June 24, 2022
This is my Arthurian legend. Since I was a child I loved this story the most. I read it retold in different ways. I read books that so expanded the character of Gawain to such an extent that it had to be told in the second person. I think one of the old traditions asked of boys is: "Who's is your favorite of Arthur's Knights of the Round Table?" and perhaps we should remember that those stories are important to boys - actually, especially in an era where masculinity has become toxic, these characters can help.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but for me, Gawain is the best. Why? I love the ideas contained in his story and character.
Consider these facts. If King Arthur was historical, he would have existed at a time when Britain was not fully "settled"; not colonized by the people Arthur ruled as king. There were the Picts, the Scots and other ancient native peoples of the British Isles, and Arthur's court would have existed in an uneasy truce with these various native peoples. And the character of the Round Table that in my mind best interacts with that paradigm is Gawain.
Gawain's most famous adventure is his encounter with The Green Knight. It was recently interpreted into a movie called The Green Knight. This is a good movie. I claim it is deeper than literature; deeper than poetry; deeper than religious story. This is about the conduct of man and men as it relates to the interchange between two cultures, two histories, and two religions foreign to each other. I have seen nothing deeper in cinematic form.
On one Christmas Day, a knight clothed in all green enters Arthur's great hall and challenges anyone in his court to strike off his head then and there - but, whosoever takes this challenge must meet the green knight in his hall a year hence, and there and then the green knight shall in turn strike off the head of his challenger. This is the premise of the story.
Gawain's motivation for accepting the challenge varies based on the retelling. The movie portrays him as young and seeking a tale of heroic strife. I have heard it told another way. In fact, the lack of clarity in defining Gawain's motivation is part of the story. The genius of the legend is that it by structure makes Gawain step into something bigger than his concept of self. Chivalry is the mechanism that brings him into engagement with his larger question, but good tales of chivalry are never about chivalry itself. The Form is Full, not Empty --
The many nuances of retelling show through in the climactic moments in this tale. And the movie The Green Knight portrays this first encounter between Gawain and the Green Knight beautifully. But first, what is implicit in that encounter? A lot.
The court of Arthur at this point has to be assumed to be living among other tribes of native people, non-Christian, and with their own history and a spirituality tied to the Great Mother religions of the Natural world. (A religion of Great Mother-type Nature worship has been remarked on in the ancient British Isles, as similar to the ancient Sumerian fertility religions.). The Green Knight has come to Arthur's court in the Form to which Arthur is accustomed and the full ceremony of the intensely political that his court embodies, but his challenge implies that his challenger will meet him on the basis of the full duality that has been unveiled here. The Green Knight is clearly foreign to the paradigm and culture that Arthur exists in - a Pict, or of another of Britain's native peoples. He has adopted Form of lifestyle and the political ceremony of Arthur's court, in his own way; a mirror held to their own existence in those categories, asking through the conduct of his character "can you really stomach living like this?"
There is an ancient fact describing the opening of relations between a group facing a power disadvantage and another group with the power advantage. If anyone has done a little wrestling they will understand it this way: it's like choosing top position or bottom position first, in rounds two and three. The Green Knight has chosen to accept the political ceremony and form of lifestyle of his opponent who would probably win in an outright war. But implicit in his challenge is that his challenger will accept the religious ceremony and form of politics that he retains. This is the level of adventure that chivalry has elevated Gawain's life to.
The beauty of the first encounter is well-painted against this backdrop, in the movie The Green Knight. Observe what is important to Gawain as he accepts and consummates the challenge. He is gifted a significant weapon - his king's sword - for the act, he enjoins all those around him to witness and remember what happened here, and he is careful to mention Christmas Day, that God may be his witness. All of these will be symbolically returned by the green knight in his return stroke.
But also observe that the green knight does not immediately bow his head. And there is a moment of confusion where Gawain is unsure of what he is to do. The green knight finally wordlessly bows his head. What are we to read from that?
Three things. That for all the political ceremony put together by Arthur's court in the moment and all the words spoken by Gawain, the green knight is not invited to speak. And therefore in the next year the land will speak for him. That despite the green knight and his people seeing it this way, Arthur's court does not see that their real political ceremony is the murder of his people. And therefore Gawain's journey toward accepting the green knight's retribution will be hard. That Gawain expresses hesitation, and is therefore not bloodthirsty, and his character does not seem to be that of a murderer. And therefore there is the possibility of grace. Gawain even turns toward his king after delivering his stroke severing the head of the Green Knight from his body. His expression is one of terror, panic, even guilt and shame, and it is clear to all that he is not a cold-blooded killer, even in this situation. And the Green Knight, who survives this blow with supernatural power, actually sees this. And this is what gives the Green Knight hope. On several levels this is what keeps him alive. In the structural determinism of a chivalric tale, Gawain's inability to just dispatch his foe, who presents himself in this way, and the Green Knight's structural inability to die, are both the same thing: evidence that his people and the Green Knight's people each cannot survive without the other. They are mutually intertwined.
What is so amazing about the Green Knight story is that it is a story about diplomacy.
In one year hence, Gawain must hold to his word of honor, and seek out the Green Chapel where the green knight makes his home. The time scale of years is shown in the wheel of the seasons placed behind the puppet shows of children. The time scale of years is at once the most advanced, and the most childlike.
No one will hold him back from taking this journey because no one can. All that his people can do to stimulate him is to needle him about his reluctance to commit. His lover asks him if he will make her his Lady; he will not commit nor even speak. And Gawain must do his task through this.
Gawain undergoes three adventures on his way to the Chapel: one trial of the body, one of his spirit and one of his mind. He is introduced to the reality of this world by bandits that rob him. Why? Because on the road, there is only one law of first impressions among travelers: the dichotomy of kindness vs. danger. Are you kind or dangerous? What do you appear to be? And Gawain acts dangerously. And the kindness of danger is vulnerability. And the danger of kindness is pity. The sash that Gawain was gifted by his mother and sisters is taken from him, as evidence of his vulnerability, along with his other possessions. Does the Chapel actually exist? He asks. "You're in it," is the reply.
Gawain's escape is frantic, hasty and destitute. And he finds in his flight from danger, a house; an old, nearly ruined house where he seeks shelter. This is not a dream. The escape is real. In the house, the bread has turned to stone. The girl alone in the house startles him and he turns to leave: where are you going? She asks. Home, he says, strikingly. The house is no longer home.
But she wants him to retrive her head from the pond. Someone came and threatened her, and then cut off her head, and threw it in the pond, she says. Gawain dives under the surface and comes up with a bleached skull. Where the girl was is a fox; on the bed in the house is a headless skeleton. But the skull in Gawain's hands becomes a head again, the head of the girl. The Green Knight is someone you know, she says. The head is alive, the but the body is dead. This is not a dream, but it is a ghost. What is Gawain to do except place the skull on the skeleton's pillow and journey on? But she has returned to him the axe of the Green Knight: a mysterious intervention.
The second adventure is in Gawain's continued journey with the fox that he must accept as a traveling companion. He has no food and shivering in the cold. He eats poisonous mushrooms and sees visions. His hand dies and rots before his eyes, and returns to health. He sees the figure of the Green Knight, silhouetted against the flashes of light night on the horizon, and abruptly turns into a tree. The old stories of sacred trees come to mind: the Norse world tree and the cedars of Lebanon...
And further on in his journey, he comes across a procession of giantesses in the hills, who hearten back to the Mesopotamian sacred feminine figures. He asks for help, but when she reaches out, he shrinks from her hand. The fox howls, standing in front of Gawain as if to guard him. And the giantess in turn also howls an unearthly sound as wild as the fox.
What does the fox represent? It I might be time to ask. The fox is a hateful figure, in that he represents the hate that is necessary in this sort of adventure. The fox is casus belli to go to war against your own problems. And sometimes it can reveal the problems you didn't know you needed to solve.
Gawain is still alone, and maybe that is where he needed to be at that moment.
Gawain's third adventure is long and stark. Starving, barely able to stand, he falls across the threshold of the castle of a hunter. He awakes in luxury. The hunter, master of the house, welcomes him. The hunter knows Gawain's name, but of the three members of the house, Gawain knows only the Lady: she appears identical to the woman back home whom he spurned commitment to. The hunter, the Lady, and an old blind woman with a blindfold live in the house. The hunter brings home animals he's hunted each day. He says Gawain should take them with him, and Gawain is puzzled, but the hunter says, no, for his journey home - where Gawain did not think he was returning.
They converse late at night and the hunter asks Gawain if he desires the hunt, the strong-boned house, or the fire within. The Lady presses Gawain to think more deeply about why the green knight is green and not any other color. His reflexive response that it is because the Green Knight is not of this world, causes her to mock him for this. Green is the color of the earth, she says. And she speaks of the nature of the fertility of the natural world, how we love the greenery of spring, and revel in it, until it grows over what else we love and we start to hate it, and begin to crush it down, under feet and beneath our bellies - and still the green comes back. Red is the color of lust, she says, but green is the color that lust leaves behind: on the earth, and in the womb. But the whole time her face is kind, even when it hardens also into something terrifying.
This is what begins the hunter's game, the game within the game in all the Gawain stories of the green knight. The hunter says that as long as Gawain stays, he will give Gawain all the produce from his hunt if Gawain will give him anything he should win in the castle. Gawain agrees, and they play this game until Christmas Day. The lady comes to Gawain on Christmas Day, and she is wearing a green girdle identical to the sash his family created for him when he set out. She says that it is created with her magic so that no harm will come to the wearer. She makes Gawain win it from her and Gawain leaves their liaison with the Lady's green girdle, and runs off to the Green Chapel to face his death. But the hunter stops him and forces Gawain to keep the promise of their game. He takes what he thought Gawain won in the castle that day - a chaste kiss. In some of the old stories this goes on for several days - each day Gawain returns the gift of the hunter's take with a chaste kiss. Gawain journeys on without returning to the hunter the girdle he won in the castle.
The fox returns and warns Gawain against going to the chapel, because if he took the sash that means he will never pass the Green Knight's test. But Gawain chases the fox away. Some men at this point have fixed their problem, and some have given up, but every man must chase away the fox and what it represents at this point. We just don't know where Gawain is.
How is a man supposed to do this: to face certain death, while also girded with the assurance that he will come to no harm? Gawain's story is transcendent on this point of human nature. He comes to the Green Chapel, a ruin of greenery marked on the path with a Rosette Cross. The green of nature's bloom, even supernaturally alive on Christmas Day, is the walls and roof of the Green Knight's hall. Backed by a latticed stone arch, the Green Knight sits, sleeping. A stream flows from him down the steps to the altar. Gawain approaches, and sits. I think this is very important. The Green Knight after a time wakes up. Gawain says he is ready to complete their game and accept the return blow to the one he dealt the Green Knight when they last met. Nonetheless, when he kneels to receive it, he flinches.
How do we understand the thoughts of this moment? This is what the movie did so well. Gawain runs away. All the way home. His mother cares for him. The king makes him king. His old lover gives birth to his son, and he abandons her. He marries a new beautiful wife for political reasons. His kingdom is attacked; his son is slain in battle. Strife consumes his family, his kingdom collapses, his mandate erodes, and all his people abandon him to himself alone in the throne room. His mother is last to leave, after his new wife. But the last thing he does is remove the green girdle that he has never since taken off, and he dies.
This is a dream; the last grasp on life for life's sake by a man facing death.
Gawain, in the Green Chapel, after thinking these thoughts, begs the Green Knight to wait just a moment. And he removes the Lady's green girdle, and says that he is ready to face the Green Knight's blow now. This is how all the Gawain stories go. And it's a very important life lesson for a man to understand why. The answer is both political and personal. One thing is that Gawain knows that if he does not keep his vow, not only himself but his country will lose its entire mandate. The moral legitimacy of his country is riding on his personal honor. Gawain does not forget that he is doing statecraft. And for two, if one is to die anyway, it is personally honorable to remove whatever charm is purported to protect you, so that the charm doesn't die along with you. I believe, along with Gawain, that it is a responsibility of a man to fully own and understand his own mortality.
How do the stories end? In some, the Gawain story inspires other knights to all wear green girdles; in others, Gawain just remains a moral foundation of the Round Table - the best of men among the best of men.
There are other knights in the Round Table story. But Gawain is the one I like for lots of reasons, as here and in the stories.
Gawain escapes certain death in all the stories. The Green Knight strikes with the axe, but only swings it into the ground. Although Gawain did not show mercy in their first meeting, the Green Knight spares him in their second - but only after Gawain removes the girdle believed to have the supernatural power to protect him from all harm. For the Green Knight, for Gawain to face certain death without any tricks or hope of escape, to face death without any defenses, is morally equivalent to death. And in a certain sense of story and plot, you can see how this is acceptable to both men.
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