The Anathemata

Rite and Fore-time (continued)

Crux-mounda at the node gammadion’db castle.

Within the laughless Megaronc

the margerond 1

beyond echelon’d Skaiane

the stone

the fonted water

the fronded wood.2

David Jones notes

1 I am associating the rock called Agelastos Petra, ‘the laughless rock’, at pre-Hellenic Eleusis (where the modelled cult-object in its stone cist within the cleft of the rock, represented the female generative physiognomy) with the Megaron-type buildings on Troy-rock where Helen was the pearl-to-be-sought within the traversed and echeloned defences of the city. But apart from this association we can accurately describe the hall of Priam as ‘laughless’, and certainly Helen was a margaron of great price.

2 Where Vergil (Aeneid II, 512-514) describes the palace of Priam he uses ancient material as to sacred tree and stone but puts them in a contemporary setting—a Roman atrium—so water is implied, for an atrium would have its sunk basin. By whatever means of fusion he hands down three of the permanent symbols for us to make use of.

additional notes

DJ note 1: In Greek mythology, Agelastos ( ‘smile-less’) Petra was the name of the stone on which Demeter rested during her search for Persephone.

a The identification of Hissarlis and Calvary is because they are both small mounds of symbolic or mythic significance which are both ‘lifted up’ in both a physical and DJ’s metaphysical sense.

e The Skaian Gate of Troy, ‘echelon’d’, i.e. with the walls or entrances staggered (gammadion’d). See here for a plan of Troy; the Skaian gate is believed to be the South Gate of Troy VI, number 11 on the map.

comments

Hague (p. 38) writes:

the megaron and note: the ‘agelastos petra’ (associated with Demeter) appears in D.’s pictured ‘Aphrodite in Aulis’; the long spear of the soldier in the foreground points almost directly to it, and the ‘modelled cult-object’ is just to the left of the spear-head. This picture is described at some length in David Blamires’s David Jones, pp.67-9, where this passage in The Anathemata is referred to. It is reproduced in Word and Image IV. The Aphrodite is of the same type as the Aphrodite of Ana. p. 57) ‘florid she breached’. The title of the picture is a little worrying for the substitution of Aphrodite for Iphigeneia seems a little high-handed.

‘My intention’, writes D., ‘in changing Iphigeneia to Aphrodite in the title was to include all female cult-figures, as I have written somewhere the figure is all goddesses rolled into one - wounded of necessity as are all things worthy of our worship – she’s mother-figure and virgo inter virgines – the pierced woman and mother & all her foretypes. She is “Elen the bracelet-giver” of I.P. also, & also the many-wounded Mair, Rhiannon of the Mabinogion, Ceidwades Wen, mundi Domina, “not a puff of wind without her” in L. of P. section. p.128. In The Ana., the Lady of the Pool refers to Our Lady as comprehending in herself all the potent pre-Xtian cult-figures and their sufferings.

She’s as she of Aulis, master:
not a puff of wind without her! her fiat is our fortune, sir: like Helen’s face
t’was that as launched the ship.

. . . I quote the line only as having a bearing on my reason for changing Iphigeneia to Aphrodite in the title of that watercolour. I remember being rather pleased with “not a puff of wind without her”. Odd how one likes certain chance lines and suppose it is because one feels most of one’s attempts may be outers or some not on the bloody target at all.’

see also

semantic structures

glossary

b gammadion: a swastika, used decoratively.

c Megaron:the great hall of the Grecian palace complexes.

d margaron: a variant of the Greek word margarites, meaning pearl.