Books for children: history, folk-tale, and legend

Over the past few months I’ve read several good books for children on historical and legendary subjects, and I pass on a few notes:

Crossbows & Crucifixes
Henry Garnett
(Sophia Institute, 2008) [1962]
187 p.

Originally published in the early 1960s as A Trumpet Sounds, this book tells the story of Nicholas Thorpe, a fifteen-year old Catholic boy in Elizabethan England who joins the underground effort to provide safe passage and hiding places for priests. Set mostly in rural locations, it follows Nicholas’ introduction to the recusant communities and his growing identification with their aims. It is a nicely imagined story that lets a good deal of real history in around the edges. The story does meander a little, and the book as a whole would have been stronger if it had a more clearly defined structure. Still, it’s a good story that introduces a young (age 10?) reader to a group of brave people struggling to save the good that they have known. Incidentally, I think the author’s name must be a pseudonym.

The Heroes
Greek Fairy Tales for my Children
Charles Kingsley
(William Clowes, 1932) [1856]
200 p.

Charles Kingsley is most well-known today for his (rather strange, I am told) book The Water-Babies, but I have enjoyed this realization of three classic Greek tales: the story of Perseus, focusing on his quest to slay Medusa; the story of Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece; and the life of Theseus, including the account of his adventure with Ariadne’s thread in the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Kingsley tells the stories with a certain archness that I found distracting only at first. I like that he emphasizes the courage, virtue, and greatness of his heroes; there is no trace of a reflexive egalitarianism here. He lets his heroes be heroes. Naturally there is a considerable amount of violence in these stories; Kingsley doesn’t underline it, but he doesn’t avoid it either. The elevated tone of the prose might make it challenging for an inexperienced reader. The prologue and epilogue are unequivocally Christian, despite the pagan origins of the tales sandwiched between. I’m happy to have read it, and will encourage my children to read it when the time comes. I found this old copy at a second-hand booksale.

Fairy Tales
Charles Perrault
(Dover, 1969) [1697]
117 p.

A superb collection of fairy tales, including those about Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Tom Thumb, and Puss in Boots — but not for children, not young children anyway. Often violent, with feints at incest and cannibalism, they are a bridge too far for this father. But considered as stories for more mature readers, they are excellent. Classics are classics for a reason.

A Child’s Book of Saints
William Canton
(St. Augustine Academy, 2013) [1898]
268 p.

This is a find. It was apparently out of print until St. Augustine Academy Press brought it back a few years ago in a high-quality reproduction of the original 1898 printing. Canton has written a series of elegant stories about saints, drawing heavily but not exclusively on legendary material. Although I have not checked it, I expect that some of these stories are from The Golden Legend or similar sources, but others (“The King Orgulous”) sound as though they could be part of the same folk-tale tradition that the Brothers Grimm explored.

Almost without exception they are superb little stories, with a gentle spirit and an eye for grace and beauty. Even if they are not stories about actual people, they are imaginative explorations of the allure of goodness, and that is no small thing. My enthusiasm is dampened only by the affected antiquarian tone that seeps in here and there. It is there, I know, to elevate the stories into a realm beyond the ordinary, and normally I appreciate that, but Canton’s ear is not perfect, and the prose sometimes sounds overripe. That aside, I intend to read these stories to my kids when they’re a little older.

The Sword and the Circle
The Light Beyond the Forest
The Road to Camlann
Rosemary Sutcliff
(Puffin, 1994) [1979-81]
272 + 144 + 144 p.

This marvellous trilogy covers the full span of Arthurian lore, from the rise of Uther Pendragon and Merlin to the death of Arthur and final collapse of the company of the Knights of the Round Table. The stories are drawn mostly from Malory’s Arthurian corpus, with the addition of a few tales such as those of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the tragedy of Tristan and Iseult. The first volume tells of the formation of the Knights of the Round Table and their adventures in the first flowerings of their chivalric enterprise. The second volume is about the quest for the Holy Grail, and the way in which the quest began to fragment the company of knights. In the final volume the fault lines widen and war breaks out between Arthur and Lancelot, leading to the final end of Arthur’s reign.

I have nothing but good things to say. I have read a fair bit in the Arthurian tradition, from Malory to Tennyson, but I’ve not enjoyed anything more than I enjoyed this. The books are billed as being for children, and, it is true, they would be suitable for children, but there is nothing in them to deter an adult’s enjoyment as well. For the first time I feel that I have a good understanding of the overall shape of the Arthurian stories; rather than just being a conglomeration of tales, they follow an arc. Sutcliff’s writing is rich and often striking, bringing out memorable details and pausing to dwell on moments that Malory, for instance, passes over quickly. She follows her sources closely, but brings something of the novelist’s art to her rendering. The language respects the intelligence of the reader.

As in the medieval sources, there is a strong Catholic undercurrent in these stories. I was glad that Sutcliff didn’t strip it out. Did you know that in later life, after his career as the flower of Christian chivalry had run its course, Lancelot became a priest? I didn’t.

This and that

A few quick notes about items of interest:

Wolf Hall: I mentioned before that a television mini-series dramatizing Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall is being broadcast. I myself haven’t seen any of it, but I have noticed a fair bit of commentary. When I read the book I complained about the slanted characterization of St Thomas More. At medievalists.net, Nancy Bilyeau unpacks the historical accuracies — or lack thereof — of the adaptation. Spoilers abound. (Hat-tip: Supremacy and Survival)

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Chesterton: An appreciative essay on GKC from an unexpected source: The Atlantic. James Parker writes with a certain cheeky abandon, but with what strikes me as a good understanding of the man:

Chesterton was a journalist; he was a metaphysician. He was a reactionary; he was a radical. He was a modernist, acutely alive to the rupture in consciousness that produced Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”; he was an anti-modernist (he hated Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”). He was a parochial Englishman and a post-Victorian gasbag; he was a mystic wedded to eternity. All of these cheerfully contradictory things are true, and none of them would matter in the slightest were it not for the final, resolving fact that he was a genius.

Parker doesn’t try to hide the fact that Chesterton’s prose is something of an acquired taste, but then that is true of many good things in life:

His prose, if you don’t like it, is an unnerving zigzag between flippancy and bombast—and somewhere behind that, even more unnerving, is the intimation that these might be two sides of the same thing. If you do like it, it’s supremely entertaining, the stately outlines of an older, heavier rhetoric punctually convulsed by what he once called (in reference to the Book of Job) “earthquake irony.” He fulminates wittily; he cracks jokes like thunder. His message, a steady illumination beaming and clanging through every lens and facet of his creativity, was really very straightforward: get on your knees, modern man, and praise God.

It’s a funny and enjoyable essay, and I’d like to know more about this James Parker.

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TS Eliot: Speaking of Eliot, the 52 Authors series continues at Light on Dark Water, and the most recent entry, written by Maclin Horton, is on his poetry. Don’t neglect to read the long comment by Cailleachbhan as well. Meanwhile, at the University Bookman, Martin Lockerd reviews a volume of Eliot’s correspondence, and at The Hudson Review William H. Pritchard reviews a collection of his early prose. So many books, so little time.

Great moments in opera: L’Orfeo

A dozen or so operas have been written on the tale of Orpheus and Euridice, including Jacopo Peri’s Euridice, sometimes said to be the first opera. But Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, our subject for today, is better known, and justly beloved. It had its premiere in 1607, and so stands very close to the first flowerings of the operatic art.

In common usage the term “renaissance music” usually evokes the polyphonic music of Palestrina, Victoria, and Byrd, but it is a conspicuously poor usage, for that music, with all its resplendent wonders, is deeply rooted in and in continuity with medieval musical traditions stretching back to the 12th century. If the Renaissance is to be identified with a rebirth, and especially a rebirth drawn from Greek and Roman sources, then there is little of the Renaissance about polyphony.

But there is a Renaissance music nonetheless; we call it opera. The Venetian musicians who created it did it quite explicitly in an effort to revive the musical effects — if not the music itself, which was lost beyond recovery — described in Greco-Roman literary sources. They aimed for a form of heightened, expressive speech, and indeed this is one of the first things to strike a modern listener to these early operas. The Baroque bifurcation of opera into alternating recitative and arias had yet to happen; in Monteverdi’s day it was, more or less, all recitative: a declamatory style, respecting the rhythms of speech, with the music intended to heighten the rhetorical power of the words.

To get a feeling for what I mean, let’s hear some of it. The clips below are all taken from a splendid DVD production led by Jordi Savall. Here is the opening instrumental toccata, a brilliant flourish that sets a stately tone for what follows (listen to the first 2 minutes or so):

This is followed by a prologue in which the spirit of music — Orpheus’ muse, of course — sets the stage:

Singing with my golden Lyre, I like
To charm, now and then, mortal ears,
And in such a fashion that I make their souls aspire more
For the resounding harmony of the lyre of Heaven.

Hence desire spurs me to tell you of ORFEO:
Of ORFEO who tamed wild beasts with his song
And made Hades answer his prayers,
To the immortal glory of Pindus and Helicon

Early in Act II Orfeo sings Vi ricorda, ò bosch’ombrosi (Do you remember, O shady groves), in which he tells of his love for Euridice, who has turned all his sorrow into joy. This is one of the most tuneful sections of the opera; the clip has English subtitles:

But this happy scene is not to last. No sooner has Orfeo proclaimed his joy than a messenger arrives bearing ill tidings: Euridice, walking in a flowery meadow, was bitten suddenly by a snake:

Then we all, appalled and sorrowed,
Gathered around her, trying to call back
The spirits that grew faint in her,
With fresh water and with powerful charms,
But to no avail, ah alas,
For she opened her failing eyes a little,
And calling you, ORFEO,
After a deep sigh,
She died in these arms; and I was left,
My heart filled with pity and horror.

This is a long clip, but a wonderful one for the way in which it illustrates all the strengths of Monteverdi’s art: its sensitive word-setting, its emotional power, its smooth integration of solos and choruses, and its musical beauty. It starts with the entry of the messenger and continues to the end of Act II. English subtitles included:

We all know what happens next: Orfeo descends into the underworld to retrieve Euridice, but, turning back to look at her just as he leads her out, thereby loses her forever. The tragic ending is brightened, or spoiled, according to taste, in Monteverdi’s version, for as Orfeo laments Apollo descends and upbraids him for his tears, offering to take him to heaven. The offer once accepted, they ascend, and a final chorus sings a joyful song:

So goes one who does not retreat
At the call of the eternal light,
So he obtains grace in heaven
Who down here has braved Hell
And he who sows in sorrow
Reaps the fruit of all grace.

I don’t know the opera well enough to have a strong view on whether this finale mars what is, in my imagination, an inherently tragic story that ought to have the courage of its convictions. But I do know that L’Orfeo is a landmark in the history of Western music, and that time spent getting to know it cannot be wasted.