That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection

A closed dark cover with a diamond-shaped window revealing a colorful, sparkly material inside, resting on an orange background.

1.-book-in-box

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection

By Gerard Manley Hopkins

Cloud-puffball, torn tufts, tossed pillows | flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
Built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs | they throng; they glitter in marches
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, | wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle ín long | lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous | ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; | in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed | dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks | treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, | nature’s bonfire burns on.
But quench her bonniest, dearest | to her, her clearest-selvèd spark
Man, how fast his firedint, | his mark on mind, is gone!
Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark
Drowned. O pity and indig | nation! Manshape, that shone
Sheer off, disseveral, a star, | death blots black out; nor mark
Is any of him at all so stark
But vastness blurs and time | beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, | joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. | Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Click here to purchase this book

This book started as my third Inversnaid book. Unfortunately I had overworked it and grown frustrated with it. While I was bemoaning this fact to a friend she asked, “But what does IT want to be?”

After a few days of thought my answer was, “It wants to be destroyed.”

So I decided to obliterate the side I had been writing on and work on the back which is very pretty. I wet the whole book, picked up some bottles in which I had mixed acrylic paint many months ago and squirted randomly over the whole piece. As it had aged the yellow paint had curdled and the result of my attempted destruction was a new and exciting background that reminded me of the then daily television images of the California fires. In my search for an appropriate text I found another Hopkins poem that fitted perfectly. This palimpsest is the result. You can still pick out bits of Inversnaid in the background under the fiery lettering. This seems to fit the spirit of That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the Comfort of the
Resurrection perfectly. The folds are irregular to create a feeling of landscape when it is standing up on the long edge. It is a difficult text to read regardless of how it is presented. I have approached this with a more oriental sensibility trying to give the meaning of the text rather than just paint beautiful letters.

It is on Arches Text Wove paper on which I did acrylic washes and then lettered with brushes and gouache.

The dimensions are: Closed H 6.25” x L 12.25”
Open: H 6.25” x L 101” (approximately)
The box dimensions are: H 7” x L 13.125” x D 1”