The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
[On this unabiding rocka
for one Great Summer
lifted up
by next Great Winter1
down
among the altitudes
with all help-heights
down
as low as Parnassus
(it’s Ossa on Pelion now)b.
Seven templum’d montes
under terra-marl.2
Sinai under.
Where’s Ark-hill?c
Ask both the Idas.d
And where:
West horse-hills?e
Volcae-remnants’ crag-carneddau?3
Moel4 of the Mothers?
the many colles Arthuri?f
David Jones notes
1 ‘This is the Aristotelian theory of the Great Summer and the Great Winter, according to which the earth passes through a cycle of climatic change, each phase of which is linked with a corresponding change in the relative area of land and sea.’ Dawson, Age of the Gods, 1929. The author goes on to explain that this Greek guess as to the cosmic rhythm is largely verified by modern physical science.
2 Cf. the layout of a templum (space), temple, camp, city, etc., with which the city on the seven hills [Rome] is associated, and the connection between this and the prehistoric settlements on the marls of the Po Valley—hence called the Terramara (marl-earth) Culture. See page 81 below.
3 Carneddau, carn-neth-ei, neth as in nether, ei as in height, accent on middle syllable; thus rhyming with Volcae in the same line, and having some slight assonance with Arthuri below. Carneddau is the plural of carnedd a mound or cairn.
It was from Volcae, the name of a Celtic tribe, that the Teutonic word Wealas, ‘the Welsh’, derived. Just as the Romans got from the Illyrians the word ‘Greeks’ and applied it to all the Hellenes, so the Germans used the name of one Celtic tribe to designate other Celts. Later it meant ‘foreigners’ and was so used by the English of the Celts in this country, but only of those Celts who had formed part of the Roman world. The Anglo-Saxons did not call the Scots or the Picts Wealas, though these were equally foreigners and Celts. So that Bret-Wealas, Brit-Welsh, might be said to mean ‘British-Roman foreigners’.
4 Moel, pronounce moil, hill.
additional notes
The original text has an image facing this page: Northmen’s thing. Inscription in coloured crayon and water-colour, 1948. The text reads NORThMENS THING MADE SOUTHFOLKS PLACE (a quotation from Finnegans Wake). I have not been able to find an adequate reproduction.
DJ note 1: the last sentence of this note is not now believed except in a very general sense that climate changes have occurred in the past, some warm, some very cold (at least according to some scientists). The story is far more complicated than was understood in 1929.
a Mount Zion, near Jerusalem.
b According to Hague (p. 35), DJ commented ‘About Ossa on Pelion, I fear I merely used the names analogously intending, as you say, a “reversal”. I thought I’d heard chaps use the tag “Pelion on Ossa”, I might have said “it’s hollow Elis on Olympia now” or “Omega is first and Alpha last”, or what you will. I wrote “it’s Ossa on Pelion now” without a thought except that I thought it served in the context of that page of reversals’.
Pelion on Ossa is an addition: piling one big mountain on another, or adding an extra burden on something which is already strenuous. I think he also means to contrast the lowness of Parnassus in one phase of the Great Cycle with the height of Pelion+Ossa in another phase of the Great Cycle.
Pelion (1610 m.) and Ossa (1978 m.) are two big mountains in Thessaly, central Greece. In Greek mythology, the Aloadaes, two strong and aggressive giants, are said to have attempted to pile Mount Pelion on top of Mount Ossa (not the other way round as DJ has it, possibly because it sounds better that way) in their attempt to scale Olympus (2919 m.)
c Mount Ararat, where Noah’s Ark came to rest.
d In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the ‘Mountain of the Goddess’: Mount Ida in Crete; and Mount Ida in the ancient Troad region of western Anatolia (in modern-day Turkey) which was also known as the Phrygian Ida in classical antiquity and is the mountain that is mentioned in the Iliad of Homer and the Aeneid of Virgil. Both are associated with the mother goddess in the deepest layers of pre-Greek myth; see Wikipedia for more details.
e This refers to the wild ponies on the hills around Capel-y-ffin, which he painted while he was staying there (see here for one example of these paintings), and also to the Uffington White Horse which is a highly stylised prehistoric hill figure, 110 m long (374 feet), formed from deep trenches filled with crushed white chalk situated on the upper slopes of White Horse Hill in the parish of Uffington (Oxfordshire).
f colles Arthuri: hills of Arthur. Several British hills have Arthurian associations, including those reputed to be his last resting place.
see also
The Terramara are to be found again on page 80.
comments
Following on from the idea of oreogenesis introduced on page 53 DJ introduces the idea that mountains rise and fall in a long cycle, naming some specific mountains of importance to him. One of the features of Welsh, and indeed much Gaelic, poetry is the way it constantly makes reference to named local features; it is grounded in place.
This lengthy parenthesis finishes on page 58; it is followed by a reference to another unabiding rock. See also note 1 on page 58, which refers to the passage as an allegory.