Figures of Earth | Page 4

is obvious, of course, that in a single volume of this bulk there could
not be included more than a selection from the great body of myths
which, we may assume, have accumulated gradually round the mighty
though shadowy figure of Manuel the Redeemer. Instead, my aim has

been to make choice of such stories and traditions as seemed most fit to
be cast into the shape of a connected narrative and regular sequence of
events; to lend to all that wholesome, edifying and optimistic tone
which in reading-matter is so generally preferable to mere intelligence;
and meanwhile to preserve as much of the quaint style of the gestes as
is consistent with clearness. Then, too, in the original mediaeval
romances, both in their prose and metrical form, there are occasional
allusions to natural processes which make these stories unfit to be
placed in the hands of American readers, who, as a body, attest their
respectability by insisting that their parents were guilty of
unmentionable conduct; and such passages of course necessitate
considerable editing.
II
No schoolboy (and far less the scholastic chronicler of those last final
upshots for whose furtherance "Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus
wrote in Oxford cloisters") needs nowadays to be told that the Manuel
of these legends is to all intents a fictitious person. That in the earlier
half of the thirteenth century there was ruling over the Poictoumois a
powerful chieftain named Manuel, nobody has of late disputed
seriously. But the events of the actual human existence of this Lord of
Poictesme--very much as the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa has been
identified with the wood-demon Barbatos, and the prophet Elijah,
"caught up into the chariot of the Vedic Vayu," has become one with
the Slavonic Perun,--have been inextricably blended with the legends
of the Dirghic Manu-Elul, Lord of August.
Thus, even the irregularity in Manuel's eyes is taken by Vanderhoffen,
in his Tudor Tales, to be a myth connecting Manuel with the Vedic
Rudra and the Russian Magarko and the Servian Vii,--"and every
beneficent storm-god represented with his eye perpetually winking
(like sheet lightning), lest his concentrated look (the thunderbolt)
should reduce the universe to ashes.... His watery parentage, and the
storm-god's relationship with a swan-maiden of the Apsarasas
(typifying the mists and clouds), and with Freydis the fire queen, are
equally obvious: whereas Niafer is plainly a variant of Nephthys, Lady

of the House, whose personality Dr. Budge sums up as 'the goddess of
the death which is not eternal,' or Nerthus, the Subterranean Earth,
which the warm rainstorm quickens to life and fertility."
All this seems dull enough to be plausible. Yet no less an authority than
Charles Garnier has replied, in rather indignant rebuttal: "Qu'ont étè en
réalité Manuel et Siegfried, Achille et Rustem? Par quels exploits
ont-ils mérité l'éternelle admiration que leur ont vouée les hommes de
leur race? Nul ne répondra jamais à ces questions.... Mais Poictesme
croit à la réalité de cette figure que ses romans ont faite si belle, car le
pays n'a pas d'autre histoire. Cette figure du Comte Manuel est réelle
d'ailleurs, car elle est l'image purifiée de la race qui l'a produite, et, si
on peut s'exprimer ainsi, l'incarnation de son génie."
--Which is quite just, and, when you come to think it over, proves Dom
Manuel to be nowadays, for practical purposes, at least as real as Dr.
Paul Vanderhoffen.
III
Between the two main epic cycles of Poictesme, as embodied in _Les
Gestes de Manuel and La Haulte Histoire de Jurgen_, more or less
comparison is inevitable. And Codman, I believe, has put the gist of the
matter succinctly enough.
Says Codman: "The Gestes are mundane stories, the History is a
cosmic affair, in that, where Manuel faces the world, Jurgen considers
the universe.... Dom Manuel is the Achilles of Poictesme, as Jurgen is
its Ulysses."
And, roughly, the distinction serves. Yet minute consideration
discovers, I think, in these two sets of legends a more profound, if
subtler, difference, in the handling of the protagonist: with Jurgen all of
the physical and mental man is rendered as a matter of course; whereas
in dealing with Manuel there is, always, I believe, a certain perceptible
and strange, if not inexplicable, aloofness. Manuel did thus and thus,
Manuel said so and so, these legends recount: yes, but never anywhere
have I detected any firm assertion as to Manuel's thoughts and

emotions, nor any peep into the workings of this hero's mind. He is
"done" from the outside, always at arm's length. It is not merely that
Manuel's nature is tinctured with the cool unhumanness of his father
the water-demon: rather, these old poets of Poictesme would seem,
whether of intention or no, to have dealt with their national hero as a
person, howsoever admirable in many of his exploits,