every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates
King Arthur
from my very first encounter with him, some story in which he rode through and casually did an amazingly perceptive Good Thing, I was awed by King Arthur. this was long before Disney turned him cutesy. if the only Arthur you know is Disney's, you've missed the Real Thing. these are not children's stories and they are. they are stories for children of all ages, and so darkness weaves its way through so many of them, all of them, I think. I mean, here is a king, an aristocracy, and a government committed to Doing Good. not the Christian kind of Good, real people Good. the Christian thing was added later and didn't graft well. but it must have amazed and amused people all the way back to cavemen or wherever the story originated (pagan England, I think) to have a government that Did Good. maybe cavemen didn't know that power corrupts, but I suspect they did. and sure enough, in all the stories, powerful men or women committed to Doing Good get undermined by being human. even a little kid can read that, can understand that. but still! they did do so much good, and then, of course, all their secret wrongs caught up with them and in one battle, the whole Round Table is destroyed, and a dying Arthur goes off with his three queens to some magical - but not magical enough - other island. he never returns. and no government since has even tried to Do Good. ah, but I've read every Arthur story I encountered, even some pretty poor ones, and read several magnificent Arthur books, so I'm not the only one fascinated by the Arthur story. Hail Arthur! may his story intrigue us forever!
No comments:
Post a Comment