Brantwood – Poppies

A window at Brantwood (above)
A spore print from a Brantwood fern (above)
Demeter - the Earth mother - Prosperina's mother (above)

We began to think more about the Poppy today – there are some real beauties in the lower garden, a wild, fragile, translucent red. We have also been enjoying Dinah Birch’s book on Ruskin’s myths. “Demeter, the “Earth Mother” as Ruskin calls her, is the mother of Proserpina and in the mythology of the Greeks is closely linked with her. The Poppy is her flower, and thus comes to be associated with Proserpina herself.” She quotes the following passage from Ruskin “Nearly all the flowers keep with them, all their lives, their nurse or tutor leaves, - the group which, in stronger and humbler temper, protected them in their first weakness, and formed them to the first laws of their being. But the poppy casts these tutorial leaves away. It is the finished picture of impatient and luxury-loving youth, - at first too severely restrained, then casting all restraint away – yet retaining to the end of life unseemly and illiberal signs of its once compelled submission to laws which were only pain, - not instruction.” Ruskin could be talking about his own childhood and probably is, but he could also be talking about Rose and he, and he is probably doing that too. But this image, of the Poppy leaf, when you look closely at it, its translucent petals are ever-rumpled from its containment. Yet, these “signs of its once compelled submission” serve to catch the shapes of light and reflection upon the petals like no other flower I know of. I have never seen such a fine texture of reflective red – and it is incredibly reflective. Yet, it makes us think of the way in which we bear the scars of our upbringing.

Proserpina of course has a whole chapter on the Poppy, and unlocking its depth of meaning is complex. He wonders, for instance, “whether poppy leaves themselves….are not too thin, im-properly thin?” I don’t know about the leaves; in fact I think he’s referring to the leaves of the flower, the petals. But the petals seem that way to me, there is something truly sensuous in their thin-ness and delicacy as they are moved by the gentlest of breezes, like the finest of fabrics, too delicate even to touch, though one longs to do so. That sensuousness would no doubt have unnerved Ruskin. When Ruskin says of the Poppy, that it is “robed in the purple of Caesars”, he goes on to say “what I meant was, first, that the poppy leaf looks dyed through and through, like glass, or Tyrian tissue; and not merely painted; secondly, that the splendour of it is proud, - almost insolently so. Augustus, in his glory, might have been clothed like one of these; and Saul; but not David, nor Solomon; still less the teacher of Solomon, when he puts on ‘glorious apparel.’ ” There’s loads more about poppies – the heads drooping like those of dying soldiers, “the specific sense of men’s drooping under weight, or towards death, under the burden of fortune which they have no more strength to sustain… the poppy became in the heathen mind the type once of power, or pride, and it’s loss”. He likens the poppy head also to the Pomegranate fruit, saying “the cause of Proserpine’s eternal captivity – her having tasted a pomegranate seed… Demeter, associated with the Poppy by a multitude of ideas which are not definitely expressed, but can only be gathered out of Greek art and literature… the fullness of seed in the Poppy, as an image of life.”

I am minded to think, in reading Proserpina, and trying to get to the true meaning of plants, of all the problems of nomenclature and classification, which Ruskin (and in fact anyone who gets interested in botany) gets mistakenly seduced into. So, the Herb Robert – a good English name – apparently it’s really a geranium. Only it’s not a Geranium is it? In fact it’s nothing like a Geranium. This business of grouping things into plant families, whether scientifically botanical, or mythalogically Ruskinian, seems to me to be useless. There are no families of plants, there are just plants, with definite characters. Ruskin is right that the true meaning of botany is in the biography of plants, but in many ways he would have been better off just exploring that idea in Proserpina, rather than trying to create a whole new classification system.

So Alex made cyanotypes of the poppy, and cyanotypes of posies of flowers with complex meanings in language. And he had some spore prints which I photographed - there's a real challenge in fixing them to the paper. I filmed the Poppy in the studio. But I want to do more with it yet, to capture the delicate way it’s petals move so gently in the wind. So little time left to us, and I also have a plan to shoot the Vervain in one of Brantwood’s Ruskinian gothic arched windows (above), in mind of Carpaccio’s St Ursula, with double exposure. Tomorrow morning I have first to dig some Vervain, pot it, then hope for an interesting pattern of clouds through the window, or rain drops upon the glass. Vervain looks nothing like Ruskin’s Vervain, or Carpaccio’s, but I don’t really care about that. It has become, for me, the light through which Carpaccio’s St Ursula is illuminated.

Late afternoon we met with Howard Hull, as ever a wonderful and enlightening talk ensued. We showed some of the work we have created so far to Sally and he, discussing also how we might show the final work here. The rooms in Brantwood, quite coincidentally we discovered, are themed with the seven lamps – Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory and Obedience. We are quite keen to put one screen in each room, making these correspondences with the rooms in the language of flowers. The whole idea of the language of flowers is worthy of so much more than we have been able to get to yet. We’re very aware of how our time here, or with this subject, is woefully incomplete. Further to that, we may use the exhibition space in the house for some cyanotypes and Ruskin’s flora drawings, plus books, like his pressed Alpine flower book, or some of his botanical books. And we all got quite excited about doing something that connects the exhibition with the living truth of the garden here – the real and beautiful world from which everything we have done, and much of what Ruskin did, stems. Sally Beamish, the head gardener here, is its inspiring and dedicated custodian.

Finally, went to see a copy of the ‘Library Edition’ which was for sale in Coniston, the whole 39 volumes of Ruskin’s work… which we have had the intense pleasure of perusing here for several hours each day, these last few days. There are very few things in life I covet, but this set of books is one of them.

It has been wonderful being here – I woke this morning anxious to appreciate every moment of the day ahead - an opening of mind and heart, and there is much that both of us will continue to learn from it, long after we have left. Above all, the separation we have experienced from the usual realities of life, to sink into creative thought as the sole and true basis for life, even if temporary - this is a most rare and powerful thing.