Archive for the 'Oxford/England' Category

Oxford, 6/08/08

Don March 30th, 2009

On Friday evening [the 6th], the faculty were invited to High Table at Christ Church, the largest of the Oxford colleges, whose Great Hall was used as the dining hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films.  Apparently, pumpkin juice is not served on those days when the Muggles are eating there, so I cannot keep my promise to report on its potable potential.  But High Table in Formal Hall is certainly worth reporting on in its own right. 

The students [at the lower tables] all rise while the faculty and their guests process in wearing full formal academic regalia and take their places at the high table on the dais, below the grand portraits of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, the founders of ‘the house,’ as the locals call Christ Church, the only college in the world whose chapel is also the local cathedral.  Then grace is said in Latin and all are seated and served a three course meal: smoked salmon and cantaloupe salad, lamb chops, and strawberry tart on Friday.  I was seated across from the Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, who was presiding–in Dumbledore’s spot, of course.  The major duty of the presiding member of faculty is to approve the wine before it is served to everyone else, by sniffing it and then giving the butler an ever so subtle nod of the head.  Gowns are not compulsory for guests, but I was wishing mine had not been too bulky to pack.  I was feeling a bit underdressed in a mere suit and tie, though my main feeling was the wish that the University of Georgia’s colors [Go Dawgs] could have been represented there at least that once.  At least I was not the only one in such straits.  But perhaps it helped dissuade me from the folly of arising like Dumbledore to say three words. 

On Saturday we had a field trip to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and the very well preserved Wells Cathedral.  According to legend, the first church in Britain was founded at Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea, who came there as a missionary in AD 63, dispersed from Jerusalem along with many other Christians by the Neronian persecution.  Oh, yes, and by the way, he brought the Holy Grail with him.  History cannot confirm the Legend, but it does verify a Christian presence going all the way back into the 500’s; so I for one take pleasure in the fact that, if the legendary story cannot be proved, neither has it been disproved.

In the 1100’s, monks exavating for an expansion of the church found a grave containing the bodies of a man and a woman and a plaque that read ‘Hic jacet Arturus, Rex Britannorum.’  Here lies Arthur, King of the Britons.  Though some cynical persons believe that this was just a publicity stunt on the part of monks trying to increase the traffic of pilgrims, the bodies of Arthur and Guinnevere were reinterred with great pomp in a black marble tomb under the high altar before the watchful eyes of Henry I.  If our knowledge of human nature lends some support to the cynics, it should be balanced by the fact that Glastonbury is in fact in the very heart of Arthurian country, and the nearby hill Glastonbury Tor is thought by many to be the historic Isle of Avalon, for during that period the ocean came in and flooded the land around it, so that it was in fact an island.  Topped with a  14th century stone tower, it today reminds you of nothing so much as Weathertop, giving a splendid view of the surrounding countryside.

Glastonbury became the largest and, after Westminster, the second most wealthy monastery in England.  In 1539, it was dissolved and sacked by the gold-ravenous Henry VIII, along with every other monastic foundation in the country.  So insatiable was his greed that he even destroyed the tomb of Arthur.  [The magnificent tomb of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury, goal of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, met a similar fate.] Abbot Whiting, 80 years old and frail, was hanged, drawn, and quartered.  The magnificent Gothic buildings fell into ruin and were scavenged for stones that ended up in local houses and barns.  What remains is one of the most beautiful and haunting sites in all of England.   

Nearby Wells Cathedral is one of the most elegant of Gothic churches, soaring heavenward as is the virtue of the Gothic style, but without the over-business on the inside that is sometimes its fault.  It is marked by a unique set of ’scissor arches’ that look as if they were part of the original design, but were actually added later to overcome settling from the excessive weight of the tower, and by the second oldest clock in England, still keeping excellent time after 600 years.  There are two knights on horseback who joust with one another on a circular track whenever the clock strikes.  One has a hinge in his back, and the poor fellow thus always loses, only to be set upright again inside the wall so he can emerge for another go against his ever victorious rival.  It is the medieval version of Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. 

And so we come to the Lord’s Day, a day of rest and worship that leaves one curiously unsatisfied here.  For one must choose between, it would seem, a traditional Anglican service full of beauty and devoid of the Gospel, or else pay for biblical content in the sermon by enduring something chillingly chummy.  Well, I suppose most people have the same dilemma anywhere, but it seems especially irksome here, where the local pulpits have been filled by the likes of Wycliffe, Latimer, Newman, and even one Jack Lewis a time or two.  Sigh.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

Oxford, 6/13/08

Don June 13th, 2008

Today was a field trip to London for Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and Churchill’s war room, the bunker from which he and the war cabinet conducted WWII–an austere and sobering reminder that never have so many owed so much to so few.  Then we had some free time before heading back to Oxford.  I spent mine in the National Gallery, across Trafalgar Square from Westminster.  It was my first time in the National Gallery, so that’s what I want to talk about.  Some highlights in chronological order:

Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna of the Rocks [ca. 1491-1508], made famous by The Da Vinci Code, is arresting from a distance through its rich color and exquisite compositional balance; but up close the details are all disappointing–except for Mary’s face, intensely human compared to the other figures.  If he did that on purpose, it was brilliant.

Hans Holbein the Younger’s famous portrait of Erasmus [1523] shows up in black and white in many history books.  In the full sized original you realize what an enigmatic expression Erasmus has on his face.  It reminded me of the Mona Lisa.  He seems simultaneously tired, humorous, and a little sad.  Somehow the man who cracked bi-lingual puns with Thomas More and the one who was in despair over the dissolution of Christendom both seem to be looking out of that one set of eyes. 

In the same room is Holbein’s The Ambassadors [1533], the one with the two young and splendidly arrayed ambassadors flanking a table covered with mathematical and scientific instruments and a lute with a broken string.  On the floor in front of them is the distorted shadow of a human skull.  I’ve never been able to see the skull in reproductions, but if you stand at the very right corner of the painting and look across it, the skull comes into perfect proportion just as the figures of the ambassadors become unrecognizable.  In the upper left corner, the rich green curtain in the background is pulled back just enough to show a wooden crucifix behind it.  It makes a rather chilling memento mori, and a rather strange one for that date, as if Salvador Dali had somehow retouched the Renaissance original.  Intriguing in reproductions, the original is more so, and strangely haunting as well.

Lucas Cranach the Elder has an allegorical figure of Charity [ca. 1537-1550] that is identical to the verbal protrait Edmund Spenser would draw in Book I of The Fairie Queene a generation later.

I love the middle ages and the Renaissance, and I love much of the Nineteenth Century in art, but the interminable procession of fat, naked gods of the Baroque does nothing for me.  The Eighteenth Century is a vast wasteland of repetitive ostentation until suddenly the English landscape painters make art interesting again by anticipating the Romantics in literature.  In Gainsborough’s Watering Place [1777] and Market Cart [1786], Nature seems to swirl energetically around the central figure in an effect that is strangely peaceful.  Then in the Nineteenth Century proper, a representational realism that is more than mere representation reaches its peak in Constable’s Stratford Mill [1820], Hay Wain [1821], and Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows [1831].  Somehow he combines a fine use of detail in the foreground with a sense of distance in his skies to capture the largeness as well as the beauty of the outdoors. 

Then, with realism having run its course, the Impressionists look for new ways in which to interpret nature and convey their feelings for it even as they render it.  This attempt reaches its apex in the tender beauty of Monet and the energetic power of Van Gogh. Monet’s Irises, Japanese Bridge, Water Lily Pond [under the same bridge but handled very differently], and Houses of Parliament at Sunset are symphonies of color that study their subjects lovingly, one might even say caressingly. 

After that, the Twentieth Century gives itself up to distortion for its own sake, or in the service of dehumanizing philosophies, and the off-putting aesthetic of difficulty, and I find myself losing interest again.  Cezanne’s Bathers, for example, is just ugly and boring after an afternoon spent absorbing the works described above.  And then come Da Da and even more self conscious attempts at cleverness.  One feels profoundly sorry for a century that could not find anything better to do with its talent, and profoundly grateful that the work of more humane times has been preserved.  As for the current century, it is too early to tell what we will do.  We could do worse than start by spending an afternoon in England’s National Gallery for instruction and inspiration.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

Oxford, 6/08/08

Don June 8th, 2008

On Friday evening [the 6th], the faculty were invited to High Table at Christ Church, the largest of the Oxford colleges, whose Great Hall was used as the dining hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films.  Apparently, pumpkin juice is not served on those days when the Muggles are eating there, so I cannot keep my promise to report on its potable potential.  But High Table in Formal Hall is certainly worth reporting on in its own right. 

The students [at the lower tables] all rise while the faculty and their guests process in wearing full formal academic regalia and take their places at the high table on the dais, below the grand portraits of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, the founders of ‘the house,’ as the locals call Christ Church, the only college in the world whose chapel is also the local cathedral.  Then grace is said in Latin and all are seated and served a three course meal: smoked salmon and cantaloupe salad, lamb chops, and strawberry tart on Friday.  I was seated across from the Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, who was presiding–in Dumbledore’s spot, of course.  The major duty of the presiding member of faculty is to approve the wine before it is served to everyone else, by sniffing it and then giving the butler an ever so subtle nod of the head.  Gowns are not compulsory for guests, but I was wishing mine had not been too bulky to pack.  I was feeling a bit underdressed in a mere suit and tie, though my main feeling was the wish that the University of Georgia’s colors [Go Dawgs!] could have been represented there at least that once.  At least I was not the only one in such straits.  But perhaps it helped dissuade me from the folly of arising like Dumbledore to say three words. 

On Saturday we had a field trip to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and the very well preserved Wells Cathedral.  According to legend, the first church in Britain was founded at Glastonbury by Joseph of Arimathea, who came there as a missionary in AD 63, dispersed from Jerusalem along with many other Christians by the Neronian persecution.  Oh, yes, and by the way, he brought the Holy Grail with him.  History cannot confirm the Legend, but it does verify a Christian presence going all the way back into the 500’s; so I for one take pleasure in the fact that, if the legendary story cannot be proved, neither has it been disproved.

In the 1100’s, monks exavating for an expansion of the church found a grave containing the bodies of a man and a woman and a plaque that read ‘Hic jacet Arturus, Rex Britannorum.’  Here lies Arthur, King of the Britons.  Though some cynical persons believe that this was just a publicity stunt on the part of monks trying to increase the traffic of pilgrims, the bodies of Arthur and Guinnevere were reinterred with great pomp in a black marble tomb under the high altar before the watchful eyes of Henry I.  If our knowledge of human nature lends some support to the cynics, it should be balanced by the fact that Glastonbury is in fact in the very heart of Arthurian country, and the nearby hill Glastonbury Tor is thought by many to be the historic Isle of Avalon, for during that period the ocean came in and flooded the land around it, so that it was in fact an island.  Topped with a  14th century stone tower, it today reminds you of nothing so much as Weathertop, giving a splendid view of the surrounding countryside.

Glastonbury became the largest and, after Westminster, the second most wealthy monastery in England.  In 1539, it was dissolved and sacked by the gold-ravenous Henry VIII, along with every other monastic foundation in the country.  So insatiable was his greed that he even destroyed the tomb of Arthur.  [The magnificent tomb of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury, goal of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, met a similar fate.] Abbot Whiting, 80 years old and frail, was hanged, drawn, and quartered.  The magnificent Gothic buildings fell into ruin and were scavenged for stones that ended up in local houses and barns.  What remains is one of the most beautiful and haunting sites in all of England.   

Nearby Wells Cathedral is one of the most elegant of Gothic churches, soaring heavenward as is the virtue of the Gothic style, but without the over-business on the inside that is sometimes its fault.  It is marked by a unique set of ’scissor arches’ that look as if they were part of the original design, but were actually added later to overcome settling from the excessive weight of the tower, and by the second oldest clock in England, still keeping excellent time after 600 years.  There are two knights on horseback who joust with one another on a circular track whenever the clock strikes.  One has a hinge in his back, and the poor fellow thus always loses, only to be set upright again inside the wall so he can emerge for another go against his ever victorious rival.  It is the medieval version of Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. 

And so we come to the Lord’s Day, a day of rest and worship that leaves one curiously unsatisfied here.  For one must choose between, it would seem, a traditional Anglican service full of beauty and devoid of the Gospel, or else pay for biblical content in the sermon by enduring something chillingly chummy.  Well, I suppose most people have the same dilemma anywhere, but it seems especially irksome here, where the local pulpits have been filled by the likes of Wycliffe, Latimer, Newman, and even one Jack Lewis a time or two.  Sigh.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Donald T. Williams, PhD, Co-Director
Summit Oxford Summer Studies Program

Oxford, 6/1/08

Don June 6th, 2008

The group today took a jaunt back into an even more distant past than the one that surrounds us daily here in Oxford: we drove out to the Roman baths in Bath, stopping at Stonehenge on the way.

One thinks of Legolas meeting Fangorn and commenting, “Now this makes even me feel young!”

No one even knows who built Stonehenge, which goes back to 3,000 BC–someone who was here before the Celts conquered by first the Romans and then the Saxons in the Christian era–and no one really knows how, and no one is even quite sure why. It is a kind of solar calendar to mark the summer solstice, but no one knows exactly how that figured into the religion of those people, whose thoughts and the tongue they framed them in are utterly lost to us. The ridges surrounding the monument in the Salisbury Plain are all topped with burial mounds: Tolkien’s Barrow Downs
incarnated right before our eyes. But even I, who go back to the Third Age of Middle Earth, could shed no light on the mystery. For the North Kingdom of Arnor built its barrows and Arvedui Last King fell even before this time, a part of your prehistory I seem to have slept through.

The pavements, hot springs, monuments, and pools used by the Romans occupying Britain between the first and
fourth centuries AD gave us a connection to an ancient people we can actually remember, the direct ancestors in unbroken line of our own civilization. And Chaucer’s Wife of Bath no doubt rested her weary old bones in those same springs when she got back from her pilgrimage to Canterbury. But that was a paltry 600 years ago–a mere blink of the eye of Father Time. So what does that make the three weeks we have left here?  I leave the calculations to the mathematically inclined, and remain your humble servant, reporting

From the Dreaming Spires,

Gandalf

Oxford, 5/31/08

Don June 6th, 2008

Some of us went out to the Trout Inn for lunch today.

SAY IT AIN’T SO!

The Trout was an old inn that you walk to past the ruins of Godstowe Abbey on the Thames River Path.  Except for the addtion of electric lights, it seemed unchanged since the 17th century. You almost expected to see Isaac Walton walk in with a mess of trout right out of The Complete Angler. And then they would serve them to you on the patio by the river, with swans and houseboats floating by and peacocks wandering through the tables looking for handouts. The peacefulness and charm of the place was indescribable. The Inklings used to love to walk out there for dinner. You had to have been there. And now you can never know what it was like.

THEY HAVE MODERNIZED IT!

Sometime since 2005, some Business Major with a mind full of numbers and metal gears, some despicable descendant of Ted Sandyman, some vile agent of Sharkey, has ripped out the heavy dark wood and old plaster of the interior and replaced it with metal, plastic, and glass. The patio by the river with its peacocks remains, but the tables and chairs have all
been replaced with modern looking things that do not fit or harmonize with or belong in such a setting.  The hike is still worth taking, and the outside of the inn is as rustic and picturesque as ever. But don’t spend your 10-15 pounds for dinner. Just shake your fist, sigh, turn around, and head back.

No taunting today, folks; no snide remarks about envy.  I am in high dudgeon and serious mourning over here.   Sic transit gloria mundi. Ubi sunt? Sigh.

From the dreaming spires,

Don

Oxford III

Don June 6th, 2008

Today we get our Bodleian Library cards.

This is a big deal. Have you ever seen a library card that was a picture ID?

Well, the Bod [as it's known to us Oxonians] is like the Library of Congress–a copy of every book that’s published automatically goes there–but they’ve been doing it about 400 years longer than we have. And it is not open to the general public. Only those who are members of an Oxford college are allowed in. As visiting scholars at New College [one of the oldest--it seemed like a good name at the time], we qualify. There are a couple of guys standing at the door who look like refuges from Men in Black [only with bowler hats] whose job is to prevent any mere mortals from profaning the sacred precincts. But we, the true elect, may flash our cards at them, whereupon they will very obsequiously usher us in to the intellectual holy of holies. To be granted this privilege, we must first swear a solemn oath never to remove any book from the Library or to deface the same, and never to bring fire into the Library or kindle it therein.

The Bod consists of several parts. The most easily recognizable is the Radcliffe Camera, a round, domed, neoclassical edifice, which is the main reading room. The American “Shadowlands” showed Lewis working there because it was easier to shoot film in that more open space, but this was one of the movie’s many inaccuracies. Lewis would actually work in Duke Humphrey’s Library, a splendid Gothic room that is the equivalent of an American library’s rare book room. And we shall have free access to it all. [Do remember that Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.]

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Oxford II

Don June 6th, 2008

Today went we to Windsor Castle.  The castle goes back to William the Conqueror, and has been added to by practically all
his successors. It is the Queen’s other residence, besides Buckingham and Balmoral. She did not deign to receive us personally for some strange reason.

I was struck by a portrait of Edward VI as a small boy, imitating, as small boys will, his father’s famous stance–though in fact it looked as if he might turn out very different from Henry VIII had he lived.  Across the fireplace therefrom was his sister Elizabeth at 13, with her fingers in a book to mark her place against the ending of the portrait session.  So young, so innocent, with no idea of what was coming, and now all turned to dust. ‘They weep for the way the world goes and our life that passes / touches their hearts,’ said Aeneas of the Carthaginians. We saw a special window that was built in St. George’s Chapel so Katherine of Aragon could attend mass without disturbing the service with all the pomp of her queenly presence. Was there ever woman with a sadder story? Rejected for no fault of her own and left to die alone in a cold castle in a strange land, with all her pitiful letters to Henry ignored. The story of our race is a sad one always; and yet we have also found joy in simple pleasures and in friendship, and the honey of peace in old poems.  Let us keep our hearts unjaded and alive to both joy and sorrow, for that is what it is to embrace life, until our Lord returns.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don

Oxford, 5/27/08

Don June 5th, 2008

I’m going to take a break from the poetic history for a while to report on my trip to Oxford, England, where I will be teaching a course on the Inklings in their native habitat to eager American students from Summit Minstries.

Arrived yesterday to 55 degrees F and a blowing rain. This is England as the English know it, not the idyllic summer’s day, that Shakespeare said hath all too short a date, that I knew on my previous incursions, and that we will hopefully enjoy later in June. But the bus from London followed Lewis’s route down the long hill from Headington into town over Magdalene Bridge, and the ancient foundations are still where I left them on my last trip: Carfax, St. Michael’s Tower, Magdalene Tower, Tom Tower, the Radcliffe Camera, and the spire of St. Mary the Virgin all still point upward to heaven, though the hearts of most Englishmen no longer follow them. Mine is still susceptible to their influence, as perhaps now only a foreigner’s can be, one who has not come to take them for granted.

The students will be coming in and getting settled today. We have a reception for them at 5:00, and then a pub meal, probably at the Red Lion, which is right around the corner from OSAP [Oxford Studies Abroad Program, which is coordinating our stay]. It is still overcast today, so while I wait for that meeting I think I will put off my traditional hikes through Port Meadow and Christ Church Meadow and dodge the showers in Blackwell’s Book Shop, whose entire floor of used and out of print books is calling my name.

From the Dreaming Spires,

Don