Spiritual & Secular Conceptions of Self-Perfection

[John Bachmann]

.....something i wrote a while ago...your comments appreciated!!!


THE ULTIMATE QUEST:

Secular and Spiritual Conceptions of Self-Perfection
in the Medieval Chivalric Romance






John Il Kwun
(215) 735 0121
kwu...@wharton.upenn.edu


Introduction
Perfection of the self is a theme that imbues every work of
the chivalric romantic tradition. It is, however, an elusive
concept of many definitions, rarely achieved by the adherents of
chivalry and seldom discussed explicitly by the authors of the
genre. Philosophers have generally described perfection in the
context of societal interactions. Adam Smith, for example,
stated:
...that to feel much for others and little for
ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge
our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection
of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind
that harmony of sentiments and passions in which
consists their whole grace and propriety...
In this school of thought, perfection of the self is relativistic
and functional, for it is a concept that is inconceivable and
irrelevant for man as an individual outside of society. The
knight's development and education (the Einbildung that makes the
Bildungsroman) -- in short, his quest to perfect the self --
follow these lines in two distinct manifestations. First, the
knight seeks to hone his martial skills, the success of which may
be determined only through battle with his peers. Second, the
knight cultivates his ability to interact with others in society
according to the strictures of chivalric courtesy, honor and
love. The consummation of these complementary quests bears
further elaboration, but these definitions are by no means
exhaustive nor comprehensive.
Ultimately, perfection for the knight in the chivalric
romance is a transcendent ideal that has little to do with
society. Indeed, as Malory, the Gawain-poet and Cervantes
suggest, absolute perfection of the self demands the rejection
and abnegation of society and its criteria for excellence and
virtue. In this sense, the cultivation of the individual assumes
spiritual and moral dimensions, a task which establishes a
dynamic contrary to the fulfillment of perfection aforementioned
-- as a relativistic concept whose function is merely to
facilitate harmonious interaction within society. The following
pages concentrate on the latter understanding of self-perfection
as spiritual and moral development, for it is a theme immanent to
each romance and, as I hope to demonstrate, one of the most
important found therein.
The medieval romance, from the grim, uncompromising fatalism
of Malory to the playful, "disordered order" of Cervantes,
entertains as well as edifies. At the very least, these are
tales of high-spirited adventure that transcend any specific
spatial, temporal or cultural orientation. It is of little
surprise that the Japanese schoolboy finds in the naive but
terribly proficient Perceval a youthful Mushashi, or sees in the
Arthurian romances the bushido and samurai of his own cultural
heritage. Yet, the chivalric romance, like the samurai
adventure, must be interpreted as allegory, for as such were
these works conceived by the authors of that age. We may adduce
that the most incredible of knight errantry's feats are often
heavy-handed, albeit innocent, devices to reify and underscore
specific themes and messages. With imaginative constructs like
the Perilous Ford, the Sangrail and the Sword of Balin, elements
of fantasy and adventure serve both to characterize the hero and
to articulate a theme. Accordingly, the following pages analyze
chivalric characters and their actions to construct an enduring
and germane concept of self-perfection that continues to amuse
and enlighten the modern reader.

Secular Perfection of the Self in War and Love
In the most fundamental sense, the perfection of the knight
demands the development and refinement of his faculties in both
love and war. The medieval Bildungsroman, notably Chretien de
Troyes' Perceval and Sir Thomas Malory's "Tale of Gareth," is
predicated on the notion that true knighthood is earned rather
than conferred. Concomitantly, and somewhat paradoxically, the
Bildungsroman implies the perfectibility of the individual
through his efforts, although even the best of knights may seldom
achieve this definitive state. As Don Quixote advised Sancho
before the latter's departure to govern Isle Barataria, "blood is
inherited but virtue acquired, and virtue has an intrinsic worth,
which blood has not." Even when one is born brother to the
Emperor of Rome, perfection must be earned, as we see in Durin's
subtle castigation of El Patin in Amadis of Gaul: "your birth is
better than your prowess or your courtesy." Similarly, Arthur
gives hope for the most churlish and "uncultivated" of louts when
he says of the unburnished Perceval: "... it's a matter of
upbringing, and he has learnt under a bad master. He can still
turn out a worthy vassal." Perfection, in short, is the
exclusive birthright of none but a prospect open to all,
ultimately contingent upon the efforts and fortunes of each
knight. Both Sancho and Don Quixote agree on this issue, but
color their beliefs with slightly differing nuances -- for the
Knight, "every man is the architect of his own destiny," while
for his Squire, retrospectively and with a shade less optimism,
"every man's the son of his own deeds."
The maturation of Beaumains into Gareth in Malory's Le Morte
D'Arthur provides the quintessential illustration of the knight's
development in the twin pursuits of love and war. As with
comparative statics in economics, Malory endows Arthur's court
with an aura of peace, youth and optimism so that we may fully
appreciate the changes within Gareth, ceteris paribus. In the
beginning, Gareth is an insouciant enigma, entering Arthur's
court requesting three favors, while refusing to offer even his
name in recompense. Sir Kay immediately gives Gareth the
demeaning (certainly to anyone aspiring to knight errantry)
appellation of "Fair-hands" and seats him "down among boys and
lads." Winning his knighthood and a quest by virtue of Arthur's
earlier promise, Gareth proves his abilities in battle by
defeating a series of most colorful opponents and dispatching to
Arthur "more worshipful knights this twelvemonth than six the
best of the Round Table have done, except Sir Launcelot."
However, Gareth's civic courtesy is at least as important as
his valor and martial prowess in winning Lady Lynet's approbation
and, transitively, Lady Lyonesse's love. In spite of Lynet's
designedly caustic companionship, Gareth maintains such perfect
courtesy and honor that she is eventually won over. She later
confesses to Gareth: "so foul ne shamefully did never woman rule
a knight as I have done you, and ever courteously ye have
suffered me," and pleads, "Alas, fair Beaumains, forgive me all
that I have missaid or done against thee." At the end, the
uncommon combination of Gareth's valor and courtesy wins him the
love of Lynet's sister, Lyonesse, who states: "for he hath had
great labour for my love, and passed many a dangerous passage."
Love, like knighthood, may be conferred nominally through a rash
promise or through enchantment. True love and nobility, however,
are earned only through personal effort and virtue.
Intricate rules of conduct govern both realms of human
interaction, and self-perfection as defined by one's success in
love and war is cumulative in nature and demands constant
vigilance. Even the renowned Gawain of Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight is imperfect, for we see him flinching in anticipation of
a blade's swing after succumbing to temptation, all the while
struggling to maintain a facade of self-control. Similarly, the
second part of Chretien's Yvain: The Knight with the Lion depicts
what Professor Benson describes as the "socialization" of Yvain,
a paradigm of the struggle that the quest for perfection entails.
The love of Laudine, which Yvain has won by virtue of his skill
at arms, must be reaffirmed through his courtesy and sustained
(and visibly demonstrated) sense of obligation.
Knights who asymmetrically display excellence in either
battle or in social niceties at the expense of the other are
abnormal and fail also to realize the elusive goal of self-
perfection. Rodomonte, in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, provides a
stark illustration of such unbalanced development -- a supreme
warrior with no conception of chivalric courtesy or honor. He
resembles a wrath-filled Hector or Achilles, cutting a swath
through the men, women and children of Paris, and is called by
Charlemagne, in his bitter invective, "this snarling dog,
unmuzzled, which eats men." A slightly more palatable, though
no less imperfect, individual is Chretien's Perceval, whose lack
of social grace and chivalric courtesy leads to his failure to
save the Fisher King and brings suffering to a number of
characters whom he encounters. (Later, we are told that these
"great harms" were caused by his sins, by imperfections in his
spiritual development.) Conversely, those knights who have
refined their social graces at the total rejection of excellence
at arms are also imperfect, like the eunuch-like courtier knights
that Don Quixote derides in one of his discourses on knight
errantry. Resembling the knights that compose the Gawain-poet's
Round Table (he writes: "[Arthur's knights] were afraid to answer
him, then gasped at his voice, And trembled, sitting motionless
in that noble Hall, silent as stones, as corpses;"), these
individuals tend to favor the revelry and celebration of the
court over the challenge of physical hardship and mental duress
requisite for perfection.
Yet, this definition of perfection as supreme proficiency in
both love and war is necessarily circumscribed by its initial
focus on societal interactions. Ultimately, it fails to capture
the true essence of self-perfection as depicted in the chivalric
romance. As evidence in the next section suggest, knights who
have mastered worldly, secular standards of conduct must still
respect a transcendent, spiritual and moral concept of
perfection. Moreover, success under the dictates of moral
perfectionism is often contrary to the knight's refinement of his
abilities in love and war. The knight's excellence is bound no
longer to the strength of his limbs and the eloquence of his
tongue, for the arena of struggle is more often the knight's
mind, conscience and heart than the battlefield, court or
bedroom. Most interestingly, although the ideal of moral
perfection may neither be feasible nor desirable, it is consonant
with the flawed characters of all chivalric romances and
ultimately preferable to more common standards of behavior.

Transcendent Perfection of the Self in Mind and Spirit
Thusfar we have seen that a superficial, though hardly
unenlightening, reading of the chivalric romances imparts a
concept of self-perfection as a function of one's achievements in
human relations -- in interactions both belligerent and
convivial. The attendant analysis treated each character as a
unitary, egoist actor, whose degree of perfection is exogenously
determined by his success in societal interactions. This
success, though determined in turn by the knight's own effort,
obviated any further elucidation of the knight himself, for we
accept at face value that some knights are always stronger or
more courteous and will try harder than others -- that a
Launcelot will defeat a Meliagaunt under any conditions, even
with one arm bound to his back. With the current conception of
perfection as a dynamic struggle waged within the individual, it
is necessary to examine the personalities of characters in
addition to their interactions with other players.
The proverbial glass half-empty is also a glass half-full,
and one way to determine methods of perfecting the self is to
study how individuals compensate for their transgressions and
sins. Throughout the romances is the theme of absolution through
penitence. "Sir Orfeo," although a brief poem, elegantly
illustrates a common response to personal shortcomings. Having
failed to protect the queen, Heurodis, Sir Orfeo abdicates and
rejects the courtly life for a purifying foray into nature:

Now that I have lost my queen,
the fairest lady men have seen,
I wish not woman more to see.
Into the wilderness I will flee...
Life in the wilderness entails the complete abnegation not only
of society, but of all its physical, material comforts: "He that
once had in plenty sweet/ all dainties for his drink and meat,/
now he must grub and dig all day,/ with roots his hunger to
allay." Having failed in his duties as king and husband, Orfeo
is granted a second chance only through the deprivation he
endures for "ten long years." The self, having been found
wanting, is remedied and perfected through abstinence from the
court's comforts and from total immersion in a harsh and
unforgiving state of nature. Only then is Orfeo able to employ
his musical virtuosity to win back Heurodis and his throne.
Chretien's aforementioned Yvain is another character that
finds redemption through self-imposed suffering. Having won
Laudine's love, Yvain is goaded by Gawain into postponing the
pleasure of consummation for greater worldly "reputation and
merit." When Yvain neglects Laudine's time-limit, her
anticipated rejection drives him mad with grief. Yvain later
muses that anyone who loses "the most joyful of all joys. .
.through his own fault has no right to enjoy good fortune."
Suffering, however, serves more than a simple punitive function,
for it improves, redeems and perfects the flawed individual.
Yvain philosophizes on these merits of penitential abstinence
with almost Nitzschean ex post logic:
The more a man has discovered a life of delight and
joy, the more, compared with another man, he is
distraught and stupefied by grief when it comes. A
weak man through practice and habit can carry a weight
that someone else of greater strength would be quite
incapable of bearing.
Although Chretien employs a magical unguent in Yvain's
partial restoration, it is actually Yvain's suffering and
depravation that not only absolves him of his past transgressions
but renews and improves him, and ultimately brings him closer to
perfection. Yvain makes this clear when seeking reconciliation
with Laudine: "Lady, one should show compassion to a sinner.
I've paid for my folly, and it was only right that I should pay
for it. It was foolishness that made me stay away, and I
acknowledge my guilt and my crime."
Moral and spiritual self-perfection is a purely personal
struggle that takes place in the rarified arena of one's soul.
Naturally, perfection in this sense is diametrically opposed to
the primacy of worldly, secular excellence as previously defined.
Unlike Orfeo and Yvain, Amadis of Gaul despairs for no ill that
he himself has committed:
Thus Amadis, now called Beltenebros, remained on the
Poor Rock, partaking the austerities of the hermit, not
for devotion, but for despair, forgetful of his great
renown in arms, and hoping and expecting death, -- all
for the anger of a woman!
Yet, Amadis' denial of his past excellence and his embracement of
Christian religiosity transform him in a way that a simple change
in identity cannot. After dwelling in penitence as Beltenebros,
he is transmuted to the extent that his brothers do not recognize
him. Having been falsely condemned, his period of suffering
empowers him to fight for Lisuarte with newly acquired vigor,
proclaiming "Gaul! Gaul! for I am Amadis." Through his trial on
the Poor Rock with Andalod, and through the baptism in battle of
his perfected self, Amadis recovers his love with Oriana and
assumes a more perfect level of existence.
In stark contrast to societal perfection which demands
personal effort and confidence, moral perfection often requires
the capitulation of the self to a conception of a higher order or
power. Paradoxically, perfection of the self comes only through
acknowledgement of one's limitations in light of this
transcendent power, analogous to the knight's spiritual
development with his renouncement of worldly and physical
considerations. Two examples sufficiently illustrate this
point. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain fails the
tests that Morgan le Fay has designed, for he "quickly, happily"
chooses the protective power of a secular belt over that of the
divine God, his judgement impaired by his overweening love for
his own life. The Green Knight says to Gawain: ". . .you failed
a little, lost good faith/ -- Not for a beautiful belt, or in
lust,/ But for love of your life. I can hardly blame you."
Gawain then pleads for and receives absolution, becoming as "pure
in heart/ As if from your birth to this day you'd never/
Sinned!" Gawain is absolved, made stronger by his mistake, but
perfection eludes him for he lacked the moral fortitude to place
trust in his own virtue and that of God. Malory's Gawain is
similarly impervious to spiritual development, refusing to do
penance because he believes that "we knights adventurous suffern
great woe and pain."
The second example comes later in Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur
when Launcelot draws his sword to slay the lions at the gate of
the castle containing the Sangrail. Launcelot's sword is
stricken from his hand and he is reproved by a voice: "O man of
evil faith and poor belief, wherefore trowest thou more on thy
harness than in thy Maker, for He might more avail thee than
thine armour, in whose service that thou are set." Launcelot
is allowed to pass only when he has affirmed his faith in God by
making the sign of the cross. Indeed, the entire Sangrail
sequence serves as a unique case study of chivalric self-
perfection, for it is that rare social experiment with one
dependent variable (the Sangrail), one explanatory variable (the
knight's perfection) and many degrees of freedom (the numerous
knights of the Round Table). The game is also bounded by strict
rationality, for as the good hermit states, the Sangrail
"appeareth not to sinners." Most strikingly, the three knights
most successful in the quest -- Bors, Perceval and Galahad -- are
younger knights who have had little experience in combat and none
in love. Conversely, Gawain, Ector and the most worldly of
Arthur's knights cannot even participate in the quest, and as
Gawain correctly confesses, "it seemeth me. . .that for our sins
it will not avail us to travel in this quest." Launcelot
achieves a modicum of success only because he is "shriven" and
transformed by his earnest efforts to perfect himself through
penance and abstinence. When he does heal Urre of Hungary, it is
only through earnest supplications to God. Self-perfection,
then, is possible only by rejecting secular, societal criteria
for excellence and by accepting the superiority of a transcendent
power that orders human lives and establishes a contrary standard
of perfection for which all must strive.
Under the very different guise of a serio-comic satire,
Cervantes' Don Quixote carries this very same message. For
Quixote, the transcendent order is his own idealized reading of
chivalry, as he avers repeatedly to Sancho: ". . .get it into
your five senses that all my actions, past, present and future,
are very well based in reason and conform in every way to the
rules of chivalry." Like Galahad and worldly temptations,
Quixote renounces with great alacrity and fervor an unimaginative
society held captive by a Church truculent in its suppression of
human expression. The ecclesiastic of the Duke's acquaintance
admonishes Quixote as follows:
...go back to your home, and bring up your children, if
you have any. Look after your estate, and stop
wandering about the world, swallowing wind and making
yourself a laughing-stock to all who know you and even
to those who do not.
As sin blinds the unfaithful from seeing the Sangrail, Quixote's
countrymen are unable to take the leap of faith to a higher order
of existence -- a leap that would collectively bring a
renaissance of that "most happy age in which the order of
chivalry flourished." Quixote, by Sancho's heart-felt
description to the bogus squire, is as pure as Galahad in his own
way:
I mean there is nothing of the rogue in him. His soul
is as clean as a pitcher. He can do no harm to anyone,
only good to everybody. There's no malice in him. A
child might make him believe it's night at noonday.
And for that simplicity I love him as dearly as my
heart-strings, and can't take to the idea of leaving
him for all his mild tricks.
Moreover, Quixote's dismal record in combat conduces quite neatly
with our postulated trade-off between secular and spiritual
perfection. In short, as Quixote declares himself, "chivalry is
a religion," to which he adheres which such faith that he and
those around him are gradually transformed, through a process of
maturation and self-revelation that unfolds in this most unusual
and entertaining Bildungsroman.

Conclusion: Perfection in an Imperfect World
As the old proverb states, one does not need to eat the
whole ox to know that it is tough. Our cursory study of several
chivalric romances and their heroes suggests two broad, competing
conceptions of self-perfection that serve as a defining
characteristic of the genre. The first definition relied on
societal interactions in love and war as a means of testing,
demonstrating and enhancing one's efforts at self-perfection,
while the latter saw perfection as a quest for a transcendent,
spiritual, moral ideal. Perfection of the self, in both cases,
is a dynamic process of maturation over time, and the standard of
moral excellence is even more elusive than the impossibly
rigorous curriculum of secular cultivation.
These realizations beg several questions in the reader: Of
what utility are these unrealizable ideals of human perfection?
What sort of society results from an aggregation of individuals
seeking perfection? In partial response, we have an excerpt
from Don Quixote's trenchant repartee to the Censor and Yukio
Mishima's contemporary interpretation of the Hagakure,
respectively. First, Don Quixote asks rhetorically: "Is it,
perchance, idleness and waste of time to wander through the
world, seeking no pleasures but the austerities by which the
virtuous ascend to the seat of immortality?" To this, the
reader may sympathize with Don Antonio who appreciates the many
"pleasures afforded by [Don Quixote's] extravagances" in his
efforts at self-perfection. Don Quixote has indeed achieved
immortality, due in no small part to his cult of self-perfection.
That our reach should exceed our grasp is indeed justification
for heaven as well as for the chivalric romance. The result is a
genre and a literature that not only entertain, but edify the
reader on man's universal condition -- his eternal quest to
cultivate himself and to attain a higher, more meaningful level
of existence.
Mishima draws from the experience of the samurai,
conclusions quite similar to those we have reached with the
chivalric romance -- we must reconcile the impossibility of
perfection with our concurrent need to strive for this ever-
elusive standard. Mishima fully appreciates this paradoxical
dilemma when he writes of the swordsman's struggle:
But on a still higher level there is an extreme
realm that transcends the skill of ordinary mortals.
One who penetrates deep into the Way of this realm
realizes that there is no end to his training, and that
the time will never come when he may be satisfied with
his labors. Therefore a samurai must know his
shortcomings well and spend his life in training
without ever feeling he has done enough.
By imbuing their characters with an idealized, stylized form of
the very human need for self-perfection within the tenets of
chivalry and Christianity, by placing these actors in settings of
high adventure and fantasy, the authors of the chivalric romances
have simultaneously guaranteed their creations popular
immortality while bequeathing a concept of perfection that is
germane today for individuals and societies everywhere.
Perfection is impracticable and imperfect, but it is a refreshing
change from the tawdry mandates of pragmatism.
Adam Smith, The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1976), 25.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedera, Don Quixote, J.M. Cohen,
trans., (London: Penguin Books, 1950), Part II, Chapter XLII,
738.
Amadis of Gaul, Book II, Chapter V, 277.
Chretien de Troyes, "Perceval: The Story of the Grail," in
Arthurian Romances, D.D.R. Owen, trans., (London: J.M. Dent &
Sons, 1987), 387.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter LXVI, 896 and Part
I, Chapter XLVII, 423.
Sir Thomas Malory, "The Tale of Gareth," in Le Morte
D'Arthur, Janet Cowen, ed., Volume I, Book VII, Chapters 1-2,
(London: Penguin Books, 1969), 233.
Sir Thomas Malory, "The Tale of Gareth," in Le Morte
D'Arthur, Volume I, Book VII, Chapter 33, 296.
Malory, "The Tale of Gareth," Le Morte D'Arthur, Book VII,
Chapter 11, 251-252.
Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, Book VII, Chapter 21, 271.
Ludvico Aristo, Orlando Furioso, Part I, Barbara Reynolds,
trans., (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1975), Canto XVII, 504-505.
Chretien de Troyes, "Perceval: The Story of the Grail," in
Arthurian Romances, 458.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Burton Raffel, trans., (New
York: New American Library Penguin, 1970), Part One, Lines 241-
243, 55.
"Sir Orfeo," in the Sourcebook. From Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, J.R.R. Tolkien, trans., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1975), lines 209-212.
"Sir Orfeo," lines 253-257.
Chretien de Troyes, "Yvain: The Knight with the Lion," in
Arthurian Romances, 314.
Chretien de Troyes, "Yvain: The Knight with the Lion," 328-
329.
Chretien de Troyes, "Yvain," 372.
Amadis of Gaul, Book II, Chapter 6, 285.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Burton Raffel, trans., (New
York: NAL Penguin, 1970), Lines 2366-2395, 121.
Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II, Book XIII, Chapter 16,
266.
Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II, Book XVII, Chapter 14,
354.
Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II, Book XVI, Chapter 6,
308.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part I, Chapter XXV, 201.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter XXXI, 673.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter XIII, 547.
Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter XXXII, 674.
Yukio Mishima, The Way of the Samurai: Yukio Mishima on
Hagakure in Modern Life, Kathryn Sparling, trans., (New York:
Basic Books, Inc., 1977), 121.