The Lyre Of Orpheus

6 Pages 1511 Words

The Lyre of Orpheus


The character of Simon Darcourt, in Robertson Davies’s The Lyre of Orpheus is no doubt a complex character. The story in this book is obviously parallel to the Arthurian legend, but it is hard to match some of the characters. Arthur Cornish, it would seem is Arthur, Maria, may be Guenevere, but some of the characters do not match so neatly. Simon Darcourt is one of those characters. At times he seems to be the Lancelot, other times more like Gawaine, or even Merlin. I believe he is a bit of all these characters, but I am leaning more toward the Merlin character.
Anyone who knows the Arthurian legend knows Lancelot is in love with Guenevere. This made me first believe Darcourt to be the Lancelot character, because he loved Maria, who was married to Arthur. He also seemed to admire Arthur by the way he spoke of him, just as Lancelot admired Arthur, (2). He was also, “no stranger to the feeling of grievance,” (4). Nor was Lancelot who, in the end, went mad. It says Darcourt had only “two miserable love affairs,” however neither are with Maria, but Lancelot only had two known love affairs, and they certainly were not pleasant, (35). Darcourt was also described as ugly, in somewhat the same way as T.H. White described him the, The Once and Future King. Simon was also a somewhat fallen priest. No matter how much he wanted to be holy, there was something that just would not let him. Lancelot was thought of an almost a holy man, but his actions, such as the affairs with Elaine and Guenevere, held him from achieving that kind of status. Lancelot did become a monk, but only after he could not be with Guenevere. I have not read the other novels from this trilogy, but Darcourt might have joined the priesthood after he could not be with Maria, granted it was because she did not want him. If Darcourt is indeed the Lancelot character, than this version of the Arthurian legend, in a way, seems to ...