In her essay on rereading, Elisa Gabbert - or at least her husband, John - has 'a theory that everyone is either a squid or an eel. Baby squids are born as perfectly formed but teeny versions of their later selves. Eels go through radical changes over the course of one lifetime, to the degree that scientists used to think eels at different life stages were totally different types of eel.' For Gabbert's husband, an opinion formed on a book ten to fifteen years ago is a suspect opinion, one he can no longer be sure of because 'Every five to ten years, he feels like a different self.' For Gabbert, 'it's the same river and I am the same man.'
When I reread books, I long to be an eel. I want to have an entirely new perspective on the narrative. I live for the new perspective. One of the first great joys I experienced studying literature was the unexpected freedom to be found in the fact that you could have two wildly different interpretations of a text and they could both be valid. This strikes me as a magnificent liberation - from the straitjacket of an opinion, from the confines of my own mind, from the obligation to fight for a point of view. About five years ago, I found myself returning to books I had read as a teenager, not as a conscious choice but in a compulsive kind of way. I wanted to see if I had changed from the person I was back then, and rather hoped that I had. What better way, I reasoned, to see the effects of all those years thinking about and teaching literature, all those years in and out of therapy, all those years surely, hopefully, growing up! - what better way than to reread old books I'd loved and find my understanding entirely altered.
One of the first series I reread like this was Mary Stewart's Arthurian sagas. They were issued on Audible in February 2019 and I'm sorry to say I waited all through the winter in a state of suppressed excitement for them to be released. Between the ages of 15 and 18, I was in love with historical situations in literature, whether that was the medieval period or the Regency era or the Victorian age or the 1920s. I had a craving for myth and legend too, and frankly, it's a shame that I'm not 16 now that retelling Greek myth has become such a massive genre. I would have hoovered that right up. Fortunately, Mary Stewart had written a series of chunky novels based on the life and times of Merlin, the sorcerer in King Arthur's Court and I adored them. The Crystal Cave (1970) was the first and it offered a kind of prequel to the well-known legends, a coming-of-age novel in which Merlin discovers his powers, hones them, and becomes the mystical lieutenant of Uther Pendragon.
When we meet Merlin he's plain old Myrddin Emrys, grandson of the King of South Wales, but his mother refuses to say who his father was. This makes life troublesome for Merlin in the court. His status is unclear which leads to him being both under- and overestimated, a bastard brat and an unknown quantity. He is particularly at risk from his evil uncle, Camlach, who views him as a potential threat to his royal lineage, and never more so when his father might return and Merlin refuses to train as a priest. Camlach decides to take matters into his own hands, making young Merlin a gift of a ripe apricot, while eating one himself. But the situation does not play out as he planned:
"What is it?" asked my uncle. He sounded edgy and impatient. The juice of his apricot was running down his chin. "Don't stand there staring at it boy! Eat it! There's nothing wrong with it, is there?" I looked up. The blue eyes, fierce as a fox, stared down into mine. I held it out to him. "I don't want it. It's black inside. Look, you can see right through." [...] My uncle, stooping, snatched the fruit from my hand and threw it from him, hard against the wall. It burst in a golden splash of flesh against the brick, and the juice ran down. Camlach flapped at it with a queer, abrupt gesture, and said to me in a voice that was suddenly all venom: "Keep away from me after this, you devil's brat. Do you hear me? Just keep away."
This is Merlin's first vision, and often they will come at fortuitous moments. As he grows older, though, they are accompanied with ill-effects, migraine-like auras and headaches, fainting fits. Often he doesn't know what he's said or done until afterwards. This novel is in fact light on fantasy and much heavier on history. We are located in the 5th century AD and deep in the midst of a war-torn Britain, fought over by multiple kings. Stewart creates a relatively clean Dark Ages, not for her the stink and stench of some more brutal novelisations, but she is intensely interested in both the spirituality of the age and the unruly transfer of power. After this near-fatal encounter, Merlin spends much of his time in the local hills and it's here he discovers the crystal cave of the title, inhabited by the wise man Galapas. He has of course found his mentor, and Galapas will instruct him in maths and medicine, science and engineering, Greek and astronomy. So when the old King, Merlin's grandfather, dies and Merlin must flee Wales or be murdered by his uncle, he has skills to offer. Merlin makes his way to France and the court of Ambrosius, exiled brother of Uther Pendragon. They will form a significant alliance and, with Merlin's help, Ambrosius will return to begin the arduous process of uniting England.
Reading the Arthurian books ruined me for the rest of Mary Stewart's novels. They have a real fire to them and an edge that her romantic adventure stories lack. It doesn't hurt that the Arthurian legends are infinitely fascinating. This novel ends with Merlin now at the height of his powers, procuring the Lady Ygraine for Uther, a union that will both end in tragedy and start the origin story of King Arthur. The next novel, The Hollow Hills, is a brave piece of storytelling. Merlin kicks his heels, mostly, for the first two-thirds of the story, and then Stewart unleashes a grown Arthur into her tale and the whole plot ignites. She does just enough to keep the reader with her through that necessary period of waiting, and then I inhaled the final third with goosebumps prickling on my skin. The final novel, The Last Enchantment is the weakest of the series, and inevitably sad. But The Crystal Cave is arguably the finest of the three. Merlin solves his problems through a clever combination of intelligence, learning and magic. His trajectory is never certain (even though we know, in theory it is), the threats that surround him are plentiful and real. His fortune turns on a dime. And Stewart manages the feat of making this strange, loveless and often lost boy, in possession of a power he scarcely understands, into a richly sympathetic character.
So, by the end of listening to The Crystal Cave, I found that I was a squid, not an eel. I reacted to the novel in exactly same way that I had at 15. But there was an unexpected gift to be had here; it was not all disappointment. Instead, I found myself constructing my own theory of rereading, put back in touch with an ardent, hopeful 15-year-old self who also stood on the brink of self-discovery, ready to find the world enchanting and full of promise. The Crystal Cave contained a horcrux of my adolescence, a part of myself that I did not know I had left behind, but which was waiting for me to come back and claim it. A little bit of real reading magic.
