David Jones (poet)
Encyclopedia
David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British
modernist
poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was considered by T. S. Eliot
to be of major importance, and his The Anathemata was considered by W. H. Auden
to be the best long poem written in English
in the 20th century. His Christian beliefs and Welsh heritage helped form his work.
, Kent
, now a suburb of South East London
, and later lived in nearby Howson Road. His father, James Jones, had been born in Flintshire
in north Wales, to a Welsh
-speaking family and was discouraged from speaking Welsh by his father, who, in common with many Welsh-speaking parents of the time, believed that habitual use of the language might hold his child back in his career. James Jones had moved to London to work as a printer's overseer for the Christian Herald Press, and it was here that he had met his wife, Alice, a Londoner born and bred. They had three children, Harold (who died in his late teens of tuberculosis
), Alice, and David.
Jones exhibited artistic promise at an early age, even entering his drawings into exhibitions of children's artwork. He wrote that from the age of six he knew that he would devote his life to art. In 1909, at fourteen, he persuaded his parents to allow him to abandon traditional education for art school and entered the Camberwell Art School
. There he studied under A. S. Hartrick, who had worked with Van Gogh and Gauguin, Reginald Savage and Herbert Cole, and who introduced him to the work of the Impressionists and Pre-Raphaelites.
With the outbreak of the First World War
, Jones enlisted with the Royal Welch Fusiliers
and served on the Western Front
from 1915 to 1918. His experiences in the trenches were to prove important in his later painting and poetry, especially his involvement in the fight at Mametz Wood
.
In 1919 he won a Government grant to study in London at the Westminster School of Art
under Walter Bayes and Bernard Meninsky
.
In 1921 he became a Roman Catholic. In 1922 he joined Eric Gill
's Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, Sussex. In 1923 he first worked as an illustrator, in 'In Petra' by Gill and H. Pepler. He returned to London in 1924, but in 1925 joined Gill at Capel-y-ffin, and in the same year did illustrations for 'Gulliver's Travels' for the Golden Cockerel Press.
In 1927 Jones returned to live with his parents at Brockley, and also spent time on the coast at Portslade near Hove. That year he exhibited seascapes and drawings of Wales at the St George's gallery. He also joined the Society of Wood Engravers
.
In 1929 he exhibited at the Goupil gallery, including watercolor landscapes of France. From 1928 to 1935 he was a member of the Seven and Five Society
.
His works were shown at Chicago in 1933, the Venice Biennale in 1934 and the World's Fair, New York, in 1939. In 1937 he published his long narrative, 'In Parenthesis'.
In 1944 an exhibition of his work toured Britain.
In 1952 he published 'The Anathemata'.
In 1954 an Arts Council exhibition of his work toured Britain, visiting Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Swansea, Edinburgh and London (Tate Gallery).
He died in Harrow, Middlesex in 1974. His grave can be found in Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries
, Lewisham, SE13, near Brockley.
, where he developed an interest in Post-Impressionism
and studied under the British artist Walter Sickert
, among other influential teachers. He also became increasingly attracted by Roman Catholicism, and in 1921 he converted, choosing "Michael" as his confirmation name. It was probably the priest who received Jones into the Church, Father John O'Connor
(in fact the model for G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown character), who suggested that he contact the Catholic artist Eric Gill
. Gill ran the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic
, based on the medieval guild
model, in Ditchling
, Sussex
. Jones joined the guild and learned wood and copper engraving
as well as experimenting with wood carving. Jones soon began producing book illustrations for the St. Dominic's Press, and he would later illustrate for The Golden Cockerel Press
, for whom he engraved the Cockerel itself in 1925.
Eric Gill split with the Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic and moved with his family and some followers to Capel-y-ffin
, a village in southern Wales, to pursue a rural way of life. Jones spent much of the years 1924 to 1927 living with the Gills and assorted hangers-on in a rambling former monastery just outside Capel-y-ffin. He had already become engaged to Gill's middle daughter, Petra, whose characteristic long neck and high forehead continued as standard female features in Jones's artwork for the rest of his career, even though his engagement to her did not last more than a couple of years. Jones continued to visit his family home in Brockley until the mid 1930s and some of his sketches depict the house and garden.
Jones's major illustrated series include wood engravings produced for editions of The Book of Jonah, The Chester Play Of The Deluge, Aesop's Fables
and Gulliver's Travels
as well as for a Welsh translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Llyfr y Pregethwr. He produced an important group of copperplate engravings for an edition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
. He also executed commissions for one-off engravings such as his illustration for T.S. Eliot's The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.
Despite his success and growing reputation as an illustrator, Jones seems to have become disaffected by the medium. He professed great disappointment in the way that his illustrations for Gulliver's Travels had been subsequently hand-coloured by art students, and complained about the reproduction of the very dark wood engravings for The Chester Play of The Deluge. This may have influenced his decision later in life to concentrate on painting. His style changed over time from more traditional watercolour landscapes to a unique mixture of pencil and watercolour resulting in dense and busy works full of symbolism. His best-known paintings include early seascapes such as "Manawydan's Glass Door" and later works on legendary subjects, such as Trystan ac Esyllt (Tristan and Iseult
).
He is also much admired for a genre that he devised later in life, which he termed "painted inscriptions", and these exert a continuing influence on calligraphers.
, which was published by Faber and Faber
with an introduction by T. S. Eliot
, was written in a mixture of verse and prose: it defies categorization as either poem or novel. Jones's literary debut won praise from critics and from fellow-poets such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats
, as well as garnering the Hawthornden Prize
in the following year. Jones's style can be described as High Modernism; the poem draws on literary influences from the 6th-century Welsh epic Y Gododdin
to Thomas Malory
's Morte d'Arthur to try to make sense of the carnage he witnessed in the trenches.
His next book, The Anathemata, appeared in 1952 (again published by Faber). Inspired in part by a visit to Palestine
during which he was struck by the historic parallels between the British
and Roman
occupations of the region, the book draws on materials from early British history and mythology and the history and myths of the Mediterranean region to explore the possibility of small cultures resisting the power of empire. The poem received mixed reviews, but was acclaimed by other literary artists such as W. H. Auden
, Kathleen Raine
and William Carlos Williams
. Douglas Cleverdon
produced dramatised readings of In Parenthesis and The Anathemata for the BBC Third Programme
.
For the rest of his life Jones worked on a long poem, of which The Anathemata was intended to form part. Sections of the work were published mainly in the magazine Agenda
, and in 1974 were published as The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (again under Faber's auspices). A posthumous volume of previously-unseen materials was edited by Harman Grisewood
and René Hague and published by Agenda Editions as The Roman Quarry.
On 11 November 1985 Jones was among sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey
's Poet's Corner. The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen
. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
In 2002 the text of three short poems was published for the first time in Wedding Poems, edited by Thomas Dilworth. Two of these poems ("Prothalamion" and "Epithalamion", amounting to 271 lines) had been written while Jones was living in London
during the Blitz
, for the marriage of Harman Grisewood
to Margaret Bailey. The third poem, "The Brenner" (24 lines), had been written on 18 March 1940 to mark the meeting of Benito Mussolini
and Adolf Hitler
on the Brenner Pass
. According to their editor publication of these poems brought into print "all the known completed poetry by David Jones".
's Wild Wales; he gave radio talks on the BBC Third Programme
; he even tried his hand at an extended consideration of Coleridge
's poem for a reprinting of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner featuring his own introduction and illustrations with a series of copper engravings. His essays were published in two collections, Epoch and Artist (Faber, 1959) and The Dying Gaul — another posthumous volume edited by a close friend and published by Faber in 1978. The best summary of David Jones' attitude to art and religion is contained in his essay, "Art and Sacrament" (included in Epoch and Artist), which explores the meaning of signs and symbols in everyday life, relates them to Roman Catholic teachings such as the dogma of transubstantiation, and argues that human beings are the only animals which create "gratuitous" works, thus making them creators analogous to God.
British literature
British Literature refers to literature associated with the United Kingdom, Isle of Man and Channel Islands. By far the largest part of British literature is written in the English language, but there are bodies of written works in Latin, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Cornish, Manx, Jèrriais,...
modernist
Modernist poetry
Modernist poetry refers to poetry written between 1890 and 1950 in the tradition of modernist literature in the English language, but the dates of the term depend upon a number of factors, including the nation of origin, the particular school in question, and the biases of the critic setting the...
poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was considered by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
to be of major importance, and his The Anathemata was considered by W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
to be the best long poem written in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in the 20th century. His Christian beliefs and Welsh heritage helped form his work.
Biography
Walter David Michael Jones, later known solely as David, was born on 1 November 1895 in Arabin Road, BrockleyBrockley
Brockley is a district of south London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. It is situated south-east of Charing Cross.It is covered by the London postcode districts SE4 and SE14.-History:...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, now a suburb of South East London
South East (London sub region)
The South East is a sub-region of the London Plan corresponding to the London Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark. The sub region was established in 2008. The south east has a population of 1,300,000 and is the location of 500,000 jobs...
, and later lived in nearby Howson Road. His father, James Jones, had been born in Flintshire
Flintshire
Flintshire is a county in north-east Wales. It borders Denbighshire, Wrexham and the English county of Cheshire. It is named after the historic county of Flintshire, which had notably different borders...
in north Wales, to a Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
-speaking family and was discouraged from speaking Welsh by his father, who, in common with many Welsh-speaking parents of the time, believed that habitual use of the language might hold his child back in his career. James Jones had moved to London to work as a printer's overseer for the Christian Herald Press, and it was here that he had met his wife, Alice, a Londoner born and bred. They had three children, Harold (who died in his late teens of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
), Alice, and David.
Jones exhibited artistic promise at an early age, even entering his drawings into exhibitions of children's artwork. He wrote that from the age of six he knew that he would devote his life to art. In 1909, at fourteen, he persuaded his parents to allow him to abandon traditional education for art school and entered the Camberwell Art School
Camberwell College of Arts
Camberwell College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost art and design institutions. It is located in Camberwell, South London, England, with two sites situated at Peckham Road and Wilson Road...
. There he studied under A. S. Hartrick, who had worked with Van Gogh and Gauguin, Reginald Savage and Herbert Cole, and who introduced him to the work of the Impressionists and Pre-Raphaelites.
With the outbreak of the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Jones enlisted with the Royal Welch Fusiliers
Royal Welch Fusiliers
The Royal Welch Fusiliers was an infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Prince of Wales' Division. It was founded in 1689 to oppose James II and the imminent war with France...
and served on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
from 1915 to 1918. His experiences in the trenches were to prove important in his later painting and poetry, especially his involvement in the fight at Mametz Wood
Mametz wood
Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th Division during the First Battle of the Somme. The attack occurred in a Northerly direction over a ridge, focussed on the German positions in the wood between 7 July and 12 July 1916. The attack of the 7 July failed to reach the wood before the men were...
.
In 1919 he won a Government grant to study in London at the Westminster School of Art
Westminster School of Art
The Westminster School of Art was an art school in Westminster, London. It was located at 18 Tufton Street, Deans Yard, Westminster, and was part of the old Architectural Museum.H. M. Bateman described it in 1903 as...
under Walter Bayes and Bernard Meninsky
Bernard Meninsky
Bernard Meninsky was a figurative artist, painter of figures and landscape in oils, watercolour and gouache, draughtsman and teacher. He was born in Karotopin now in the Ukraine but raised in Liverpool where he attended the Liverpool School of Art in 1906 after initially attending evening classes...
.
In 1921 he became a Roman Catholic. In 1922 he joined Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
's Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, Sussex. In 1923 he first worked as an illustrator, in 'In Petra' by Gill and H. Pepler. He returned to London in 1924, but in 1925 joined Gill at Capel-y-ffin, and in the same year did illustrations for 'Gulliver's Travels' for the Golden Cockerel Press.
In 1927 Jones returned to live with his parents at Brockley, and also spent time on the coast at Portslade near Hove. That year he exhibited seascapes and drawings of Wales at the St George's gallery. He also joined the Society of Wood Engravers
Society of Wood Engravers
The Society of Wood Engravers was co-founded in 1920 by British wood engraving artist Gwendoline Raverat, wife of French painter Jacques Raverat.The Society was revived in 1984 by Hilary Paynter. It publishes a bulletin called Multiples....
.
In 1929 he exhibited at the Goupil gallery, including watercolor landscapes of France. From 1928 to 1935 he was a member of the Seven and Five Society
Seven and Five Society
The Seven and Five Society was an art group of seven painters and five sculptors created in 1919 and based in London.The group was originally intended to encompass traditional, conservative artistic sensibilities...
.
His works were shown at Chicago in 1933, the Venice Biennale in 1934 and the World's Fair, New York, in 1939. In 1937 he published his long narrative, 'In Parenthesis'.
In 1944 an exhibition of his work toured Britain.
In 1952 he published 'The Anathemata'.
In 1954 an Arts Council exhibition of his work toured Britain, visiting Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Swansea, Edinburgh and London (Tate Gallery).
He died in Harrow, Middlesex in 1974. His grave can be found in Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries
Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries
Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries were opened within one month of each other in 1858 and are sited on adjacent plots of previously open land. The two component parts are characteristic examples of the first wave of Victorian public cemeteries and are now part of the Brockley Conservation Area.The...
, Lewisham, SE13, near Brockley.
Jones as artist
After the war, Jones entered the Westminster School of ArtWestminster School of Art
The Westminster School of Art was an art school in Westminster, London. It was located at 18 Tufton Street, Deans Yard, Westminster, and was part of the old Architectural Museum.H. M. Bateman described it in 1903 as...
, where he developed an interest in Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
and studied under the British artist Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
, among other influential teachers. He also became increasingly attracted by Roman Catholicism, and in 1921 he converted, choosing "Michael" as his confirmation name. It was probably the priest who received Jones into the Church, Father John O'Connor
Father John O'Connor
Father John O'Connor , a Roman Catholic parish priest in Bradford, Yorkshire, was the basis of G. K. Chesterton's fictional detective Father Brown. O'Connor was instrumental in Chesterton's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922...
(in fact the model for G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown character), who suggested that he contact the Catholic artist Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
. Gill ran the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic
The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic
The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic was an art colony and experiment in communal life in early 20th century England. The story of the Guild began when Eric Gill the sculptor and letter cutter came to Ditchling, Sussex in 1907 with his apprentice Joseph Cribb and was soon followed by fellow...
, based on the medieval guild
Guild
A guild is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest types of guild were formed as confraternities of workers. They were organized in a manner something between a trade union, a cartel, and a secret society...
model, in Ditchling
Ditchling
Ditchling is a village and civil parish in the Lewes District of East Sussex, England. The village is contained within the boundaries of the South Downs National Park; the order confirming the establishment of the park was signed in Ditchling....
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. Jones joined the guild and learned wood and copper engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
as well as experimenting with wood carving. Jones soon began producing book illustrations for the St. Dominic's Press, and he would later illustrate for The Golden Cockerel Press
Golden Cockerel Press
Golden Cockerel Press was a major English private press operating between 1920 and 1961.The Press was founded by Harold Midgley Taylor in 1920 and was first in Waltham St Lawrence in Berkshire where he had unsuccessfully tried fruit farming...
, for whom he engraved the Cockerel itself in 1925.
Eric Gill split with the Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic and moved with his family and some followers to Capel-y-ffin
Capel-y-ffin
Capel-y-ffin is a hamlet near the English-Welsh border in Powys, Wales, in the Black Mountains within the Brecon Beacons National Park. The nearest town is Hay-on-Wye, some to the north-west.-The Chapel:...
, a village in southern Wales, to pursue a rural way of life. Jones spent much of the years 1924 to 1927 living with the Gills and assorted hangers-on in a rambling former monastery just outside Capel-y-ffin. He had already become engaged to Gill's middle daughter, Petra, whose characteristic long neck and high forehead continued as standard female features in Jones's artwork for the rest of his career, even though his engagement to her did not last more than a couple of years. Jones continued to visit his family home in Brockley until the mid 1930s and some of his sketches depict the house and garden.
Jones's major illustrated series include wood engravings produced for editions of The Book of Jonah, The Chester Play Of The Deluge, Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
and Gulliver's Travels
Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels , is a novel by Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift that is both a satire on human nature and a parody of...
as well as for a Welsh translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Llyfr y Pregethwr. He produced an important group of copperplate engravings for an edition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is the longest major poem by the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, written in 1797–98 and was published in 1798 in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Modern editions use a later revised version printed in 1817 that featured a gloss...
. He also executed commissions for one-off engravings such as his illustration for T.S. Eliot's The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.
Despite his success and growing reputation as an illustrator, Jones seems to have become disaffected by the medium. He professed great disappointment in the way that his illustrations for Gulliver's Travels had been subsequently hand-coloured by art students, and complained about the reproduction of the very dark wood engravings for The Chester Play of The Deluge. This may have influenced his decision later in life to concentrate on painting. His style changed over time from more traditional watercolour landscapes to a unique mixture of pencil and watercolour resulting in dense and busy works full of symbolism. His best-known paintings include early seascapes such as "Manawydan's Glass Door" and later works on legendary subjects, such as Trystan ac Esyllt (Tristan and Iseult
Tristan and Iseult
The legend of Tristan and Iseult is an influential romance and tragedy, retold in numerous sources with as many variations. The tragic story is of the adulterous love between the Cornish knight Tristan and the Irish princess Iseult...
).
He is also much admired for a genre that he devised later in life, which he termed "painted inscriptions", and these exert a continuing influence on calligraphers.
Jones as poet
Although he had been trying to write about his wartime experiences for some time, it was not until 1937 that Jones published his first literary effort. In ParenthesisIn Parenthesis
In Parenthesis is an epic poem of World War I by David Jones first published in England in 1937. Although Jones had been known solely as an engraver and painter prior to its publication, the poem won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W.B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot...
, which was published by Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
with an introduction by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
, was written in a mixture of verse and prose: it defies categorization as either poem or novel. Jones's literary debut won praise from critics and from fellow-poets such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
, as well as garnering the Hawthornden Prize
Hawthornden Prize
The Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award that was established in 1919 by Alice Warrender. Authors are awarded on the quality of their "imaginative literature" which can be written in either poetry or prose...
in the following year. Jones's style can be described as High Modernism; the poem draws on literary influences from the 6th-century Welsh epic Y Gododdin
Y Gododdin
Y Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Britonnic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth...
to Thomas Malory
Thomas Malory
Sir Thomas Malory was an English writer, the author or compiler of Le Morte d'Arthur. The antiquary John Leland as well as John Bale believed him to be Welsh, but most modern scholars, beginning with G. L...
's Morte d'Arthur to try to make sense of the carnage he witnessed in the trenches.
His next book, The Anathemata, appeared in 1952 (again published by Faber). Inspired in part by a visit to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
during which he was struck by the historic parallels between the British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
and Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
occupations of the region, the book draws on materials from early British history and mythology and the history and myths of the Mediterranean region to explore the possibility of small cultures resisting the power of empire. The poem received mixed reviews, but was acclaimed by other literary artists such as W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Kathleen Raine
Kathleen Raine
Kathleen Jessie Raine was a British poet, critic, and scholar writing in particular on William Blake, W. B. Yeats and Thomas Taylor. Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founder member of the Temenos Academy.-Life:Raine was...
and William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...
. Douglas Cleverdon
Douglas Cleverdon
Douglas James Cleverdon was an English bookseller and radio producer, in both fields associated with numerous leading cultural figures in the United Kingdom.-Early life:...
produced dramatised readings of In Parenthesis and The Anathemata for the BBC Third Programme
BBC Third Programme
The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...
.
For the rest of his life Jones worked on a long poem, of which The Anathemata was intended to form part. Sections of the work were published mainly in the magazine Agenda
Agenda (poetry journal)
Agenda is a literary journal published in London and founded by William Cookson. Agenda Editions is an imprint of the journal operating as a small press.-History and editorial orientation:...
, and in 1974 were published as The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments (again under Faber's auspices). A posthumous volume of previously-unseen materials was edited by Harman Grisewood
Harman Grisewood
Harman Joseph Gerard Grisewood was an English radio actor, radio and television executive, novelist and non-fiction writer. He acted as literary executor to the poet David Jones, a lifelong friend....
and René Hague and published by Agenda Editions as The Roman Quarry.
On 11 November 1985 Jones was among sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
's Poet's Corner. The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC was an English poet and soldier, one of the leading poets of the First World War...
. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
In 2002 the text of three short poems was published for the first time in Wedding Poems, edited by Thomas Dilworth. Two of these poems ("Prothalamion" and "Epithalamion", amounting to 271 lines) had been written while Jones was living in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
during the Blitz
The Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
, for the marriage of Harman Grisewood
Harman Grisewood
Harman Joseph Gerard Grisewood was an English radio actor, radio and television executive, novelist and non-fiction writer. He acted as literary executor to the poet David Jones, a lifelong friend....
to Margaret Bailey. The third poem, "The Brenner" (24 lines), had been written on 18 March 1940 to mark the meeting of Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
on the Brenner Pass
Brenner Pass
- Roadways :The motorway E45 leading from Innsbruck via Bolzano to Verona and Modena uses this pass, and is one of the most important north-south connections in Europe...
. According to their editor publication of these poems brought into print "all the known completed poetry by David Jones".
Jones the essayist
Jones wrote a number of essays on art, literature, religion and history. He wrote introductions for a few books such as a new edition of George BorrowGeorge Borrow
George Henry Borrow was an English author who wrote novels and travelogues based on his own experiences around Europe. Over the course of his wanderings, he developed a close affinity with the Romani people of Europe. They figure prominently in his work...
's Wild Wales; he gave radio talks on the BBC Third Programme
BBC Third Programme
The BBC Third Programme was a national radio network broadcast by the BBC. The network first went on air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts...
; he even tried his hand at an extended consideration of Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...
's poem for a reprinting of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner featuring his own introduction and illustrations with a series of copper engravings. His essays were published in two collections, Epoch and Artist (Faber, 1959) and The Dying Gaul — another posthumous volume edited by a close friend and published by Faber in 1978. The best summary of David Jones' attitude to art and religion is contained in his essay, "Art and Sacrament" (included in Epoch and Artist), which explores the meaning of signs and symbols in everyday life, relates them to Roman Catholic teachings such as the dogma of transubstantiation, and argues that human beings are the only animals which create "gratuitous" works, thus making them creators analogous to God.
External links
- David Jones website
- Examples of Jones' work at the Tate GalleryTate GalleryThe Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...