bLOGOS/HA HA: Falls the Shadow

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

23 May 2020

Falls the Shadow

In today's edition of Memo Review

Rex Butler regards ...

Theatre of the Actors of Regard

Jane Sutherland, Obstruction, Box Hill, 1887, oil on canvas,

41.3 x 31.1cm. Art Gallery of Ballarat.

... and writes : Jane Sutherland, Obstruction, 1887

Here, we draw (see below)
and re-read Part 5 of T S Eliot's The Hollow Men :

V

  Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

  This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

   . . . .

"Now all I have is a reproduction, and it is not enough. Sometimes it just isn’t. I can’t wait for all this to be over, so I can get out of my paddock and go and see for myself. Like the young girl in Sutherland’s painting—and, needless to say, this is to make it just another in that long line of works of art that are seen somehow to be prophetic of our current plague—I feel obstructed. I feel cowed. I feel covid.

The painting reaches over to me, across the fence separating us. But more than anything, I just want to stand there before her and it and be judged. Have I done right by them? Have I let them out of the paddock?"

- Rex Butler