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Thesis Final Seeing God and the Poetry of Ursula Bethell by Marit Flinn A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature Victoria University of Wellington 2008 Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................iii Abstract ..........................................................................................................................iv Introduction ....................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Beauty and the Beast: resolving tensions between physical and spiritual in From a Garden in the Antipodes ....................................25 Chapter Two: Encountering Christ in Time and Place : The role of the phenomenal world ......64 Chapter Three: Encountering Christ in Time and Place : The role of the mind ...........................100 Chapter Four: Waking in Heaven: Day and Night .........................................................................127 Conclusion .................................................................................................................162 Bibliography ..............................................................................................................173 ii Acknowledgements Many, many people have helped me in so many ways while I was working on this project and I would like to thank them all for their support. I would particularly like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Jane Stafford, for her (hopefully successful) attempts to banish the head of King Charles the First from my work. Thanks, Jane! Also to my parents, because, in the end, they are the ones who got me here. Thanks to Gill Hubbard, for sharing an office and showing interest and providing encouragement when I needed it. Also, thanks to the staff and other post-graduate students of the English Department at Victoria University, all of whom have been friendly and helpful. Special thanks to Saskia Voorendt, my organised friend to whom I could go with all of my queries. And most especially to my husband, Richie, who has been not only patient and encouraging throughout, but helpful in every way, shape, and form. I thank you for picking up the slack, and for the hours of reading and editing. You have been truly wonderful and I thank the Lord for you. Marit Flinn Wellington May 2008 iii Abstract Mary Ursula Bethell’s poems are almost exclusively celebrations of natural beauty. What, then, is the significance of the beauty within the world to the poet? This question is central to Bethell’s poetry and this thesis attempts to answer it. Beauty, for Bethell, is the invisible shining through the visible. It is the glory of God shown in the physical world. As Bethell searches for and celebrates beauty, she is in fact searching for and celebrating the face of God. Bethell’s first collection, From a Garden in the Antipodes , introduces the role of beauty in the poet’s life: a role of revealing the world as a point of connection between herself and her God. Time and Place continues with this theme. Here the focus is on Christ as the ultimate Being – the foundation of all things, who is revealed most perfectly through the beauty of the world. Day and Night holds the climax of the revelation of God. It unveils the Holy Spirit as the ‘Spirit of Beauty’, so creating a direct link between the poet and her God – a link which is made evident by the beauty of the world. iv Introduction ‘MY URSULA BETHELL’ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the sea and the land, light and darkness, day and night, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea and all of the creatures that walk on the land. 1 Lastly he made man in his own image, male and female he created them. And God established a garden for them, a garden full of trees and in which was planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Being deceived by the serpent, and desiring wisdom, Adam and Eve ate the fruit of this tree which they were forbidden to eat. Because they ate the fruit which they were commanded not to eat God passed judgment over them, cursing the ground and causing it to produce thorns and thistles. He said to Adam: By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. 2 1 Genesis 1. 2 Genesis 3:19. 1 The shared nature of people and the earth is used to point to the mortality of humanity. God essentially curses everything that has physical being – all things that are will pass away as a result of sin. But God, while being perfectly just, is also merciful. When he turns to judge the serpent, who assisted in the deception, God promises Adam and Eve a saviour. He says to the serpent: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. 3 The serpent is a symbol of evil, of destruction and death. The one who will crush the head of the serpent is Jesus Christ, who, in the gospels of the New Testament, died and rose again, and so was stung by the serpent, but ultimately defeated death. This story about the creation of the world and the fall of humanity presents only the rudiments of Christianity, but it is the foundation upon which Mary Ursula Bethell’s poetry rests. Toss Woollaston records in his memoirs, Sage Tea , the first time he was introduced to Ursula Bethell. She had just emerged from church wearing blue silks, ‘with her head a little bent, eyes inward, evidently meditating on divine matters’. 4 Bethell was born on October 6, 1874, in England, and died on the 15 th of January, 1945. She spent her childhood in New Zealand, but left for England to attend Oxford Girls' High School in 1889, where she lived with the 3 Genesis 3:15. 4 TossWoollaston, Sage Tea: An Autobiography (Auckland: Collins, 1980), p. 215. 2 Mayhew family who were instrumental in the development of her poetry. Ruth Mayhew (Lady Ruth Head) was the recipient of the verse in From a Garden in the Antipodes ,5 while her brother Arthur undertook the publication of this first collection by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1929. Peter Whiteford suggests that the oldest brother, Arnold Mayhew, may have been the one time ‘sweetheart’ whom Bethell guardedly refers to in her letters. 6 Between 1889 and 1919, when she made New Zealand a permanent home, she travelled widely, visiting Switzerland, New Zealand, the United States and even India. She was heavily involved in social work and joined the Anglican Grey Ladies for a time, although it seems their untidiness and noise became too much for her. She also gifted a house to the Anglican church as a centre for training deaconesses. It is not surprising, given her interest in the welfare of society, that she existed at the centre of a literary circle in Christchurch and often took to spiritually supervising many of the young people she patronised. Monte Holcroft admits that [a]lthough my respect for Ursula Bethell grew stronger as I talked to her more frequently, I found that in some ways she had to be resisted. She was generous in her desire to help young writers; but I think she liked to feel that she was influencing their work…At one time our friendship became strained, and had to be interrupted, because I felt that in the tasks I had undertaken I needed personal freedom…I feared her gentle pressure towards theology. 7 5 Ursula Bethell, From a Garden in the Antipodes , by Evelyn Hayes (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1929). 6 Peter Whiteford, ‘Introduction to Vibrant with Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell ’ (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005), pp. xv-xvi. 7 Monte Holcroft, ‘Ursula Bethell: Some Personal Memories’, pp. 284-290, in Landfall , vol. 2, no. 4 (December 1948), p. 288. 3 But whether or not she influenced any of those artists who came to her attention, such as Toss Woollaston, Monte Holcroft, D’Arcy Cresswell, Eric McCormick, John Summers, and even Charles Brasch – whose poetry, she told him, she did not particularly admire 8 – her own poetry holds an important place in New Zealand literature. Most of her poetry was written while she lived at Rise Cottage on the Cashmere Hills, in Christchurch, with Effie Pollen. This period spanned a decade, from 1924-1934. The sudden death of her very dear friend essentially ended Bethell’s desire to write poetry. Not only this, it spelled the end of her ability to see poetry in the world surrounding her. In each year following Effie Pollen’s death, around the anniversary of her passing, Bethell wrote a memorial of her friend. In the sixth and last of these, Bethell expresses how the pain of Pollen’s death has caused her lack of inspiration: Out to the pastures, then, we went, to seek our Spring. Now, in the city pent, Spring sudden overtakes me As in time past my joy, hear my complaint now, Spirit of Beauty, hear… Match Spring with vision, Spirit of Beauty, bring With your persuasive love to the inward eye awakening, Lest looking on this life to count what time has taken I cannot bear the pain. (‘Spring 1940’) 9 The poem reveals that while joy ‘in time past’ enabled her to see the Spirit of Beauty within the world, the pain she now bears means that spring is no longer matched with the vision from which her poetry sprang. The awakening 8 Charles Brasch, Indirections: A Memoir 1909-1947 (Wellington: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 302-303. 9 Mary Ursula Bethell, Collected Poems (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1950), p. 103. 4 of her ‘inward eye’ is crucial to her poetry. It is this ‘inward’, or spiritual, eye, that my thesis investigates.
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