Holy Thursday - a poem by Geoffrey Hill

Since this is the paschal time, I present you one of Geoffrey Hill's early poems, taken from his first collection For the Unfallen from 1958, whose title is relevant for the season.


Holy Thursday

Naked, he climbed to the wolf's lair;
He beheld Eden without fear,
Finding no ambush offered there
But slep under the harbouring fur.

He said: 'They are decoyed by love
Who, tarrying through the hollow grove,
Neglect the seasons' sad remove.
Child and nurse walk hand in glove

As unaware of Time's betrayal,
Weaving their innocence with guil.
But they must cleave the fire's peril
And suffer innocence to fall.

I have been touched with that fire
And have fronted the she-wolf's lair.
Lo, she lies gentle and innocent of desire
Who was my constant myth and terror.'

The Disappearing Island - a poem by Seamus Heaney

Continuing on from previous blogpost's theme of islands, and keeping in tune with my abiding fascination with them, I here give you a short but haunting poem by Seamus Heaney, printed in his collection The Haw Lantern from 1987.


The Disappearing Island

Once we presumed to found ourselves for good
Between the blue hills and those sandless shores
Where we spent our desperate night in prayer and vigil,

Once we had gathered driftwood, made a hearth
And hung our cauldron like a firmament,
The island broke beneath us like a wave.

The land sustaining us seemed to hold firm
Only when we embraved it in extremis.
All I believe that happened there was a vision.

Islands - a poem by Derek Walcott

It is the Easter week and I am home, back in the house of my paternal grandparents where I spent so much of my childhood, and where - because it is close to the salt scents of the fjord and because it contains so much memorabilia from the outside world - I feel that I am both securely nestled in the homescape and also connected to the wider world. Here I read about distant lands, about islands - especially about islands - and here I keep going back to my favourite poet, Derek Walcott. I'm giving you this particular poem because it fits so well with the book I'm currently reading, the Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky, a florilegium of islands that stokes the imagination and transports the mind far away.


Islands

Merely to name them is the prose
Of diarists, to make you a name
For readers who like travellers praise
Their beds and beaches as the same;
But islands can only exist
If we have loved in them. I seek
As climate seeks its style, to write
Verse crisp as sand, clear as sunlight,
Cold as the curled wave, ordinary
As a tumbler of island water;
Yet, like a diarist, thereafter
I savour their salt-haunted rooms
(Your body stirring the creased sea
Of crumpled sheets), whose mirrors lose
Our huddled, sleeping images,
Like words which love had hoped to use
Erased with the surf's pages.

So, like a diarist in sand,
I mark the peace with which you graced
Particular islands, descending
A narrow stair to light the lamps
Against the night surf's noises, shielding
A leaping mantle with one hand
Or simply scaling fish for supper,
Onions, jack-fish, bread, red snapper;
And on each kiss the harsh sea-taste,
And how by moonlight you were made
To study most the surf's unyielding
Patience though it seems a waste.

From In a Green Night (1962)

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 10 - Breviary or Missal?

One of the primary tasks of my research of the fragments at Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, is to assess - as far as possible - what type of books these fragments once belonged to. This is sometimes a frustratingly difficult question, as there is a wide variety of books used for the various liturgical services. As I have mentioned in a previous blogpost, there are some books that contain material for the mass, such as graduals and missals, and books that contain material for the office, such as breviaries and antiphonaries. With some fragments it is easy enough to assess whether a fragment belongs to the office or the mass, as there are some types of chants that are used exclusively for one type of celebration. In other cases, however, the fragment simply does not contain enough information to be certain. For instance, although text types such as antiphons and responsories are primarily chants belonging to the office cycle, they do also appear in masses.

RARA M 28
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

One such challenge was posed by the fragment shown above, an apparently single-column folio page with water damage and wormholes. Rubrics and some chants made it easy enough to ascertain that the fragment contains texts for the feasts of the birthday of John the Baptist (June 23) and the feast of Peter and Paul (June 29). Due to the large script of the fragment, the page does not contain much information despite its size, and what does appear are texts that are in some cases too general to allow for any conclusion as to whether fragment comes from a missal or from a breviary (or any of the other options). This question was also made difficult by the fact that I was for a long time working only from pictures, and it was not until relatively recently that I had a chance to see the fragment for myself and take a few pictures of my own. 
 

RARA M 28
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

It was then that the question could be answered. I had taken a few pictures but without paying very much attention to the fragment itself, because I had other priorities at the time. But when I had uploaded my pictures and as I was looking through them, I noticed that the texts for the vigil were easier to read than I had thought, and I could even make out a few of the incipits. I also saw that one rubric that I had failed to identified earlier could be read as GR, a responsory for the gradual, a type of chant uniquely belonging to the missal (as seen below just before the blue A). I looked further at the texts for the vigil, and I was able to make out indications for the offertorium, another chant exclusively for the mass, and then a "co" which belongs to the communion, also only found in the celebration of the mass.

RARA M 28
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

It turned out that the answers had been there all along, and I only needed to come closer to the fragment to take some more detailed pictures. It also reminded me how necessary it is to continuously return to the fragments to check and check again, because there are sometimes details that are unclear or difficult to identify at first, but which can appear more clearly the second or third time around. One reason for this hermeneutics of fragments, as it were, is due to a very basic but very important point: In some fragments, certain items might be difficult to identify, especially if you have not encountered them before. Later on, however, as one progresses in the studies of other fragments, one might come across this item in such a condition that it can be identified with greater ease, and it is then possible to return to earlier investigations and fill in the gaps. This is why I have been working on around thirteen different fragments over and over again for four months.