THE SPACE OF TRANSFORMATION: MERLIN BETWEEN TWO DEATHS

Abstract

Introduction: the changing shape of MerlinIn thirteenth-century French prose romance, Merlin is a hybrid, a shape-shifter, an omniscient author, and a disembodied voice. The prophet of the Grail who is fathered by a devil, he has the gift of omniscience about past and future, and yet is defeated by a woman to whom he teaches all his magic. Merlin knows that he is destined to be imprisoned by the woman he loves, and yet searches out this prison. Although this defeat removes Merlin as a physical presence from the Arthurian landscape and the events which unfold within it, his influence is still felt within the text he has shaped: his tomb is not sealed off, but becomes a space of re-creation and metamorphosis which opens more narrative possibilities than can be dealt with by any one prose romance. In this article, I shall argue that Merlin's shape-shifting is reflected in the reconfiguration of the textual spaces he inhabits. At various points in the texts which portray him, Merlin appears as a child, an old man, a woodcutter, a hideously ugly herdsman, a handsome 'prodome', a messenger, a peasant, a blind minstrel, a wild man, and a talking stag.1 His omniscience means that he is able to dictate events in both senses of the verb: he intervenes and advises in order to influence the plot of the Arthurian estoire; and he recounts its events to his scribe in order to supervise its recording in written record.As Merlin changes shape, the shapes into which he writes himself also change. The tale of Merlin in thirteenth-century French is part of a wider story cycle teliing of the Grail and Arthur's kingdom. The various manifestations of this long, enchanting and massively popular tale have a complex and controversial tradition, which I outline at the beginning of this article. Merlin's crucial disappearance from the Arthurian action is staged in a number of different ways across this tradition, but, as Yves Vade states, this disappearance is characterized by his enclosure in 'des lieux paradoxaux ou il est inaccessible, introuvable, a jamais present/absent'.2 Vade also points out that the tomb in which Merlin is enclosed does not bring about closure:3 the enchanter not only accepts but desires this incarceration, marking him with what Cary Howie calls 'claustrophilia', in his book of the same name.4In this article, I shall explore Merlin's claustrophilic tendencies in relation to psychoanalytic formulations of the 'zone de l' entre-deux-morts' and the voice as the objet a. The story of an individual who knowingly embraces his destiny to be walled up alive in a tomb is also the story of Antigone, who, in Sophocles' play, refuses to stop honouring her brother's corpse, and is condemned to be shut up in his tomb.5 In his reading of this play, Jacques Lacan formulates the notion of the 'zone de G entre-deux-morts' to describe Antigone's determined identification with her dead brother.6 The Lacanian argument is a useful one for reflecting on the relationship between the textual space of Merlin's story and the physical space of the sage's tomb, since it offers a way of configuring the apparent paradox posed by both spaces. While Merlin does not escape his final prison, his voice does persist as a means of contact with the continuing events of the Arthurian world, and their continuing narration in prose romance. The voice is a trace of a person's bodily identity, insubstantial in itself yet vital and potentialiy replete with meaning: this is the significance of the voice as an object in psychoanalytic theory. It stands for the subject, and acts as an intimate yet intangible connection between subjects.7 Both psychoanalytic formulations - that of the 'zone de I' entre- deux-morts' and the voice as the objet a - offer ways of imagining impossible spaces.8I shali argue that Merlin's tomb and the texts which frame him can be seen as impossible spaces. The text which goes by the rather unsatisfactory tide of La Suite du Roman de Merlin is exemplary of the troublesome status of Merlin and his tomb as they are represented within medieval narrative. …