myth to aid in our understanding of our own and others' lives.

No doubt about it, Williams demands our full attention. This is not beach reading! The poems require a thorough grounding in Mallory, Virgil, Dante, and the Bible, a solid background in Medieval history, and at least some familiarity with Welsh mythology, the Kabbalah, Milton and Wordsworth - and that's just for starters. But the effort is worth it. His lines positively glow (I'm amazed I need a light to read them by at night).

Williams' reputation as being "too difficult" is simply not true. He is nowhere as deliberately obscure as Eliot's "The Wasteland", or syntactically tortured as much of James Joyce. Williams does not use an obscure word or difficult phrase without good reason, and never just to be clever. But he can't be read quickly, or just once. He has to be pondered, in the true meaning of that word. Sometimes a single stanza, or even a line, is enough for a day's reading. Trust me, the rewards are there.

What makes this edition especially important is its inclusion of Williams' unpublished Arthurian poetry alongside the full texts of his two published volumes, "Taliessin through Logres" and "The Region of the Summer Stars". The new material, although occasionally uneven in quality, and sometimes more resembling rough drafts rather than completed works, adds immeasurably to one's understanding and appreciation of the more familiar, previously published poems.

This edition does have two annoying (and inexcusable) flaws. First, due to a scribal error in the text approximately half way down on page 79, the planet Mercury is rendered "Mercy", which is not only the wrong word (it is correctly printed in my 30+ year old Eerdman's edition), but makes no sense. Williams is hard enough to understand as it is without a misprint driving attentive readers crazy trying to decipher an unintelligible line. The second shortcoming is the omission of the endpapers, displaying Williams' map of the Empire, as described in the poems. What makes this omission even more mysterious is that the map is specifically mentioned in the text, on page 161 ("the map ... reproduced as the endpapers of this volume").

Recommended to everyone who loves good poetry or the Arthurian legend.