Snowy Tower: Parzival and the Wet, Black Branch of Language

287 Pages·2014·4.31 MB·English

by  Martin Shaw

Praise for SNOWY TOWER
“An outrageous piece of magic, this horde of galloping insights sprung
from the meeting of one of Europe’s most alchemical stories with the
pirate brilliance of Martin Shaw. His rollicking telling of the Parzival
legend makes obvious that Shaw is a master tale-slinger, but he’s also a
superb fisherman in the depths of our collective soul, reeling in wisdom
that instructs, often disturbs, and hugely nourishes.
And sometimes he is one of the fish, a wild salmon swimming
upstream, splashing us with glints of knowing yet never quite caught
within our net. At other moments, the author seems a hooved intelli-
gence browsing leaves in the dark heart of the Arthurian woods, knuck-
le-thick with mosses and deadfall all around. Shaw is on familiar terms
with the language of magpies and the weaving techniques of spiders;
whatever creaturely shape he takes, it’s clear that he’s drunk deep from
rivers wending through many of the world’s tangled cultures. Hence his
tongue is steeped in tales within tales from traditions near and far.
Reading this book we feel ourselves drying our boots round a crackling
fire burning high in the mountains. The snow has finally stopped falling,
lights from a village glimmer way off below, and someone’s antlers are
scraping the underside of the moon.”
—David Abram, author of The Spell of the Sensuous
“Martin Shaw has hung around a great deal in the Otherworld. There
is woodsmoke and fox fur in his thinking, and a wild mix of courage,
stories and troubling ideas—Snowy Tower is a kind of outlaw language.”
—Robert Bly, author of Iron John
“Martin Shaw’s a conjurer, a thirteenth-century troubadour dropped
into our midst. Snowy Tower animates a tale from a far-off place and far-
off time into vibrant, immediate life. He breathes into his characters a
beating pulse, agile speech, and bedazzling wit. Catch him any way you
can.”
—Eric Utne, Founder, Utne Reader
“In Snowy Tower Martin Shaw gives us Parzival handled with an associa-
tive alacrity that yields new insight and a deeper connection to the story’s
cultural roots. Beyond the best thinking of individuals, here we find the
best thinking of whole cultures. Shaw is a writer in love with the oral
tradition. This is a rare voice opening a keen rapport with the wisdom of
living myth.”
—Daniel Deardorff, author of The Other Within
“Martin Shaw’s gift is his unsurpassed ability to bring myth and legend
past locked gates and into our hearts. Snowy Tower reveals all the glory
and terror of the human condition, showing us the deeper story of our
own lives.”
—Jacob Needleman, author of An Unknown
World: Notes on the Meaning of the Earth

White Cloud Press
Ashland, Oregon
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2014 by Martin Shaw.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means whatsoever, including graphic, electronic,
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by
any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission from the publisher.
Interior illustrations © 2014 by Cara Roxanne, www.cararoxanne.co.uk
Cover and interior design by Christy Collins, C Book Services
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shaw, Martin, 1971-
Snowy tower : Parzival and the wet, black branch of language /
Martin Shaw.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-935952-92-3 (pbk.)
1. Wolfram, von Eschenbach, active 12th century. Parzival. 2. Perceval
(Legendary character)--Romances--History and criticism. 3. Nature in
literature. 4. Wilderness areas. I. Title.
PT1688.S43 2014
831’.21--dc23
2013030476
Contents
Foreword by Coleman Barks ix
Introduction xi
Part One: THE HAWK AT DAYBREAK
Chapter 1. Magical Privacy 3
Chapter 2. The Shaggy Margins of Existence 21
Chapter 3. Living the Twisted Knot 45
Chapter 4. The Old-World Mentor: Outer Teachings 65
Chapter 5. The Heart Besieged: Waking the Ecstatic Man and
Woman 81
Chapter 6. Finding Wild Mountain: The Hallucination of Empire 97
Part Two: THE MAYMED KYNGE
Chapter 7. Hard Legacies 119
Chapter 8. The Falcon, the Blood, the Snow 129
Chapter 9. The Cynocephalic Virgin: Shame’s Rough Music 139
Chapter 10. Hermitage of Star-Fire: Inner Teachings 161
Chapter 11. Courting the Mottled Brother 175
Chapter 12. Tusks, Tails, and Glory: The Grail Company 193
Epilogue. Tigerish Praise and Apple Blossom Speech for the
Woman that Lives at the Edge of the World. 205
Acknowledgments 215
Appendix: Parzival (story in complete form) 217
Bibliography 259
viii Snowy Tower
I ix
Foreword
We hardly knew it, but we have been needing this story to
return to us. It is one of the truly magnificent, most gen-
erously freighted stories of our civilization. As you experi-
ence Martin Shaw’s handling of the medieval epic Parzival, you enter the
great myth of your own life. The great loves, the wound that won’t heal,
the lost brother we finally find, the grail that keeps leading us on. As a
child Parzival was called “Beautiful Face,” and you may find your own
beautiful original face here.
This work is the wide-sky-waking of a spring dawn, brilliantly revived
and refreshed. Startling feminine characters appear: Cundrie, Sigune,
Condwiramurs. This is not just a story for men. It has been simmered
around wilderness fires, told and retold for years before being brought
into print. The trees themselves with their enfolding intelligence are
near. Martin fully feels the joy of oral culture and the poet’s delight in
the surrounding world. Grief also haunts these pages—grief for the
questions we forgot to ask, for friends that slipped away, for the smoke
and darkness of our own arrogance. We find that regret can give life new
freshness. Parzival, through his journey, becomes as much a crow as a
hawk. We let his wingfeathers carry us along.
Stories from Martin Shaw’s life are generously added to the mix, and
the trickster is everywhere present. Cundrie, the wild, tusked woman
from the woods, leads Parzival to the Grail, not the pure beauty of some
troubadour ideal. Parzival’s magpie, Muslim brother becomes starkly
visible. It is the pagan imagination underneath European civilization
that makes this myth so elegantly, chaotically, and dangerously alive.
Only Martin Shaw with his new, exfoliating idiom could have made this
vision clear.
Coleman Barks
ix