Taliessin Through Logres

Legendarily difficult poets are so much fun. Admittedly, this might only be because after suffering through them you get to brag about it, but it still holds true. Who doesn’t feel a rush of pride after finishing Eliot’s “Wasteland?” Entirely outside of any aesthetic pleasure I get, I tend to have a certain glow from bullying through.

That glow is generally how I feel about Charles Williams’ Taliessin through Logres. Charles Williams is the Inkling you’ve probably not heard of, although still very influential for the other members of the group. Glyer’s The Company They Keep reminded me that I had wanted to read Williams, and so I picked this up on top of my already huge stack. It is a good illustration of her point – Lewis edited the collection of poems in Williams’ cycle, and provides excellent notes for reading Williams. This is necessary because, as above, he is just a little difficult.

Part of this difficulty lies in the nature of his task. Williams retells the Grail/Arthurian myth through lyric poems, which can at times cloud more than clarify. However, more of the difficulty lies, I think, in the innate obscurity of Williams’ thought. He had very definite metaphysical and spiritual concepts, which were, at best, tangential to orthodox Christianity (most notably his idea that the substitionary atonement was a model for social interaction – as Christ took our sins, so we can take the sin or pain of others). His conception of love and order is strange, while interesting and maybe agreeable depending on how much appreciation we have for the dialectic – they do relate almost as thesis and antithesis.

The quality of the poetry itself? Well, how can I judge. It has both moments where it reaches powerfully and moments where it collapses. Overall, not quite my cup of tea, but not shabby. It inspired me to write some poetry of my own (which we all hope will never see the light of day). Still, I must admit I find it difficult to imagine what the other Inklings saw that was so earthshattering about Williams. He is mystical, and difficult, but that hardly places him in a category alone. In comparison with such giants as Eliot and Pound he seems merely minor, like the rest of us.

Let me ask the same question that Lewis did – do we have a right to be difficult? Can I make strange allusions, write in odd dead languages, and generally carry on when I’m writing in the public realm? I think Lewis might just be dead on in his break down of obscurity in the editorial notes here: he talks of private, public, and inherent obscurity (though these terms are mine). Private obscurity is when I refer to my cousin’s dog. There is no way you can know this and it is rude. Public is when I refer to things that people in general (though perhaps not you in particular) know: perhaps a motto in Latin. Inherent obscurity happens when writing about innately complex topics. A crystal clear depiction of the Trinity, for example, is over-simplistic. These latter two types of obscurity are fine, and indeed might add to the value of the work, while the first is a sign that the author is merely writing for himself.

The best writers teach us something. If the only thing they teach us is the discipline of how to read their difficult text, we have still learned.

Besides, afterwards, we get to brag about finishing it.