J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Fall of King Arthur" and the holy realm of Logres

I am not a medievalist but was recently given a copy of The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien by my son. A long-time enthusiastic of Tolkien's work, this is verse that at times matches the doom-laden atmosphere of both The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin. Tolkien abandoned the poem some time in the mid 1930s probably due to the overwhelming pressures of other projects and his teaching load at Oxford. What he left, though unfinished, is both powerful and memorable.

Perhaps more than anything, Tolkien manages to conjure up a world of brooding and tragic passions that seem reflected in the very landscapes he describes - the eastern forests and tempest-torn skies of Europe where the warring Arthur goes to defend the ruin of the "Roman realm" and the fierce seas driving Arthur and his enemies towards the shores of "blessed Britain" through sweeping surf and waters that glitter with green and silver.

Here is a brief example from the description of the Eastern forests where Arthur takes his army, a forest called Mirkwood:

                          "Thus at last came they
to Mirkwood's margin   under mountain-shadows:
waste was behind them,   walls before them;
on the houseless hills   ever higher mounting
vast, unvanquished,   lay the veiled forest." (I.67-71)

Further in we see "lowering trees", "ravens croaking" and "ruinous rocks" swallowed by "sudden tempest". The sense of a world haunted by the almost physical presence of evil and darkness is very powerful throughout the poem, as if the passions stirred up among warring and discontent men were played out in creation among "shapes disastrous" and "fell shadows". Readers of both The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion will recognise echoes of style and imagery in all of these phrases.

The Fall of Arthur is powerful verse capturing the last days of King Arthur returning from Eastern wars to defend his kingdom against the treachery of Mordred. Throughout the poem we are taken inside the loss of both Guinevere and Lancelot to a love that proves only tragic and divisive for themselves and the "kindly Christendom" for which Arthur longs on his return. The tragedy and unfolding darkness however, is at times shot though with glimpses of the Christian splendour that Arthur had come home to defend.

Here we will find "dragon-prowed" ships bringing death and destruction, the "wolf" Mordred whose lust drives him to hunt the runaway Guinivere even to the "walls of Wales" and darkness haunting both sea and land as war simmers on the shores of the "holy realm" of Logres. But here also we will find the "holy crown" of King Arthur coming back to reclaim his kingdom with both might of arms but also a deep devotion to the Catholic faith, and specifically to the Virgin and Child, an image of which is emblazoned on his sails:

"at last returning   to his lost kingdom.
On his shrouds there shone   sheen with silver
A white lady   in holy arms
a babe bearing   born of maiden.
Sun shone through them.   The sea sparkled." (IV.126-129)

Men, says the narrator "marked it well" and "Mordred knew it". In an egalitarian age, this remarkable devotion to all that is tender, beautiful and life-giving seems out of place amidst the cry and hue of war. But Tolkien knew, I think, that the two are far from incompatible.

Tolkien's wonderful verse reminds us that we need to rediscover the purity of devotion and the love of all that is truly holy and good in our time. But equally, we need to rediscover a willingness to defend it, even at great personal cost.

Images: The Fall of Arthur, King Arthur with Virgin on Shield (14th C.), Madonna and Child by Ansano di Pietro di Mencio (15th C.).

Harps of Birkenau: The Auschwitz Poems

I recently took a school trip out to Berlin and Krakow during which we visited among many places the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps. The visit came after being in Berlin and seeing the Jewish Museum, Oscar Schindler's factory and the Berlin Wall and was in many respects the main visit of the trip. I have taught some of the literature of the holocaust before but whilst at Auschwitz came across an anthology called The Auschwitz Poems, edited by Adam A. Zych.

It seems incredible after visiting the camp and seeing close-up how the extermination of a whole race was planned and implemented that amidst the terror and anguish of this time, many poems were written in the camp as well as after the camp was liberated. Some of these are by former inmates, relatives or visitors.

It is hard not to feel overwhelmed by the mystery of iniquity in a place like Auschwitz, nor to reel at its radical nature. Walking the site, the horror that unfolded there can be difficult to grasp. It was a hot day on our visit and I began to feel distinctly light-headed as a result of both the heat and the experience. But the poems in this anthology are, if anything, a testament to the ability of life to ultimately triumph over death as we believe as Christians that it does. They are a testament so often to the human spirit's desire for transcendence even amidst the most terrible of circumstances:

"Creative writing in concentration camps, gulags, and prisons revealed that even in the most difficult conditions one could and must remain a human being - a creative being - and not the helpless convict condemned to scorn and annihilation." (Adam A. Zych, Introduction)

Many voices are represented her, including those of the famous such as Primo Levi, Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Czeslaw Milosz, Randall Jarrell and Robert Lowell. But the less well-known or even unknown also predominate here such as Shelli Jankowski-Smith whose poem The Death of Maximilian Kolbe I especially like. We were able to visit Kolbe's last cell in the basement of the notorious Cell Block 11, also known in the camp as the 'Death Block'. Photography is forbidden there and all that adorns Kolbe's cell are two large candles and a wreath on the wall.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe's story perhaps more than anything illustrates that evil does not have the last word. That in the last analysis, evil is only defeated by love. Father Kolbe's exchange of his life for that of another prisoner reminds us that standing against and overcoming evil is costly; in the face of the most radical evil, Kolbe understood that only the most radical love could meet and overcome it. By modelling Christ's love in and through his death, Father Kolbe gave hope to hundreds of prisoners. Says the ending of Janowski-Smith's poem:

"There is, at least, no solitude in the grave. The communion
of saints is always with us. We walk
in the ashes of saints, we breath the dust of martyrs."

And the blood of martyrs, as Tertullian once wrote, is the seed of the Church. I will only mention one other voice here for now, the voice of Zofia Grochowalska-Abramovich who is sometimes referred to 'the poet of Auschwitz'. Her story is a fascinating one and is taken up here by Cherie Braun along with one of Abramovich's poems, the beautiful The Fragrance of Lindens.

Zofia Grochowalska-Abramovich, a Polish Christian working for the resistance spent four years in Ravensbruck and Auschwitz and when the allies were coming, buried her poems in a jar at Auschwitz. This, according to Braun was later recovered by another camp inmate. Any literary activity in the camps was forbidden which is perhaps why some of her work appears fragmentary, like this from a haunting piece called The Harps of Birkenau:

"Smoke floats, thick foul smoke...
People burn people here.

And on luminous poles
stretched wires shine.
These are the harps of Brzezinka,
harps of Birkenau."

Brzezinka means 'birch forest' but also refers to a small Polish village about two miles from Auschwitz. Its double meaning suggests both the human destruction at Auschwitz but also the use of the forest to hide the instruments of extermination, the gas chambers and the crematoria.

Here, the harp - instrument of praise in the Psalms but also of lamentation - is equated with imprisonment and suffering and with the wire fences surrounding the camp. More specifically we might see an identification with the suffering in exile of the Jews in Psalm 137 who hung up their harps by the River Babylon in grief at their captivity.

Despite this, Grochowalska-Abramovich did not hang up her harp, but wrote in protest at the inhuman suffering she witnessed around her. Like many others in this anthology, her words are both memorable and important as a testament of hope to the ability of the person to retain their freedom even when everything has apparently been taken away.

Images: Book cover to "The Auschwitz Poems", Inscription on one of four tombstones at Birkenau for all the dead of Auschwitz; Saint Maximilian Kolbe; Crematorium through birches, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Morning eastward springs: The funeral of Stratford Caldecott

This week I attended the funeral of the Catholic writer Stratford Caldecott at the Oratory in Oxford (see Kathy Schiffer's brief obituary here). I had met Stratford only twice - both times at conferences organised by the G. K. Chesterton Institute in Oxford - but had also corresponded by email with him several times about writing and publishing. My daughter Emily had the privilege of staying with his family in Oxford for a month while she studied to teach English as a Foreign Language there.

Stratford's funeral was the most beautiful I have attended, rich in the beauty and hope of the Catholic Tradition and set to the beautiful Requiem by Gabriel Fauré performed live in the Oratory itself. Stratford embodied the call of the Second Vatican Council to proclaim the mystery of salvation and restore all things in Christ. He will be deeply missed and his passing will leave a profound impression on the Catholic intellectual landscape of this country.

The Oxford Oratory was of course where Gerard Manley Hopkins worked as a curate from 1878 before moving to Manchester. Hopkins' poetry was in many ways my first encounter with verse outside of the poets I was taught at school such as D. H. Lawrence and Ted Hughes. In 1877, Hopkins wrote "God's Grandeur" later published by Robert Bridges with other poems of this period such as "As kingfishers catch fire".

The last lines of this poem bring to mind the hope of light from darkness witnessed by Stratford's funeral:

"And though the last lights off the black West went
   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs -
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

The hope of eternal life to which Hopkins witnessed as a priest and of which Stratford wrote so often. Whilst in Oxford, we also revisited the University Church of St Mary the Virgin where C. S. Lewis preached his famous sermon The Weight of Glory in which he says of the hope of glory that awaits us as Christians:

"We are to shine as the sun, we are to be given the Morning star...At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure...Some day, God willing, we shall get in."

Stratford's funeral was such as day, for like Hopkins he knew that,

   "Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
   To the Father through the features of men's faces."
       (from As kingfishers catch fire)

May he behold "white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise" (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King).

Requiescat in pace, Stratford.

A list of Stratford Caldecott's books can be found here.