the fisher king

I've been putting this off but it needs to be done. There is so much material on the legend of the Fisher King and it ranges so widely across historical periods and narrative genres that incorporating it into this discussion is a very daunting task. But, as I say, it needs to be done, so today I shall make a start by outlining the story and writing a little about what we should be looking for in the many incarnations of the legend.

The Fisher King is the keeper of the Grail but, like other keepers of legendary artefacts - Philoctetes, for example, on whom Heracles bestowed his mighty bow and arrows - he is also afflicted with a terrible wound, as if the gift must be counter-balanced by some powerful sense of suffering. And so the king goes out fishing while his kingdom falls apart - turns into a wasteland - around him. The hero chosen to heal the king is Percival - or Parsifal - although in later versions of the story he becomes the companion of Galahad, who now moves to centre stage. A great deal of work has gone into unpicking and interpreting the legend of the wounded king but, for the purposes of this project, I think we need to focus on what it means that the king is a fisherman. Is that itself of significance, and, if it is, then how is it to be understood?

This brings us in turn to the question of what the fish themselves signify, for - whatever it is - the king is characterised by his pursuit of it. There is, of course, no key that will unlock the symbolism and confer upon the legend a fixed and stable meaning. Each version has its own understanding of the king's pursuit and this is what we need to work with. But stucturally the act of fishing has a quality of doubleness. On the one had, it seems the wrong activity for a king - too small a pursuit - and it is a sign of his afflection that he is reduced 'merely' to catching fish. But, on the other hand, it gestures towards the search for that which will restore some sort of wholeness to the world of the king - it is the act that might mediate between the ruinous conditions of the present and the possibilities of the future.

As I write this, it strikes me that there is something very Blochian at work in the 'dark present' of the king's condition in which are contained the traces of future possibility. But what needs some thought is that fact that the king is both subject and object - agent and patient - in the story that unfolds around him: the subject or agent of whatever the pursuit of fish symbolises, but - in the end - the object or patient of Parsifal or Galahad's heroism. The story is resolved through the emergence of another hero (and here I feel shades of Finn and Finegas, although I hardly dare to think about it).

At any rate, there is a conundrum here that I'd like to look at and which I'll return to in a few days, perhaps with more to say.

I like this drawing of the Fisher King by William T. Ayton - I'm linking to the blog rather than posting it because it's copyright. Do go and have a look.