University of Virginia Library

David Jones's Glosses on The Anathemata
by
Thomas Dilworth

W. H. Auden called David Jones's The Anathemata "one of the most important poems of our time" and "probably the finest long poem in English in this century." A growing number of poets and critics agree. Unquestionably, The Anathemata is a work of vital and all-inclusive imagination. Its subject is no less than western civilization from its prehistoric beginnings. The work's frame of reference moves from modern times to the Jerusalem of Christ, to geological prehistory, and on to republican Rome, to classical Greece, and to a merchant ship in the second millennium B.C. The time then shifts to Anglo-Saxon England, to nineteenth-century London, to late-medieval Britain, to papal Rome, back to Jerusalem and finally back to modern times. In all this there are no associations of a personal and private nature such as mar the Cantos of Pound. Nor are the myths that inform the poem private, like those of Blake; they derive from historical traditions—classical, scriptural and medieval, Welsh, Norse and English. Because

these traditions involve what is for most readers "unshared backround", David Jones provides his own annotations to the poem. These certainly help. But The Anathemata remains a difficult poem to read. Its density of allusion, its intricacy and breadth place it securely in what George Steiner calls "the hermetic or intimist tradition" of literary modernism. The Anathemata will never be a popular poem. But it is an important poem and will always have readers, though these will be grateful for whatever help they receive.[1] In this regard, they will necessarily be indebted to David Jones himself, not only for his published prose, his notes to the poem, and the letters that will someday be published, but also for the interpretive glosses he inscribed over the years in his own copies of The Anathemata. David Jones's handwritten marginal glosses appear in two copies of the first edition of the poem (London: Faber and Faber, 1952) that he owned at the time of his death in 1974, and which have since been deposited with the rest of his personal library in the National Library of Wales.[2]

In contrast to the poem's preface and notes, which mostly explain the work's cultural and historical matrices, the marginalia comment directly on specific aspects of the poem itself. Sometimes fragmentary and cryptic, the glosses candidly record David Jones's personal clarifications and interpretations of the text. For example, they assign major importance to the motif of the voyage, the symbol of the ship, the figure of the captain and that of the mother of Christ. Moreover, the glosses imply a thematic interrelationship between this motif and these images. Certain of the marginalia, further-more, suggest what appear to be some of the structural principles and relationships informing the poem's composition. This is especially likely if, as specific marginal references suggest, many of the glosses were written within a year of the poem's publication.[3] In various ways, the marginal glosses of David Jones constitute an authoritative commentary on The Anathemata.

One of the copies of the poem in which the marginalia appear was, according to the poet's inscription on the front end-papers, "received from Fabers, Oct 17th 1952". In this copy are a series of brief, hastily written glosses entered by David Jones on the fifth of May, 1953, as he listened to the two-hour radio dramatization of sections of The Anathemata on the B.B.C. Third Programme. These marginal comments, which record a mixed reaction

to the programme, do not gloss the poem directly. But they do give some indication of how David Jones thought his poem should (and should not) be read aloud. Comments such as "Good", "OK", and "Very Good indeed" register his emphatic approval of Dylan Thomas's rendition of the section of the poem entitled "MABINOG'S LITURGY".[4] Of Diana Maddox's reading of "THE LADY OF THE POOL", however, his remarks record a thoroughgoing, sometimes anguished, disapproval. She reads "too fast", in contrast to the slower pace of Dylan Thomas.[5] And she reads in the self-consciously dramatic way that David Jones particularly disliked in the reading of poetry by many professional actors. About Norman Shelley's reading of the "REDRIFF" section, David Jones writes on page 121, "All part IV very badly done". His objection here is partly to the section's being read in a Cockney accent. I remember David Jones once saying that "the right accent is home-county; Churchill had a bit of it, and George V. The 'g's were dropped at the ends of words and it was 'gels' instead of 'girls'." Before the date of broadcast, David Jones had unsuccessfully urged Douglas Cleverdon, the programme's producer, to have the accent corrected or to omit "REDRIFF" from the programme.

In the following list of marginalia, I omit the many and repetitive comments on the radio broadcast, together with David Jones' occasional protests at the radio-script's deletion of lines and passages from sections of the poem. All other marginalia, that gloss the poem directly, are recorded below, under the headings of the sections of the poem in which they appear. The glosses are preceded by page and line numbers. In most instances, these are followed by words of the poem in quotation marks and then by the poet's marginal gloss in italics. An asterisk marks page and line references to the copy of the poem in which Jones recorded his reactions to the radio broadcast. I have, in most cases, interpreted the relationship of gloss to text.

I. RITE AND FORE-TIME

53.11 "They make all shipshape " [Jones's underlining] pivot for Argosy II p. 95—IV [sic] 182

David Jones used the words "voyage" and "argosy" interchangeably. Here he indicates a correspondence between the cenacle that Peter and John prepare for the Last Supper and the symbolic voyage subsuming those of all the ships in the poem. This archetypal voyage begins on page 95 with a Greek vessel's approach to the port of Athens in the fifth century B.C., and concludes, on page 182, with the Greek vessel's final berthing beneath the

Acropolis. In the pages between the approach and the final berthing, a number of voyages take place in various historic periods. These voyages are all, with minor variations, westerly and then northerly in direction, and so trace a single course. Their directional consistency suggests that all the poem's ships typologically partake of the symbolic world-ship elaborately described in Part VI of the poem and here identified with the Supper room. Its sailing constitutes the single voyage of redeemed mankind. Jones writes, in An Introduction to Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1972), that "there is but one voyager's yarn to tell" (31)—the story of man, which is also, archetypically, that of Christ.

53.20 ". . . before all oreogenesis" pivot for Vorzeit

The reference here is to "the Vorzeit-masque" (63) in which men dance to the climatic oscillations of the Permocarboniferous glaciation, which was the last ice-age. The geological time of oreogenesis, when mountains were formed, occurred millions of centuries before men evolved and were able to dance during the most recent glaciation. The Precambrian oscillations of oreogenesis are analogous to those of glaciation, though the latter were much shorter in duration. In "RITE AND FORE-TIME", oreogenesis is seen as preparatory to, and somehow continuous with, the ice-age of human prehistory when man performed ritual dances to the rhythm of the geological music.

Between pages 186 and 187, David Jones placed a loose piece of paper on which he writes that

During Precambrian oreogenesis, climatic variation coincides with fluctuation in the height of mountains: "for one Great Summer / lifted up / by next Great Winter / down" (55). These processes begin the choric chanting of a cosmic lauds that culminates in the Benedicite of the last great glaciation (63). Then men, not mountains, dance, and in anticipation of the eucharistic rite—in which all ritual acts have their symbolic and theological culmination.

II. MIDDLE-SEA AND LEAR-SEA

96.14 "Up she looms" Here, or 16 lines previously?, according to HG begins 'the whole argosy of mankind' to end on p. 182.

The text of the poem refers to the thirty-foot bronze statue of Athena Promachos that dominates the Acropolis in the fifth century B.C. and is

seen by men on the Greek ship. The phrase "the whole argosy of mankind" ('argosy' here meaning voyage) appears in Jones's Introduction to Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" (30, 38), and apparently originates with the poet's friend Harman Grisewood. Jones tentatively, and correctly, suggests that the voyage starts not here but on the previous page, where the Greek ship first begins the approach to its home port of Athens. See the gloss on 53.11 above.

102.23* ". . . and must go a compass'

Here David Jones draws a sketch indicating a ship reversing its course or, in nautical language, going a compass.

103.11 "Clōse-cōwled, in hĭs mâst hēād stāll the sôlităry cântŏr"

This line Jones scans for syllabic quantity, and possibly for stress (mâst, sôlitary, cântor).

III. ANGLE-LAND

115, note 2 "How Balin met with his brother Balan . . ." cf. In Par by misadventure

Here, at the end of the section concerning the settlement of England by Angles and Saxons, modern British and Germans fighting during the World Wars are compared to the brothers in Malory who mistakenly slay each other. The modern wars are fratricidal because of the consanguinity of the English and Anglo-Welsh with the Germans owing to the medieval settlement of Angle-land. Jones's gloss refers to the dedication of In Parenthesis (1937), "TO THE ENEMY / FRONT FIGHTERS WHO SHARED OUR / PAINS AGAINST WHOM WE FOUND / OURSELVES BY MISAD-VENTURE."

V. THE LADY OF THE POOL

124.1 "Did he meet Lud at the Fleet Gate?" the old Pelasgian

The man who may have met Lud is an archetypal captain-figure. At the start of this section of the poem, he emerges as a Mediterranean captain listening to Elen Monica's monologue in late-medieval London. The marginal gloss identifies this captain with a Phoenician captain called "the old Pelasgian" (107) and with an "old" Greek captain called "the bacchic pelasgian" (173).

• 124.1 "Did he meet Lud at the Fleet Gate?" Prelude 1
• 124.4 "Did he walk the twenty-six wards . . .?" Prelude 2
• 125.15 "Was already rawish crost the Lower Pool . . ." Comp. of Time
• 127.3 "From the Two Sticks an' a' Apple . . ." Comp. of Place

The designation, on page 124, of Preludes one and two appears to reflect the usage of St. Ignatius Loyola in The Spiritual Exercises. There the topic of meditation for a particular day is introduced by "the first prelude", recalling

the history of the subject, and "the second prelude", locating the subject in a specific place. The emphases on time and place in the Ignatian preludes are combined in each of Jones's preludes, which locate this section of the poem in London and, by reference to "the White Mount" and "the twenty-six wards", implicitly designate the time as post Norman Conquest. Furthermore, the Ignatian emphasis on time and place, respectively, corresponds to the subsequent glosses designating parts of the poem as "Composition of Time" and "Composition of Place". The Ignatian terminology and emphasis on time and place suggest a parallel between the opening of "THE LADY OF THE POOL" and the commencement of meditation in the Ignatian mode. This section of the poem, after all, is an uninterrupted spoken meditation by Elen Monica, the Lady of the Pool, who is roughly Loyola's contemporary. And there may be more extensive correspondences with the Ignatian form of meditation, for the entire poem is a sort of meditation. As David Jones writes in his preface, it concerns "matters of all sorts which, by a kind of quasi-free association, are apt to stir in my mind at any time and as often as not 'in the time of the Mass'" (31).

The four lines in the text are marked with two vertical lines in the margin. The gloss cryptically indicates that the theme of this passage is the first subject of Elen Monica's long monologue and therefore one of the principal themes of the poem. In the passage, Mary is pre-typified by Iphigeneia whose sacrifice placated Artemis, against whose will the Argive fleet could not set sail for Troy (see Euripides, Iphigeneia in Aulis). Iphigeneia's willingness to be sacrificed corresponds to Mary's fiat mihi. Furthermore, Mary resembles Helen, the expedition's formal cause, or reason for setting out. Early in the poem, Helen is called "the margaron" or pearl (56), an image recalling Matthew 13:46 and Troilus and Cressida II, ii, 81-83, both of which concern merchants setting out to acquire a 'pearl of great price'. In The Anathemata, the merchant is chiefly evocative of Christ. Mary's correspondence to Helen at the finish of the expedition suggests Mary's symbolizing the bride of Christ—bride because liturgically equated with redeemed mankind. Alluding to this correspondence later in the poem, Jones writes of Christ and Mary, "He that was her son / is now her lover" (224). In the four lines quoted above, Mary is also likened to the "pretty maid" of the nursery rhyme who tells a young man, "My face is my fortune." Because Mary symbolizes mankind, her face is our fortune—her beauty symbolizing the compliancy of will that made possible the Incarnation. Later in the poem, her magnanimity is equated with her tota pulchra, which exceeds the physical beauty of Helen with her blemished brow (194).

128.13-14 "Or may I never / keep company more . . ." Here L of P starts her long digression about lovers etc.

Elen Monica has been listing the churches of London and will resume listing them on page 160. The intervening digression about her lovers will itself be interrupted by several digressions.

137.3* "His beard full of gale." Chaucer in many a tempest had his beard ben shook

The poem alludes to the Shipman's portrait in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, line 408, which is quoted in the gloss.

Elen Monica, alluding to Chaucer's Prologue (lines 7-8), designates the day the medieval ship Mary arrives in port as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Virgin says fiat mihi. The Mary is here a manifestation of the archetypal ship in which every man sails. See 128.9-12 and 53.11 above.

139.6-7 "I saw water / coming from the right side . . ." a latere dextro

The poem here refers to a hole in the Mary's hull. The poet's Latin gloss is from the "Vide Aquam", sung by the priest during Paschaltide at the sprinkling of the faithful with holy water: "I see water going out from the temple, from the right side, and all who come to that water are saved." The image of water from the temple, deriving from Ezekiel 47.1, implies that the medieval ship typifies the Church and corresponds to the physical body of Christ, from which water came after he was pierced with the spear.

140.5-6 "vancurrers of snow / and thunder noons of yallery night" 31.1.53

The word "yallery" is from the song "The Six Dukes". The word "vancurrers" evokes the "vaunt-couriers" of King Lear III,ii,5. The numbers in the gloss seem to indicate the date 31 January 1953, possibly a day on which David Jones was reading and glossing the poem.

141, bottom margin. The Captain himself speaks only on p 141, when, in reply to her direct query: 'storm or hurricane?' he answers: 'For certain this barke was Tempest-tost?" (DJ letter to DC written round about March 12th 1953)

Why David Jones puts his gloss in the form of a question is not clear. In a letter of 12 March 1953 to Desmond Chute, he conveys this information without reservation.

     

146.10 "how this Maudlin 1 gilt 2 streamers 3 . . ."	1 adj
	2 noun
	3 verb

148.5 ". . . we know our rutters." from routiers

"Rutters" is not a Cockney pronunciation of routiers. The French word, meaning nautical guides or track-charts, was adopted by the earliest English

writers of pilot-books, which they called 'rutters'. Rutter, in this sense, is a well-established English word, though unrecognized by the O.E.D. See David Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times (1958), p. 13.

• 149.6,10,15 "The sawbones"
• "The Redriff mate" subs?
• "The boatswain, from Milford," [Jones's underlining]

All three underlined nouns may be the subjects of their respective sentences, in which the predicate "was" is understood. They may also be prepositional objects depending on the words "Without mention of the usuals as" (lines 3-4). The ambiguity is the reason for the question mark in the gloss.

149.19 [as tho' he] "were dozing" [Jones's underlining]

150.1 [as tho' he] "Had made fast"

150.4 seque] "Had conned their ship"

The three glosses above appear, as bracketed, before the phrases in the text. The glosses indicate what should be evident without them, that the phrases in the text are to be understood as introduced by the words "As though: / he" (149.17-19). Each phrase begins a simile by which Elen Monica describes the Milford boatswain's antique comparisons.

150.16* "south-south-westing" sow-/ sow

Here what seems a gloss indicating proper pronunciation is actually an emendation that has not yet been incorporated into the poem. In a list of corrigenda compiled "For Jack & Maire Sweeney" in 1962, David Jones writes, "Page 150, line 16, for 'south-south-westing' read sow'-sow'-westing."

150, note 3 "A phenomenon reported by Marco Polo." Cf. Marco Polo, Ch. XXXIII, trans H. Murray, 1844.

Here again, what seems a gloss is actually a correction not yet incorporated in the text. David Jones makes this clear in his list of corrigenda compiled for the Sweeneys. In the poem, Elen Monica expresses disbelief ("what a carry on!") in the Welsh boatswain's claim of "recent instances of islands that be males and females". What she reacts against is not, however, the Welsh boatswain's report (or that of Marco Polo), but her own confusion of the Welshman's story. Marco Polo reports that off the Indian coast is an island called "Male" on which men live who, for three months each year, visit their wives on an island called "Female". See The Travels of Marco Polo, Hugh Murray, tr. (1844), Part III, ch. xxxiii, p. 279.

151.3 "the modrern rig" [Jones's underlining] stet /, tho' modren is the commoner corruption.

The word "modern" is pronounced by Cockneys sometimes as spelled in the text and more commonly, as spelled in the gloss.

154.12 "'now-opserve-you-close-nows-cabden'" Welsh for Captain

Ellen Monica is mimicking the accent of a Welsh boatswain.

154* Of Noble Race was Shenkin

This phrase, written along the outer margin, is the first verse of an eighteenth-century comical song concerning typical Welsh claims to the noble ancestory. David Jones seems reminded of the song by the Welsh boatswain's claiming Trojan and Roman antecedents. The lyrics of the song appear in Thomas D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth: Pills to Purge Melancholy II (London, 1717), p. 172.

155.10 "Gup Scot!" cf Skelton

Elen Monica's exclamation derives from the words "Gup, Syr Scot", which appear in line 109 of Skelton's poem, "Agaynst the prowde scottes clatterynge, / that neuer wyll leaue theyr tratlyng." Elen Monica is accusing the Scotsman aboard the Mary of speaking excessively about "grammarie" or magic. "Gup", an exclamation usually directed to horses, here roughly means 'get out'.

The poem refers to Mary's co-redemptive presence at the Passion of her son. The word "anamnesis", Greek for 're-calling', can mean 'a remembering' but is used liturgically to express the eucharist's 'making present again' the person of Christ and the effects of his Passion. The gloss is therefore appropriate here, where the text, employing imagery from Isaiah 63, refers to the crucifixion. But the word, here and below (164.8-12), seems primarily to designate the aesthetic effect of a special kind of remembering. James Joyce's use of the term 'epiphany' involves a similar transposition from liturgical to literary modes. David Jones probably derives his understanding of "anamnesis" from Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1947), pp. 242-247. Jones owned three copies of the book at the time of his death; one of them, obtained on 3 August 1948, is heavily annotated.

160.21 "At the Fisher with the ring, 'pon Cornhill" Comp of Place

164.8-9 "best let sleepers lie / and these slumberers" anamnesis

Elen Monica is recalling, and praying for, legendary Brute and his fellow voyagers from Troy who sleep in the ground of London, which was thought to have been first established as 'Troy Novaunt'.

165.15 ". . . we carry out Chloris as dead as a nail." cf p 190 [= Flora

Elen Monica is referring to the folk custom, originally a fertility ritual, of carrying out the spirit of vegetation, dead at summer's end but destined

to be reborn in the spring. Her emphasis here on Chloris's death is appropriate to Elen's speaking during the last days of summer at the end of the Middle Ages. The poet's gloss refers to a later point in the poem where Chloris is called on to witness the symbolic blossoming of the cross in a springtime that is at once seasonal, cultural and metaphysical. This blossoming, while prefigured by fertility ritual, is of a significance not fully comprehended by pagan rites. The voice of the poem asks, The gloss on page 165 makes it clear that Chloris and Flora are alternate names for the same nature-deity, associated in this passage with proverbial Aunt Flora.

166.1 "'T will soon be on us, cap'n" Episode w-wind

It is the winter wind that "will soon be on us". Elen Monica's original intention in speaking to the Mediterranean captain is to warn him of the imminence of winter (see page 125). Here she concludes her digressions and resumes her original purpose. The warning she gives (lines 1-10) is called an "Episode", possibly with reference to the action framing choric expression in Greek drama, for the action of warning is the dramatic context of her monologue. Furthermore, the root meaning of the word 'episode' is 'a coming-in' (epieisodion). This may suggest the return to her original purpose which brings to an end the many and long excursions that are her monologue.

VI. KEEL, RAM, STAUROS

169, the section's title page. The Ancient Mariner is behind a number of forms used in this section & elsewhere in ANA. The Ancient Mariner is one of the clues to ANA? DJ to DC 3.iii.53.

The substance of this very important gloss David Jones took from a letter he had just written to Desmond Chute. The poem's Part VI, which he glosses here, largely concerns a cosmic ship crewed by "the true-hearted men so beautiful" (175), who recall Coleridge's "the many men so beautiful" ("The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", line 236). The bride in "The Ancient Mariner" is also aboard, where girls are "red, and as / roses-on-a-stalk" (179). Of her Coleridge writes, "red as a rose is she" (line 34). The other ships in The Anathemata, which partake of this world-ship, are all in some way or

other the ship of the Mariner. The Phoenician ship of Part II, for example, arrives at Cornwall after "a weary time a weary time" (98), words describing the ordeal of the Mariner's vessel (Coleridge, line 145). And like that vessel, the medieval Mary endures "vengeance of white great birds", and "wraith-barques" (142).

170.1 "Did he hear them . . .?" the old padrone

In this gloss David Jones identifies the man in the text as the Greek captain called, later in the poem, "the old padrone" (182). The captain's being old typologically equates him with the Ancient Mariner. All the poem's sailors partake of the Mariner-figure's symbolic age, including the "ancient man" to whom Elen Monica delivers her monologue (166, cf. Coleridge, line 39) and the Welsh boatswain about whose "antique" comparisons Elen says "you could not choose but hear" (154, cf. Coleridge, line 18).

171.16 "He's some rare chinas" rhyming Cockney slang for mate: china (-plate).

'China plate' rhymes with 'mate': the rhyming word 'plate' drops out and the word 'china' is used by itself to indicate 'mate'. See In Parenthesis, page 36: "Sorry mate—you all right china?"

172.11 "the're all in the swim" for they're

173.5 "if not the cod's-eye man?" Cf USA folksong: 'she wants the cod's eye man!

The poem alludes to the sea-shanty more correctly known as "The Hog's-Eye Man," in which the hog's eye is a euphemism for the vulva. This song, bowdlerized for the ingenuous reader, appears in Shanties for the Seven Seas, Stan Hugill, ed. (1961), p. 269.

173.13 "Down" Keel

From here to the bottom of page 175, the Keel is contemplated as the structural foundation of the world-ship and a symbol, therefore, of the divine Logos sustaining the world and of Christ, the Logos incarnate, who redeemed it.

174.24 "or stanchioned and 'tween decks" as p 176

The stanchioned or upright wood is that of masts. In this gloss David Jones identifies it with the mast which is a "gibbet" for men condemned to death; this gibbet is the only vertical wood mentioned on page 176.

175.25 "To be set up" Ram

From here to the middle of page 178, the principal subject is a number of siege engines being transported aboard the ship.

178.11 "or vertical'd?" Stauros

From here to 180.20, upright cult-objects—typologically synonymous with the Christian cross, the stauros in Greek—are considered in their ritual significance and as objects of veneration.

179.14 "the swaithed incurable that crept unseen" and lepers too

The names in the text are those of Phryne of fourth-century B.C. Athens, and Lais, one of two Corinthian courtezans of that name—one in the fourth century B.C., the other in the fifth century B.C. Their names serve for any women of loose sexual morals who, nevertheless, worship with real devotion in "churches & temples".

180.21 "Recumbent for us" Coda

From here to 181.2, the significance of the Keel and its relationship to the cross-signifying masts are recapitulated. The glosses—"Keel" (173.13), "Ram" (175.25), "Stauros" (178.11) and "Coda"—are written large and in pencil, apparently on a single occasion and to designate the structural components of the central meditative interlude that interrupts the consideration of the Greek captain which opens and closes this section of the poem.

181.3 "Ship's master:" [Jones's underlining] = sodden, tough but efficient & at base kindly skipper who berths em to schedule & is thus a type of St Peter & of O. Lord & of Manawydan the sea-god? cf 'who do you think is master of her? Shanty p 182.

The ship's master is first of all the Greek captain whose vessel is entering its berth in Athens' Phaleron harbour (see 53.11 above). He corresponds typologically to Manawydan, Welsh sea-god and latter-day folk hero who appears later in the poem in what seems a Welsh-Norse version of the parable of the pearl (199-201, cf. Matthew 13). Manawydan, in The Mabinogion's "Manawyddan mac Llyr", is a redeemer-figure.

The question "Who d'you think is Master of her?" is asked on page 53 of the poem, where the ship is the Supper room and Christ its master. The question originally appears in the sea-shanty "Shallow Brown", which is echoed again on page 182.

Here as elsewhere in the marginalia, David Jones writes his gloss in the form of a question. This is not necessarily an expression of uncertainty, for often where he uses the question mark in a gloss he is more assertive in a corresponding letter (see 141 and 169 above). In any case, he seems to be glossing as a reader of his poem, not as its author, his tentativeness possibly being in deference to the free speculation of subsequent interpreters of The Anathemata.

182.3 "the vine-juice skipper." cf sea-shanty: 'the Lime-juice skipper'

The gloss quotes words from "Shallow Brown" that are altered in the poem because the Greek captain is perpetually drunk on wine. In this he recalls Christ's prototype, Noah, who "drank . . . wine" and "was . . . drunken" (Genesis 9:21 ff), and conforms to the type of Christ himself, the "winebibber" who scandalized the Pharisees (Matthew 11:19).

182.15-16* "He would berth us / to schedule" pro. sked-ule

The word is meant to be pronounced as spelled in the gloss.

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).

Notes