I just finished the Worm Ouroboros and as it is a big, epic book, it put me in the mood for more tales of yore, namely rereading The Once and Future King (and if you've seen Camelot or Disney's The Sword in the Stone, you have actually sampled a section of this curious work!). I called the Worm Ouroboros a christianized myth as it were, not Christian in the sense that it is anything like Narnia or Tolkien's epic, but rather that it is the result of an education founded in the christianized classical thought that resulted when Rome fell and the myths spouted by a collection of Galilean fishermen took hold of popular thought and culture. Perhaps it is more a medieval epic than it is an odyssey, but what struck me as just plain wrong was the end. Throughout the book is an epic struggle of mythic proportions against the powers of darkness, the cost to the seeming demigod heroes is immense but even more is the utter wickedness borne by those of common birth, who die in their thousands unnamed and unmourned, with only a little side note on their utter misery at the hands of the villains. When finally the good has conquered, rather than rejoice that peace has been won, and little thinking that another great evil will no doubt arise from some corner unlooked for, our heroes mope about that their playmates have been overthrown and thus has all glory ended, and when given the chance, they happily renew their age old pledge of violence against their now eternal foes, never blinking an eye to ask what the common farmer, whose sons will die nameless on sea or land, while his daughters and wife are ravished, his holdings burned, and he himself brutally murdered, will think upon the matter, as long as these great ones can have their eternal glory.
Enter the modern Arthurian saga that dares to rethink the ancient tale, exploring in full the idea that Might does not make Right, that glory for its own sake is wrong. That Men are the only species that routinely goes to war against itself for no better reason than that they don't agree over some silly matter none can remember once the blood starts flying. Neither of these books are written from an orthodox Christian perspective, indeed, Once and Future makes plenty of sly jabs at religion and God while still stealing from its ideals to make its point. Worm glories in Man's quest for personal glory whereas Once and Future bemoans his fallen and selfish nature somehow hoping some earthly king, himself a fallen man, can overcome it. The cure to both is a good dose of Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton who all wrote and lived during the same era, namely during and after the two world wars.
Worm envisions a bloody and dark future wherein death and destruction and evil is borne by all men for the glory of a few. Once and Future ponders over what life might be like could man but overcome his inherently selfish nature, finding no satisfactory answer but 'maybe tomorrow!' Both inevitably sad pictures of humanity serving or saving itself. Both an endless and meaningless cycle of personal ambition and trying to overcome it, only to fail and raise up a new sort of tyrant instead, the futile fulfillment of the hopeless worm eating his own tail.
The myths of Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton are the cure for this dismal miasma, this stark gray utopia that is neither morning nor evening but always a bitter November day. We need not a circle but a cross! The dragon is not content to eat his own tail but rather wishes to consume the whole world and all reality besides. There is an everlasting glory but it is not found in our personally vanquishing the worm but rather in following the only King Who can, and we die not nameless minions, unmourned, uncounted, rather has He our names graven upon His very heart, his very hand, and it is He that died in our stead, not a glorious Captain in war but rather an innocent criminal in shame. And when He brings His promised peace, it will not be boring or pointless, but will grow from glory to glory, forever, for His glory is to be our own! We can neither save ourselves or win eternal glory to ourselves that last more than a sunrise, nor match even the glory of a simple flower that fades within a day. But He who wrought both Day and Night, lilies and Men, has glory to spare, for He is the true master of the Serpent that has for a while proclaimed himself King, and of the mean little potentates of all the ages that likewise think they rule the world, but are merely gnats in all the long ages to come.
Both books are interesting and intriguing and thought provoking, but neither gets it right when it comes to true glory and the source thereof. Tolkien's great epic pushes back the darkness at great cost and most certainly never wishes for its return, though he has characters enough that wish for glory for its own sake, rather it is his noble vision of a lasting glory from beyond the world's shores that makes this epic so beloved and remembered when the other books are becoming almost obscure, though no less epic in scale or excellent in execution, it just happens that Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton's tales happen to be true, and in our heart of hearts, this is indeed what we desire, no matter what our lesser thoughts tell us at any given moment. Forego despair and never ending darkness, embrace the True Light of the World and never again fall into abject and utter night, or worse, an unending gloom with never a star to light again the way!
