Chivalry

Chivalry

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Title: Chivalry
Author: James Branch Cabell
Release Date: March 28, 2004 [eBook #11752] [Date last updated:
September 30, 2005]
Language: English
Character set encoding: iso-8859-1
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CHIVALRY***
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CHIVALRY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL

1921

TO ANNE BRANCH CABELL
"AINSI A VOUS, MADAME, A MA TRÈS HAULTE ET TRÈS
NOBLE DAME, A QUI J'AYME A DEVOIR ATTACHEMENT ET
OBÉISSANCE, J'ENVOYE CE LIVRET."

Introduction
Few of the more astute critics who have appraised the work of James
Branch Cabell have failed to call attention to that extraordinary
cohesion which makes his very latest novel a further flowering of the
seed of his very earliest literary work. Especially among his later books
does the scheme of each seem to dovetail into the scheme of the other
and the whole of his writing take on the character of an uninterrupted
discourse. To this phenomenon, which is at once a fact and an illusion
of continuity, Mr. Cabell himself has consciously contributed, not only
by a subtly elaborate use of conjunctions, by repetition, and by
reintroducing characters from his other books, but by actually setting
his expertness in genealogy to the genial task of devising a family tree
for his figures of fiction.
If this were an actual continuity, more tangible than that fluid
abstraction we call the life force; if it were merely a tireless reiteration
and recasting of characters, Mr. Cabell's work would have an
unbearable monotony. But at bottom this apparent continuity has no
more material existence than has the thread of lineal descent. To insist
upon its importance is to obscure, as has been obscured, the epic range
of Mr. Cabell's creative genius. It is to fail to observe that he has treated
in his many books every mainspring of human action and that his
themes have been the cardinal dreams and impulses which have in them
heroic qualities. Each separate volume has a unity and harmony of a
complete and separate life, for the excellent reason that with the
consummate skill of an artist he is concerned exclusively in each book

with one definite heroic impulse and its frustrations.
It is true, of course, that like the fruit of the tree of life, Mr. Cabell's
artistic progeny sprang from a first conceptual germ--"In the beginning
was the Word." That animating idea is the assumption that if life may
be said to have an aim it must be an aim to terminate in success and
splendor. It postulates the high, fine importance of excess, the choice or
discovery of an overwhelming impulse in life and a conscientious
dedication to its fullest realization. It is the quality and intensity of the
dream only which raises men above the biological norm; and it is
fidelity to the dream which differentiates the exceptional figure, the
man of heroic stature, from the muddling, aimless mediocrities about
him. What the dream is, matters not at all--it may be a dream of
sainthood, kingship, love, art, asceticism or sensual pleasure--so long
as it is fully expressed with all the resources of self. It is this sort of
completion which Mr. Cabell has elected to depict in all his work: the
complete sensualist in Demetrios, the complete phrase-maker in Felix
Kennaston, the complete poet in Marlowe, the complete lover in Perion.
In each he has shown that this complete self-expression is achieved at
the expense of all other possible selves, and that herein lies the tragedy
of the ideal. Perfection is a costly flower and is cultured only by an
uncompromising, strict husbandry.
All this is, we see, the ideational gonfalon under which surge the
romanticists; but from the evidence at hand it is the banner to which
life also bears allegiance. It is in humanity's records that it has reserved
its honors for its romantic figures. It remembers its Caesars, its saints,
its sinners. It applauds, with a complete suspension of moral judgment,
its heroines and its heroes who achieve the greatest self-realization.
And from the splendid triumphs and tragic defeats of humanity's
individual strivings have come our heritage of wisdom and of poetry.
Once we understand the fundamentals of Mr. Cabell's artistic aims, it is
not easy to escape the fact that in Figures of Earth he undertook the
staggering and almost unsuspected task of rewriting humanity's sacred
books, just as in Jurgen he gave us a stupendous analogue