The Figure of Merlin

There’s no telling how long I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Merlin. Probably the first time I ever saw him was in his T. H. White/Walt Disney incarnation, in the clip of the ‘Wizard’s Duel’ from The Sword in the Stone, that was shown on The Wonderful World of Disney each year at Christmas. But he was everywhere in children’s programming when I was small.

In King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table (1966; 1969, American release) Merlin is a force for good, King Arthur’s wise man; in  the 1970 CBS: Famous Classic Tales version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Mark Twain’s Merlin is a villain, the epitome of the superstition, chicanery, and ignorance of Twain’s perceived version of the Middle Ages; in The Saturday Superstar Movie of The Adventures of Robin Hoodnik (1972) he appeared as Whirlin’ Merlin, a magician for hire engaged by the bad guys; in the 1972 The Brady Kids animated show, Larry Storch voiced Marlon, a magical bird expy of the famed magician, and his old pal Merlin, a beardless, W. C. Fields sound-alike even appears in one episode. Merlin appeared as a figure representing the artist in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, a movie that was often on TV.

In Fourth Grade Jerry Williams brought a comic book to class, DC’s The Demon #1, that featured Merlin as a catalyst to Jason Blood’s back story. In Fifth Grade I read Blanch Winder’s Stories of King Arthur and was enchanted: the first few stories were about Merlin and his origins, perhaps the first place I ever saw Merlin young before being a bearded sage. Then came Middle School and Merlin was let loose.

I graduated into the next level of Merlin. Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, actually reading T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave (another young Merlin tale), all were in the Briesemeister library. Even in The Dark is Rising Merriman Lyon, the Oldest of the Old Ones, was Merlin, a fact I might have known right away if Under Sea, Under Stone (the first book in the series) had been available.

High school took me to the research phase on Merlin. Geoffrey Ashe was the main Arthurian scholar then, in search of the historical origins of King Arthur and his court, including how the figure of Merlin developed. Those were the years that The Book of Merlyn (T. H. White’s unpublished conclusion to his Matter of Britain books) came out, as did John Steinbeck’s unfinished The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. I read C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, where the awakened Merlin plays a pivotal part. Towards the end of high school, I read Merlin by Robert Nye, which drew on a lot of the original sources as well as on scurrilous humor.

While in college, a lot of those original sources became available to me, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory and Spencer and so on, including drips and dabs from medieval tales. That was when I read Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex, where of course Merlin appears in the early chapters. The movie Excalibur (1981) featured Nicol Williamson as the mercurial magician.

And so it goes. Merlin is a character of greater or lesser importance in dozens of books (many of dubious quality, but I had to look into them), TV series (I might mention the 2008 BBC series – which I never watched, or the 1998 Sam Neill miniseries), and films since then, so many in fact I cannot keep up with them, nor I doubt could anybody. Merlin is even an ‘historical figure’ in the Harry Potter mythos. Villain, hero, youth, sage, bard, devil, wizard – Merlin continues to fill all those niches, and may well continue to do so through all time.

Roscoe Lee Browne as Merlin in the 1978 Once Upon a Classic episode, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"

Darkling Child: Into the Archive

Merlin (Copyright 1978; First American Edition 1979 Putnam), by Robert Nye.

I first got this book in a Bantam paperback edition back in 1981, off the spinner-rack at a Pic’n’Pac near the town college. That it was about Merlin intrigued me, of course, but the fact that the cover advertised it as “A Very Adult Fantasy” gave me a moment’s pause. Still, I was graduating high school that year, so I figured it was time to put my big boy pants on. After all, it couldn’t be straight-out pornography.

Nor was it. The most that could be said about it was that was bawdy, not erotic: almost in the same fashion as Rabelais or Chaucer, but with a comedic injection contrasting Medieval style and story with dirty jokes and over the top ‘adult’ situations. The story of Merlin, born a failed Antichrist trying to thwart his father the devil’s plans, always finds his efforts undermined by human weakness, in the end especially his own. Merely human endeavor, no matter how wise, cannot save mankind while it stands poised on the banana peel of doom.

Well, I went on to college and found Falstaff (a longer and more engaging work), and followed his books until his crowning achievement, The Late Mr. Shakespeare (1998), the last, I think, of his ‘Thomas Urquhart’- style novels. He died in 2016. I have been trying to get a hardback copy of Merlin for years, and finally found one at a reasonably low price. While I do not consider Nye’s novels all undisputable masterpieces (his main fame was as a poet), I do find them engaging entertainments that offer their own special appeal that one can find nowhere else, a blend of philosophy and scatology. There are a couple of his novels, dealing with Gilles de Rais and Lord Byron, that I would like to try. 

Living La Vita Merlini

“Vita Merlini, or The Life of Merlin, is a work by the Norman-Welsh author Geoffrey of Monmouth, composed in Latin around AD 1150. It retells incidents from the life of the Brythonic seer Merlin, and is based on traditional material about him. Merlin is described as a prophet in the text. There are a number of episodes in which he loses his mind and lives in the wilderness like a wild animal, like Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel. It is also the first work to describe the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay, as Morgen. Geoffrey had written of Merlin in his two previous works, the Prophetiae Merlini, purported to be a series of prophecies from the sage, and the Historia Regum Britanniae, which is the first work presenting a link between Merlin and King Arthur. The Vita Merlini presents an account of Merlin much more faithful to the Welsh traditions about Myrddin Wyllt, the archetype behind Geoffrey's composite figure of Merlin. Whereas the Historia had Merlin associating with Arthur, his father Uther Pendragon, and his uncle Ambrosius in the 5th century, the Vita's timeframe is during the late 6th century, and includes references to various figures from that period, including Gwenddoleu and Taliesin. Geoffrey attempts to synchronize the Vita with his earlier work by having Merlin mention he had been with Arthur long before.” – Amazon.

Merlin has been a figure of interest to me since I was very young, and I’ve always indulged myself in books that concern him in any way, whether it be legendary, historical, or fictional. Search this blog for “Merlin” (or indeed, “Merlyn”) and you won’t even begin to scratch all the works that involve the famous wizard in some way. I was finally able to track down this seminal early work about him at last.

It was fairly expensive for being such a thin little book; it is only 105 pages long, and half of that is the original Latin poem. The other half is the English translation and footnotes. The price is reflected in its rarity and its niche scholarly interest, but I found after hesitating for almost a year I had to have it. It was a quick read, but not without interest. It contains elements of the Madness of Merlin, the Three Fates, and the Matter of Britain (in prophecy), but there is also a large chunk recounting the world creation from Genesis, which I can only consider filler and a little off topic, but probably inevitable in an early medieval work.

Stuff&Junk: Comic Specials

"The Middle Ages" is a coloring book, but again, its size has kept it with the comic magazines.

 

Wizards and Jesters

The Quest for Merlin, by Nikolai Tolstoy

Nikolai is the grandnephew of Leo Tolstoy (if that means anything; it is a bit of trivia), and he published this deeply scholarly examination of the Merlin legend, its development and history, in 1985. I pounced upon it, as I love anything about Merlin. From the question of whether there was a historical Merlin to the cultural impact that the figure of Merlin has had, this is very thoroughly researched and does not skip or skimp on sources. The first academic book I ever found completely dedicated to the wizard.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: History. Literary. Softcover.

Merlin, by Norma Lorre Goodrich

Goodrich had already written many books on medieval literature when she started producing her books on Arthurian legend. There are two or three others in this series, but “Merlin” is the only one I had to have. I don’t want to go into her theories or conclusions or their validity; I got it just to read about Merlin, his age, and the early sources.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Legend. History. Softcover.

Merlin: The Prophet and His History, by Geoffrey Ashe

Ashe was the Arthurian scholar when I was high school and I read a couple of his books there. This is his book concentrating on Merlin. 2006. He comes to the conclusion that of all the figures in the Matter of Britain, Merlin is the one character that has the most chance of having been a real historical person. Contains the usual look at the impact he has had on literature and art.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Legend. History. Literature. Hardback.

Merlin: Shaman, Prophet, Magician, by John Matthews

A popular culture, as opposed to a scholarly, book about the wizard. Full of color reproductions of works of art and movie stills. Nice to look at.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Legend. Hardback.

Merlin and the Dragons of Atlantis, by Rita and Tim Hildebrandt.

Lord, it’s not good. It’s even less good than Urshurak, because it doesn’t have color pictures (except for the cover), and Tim’s black-and-white illustrations are rather cold and stark. The story (probably penned by Rita) is not a writerly story, but seems to be developed as a template or suggestion for a movie, perhaps a lesser Harryhausen. Still, Hildebrandt.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Fantasy. Novel. Hardback

OJRIL – The Completely Incomplete Graham Chapman, by Graham Chapman, Edited by Jim Yoakum.

“Unpublished scripts from Monty Python’s pipe-smoking genius.” Foreword by Eric Idle. Hilarious, especially “Jake’s Journey” which was to be the pilot for a proposed series in the late 80’s about a boy who travels between the real world and others as a squire to a knight (played by Chapman). Comedy and fantasy. It wasn’t quite understood by producers at the time.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Scripts. Comedy. Softcover.

The Book of Sequels, by Henry Beard, Christopher Cerf, Sarah Durkee, and Sean Kelly.

“In One Lavishly Illustrated Volume: Remakes, Updates, and Spin-Offs of the World’s Best-Loved Masterpieces!” Parodies of the Classics packaged as if for modern marketing. How can you explain humor – except to say this is one of the funniest books I ever read, especially since it basically predicted the re-hashing sequelitis that has come to plague popular culture.

Ranking: Keeper.

File Code: Humor. Softcover.

Cvltvre Made Stvpid, Written and Illustrated by Tom Weller.

“A Misguided Tour of Illiterature, Fine & Dandy Arts, and the Subhumanities.” Hard to describe the charm of this book; it is a constant barrage of puns and parodies, that build up into such a wave of affectionate satire on the sacred cows of our culture that you can only marvel as you laugh at the laugh-a-minute delivery.

Ranking: Hi-larious!

File Code: Humor. Parody. Softcover.

Leonardo's Notebooks, by Leonardo Da Vinci (Edited by H. Anna Suh)

A huge art book, a present from Susan and Andy, and so complete as to replace all the other Leonardo art books I used to own. My obsession with the man began with a PBS series (which I now own on VHS) back in middle school: “The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci”.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Art. Hardback.

The Age of the Renaissance, by Denys Hay, Editor.

Perhaps the biggest book I own, and one of my favorites from high school. Full of color reproductions and woodcut drawings, a great and grand pageant displaying all the works and discoveries and scholarship of that great epoch. I got this copy at Half-Price. [My copy doesn't have the cover, but I wanted to show it.]

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: History. Art. Hardback (and how!)