What's Bred In the Bone

I first read What's Bred In the Bone 25 or so years ago and the only things that I remembered from it were: Francis Cornish sketching at the autopsy of the dwarf tailor; the Drollig Hansel; and the huge triptych of The Marriage at Cana. I only remembered the art: and while this book is certainly about art, it is more about those lucky few who are able to access the deep well of common experience -- the Collective Unconscious -- and drag forth images to interpret and present as their own; it's about artists, whether painters or writers, and their efforts to grasp and personalise the universal. 

What's Bred In the Bone picks up a few years after the timeframe of The Rebel Angels : Simon Darcourt is explaining to Arthur and Maria Cornish that he has hit a roadblock in his efforts to write a biography of Arthur's late uncle, Francis. There is very little information to be found on the great man, and what there is has a whiff of scandal (Perhaps some art forgery? Perhaps some homosexuality?). As the three debate whether or not the biography should be pursued, the point of view shifts to that of two mythological creatures with an interest in the matter: the Lesser Zadkiel ( the angel who interfered when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac, so he is an angel of mercy, though a lot of biographers aren't), who has recorded all of the events of Francis Cornish's life, and the Daimon Maimas (a type of creative spirit assigned to very few humans who, in this case, presented his charge with many difficulties because A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life). These two then review Francis' life, starting with the histories of his grandparents and then parents because, after all, what's bred in the bone will not out of the flesh.

After reading Robertson Davies : A Portrait in Mosaic, I could recognise that Davies gave Cornish a biography similar to his own. Both were raised in wealthy homes set in coarse, remote Ontario towns ("Jumping-Off" places where the residents are sewn into their longjohns for the winter, presumably not bathing again 'til Spring), were sent to a snooty boys' boarding school, attended a respectable Toronto University, and then took a degree at Oxford. But while Davies retreated back home as WWII loomed, Cornish pursued his art studies in Bavaria (and spent his evenings counting the cattle cars that made their way to the local concentration camp). Through Cornish's failed efforts to adapt his outmoded artistic tastes for modern audiences, I got the sense that Davies was describing his own literary efforts. In a way, this is an old-fashioned book and a lament for an earlier time; one richer in myth and legend.

Science is the theology of our time, and like the old theology it's a muddle of conflicting assertions… It's the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination.

Like The Rebels Angels, this was a book of dichotomies: Cornish attempted to reconcile the male with the female; the "normal" with the "grotesque"; New Money and Old Money; the New World and the Old World; Old Masters and New Masters; Catholics with Protestants; and wanting to be a benefactor but loving his money a bit too much. There are layers of symbols -- from the obvious iconography of paintings new and old to the quest for the three aspects of womanhood -- and the occult looms large through astrology and alchemy. Once again, it is always amazing to me to read a Davies book that is crammed full of unfamiliar information and situations, yet never feel confused or patronised. And, of course, I love the Canadian bits:

Sorry, sorry, sorry! Of course you're a Canadian. Do you know what that is? A psychological mess. For a lot of good reasons, including some planetary influences, Canada is an introverted country straining like hell to behave like an extravert. Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!

I watched the movie Pan's Labyrinth the other day and it was a good companion piece for this book: aside from the Communists fighting the Fascists in Franco's Spain (which two characters in this book run off to do), it's a movie rich in allegory; a deep meditation on the protective power of myth and storytelling. Of course, it also reminded me of The Monuments Men and could just see Cornish taking his place beside George Clooney in the repatriation of looted art.

Kennedy is taking a minor in Art History, and in her first year, she was surprised to find herself a leading expert on Christian symbolism and iconography in her classes.  She hasn't been particularly surrounded by religious images, but she did go to nominally Catholic schools, and in her first Intro to Art History class, she was the only student who knew that Jesus wasn't crucified alone; the rest of the class was shocked by a painting depicting three crosses; the rest of the class had thought that crucifixion was a special punishment only used for Jesus in the history of the world. Naturally, her class wasn't made up of just Muslims and Buddhists -- the class also included the descendants of people who once knew these things. I am all for secularization, but I can't help but feel like maybe the disconnect we're all feeling from each other is the loss of a shared history and mythology. It's probably a good thing that public schools don't say the Lord's Prayer anymore and I can understand why people bring lawsuits to have the Ten Commandments removed from courthouses, but when it comes to art, there's something lost when we no longer have a shared language -- and maybe that's one of the points made in this book: although Cornish couldn't express the truths from his own deep well through modern art, maybe there is more truth to a Jackson Pollack (more shared understanding) than a Philistine like myself can recognise.

And because I can, here are some paintings referenced by Cornish:

Love Locked Out

Allegory of Time

Harrowing of Hell

We talked about this book at the Lit Course last night, and again, it was a motley discussion. The Prof began by reading this part (the final dialogue of Zadkiel and Maimas):

Of course, we know that it is all metaphor, you and I. Indeed, we are metaphors ourselves. But the metaphors that shaped the life of Francis Cornish were Saturn, the resolute, and Mercury, the maker, the humorist, the trickster. It was my task to see that these, the Great Ones, were bred in the bone, and came out in the flesh.

The Prof then explained the difference between a metaphor and a simile (did anyone there not know this?) and then said, "If I said, 'My love is like a red, red rose', that's a simile because it used 'like'. But if I said, 'My love is a red, red rose', that's a metaphor. If I said, 'My love is a red, red rose', what does that make you think of?"

People responded, "love is beautiful and perishable", "thorny", "sweet but temporary", and the Prof liked all of these answers and said, "Yes, that's what a metaphor is." But, in my mind, I was like, How would those answers be any different if she had asked, "What does it make you think of when I say, 'My love is like a red, red rose' "? I didn't think this was a good example at all (but kept my yap shut) and then, later, she accidentally supplied the perfect example (when we were no longer discussing metaphors): When Cornish painted The Marriage at Cana, he was able to create a work of genius because Meister Saraceni had not taught him to paint like an Old Master, but as though he was an Old Master. But back to her point: since we, as the readers, are sitting with the Daimon and the Recording Angel as Cornish's life is played back, and since they are just metaphors, then we must be metaphors, too, and what does that mean? I have no idea what that means (although there was some talk about how Davies expected the reader to filter his books through their own experiences) and that question was never really answered.

More odd discussions:

The Prof pointed out that with Davies writing Canadian characters who work for MI5 and as international art experts, he never thought of Canada as a small place. An old lady then said that she had gone to Camp-X a couple of years ago and learned that Canada trained a lot of the spies for WWII, and incidentally, it's a shame that it's crumbling away, and even now, all of the artifacts are held in one quonset hut and opened up to tourists by volunteers for two hours a week. The Prof used this as an excuse to take a swipe at the Harper Government's "questionable priorities".

This led into the character in the book, Ross, who became the Director of the National Gallery, and who wanted to raise it up to international standards with the acquisition of Important Art. After bemoaning that the (fictional) Minister responsible for the gallery's funding thought more of keeping her seat (and therefore, didn't want to be seen wasting tax-payers' dollars), the Prof said much later, "And then there's the Voice of Fire controversy, and tell me what you think $3 million is worth." Okay, but which is it, Prof? Is choosing political power over support for the arts narrow-minded? Or is it just a waste when you don't like the art? 

Voice of Fire

And by the by, the article says that the National Gallery paid $1.8 million, not 3. And another odd mistake for an English Prof: while talking about The Little Mermaid, she twice referred to it as a Grimm fairytale, even though I knew it was Hans Christian Anderson, but like always, I'm not trying to undermine anyone. (Publicly, lol.)

Another odd point: The old German woman (the "newbie" from the first class) said that she thinks the over-medication of psychological problems is "the new Holocaust" because "anyone who is different is expected to fit into a box or pffft, you're out of here". Curious statement from a German of a certain age...

And finally, and I can't even remember how this came up, but the Professor made a point about a European Philosophy Professor -- Slavov Žižek, the "Mad Serb" -- who compares the Marxist view of Capital to Freudian Dream Analysis. She asked someone for a coin and said, "What is this?" People shouted out, "A quarter" "Twenty-five cents", and she said, "No, it's just a circle of metal. What's it worth?" "Twenty-five cents!" "No, it wouldn't have that much metal in it, but we agree that it has an exchange value of twenty-five cents. And what Žižek is saying is that we are constantly suppressing the rational -- what we know to be true, like the true value of this circle of metal -- in order to raise up the reasonable -- what we collectively agree to be true. And that goes back to our last book and the old Gypsy, Mamusia, and the drive to suppress old knowledge in order to raise up what we think is reasonable. And it goes to Harper refusing to keep Camp-X going because this government has a narrow-minded focus on the ever-present now. And the tie to the Holocaust is that Germany was the prime example of a society that had, through logic and reason and an embracing of the modern, suppressed the rational in order to commit the monstrous." She then invited us to check out some Žižek movies on Netflix (The Pervert's Guide to Cinema and The Pervert's Guide to Ideology), but I was only able to find the latter listed. As an aside (and in keeping with my view of our Prof and her progressive worldview), this is the first review for the film on Netflix:

If you grew up thinking Ayn Rand was a brilliant thinker and not a grumpy lady with a hateful ideology, you're going to despise this movie. It might even make you extremely angry. In fact, this movie has the capacity to infuriate a great many people, from Catholics to Atheists to the United Nations and beyond. Though one has to squint and clench just to cut through the soup of speech-barriers between the narrator and the viewer, the concepts being explored are complex and at times rather profound, attacking and picking apart not just one particular ideology, as the Randians will certainly feel is the case regarding capitalism, but ALL ideologies, and the notion of 'ideology' itself.

That was the last talking point and the Prof ended by saying, "It's always fascinating to see where discussing Robertson Davies will lead, but I think that was his goal: to get us thinking and talking."  Good enough, that.

Further Edit:

I did watch The Pervert's Guide to Ideology and it was interesting enough -- for a Marxist filter of commonly held beliefs, as seen in movies. What I couldn't help but wonder, though, is if these movies actually demonstrate the subconsciously held ideological beliefs of their creators or did Žižek simply choose movies that demonstrated the points he wanted to make? It's interesting to see him link Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver and John Wayne in The Searchers with the invasions of Afghanistan and Viet Nam (in that Americans see themselves as heroes and will go in, guns blazing, to rescue even those who say they don't want it) but is the shark in Jaws really a manifestation of the western world's "fear of the other"? Couldn't it just be about a shark? What Žižek's movie did do was make perfectly clear what kind of filters our Prof is seeing the world through.


All Five Titles:

Robertson Davies : A Portrait in Mosaic

None is Too Many

The Rebel Angels

What's Bred in the Bone

The Lyre of Orpheus