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).
I think I’m with Luce on this one and wish to maintain a hermeneutic of suspicion in my reading of Kimberly’s attempt to redeem petition.
Kimberly seems to me to have an inherently optimistic view of what Irigaray might or might not say on the subject, which I’m not sure stands on firm foundations. Furthermore, a careful exegetical reading of Kimberly’s last comment might suggest that Kimberly shares that suspicion even within her own argument.
Meanwhile, I am considering whether there is a good thesis to be written on the essential truth of punctuation in comparison to the essential lies of words. (Is the full stop a signifier of language or a container of meaning? etc)
Regarding the hymn as a postmodern commentary on Victorian hymnody, I find myself asking whether the whole piece is not an answer to the question at the heart of Victorian religious rhetoric, viz. “What can I give him (sic), poor as I am?” and its related response, “If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb”
(Yes, it is the Rossetti connection, obviously).
The closing lines of the verse seem to me an entertaining challenge to Victorian literalism as they indicate what will happen to hymnody if the lamb-bearing shepherd that has been posited ever actually turns up. The consequence of the presence of the lamb is the use of wool as a metaphor for spiritual engagement. Thus:
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.
A postmodern sensibility implies the presence of many such shepherds and their many consequent lambs. Thus, much wool.
QED?
I’m sure Kelvin’s last comment should end this thread, but Derrida and I will not allow him to claim a final word.
My previous comment was certainly not a telling of Irigaray’s position, but perhaps of my own.
As I drove to Rothesay, I couldn’t help but think we have a MTh thesis floating about here: ‘An examination of the influence of French feminist and linguistic theory on contemporary theology and praxis in the SEC.’
I would also like to nominate this blog-post and conversation as the most quintessentially piskie thread ever seen.
oh dear — it’s back to grammar: can quintessentially take a modifier?
With regard to the previous comment, “Kelvin, you are such a show off. All the more irksome when you are right.” I think that I should point out that there is the possibility that this thread could be used as a good example of the consequences of teaching feminist theory to men. Kimberly might chose to argue that they will use it for their own competitive purposes.
And I might or might not disagree.
Dworkin anyone?
Ronald or Andrea?
Well, it was Andrea I was thinking of, but ambiguity is the name of the game…
Good grief! Clearly this conversation goes to show that I should not waste so much time at work or I miss all the fun!
But surely the notions of an origin of petition, of relationship, whether a dynamic of alienation followed by integration or of interdependence – whether the origin is located in ourselves or the other – is problematic?
Kimberly – surely Luce would think that wandering far from the light is exactly where you should go? And to get back to our text, surely the warp and the weft is a metaphor for the sex which is not one?
Kelvin – the rest of the hymn certainly does support my Marxist reading! I’m intrigued that the grammar is much better in most of the other verses and I think they are the stronger for it (perhaps the Penelope metaphor was a challenge for Dr Whitla. I also note his use of the dash – made so popular by Rossetti’s colleague across the pond, Emily Dickinson. Perhaps the dash is an empty signifier signalling the presence – absence of the other? Whilst the full stop is containment and container; the vehicle for petition but limiting the slippage of meaning.
And now I’m off to tend my neglected MLitt!
An apophatic dash?
A questioning apophatic dash even