The Anathemata
The Lady of the Pool (continued)
. . . did black deth
have him young? Or does he sit degreed an’ silked in oriel’da halls, in a cure o’ Christ and shorn to sign it, warming their disputations till frigid syllogism pulses like mother nature—by a most exact art?
Oh! do the budged owls pluck where their forelocks were, as did remunerated errand boys—when manners was—for proper admiration to see divine science by the muse so fired?
Is their chilly curia a very thalamosb: is Lady Verity with Poesy now wed, and at that bed, by Prudentia curtained close, does the Trivium curtsy and does each take hand and to the Quadrivium call: Music! for a saraband ?1
And does serene Astronomy carry the tonic Ave to the created spheres, does old Averroes show a leg?2—for what’s the song b’ Seine and Isis determines toons in caelian consistories—or so this cock-clerk3 once said.
Do all in aulac rise
and cede him his hypothesis:
Mother is requisite to son?
Or would they have none
of his theosis?
He were a one for what’s due her, captain.
Being ever a one for what’s due us, captain.
He knew his Austin!4
But he were ever
at his distinctions, captain.
They come—and they go, captain.
David Jones notes
1 Cf. the division of the Seven Liberal Arts into the Trivium: Grammar Dialectic, Rhetoric; and the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, Music.
2 He held matter to be uncreate and from all eternity.
3 Pronounce to rhyme with ‘lurk’
4 Cf. Augustine, ‘God became man that man might become god.’
additional notes
DJ note 2: Averroes, the 12th century Arab philosopher, will hardly be likely to show a leg here; for Rome (caelian consistory) will be guided by Paris and Oxford (Seine and Isis).
DJ note 4: DJ is wrong here, for the phrase was used by St Athanasius not St Augustine, and earlier by St Irenaeus (though he would have learnt it from an Augustinian priest). It is an important part of the doctrine of theosis, or becoming (more) like God. The teaching of deification or theosis in Eastern Orthodoxy and much of Eastern Catholicism refers to the attainment of likeness of God, union with God or reconciliation with God.
see also
semantic structures
glossary
a oriel: a large recess with a window, projecting out from a room or building.
b thalamos: an inner room, here used in the sense of bridal chamber.
c aula: here used in the sense of ‘oriel’d hall’.
comments
Elen wonders where her former lover is now. Dead of the plague, perhaps, or a senior member of Oriel College Oxford, engaged in medieval teaching and scholarly disputation.