The Blessed Virgin Mary in Ely Cathedral

Philip Harvey
The first Carmelite Library Lecture for this year turned out to be more a mini-symposium on artworks representing the Blessed Virgin Mary. We have no likenesses of the original Mary, no photographs or quick sketches, only the accounts of her found in the New Testament. Since those words were written down there has been an entire history of artistic responses to Mary. Andy Bullen SJ is a creative art historian who offered the participants in our symposium a range of Marian images, starting from the first known image of Mary, located in one of the catacombs, and coming up to contemporary interpretations of Mary and the Gospel words that are confronting and counter-cultural. Icons, frescoes, altarpieces, statues, and other artworks were introduced and responses invited from the audience. As Andy has said, “I love doing presentations like Tuesday’s, as I know that if the audience responds to the images then we will get somewhere fresh.”

When meeting any work of art, Andy has four questions that he asks himself. He calls the four points “Lord, that I may see”:
What am I seeing?
What am I feeling?
How come what I see leads me to feel that?
So what?
And after that he has a further direction for thought: Then, look again!

The image from Tuesday night that has stayed with me for days is the statue of Mary by David Wynne in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral. Of all the images presented to the group, this one provoked the most comment and animated conversation. Using Andy’s four questions, I kept studying the sculpture online using Google Image.

What am I seeing? A woman with her arms raised in the air and her head forward. She stands on the ledge of a medieval stone window above an altar. Everything around her is old and broken and weathered stone, which makes her appearance striking because she is presented wearing a full length blue dress; she has long golden hair. 

What am I feeling? I know that I am looking at a statue of Mary, which is a surprise because Mary is never represented in art with her arms above her head in such a forceful manner. So I am being asked to ask why she is presented in this way. Once told that it is the moment of the Annunciation everything changes again. She is in the act of saying Yes to God. She herself is a powerful figure, but what she is doing is conceiving the Incarnated Word. 

How come what I see leads me to feel that? I am in awe because the statue has been placed at the focal point of the Chapel, she is made immediate and draws attention to the more important reality that this is not about her but about what God is making happen. I feel surprise because this is in no way a conventional presentation of Mary at the Annunciation

So what? I wonder about how this work leads to worship, as indeed it is designed to do in the space. I wonder about its connection to the Christian past of Cambridgeshire.

And after that, in days following, I followed the further direction: Then, look again!

In his visitors’ tour guide of Ely Cathedral, Canon Dr Peter Sills writes: “ Entering the Lady Chapel you meet a gracious, light and open space. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the rise of the cult of the Virgin Mary, and chapels in her honour were added to many churches and cathedrals, including Ely. This chapel is exceptional as it is by far the largest attached to any British cathedral. Its foundations were laid in 1321.” So we know that placing a new statue of Mary in the Chapel in 2000 was filled with historical and artistic meanings. 

“All this was destroyed,” Dr Sills continues, “ in the sixteenth century during the Reformation, which, in keeping with Puritan convictions, rejected all forms of religious decoration. Traces of the paint can still be seen, and fragments of the glass survive in the central window on the south side. You can see the damage clearly - the exquisite figures in the lower niches have been defaced and above these are the empty pedestals where the statues stood. It is believed that the carvings told the story of Mary's life and miracles. Despite its beauty this is a place of brokenness.” He then adds a line that brings us into the present and the purpose of the statue, which is not there simply because it is a work of art: “You may like to pause here and pray about the brokenness, grief or loss that you have experienced.” The Ely Madonna stands as a reminder of the iconoclastic disasters of the Civil War (Cromwell used Ely Cathedral to stable his horses) and of the town’s Anglo-Saxon and Norman inheritance. At least one member of the symposium group saw the statue as representative of St Etheldreda, foundress of the first monastery on the site, while others thought it had Celtic and even pre-Christian references.

Dr Sills own response to the work is instructive: “Most representations of Mary are passive, holding the child Jesus on her knee. Here she is expressive, exulting in the news that she is to be the mother of the Saviour. On the base of the statue are her words from St Luke's Gospel: 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord' (Luke 1.38).”

When the statue was installed it caused much argument and divided opinion, not unlike the responses it inspired at our symposium. One person who was not happy was Germaine Greer. In a typically unconstructive review of the work in 2007, Greer said this: “The chapel's austere monochrome was harshly assailed in 2000 by the installation of a life-size effigy of a woman with raised arms. Half a ton of Portland stone was hoisted up on to a ledge, from which point the carved female figure dominates and dwarfs the whole space. It stands to reason that a lady chapel needs a lady, and here she is. You can tell she is Our Lady because she wears a full-skirted gown of electric blue. A colour less suited to her surroundings could hardly be imagined, unless it be the staring gilt of the belt slung around her hips and applied to the biggest hair since Dolly Parton. The bodice of the gown is no more substantial than a single coat of blue paint, so the breasts raised by the upraised arms are delineated in a manner more akin to soft porn than religious imagery.”

Perhaps Greer could have found useful Andy’s four point plan. It is curious that Greer has not caught on to the meaning of the blue dress and golden hair. Lapis lazuli from Afghanistan was the costliest pigment in medieval Europe, which is why Mary’s colour is blue: artists would only use the most valuable materials to represent the Mother of God. Hence also the gold, which is also the base colour of icons. As for the bra-lessness, as one member of our own group said, the bra was not a common garment before the modern era and it is more likely that a woman like Mary would not have worn one, whether she was Mary in Nazareth or Mary in Ely in the seventh century.

After reminding us about the Puritan destruction of Ely Cathedral, Greer concludes her unhelpful remarks by asking of the future of the Ely Madonna, “Where are the iconoclasts now that we really need them?” Such a question tells me more about Greer’s approach to art criticism than it does anything about the work she is discussing. It would look seriously out of place as the sixth question in Andy Bullen’s “Lord, that I may see.”

Seeing a work like the Annunciation at Ely makes us see the event, which is credal and a purposive example of faith, in ways we had maybe not imagined before. The work invites us into that space of great force and simple humility which is repeated everywhere in the world in the words of the Magnificat. And no doubt discussion and argument about the work will continue, alongside appreciation and reverence.

Table Talk of Les Murray --- Or --- Just Having a Yarn

Philip Harvey records some conversations with Les Murray during his two-day visit to the Carmelite Library in late February 2013 

  

Les said that we have to learn to write our poem, whatever that poem might be. Hitler, he said, couldn’t write his poem so he did something very different instead. This prompted a question from the floor (Wednesday night) about, if it were not possible for a tyrannical killer to write a poem what did Les make of the Serbians close to Radovan Karadžic who were producing epic poetry. Les thought it couldn’t be a good poem and he’s be interested to see such a work. This prompted me to mention Mao Tse-Tung. There was agreement that Mao issued poetry because in Chinese society it is sign of a cultivated leader to compose verse. But Les then talked about an Australian friend of his who is responsible for the English version of Mao’s famous saying “Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land,” though his colleague was the one who translated it into the more famous: “Let a thousand flowers bloom …” This was, for Les, a marvellous sentiment, it was only a pity that Mao didn’t mean a word of it. If someone stood up and said something creative Mao then knew who to cut down.

Les has been working for the Macquarie Dictionary, roving through old dictionaries and testing terms. His latest adventure is to study some of the dictionaries of American usage to see how many of the words have moved into Australian English. His conclusion is that it was almost steady until after the Second World War, when it levelled somewhat. He thinks Australian English owes more to Indian English, what he calls chutney vocabulary, than to American English. I raised the matter of the internet as a force for increased American usage, but he seemed more to think that online is simply spreading and broadening the language from all over the place.

When Carol O’Connor read ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ by W.B. Yeats (Thursday morning) she asked Les, where is the place you go to when you write? “Different places, anywhere,” was his first response. But then he thought about it some more. “Home, that’s the place I go wherever I am, I go to that place ‘home’ and write from there.”

Michelle Trebilcock read the poem ‘Wisdom’ by the mystical writer Sebastian Moore, which Les felt was not a poem, but rather a series of steps in an argument. This, for Les, was not really a poem in the sense of making something happen, or come alive. He finished this reaction to the writing by saying, “What he needs is a good bout of depression.” Depression has been for some years now a leading factor in the shape of his life. He names it as a disease and even demarcates the years where the biggest depression began and ended. It didn’t actually stop him writing, but it made it hard to get from one day to the next. Even though depression still hits, it doesn’t have the same overriding effect as at midlife. Another time he talked about drugs, and how he once smoked eight cigars a day, but when the black dog hit (was it 1988?) the taste of cigars was horrible and he couldn’t smoke them anymore. It was like a chemical change or something had happened in his body. It was a telling reaction to the Sebastian Moore poem , which uses a poetic form to detail an important thesis about reaching Wisdom. But for Les, real poetry is working at another level, is breaking through into something more than the detail of an argument.

Elsewhere he said that it is good to lay fallow for a while, when writing. When you write again it can be a very different kind of writing. He thinks the writing he does now is different again and he cannot quite make out what is happening. 

After I read Vincent Buckley’s ‘What the Taxi Driver Said’, Les said that I had done more than Vin had ever done, I had made him listen to Vin. This was some kind of quip, I guess, because he then reminisced about how whenever he and Vin got together they would just get drunk and roll on the floor. Often there wasn’t much talk because the drink inhibited conversation. He said that Vin was argumentative, there was always likely to be a clash around the corner. Irish whiskey was the stuff, though at meals Les remembers the preference being for white wine. I observed that both beverages feature well in Buckley’s poetry, but it is the red wine that is good for you, not the white wine. Yes, said Les, it’s full of iron. I refrained from adding, and histamines.

When asked if there is anything that isn’t sacred, Les said instantly, “Yes, computers.” The new technology is not to his liking. He even read a new poem that takes the computer to task, especially the controls it now exerts over our lives. Some might think this the attitude of a technophobe or paranoid Luddite, but seen from his angle it is formed by independent common sense. He seems to rely on others for help with computers, but maybe it will be like TV, which he once complained about, only later to write about in an adaptive fashion.

The Greek term hapax legomenon kept coming up in conversation when talking to me, he couldn’t find it in his dictionaries. The name of the Melbourne literary society Haplax seems to be inspired by the term; he keeps being asked by members to talk to them. I said these are the single appearance of a word in a literature or author’s work, the most crucial and significant Greek hapax legomenon today still being in Homer and the New Testament. Discussions about what a word might mean when there are so few instances of its use can become quite prolonged, over generations in fact. A word that in Homer might have been common as mud has taken on the mystery of a rare diamond, simply because of its sole appearance in the surviving literature. We joked about how many ordinary words in his own Works may become hapaxes for future readers. Later Les came back to this, saying he used the word iliast, which may become a hapax. Or not, if it took on. An iliast uses iliasms. His autistic son, for example, is an iliast because he transposes pronouns so that they govern different parts of the sentence than in normal grammar, something Les finds delightful. He seemed chuffed when I observed that iliast in this context seemed to be not so much a grammatical term as a term of endearment.

“Why don’t your poems rhyme?” is a question he gets enough during question times, such that he foils the question by asking it himself. Les Murray pointed out that the Romans did not rhyme. He said Shakespeare is not in the regular practice of rhyming, he rhymes when he wants to indicate a scene is closing, and to make a point, but it is not common. Rhyme is an expectation more than it is the standard of English poetry. His own work has various factors in play at any one time, one of which may (or may not) be rhyme. He likened the way he composed to jazz, saying that he draws in all sorts of expression and ideas that work with the basic tune. When I asked if he thought this a form of improvisation, he was not so happy, saying that it was never simply improvisation, that first all the other factors had to work together. My interpretation of this remark was that, according to Les, poetry is not pure improvisation.

My first magazine question (Thursday morning) was this classic opener, for which there are many answers: “Where does poetry come from?”  I reminded Les of his answer to Clive James on TV years ago: “It comes from a wound.” He nodded his head at the memory, “Yes, it’s the Greek trauma.” He also liked my quote from Pablo Neruda’s ‘Poetry’, where the Chilean says

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.

The idea that poetry came in search of the poet was appealing to Les. His answers this time ought to show up on the Eureka Street interview.

One of the women read an original poem at the Thursday session which Les felt was good, but still a series of unconnected lines. Another woman in the group related to the poem and thought that she had written something that spoke to her own experience. Les then conceded that there are poems that women relate to more than, or even exclusive of men, and vice versa. He drew a gender difference between male and female when it came to the reading of a lot of poetry.

He was asked about his conversion to Catholicism. He thought this was an appropriate question in the context. His parents were both strict Presbyterians of the Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia. He was brought up in this tradition, but at a certain age discovered other traditions and in particular Roman Catholicism, which seemed to speak to him straight away. He was interested in its language of symbols, but also by its teaching about forgiveness. Presbyterians, he asserted, had little time for forgiveness. People, including his own parents, would not speak to other people for years if some wrong had been committed, and seemed stuck with this attitude of not seeking reconciliation. He was glad his mother had not seen him convert, as she was strongly anti-Catholic, the result of going to a Catholic girls’ school. She used to have arguments with one of the sisters who was a teacher, and wished he had been there to see the “knock down, drag out” fights that went on between them. For over forty years his father never talked about Les’s conversion, made no mention of it to Les himself. But one day Les was talking to an interviewer, and when Les said that his father didn’t talk to him about his conversion to Catholicism, the interviewer said that he talked to him about little else.

Poetry for the Soul with Les Murray --- THE ONLY WHOLE THINKING

Philip Harvey

Les Murray reading at the Carmelite Centre on Wednesday night

I

Les Murray took the plane from Sydney on Wednesday, arriving in a very humid Melbourne where rain and thunderstorms would take over the afternoon. Les was here as a guest of the Carmelite Centre, where he was scheduled to give two sessions as part of our series ‘Poetry for the Soul’. The title of these sessions was ‘The Only Whole Thinking’, taken from his poem ‘Poetry and Religion’:

Religions are poems. They concert

Our daylight and dreaming mind, our

Emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

Into the only whole thinking: poetry.

The first session was conducted to a large and receptive audience in the O’Connor-Pilkington Rooms of the old Carmelite Hall in Richardson Street, Middle Park. Les Murray read and talked about his poetry, his performance built around awareness of the sacred and the many different ways of getting words to say the sacred. Amongst poets he praised in this regard was Judith Wright, who according to Les has some poems that go straight through to an expression of the sacred, something that is actually a great test, very hard almost impossible to do well. In passing he also mentioned Lesbia Harford, saying that people are only now starting to see that she is one of Australia’s greatest poets.

Les had prepared a paper on the subject of religion and poetry. The eye told us that this paper had been written in longhand on a single side of A4, but the ears reported that what he actually said went very much longer than that, leading one to conclude that most of the paper was in his head. One hopes that Les will find time to write out all the things in his head that he actually said to us at Middle Park on Wednesday night. One way or another I guess this will happen in due course. It might be in an essay, or come out as poems.

Les Murray reading his prepared paper

II

On Thursday morning the 28^th of February Les arrived back at the Carmelite Library early for breakfast of a bacon and egg roll and real coffee. At 8.30 cameras, cords, microphones and other paraphernalia had been set up by documentary maker Peter Thomas for a short film interview with Les Murray for Eureka Street. As Poetry Editor of Eureka Street it was my task to devise questions to spur Les into verbal action. Here is the running order of questions:

General Questions

1.      There are many answers to this question, so just a few please: Where does poetry come from?

2.      Where is poetry going?

3.      Poetry makes things happen, but what?

4.      What advice would you give a teenage poet today?

On the Work

5.      Generalisations are a feature through your poetry, i.e. mini-summations that build the conversation, but they seem to me to be a way of ticking off conclusions as you go along. Would you say a lot of your work leaves conclusions open, that things are going to be kept provisional?

6.      The drive to praise overwhelms all other considerations in your work (e.g. satire, polemic, politics, history). Could you talk a little about praise.

7.      The way words do what they say, i.e. imitate, repeat, reflect the subject-object-verb of their own meanings is something constantly on show in your poetry. Could you say some things on the vitality of English and your methods of getting that into the writing?

8.      If we accept that all of a poet’s Work is autobiography, where does the divide occur between the personal revelation and the public utterance? Is every poet moving somewhere between the two at all times?

Other Questions

9.      Is there anything that isn’t sacred?

10.  What is the future of the English language?

A first take with me asking the questions in conversational mode did not satisfy us, so after some rumination and further sips of his real coffee, Les said he would do it again straight by working from the printed questions. As he put it jocularly, “This is interview by Piece of Paper.” The film ran smoothly and will air online at Eureka Street in coming weeks.

Les Murray and Philip Harvey in the Carmelite Library

III

The second session of Poetry for the Soul was inspired by a creative suggestion from Les himself when he visited the Library last December. Why not have a Morning Tea where people come along with a favourite poem? They can read the poem aloud and then we can all talk about it. This is the kind of pastime that Les enjoys, and he is not alone in that way. So a comfortable number of interested individuals arrived at 10 o’clock, most with a poem to read. Some had only heard about the session on the grapevine or at the last moment, so did not have a poem to read. But here is the list of those who did:

Laura Hallsworth read her own poem, ‘Lady of the Night’.

Bronwyn Evans read her poem ‘Night Wash’.

Barbara Zimmerman read a quote of Peter Steele’s from his interview with Clive James on ABC Radio.

Carol O’Connor read ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’ by W.B. Yeats, and later in the session ‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Donna Ward read ‘The Journey of the Magi’ by T.S. Eliot.

Pádraig Ó Tuama, visiting from Ireland, read the second version of Patrick Kavanagh’s poem. entitled ‘In Memory of My Mother’, which is his favourite Kavanagh poem, then later recited his own poem ‘Dominic and Jenny’s Sex Life’.

Michelle Trebilcock read the poem ‘Wisdom’ by the Benedictine spiritual writer Sebastian Moore.

Marion Ryan, also of Ireland, recalled from memory the opening lines of Francis Ledwidge’s poem ‘Lament for Thomas MacDonagh’.

Janice Withers read her own poem called ‘Emperor’s Fate in the Hands of the Lepidopterist’.

I would have read Vincent Buckley’s ‘Triads’ or something dramatic like ‘Louisa Stewart is Foaling’, but in the end went for lightness instead: ‘What the Taxi Driver Said’.

Les Murray then read some of his new poems, typewritten on A4 in a big old-fashioned springback folder. When asked, he said he types all of his poems and doesn’t use a computer. When asked are ribbons freely available he said yeah, but you have to find them online. And how does he do that without a computer? He gets someone who knows about computers to do it for him.

Throughout the session there was a lively exchange of responses to the different poems, with Les being sensitive and enquiring of those who offered original poems. The two poems that temporarily silenced him into happy and knowing acceptance were those by Yeats and Hopkins. After the Hopkins he said, “It’s a beauty, isn’t it? Hopkins was the first poet I read at school that got me in. People would say he’s the first of the moderns, but that’s not right, he’s not a modern, it’s just poetry. When you hear it, you know, time frames are immaterial. It’s for real.”

The session could have gone on for hours, but a lunch appointment called and after formalities were over Les was back in Donna Ward’s car and off again. By mid-afternoon Les Murray was back in the air, flying to Sydney or Newcastle, and a return to the domestic round.

 Les Murray and Donna Ward in the Carmelite Library

 Images by Peter Thomas. Taxi service courtesy of Donna Ward.