WASTE LANDS MODERN AND MEDIEVAL

(My Scribe, Simon Acland, tells me this is a copy of a guest blog kindly hosted by Now is Gone at http://katysozaeva.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/guest-post-simon-acland-author-of-waste.html He says it is something to do with my story.)

Almost 750 years separate TS Eliot’s The Waste Land from the first Grail Romance, Chrétien de Troyes’ Roman de Perceval. Maybe readers would not have made any connection between the modern poem and the medieval Grail poems had it not been for Eliot’s mischievous notes at the end of his poem. To quote: “Not only the title, but the plan and a good deal of the symbolism of the poem were suggested by Miss Jessie L. Weston’s book on the Grail legend: From Ritual to Romance.” From the sound of it, without Jessie Weston’s book there might have been no modern Waste Land at all; one can imagine Eliot reading From Ritual to Romance when it came out in 1919, three years before his poem, and that sparking off the chain of creative thought that resulted in one of the 20^th century’s greatest poems.

Most people think of the Grail as intimately connected with Jesus and Christianity. It is the chalice that was used at the Last Supper, or the vessel used to catch Christ’s blood when he was taken down from the Cross. We think of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, selecting the wooden carpenter’s cup in that cave high above Petra, and using it to save his dying father Sean Connery. Or maybe we think of it as in The Da Vinci Code: a symbol of the bloodline of Jesus – the San Graal of medieval French somehow being a corruption of the modern French sang real meaning royal blood. That was the idea that Dan Brown borrowed from Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s 1982 pseudo-history The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

But actually, in that first Grail tale, Chrétien de Troyes does not make any specific connection with Jesus or Christianity. In the Roman de Perceval, the knight of the title finds himself in a mysterious castle. He witnesses a strange procession, the centrepiece of which is a magical golden grail (in medieval French a graal is a somewhat obscure word meaning a large serving dish, on which you might place a roast swan or large salmon). Later on in Chrétien’s poem it transpires that the grail is used to feed and keep alive a wounded king, and it is at one point described as ‘tante sainte chose’ (‘such a holy thing’), but it is not linked specifically with Jesus Christ in any way. The land of this king (who happens to be Perceval’s uncle) is barren, laid waste, and Perceval misses the opportunity to lift the spell by asking questions of his host about the grail. It is suggested that the king, poor fellow, has been wounded through the loins, and that his resulting infertility has turned his kingdom into a waste land. So the original grail appears to be a life-giving cornucopia linked with Celtic legend more than a Christian object. But it is never fully explained. Thus a great mystery is set up – what is the grail, why is the king wounded, why is his land barren, and what will happen when the quest is fulfilled and the spell is lifted?

Chrétien de Troyes was probably the most popular writer of his day (I will not insult him by calling him the Dan Brown of the 1100’s). A great storyteller, he would have explained the mystery, but he died around 1180 before he could complete the romance. Eliot deliberately shrouded the meaning of his poem, leaving the reader to interpret it; Chrétien did the same by the accident of his death before the completion of Roman de Perceval.

Of course, my book The Waste Land does not belong in the same illustrious company. It is sub-titled An Entertainment. The meat of it is an adventure story about a monk turned knight who travels East on the First Crusade, discovering the ‘truth’ about the Holy Grail and losing his ideals along the way. But I had great fun using some of the same imagery as Chrétien and Eliot did. There are some physical waste lands in my book – the Turkish desert where the Crusaders suffer appallingly from thirst, the surroundings of Antioch razed during months of siege, the bare wilderness around Alamut. And for my hero Hugh de Verdon the whole Crusade is a spiritual waste land. For that reason, and as an homage to Eliot, I borrowed his title, used snippets from his poem for my chapter headings, and hid twenty-three direct quotes in my text for Eliot fans to find. Most people spot ‘April was the cruellest month’ but some of the others are harder. Look out for a couple of father figures who are wounded in rather uncomfortable places too!

THE GRAIL LEGEND IN MEDIEVAL AND MODERN FICTION

(This is a copy of a guest post by my scribe on A Book Geek http://abookgeek-llm.blogspot.co.uk/ He says it's something to do with my story.)

The opening conceit of my novel The Waste Land is that a group of desperate Oxford dons discover an ancient manuscript in their library. They resolve to rescue the finances of their bankrupt college by turning this manuscript into a best-selling thriller (think The Da Vinci Code). The manuscript contains the autobiographical story of Hugh de Verdon, a monk turned knight who goes on the First Crusade (1096-99) and “discovers the truth about the Holy Grail”. What is more, the manuscript appears to be the Urtext, the original source material, for the very first medieval Grail romance written by Chrétien de Troyes around 1180.

I studied French and German at Oxford in the 1970s. Back then, Oxford was more than a little old-fashioned, and I found myself studying 12^th and 13^th Century Grail Romances as my special subject (that is Modern Languages at Oxford for you). However, I found them fascinating and became a fully signed-up Holy Grail geek. Later I read with amusement the books which adapted the medieval legends – The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln, which caused a storm in 1982 by suggesting that the Holy Grail – the San Graal in medieval French – was actually a cipher for the royal blood line of Jesus Christ – the Sang Real in modern French. This was the central idea which was then taken into The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Not for nothing is Dan Brown’s villain called Sir Leigh Teabing.

My novel The Waste Land jokes that it all started with Hugh de Verdon’s story, but, in fact, it of course started with that fellow Chrétien de Troyes. Little is known about him, even though he was the Dan Brown of his day. He wrote several very popular chansons de geste, long poems with Arthurian themes about chivalry and damsels in distress, which in places were funny, and for medieval times, even erotic. Chrétien’s last work is called the Roman de Perceval.

In the Roman de Perceval, the knight of the title finds himself in a mysterious castle, and witnesses a strange procession, the centerpiece of which is a magical golden grail (in medieval French graal is a somewhat obscure word meaning a large serving dish, on which you might place a boar’s head or large salmon). Later on in the poem it transpires that the grail is used to feed and keep alive a wounded king, and it is at one point described as ‘tante sainte chose’ (‘such a holy thing’), but it is not linked specifically with Jesus Christ in any way. The land of this king (who happens to be Perceval’s uncle) is barren, laid waste, and Perceval missed the opportunity to lift the spell by asking questions of his host about the grail. The grail appears to be a cornucopia linked with Celtic legend more than a Christian object but it is never fully explained. So a great mystery is set up – what is the grail, why is the king wounded, what happens when the quest is fulfilled and the spell is lifted?

But Chrétien died before he could finish the story, leaving these questions unanswered. Imagine if Dan Brown had died before finishing The Da Vinci Code.

Such was Chrétien de Troyes’ popularity that several writers soon attempted to complete his story. The first of these to make a connection between the Grail and the vessel used by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper and to catch Jesus’ blood when he was taken down from the Cross was Robert de Boron. This version contains many of the familiar elements of the legend - Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, King Arthur, the questing knights – but it too was followed by other medieval versions which adapted the story to the individual interests of the writers. One version, Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, introduced a loose connection with the Templars. Then, with the passing of the Middle Ages and of the interest in questing knights, the Grail fades from view. It isn’t really until the rekindling of interest in things gothic in the 19^th Century that the Grail reappears as a cultural theme in Wagner’s opera Parsifal and the paintings of the pre-Raphaelites.

Sir James Frazer’s massive twelve-volume study of anthropology and folklore, The Golden Bough, published from 1890 to 1915, rekindled 20^th century interest in ancient myth and legend. In 1919 Jessie Weston focussed in on the Grail myth in her influential work From Ritual to Romance, and tied its origins firmly back to Celtic fertility legends. Three years later TS Eliot seized on the imagery of the Grail for his poem The Waste Land. Eliot acknowledges his debt to both these writers in the controversial notes to his great poem. In my turn, in homage, I have seized on Eliot’s title for my book, used snippets of his poem for my chapter headings, and buried 23 direct quotations in my text for eagle-eyed Eliot enthusiasts.

There was a trickle of Holy Grail books through the mid-20^th Century, and some films, not least Monty Python and the Holy Grail (to which I have also paid a sort of homage by dressing up in Monty Pythones-que Crusader costume to do video interviews about my book). You can watch the video here: http://www.meettheauthor.co.uk/bookbites/1915.html

But it wasn’t really until the 1982 success of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail spawned a flood of imitation pseudo-histories and a torrent of similar fiction that the floodgates really opened. Given the size of the genre, I am not sure that I should have added to it, but I hope that you enjoy reading my lesser Waste Land if you have a chance to do so. For all its proud pedigree, it is a simple adventure story about a knight who falls in love and loses his beliefs, and firmly, as its sub-title suggests, intended as an Entertainment.

I've been out crusading

I must own to my shame that I have not posted anything here for a while. I've been out crusading (the Naked Rambler is free).

And my scribe/secretary Simon Acland has been absent, working on another manuscript. He calls it Elite - The Secret to Exceptional Leadership and Performance. He tells me it is not about me, although from the title I believe that it is. Whatever the truth may be, I have had Acland severely lashed because either he lies, or he works in another's service against my will.

And what can this Secret to Exceptional Leadership and Performance be, save the  Grail?

In spite of my scribe's idleness and deceit, my story The Waste Land has now reached a far off country of which I had not heard before. They call it the United States of America and they tell me there are many there who know their letters. In a city there called New York, Beaufort Books has made my manuscript widely available to all who can read. I believe Beaufort Books take their name from Beaufort Castle in Outremer, or Qala'at al-Shaqif as it is known in the Arab tongue. But perchance they stem from that Beaufort Castle near my master Godfrey's stonghold at Bouillon; perchance not because in my day that was a poor place indeed, just a compound with four weak walls and no towers to speak of.

In any case, I salute the brave Beaufort Books of New York in the United States of America for their courage in risking the wrath of the Templars and promulgating my story.