Colloquium Christus                                  The Christ Colloquy

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 In 'The Christ Colloquy', I explore courtly love, the love of English Literature, then, the superior love for Philosophy, as the handmaiden of Theology, preparatory to filial love for

Our Lady, and the Communion of Saints. Loving the Sacred Heart of Jesus, purifies the new,

eternal 'sommo poeta', to become a new disciple and a new evangelist in Book VI, and to marry in Book VI, experiencing full, vocational human love on earth, as husband and wife, and a Roman Catholic family, preparatory to the love of God in Heaven, and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. In Book VII, 'the eternal pilgrim' fulfills a final journey, travelling on pilgrimage to Rome, led and instructed by the Holy Spirit, in the form of a pillar of cloud. 

'The Christ Colloquy' is a complete 'DNA Theory' of the Literature of The Western Canon.      

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The poem begins, in media res, with the exiled Englishman, travelling on pilgrimage to the

basilica of St Paul's in Rome for the Triduum of 2013, to seek consolation at the loss of singing Gregorian Chant, in the holy white choirwood of an English monastery. During His Passion, on Good Friday afternoon, Christ addresses the exile from the wood of the Cross, and grants him the title of Andrew 'of the wood', in recognition of his distress, at not having found Thomas More's monastic utopia on earth.

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The Logos, initiates the journey of his, Christ's 'Cross-back', recalling Dante from Paradise,

to receive the exile, as his pupil in divine poetry, so that he might learn how to sing a new literary gospel by being admitted into Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, that night,

as they are in 2013, while the monks sing vespers and compline at St Paul's.

Canto I of the new poem begins, with the weeping poet, recalling the lost grace of singing Gregorian chant in his choir-stall, as a novice monk, honouring in truth, the 'selva opaca'.

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Too, quite past mid-point, along this wide, wide way,

Of my life, and having known too long, the

Deeep and tracky-ruck, of that most unwan and

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Unwhite of English wood and wept, and, having

Touched too, most lightly upon that continental

Solemn wood and failed; and, heel touched high York...

'The Christ Colloquy', Book I Commedia, Canto I: 1-6, Grattan. 

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And, in the falling thrush of early April showers,

In the half-yellow afternoon light, long before the

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Full hard hot of summer, had beat weathered

Summered Tuscan greened soil, or, had thrashed

Blake's green English hills and lands unJerusalem;

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As remembered, seated before the three

Presence symbols in Triduum's Rome before

The third hour of Crucifixion veneraation, Holy Week

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Sequential mass intoned by the holy abbot-

Monk of priest, encircled by his holy monastic

Band, and sung lofty thrice, low in transept:

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'This is the wood of the Cross, on which

The Saviour of the world was hung'; half-

Way aisled:'This is the wood of the Cross,

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On which the Saviour of the world was

Hung'; and, crenellated before the fazing

Altar where lie revered the interred bones

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Of the great Paul saint...

'The Christ Colloquy' Book I Commedia Canto I: 26-43, Grattan.

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The figure of April, a real person, but primarily a new literary creation, has been created and

designed in harmony with Dante's figure of Beatrice, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Designed in seven books, as a didactic summa, to educate, evangelize and delight, the poem is a new literary gospel, written foremost, to honour Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the theotokos,

but also, to accompany, fulfill and honour 'The Divine Comedy'. 

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'Beatrice, my beloved mother spiritual, what is Philosophy? Is it that subject, that grounded Boethius discoursed about, with Lady Philosophy in Ravenna?'

'The Christ Colloquy', Book III  Filosofia, Canto II: 1-3.

Beatrice and April discoursing in Paradise together, before descending to

St. Paul's outside-the-walls in Rome, at 6 pm, on Holy Saturday evening, 2013.  

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The governing notion of the new 'Commedia' of 2013, is the confusio intellectus of the three

woods, three different monastic choirwoods, in three different monasteries in England, which

form a trinitarian aspect of Dante's 'selva oscura', as part of the unifying image of the wooden Cross of Christ.

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  The divine agency of April's face and smile, guides Andrew through the naturally changed and updated Inferno of 2013, to the famous wood of the suicides, ('The Divine Comedy', Inferno, Canto XIII), and rids him of false over-love, for the holy, white choirwood of William Blake's heavenly 'Jerusalem' monastery in rural West Berkshire, and grounds him in the clarifying

agency of the truthful opposite of Dante's 'selva oscura', the purifying, dark, choirwood of a contemplative monastery of the French Solesmes Congregation on More's 'holy isle of Utopia', the Isle of Wight, and, to properly cherish, the learning, excellence and truth of the 'Ample' choirwood of England's Augustinian 'City of God', in Yorkshire.

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'For, the ellipsis of the Logos is yours, when all you sought

Was the sweet, white road, deducted away from, that

One, white purity. Fasten, this new impulsion, upon your

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Heart, and follow, your courtly love, for this Florentine Child,-

She, whose face, is carved in Inferno;-

She, whose face, was carved cut in coelis, in the

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Image of Mary, April, she, who bears the dark

Hair, and that long nose of the tribe of Judah;-

You, who gazed on the face earthly, of Our Lady, and

 

Will never see the unvein veins, of some unvein vains, again'.

'The Christ Colloquy', Book I  Commedia, Canto XIII: 132-142, Grattan.

Ciacco counsels Andrew 'of the wood', before his two masters, Dante and Virgil, in the third circle of Dante's re-entered Inferno, as it is today, on Good Friday evening, 2013.

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The new poet, must love the wood of the Cross completely, in order for the Gregorian Chant of Adonai Abbey, to be transubstantiated into new, strange and strong epic poetry, in the

form of the words of a new literary gospel, and to have the verbum or logos, the word of God, impanated within his heart, and focus solely upon the Cross of Christ.

As Dante mourned and wept for the eternal loss of Florence, exiled by the priors of the city, presumably on false charges of corruption, Andrew mourns the loss of singing the Adonai Office and serving the parishioners and oblates of the monastery, before he was persuaded

to leave the monastery at the conclusion of the novitiate, by two jealous solemnly professed monks. Then, seven years of exile, by the council, conclude with a profound experience of courtly love in Florence, guided by the Holy Spirit and Vocatio, at the crucial and defining 'pilgrim' age of 35, creating seven books for Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man from 'As You like It', echoing too, Thomas Merton's 'Seven Storey Mountain', and, the seven deadly sins.

 

I contrast Dante's great interest in politics and the relationship between Church and State, explored in 'De Monarchia' with a clarifying and purifying utopian philosophy, sourced in Thomas More's golden handbook, 'Utopia'.

The poem is also a spiritual quest, in order to acquire sufficient purity of heart, puritas cordis, to kiss the logos into the heart of a woman and achieve a new, sublime and unique, dynastic marriage, divinely sanctioned by the Holy Trinity, second only, to that of Joseph and Mary,

an unsurpassably lofty partnership, above even, their celebrated antecedents and spiritual parents, Dante and Beatrice, to create the words of a new literary Gospel for Shakespeare's England of today, to rest underneath Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, in the fusion of two intellects and two conjoined lives, 'the library', (Andrew) and 'the librarian', (April).

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                             'Now that this sensation is  

Complete within you, in this preached coming

Of your discipleship-kingdom, lay I will, open to you,

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The regions of Hell, to tire out my bones to death in

Heaven; for it seems, the Holy Spirit, has long awaited

The coming of the Cross-Man, choirwood planed, as well

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As wide shouldered, to remove from me il

Sommo poeta's garb, and rename His name,

Yahweh, for poetry-prophecy'. And, before

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Me then, Dante half-disrobed. 'I admit and

Recognize your auctoritas, and Christ sanctioned,

I, cede my place to you, eternal pilgrim'. And,

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Without his singing robes, the cloakless Dante,

Stripped his back to tunic half-nakedness,

Though, the ivy crown, still atop his head....

'The Christ Colloquy', Book I Commedia, Canto XIII: 19-33, Grattan.     

 

The figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, directs and guides Beatrice, April and Vocatio in the poem, who in turn, love and protect the new poet. In Book II, 'Letteratura', the poet walks on Chaucerian pilgrimage, with the Blessed Virgin, from Southwark to Walsingham in Norfolk, and then Florence to Rome, to rebuild entirely, the logos, desecrated by Joyce in 'Finnegans Wake', and return it, to full glory and eminence, building on the preliminary work of

'The Christ Sonnets'. This prepares him for the honour of meeting Our Lady herself, flanked by Beatrice and April with Ruth, before St. Peter and St. Paul, beside Sacerdos and Robinson, in the garden of Gethsemane, alongside Christ's tomb at midday, on Easter Sunday 2013. 

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'Please, Sir, will you not sing for my Edward King?'

'The Christ Colloquy', Book V Mary, Canto III: 1, Grattan. 

Our Lady addresses Andrew 'of the wood', the greyhound and new 'sommo poeta',

by Christ's tomb in the garden of Gethsemane, at midday on Easter Sunday, 2013. 

 

It is to Virgil, however, before Cicero, that Andrew first explains his long journey, and the progression through the whole cycle of the seven books is set in motion:

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And I spoke up to Virgil: 'I came out of the Moses

Wicker basket of the Stratford, unknown the Babel

Gather of those lesser names, until, the distil

 

Of dry education, as complying to any name as

Of that reducting shepherd, the English masque

Of John Milton, the wreathing magnificence of his

 

Works, lie as a befiting moot happy, upon

The rooding Cross itself. As to the Stratford, I

Acknowledge, the eternal grant of his corpus

 

Upon my body and spirit; the long enmeshment

Of my ideas, has been made fertile within the

Crescent of my Synoptic accreditation and hard

 

Without, sped the indoctrination within patres

Ecclesiae graecique (and the pagans tongued

Their suffers). Changing Ovid, for those fanciful

 

Draughts, 'Metamorphoses', England, bears the

Many redresses of his influences, and they re-

Main untouched by me, passage of my many years;

 

But, the unretardation of my carrying growth

Speaks of the Latin-Greek-Hebraicization; for,

Desert Fathers, dewed my soul, and Theologians,

 

Both east and west, as split the tributaries,

Of the charcterful eaarly moderns, -More and

Tyndale, and those lesser, whose, names, my

 

Teeth grind out but fitfully, Marlowe, Spenser

An their ilk; but, pooled longest the specctres

Of the lecturing hall and myself enlegislature,

 

Destructive, Irish, provincial Joyce, and cleaving

Ever remote of this figure, Dante, whose

Transcendent pained soul, I, would fain call

 

Master. Through, the harassment of my unfound e-

Utopia, with the escalating condemnation that has

Worn me sullied, soiled, hurt, doubt-ridden, through

 

These, I have earned this won name of 'of the wood''.

And Cicero spat back: 'Well, you inrhetoric yourself,

When you should be upsinging bread crusts to Heaven'.

'The Christ Colloquy', Book I Commedia, Canto X: 1-36, Grattan.