Osip Mandelstam's 'Notre Dame': "To Make Grim Bulk a Thing of Beauty"

NOTRE DAME (Osip Mandelstam, translated by A Z Foreman)


Where foreign clans were tried in Roman court
The basilica stands. First in delight
Like early Adam, stretching nerves, the light
Groined archway bunches muscle out for sport.

But things outside betray the secret plan:
A pact of arch and buttress here forestalls
A burly mass from flattening the walls
In deadlock with the bold vault's battering ram.

A well-turned maze. Primeval wood and stone.
The Gothic spirit's rational abyss.
Egyptian brawn and Christian timidness.
Reed next to oak. The plumb-line takes the throne.

But, stronghold Notre Dame, the more acutely
I studied your great ribs' monstrosity,
The more I thought: a time shall come for me
To likewise make grim bulk a thing of beauty.


Translation © A Z Foreman. Used by permission. Taken from http://poemsintranslation.blogspot.co.uk/


I'm probably not ready to write anything about Osip Mandelstam. I am sure that his name has circled around the edges of my consciousness occasionally, for years - it is certainly iconic. His influence upon so many poets and artists has been immense. Mandelstam's name shows up in Paul Celan's work, which probably caught my interest recently.


In Brest, before hoops of flame,
in the tent where the tiger leapt,
there, Finite, I heard you sing,
there I saw you, Mandelstam.

(from 'Afternoon with Circus and Citadel', Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger)


Mandelstam died quite young, because of his creative work; specifically, a famous poem targeting Stalin, The Stalin Epigram. He was born in Poland of Jewish parents but grew up in Russia. Dedicating many years of his life to Symbolist and Acmeist poetry, he became increasingly open about his opposition to Stalin's totalitarian government. He was exiled and eventually died in one of the Soviet Union's labour camps.

I love the above picture, which shows Mandelstam on the left, with his friends and fellow poets Chukovsky, Livshits and Annenkov, in 1914. Their faces betray passion and self-confidence. They could not possibly be more vivid, even filmic. It's as though they are still alive.

I thought the above poem was superb, also being an admirer of the Gothic magnificence of Notre Dame in Paris. I wondered if the final lines ("a time shall come for me/To likewise make grim bulk a thing of beauty") referred to the fact that Mandelstam bore witness to oppressive rulership and wanted to produce something transformative from his experiences. However, the poem was published in 1912, before the Bolsheviks took power - so I'm probably completely off. Still, I wonder if there is something prophetic about the words of the poem, looking ahead to the brave and tragic events of his life. Poetry certainly ventures into that territory, more so than most forms of art.

Madonna House: The People of the Towel & Water

Video made at Madonna House, Combermere, Ontario, Canada

I have visited the Madonna House community in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada, a number of times, in 1985 and in 2005. One of many blessings was meeting and working with a priest of Madonna House, the late Monsignor Art Bukowski, from Michigan, USA, in Kentucky during the summers of 1969 and 1970, when I was a young priest studying in the USA. He was much older than me and when I first met him he had just finished 29 years as president of Aquinas College, Grand Rapids. He later, I think, spent some time in Latin America. He died in 1989. I remember him for his quiet, missionary zeal as a priest and his driest of the dry humour. I also remember the Madonna House cross that he wore.

 Monsignor Arthur F. Bukowski

The video, which begins with part of the gospel for Holy Thursday, highlights the consecration of Catherine de Hueck (de HUEeck) Doherty and her husband to Jesus through Mary. This consecration comes from the teachings of St Louis-Marie de Montfort. The film mentions that that saint had a similarly deep influence on the spirituality of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta and Blessed John Paul II. It was also the bedrock of the spirituality of the Servant of God Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary.

Something else emphasised in the video is 'Nazareth spirituality', which deeply influenced Blessed Charles de Foucauld, though in a somewhat different way. It is also implicitly part of the spirituality of Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche and co-founder of its 'cousin' Faith and Light. Both of these, like Madonna House, are very Marian. Indeed, Faith and Light grew out of an international pilgrimage to Lourdes for persons with learning disabilities and their families in 1971.

The very title of this video also reminds me of something that Jean Vanier places great importance on, the washing of the feet. In a retreat I made under him in Manila in 1995 we spent a whole afternoon reflecting on this, ending in small circles where we washed the feet of one of the persons beside us. The one who washed mine was Lala, about whom I've written a number of times before.

 Lala taking care of Jordan in the 'Nazareth' that is the L'Arche community, Cainta, Rizal, near Manila

Though based in England at the time, I was chaplain to the small Philippine group at the Faith and Light international pilgrimage to Lourdes during Holy Week 2001. After the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper we had our own washing of the feet ritual in the garden of the hotel where the Filipinos were staying.

'Nazareth spirituality' shows the extraordinary presence of God in the ordinary. Most of us spend our whole lives in 'Nazareth' and yet very few of us are aware of this.

A quiet joy comes through this film, the kind of joy that Pope Benedict spoke about in his message for this year's World Youth Day, observed yesterday, Palm Sunday.