History and heros

Maybe it's because my family name is "King" that I've always had a fascination with great monarchs. My top three favorites are David (of Judah and Israel), Lear (of Britain), and Arthur (of Britain). What I love is the mythos, the wonder of how a single person can change the shape and direction of a whole people, even of the world. It's also no coincidence that all my favorites are tragic kings, who ultimately failed in their quests. After all, perfect victory over evil and injustice does not lie in this life, but in the next. Christ, the King of kings, died -- not to save us from the cross -- but to save us through it.

It's also no coincidence, then, that my favorite kings are all accused of being legendary rather than historical. I happen to, respectfully, disagree; and I've just finished reading a book which has helped me to articulate why. The book is The Discovery of King Arthur, by Geoffrey Ashe. In it, he notes that historians have tended to ask the wrong question in searching for the "historical" King Arthur:

The historical line of inquiry, pursued with a strict regard for fact, leads to a near-nullity. Yet that is paradoxical. The Arthurian legend is far from being a near-nullity. In its various versions it is a fact itself, a very great fact, one that has survived through the centuries with extraordinary richness and vitality in most of the languages of Europe and America. Far from being pruned away, it needs to be drawn back into the investigation. The Arthur question is literary rather than historical. The proper question is to ask, not 'Did Arthur exist?' but 'How did the legend originate, what realities is it rooted in, what was its starting point?'

In other words, the historians have neglected to regard as sufficiently historical evidence the very documents which occasioned their question in the first place. (I could note that a similar fallacy seems to pervade Biblical studies, especially of the New Testament; but, not being a Biblical scholar myself, I shall refrain.)

Yet, whatever its virtues and arguments in historiography, that is, the theory of doing history, Ashe's book points out another theme in the development of Arthurian legend: the longing for a hero.

As Ashe presents it, the character of Arthur originated as a restitutor, or restorer, figure -- a kind of messiah. In the Roman Empire of the fourth century A.D., of which much of Great Britain was a part, the emperors attempted to reclaim the empire's former glory in the face of growing threats from barbarians and in the aftermath of massive internal crises. Needless to say, none truly succeeded, and Rome itself was sacked in 410 -- the first of many such victories by various barbarian peoples. The citizens of the empire asked how and why this happened, and how their honor could be restored. St. Augustine wrote one of his most famous treatises, The City of God, to answer this very question. His answer was that Jesus was the longed-for restorer, and that his kingdom was not of this world. But that failed to satisfy the longing for victory and honor now.

In the first "complete" biography of King Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, portrays him as first a defender of the Britons against the invading Saxons, Angles, and Jutes; then as a campaigner in what today is France against the Roman Empire. In other words, Arthur is a sort of British restitutor. Ashe's argument is founded on finding a historical basis for such a British figure, whether attached directly to the name "Arthur" or not.

But perhaps a greater theme is the persistence of the messianic longing which Ashe points out. England (ironically named for the Angles that Arthur fought) awaits a hero, Arthur returned, to save them in their time of need; and several English monarchs have adopted the Arthurian aura to legitimate their rule. Nor is America immune from such a longing. After all, we have legends surrounding General and President George Washington, President Abraham Lincoln, and even President Theodore Roosevelt -- not to mention the explicit Arthurian metaphors applied to President Kennedy. And witness the fervor of expectation surrounding President Obama's election, and the disappointment in many that the world did not change suddenly upon his inauguration.

In my own life, I find that I tend to waffle between fantasies of becoming just such a world-restoring hero, (especially after watching an action movie or some such thing,) and fantasies of having all my troubles solved by such a hero, (even if the hero who saves me is also the damsel in distress whom I rescue!) As one of my therapists challenged me, I have yet to learn to be a "mere mortal."

Now, I think there really is something to the first fantasy: life is full of challenges and adventures which, to the outsider, may appear mundane but in fact are calls for courage and heroism. Not all of us will have epic poems composed in our honor, but all of us have opportunities -- perhaps more than we would like -- to demonstrate heroic virtue. The danger is to pursue the honor more than the virtue.

It is the second fantasy that, for myself at least, I am most wary. The persistent desire for someone else to take care of my problems, to make everything perfect, with no effort expended on my own part -- in short, the vice of sloth -- remains my primary temptation. As I said before, perfect victory over evil is not for this life. I have no ground to condemn the imperfection of anyone else's achievement, much less to refrain from myself attempting some good, simply because it will not be perfect. This life is not for perfect. This life is for tragedy -- but tragedy which leads to perfect joy in the one true restitutor: Christ.