Sett Forth Gorgeouslie...

It can't be helped.  Allow a poet...a musician...to write about language...about rhythm...about words...and you end up with a delicious etude; a sweet ebb and flow of language fitted to the tale.  Allow an eccentric to limp a few miles in the shoes of one of the most colorful, most perplexing, most misunderstood kings ever to wear the English crown, and you find yourself enchanted, intrigued, captivated.  The pairing of David Teems with King James and his Bible constitutes a literary match made in Heaven.

"...the times were alive, effervescent.  English was in the throes of discovering itself.  The late Elizabethan age was an age of linguistic sizzle."

Into this age is born a baby of questionable paternity.  His mother, the Queen of Scots,  will be imprisoned shortly after his birth.  He will be manipulated and plotted against all through his tender years.  And yet, despite all that, there is greatness in him.  An inexorable, ineffable presence.  Majestie.

Teems tells his story with compassion, insight, and good humor.  He tells of the Bible which bears the king's name;  of its origin, its translators, and its sumptuous language.

The Bible was meant to relieve us of the burden of ourselves, to hold up a mirror that is clear, articulate, accessible, and above all beautiful.  And to do so with rhapsody.  It should be stately, elevated, fluid, other.  How are we to set ourselves adrift otherwise?  There should be a certain amount of reach involved.  It should touch us to the very quick, if indeed we are penetrable.

He plunges us deep into this extraordinary season when voices like William Shakespeare, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe were shaping the English language into something robust and expansive.  A golden age of sorts.  And he helps us understand the role our unlikely hero plays in the mix. 

I confess, I was prepared to not like James, despite the fact that I knew he had an ardent defender in David.  I just couldn't do it.  By the end of the book I was in tears...and rooting for this most complex and surprising luminary who somehow managed to call out greatness in others.  It was the final paragraph that did me in.  I share it with you here to tempt you.  Because I know that when you encounter it in the book, after living with His Majestie for a while, you will read it anew.

And that's it.  That's James.  Pan Pacificus.  More the artist than the administrator, more the visionary than the clerk, more the dreamer than the shopkeeper;  where he dreamed he dreamed big, rather like a king.  Where he loved, there were no half measures.  Where he failed, he was absolutely magnificent.  As only true greatness does, he offered the power of flight to those who, like him, had flight within themselves.  In the end, it is always a matter of belief.  Always.

 

*The title of the post is drawn from King James' directive to the translators that the Scriptures should be "sett forth gorgeously".  It is also an apt description of the book.

**All quotes in the post lifted directly from Majestie 

 

Comments

[Gail Hyatt]

My biggest frustration in life is that I can't read all the books I want to read at once. This book is at the TOP of my to-read list. Your review has made more unbearable the fact that it's ON the list and not IN my hands. (I am currently reading four books simultaneously.)

But, it will get to it. (I'm leaving on Vacation in a week and that's basically all I want to do is read, read, read.)

Thank you for a delicious taste of David's book. I cannot wait.

[Benita Teems]

Incredible review! You're good!

[Shelia]

Gail, you will love it. Great vacation read. I read the second half in an afternoon. Loved reading straight through so that all the characters continued to throb in my head as I read.

Thanks, Benita. I know you happen to be a big fan of the author. ;) Glad you like the review.

[Julie B]

Oh yes, another one I'm adding to my list! And I agree with Benita, you're good! :)