‘No poet wants to be labelled – they all want to break the mould – but Bunting acknowledged his roots.’
Joined-up writing? Jonathan Wooding discusses Basil Bunting
‘He knew where he belonged.’
or my money, Basil Bunting (1900-1985) can legitimately be regarded as a representative Quaker figure. This pioneering poet was a student at Ackworth and Leighton Park schools, a conscientious objector, an enthusiastic attender at Meeting for Worship, and an all-round non-conformist. ‘Meditation in the Quaker Meeting House shaped his philosophy’, writes Richard Burton in his luminous biography A Strong Song Tows Us.
Despite this observation, Burton has a rather tin ear when it comes to detecting Quaker sensibility. Bunting said in a 1981 interview that, ‘I believe my outlook and [the Quakers’] outlook are fundamentally the same’. But he went on to add, paradoxically (as any self-respecting poet (or Quaker) would), that ‘they might differ in almost every detail’.
Burton resists Bunting’s rather attractive way of depicting the religious life, perhaps for good reason, but he spends too much time worrying that Bunting ‘wasn’t even a Quaker’, as if one has to be born a Quaker to count as one. He is nearer the mark when he notes ‘Bunting’s complex relationship with Quakerism’.
Let’s be realistic, however. It does no one any favours to be called a religious poet. In the post-Christian twenty-first century it would consign them, and their text, to irrelevance. No, thank you, says the sensible poet. And if not a religious poet, then probably not a Quaker one either. Just ‘poet’, please. Even for the writer of ‘At Briggflatts Meetinghouse’, perhaps the most convincing poem about the Quaker experience of worship.
We can safely boast that this short poem (featured, by the way, in A speaking silence: Quaker poets of today) bears comparison with any universally-admired poem, religious or otherwise. Boasting, of course, would not be pleasing to the old Ackworthian and Leightonian. Look at how he writes in his similarly-named, autobiographical poem, ‘Briggflatts’. There he writes of the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti who ‘condensed so much music into so few bars / with never a crabbed turn or congested cadence, / never a boast or a see-here’. One must rein in on the see-hereing, as a good Quaker ought.
And look, too, at the opening sentence of ‘At Briggflatts Meetinghouse’ itself. ‘Boasts’ are unwarranted or inflated claims and assertions that will get comeuppance. They’ll be mocked by old Father Time. In that first line we think of the ruins of ancient Rome, making their tragicomic boasts under the mocking eyes of the modern tourist. There’s also, I suppose, a partial criticism of boasts deriving from Rome’s Vatican. George Fox, after all, did make a practice of asking ‘whether the Church of Rome was not degenerated from the Church in the primitive times, from the Spirit, power, and practice that they were in the Apostles’ times?’ I’m not sure I’d have the impertinence or temerity to speak quite so plainly myself, but Bunting’s verse does also contain asperity. Speak plainly we must. Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s gets it in the neck too – merely a monument to himself, it would appear.
The Quaker way, for Bunting is, rather, to be at peace with impermanence and mutability – with mortality and evanescence. This is quite the reverse of boastful assertion, or the desire for monumentality. Bunting has a fearless perception of remorseless entropy, of the dying of the light. Later in the poem, to think (unaided) is not to descend into despair, but to remain divinely impassive before time’s eroding force. It is to recall the refining virtue of a godly or saintly fire, which does not ‘sink’. This may be unconventional as religious assertion or consolation, but Bunting was aware of his place in theological tradition: ‘I think that old fashioned Quakers, 19th century Quakers, certainly would regard me as an atheist and I’m perfectly certain that Roman Catholics, Anglicans, probably Wesleyans and so forth would regard me as an atheist too.’ One can only admire the candour and self-knowledge in such a statement – its audacity too. It is unconstrained and unencumbered by dogmatic conformity. Notice, crucially, that apparent atheism does not preclude attendance at Meeting for Worship.
‘At Briggflatts Meetinghouse’, then, is flinty and fluent, zen-like in focus and selflessness. It is transparent, translucent, scandalously discarding liturgy and creed. No poet wants to be labelled – they all want to break the mould – and few are saintly, but Bunting acknowledged his roots – his shaping spirits. Burton refers to a conversation Bunting had with Peter Lewis as they walked past Durham Cathedral: ‘He wanted to distance himself from religious authoritarianism and dogmatism. He did admit that there were ways in which he could be considered a “religious” poet. Yet it was surely the bare meeting house at Brigflatts that spoke to him more clearly about Lux aeterna than the great Cathedral in Durham.’
Bunting’s great claim to literary fame is in fact that autobiographical poem mentioned earlier. It is named for Brigflatts Quaker Meeting House (though Bunting uses an older spelling, with a double ‘g’). As Burton informs us, rather excitingly, ‘Brigflatts is within a couple of miles of the birthplace of the Quaker movement, Firbank Knott near Sedbergh, where George Fox delivered his great sermon in 1652.’ I for one take this title as a guiding declaration of intent. After all, T S Eliot, that other great modernist poet, chose ‘Little Gidding’ as the title for the fourth of the Four Quartets. Little Gidding is the site of a rather different religious community, founded by Nicholas Ferrar, dating from 1626. It was keen on the Book of Common Prayer and the Anglo-Catholic tradition, admired by poor old Charles I. George Fox doesn’t mention these saintly people in his Journal. Yet Ferrar would have recognised Bunting’s Meeting for Worship: ‘for a little longer here / stone and oak shelter / silence while we ask nothing / but silence.’
Enough said. Bunting didn’t, finally, want to be called a Quaker poet – he thought that fate had befallen ‘that ass Whittier’ (of ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ fame), but he knew where he belonged. As he told Gael Turnbull, ‘The meeting has formally accepted me as an “attender”.’ He was a poet, a modernist poet, who happened to be a Quaker, too.
At Briggflatts Meetinghouse
Boasts time mocks cumber Rome. Wren
set up his own monument.
Others watch fells dwindle, think
the sun’s fires sink.
Stones indeed sift to sand, oak
blends with saints’ bones.
Yet for a little longer here
stone and oak shelter
silence while we ask nothing
but silence. Look how clouds dance
under the wind’s wing, and leaves
delight in transience.
Comments
‘Delighting in transience,’ indeed, fine words for a wind soaked January day. I am grateful for the introduction to Bunting as a poet standing alongside Quaker concerns.
By bigbooks1963@gmail.com on 12th January 2023 - 11:53
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