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T. H. White's masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as Excalibur and Camelot, and a poignant story of adventure, romance, and magic that has enchanted readers for generations. Once upon a time, a young boy called "Wart" was tutored by a magician named Merlyn in preparation for a future he couldn't possibly imagine. A future in which he would ally himself with the greatest knights, love a legendary queen and unite a country dedicated to chivalrous values. A future that would see him crowned and known for all time as Arthur, King of the Britons. During Arthur's reign, the kingdom of Camelot was founded to cast enlightenment on the Dark Ages, while the knights of the Round Table embarked on many a noble quest. But Merlyn foresaw the treachery that awaited his liege: the forbidden love between Queen Guenever and Lancelot, the wicked plots of Arthur's half-sister Morgause and the hatred she fostered in Mordred that would bring an end to the king's dreams for Britain--and to the king himself. "[The Once and Future King] mingles wisdom, wonderful, laugh-out-loud humor and deep sorrow--while telling one of the great tales of the Western world."--Guy Gavriel Kay… (altro)
wandering_star: I thought of making this recommendation when reading the magical education section of The Magicians, which reminded me of the first book of The Once and Future King. But the wider idea - that magical powers can't stop us from making stupid human mistakes - is also relevant to both books.… (altro)
I actually listened to the first story- The Sword In The Stone- in this book , then the audio died. Bad cd. So I returned it to the library and someday will finish, because I was enjoying it. ( )
Long and meandering, this retelling of the myth of King Arthur is a beautiful fantasy story about a young boy and the lessons, trails and tribulations he encounters along his way, as he tries to introduce Law, Order and Civilization to his beloved country. Written during WWII, White takes apart the nature of man in this story and looks very deeply and carefully at why men fight wars, and how as a species we can one day walk away from it all. With a very distinct cast of characters and a beautiful way of writing (sometimes funny, more often than not engaging), this book is definitely not just for fans of Arthurian legend, but also those looking for something that will make them think a little about the Human Condition. ( )
It starts slow and has some slow parts, but all told, it's bloody brilliant. An excellent addition to Arthuriana and some fascinating philosophical thought ( )
Azt hiszem, így tisztességes kezelni egy nagy nemzeti mítoszt: játékosan és szabadon. Megőrizni a történet alapvonalait, de áttörni a nyelvi és gondolkodásbeli korlátokat (amelyek a századok során óhatatlanul rárakódtak) azzal, hogy nem félünk az anakronizmusoktól, és bátran kibeszélünk a jelen olvasóihoz. Ezzel érzékeltetjük, hogy maga az üzenet (mint minden időtálló mítosz üzenete) nincs bezárva az idő kalitkájába, hanem az örökkévalóságnak szól. Az Üdv néked, Arthur, nagy király bővelkedik ugyan mulatságos kalandokban, és gazdagon fricskázza a lovagkor blődségeit, de nem puszta paródia – több okból sem lehet az. Mindenekelőtt azért, mert olyan életteli szereplőgárdát játszat, hogy azok szétfeszítik a komédia kereteit – úgy megszereti őket az ember, hogy én szinte féltem végigolvasni ezt a könyvet, nehogy bajuk essék*. Mert hát – nem titok ez: az Arthur-mondakör nem vidám olvasmány – bizony bajuk esik. Ez a könyv ugyanis úgy játékos, hogy közben végtelenül szomorú is. (Megjegyezném: csak a legnagyobbak tudják ezt a két szintet – a játékost és a szomorút – egy szövegen belül mozgatni.) Keserű, bölcs tanmese ez az emberről és a hatalomról: a királyról, aki életét teszi fel arra, hogy az Erő Törvényének helyére az Igazság Törvényét helyezze, hogy aztán ez az abszolút (és épp ezért: könyörtelen) Igazság legyen a végzete. Arról, hogy a Rend, még ha jó szándékból születik is (hogy a Káoszt kordában tartsa), gyakran túlnő az emberen, és felfalja őt. Mert hiába hisszük azt, hogy vannak Jó Emberek, meg vannak Rossz Emberek, és elég kettejüket elkülöníteni a tökéletes társadalom eléréséhez – ez nem igaz. A helyzet az, hogy a Jó is, meg a Rossz is az emberen belül van – nincs olyan Nagy Király, aki ezen változtathatna.
* Vajon megmenthetnénk a haláltól mondjuk Zola regényeinek hőseit, ha soha többé nem olvasnánk Zola-regényt? ( )
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She is not any common earth
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye
Where you and I will fare.
When shall I be dead and rid Of the wrong my father did? How long, how long, till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother's curse?
"Nay," said Sir Lancelot "... for
once shamed may never be recovered."
"He thought a little and said:
'I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many of my patients. I should prescribe for Mr. Pontifex a course of the larger mammals. Don't let him think he is taking them medicinally...'
Dedica
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For J.A.J.A.
Incipit
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On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition and Astrology. The governess was always getting muddled - she would take it out of the Wart by rapping his knuckles.
Citazioni
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“If I were to be made a knight,” said the Wart, staring dreamily into the fire, “I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for it.” “That would be extremely presumptuous of you,” said Merlyn, “and you would be conquered, and you would suffer for it.” “I shouldn’t mind.” “Wouldn’t you? Wait till it happens and see.”
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
"Which did you like best," he asked, "the ants or the wild geese?"
"Yet here I am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians would call a traitor—because, by calling names, they can score the cheap debating points. And do you know another thing, Arthur? Life is too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds."
"You have become the king of a domain in which the popular agitators hate each other for racial reasons, while the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who is the one person that gets hurt. Unless you can make the world wag better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless series of petty battles, in which the aggressions will either be from spiteful reasons or from sporting ones, and in which the poor man will be the only one who dies. "
"The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards."
Few people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as the members of a ruling caste which is being dispossessed.
Arthur's feelings completed the misery of the court. He, unfortunately for himself, had been beautifully brought up. His teacher had educated him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of man from fish to mammal—and, like the child in the womb, he had been protected with love meanwhile. The effect of such an education was that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for living—without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner forms of selfishness. Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of vices. He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or for torturing his wife. He had been given too much love and trust to be good at these things.
Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives can be dissected. He was only a simple and affectionate man, because Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having.
When Lancelot saw her waiting for him at the table, with Arthur beside her, the heart-sack broke in his wame, and the love inside it ran about his veins. It was his old love for a girl of twenty, standing proudly by her throne with the present of captives about her—but now the same girl was standing in other surroundings, the surroundings of bad make-up and loud silks, by which she was trying to defy the invincible doom of human destiny. He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth—the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here—what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with the eyes alone. They said: Don't look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in the prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age.
One explanation of Guenever, for what it is worth, is that she was what they used to call a "real" person. She was not the kind who can be fitted away safely under some label or other, as "loyal" or "disloyal" or "self-sacrificing" or "jealous". Sometimes she was loyal and sometimes she was disloyal. She behaved like herself. And there must have been something in this self, some sincerity of heart, or she would not have held two people like Arthur and Lancelot. Like likes like, they say—and at least they are certain that her men were generous. She must have been generous too. It is difficult to write about a real person.
Lovers were not recruited then among the juveniles and adolescents: they were seasoned people, who knew what they were about. In those days people loved each other for their lives, without the conveniences of the divorce court and the psychiatrist. They had a God in heaven and a goddess on earth—and, since people who devote themselves to goddesses must exercise some caution about the ones to whom they are devoted, they neither chose them by the passing standards of the flesh alone, nor abandoned it lightly when the bruckle thing began to fail.
"Because a man can push you off a horse with a stick, it doesn't mean he is a better man than you are."
"When you are a king you can't go executing people as the fancy takes you. A king is the head of his people, and he must stand as an example to them, and do as they wish."
"Civilization seems to have become insane," she said.
"War is like a fire, Agnes. One man may start it, but it will spread all over."
He saw the problem before him as plain as a map. The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing. Frontiers were imaginary lines. There was no visible line between Scotland and England, although Flodden and Bannockburn had been fought about it. It was geography which was the cause—political geography. It was nothing else. Nations did not need to have the same kind of civilization, nor the same kind of leader, any more than the puffins and the guillemots did. They could keep their own civilizations, like Esquimaux and Hottentots, if they would give each other freedom of trade and free passage and access to the world. Countries would have to become counties—but counties which could keep their own culture and local laws. The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined. The airborne birds skipped them by nature. How mad the frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly.
There would be a day—there must be a day—when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, just as the world had none—a table without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.
Ultime parole
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The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.
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These editions of The Once and Future King do not contain The Book of Merlyn. Please do not combine with the editions that do contain The Book of Merlyn.
Redattore editoriale
Elogi
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T. H. White's masterful retelling of the saga of King Arthur is a fantasy classic as legendary as Excalibur and Camelot, and a poignant story of adventure, romance, and magic that has enchanted readers for generations. Once upon a time, a young boy called "Wart" was tutored by a magician named Merlyn in preparation for a future he couldn't possibly imagine. A future in which he would ally himself with the greatest knights, love a legendary queen and unite a country dedicated to chivalrous values. A future that would see him crowned and known for all time as Arthur, King of the Britons. During Arthur's reign, the kingdom of Camelot was founded to cast enlightenment on the Dark Ages, while the knights of the Round Table embarked on many a noble quest. But Merlyn foresaw the treachery that awaited his liege: the forbidden love between Queen Guenever and Lancelot, the wicked plots of Arthur's half-sister Morgause and the hatred she fostered in Mordred that would bring an end to the king's dreams for Britain--and to the king himself. "[The Once and Future King] mingles wisdom, wonderful, laugh-out-loud humor and deep sorrow--while telling one of the great tales of the Western world."--Guy Gavriel Kay
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The Once and Future King Group Read: General Thread
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