THE DESCENT: The first point to establish clearly (this time, I hope) is the nature of the narrator’s perspective, his untrustworthy account of events and their meaning. The primary evidence for that is his several references to Dante’s Divine Comedy, in particular his failure to understand the real nature of Dante’s Inferno and thus of sin and evil. Lance, for example, says to Hal: ”Not even your church took it [‘the sexual connection’] very seriously until recent years. Dante was downright indulgent with sexual sinners. They occupied a rather pleasant anteroom to hell.” (17). This judgement is decidedly false, since after Limbo, Circle 1, the circle of the virtuous pagans, Circle 2, the circle of the lustful, is the circle of those viciously blown around and around hell by the black wind of uncontrolled desire. In Esolen’s translation, “I learned that such a torment [That hellish cyclone that can never rest/snatches the spirits up in its driving whirl,/whisks them about and beats and buffets them] was designed/for the damned who were wicked in the flesh,/who made their reason subject to desire.” (Canto 5: 31-33; 37-39). The lustful are truly in hell proper; there is no pleasant anteroom in hell, not even Circle 1, Limbo.
Lance’s glib assessment of Dante’s treatment of the lustful is repeated a few pages further in his narrative, as he is attempting to define the spirit of New Orleans: “This city’s soul I think of as neither damned nor saved but eased rather, existing in a kind of comfortable Catholic limbo somewhere between the outer circle of hell, where sexual sinners don’t have it all that bad, and the inner circle of purgatory, where things are even better.” (23). Things are only better in Purgatory because these spirits have seen and repented their sin and evil [WP’s Lancelot has neither understood his sin nor repented it]; on the other hand, the final circle in Purgatory consists of a ring of fire through which all must pass before entering the earthly paradise. Dante is terrified, and it takes Virgil and Statius to get him through. Once again Lance does not seem to have a clue as to the real nature of evil and sin, which will lead shortly to his Quest, to see if he can find a real sin. Also, as in Augustine’s City of God, there are only two cities in Dante: the Inferno where we find the City of Dis, and the Purgatorio and the Paradiso where we see the reality of the City of Heaven taking shape and existing, i.e. the Heavenly Jerusalem.
#1. [before I run out of energy] In the Inferno Francesca provides an important context for thinking about Lance and his unfolding behavior as she describes to Dante the cause of her situation in Hell in Canto 5: “Love, which allows no loved one not to love,/seized me with such a strong delight in him/that, as you see it will not leave me yet.//Love led us to one death. The realm of Cain/waits for the man who quenched our lives.” Paola and Francesca are reading the story of the adultery committed by the Arthurian Lancelot and King Arthur’s wife Guinevere; they read no more that day but commit adultery as well, the first moment of sin described beautifully by Dante! Note well, that the person who killed them (Paola’s brother and Francesca’s husband) is in the ninth circle of Hell. The analogous situation in WP’s Lancelot is that P and F are Janos Jacoby and Lance’s wife Margot, while Lance is analogous to P’s brother who is in the ice of Caina, where reside the unrepentant betrayers of kin. Margot is, after all, Lance’s wife.
#2. The Quest, early on with Lance’s awareness of Margot’s infidelity: “Can good come from evil? Have you ever considered the possibility that one might undertake a search not for God but for evil?….what if you could show me a sin? A purely evil deed, an intolerable deed for which there is no explanation? Now there’s a mystery. People would sit up and take notice. I would be impressed. You could almost make a believer out of me.” (51-52)
“My quest was for a true sin—was there such a thing? Sexual sin was the unholy grail I sought./It is possible of course that there is no such thing and that a true sin, like the Grail, probably does not exist.” (140)
”The mark of the age is that terrible things happen but, there is no ‘evil’ involved. People are either crazy, miserable, or wonderful, so where does the ‘evil’ come in?/There I was forty-five years old and I didn’t know whether there was ‘evil’ in the world.” (139)
”So overnight I became sober, clear-eyed, clean, fit, alert, watchful as a tiger at a waterhole./Something was stirring. Sir Lancelot set out, looking for something rarer than the Grail. A sin.” (140) Not to give too much away at this point, but it should not be too difficult to see that the sin Lance seeks is going to be what he himself becomes or, more accurately, what he himself now is. It will remain for him at the end of his tale to see that reality in himself, the rapist and murder. Again: Lancelot: “Very well. I’ve finished. Is there anything you wish to tell me before I leave?” Hal/Percival: “Yes.” Novel ends, or, it is left to the reader to see what now should be the clear difference between what Lance doesn’t see and what Percival does, and the reader should see too. But back to the process or perhaps better, back to the descent.
#3. Note that Lance immediately begins preparations and describes in detail those preparations to blow up Belle Isle, who will stay and who he warns to leave. Premeditation!
“Elgin, how would you like to make a movie?” (140)
#4. Note the change in Hal, after Lance’s rant against the present age, whom Lance begins to call “Percival,” the name also of one of the Grail knights.
“What’s the matter? You look stricken for the first time since you’ve been coming here. Ha ha, so at last I’ve gotten a rise out of you./What did you say? What happened to me?/What do you mean? Do you mean what happened at Belle Isle?/That’s in the past. I don’t see what difference it makes./You want to know what happened?/It’s hard to remember. Jesus, let me think. My head aches. I feel lousy. Let me lie down for a while. You don’t look so hot either. You’re pale as a ghost./Come back tomorrow.” (160; end of Chapter 6, of which there are 9 chapters, as there are circles in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in the Divine Comedy; another possible allusion?)
Point: Lance doesn’t “see what difference” the events of the past make! In the quest for a sin, of course, they make all the difference in the world!
Point: Lance continually uses the name “Jesus” both as an expletive and as a reference to the Catholic priest, his friend Percival (see above). On page 84, for example, the connection between Christ and the priest is strongly suggested: “Jesus, come in and sit down. You look awful. You look like the patient this morning, not me. Why so pale and sad (“fond lover”)? After all, you’re supposed to have the good news [Gospel?], not me. Knowing you, I think I know what ails you. You believe all right, but you’re thinking, Christ, what’s the use? Has your God turned his back on you?” (Italics mine)
#5. Once you see the bipolar vision taking place, one of the delights in reading the novel is to see how the two perspectives exist together: Lance’s untrustworthy perspective and Hal/ Percival’s clear perspective/insight.
For example: He virtually rapes Raine Robinette: “I was alone, far above her, upright and smiling in the darkness.” (235) That is chilling, pun intended, as is his entire interaction with Raine that night before the house blows.
He then sees the adultery, after he enters “Margot’s bedroom, mine and Margot’s, that is.” (236). He finds Jacoby and Margot in bed together. “I didn’t see what I wanted to see after all. [the sin, the evil?] …. I knew only that it was necessary to know, to know only as the eyes know. The eyes have to know./But I did not see them after all. I felt them.” (236) Shortly thereafter, he fights Jacoby and essentially murders him: “We’ll never know what he wanted because his head was bending back and I was cutting his throat, I think. No, I’m sure. What I remember better than the cutting was the sense I had of casting about for an appropriate feeling to match the deed.” (242) The appropriate feeling, so to speak, will come.
When the house blows up the image Lance uses to describe his experience is revealing, as images are to be: “I ‘was wheeling slowly up into the night like Lucifer blown out of hell, great wings spread against the starlight.” (246) He unconsciously makes the identification of himself with the heart of darkness, Lucifer.
Apparently Percival asks him how he got burned since Lance had been blown away from the partially burning house: “I had to go back to find the knife.” (246; end of Chapter 8) A thing, like Excalibur, not a person, not his wife.
Then the “appropriate feeling” occurs in Chapter 9, though Lance doesn’t understand it: “The truth is that during all the terrible events that night at Belle Isle, I felt nothing at all. Nothing good, nothing bad, not even a sense of discovery. I feel nothing now except a certain coldness./I feel so cold, Percival./Tell me the truth. Is everyone cold now or is it only I?” (253) There’s the image from the final circle of Dante’s Inferno, which is spiritually where Lancelot is.
Lance, however, has a question regarding his quest which in itself is ironic given what he doesn’t see or understand: “The question is: Why did I discover nothing at the heart of evil? There was no ‘secret’ after all, no discovery, no flickering of interest, nothing at all, not even any evil….So I have nothing to ask you after all because there is no answer. There is no question. There is no unholy grail just as there was no Holy Grail.” (253)
With only the cold [of the ninth circle] there is no real humanity left in the person, no human warmth. Lance has become inhuman as is clear when he describes killing Jacoby: “All it came down to was steel molecules entering skin molecules, artery molecules, blood cells.” (254)
It’s clear at this point in particular that Percival, the Catholic priest, understands what Lance has become: “You gaze at me with such—what? Sadness? Love? What about love? Do you think I can ever love anyone? Explain the question./But that is beside the point. The point is, I know what I need to know and what I must do. Shall I tell you? Christ, you of all people should understand.” (254) Once again the double nature of the name is clear, the expletive and the identification of the priest as the sacramental presence of Christ, the sacramental presence dominating.
But Lance continues, “Come here and stand with me at the window. I want to show you something, some insignificant things you may not have noticed. Why so wary? You act as if I were Satan showing you the kingdoms of the world from the pinnacle of the temple.” (254)
There it is: Christ present in Percival versus Satan (the presence of evil) in Lancelot. And it’s Lance who again makes the unconscious identification of himself with that evil. What remains, on the one hand, is for Percival to show him what he has become.
Lancelot, I think, is an credibly rich and complex novel. Part of the joy of it is in seeing how various elements fit into the central reality of the quest for evil that is unfolding before us, and the way in which Lance’s and our culture is present in detail. Then there is the new woman, Anna, and how Lance understands her and how she fits in really. And the mysterious woman who appears during the hurricane, sort of the Lady in the Lake with the “sword,” i.e. the precious Bowie knife. Merlin and movies are at the heart of the experience too. All of these details relate to the character of Lancelot and the image of evil that he has become.
One last detail that clinches for me the meaning is the way one of Lance’s final comments relates back to the Dante epigraph: “You know something you think I don’t know, and you want to tell me but you hesitate.” (256) Percival has seen the city of the dead with Lancelot as the unconscious Satanic image of evil at the center. Yes?
A bit earlier, Lance comments on the emergence of the real sacramental presence of Christ in the priest who has resumed his priestly role: “So you pray for the dead. You know, something has changed in you. I have the feeling that while I was talking and changing, you were listening and changing. Am I wrong or have you reached a decision of sorts? No? You’re waiting for me to finish?” (254) Yes?
The clincher regarding Percival [the name is crucial now too, though it always was inherently]: “So you plan to take a little church in Alabama, Father, preach the gospel, turn bread into flesh, forgive the sins of Buick dealers, administer communion to suburban housewives?
”At last you’re looking straight at me but how strangely!” (256) Yes!
A teacher’s/critic’s confession: I am essentially an absolutist regarding understanding of works of literature. I know that there can be numerous and various interpretations of any given work of literature, but I believe that finally it is possible to see what the given work truly means. I think, for example, that I am right about what’s at the heart of Lance’s narrative. When I saw what the narrative was doing for the first time, I had an “Aha!” Moment! I read and taught for the “Aha!” moment, so to speak. Truthfully, they tended to be difficult and far apart, but when they occurred it made every moment spent reading and thinking worthwhile. My purpose as a teacher was to direct students how to see the “Aha! moment for themselves. How do the details of a poem, a short story, a novella, a novel come together to reveal the pattern and insight that is present in the work. One of my favorite authors with whom I have had the most success is Flannery O’Connor. Mrs. Turpin’s “Who do you think you are?” for example, reveals the heart of her sin and the nature of the unfolding action of the story. Or Parker, sitting under the (“fruit”/nut?) tree at the end of his story, “crying like a baby.” [The kind of tree is part of the meaning (pecan?), but I have forgotten, alas, without my text! The answer is always in the text.
Another favorite Aha moment occurred when I finally saw the pattern at the heart of Henry James’ The Figure in the Carpet! What a magnificent story that in a sense supports what I have been saying about the job of the literary teacher/critic. That story is about a critic who really doesn’t get “it” and who never will; it’s also, incidentally, about 3 readers who do get “it”! Who truly “see” into the work, to use that important metaphor.
And, a short story author I love but who frustrated me frequently: Eudora Welty! I remember dancing for joy when I finally understood Keela the Outcast Indian Maiden. [The title may be a bit off, but it’s close!] Sometimes it is almost as much fun not understanding as it is understanding. In either case the good reader begins to acquire the work of literature. If I have the energy and, of course, the life left I will try to illustrate that with Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, another work that I love.
Okay, as Porky Pig might say, “That’s all folks.”
Aha!