9 Jul 2013

Heat

The temperature in my sheltered little garden was 35 yesterday - in the evening. I'm moving to the Arctic Circle. 

Breakfast and supper in the garden then, and a good part of the day wandering the beaches. Thank heavens for a cooling sea breeze. The water isn't warm so I shan't be tempted to break the 27 year record of living by the North Sea without actually going in it. Just nice to wet ones feet.

Otherwise I've been pursuing my recent obsession with Pope Joan. The www leads from one thing into another, and then into side roads, and that's where I met her again. Many years ago I swept through, at speed, my mother-in-law's copy of the Lawrence Durrell translation/rewrite of the C19 Greek novel by Emmanuel Roydis. It was Roydis's only novel and led him to infamy and excommunication. He accepted both with equanimity and uncaring because he was in love with Joan. Or all that she stood for. In the preface Durrell calls it a 'brief record of the history and misfortunes of Eros after his transformation by Christianity from a God to an underground resistance movement.' That, for me, makes Roydis a Hero.

Joan was the daughter of a monk and a nun so she fulfilled her genetic obligations to blaspheme by becoming the only female pope in history (and if it is all a fiction as some think then I see it as evidence of the need for such a phenomenon.) She, like many intelligent young women of her time, had entered a nunnery when her father died, seeing it as the best way of coping with complete poverty and lack of relatives. With the help of a few visions and dreams, the arrival of a young monk who had come to the convent for help scribing a document in gold leaf, and some intense study of the Song of Solomon, she discovered that the best way to worship the Almighty is by enjoying what is given to us to enjoy. 'The All Highest, according to the holy Augustine and Lactantius, does not look askance at the choice of more liberal paths should they leads us toward Him. So what point is there in hunting Paradise through thorns and thistles and boiled vegetables?'

How wise.

There have been several extramural pleasures for me in this obsession. The first being flashbacks to my much loved Greek father-in-law who was anti-clerical in the extreme and must have relished this tale. (Maybe the book was his. He wouldn't have need translation to the original but I suspect Durrell's is even more humorous than the original.)  The second pleasure was the way the uncut Czech version of the film about her life arrived beribboned and with a beautiful postcard of Olomouc.

No comments: