And will my English soul be able to befriend them?"
I love this part, Peter, and at the risk of sounding crazy, it's something I wonder about very much. (For example, I was born and grew up in Appalachia, but that's Shawnee land; my ancestors came over here only two generations back so where am I more from? Some place in Europe I've hardly ever been to, or some new world in which I grew up but have no ancestry?)
There are so many people living in this in-between.
I share this dislocation, and the question of where is the land that holds my myths and stories, the ones that speak to me, blood and bone, is one I've thought about since childhood. It's not here in southern Ontario: I love this place for many reasons, but my dreamlands and my archetypes reside on the other side of the Atlantic, where henge and barrow, track and hillfort, carry ghosts and whispers and memory. A wonderful poem, asking a real question of some importance, I believe, about one of the many facets of a land that make it home -- or exile.
Thank you so much for these comments, James and Marian. I agree that there are indeed many who live in this particular in-between. The question of identity in these young countries, these post-colonial colonies, must have some bittersweet answer of being both at home and in exile -- being in a country but not of it, being children nurtured by the wolf-headed Saint Christopher. Of course, even Lewis and Tolkien, being firmly rooted in England (but perhaps not Britain), still had a longing like this; a longing for the realm of Faërie slipping westwards past the corners of their eyes. I often think of Lewis's words in 'The Weight of Glory':
'In speaking of this desire for our own far off country […] I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence […] Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter […] The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.'
Lord Dunsany called Faerie 'the fields beyond the fields we know', I believe. I;ve read the Lewis quote before, although I'd forgotten about it -- and he's right, of course -- but for reasons perhaps only of my imagination, my 'own far off country' feels closer in the landscape of England than it does in the landscape of Ontario.
It isn't easy to understand why a man might be concerned about whether fairies love him. The person seems to pass from delusion for a moment as naivete passes by like a river. There is sentiment for a distant land where fairies dwell, and he may cling to the idea while sustaining pressure from deserts and divergent plans about what to do or where to go. There seems to be an intensification of meaningless or at least a consideration to stop putting in effort, even if pride is sacrificed. Maybe the silver lies are representative of conceptions of the world that are not deep enough to satisfy an adult who cannot unsee what he has seen in life. Phew, this hit home for me somewhat.
Thanks for this comment, Charles. Silver lies can certainly be 'representative of conceptions of the world that are not deep enough to satisfy an adult who cannot unsee what he has seen in life'; well put.
To add to this: fairy-tales (and fiction in general) have sometimes been described as 'lies breathed through silver', implying that though they may be beautiful and fun, they are still just lies. I disagree with this common definition. The truth that fairy-tales convey is simply of a different kind, and perhaps (when told well) further from a lie than many non-fiction stories. It is difficult to hold on to this conception of fairy-tales though -- you almost have to observe them through the corner of your eye because facing them pridefully straight on might destroy them for you, and your innocence will not long survive without such fictitious stories ...
I can ramble about this for a while, so maybe we should continue the conversation over coffee on Saturday!
Writing about a southern road, I was thinking of my ancestors' journey to Australia from Britain -- a journey undertaken by many convicts who would have historically had their hands taken for their crimes, and filled with colonial plans which some now ask to be reversed by Britain symbolically cutting off its own hands with de-colonisation. I was also thinking of a symbolically southern journey delving for clarity about Faërie, if that makes sense (delving for answers of a fey kind might be somewhat like grasping at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, constituting a fall -- hence the subtitle 'Falling South of Faërie).
Thanks as always for reading and commenting, Katie!
What an interesting heritage. I had no idea they took convicts’ hands. How did they make a life there without them? Delving for answers of the fey kind like the tree of life sounds like a wise insight.
Sorry Katie, I think I expressed myself poorly in my reply. I meant to say that many of the convicts were thieves who would have likely had a hand removed if they'd been convicted prior to the colonial era; as it was, many were forced to choose between imprisonment and living out their sentence labouring in the exile of the Australian colony. It would have been difficult indeed for them to labour without hands!
My personal heritage is a little foggier (though I do know that I'm descended from one of the first Australian merchants, Robert Campbell, on my Mother's side), but in this poem, I am writing more about Australian identity in general.
"And are there fairies in Australia, I wonder?
And will my English soul be able to befriend them?"
I love this part, Peter, and at the risk of sounding crazy, it's something I wonder about very much. (For example, I was born and grew up in Appalachia, but that's Shawnee land; my ancestors came over here only two generations back so where am I more from? Some place in Europe I've hardly ever been to, or some new world in which I grew up but have no ancestry?)
There are so many people living in this in-between.
Loved the photos, too, by the way.
I share this dislocation, and the question of where is the land that holds my myths and stories, the ones that speak to me, blood and bone, is one I've thought about since childhood. It's not here in southern Ontario: I love this place for many reasons, but my dreamlands and my archetypes reside on the other side of the Atlantic, where henge and barrow, track and hillfort, carry ghosts and whispers and memory. A wonderful poem, asking a real question of some importance, I believe, about one of the many facets of a land that make it home -- or exile.
Thank you so much for these comments, James and Marian. I agree that there are indeed many who live in this particular in-between. The question of identity in these young countries, these post-colonial colonies, must have some bittersweet answer of being both at home and in exile -- being in a country but not of it, being children nurtured by the wolf-headed Saint Christopher. Of course, even Lewis and Tolkien, being firmly rooted in England (but perhaps not Britain), still had a longing like this; a longing for the realm of Faërie slipping westwards past the corners of their eyes. I often think of Lewis's words in 'The Weight of Glory':
'In speaking of this desire for our own far off country […] I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence […] Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter […] The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.'
Lord Dunsany called Faerie 'the fields beyond the fields we know', I believe. I;ve read the Lewis quote before, although I'd forgotten about it -- and he's right, of course -- but for reasons perhaps only of my imagination, my 'own far off country' feels closer in the landscape of England than it does in the landscape of Ontario.
It isn't easy to understand why a man might be concerned about whether fairies love him. The person seems to pass from delusion for a moment as naivete passes by like a river. There is sentiment for a distant land where fairies dwell, and he may cling to the idea while sustaining pressure from deserts and divergent plans about what to do or where to go. There seems to be an intensification of meaningless or at least a consideration to stop putting in effort, even if pride is sacrificed. Maybe the silver lies are representative of conceptions of the world that are not deep enough to satisfy an adult who cannot unsee what he has seen in life. Phew, this hit home for me somewhat.
Thanks for this comment, Charles. Silver lies can certainly be 'representative of conceptions of the world that are not deep enough to satisfy an adult who cannot unsee what he has seen in life'; well put.
To add to this: fairy-tales (and fiction in general) have sometimes been described as 'lies breathed through silver', implying that though they may be beautiful and fun, they are still just lies. I disagree with this common definition. The truth that fairy-tales convey is simply of a different kind, and perhaps (when told well) further from a lie than many non-fiction stories. It is difficult to hold on to this conception of fairy-tales though -- you almost have to observe them through the corner of your eye because facing them pridefully straight on might destroy them for you, and your innocence will not long survive without such fictitious stories ...
I can ramble about this for a while, so maybe we should continue the conversation over coffee on Saturday!
I too wonder about faeries here in Northern Illinois. The land around here feels very quiet. What took you on those southern routes?
Writing about a southern road, I was thinking of my ancestors' journey to Australia from Britain -- a journey undertaken by many convicts who would have historically had their hands taken for their crimes, and filled with colonial plans which some now ask to be reversed by Britain symbolically cutting off its own hands with de-colonisation. I was also thinking of a symbolically southern journey delving for clarity about Faërie, if that makes sense (delving for answers of a fey kind might be somewhat like grasping at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, constituting a fall -- hence the subtitle 'Falling South of Faërie).
Thanks as always for reading and commenting, Katie!
What an interesting heritage. I had no idea they took convicts’ hands. How did they make a life there without them? Delving for answers of the fey kind like the tree of life sounds like a wise insight.
Sorry Katie, I think I expressed myself poorly in my reply. I meant to say that many of the convicts were thieves who would have likely had a hand removed if they'd been convicted prior to the colonial era; as it was, many were forced to choose between imprisonment and living out their sentence labouring in the exile of the Australian colony. It would have been difficult indeed for them to labour without hands!
My personal heritage is a little foggier (though I do know that I'm descended from one of the first Australian merchants, Robert Campbell, on my Mother's side), but in this poem, I am writing more about Australian identity in general.
Oh I see. Your country has an interesting history that’s for sure. Then there are the stories of the indigenous people as well.
Great one!
Cheers Nik! Much appreciated.