In Parenthesis
by
by
W.S. Merwin (Foreword by),
T.S. Eliot (Introduction)
BlackOxford's review
it was amazing
bookshelves: favourites, british, historical-fiction, philosophy-theology The Liturgical Transformation of War
David Jones was a visual artist who also wrote poetry. His most important poetic work, In Parenthesis, is a profound memorial of his experience of the Great War. Critics have read the message of In Parenthesisas both pro and anti-war, the former largely because of its apparent celebration of the armed man through the ages, the latter on account of the detailed depiction of the suffering and oppression of the common soldier. But it is more likely that In Parenthesis is not a commentary on the desirability or inevitability of war as it is Jones's effort to create a plausible theory of his experience, a theory which provides a judgement not on war but on God. T. S. Eliot captures this in his preface, "We search how we may see formal goodness in a life singularly inimical, hateful to us." Put another way, the poem is a theodicy, a reconciliation of the ways of God to man, a form not used with greater effect until the literature of the Holocaust, which it anticipates.
In Parenthesis was first published in 1937, almost 20 years after the events that it recounts. Although highly emotional in parts, this is not a work of the immediate or unmediated emotions of the trenches. And although its structure appears as a straightforward chronological history of Jones's life from his initial military training in 1915 to the Battle of the Somme in 1917, the underlying form is one of religious liturgy in which time is contained in an eternal timelessness. The liturgical pervades the work and creates a particular kind of theodicy, one which is merciless in its judgement about the imbecility of the created world but which is conducted from a stand of faith in its creator. This is what gives the work its ambivalent tone of irony and respect. It is also what makes the poem profound and not merely moving.
Jones converted to Catholicism in 1921. By his own judgement he was first attracted to Catholicism not for dogmatic or intellectual reasons but because he happened upon the celebration of the Mass one night while he was at the front. He experienced not just a place of calm within the chaos of war but a set of actions, a ritual, that had a reality of its own while being part of the other reality of filth, pain, and fear. Jones seems to allude to this event in an early part of In Parenthesis as a moment of revelatory import when a shell explodes without warning near Pvt. John Ball:
"...out of the vortex, rifling the air it came - bright brass-shod, Pandoran; with all air-filling screaming the howling crescendo's up-piling snapt. The universal world, breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness. Then the pent violence released a consummation of all bursting's out; all sudden up-rendings and rivings-through - all taking-out of vents- all barrier-breaking - all unmaking, Pernitric begetting - the dissolving and splitting of solid things. In which unearthing aftermath, John Ball picked up his mess tin and hurried within; ashen, huddled, waited in the dismal straw."
This alternative reality became, after his conversion, a controlling aspect of his life. Jones joined the Ditchling Community, a Dominican-inspired fraternity initiated by the artist Eric Gill. The community combined artistic work with Catholic religious practice and Jones was known to abruptly leave whatever he was busy with to attend various daily offices and devotions. In the preface to his other major poem, The Anathemata published in 1952, Jones points out that the work is structured around the Catholic Mass. It would clearly be an overstatement to say that Jones was obsessed by liturgical ritual but not that this ritual provided something fundamental in his appreciation of the world.
Ritual is a constant theme throughout In Parenthesis. It is a ritual of military parade that opens the poem. The rituals of the common soldier in daily life, the rituals of entry into, survival within, and relationships shaped by the trenches are on every page. Rituals are what brings some sort of order amidst the chaotic environment of the front-line. They bring some sort of peace during the crisis of bombardment and death. They constitute a place of retreat and regeneration. During the move from camp to ship transport Jones's attitude toward ritual is made clear: "...the liturgy of their going-up assumed a primitive creativeness, an apostolic actuality, a correspondence with the object, a flexibility." The respect for tradition-driven action is explicit. It is creative. It is reliable because ancient. It is in some mysterious manner capable of eliminating the Kantian separation of subject and object.
The expression is, unlike that of other great writers who reflect their religious background in their work - like Milton, Melville, Thoreau, or even Hopkins - Jones's concern is not with dogma, metaphysical explanations or biblical directives. It is a liturgical transformation of war. Hence its objectivity, it's detail, it's routineness even in crisis, one might even say its flatness. To learn that Cockney is the lingua franca in the ranks consisting of diverse, often mutually incomprehensible dialects is not just interesting, it is a reference to liturgical Latin as a binding force in the Catholicism of the period. We get almost nothing of feelings in the first six parts but rather are overwhelmed by behavioural specifics: how to walk, how to stand guard on a firing step, how to set the range precisely on ones rifle sight, how to clean the 63 parts of the Enfield rifle, how to treat NCO's and commissioned officers, how to submit creatively to direction, how to be around death. In short, how to live.
The structure of In Parenthesis is, although not explicitly stated, similar to that of Jones's other major work, Anathemata, namely the Tridentine Mass which begins with a procession before the altar. The procession is accompanied by the Asperges me, sprinkle me, during which the congregation is blessed with holy water, just as the soldiers of Company A are rained upon before their departure during part 1. Part 2 describes the initial period of deployment in France, a time of instruction in the practicalities of military life at the front. This corresponds to the Mass of the Catechumens, the first major part of the Tridentine Mass, which is also a period of instruction for the uninitiated. It is at the end of this part that Ball has his experience of the enemy shell, his baptism of fire, through which he, and the rest of the company, become different people. War has entered their souls. They have been baptised through fire, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and are now ready to proceed.
Part 3 opens the Canon or essential portion of the Mass, the first act of which is the Offertory during which the objects that are to be given (back) to God are identified and presented at the altar. In the Mass, these objects are the unleavened bread and the wine. In the poem the objects in question are the men themselves, who are now part of the sacrificial community, "And you too are assimilated, you too are of this people." They are to be offered, not just to the Enemy but also to the trench rats: "You can hear his carrying parties rustle our corruptions through the night weeds - contest the choicest morsels in his tiny conduits, bead-eyed feast on us; by a rule of his nature, at the night-feast on the broken of us."
The central mystery of the Mass is the Consecration, the divinely authorised human action through which the eternal enters into time. Although dogmatic tradition since the early Middle Ages has emphasised the action of the priest in calling the Body of Christ into existence, a parallel tradition that the congregation simultaneously forms the Body of Christ through its liturgical solidarity is equally valid. Both traditions are reflected in the poem. "An eastward alignment of troubled, ashen faces" (facing the westward German trenches; but the traditional alignment of Catholic Churches is toward the East) awaits expectantly the Consecration. Rifles are cleaned with oil and water in emulation of the cleansing of the priest's hands in preparation for his consecratory act. Suddenly the act is done and an ontological change has occurred, "...up shrouding, unsheafing - and insubstantial barriers dissolve. This blind night-negative yields uncertain flux....The flux yields up a measurable body."
At this point the Roman ritual calls for the Elevation of the consecrated bread and wine, its exhibition to the congregation. The equivalent poetic moment occurs in sequence, a call to attention, "Stand to, Stand to, Stand to arms." But it is also the congregation that is the object of (self) sacrifice, to itself, each on behalf of the other, "The hanged, the offerant: himself to himself on the tree...honouring this rare and indivisible New Light for us, This concertina'd Good News of these barbarians, them bastard square-heads." The imagery edges on the blasphemous: the gospel as barbed wire, those whom we sacrifice ourselves for, as well as to, namely the enemy.. These front-line soldiers are honoured as, "scape-beasts come to the waste-lands." Rations are distributed but this is not yet Communion. "You could eat out of their hands..." but the food is inedible: tepid tea, hairy cheese and sodden bread. Real Communion awaits.
It is at this point that Jones speaks directly to the reader, "You ought to ask: Why, what is this, what's the meaning of this..." The ambiguity is profound. What is the object of the question? This war? All war? The consecrated bread? The troops as sacrifice for each other? Or for the enemy? He makes no clarification but simply points out, "You live by faith alright in these parts." He then alludes to the prayer in the Mass that addresses the Body of Christ in all its forms, the Agnus Dei, sacrificial Lamb of God. The men have become little more than "bleating sheep [who know not] the market of her fleece."
Part 5 is the beginning of the act of Communion which then continues on in Part 6. During Communion first the priest then the congregation consume the consecrated bread and wine. They also enter into one another, paradoxically dying to themselves. This is not just mysterious, it is unnatural, " ...they've tampered with the natural law...We all want the Man hanged." Who is this Man? The Kaiser? The officer class? Mankind? Christ? Ourselves?
It is at this point that the first company deaths occur, two dead, two missing on patrol, one German prisoner. One of the deaths is an officer hung up on the wire, the Communion of the priest perhaps before the congregation is served. Jones makes a further nod to the physicality of Communion emphasised by Catholic doctrine in his reference to the old Latin daily office said by priests and religious. The rubric specified that where possible these prayers should pronounced not just read contemplatively, "...to watch the lips move beneath the beaver's shade, where a canonical wise nests conserved in an old man's mumbling, the validity of material things, and the resurrection of this flesh."
Communion is intended to be catholic, that is universal. Hence "...all these types are catered for, but they must know exactly how to behave ...there's neither bond nor free in this outing, Greek nor Bulgarian." Once again Jones is concerned about action, correct action. The men then consume the gifts of food they have received from home. Seed cake becomes the substance of their shared life under the apocalyptic din of an artillery barrage. This is simultaneously a trivial and solemn moment, "...how is a man to know the habits of his God, whether he smiles suddenly or withholds, if you mishandle the things set apart, the objects of his people he is jealous of. You sit with circumspection and you rise with care." At this point the litany of names of those about to go over the top is parallel to the brief litany of the saints in the Leonine prayers (now suppressed) of the Tridentine ritual.
Part 7 might be considered a more developed view of Communion. But given its depth of emotion and feeling, it seems more likely to be a sort of recapitulation of liturgical ritual in the 'real life' and death of the men of the company. The Mass is now put into the attack whereas the prospective attack was included in the Mass up to this point. This is signalled, among other places, in the oblique reference to the prayer Quam Oblationem, Bless and approve our offering, from the Latin Canon. The men have been sanctified as they walk toward the German lines, "Each one bearing in his body the whole apprehension of that innocent...." The designation of this 'innocent' is vague but it includes them certainly. The description of their deaths is almost unbearable in its understatement:
"By one and one the line gaps, where her [Sweet Sister Death's] fancy will - howsoever they may howl for their virginity
She holds them - who impinge less space
And limply to a heap
nourish a lesser category of being"
And finally we are led back to the beginning of the poem and start again as, " ...and dew apserges the freshly dead."
Like any great work of art there are countless interpretations that can be made of In Parenthesis. The one above has the (perhaps sole) advantage of allowing the work to be free from political presumption. Like any theodicy, the poem cannot come to a conclusion which abandons God without plunging into a Manichaen abyss. So it leaves open its theological interpretation. By concentrating on ritual rather than metaphysics, Jones promotes an investigation and judgement which is beyond dogmatic logic. This is I think its essential and enduring genius.
David Jones was a visual artist who also wrote poetry. His most important poetic work, In Parenthesis, is a profound memorial of his experience of the Great War. Critics have read the message of In Parenthesisas both pro and anti-war, the former largely because of its apparent celebration of the armed man through the ages, the latter on account of the detailed depiction of the suffering and oppression of the common soldier. But it is more likely that In Parenthesis is not a commentary on the desirability or inevitability of war as it is Jones's effort to create a plausible theory of his experience, a theory which provides a judgement not on war but on God. T. S. Eliot captures this in his preface, "We search how we may see formal goodness in a life singularly inimical, hateful to us." Put another way, the poem is a theodicy, a reconciliation of the ways of God to man, a form not used with greater effect until the literature of the Holocaust, which it anticipates.
In Parenthesis was first published in 1937, almost 20 years after the events that it recounts. Although highly emotional in parts, this is not a work of the immediate or unmediated emotions of the trenches. And although its structure appears as a straightforward chronological history of Jones's life from his initial military training in 1915 to the Battle of the Somme in 1917, the underlying form is one of religious liturgy in which time is contained in an eternal timelessness. The liturgical pervades the work and creates a particular kind of theodicy, one which is merciless in its judgement about the imbecility of the created world but which is conducted from a stand of faith in its creator. This is what gives the work its ambivalent tone of irony and respect. It is also what makes the poem profound and not merely moving.
Jones converted to Catholicism in 1921. By his own judgement he was first attracted to Catholicism not for dogmatic or intellectual reasons but because he happened upon the celebration of the Mass one night while he was at the front. He experienced not just a place of calm within the chaos of war but a set of actions, a ritual, that had a reality of its own while being part of the other reality of filth, pain, and fear. Jones seems to allude to this event in an early part of In Parenthesis as a moment of revelatory import when a shell explodes without warning near Pvt. John Ball:
"...out of the vortex, rifling the air it came - bright brass-shod, Pandoran; with all air-filling screaming the howling crescendo's up-piling snapt. The universal world, breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness. Then the pent violence released a consummation of all bursting's out; all sudden up-rendings and rivings-through - all taking-out of vents- all barrier-breaking - all unmaking, Pernitric begetting - the dissolving and splitting of solid things. In which unearthing aftermath, John Ball picked up his mess tin and hurried within; ashen, huddled, waited in the dismal straw."
This alternative reality became, after his conversion, a controlling aspect of his life. Jones joined the Ditchling Community, a Dominican-inspired fraternity initiated by the artist Eric Gill. The community combined artistic work with Catholic religious practice and Jones was known to abruptly leave whatever he was busy with to attend various daily offices and devotions. In the preface to his other major poem, The Anathemata published in 1952, Jones points out that the work is structured around the Catholic Mass. It would clearly be an overstatement to say that Jones was obsessed by liturgical ritual but not that this ritual provided something fundamental in his appreciation of the world.
Ritual is a constant theme throughout In Parenthesis. It is a ritual of military parade that opens the poem. The rituals of the common soldier in daily life, the rituals of entry into, survival within, and relationships shaped by the trenches are on every page. Rituals are what brings some sort of order amidst the chaotic environment of the front-line. They bring some sort of peace during the crisis of bombardment and death. They constitute a place of retreat and regeneration. During the move from camp to ship transport Jones's attitude toward ritual is made clear: "...the liturgy of their going-up assumed a primitive creativeness, an apostolic actuality, a correspondence with the object, a flexibility." The respect for tradition-driven action is explicit. It is creative. It is reliable because ancient. It is in some mysterious manner capable of eliminating the Kantian separation of subject and object.
The expression is, unlike that of other great writers who reflect their religious background in their work - like Milton, Melville, Thoreau, or even Hopkins - Jones's concern is not with dogma, metaphysical explanations or biblical directives. It is a liturgical transformation of war. Hence its objectivity, it's detail, it's routineness even in crisis, one might even say its flatness. To learn that Cockney is the lingua franca in the ranks consisting of diverse, often mutually incomprehensible dialects is not just interesting, it is a reference to liturgical Latin as a binding force in the Catholicism of the period. We get almost nothing of feelings in the first six parts but rather are overwhelmed by behavioural specifics: how to walk, how to stand guard on a firing step, how to set the range precisely on ones rifle sight, how to clean the 63 parts of the Enfield rifle, how to treat NCO's and commissioned officers, how to submit creatively to direction, how to be around death. In short, how to live.
The structure of In Parenthesis is, although not explicitly stated, similar to that of Jones's other major work, Anathemata, namely the Tridentine Mass which begins with a procession before the altar. The procession is accompanied by the Asperges me, sprinkle me, during which the congregation is blessed with holy water, just as the soldiers of Company A are rained upon before their departure during part 1. Part 2 describes the initial period of deployment in France, a time of instruction in the practicalities of military life at the front. This corresponds to the Mass of the Catechumens, the first major part of the Tridentine Mass, which is also a period of instruction for the uninitiated. It is at the end of this part that Ball has his experience of the enemy shell, his baptism of fire, through which he, and the rest of the company, become different people. War has entered their souls. They have been baptised through fire, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and are now ready to proceed.
Part 3 opens the Canon or essential portion of the Mass, the first act of which is the Offertory during which the objects that are to be given (back) to God are identified and presented at the altar. In the Mass, these objects are the unleavened bread and the wine. In the poem the objects in question are the men themselves, who are now part of the sacrificial community, "And you too are assimilated, you too are of this people." They are to be offered, not just to the Enemy but also to the trench rats: "You can hear his carrying parties rustle our corruptions through the night weeds - contest the choicest morsels in his tiny conduits, bead-eyed feast on us; by a rule of his nature, at the night-feast on the broken of us."
The central mystery of the Mass is the Consecration, the divinely authorised human action through which the eternal enters into time. Although dogmatic tradition since the early Middle Ages has emphasised the action of the priest in calling the Body of Christ into existence, a parallel tradition that the congregation simultaneously forms the Body of Christ through its liturgical solidarity is equally valid. Both traditions are reflected in the poem. "An eastward alignment of troubled, ashen faces" (facing the westward German trenches; but the traditional alignment of Catholic Churches is toward the East) awaits expectantly the Consecration. Rifles are cleaned with oil and water in emulation of the cleansing of the priest's hands in preparation for his consecratory act. Suddenly the act is done and an ontological change has occurred, "...up shrouding, unsheafing - and insubstantial barriers dissolve. This blind night-negative yields uncertain flux....The flux yields up a measurable body."
At this point the Roman ritual calls for the Elevation of the consecrated bread and wine, its exhibition to the congregation. The equivalent poetic moment occurs in sequence, a call to attention, "Stand to, Stand to, Stand to arms." But it is also the congregation that is the object of (self) sacrifice, to itself, each on behalf of the other, "The hanged, the offerant: himself to himself on the tree...honouring this rare and indivisible New Light for us, This concertina'd Good News of these barbarians, them bastard square-heads." The imagery edges on the blasphemous: the gospel as barbed wire, those whom we sacrifice ourselves for, as well as to, namely the enemy.. These front-line soldiers are honoured as, "scape-beasts come to the waste-lands." Rations are distributed but this is not yet Communion. "You could eat out of their hands..." but the food is inedible: tepid tea, hairy cheese and sodden bread. Real Communion awaits.
It is at this point that Jones speaks directly to the reader, "You ought to ask: Why, what is this, what's the meaning of this..." The ambiguity is profound. What is the object of the question? This war? All war? The consecrated bread? The troops as sacrifice for each other? Or for the enemy? He makes no clarification but simply points out, "You live by faith alright in these parts." He then alludes to the prayer in the Mass that addresses the Body of Christ in all its forms, the Agnus Dei, sacrificial Lamb of God. The men have become little more than "bleating sheep [who know not] the market of her fleece."
Part 5 is the beginning of the act of Communion which then continues on in Part 6. During Communion first the priest then the congregation consume the consecrated bread and wine. They also enter into one another, paradoxically dying to themselves. This is not just mysterious, it is unnatural, " ...they've tampered with the natural law...We all want the Man hanged." Who is this Man? The Kaiser? The officer class? Mankind? Christ? Ourselves?
It is at this point that the first company deaths occur, two dead, two missing on patrol, one German prisoner. One of the deaths is an officer hung up on the wire, the Communion of the priest perhaps before the congregation is served. Jones makes a further nod to the physicality of Communion emphasised by Catholic doctrine in his reference to the old Latin daily office said by priests and religious. The rubric specified that where possible these prayers should pronounced not just read contemplatively, "...to watch the lips move beneath the beaver's shade, where a canonical wise nests conserved in an old man's mumbling, the validity of material things, and the resurrection of this flesh."
Communion is intended to be catholic, that is universal. Hence "...all these types are catered for, but they must know exactly how to behave ...there's neither bond nor free in this outing, Greek nor Bulgarian." Once again Jones is concerned about action, correct action. The men then consume the gifts of food they have received from home. Seed cake becomes the substance of their shared life under the apocalyptic din of an artillery barrage. This is simultaneously a trivial and solemn moment, "...how is a man to know the habits of his God, whether he smiles suddenly or withholds, if you mishandle the things set apart, the objects of his people he is jealous of. You sit with circumspection and you rise with care." At this point the litany of names of those about to go over the top is parallel to the brief litany of the saints in the Leonine prayers (now suppressed) of the Tridentine ritual.
Part 7 might be considered a more developed view of Communion. But given its depth of emotion and feeling, it seems more likely to be a sort of recapitulation of liturgical ritual in the 'real life' and death of the men of the company. The Mass is now put into the attack whereas the prospective attack was included in the Mass up to this point. This is signalled, among other places, in the oblique reference to the prayer Quam Oblationem, Bless and approve our offering, from the Latin Canon. The men have been sanctified as they walk toward the German lines, "Each one bearing in his body the whole apprehension of that innocent...." The designation of this 'innocent' is vague but it includes them certainly. The description of their deaths is almost unbearable in its understatement:
"By one and one the line gaps, where her [Sweet Sister Death's] fancy will - howsoever they may howl for their virginity
She holds them - who impinge less space
And limply to a heap
nourish a lesser category of being"
And finally we are led back to the beginning of the poem and start again as, " ...and dew apserges the freshly dead."
Like any great work of art there are countless interpretations that can be made of In Parenthesis. The one above has the (perhaps sole) advantage of allowing the work to be free from political presumption. Like any theodicy, the poem cannot come to a conclusion which abandons God without plunging into a Manichaen abyss. So it leaves open its theological interpretation. By concentrating on ritual rather than metaphysics, Jones promotes an investigation and judgement which is beyond dogmatic logic. This is I think its essential and enduring genius.
posted by The Mind of BlackOxford @ August 04, 2016
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