johnfallot

Except perhaps for Disney and Classic Comics, this was my first introduction to the legends surrounding King Arthur and his knights. I read it in junior high school, a beautifully illustrated old copy of the thing being, as I recall, in the classroom, available for "reading times" in English class. The idealized graphics and plates are what really captivated me. I just finished a book on the history of sex which had a section on the invention of romance in the 12-14th centuries in Provance and Acquitaine. Reading about the development of this genre and the ethos associated with it made me marvel at how very strongly my own ideas of love associate with something which was developed centuries ago, filtered through such images as were found in this book of lissome ladies and stalwart knights, of mortal combats reward for which would be a approbative glance, of impossible aspiration, fantastic idealizations. Since I started falling in love with sexual feeling at age ten and stayed unkissed until college, since I read a good deal of such literature in the meantime, it is possible to see how these incredible ideas took root and grew. The trick is in constructively reconciling the ideal to the actual, the task of coordinating what amount to religious notions to quotidian actualities. The reason I like Leonard Cohen as a poet is because he spans the distance between what one of my psychiatric clients once called "the kundalini and the cross."

2020-09-06 04:18