Into the Archive: The Book of Taliesin

 

"Tennyson portrayed him and wrote at least one poem under his name. Robert Graves was fascinated by what he saw as his work's connection to a lost world of deeply buried folkloric memory. He is a shapeshifter; a seer; a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the British Isles; a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology; a sixth-century Brythonic bard; and a legendary collective project spanning the centuries up to The Book of Taliesin's compilation in fourteenth-century North Wales. He is, above all, no single "he."

"The figure of Taliesin is a mystery. But of the variety and quality of the poems written under his sign, of their power as exemplars of the force of ecstatic poetic imagination, and of the fascinating window they offer us onto a strange and visionary world, there can be no question. In the first volume to gather all of the poems from The Book of Taliesin since 1915, Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams's accessible translation makes these outrageous, arrogant, stumbling and joyful poems available to a new generation of readers." - Amazon.

Yesterday, to my surprise, I found this book already in the mailbox. I was not expecting it until the 20th at least (it was coming all the way from Great Britain). This means I have three new books to read in the hopper at one time, a circumstance that very rarely occurs these days. It's been on the Wish List for a while, and is what I would consider a primary source for my 'Arthurian Studies,' or, in a broader sense, the early literature of the British Isles, not unlike 'The Mabinogion' or 'La Vita Merlini'.

By a strange coincidence, thirteen years ago (yesterday) I wrote on Facebook that I was buying books for the boy I was thirty years ago and feeding them through the bars of his cage to keep him alive. Though I am sure I will get some mild enjoyment out of Taliesin, I'm not quite sure I will squeeze out of it what I might have when I was, say, thirty. But anyway, it will have to wait until I finish Knock Three Times! and maybe even On the Shoulders of Hobbits before I buckle down to it. 

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER: A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own
affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a
politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old
age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child
again. I can give you the memories of my ancient wisdom: mere
scraps and leavings; but I no longer really care for anything but
my own little wants and hobbies. - Heartbreak House, George Bernard Shaw.