University of Virginia Library

VII. MABINOG'S LITURGY

184, note 8 This footnote is expanded to read ". . . at the time of his Passion in A.U.C. 783, A.D. 30", and in the margin below David Jones writes the gloss: Crucifixion April 7, 783. The gloss gives the date as 783 A.U.C., according to the Roman designation of years Ab Urbe Condita, 'from the foundation of the city'.

190.17 "Aunt Chloris!" stet cf p 165 q.v.

208-209 Between these pages David Jones placed a loose piece of paper on which he writes the following:

The first two lines of this note refer to 182.15-16 above. According to the theology of David Jones's Catholic faith, the term "predestination" indicates the final destiny of man, which is eternal happiness with God, a destiny intended by God but entailing man's free consent and cooperation.

The final six lines of Jones's note are extremely important; they suggest a correspondence between the overall shape of The Anathemata and the pattern of the liturgical year. The latter begins with the season of Advent. So does the poem. Its first section, "RITE AND FORE-TIME", concerns the "cosmic Advent" when oreogenesis and glaciation pre-enacted the Baptist's Advent-prophecy that "the mountains and hills shall be made low" (see 53.20 above). Later in fore-time, but still in Advent, "Tryannosourus" is said to "lie down with herbivores" (74), like the lion and lamb of Isaiah's messianic prophecy. Furthermore, as the liturgical season of Advent has its conclusion at the feast of the Incarnation, the prehistoric Advent, with all its biological mutations (74-75), has its culmination in the Incarnation—which is at once the climax and complement of human evolution. Therefore Christmas, the temporal occasion and principal subject of Part VII, "MABINOG'S LITURGY", is a hearkening back to, and a completion of, some of the major themes of the poem's Part I.

But Jones unites "Xmas & Paschal nts" in his hand-written note. And "RITE AND FORE-TIME", if it anticipates Christmas Night (actually Christmas Eve) in the poem's penultimate section, also anticipates the institution of the eucharist on the paschal night of the poem's final section, "SHER THURSDAYE AND VENUS DAY". This section, like "MABINOG'S LITURGY", complements Part I by fulfilling certain of its themes. The sacrament of Bread is the ultimate culmination of fore-time's geological processes that make the land arable for the cultivation of grain (69, 82). The eucharist is likewise the highest expression of the tradition of ritual art exemplified throughout Part I in the sculpted mother goddess of Willendorf (59), the cave-paintings of Lascaux (60), Neanderthal burial rites (61), and ritual dance for the success of the hunt (82).

The reference to "Gwenhewyvarr" in Jones's hand-written note suggests that, while the two concluding sections of the poem supplement one another in completing the themes of fore-time, this double completion has its special epiphany in the coincidence of the Incarnation and the eucharist at the Christmas midnight Mass in "MABINOG'S LITURGY". Gwenhwyfar, present at the Mass, is especially evocative of the poem's opening section; she is the symbolic equivalent of Mother Earth—the heroine, as it were, of "RITE AND FORE-TIME", clothed there in geological strata and "life-layers" (74). Like the earth, the Celtic queen wears rock strata: her "spun Iberian asbestos" (196) or "fire stone" (202), verbally redolent of the earth's "fire-wrought cold rock" (74); and her "Dalmatian tunic of gold stuff", which is "mantling" (202) reminiscent of the earth's "mantle-rock" (82). Her clothing, furthermore, represents a wide variety of the types of life on earth. Over her skin she wears Eblana flax. On her feet buck-skin of cattle, ivory of narwhal. Her lacerna or chasuble is edged and lined with fur "of marten and

pale kinds of wild-cat", and embroidered with forms "as apis-like as may be" (203). To complement these bee-forms, her laticlaves are coloured with dye from real kermes insects. The queen's barley-pale hair (196-7), moreover, recalls the barley at the conclusion of "RITE AND FORE-TIME" that crowns the processes formative of the earth (82).

Barley-hair identifies her, furthermore, with Demeter, the blond earth-goddess whose particular symbol is barley and whose name, deriving from the Cretan deai, or 'barley', means 'Barley-Mother'. At the conclusion of her description, Gwenhwfar, representing the earth, bows "toward the stone" holding the munera or gifts of the earth, which include bread "of Ceres", the Latin name for Demeter. As earth-figure and personally from "the reserve-granaria" (203), Gwenhwyfar herself has provided the bread. In her bow to the altar, therefore, the primordial earth gives human assent, acknowledging its purpose and fulfillment. "Cycle comes full circle," as David Jones says in his holograph note. "In the last—we are back."

The marginal glosses written by David Jones in his copies of The Anathemata vary in kind and importance. Some of them identify allusions (137.3; 139.7; 155.10) and record personal associations (115, n.2). In a few instances, the marginalia clarify narrative context in a manner reminiscent of Coleridge's glosses to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (172.28-30; 179-180). Sometimes the syntax of the poem is clarified (146.10; 149-150). But only once, when the captain's response to Elen Monica is identified (141) does serious textual ambiguity seem to require such clarification. One gloss illuminates Jones's prosody, suggesting that he, like Ezra Pound, carefully considered syllabic quantity as well as rhythmic stress (103.11). Many of the glosses, taken together, suggest a great deal about the poem's symbolism: the scope of the voyage, the permanence throughout time of the captain-figure, his identification with the Ancient Mariner and with Christ, and the correlative importance of the figure of Mary. Some of this has been disclosed or suggested by René Hague, Jeremy Hooker and other critics. No critic, however, has discovered the structural principles revealed in David Jones's marginalia: his use of what he calls prelude, pivot, coda, episode, anamnesis and composition of place and time. Furthermore, the glosses reveal the structural divisions of "KEEL, RAM, STAUROS", and suggest the symbolic and thematic resonance between the opening section of the poem and its two concluding sections. This last revelation, especially, has profound implications for the poem's interpretation and may ultimately increase its critical acceptance as one of the finest achievements of modern English poetry.[6] In any case, the disclosure justifies the claim for unity of form that David Jones makes—with characteristic deference to the reader—when he writes in the preface to The Anathemata, "If it has a shape it is chiefly that it returns to its beginning" (33).