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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
March 25, 2012
Angels & doves
Fundamentalism, or literalism, has an important place in religion. It is essential to religious art. Symbols, and symbolic language, narrative metaphors and parables, as well as actual events reported in the Bible, provided the underlying storyline for the art of the western world, as for its poetry and music.Even where the original tale is a parable, and its meaning abstract, the artist in a visual medium must start by taking the details as they are; with a visual language. The great artist then works with and through this material, to make it resonate with the "text" - to convey the same depths that lie everywhere beneath the surface of the Biblical narratives, and lives of the saints. This is true not only of the Christian religion, but universally. As a child of 11 and 12, in a country that practised Theravada Buddhism (Thailand), I was first enchanted by temple art, especially mural paintings, depicting Lord Buddha, and what followed from his life. In a museum in Bangkok, I can recall puzzling over an extraordinary collection of Buddha images, in various postures of meditation. Literalist images: yet in each emotionless gesture, the still, sculptural Buddha is "teaching" - about suffering; about the cause of suffering; about the cessation of suffering; about the eight-fold pathway to freedom. I recall wrestling with the ideas, at an age too young, and with learning too thin to make much sense. But there must have been some tiny insight there, some slight grasp, for I came away with the idea that this was not about the mere avoidance of suffering. From travels in childhood, youth, even manhood, I could not help becoming a "comparative religion junkie." Faithful readers will know the journey led to Rome. But I took half a century to get there, via atheism, agnosticism, and comfortable heresies. Paradoxically or not, my appreciation for the monastic dimension of Catholic life was founded partly in a childhood acceptance of Buddhist monasticism, which offers many striking parallels. The symbol I propose to take literally today is that of the dove. It is familiar to everyone, in its quasireligious role as the peace symbol. Appropriated from Christian iconography, it is now an easily recognized item of international signage: a kind of marketing logo, to go with jingle or slogan. Its meaning has been narrowed to "no more war" - an unachievable condition on this planet. Yet it resonates still, from the depth of the spiritual tradition it appropriated. The Christians, for their part, took it from the Jews, and indirectly from the pagan Greeks and Romans upon whom the Hebrew people had made some impressions. It was a symbol of purity and peace from the most ancient times: in ancient Egypt, for instance, the insistent cooing of the dove at daybreak, was taken as summons to the sleeping soul, to awaken into immortal life. In Genesis 8, we read of the dove that Noah sent out from the ark, across the flood waters. It returned with an olive branch, signifying dry land; and in the recession of the waters, a harbinger of peace between God and man. The Trinity is implicit, arguably explicit, in the messianic teachings of the Hebrew scriptures, or Old Testament. The Messiah will be united with God, as son with father, or as the reflection of God in the image of man. But there is a third person, too, within this unity, characterizing the godhead: and the dove in Christian art is the symbol of this holy spirit. Sunday, March 25 is specifically the feast of the Annunciation in the Christian calendar, called "Lady Day" among our English-speaking ancestors. (The Church celebration is transferred to Monday this year, when it is also the fifth Sunday in Lent, and thus the opening of Passiontide.) It is the day precisely nine months before the feast of the Nativity (Christmas). It is the gospel moment in which the angel Gabriel comes to Mary at Nazareth. He comes to announce, what she then joyfully accepts: that she will give birth to the Messiah. In the first chapter of Luke (verses 46-55) is the Canticle of Mary, or "Magnificat" from its first word in Latin: "My soul doth magnify the Lord. And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour." It is a text that has been set by the greatest of musical composers, focusing attention upon the wealth of meaning within each phrase. It is in itself a passage of incomparable poetic sublimity. So much of what we are, and have been, in western civilization, sings in those lines. And likewise, the greatest artists have painted this Annunciation: the angel typically kneeling before Mary, enthroned; the dove of the Holy Spirit fleeting overhead. Beyond this, a very complex iconography, of objects and gestures, which has had its own history over the intervening centuries; and will develop through centuries to come. The angel in this piece is to be taken literally. He lifts his finger, pointing up, to something beyond canvas, paper, or board - both literally, and figuratively, to what is beyond all human understanding. This is what art is for: to show direction; to point the way up. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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