I.
THE INTIMATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS OF SUBSURFACE MEANING.
THE
study of a great literature should begin like the preparation for a royal
banquet, not without some solicitude for right conduct in the King's palace-
which is the consecration of motive- and not without recollection of that
source from which the most excellent gifts derive in their season to us all.
Surely the things of earth are profitable only in so far as they assist us
towards the things which are eternal. In this respect there are many helpers,
even as the sands of the sea. The old books help us, perhaps above most things,
and among them the old chronicles and the great antique legends. If the hand
of God is in history it is also in folklore. We can scarcely fail of our
term, since lights, both close at hand and in the unlooked-for places, kindle
everywhere about us. It is difficult to say any longer that we walk in the
Shadow of Death when the darkness is sown with stars.
Now, there are
a few legends which may be said to stand forth among the innumerable traditions
of humanity, wearing upon them the external signs and characters of some
secret or mystery within them which belongs, as it would seem, rather to
eternity than to time. They are in no sense connected with one another- unless
indeed by certain roots which are scarcely in time and place- and yet, by
a suggestion which is deeper than any suggestion of the senses, it would
appear as if each were appealing to each, one bearing testimony to another,
and all recalling all. They might be broken fragments of some primitive revelation
which, except in these legends, has passed out of written records and far
from the memory of man. The fullness of their original design may be, and
sometimes is, reconstructed from age to age, but the result bears always,
and that of necessity, the tincture of its particular period, reflecting
the first intention sometimes in a glass darkly and sometimes in a crystal
brightly, so that it is less or more, according to the mind of the age. To
the class of which I am speaking belongs the Graal Legend, which in all its
higher aspects may be included among the legends of the soul. Perhaps I should
say rather that, when it is properly understood, the Graal is not a legend
but a personal history.
It will be intelligible
from this one statement that I am not putting forward a thesis for the instruction
of scholarship, which is otherwise and fully equipped, and it may be desirable
to make it plain from the beginning that my offering to the consideration
of the literature is intended for those who have either found their place
within the sanctuary of the mystic life or are at least in the outer circles.
I take up the subject where it has been left by the students of folklore
and by all that which might term itself authorized scholarship. Ut adeptis
appareat me illis parem et fratrem, I have made myself acquainted with
the criticism of the cycle and I am familiar with the cycle itself. It is
with the texts, however, that we shall be concerned, or at least more especially,
and I approach them from a new standpoint. As to thls, it win be better to
specify from the outset its various particulars as follows: (I) the appropriation
of certain myths and legends which are held to be pre-Christian in the root-matter,
and their penetration by an advanced form of Christian Symbolism carried
to a particular term; (2) the evidence of three fairly distinct sections
or schools, the diversity of which is less, however, in the fundamental part
of their subject than in the extent and mode of its development; (3) the
connexion of this mode and of that form with other schools of symbolism,
the evolution of which was going on at the same period as that of the Graal
literature; (4) the close analogy in respect of the root-matter between the
catholic literature of the Holy Graal and that which is connoted by the term
Mysticism; (5) the traces through Graal romance and other coincident literatures
of a hidden school in Christianity which, because it is an expression that
has been used for over a century, I shall continue to call the Secret Church,
though it predicates an instituted office that, I think, scarcely belongs
to the unmanifested company with which it will be seen that I am concerned.
Perhaps, within the admitted forms of expression, the idea corresponds more
closely with that which is understood by the school of the prophets, though
the term only describes a certain highly advanced state by one of the gifts
which may be taken to belong thereto. This, I should add, is on an express
assumption that the gift has little connexion with the external meaning of
prophecy; it is not the power of seeing forward, but rather of sight within.
In subjects of this kind, as in other subjects, the greater naturally includes
the lesser, it being of minor importance to discern, for example, the coming
of Christ in a glass of vision than to understand, either before or after,
the vital significance of that coming. I mention this instance because it
enables me to say, on the authority of my precursors, that it was out of
the secret school, or company which had secured its election, that the Christ
came at His season. The Graal romances are not documents of this school put
forward by the external way, but are its rumours at a distance. They are
not authorized; nor are they stolen; they have arisen, or the consideration
of the Hidden Church follows from their consideration as something in the
intellectual order connected therewith. From this point of view it is possible
to collect out of the general body of the literature what I should term its
intimations of subsurface meaning into a brief schedule, as follows: (a)
The existence of a clouded sanctuary; (b) a great mystery; (c) a desirable
communication which, except under certain circumstances, cannot take place;
(d) suffering within and sorcery without; (e) supernatural grace which does
not possess efficacy on the external side; (f) healing which comes from without,
carrying in most cases all the signs of insufficiency and even of inhibition;
(g) in fine, that which is without enters within and takes over the charge
of the mystery, but it is either removed altogether or goes into deeper concealment-
the outer world profits only by the removal of a vague enchantment. The unversed
reader may not at the moment follow the specifics of this schedule, but if
the allusions awaken his interest I can promise that they shall be made plain
as we proceed.
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