ABSTRACT
thirteenth century Hese carvings between cloister and chapterhouse?—when were they started? You might ask when a flower started, the beginnings Of a song or a marriage. Was it the first note struck, And the last dragging word at the nuptial supper? Or should we return to the singer’s earliest ballad— Lute-strings answering his mood at their own playing?— A glance across the rose-hedge in an evening garden? Before that, surely, to the child’s solitary chanting, The first propensity for love in the apprentice heart. And so with sculpture: it is less creation Than a reassembling of the before-created, a melting Down of memories in the unpredictable instant When some spark, through the unguarded senses, catches The mind alight, and all is a chaos of seething Impressions, which the artist’s concentration moulds Before the whole mass hardens. Yet the spark itself Is the only new element—that is the yeast Which sets the fl.at dough rising. These carvings then: to find their source I’d need to wander through a labyrinth of beginnings Each leading to an earlier recollection. But take what seems the first path first: Henry Falcon. He was the Master Mason When our Cathedral was building. After my father took me And signed my bonds, Falcon set me working In the long penthouse behind the eastern end. For five years I breathed stone-dust, Shuffled in stone-dust, carrying squares and templates From draughting-board to work-bench; checking tools And counting them at night-fall—mallets, stone-saws, Drills and chisels; hauling the chain-tackle To raise the tremendous blocks, or greasing boards That slid them to the next workman. Then I learned To use these tools myself, how to dress the stone And polish to mirrors the shafts of Purbeck marble That rose in clusters round the white columns; How to cut the rough cone that formed the capitals For some carver to fashion into leaf or cornsheaf, Or a monk with tooth-ache. At once I knew: ’This— This is my work-and nothing in the world else!’ Well, that was one beginning. I became a lover— That’s the only way to work—yes, and a jealous one, Hating to see the virgin stone violated By other hands—by men whose only ambition Was to copy and re-copy the patterns they had seen In their ‘prentice days, with no spark of themselves added, No observation.—Men who had never watched a hedgehog Shamble pathetically across a lane, cutting one In stone, and thinking (if they thought at all) that theirs Was its equal. Why, those were not births of art, But the monsters of in-breeding. ‘When I’m a sculptor,’ I told myself, ‘I’ll not attempt to carve The block into a rose. I’ll let the flower Blossom from the stone.’ So at the next stage In the Master’s workshop, studying geometry and drawing, Preparing designs, and working at cones myself Under his direction, I tried to combine the formal With the actual—to see each separate pattern Part of the building, yet part of nature too; So that a crouching rabbit, that lent its ears To the curve from pier to arch, at the same wild moment Heard the squared reapers closing in.… Words on my ears like blows.—Falcon Stopped at my bench, rebuked me, and walked on. But later, when the others left, returning moodily He looked again—more at myself, I think, Than at my rabbit—questioned me kindly, and my thoughts, Dammed for so long by my inward brooding, Came flooding out. He said little then, but afterwards He halted often, suggesting more moulding here, Less undercutting there, criticising my work Less for its nonconformity to the teacher’s rules Than to my own ideals. Sometimes I’d think: ‘The Chapter-house and the Cloister-passage—suppose When their tum comes—suppose….’ If asked a motif, What would I choose? Then—my next beginning— In a cornfield one afternoon, watching the poppies As they swayed in the harvest breeze, a peasant stopped me. We talked of com and poppies, and she told me, Leaming my trade, she hated the Cathedral—guess!— For the million buttercups it blotted out…. Yes, you may laugh and think her mad, but to me That meeting was revelation, an act of God. There was my motif—gildcup petals opening To the sun. The Church would repay her stolen flowers With my perennials! That night, the Master Called me at candlelight—sharp-featured, billed Like a falcon—studied me as one unknown, and then: ‘I’m sending you to Rheims. A new spirit is alive In Europe. Men are looking now past Universals To the nature of the individual. Philosophy Moves that way, and art will follow. It’s a conception I understand, but cannot rise to in my work. To you, as your face reveals, the theory’s nothing, But already, unless I’m much mistaken, your eyes And hands know it. Go to Rheims. Go with clean vellum and a clear mind. See and draw. But mostly feel. Yes, And laugh a little: get buoyancy, gaiety Behind your chisel. Go to France and find it.’ And there at Rheims, on the wall of the West Front Above John Baptist, I saw my buttercups Clustered like lilies on a pond, and behind him An exquisite panel of their leaves. At first, wonder; Then respect for craft; finally despair. For all my aspirations were figured there— What was there left to do? I made my drawings, And travelled to Chartres and the Sainte Chapelle. Everywhere, in the new work, the same story: Oakleaves, vineleaves, leaves of every sort Carved with the same assurance, the same perfection Of insight, as if the very world were created new, For us, the first Adam, to see and marvel at. Even twilight songs I heard in the vineyards, In the cornfields of Provence, held this joyousness, This life-wonder. Yes, one I remember: Buds break and birds are singing, Gildcups shine in the green grass; In watermeadows, where larks are winging, I sigh to see my Lady pass. Who could be young and hear such songs in the springtime And not be happy? So, under their influence, My despair faded. Though ambition was killed, Life was alive here-and I lived and drew. But as my notebook and my roll of drawings fattened, Till I’d tossed all else from my pack, I began to notice The differences within their unity. The individual hand That carved the leaves added some fragment of itself, Cc 33 The craftsman’s signature. Then gradually I realised That art can never end—not while the Creator Shapes every creature new, and gives new eyes To each beholder. Now, my mission ended, I stood on the shores of Prance; and across the waves Saw the half-formed Cathedral on the clouds. My beginnings were over. Now I could begin.
