As my mind clears from the haze of this weekend, which ended with a blast of an evensong and a choir party, there are two literary questions that I need answers to. Both of these arose at the party.
Firstly, I was asked about the second verse of the last hymn we sang on the radio yesterday:
For healing of the nations, for peace that will not end.
For love that makes us lovers, God grant us grace to mend.
Weave our varied gifts together: knit our lives as they are spun.
On your loom of life enrol us till the thread of life is run.
O great Weaver of our fabric, bind church and world in one.
Dye our texture with your radiance, light our colours with your sun.
My interlocutor asked me how I could have allowed those first two lines because the phrase God grant us grace to mend seems to suggest that there is something wrong with all the things that come before it. What is wrong with the love that makes us lovers, that needs to be mended?
Now, looking at this today, I find myself wondering whether the grace to mend refers to us, rather than the love of lovers. I’m wondering whether this is using the word mend in a similar way to the way Benedick says, “serve God, love me and mend” in Much ado about Nothing.
In a different conversation, I was asked whether I had read The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. My answer was in the affirmative. Indeed, I said, it was all the fault of the woodworm.
So far so good, it was without doubt all the fault of the woodworm. However, I then went on to say assertively that part of the book was about the Achilli Lauro tragedy. My second interlocutor could not remember that bit at all and I found myself wondering whether:
a) I was making this up entirely
b) there is a section in the novel about the Achilli Lauro or
c) there is a section in the novel about a similar kind of raid on a cruise ship.
Come the dawning light of day, I cannot find the novel in question to check.
Any of you literary types (perhaps those who read HD or live in Scotland’s literary hub Dunoon or what have you) help me out with either of these questions?
Bet you all wish you went to parties like this. (And pass the paracetamol, whilst you are at it).
The potted biography helps. The hymn does to normal grammar what William Morris does to trees.
Ask a grammatical question, get a grammatical answer! 😉
But herewith my content-focused interpretation:
I’d hesitate to say much about the helpfulness or otherwise of biography without reading any of the learned doctor’s work on the venerable Victorians. But since I generally am happy to admit all sorts of contextual information into literary analysis – even (horrors!) authorial intent, I’ll go with a cautious yes. At least we know that he likely does have a thorough knowledge of Victorian hymnody as well as more literary poetry (if that’s an appropriate distinction, which I’m not sure it is – Christina Rossetti being a case in point).
Could certainly be read as postmodern commentary on Victorian hymnody (perhaps a suitable example could be posted for our edification/amusement?? for those of us who are less expert than Dr Whitla). Perhaps one could even attempt a Marxist reading in ‘varied gifts together’. Or it’s an effort to subvert violent rhetoric that often portrays the Church as triumphalist and militant (‘Onward Christian Soldiers’) – the ‘bind church and world as one’ would support this reading as the church is not portrayed as victor over the world but as loving partner (like lovers in second line). And then of course there’s the feminist reading – seeing it as a revision of traditional discourse that domestic tasks such as spinning and weaving are ‘women’s work’ and not as valuable as aforesaid militaristic – perhaps this is a subtle comment on women’s relationship to authority in the church can change and it’s a call for and/or celebration of women’s ordination (& perhaps a revision of Homer here and displacing Odysseus from the centre and focusing instead on Penelope’s story – Penelope could be read as presence of divine feminine in between the lines as it were). And of course we know that knitting as a venerable task for fishermen and soldiers – so I will retract my statement about mixed metaphors and suggest that Dr Whitla is attempting to reframe masculinity by connecting knitting and weaving – suggesting a balancing of power between genders and valuing of work/experience/gifts of all . . . which takes me back to my Marxist opener . . .
Oh, this is a fun game!
Entirely agreed about grammar, Morris, trees!
Although I’m still not convinced about the first line and it’s lack of, well, a subject and a verb! But I will spare you all my (inevitably horrendous) Lacanian reading of lack – that would be a bridge to far I think.
Lacan? Oh do go on. This will take piskie blogging to new heights.
(but can we get to Irigaray too? I can feel dormant brain cells twitching in anticipation )
I’m grateful to all those who have posted above, which provided a very entertaining and illuminating read after this evening’s vestry meeting. I’ve a feeling this thread is not over yet.
The Marxist underpinning of the piece in question can perhaps be most easily demonstrated by reference to the whole work, which is available on the Anglo-Catholic Socialism song page. Note there the comments about the censoring of the original second verse.
“For healing of the nations, for peace that will not end.
For love that makes us lovers, God grant us grace to mend.”
This rather slack writing is a function of poetic diction, which I personally abhor. It’s a pity that laudable sentiments have to be wrapped up in such a linguistic style, imho. Any poet trying to write to a strict rhyme and rhythm has to contend with the temptation to stick in phrases that fit the space rather than what actually makes sense.
What kind of poetry makes good prayer though? Or preaching? My sermon on Sunday was not by any means written in complete sentences at all. Awful though it may be, good rhetoric, at least in these times, isn’t always comprised of good grammar. (Though I think you need to know what rules you are breaking sometimes).
If I were hearing this poem being read to me, or sung as a hymn, I would hear the three initial clauses as biddings in a prayer, and expect there to be a full stop after lovers. I would not automatically hear “God grant us grace to mend” as an action that was being applied to anything, but rather as a further petition.
Sorry to come back to the punctuation question, but I find myself wondering whether semi-colons would be of assistance here.
Yes! Semicolons!
Kimberly tantalisingly raised the question of Irigaray. Is she (Kimberly or Luce – you take your pick – the ambiguity is never unhelpful here) suggesting that there is an essentialist subject-object relationship generated by petition?
Is she (or She?) of the view that directing language, any language, towards an unseen other is so deeply rooted in patriarchal notions that the autonomy of the human subject is fundamentally undermined?
(Kelvin, you are such a show off. All the more irksome when you are right.)
Yes, indeed, petition does imply a lack of mutuality, and thus an inability to posit mutual relationships.
But only if we see petition as a verbal exchange that we begin.
If petition is seen instead as a linguistic response to God’s initiative in us… if it is a learning to name the self we are becoming in relation to others, then I think we might be able to avoid the object-subject divide. We might even see petition as a valid affirmation of difference as we enter a relationship in which God needs us as much as we need God, God petitioning us as much as we petition God.
But in saying that, I suspect Luce would think I’ve wandered far from the light.
So the unspoken assumption behind the concept of petition is an a priori assumption of interdependence? Rather than an a priori assumption of seperation / alienation and then reintegration? However, isn’t including ‘difference’ a problem in interdependence? By establishing the notion of difference, won’t we end up in a dulaist assumption of ‘same’ / ‘different’? (Go get it Kelvin and Kimberly…..)