The Anathemata
Rite and Fore-time (continued)
Searching where the kitchen midden tells of the decline which with the receding cold marked the recession of the Magdaleniana splendours.
Yet there he brights fragmented protomorphs
where lies the rudimentary bowl.2
How else
multifariam multisque modis3
the splendour of forms yet to come?
David Jones notes
2 Rather oddly, the first beginnings of anything like pottery are found among the depressed peoples who lived after the decline of the Palaeolithic cultures and before the rise of the Neolithic.
3 See the Epistle for the Third Mass of Christmas Day, Heb. I, 1. ‘ … at sundry times and in divers manners’ .
additional notes
DJ note 3: A longer quotation from Hebrews 1:1-2 shows its relevance to the poem: ‘God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds’.
a The Magdalenian period in western Europe refers to an Upper Paleolithic culture which spans the period between c. 17,000 and 12,000 years ago, toward the end of the last ice age.
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