Watched the State of the Union address last week. Have watched several events featuring the other guy lately.
The day after the State of the Union address, while others were analyzing the speech, I found myself looking at the battle ahead and Wagnerian music began to play in my mind.
And images.
Listen as you read:
A chill late evening on an ancient battlefield, smoke and fog intermingling to turn the setting sun a deep orange in the aftermath of an epic life-and-death confrontation between two legendary opponents.. Think of Arthur and Mordred from medieval England.
The State of the Union address was one of them drawing the sword that is a traditional symbol of power, of justice, of the best interests of the people and throwing away the scabbard to enter the final struggle with one whom he sees as a brooding, vengeful foe seeking to destroy everything good and honorable; a rival of equally waning strength, knowing this is his last, desperate chance to prevail.
In Arthurian legend, Arthur and, Mordred, variously referred to in the tellings of the tale as Arthur’s traitorous nephew or the traitorous son of Arthur’s nephew Gawain, or Arthur’s bastard son born of Arthur’s relationship with his half-sister (and there are other descriptions). They are two of the few survivors of the Battle of Camlann. Arthur, seeking to regain the throne Mordred had seized in his absence, impales Mordred on a spear. But Mordred uses the last of his waning energy to pull himself along the spear and strikes Arthur with a mortal blow to the head.
Arthur, knowing his end is near, commands Bedivere to throw the great sword, Excalibur, into a nearby lake, which Bedivere finally does, reluctantly. He sees a hand part the waters, catch the sword, shake it three times, and pull it beneath the quiet waters of the pool.
(The climactic last scene, accompanied by Wagner’s “Death and Funeral” music from Gotterdammerung, was used in the concluding scenes of the 1981 movie “Excalibur,” considered one of the greatest Arthur legend films ever made. In the movie, Percival rather than Bedivere throws the sword.
(5) Excalibur – Finale – YouTube)
Arthur’s body is buried later at Glastonbury. His former ally, Launcelot, returned from France, learned that Guenevere had become a nun, went to Glastonbury to hear the story of Arthur’s final battle, and became a monk.
Six years later, after Guenevere had died, he and other surviving Knights of the Round Table went to Almesbury to take her remains to Glastonbury to be interred next to Arthur.
So it is told in one of the many versions of the Arthur legend.
Will this battle in future decades be seen as Arthurian as the English legend describes the final battle between Arthur and Mordred, between good and evil? Will, in the end, we be left with the thought neither survived (politically) but the kingdom endured?
(screen shots are from the motion picture Excalibur, produced by Orion Pictures)
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(Perhaps these thoughts have some distant genetic origin. Glastonbury is about ten miles from the ancient lead-mining community of Priddy, England. The patron saint of Glastonbury is Joseph of Arimathea, perhaps an uncle of Jesus, and a tin trader who took a young Jesus with him during Jesus’ “lost years” when Joseph was involved in the tin trade with pre-Roman England. Local legend in Priddy has it that a young Jesus, traveling with Joseph, also visited Priddy.
The Gospels, of course, identify Joseph of Arimathea as the person who got permission to remove Jesus’s body form the cross and to place it in his personal tomb.)