‘The Myrrh-Bearing Women’, Russian icon, 16th century
Garden real, not real, mere real, unreal,
indivisible for them, their being.
Green-gilt catkins hang — then shudder, hurl
angelstruck: ‘He is not dead, but living!’
And everything they knew is put aside.
A rock may move. Myrrh is not needed more.
Nor linen shards. Death’s empire he has tight-
ly rolled up like a bandage. ‘Go, therefore…’
And they run. And straightway meet the gardener,
and fall down, and worship, cry, and clutch
his stabbed feet. But what for women harder than
this could be: ‘You must let go, not touch…’?
As slow lithologies, whole plates, tear off
their bedrock, so their hair unkisses him.
They stand, still bowed. And then he says: ‘Fear not.
I shall be with You till the end of time.’
© Patrick Miles, 1995
HAPPY EASTER!
ADVERTISEMENT
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Captain of the 11
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon c.1901
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
‘The Women’ (after Pasternak)
‘The Myrrh-Bearing Women’, Russian icon, 16th century
Garden real, not real, mere real, unreal,
indivisible for them, their being.
Green-gilt catkins hang — then shudder, hurl
angelstruck: ‘He is not dead, but living!’
And everything they knew is put aside.
A rock may move. Myrrh is not needed more.
Nor linen shards. Death’s empire he has tight-
ly rolled up like a bandage. ‘Go, therefore…’
And they run. And straightway meet the gardener,
and fall down, and worship, cry, and clutch
his stabbed feet. But what for women harder than
this could be: ‘You must let go, not touch…’?
As slow lithologies, whole plates, tear off
their bedrock, so their hair unkisses him.
They stand, still bowed. And then he says: ‘Fear not.
I shall be with You till the end of time.’
© Patrick Miles, 1995
HAPPY EASTER!
ADVERTISEMENT
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Share this:
Related