Launcelot and Guenevere | ||
FATA MORGANA
A Masque
Author's Notes for Fata Morgana.
- Launcelot (Costume of novice). Plumbing the mystery of his evil (at and after his devotions.)
- The other knight monks (Job's comforters).
- The persian guest.
- The descent into Hell.
- Devils and Sins.
- Lucifer.
- Angro-Mainyus.
- Fuit sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum.
- Persian. Serve then my master since he is evil.
- Launc. Knowing the evil, now I choose the good.
- The cell again. The Angel.
- Thou hast repented. See that thou repair.
- Quest of Merlin.
- Girlhood of Guenevere.
- Brociliande.
- Holy Grail.
- Morte d'Arthur.
- The Descent into Hell.
- Arthur in Avalon.
- The New Earth.
- Voices of the Sea.
Hindoo/Unity/Sin/Thesis.
Persian/Duality/Effects/Anthithesis.
Hellenic/Unity in Complexity/Resolutions/Synthesis.
The Sailing of the Serpent (?)
Of “Fata Morgana” he says in the Schema: “It suggests the ethical drift of the series.”
The foregoing early study indicates that in “Fata Morgana”—sometimes called “The Masque of Ethics”—he would have embodied his views regarding the Trinity.
The three masques would have involved his philosophy. The Morgana was to have treated ethics somewhat as the masque of Taliesin treats æsthetics.
It is easy to see that from the unity, which means unrelatedness through the duality, which means contention by opposition, to the trinity, which means inter-action, personality is a psychological evolution which he had outlined for this masque. The word Hellenic used here instead of Hegelian, modern, or Christian, probably indicates that he would have used the Trinity in physical beauty as his symbol in the masque.
As Taliesin presented the education, consecration, and function of the artist, so the “Masque of Evil” must have finally embodied the rôle of religion, or the philosophy of religions, in the evolution of evil or discord into good or harmony.
He found himself facing the Hindoo unity, then
“The Masque of Evil,” a study of the problem of good and evil, was a natural product from the author of the essay “The Duece, or Goethe's and Marlow's Faust.” This essay, read at the School of Philosophy at Farmington when he was twenty-five, was doubtless to this poem what a sketch is to a painting: hardly a cartoon, but the preliminary thought digested somewhat in mind but without the sacramental form which at once discovers and manifests. But the deeper development of his conception of the rôle of evil in the cosmos, which in those last ten years would have been prepared to be blazened by his genius in “Fata Morgana, The Masque of Ethics,” can only be guessed by those who know the trend and deepening of his thoughts in that time.
Worship thou me!
Put not up vain prayers to avert my wrath,
For my wrath shall fall like the thunderbolt
And thou shalt be cleft asunder as an oak.
Cry not unto me for mercy, for I am merciless.
Sin and Death are my ministers,
And my ways are ways of torture and the shedding of blood.
I am the Lord thy God.
My sword is as fire in the forest;
My feet are inexorable.
Ask me not to deliver thee from evil.
I am Evil.
He dwelleth in the Sun,
But I in the terror of tempests.
There are two thrones, but one God.
But in the deeps there is calm.
Ahura-mazda and I are one God;
There is war between our legions,
But in us peace.
Behold, he knoweth my thoughts and I his,
And there is no discord in us.
And I in darkness;
His ways and my ways are asunder.
But blaspheme not, calling me “Devil,”
Neither saying, “There are two Gods;”
I am the Most High God,
And I and Ahura-mazda are one.
Launcelot and Guenevere | ||