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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/6/2019, SPi
The aim of the Oxford Classical Monographs series (which replaces the Oxford
Classical and Philosophical Monographs) is to publish books based on the best
theses on Greek and Latin literature, ancient history, and ancient philosophy
examined by the Faculty Board of Classics.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/6/2019, SPi
A D A BR O N O W S K I
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/6/2019, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© Ada Bronowski 2019
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/6/2019, SPi
For I.B.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/6/2019, SPi
Still from Raven Girl, ballet created by Wayne McGregor for the Royal Ballet in 2013.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/6/2019, SPi
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction 1
0.1. A Brief Overview of the Main Texts 8
0.2. A Summary of the Content of the Chapters 12
1. The Invention of the System: A System is a System is a System 17
1.1. The Critique of Tripartitioning: Three Parts do not Make a System 17
1.1.1. Tripartitioning of What? 18
1.1.2. The Analogies for Tripartition 19
1.1.3. A Discourse about Philosophy vs. Philosophy Simpliciter:
from Plutarch to Hadot 22
1.1.4. Chrysippus Vindicated, or Tripartition Trivialized 25
1.1.5. Tripartition: Teaching and Transmission 29
1.1.6. Tripartition: of ‘Philosophy Itself ’ 35
1.1.7. Philosophy Itself: Practice and Theory in One 38
1.1.8. Tripartition into Parts, Topics, or Species? 43
1.2. Historiography and its Entanglements 45
1.2.1. Sextus Empiricus: a Historian of Philosophy with an Agenda 46
1.2.2. The Real Debate about Tripartition between the Stoics
and the Peripatetics: What is a Whole? 49
1.3. The Stoic Notion of a Systēma 52
1.3.1. The Systēma as the Structure of Arguments 54
1.3.2. The Systēma as the Structure of Knowledge 55
1.3.3. The Systēma as the Structure of an Art 57
1.3.4. The Systēma as Structure of the Cosmos: the Cosmic City 61
1.3.4.1. The Local City and the Cosmic City 61
1.3.4.2. The Systēma, or the Logical Principle of the
Cosmic City 65
1.3.5. The Systēma as Structure of the Cosmos: Unity and
Cosmic Sympathy 71
1.3.6. The Systēma and the Parts of Philosophy 75
1.3.7. The Systēma and Lekta 78
2. Lekta in the Stoic Ontological Framework 81
2.1. The Map of the Logical Structure 81
2.1.1. Logos-reason and Logos-speech 81
2.1.1.1. There is no Specific Question of Language 86
2.1.2. The Logical Structure of the Systēma: the Distinction
between Rhetoric and Dialectic 87
2.2. Dialectic 91
2.2.1. The Distinction between Signifier and Signified 91
2.2.2. Two Kinds of Sēmainomena: Impressions and Lekta 94
2.2.3. Rational and Irrational Impressions 97
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x Contents
2.2.4. Propositional Content 101
2.2.4.1. Can a Dog have Logos? 102
2.2.4.2. Propositional Content and Propositions:
the Role of Logos-reason 104
2.2.4.3. Propositional Content and Propositions:
the Role of Assent 106
2.2.5. Propositional Content and Verbalization: Stoics and
Epicureans 108
2.2.6. Lekta and Impressions 112
2.2.7. Why are Impressions and Lekta both Sēmainomena? 117
2.2.7.1. Alternative Configurations of the Logical Structure 120
2.2.7.2. The Sēmainomenon is Said in Many Ways 122
3. Bodies and Incorporeals 127
3.1. Being a Body 127
3.1.1. Body as Active and Passive 128
3.1.2. On a Doxographical Tradition of the Passivity of Body 132
3.1.3. The Stoic Defence of the Passivity of Body 138
3.1.3.1. Being Conjoined: on Brunschwig’s
‘Graft of Corporeality’ 139
3.1.3.2. Being Conjoined: Active and Passive Together 143
3.1.3.3. To Act or Otherwise be Acted upon, is that the
Question of Conjunction? 145
3.2. The Stoic Criterion for Corporeality and the Place of
Incorporeals in Ontology 149
3.2.1. The Stoics and the Gigantomachia 149
3.2.2. Corporealization of Being 152
3.2.3. Incorporeals in Reality: What is at Stake? 155
3.2.4. Somethings and Not-somethings: in Defence of the Reality
of Incorporeals 157
3.3. The Roles of the Platonic Ideas Redistributed in Stoic Ontology 160
3.3.1. What is Taught: Something 161
3.3.2. What is Taught: an Incorporeal 163
3.3.3. Incorporeality: from Plato’s Ideas to the Stoic Four
Incorporeals 165
4. Rationality in Stoic Thought: Grasping Lekta 171
4.1. Ordinary Teaching: an Additional Note 171
4.2. What is Taught: Lekta 176
4.3. Lekta and the Mind 178
4.4. Where do Impressions Come from? 181
4.4.1. The Gymnastics Teacher 181
4.4.2. Epi and Hupo Impressions: a Difference in Kind? 185
4.4.3. The Epi Impressions as ‘Contact from a Distance’: Schubert’s
Unfinished Melody 188
4.4.4. The Epi Impression: Paying Attention to Lekta 190
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Contents xi
xii Contents
7.1.1. Doctrinal Consistency about the Foundational Reality
of Katēgorēmata 287
7.1.2. What Comes First: the Katēgorēma or the Cause?
Answer: Wrong Question 290
7.1.3. From Katēgorēmata to Lekta: a Developmental Story? 292
7.2. A Cause Causes a Katēgorēma to Obtain 294
7.2.1. The Fuzzy Consensus on Causes being That Because of Which 296
7.2.2. Beyond Consensus: the Only Active Cause is a Specific Body 299
7.2.3. The One Cause, and the Others 302
7.3. What a Cause is of: Stoics vs. Peripatetics 304
7.3.1. The katēgorēma is Uncategorizable for the Peripatetics 306
7.3.2. The Distinction between Wisdom and being Wise 309
7.3.3. A Category Distinction 312
7.4. Complexities and Relations: the Katēgorēma and the Conjoined Pair 313
7.5. The Causal Schema 318
7.5.1. A Structural Principle of Ontology 318
7.5.2. Action and Causation 322
7.6. To be Real 326
7.6.1. The Causal Relation as Revelatory, but not Generative
of Ontological Distinction 326
7.6.2. The Dependence Theory 328
7.6.3. To Obtain and to Subsist 332
7.6.4. Conclusions 339
8. Lekta and the Foundations of a Theory of Language 341
8.1. From Katēgorēma to Axiōma 341
8.1.1. Being Said of Something: an Ontological Structure 342
8.1.2. The Axiōma 344
8.1.3. In Language ‘Three Things are Yoked Together’, S.E.
M. 8.11–12 347
8.1.3.1. The Tunchanon: a Peculiar Term 348
8.1.3.2. The Tunchanon and the External Object 349
8.1.3.3. The Tunchanon is Dependent on the Lekton 353
8.1.3.4. S.E. M. 8.12: a Grey Area 356
8.1.3.5. Language, States-of-affairs, and the Place of Man 360
8.1.3.5.1. Is Translation Possible? 361
8.1.3.5.2. Is a Language Limited? 362
8.2. The Unity of the Lekton 365
8.2.1. Incomplete and Self-complete 365
8.2.2. How to Express a Katēgorēma 369
8.2.2.1. The Infinitive Form and the Conjugated Form 369
8.2.2.2. Clement’s Testimony: a Misleading Account of Ptōsis 373
8.2.2.3. Conclusion: the Pivotal Role of the Katēgorēma
for the Unity of the Lekton 377
9. The Syntax of Lekta 383
9.1. The Sentence: the Platonic Tradition vs. the Stoics 383
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Contents xiii
9.1.1. On the Notion of the Finished Sentence 384
9.1.2. The Platonic-Peripatetic Tradition vs. the Stoics on the
Parts of Speech 387
9.1.3. The Parts of Speech and Lekta 390
9.1.4. The Syntax of the Lekton: the Stoic Notion of Completion 392
9.1.5. The Axiōmatic Structure as Ontologically Constitutional 394
9.1.6. The Incomplete Lekton: Trivial or Special? 397
9.1.7. Minimal Parts and the Invention of Syntax: the Stoic
Incomplete Lekton vs. Frege’s Unsaturated Concept 401
9.2. Grammar on the Stoics’ Terms 403
9.2.1. The Kinds of Axiōmata and the Right Combination 403
9.2.2. The External Object 405
9.2.3. The Case-ptōsis and its Counterpart, the Tunchanon 408
9.2.4. Bearing the Case-ptōsis and Constructing the Concept 410
9.2.5. The Tunchanon’s Double Requirement 413
9.2.6. RIP Dion 416
9.2.7. The Case-ptōsis: the Particular Case of a Generic Concept 419
9.2.8. The Case-ptōsis: Neither Body nor Lekton 422
9.2.9. Oblique Cases: Surface Grammar After All? 423
9.2.10. The Verb and the (Un)combined Katēgorēma 427
Bibliography 437
Index of Passages 465
General Index 473
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/5/2019, SPi
Introduction
This book is about the introduction of lekta by the Stoics into their systematic
account of reality, as real items in ontology. This affirmation alone is liable to
raise a few eyebrows: in some, because they will have never heard of lekta, in
others, because this is not quite consonant with how lekta are often presented.
In many, or most, studies of lekta, or in which lekta are discussed, they are
considered not as items belonging to the account of reality, but rather, as
belonging to the more restricted context of the production of meaningful
speech. Accordingly lekta are often discussed as part of an examination of a
Stoic theory of meaning, and as an original component in a burgeoning
philosophy of language. In this respect, the Greek term ‘λεκτόν’ is often
translated as ‘sayable’ in English, in what is intended to be a calque from the
Greek. The Greek term ‘lekton’ is derived from the Greek verb ‘legein’, ‘to say’.
It is in fact the form of the Greek verbal adjective, which has connotations of
both passivity and modality, both captured by the English ‘sayable’: it is what
is said, or can be said, under certain conditions. In one important source-text
we are told: ‘we get things said, which are in fact lekta’.¹ These are contrasted,
in the very same passage, with sounds which we utter, but emphatically do not
say. Lekta are thus what we get said when we utter utterances. But, it follows,
not any kind of utterance, only the utterances which get a lekton said—that is
the condition. Lekta are thus sayables, the sort of things which get said, and
can only get said by uttering certain kinds of expressions, whose characteristics
are yet to be determined.
Alongside this role in language, however, a number of concurring texts
report that lekta ‘subsist in correspondence with rational impressions’.² This
tends to suggest, before any further interpretation, that lekta are not bound to
a role in the production of language, but that they contribute to our thought
processes. Still other texts report that lekta are what is true or false, in contrast
to rival views which identify truth and falsehood either in utterances or in
thought.³ This again tends to suggest that lekta are considered by the Stoics to
¹ D.L. 7.57: ‘λέγεται δὲ τὰ πράγματα, ἃ δὴ καὶ λεκτὰ τυγχάνει’. ² D.L. 7.63; S.E. M. 8.70.
³ S.E. M. 8.69, 8.74; D.L. 7.65.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/5/2019, SPi
2 Introduction
be distinct from questions of speech, as also from questions pertaining to the
contents of our thoughts. In still other texts, lekta are said to be the effect of
causes, or what causes are of.⁴ The context of discussion in these latter texts is
even further removed from questions about language or mental operations,
and suggests that lekta are items in ontology and physics. The effect of a cause,
whatever it may be, has been caused to be or to happen, and is thereby proved
to be a real thing, whose origin is parsed in causal terms; it therefore has some
sort of ontological status, and as such deserves to be counted amongst the
constituents of reality.
Such a variety of contexts of discussion calls into question the traditional
first association of lekta with language. The major claim of this book is
precisely this, that lekta are not linguistic items, but items with an ontological
status, which language can express. Their relation to language is the relation
language has to reality, or rather the relation reality has with language, namely
that reality has a structure, which language is capable of grasping and express-
ing. Lekta are part of the complex configurations which make up this struc-
ture. It is one feature of these configurations that they are what language
expresses. These configurations are thus what is said, or what there is to say,
and are available to language; but they are not determined by language. The
world is there to be said. This leads to envisaging the role of language as
instrumental in accessing its content, rather than productive of it. For if lekta
are indeed what we get said when we make the relevant utterances—the
utterances, that is, which are more than mere sounds—then language is the
means, which certain rational beings possess (in particular human beings⁵) in
order to access this structure. It is thus the theory of language, and not the
theory of lekta, which belongs to a restricted context of discussion within
the systematic account of reality. To argue for this view of lekta, the whole
systematic account will need to be appraised, and re-appraised, once certain
historiographical simplifications and assumptions have been exposed and
challenged.
In this light, a first methodological point will be to keep to the transliterated
form ‘lekton’ and resist translating the Greek term ‘λεκτόν’ as ‘a sayable’. This
will also be the case with a number of key terms which will feature in relation
to lekta, and which we shall refer to also in transliterated form, such as
‘katēgorēma’, ‘axiōma’, ‘ptōsis’, and also the term ‘systēma’, which, we shall
see, is used by the Stoics in such a distinct way that a seemingly straightfor-
ward translation as ‘system’ confuses rather than illuminates the Stoic under-
standing of the term. The choice of transliteration results, not from a taste for
preciosity or antiquarianism, but from a desire to approach the texts, and the
Introduction 3
theories they transmit, with the least possible pre-established assumptions or
expectations. For terms such as ‘proposition’, often used to translate the Greek
‘axiōma’, or ‘predicate’, for ‘katēgorēma’, are loaded with layers of connota-
tions acquired over the centuries of philosophical analysis that separate us
from the Stoics. But these terms are often used appositely by the Stoics, in ways
which are innovative and often puzzling for their own contemporaries
and successive commentators and critics throughout antiquity. That the
katēgorēma—literally, that which is said of something—makes its earliest
appearance in the Stoic corpus of texts as the effect of a cause, and not as a
logical predicate, which the Aristotelian resonances of the term may suggest, is
one example of how free of preconceived expectations a reader must be in
approaching these terms and their usage by the Stoics. Already in antiquity,
frustration with Stoic terminology and subsequent incomprehension of the
usage of terms punctuate the critical debates arising from Stoic theories in all
domains, particularly in relation to lekta and the constellation of notions
surrounding them. As we shall see in detail in the sections of the book devoted
to these debates,⁶ there is an ideological prejudice amongst ancient commen-
tators. They attempt to present the Stoics as merely introducing terminological
coinages for things that Plato or Aristotle had already discussed, using differ-
ent terms. It is partly through the influence of these commentators that the
specificity and originality of Stoic doctrine became blurred, if not eradicated.
In many respects, the Stoics have been the victims of the complexity of their
philosophical account, starting with terminological subtleties.
This leads us to a second methodological question, that of the approach to
the source-texts. It is well known that there is a tragic paucity of original texts
when it comes to the Stoics. The difficulties that follow are of two main kinds:
first, that of reconstructing a doctrine which has come down to us in frag-
mentary form, though an overwhelming number of those fragments assure us
that Stoic doctrine is eminently systematic. It is celebrated as such in antiquity,
by both defenders and detractors, in that it presumes to give a complete
account for all there is, for all there is to know, for all there is to say, and for
all there is to do, in terms of a deeply interrelated and consistent world view.
The second well-known difficulty is that of discerning a development in
thought corresponding to a periodization marked by the different figureheads
of the Stoic school. There are about six centuries of self-proclaimed active
Stoic philosophers, with the later figureheads, in particular Epictetus and
Marcus Aurelius, appealing directly to the authority of the founding
fathers, in particular Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus. However, especially
with regard to these founding theories—what is sometimes referred to as Stoic
orthodoxy—who said what, and why, are for the most part questions without
⁶ See in particular 3.2, 3.3, 6.3, 7.3, 8.2.2.2, and 9.1.2 below.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/5/2019, SPi
4 Introduction
answers. And yet, whenever we do have a snippet of precision about this or
that thinker, on this or that topic, we see how important the internal debates
are in shaping and honing a line of thought within the school.
The state of the sources thus poses two interconnected challenges: on the
one hand, that of identifying the elements which characterize the unified,
ordered, and all-inclusive account which is what each generation of Stoic
philosopher stands for and appeals to.⁷ In this perspective, the lone voices
whose names are mentioned in passing are recorded as oddities, precisely for
having set themselves apart from a standard Stoic line. For example, Aristo of
Chios, a contemporary and follower of Zeno of Citium, the founder of the
Stoic school, stands out for having rejected the study of logic and physics,
advocating only that of some branches of ethics; or a certain Basilides,
otherwise bewilderingly unknown, whose claim to fame is a lonely mention
by Sextus Empiricus, as a Stoic who claimed that ‘nothing incorporeal exists’.⁸
What these isolated voices contribute is to ratify and confirm, by contrast, the
uniformity and solidity of the school’s doctrine.
On the other hand, it is clear that this doctrine evolves, if only in response to
its critics. Our sources are generous enough to attest to this when we find
aligned, for example, Zeno’s formulation of the goal of life as ‘living in
agreement’, followed by Chrysippus’ interpretation as ‘living in agreement
with nature’, itself followed by other formulae offered by a number of succes-
sive figures from later generations, each adding to and amplifying the original
view held by Zeno.⁹ Thus, whilst the elaboration of a consistent and uniform
Stoic line of thought is the concern of every generation of Stoic philosophers,
the developments of doctrine which follow from explanations and clarifica-
tions of one or the other question are inevitable—and such developments are
due to specific contributions from specific figures. Indeed, some contributions
are so overwhelmingly innovative and decisive for Stoicism that they are not
so much turning-points as points of no return, becoming definitive of Stoic
doctrine. The contributions credited to Chrysippus in questions of logic,
physics, and epistemology are one such moment in the development of
Stoic doctrine. From this perspective, the challenge is therefore to distinguish
a transformative contribution from an explanation of doctrine, and an
⁷ This can produce interesting forms of doctrinal schizophrenia. Seneca will be one such an
example in our investigations: we shall encounter him in the pages of this book as torn between
an all-dominating ‘us’, the Stoic school, and his own attempts, not so much at cutting loose, but
at re-ordering priorities which should be ‘our’ main concern.
⁸ On Aristo see S.E. M. 7.12 and D.L. 7.160. On the hyper-materialist Basilides see S.E. M.
8.258. Nothing else is known of this figure, and there are no concrete grounds to think he is the
Basilides of Scythopolis listed in later chronicles, who may or may not have been a teacher of
Marcus Aurelius, though Marcus himself never mentions him; see GOULET 1994 p.90 entry 14
and further speculative suggestion in entry 15.
⁹ In Stob. Ecl. 2.7.6a.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/5/2019, SPi
Introduction 5
explanation from a grounding principle, which is either explicitly attested as a
pillar of the system established by Zeno himself, or is sufficiently accepted and
widely repeated in different and various sources as to suggest that it is a pillar
of the system.
When it comes to lekta, these two perspectives play an important role. For
texts which report discussions of lekta are few. What is more, as mentioned
briefly above, the discussions belong, or seem to belong, to different contexts:
causation, logic, language, mind, impulse, and action. A number of the
relevant texts have equal claims of authority for relaying core doctrine. Thus
both the question of a systematic, uniform account and the possibility of a
development in the theory of lekta are particularly urgent, and particularly
complex. For the different contexts of discussion of lekta belong to core Stoic
doctrine. From this authoritative group of texts we learn, firstly, that lekta are
one of the four incorporeals which constitute, alongside the corporeals, all
there is;¹⁰ secondly, that lekta have a relation of correspondence to the content
of our thoughts, as already noted; thirdly, that a katēgorēma is the incorporeal
effect of a corporeal cause; fourthly, that lekta are what gets said when we
speak. There are various ramifications to these claims, connected also to the
critical debate of which they are part; they will be examined in depth in the
pages that follow. It is sufficient here to set out these four cardinal directions,
since it is the clash between their disparity and the systematicity to which they
are supposed to contribute that has determined the approach to lekta in
ancient historiography and in modern scholarship.
This disparity has justified developmental readings that take one or the
other context as original, and the rest as derivative and inserted along the way
to fill gaps in the theory. Most notably, as adumbrated above, a prevalent
reading has taken as its root the linguistic character of lekta. This has shaped
an account of lekta as the fulcrum of a semantic theory which, with varying
degrees of sustained analysis in the scholarship, has produced sometimes
refined accounts of Stoic epistemology whereby our mental operations are
essentially bound to our linguistic capacities. The linguistic reading thus takes
the descriptions of lekta as corresponding to the content of thoughts, as a
further development from a prior and binding account of the production of
meaningful language. Another parallel interpretation takes the causal role of
lekta as prior and the role of lekta in language as a later development. Again,
these are rough sketches of directions for interpretation. These interpretations
are analysed in depth in this book, with due attention to detail, successes,
failures, and aims. One point that can be noted without going into detail is that
a developmental reading imposes a hierarchy of authority on our source-texts.
But this, in fact, is an extremely delicate matter.
now panting for reprisal and revenge, menaced with open rebellion
by a sister’s son, his army melting, his adherents failing, his sceptre
sliding from his grasp, Arthur can yet provide tenderly and carefully
for her safety who has brought down on him all this shame, ruin, and
defeat.
Could she but have seen him as he really was in the golden days
long ago, when her court formed the centre of all that was bravest
and fairest in the world of Christendom, when her life seemed one
long holiday of dance and revel in the lighted halls of Camelot, of tilt
and tournament and pageantry of mimic war, held in honour of her
own peerless beauty, in the Lists of Caerleon, of horn and hound and
rushing chase and willing palfrey speeding over the scented moors
of Cornwall, or through the sunny glades of Lyonesse, of sweet May
mornings when she went forth fresh and lovely, fairer than the very
smile of spring, amongst her courtiers, all
to walk apart, nevertheless, with flushing cheek and eyes cast down,
while she listened to his whispers, whose voice was softer and
sweeter than fairy music in her ears! Could she but have known then
where to seek her happiness and find it! Alas! that we see things so
differently in different lights and surroundings—in serge and velvet,
in the lustre of revelry and the pale cold grey of dawn, in black
December frosts and the rich glow of June. Alas for us, that so
seldom, till too late to take our bearings and avoid impending
shipwreck, can we make use of that fearful gift described by another
great poet as
but still reality, and, as such, preferable to all the baseless visions of
fancy, all the glitter and glamour and illusion of romance. We mortals
must have our dreams; doubtless it is for a good purpose that they
are so fair and sweet, that their duration is so short, the waking from
them so bitter and forlorn. But at last most of us find ourselves
disenchanted, weary, hopeless, memory-haunted, and seeking
sanctuary after all, like Guinevere, when Lancelot had gone
Deep must be the guilt for which such hours as these are
insufficient to atone!
But the queen’s penance hath only just begun, for the black drop
is not yet wrung out of her heart, and even in her cloister at
Almesbury it is remorse rather than repentance that drives the iron
into her soul. As it invariably does in moments of extreme feeling, the
master-passion takes possession of her once more, and “my
Lancelot” comes back in all his manly beauty and his devoted
tenderness, so touching and so prized, that for him, too, it must
make the sorrow of a lifetime. Again, she sees him in the lists, best,
bravest, and knightliest lance of all the Round Table. Again, sitting
fair and courtly and gentle among dames in hall, his noble face none
the less winsome, be sure, to her, for that she could read on it the
stamp of sorrow set there by herself as her own indelible seal.
Again she tastes the bitter torture of their parting agony, and her
very spirit longs only to be released that it may fly to him for ever, far
away in his castle beyond the sea.
This, with true dramatic skill, is the moment chosen by the poet for
the arrival of her injured, generous, and forgiving lord—
And now comes that grand scene of sorrow and penitence and
pardon, for which this poem seems to me unequalled and alone.
Standing on the brink of an uncertainty more ghastly than death,
for something tells him that he is now to lead his hosts in his last
battle, and that the unearthly powers to whom he owes birth, fame,
and kingdom, are about to reclaim him for their own, he stretches the
hands of free forgiveness, as it were, from the other world.
How short, in the face of doom so imminent, so inevitable, appears
that span of life, in which so much has been accomplished! Battles
have been fought, victories gained, a kingdom established, a
bulwark raised against the heathen, an example set to the whole of
Christendom, and yet it seems but yesterday
Thus, with all his soul flowing to his lips, this grand heroic nature
blesses the guilty woman, grovelling in the dust, and moves off
stately and unflinching to confront the doom of Fate.
Then, true to the yearning nature of her sex, yearning ever with
keenest longings for the lost and the impossible, Guinevere leaps to
her feet, the tide of a new love welling up in her wayward heart,
fierce, cruel, and irresistible, because it must be henceforth utterly
hopeless and forlorn. With her own hand she has put away her own
happiness; and what happiness it might have been she feels too
surely, now that no power on earth can ever make it hers again!
Oh! for one word more from the kind, forgiving voice! Oh! for one
look in the brave, clear, guileless face! But no. It is never to be.
Never, never more! She rushes indeed to the casement, but Arthur is
already mounted and bending from the saddle, to give directions for
her safety and her comfort.
“So she did not see the face,
Which then was as an angel, but she saw—
Wet with the mists and smitten by the lights—
The dragon of the great Pendragon-ship
Blaze, making all the night a steam of fire.
And even then he turned; and more and more
The moony vapours rolling round the king,
Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it,
Enwound him, fold by fold, and made him gray
And grayer, till himself became as mist
Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.”
THE END
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
London & Bungay.
FOOTNOTES:
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