a propos d'avalon

[Marc'heg an Avel]

Voici un petit "digest", en langue anglaise, tiré de :

Ronan Coghlan : The illustrated encyclopaedia of arthurian legends
Editions Element Books LtD. Shaftesbury. Dorset. 1991 / 1993

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AVALON.


The island to which Arthur was taken after his last battle, to be healed of his wound. Geoffrey calls it Avallo in the Historia and insula pomorum (island of apples) in the Vita Merlini. It is often seen as having a connection with apples because of the similarity of its name to various Celtic words denotinf that fruit : Old Irish aball, Middle Welsh afall, Middle Breton avallenn, Celtic avallo. It has also been connected with Avalloc, evidently originally a god who, according to William of Malmesbury, lived there with his daughters. The present form of the name may have been influenced by the Burgundian place name Avallon. One school of thought suggests that it comes from Irish oilean (island). It was perhaps originally a Celtic paradise. It was said to produce crops without cultivation, to be ruled by Guingamuer, Morgan's lover, or by a king named Bangon. In Perlesvaus, Guinevere and Loholt died before Arthur and were buried there. Avalon was the identified with Glastonbury, probably because Arthur's grave was supposely found at Glastonbury in the reign of Henry II and, as tradition had had him born away to Avalon, the two were considered the same. However, because of the firts syllabe in Glastonbury's name, some may have thought it identical with Caer Wydyr, the fort of Glass, another name for Annwfn. Another tradition claims that a man named Glast or Glasteing found his eignt-footed pigs here under an apple tree, and called it Insula Avalloniae.

Not all tales suggested that Avalon was identical with Glastonbury. According to Ogier le danois (a medieval french romance with some Arthurian content), it lay near the Earthly Paradise. In the Spanish medieval poem La Faula it seems to be considered an oriental isle, for the narrator tells how he was carried to the East on the back of a whale and arrived at an island where Arthur an Morgan were still alive.

That Avalon seems to have had o connection with the pagan Celtic religion is supporter by the fact that, in the Vita Merlini, Morgan is described as the chief of nine sisters living on the island - just like the nine Celtic priestesses able to turn into animals, heal the incurable and prophesy the future who lived on the Gaulish isle of Sena, according to the Roman writer Pomponius Mela. It is also noteworthy that, in Irish mythology, the name of the island over the seas belonging to the sea-god Manannan was Emhain Abhlach".

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J'ai respecté les italiques et les majuscules. Si vous y trouvez quelques co(q)uilles, n'hésitez pas à me les faire savoir.

J'apporterai une traduction en langue française un peu plus tard, à moins que quelqu'un veuille bien s'y mettre.

JC Even

[Marc'heg an Avel]

Voici une phrase que j'ai trouvée dans le petit ouvrage : Arthur et la Table ronde. La force d'une légende, par Anne Berthelot. Découvertes Gallimard littérature. 1996 :

p 42 :

"Il est d'ailleurs facile d'identifier Avalon et Glastonbury par le biais d'un jeu sur les étymologies dont raffole le Moyen Age. Glastonbury, en effet, est la traduction d'Inys Wytrin, l'"ile de Verre". Or c'est là une des interprétations d'Avalon".

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C'est exactement ma façon de lire les romans arthuriens : ils sont truffés de jeux de mots, volontaires ou involontaires, jouant sur les sens et sur les écritures, à tel point que leur origine meme est devenue incompréhensible.

C'est comme l'histoire de l'homme qui a vu l'homme qui a vu l'ours ...
C'est comme la progression de la rumeur : un fait banal et identifiable devient, au fur et à mesure que l'information avance, de plus en plus important et de plus en plus énigmatique à la fois.

Alors, qui donc ici pourrait démontrer qu'un poète, ou un scribe, se trouvant face au nom de la rivière EDEN, ne l'aurait pas traduit tout simplement en : Paradis, sachant que la plupart des scribes étaient des gens de religion.

J'ai un autre cas du meme type : Ou donc se trouve le Chateau de Liesse qui a vu les amours de Merlin et de Vivianne ?

JC Even