#sword at sunset

[finnlongman]

Found this delightful 1963 hardback of Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset in a charity shop for £3 earlier. I love that the cover design brief appears to have consisted solely of the title. "Sword? Sunset? Yeah no worries I'm on it. No, I don't need any further information." Like damn, yeah, that sure is a sword at sunset.

[agentbluefox]

“It is lonely never to have been loved, only devoured” -Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset

[verecunda]

Anyway, tonight on no I will never shut up about parallels between Tolkien and Sutcliff:

Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first éored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, for the battle-fury of his fathers ran like new fire in his veins, and he was borne up on Snowmane like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like an image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and the darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.

- “The Ride of the Rohirrim”, The Lord of the Rings

We flung our curve right-hand-wise around Badon Camp, riding like the Wild Hunt, for we must have had the best part of a mile to cover. I heard the drum of our squadrons’ hooves behind me and on either side; the wind of our going filled the standard so that the Red Dragon of Britain seemed to spread its wings in flight above us. We struck the Ridgeway and thundered down it towards its meeting point with the road south. Signus’s flying mane whipped back over my buckler; and as we swung into the mouth of the pass, at full pitch of my lungs I raised the war cry of Arfon: “Yr Widdfa! Yr Widdfa!” and heard it caught up behind me into a challenge, into a paean.

[...]

Presently the host of the Saxons had become a mass of swirling separated war bands that swayed and surged to and fro, each battling desperately for itself; with the cavalry busy among them. They were breaking away in flying groups, and later still, at twilight, when people in houses would be lighting candles for the women to weave by, after the evening stew, we were hunting the defeated rabble of a proud and mighty war host down the White Horse Vale.

Not today, not today, would Britain go down into the dark.

- “Badon Hill”, Sword at Sunset

[fuckyeaharthuriana]

arthurian books i’ve read:

Sword at Sunset (Sutcliff)

Historical setting, focusing on Arthur, Arthur/Guinevere, angsty Mordred, focusing on Arthur’s conquest of Britain, implied queer Arthur

[violetcancerian]

There will be more songs--more songs tomorrow, though it is not we who shall sing them.

[starkemaus]

so like. say I did wanna ease myself into arthurian legend. wheremst would you personally recommend dipping my toes in first?

Boy Howdy! 

I’ve given this some thought and the path I’m going to recommend might seem…roundabout but I want to: entice, educate, and elaborate *rolls up sleeves*

First, I would have you read Sword at Sunset by Rosmary Sutcliff. But Rachel! You say. SaS is a complex historical novel written as if Arthur had been a real person and there is certainly arthur™ content that is going to go over someone’s head who is not familiar with the myth! Perhaps, I say, sipping my English Breakfast and looking at you firmly over the lip of my spectacles. But the important things remain: A. it’s a fucking fantastic book. B. It merges the more romanticized and well known arch (ie: lancelot, Gwen, Mordred) with the lens of it’s original welsh roots, AND sets you up for a deep abiding love of the world that this story takes place in (which imo is lacking in other tellings because the setting takes such a backseat to the drama)

Now that you’ve fallen in love with this little diddy we move on to some more academic lit. Next up we have Le Morte d’Arthur or The Death of Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. This is what I fondly refer to as “The Arthurian Bible” Malory sets himself up as this Arthurian Expert and puts down every goddamn story he’s ever heard about Arthur, Lancelot, Gawain, Gareth, Tristan, Knighty McKnight pants. This is the text Monty Python was making fun of. This is the text everyone who writes Arthur has read. It’s got it’s moments but it’s a slog through repetitive (often conflicting lmao) stories. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say it was required reading because it is.

Ok, that was a journey, now you need a little pick me up? Non? Let us escape these French retellings and take a little trip over the Atlantic to the good ol’ US of A. Next stop The Once and Future King by T. H. White. This is another one that anyone who’s anyone in the athur community has read. You’ve seen Sword in the Stone? Yep it’s that. And yes Merlin really does turn Arthur into a squirrel. White was writing an Arthur for a country that had just gone through WWII and he plays heavily with the chivalric themes and ideas that might does not make right. You will appreciate more deeply how American this book is having read these others first and how the changes White makes reflect a desire to understand why we consider heroes…heroes.

Ok, back to some history for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is a fun little jaunt back in time (written around the time of the Canterbury Tales) and is a great peek at the humor and just general shenanigans this universe of literature can get up to. I have multiple translations of this but I recommend the Simon Armitage version because his modern english translation tried very hard to keep the tone and pace of the original text so that the experience isn’t some dry literal word for word mumbo jumbo (though admittedly it is fun to read the version I have where the Middle English is placed next to the translation so that you can see how ME just sounds like German spoken by someone with an incredibly awful Scottish accent).

Lastly in my Arthurian Lit Speed Run (patent pending) we have The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Caveat! Bradley did some shifty pedophilia stuff both in this book and real life and you *need* to know that going in. This book SCREAMS 70′s feminism and neo-paganism but it’s one of the few in the totally unofficial arthur canon that is told from the perspective of the women involved. She also fucks around with the myth in an interesting way in my opinion.

Overachiever extra credit:

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Mabinogion

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

The Story of King Arthur and his Knights by Howard Pyle

*looks up from clipboard* So tell me, have you heard the good word of our king once and king to be?

[oldshrewsburyian]

My HEART. I have read Sword at Sunset and I am /penslain/. What a gorgeous, sad book. Sutcliff's voice is awesome in the best way.

Oh, it delights me to hear this! I do adore that book… though I think being devastated by it is more or less inevitable.

[freckles-and-books]

Spending Sunday in bed because I love my new bedding so much (and tempting fate by drinking coffee on it). I’m hoping to finally finish Sword at Sunset today and cry about my poor doomed Artos.