Gatsby's Oxford by Christopher A. Snyder

Author:Christopher A. Snyder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2019-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

‘O my brother, Percivale,’ she said,

‘Sweet brother, I have seen the Holy Grail:

For, waked at dead of night, I heard a sound

As of a silver horn from o’er the hills

. . . and then

Streamed through my cell a cold and silver beam,

And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail,

Rose-red with beatings in it, as if alive,

Till all the white walls of my cell were dyed

With rosy colours leaping on the wall;

And then the music faded, and the Grail

Past, and the beam decayed, and from the walls

The rosy quiverings died into the night.89

Tennyson’s language and phallic/vaginal imagery capture and expand the eroticism of the medieval romance. In seeking the Holy Grail, however, we must remember that Galahad loses his spiritual lover, Perceval’s sister. In the Cistercian-influenced thirteenth-century remake of romance’s knight-errantry, as well as in Tennyson’s medievalism, spiritual transcendence—not physical love—is the true ending of the Quest. Like both Tolkien and Lewis, Fitzgerald was drawn to the ability of eros to transcend the physical realm, and like them he usually avoided descriptions of actual sexual acts between his fictional lovers apart from the kiss.90 Henry Dan Piper discusses Gatsby’s “mythopoeic nature” at length, comparing him to the Great or Noble Fool archetype of Celtic and Arthurian literature (in particular Perceval/Parzival).91 He suggests that Fitzgerald is drawing unconsciously on the medievalism of Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Barrie, and John William Locke (the last two mentioned as among Amory’s favorite authors in This Side of Paradise) and converting the Grail knight into a Horatio Alger poor-boy hero.

The young Jimmy Gatz starts out on a quest built on the American Dream of the self-made man who wins fortune and influence through the exertion of great physical rigor married to charisma. But instead of finding a love that will elevate his soul, he discovers an intelligent but fragile young woman who turns out to be La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the lovely, heartless creature feared by the Romantic poets (here we enter the realm of medievalism, rather than the medieval). There are indications of this in her name, Daisy Fay. “Daisy,” the beautiful flower whose pure white petals lead to an inner core of gold and, in some English varieties, are tipped in crimson (violence/blood).92 “Fay,” indicating the beautiful faeries that lure questing knights away from their world of masculine accomplishment into otherworldly exile or death. The most infamous of these was Morgan le Fay, remembered for her attempts to seduce Lancelot and usurp the power of King Arthur. Some scholars have seen Daisy Fay as a Morgan le Fay reincarnate!93

Perhaps this is unfair to Daisy—she does not set out to destroy Gatsby, who probably has less of a real understanding of who she is than does her husband. Daisy and Tom are famously described by Nick as “careless people,” but no one seems to care much about the death of Myrtle Wilson (except for her husband). Myrtle was neither old money aristocracy (like Tom, Daisy, and Nick) nor a parvenu craving Old

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