'Dragonet'|| Watermarks

Dragonet

I listen to money singing.  It's like looking down
   From long french windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
   In the evening sun.  It is intensely sad.  ~Philip Larkin, High Windows (1974). 

“What to read in war time is a great question, I mean in the way of fiction...” ~on the binding of periodicals

The Wreck of the Deutschland

The inscription on the gravestone reads:

"Pray for the Souls of Barbara Hultenschmidt ,Henrica Fassbender (not found), Norberta Reinkober, Aurea Badziura and Brigitta Damhorst.

Franciscan Nuns from Germany who were Drowned near Harwich in the wreck of the Deutschland Dec 7th 1875. Four of whom were interred here Decr. 13th. RIP"

The sinking of SS Deutschland (1866) in December 1875 was one of the great Victorian maritime disasters

The German liner became stranded on the Kentish Knock while en route from Bremen for Southampton and New York with passengers, emigrants, and general cargo. It happened in severe fog and snowstorms, which also prevented her signals of distress from being seen. Amongst those who died were five Franciscan nuns. The nuns had been expelled from Germany under Bismarck`s Kulturkampf laws. En route to fulfil their vocation, they perished in the tragedy.

Of the five, only four of the bodies were discovered. The fifth remained undiscovered. The four were buried in St Patrick's Cemetery, Leytonstone...

This incident inspired the poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'

The poem is dedicated to

"the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875"

On that night when the nuns were on board the ship, Hopkins recalls that he was in Wales in one of the Jesuit houses.

The reference to Gertrude is to St Gertrude the Great, the subject of yesterday`s talk by Pope Benedict XVI.

It would appear that Hopkins thought (wrongly) that St Gertrude of Halfta and Luther were born in the same town. Hopkins contrasts the two traditions in Germany: Lutheranism and Catholicism

It would appear that in the turbulent scenes, the leader of the nuns was seen standing and heard calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’

In the poem Hopkins teases out what the nun may have meant and the influence of St Gertrude of Halfta is evident.

"20

She was first of a five and came

Of a coifèd sisterhood.

(O Deutschland, double a desperate name! 155

O world wide of its good!

But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town,

Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood:

From life’s dawn it is drawn down,

Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.) 160

21

Loathed for a love men knew in them,

Banned by the land of their birth,

Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them;

Surf, snow, river and earth

Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light; 165

Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,

Thou martyr-master: in thy sight

Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers—sweet heaven was astrew in them.

Five! the finding and sake

And cipher of suffering Christ. 170

Mark, the mark is of man’s make

And the word of it Sacrificed.

But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken,

Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced—

Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token 175

For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.

23

Joy fall to thee, father Francis,

Drawn to the Life that died;

With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his

Lovescape crucified 180

And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters

And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride,

Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,

To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.

24

Away in the loveable west, 185

On a pastoral forehead of Wales,

I was under a roof here, I was at rest,

And they the prey of the gales;

She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly

Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails 190

Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’:

The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best.

~from postings, Perry Lorenzo

In wind’s burly and beat of endragonèd seas

                                     

      This is a series which begins with "Breathe, arch and orginal Breath," which is an invocation of the Muse of the Holy Spirit--rather like the opening of Milton's Paradise Lost which develops the imagery from the opening of Genesis whre the Spirit of God hovered over the waters------a series which begins with the Holy Spirit and ends with an image of the waters as a Dragon, which of course reminds us of the drama of the Apocalypse as well as the Babylonian creation-myth of Marduk slaying Tiamut or Jehovah slaying Leviathan, underlying the original Genesis account as well. These stanzas, obviously, run the full sweep of God's affair with the world, from Creation to Apocalypse, particularly climaxing in:

"Other, I gather, in measure her mind's

Burden, in wind's burly and beat of endragoned seas."
Addendum:

....When at last he saw fit to introduce Hopkins’s singular poetry to the world, some 30 years after his friend’s death, Bridges opened the volume with “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” “like a great dragon,” he wrote, “folded in the gate to forbid all entrance.” Entrance would be gained, however...

Newman's vision is of a soul who desires purgation in order to be made worthy & capable of the vision of God: it is a beautiful vision. It roots our relationship with God, even our relationship through death on such a celebration as All Souls Day, in Love, in Eros even, indeed in our longing and desire for God, a longing God has put in us. Thus Purgatory, for Newman, as for Dante, is Love.
Of course, Edward Elgar famously set this all to exquisite music:
Soul
I go before my Judge. Ah! ….
Angel
…. Praise to His Name!
The eager spirit has darted from my hold,
And, with the intemperate energy of love,
Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel;
But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity,
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes
And circles round the Crucified, has seized,
And scorch'd, and shrivell'd it; and now it lies
Passive and still before the awful Throne.
O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe,
Consumed, yet quicken'd, by the glance of God.
Soul
Take me away, and in the lowest deep
There let me be,
And there in hope the lone night-watches keep,
Told out for me.
There, motionless and happy in my pain,
Lone, not forlorn,—
There will I sing my sad perpetual strain,
Until the morn.
There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast,
Which ne'er can cease
To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest
Of its Sole Peace.
There will I sing my absent Lord and Love:—
Take me away,
That sooner I may rise, and go above,
And see Him in the truth of everlasting day.
--from John Henry Cardinal Newman, The Dream of Gerontius