Roland Bouyssou, a professor emeritus at the Université de Pau, interprets David Jones’s modernist masterpiece, In Parenthesis, as a structured “war liturgy” where the battlefield functions as a sacred space of sacrifice.
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In Parenthesis: A War Liturgy
Roland Bouyssou
Biography
Roland Bouyssou is professor emeritus at the Université de Pau and author of Les
Poètes-combattants anglais de la Grande guerre, Toulouse: Université de Toulouse
Le Mirail, 1974.
Abstract
David Jones wrote In Parenthesis as a kind of testimonial to his experiences of World
War I. He shaped the memories into a liturgical pattern, as soldiers become
sacrificial victims who undergo a process of initiation in seven stages, over a period of
seven months, leading to their immolation. Dai Great-Coat is an archetype of the
timeless soldier.
Résumé
David Jones écrivit In Parenthesis comme une sorte de témoignage attestant de son
expérience de la première guerre mondiale. Il en esquisse le souvenir sur un mode
liturgique, les soldats, victimes sacrificielles, se soumettant à une initiation à sept
degrés, sur une période de sept mois, jusqu’à leur immolation finale. Dai Great Coat
fait figure de l’archétype du soldat intemporel.
Keywords
David Jones, In Parenthesis (1937), War Poetry, World War I, 1915, 1916, Liturgy, Y
Goddodin (6
th
Century), Aneirin, Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), Robert
Graves, Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, Mametz Wood, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot,
Citation Arts of War and Peace 1.1. (March 2013) The Fallen & the Unfallen http://www.awpreview.univ-paris-diderot.fr
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In Parenthesis was written some ten years after the end of the war, at a time when
Edmund Blunden, Siegfreid Sassoon, and Robert Graves were writing their memoirs.
Now David Jones’s work has nothing in common with memoirs, even if it draws on
memories of his own experience as an infantryman on the Somme. In his preface to
In Parenthesis he says: “This writing has to do with some things I saw, felt and was
part of. The period covered begins early in December 1915 and ends early in July
1916”. David Jones is so keen on pointing out that In Parenthesis is based on facts,
that a map of the sector with references to the pages of the poem is included in the
hardback first edition. In Parenthesis is crammed with realistic, graphic renderings
of incidents and settings, which makes it one of the best documented works on the
day-to-day life of the “foot-mob”.
David Jones’s purpose is not to record memories, but to use them in designing
and “making” a work of art, which does not give “a likeness”, but an “equivalence” of
the war. This new “construction” is an object in its own right, “a thing-in-itself”, with
its own “structural design”, and “structural coherence”. By nature, war is chaotic;
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David Jones attempts to bring order into that confusion, and give it a meaningful
“shape”. This purpose will be achieved by transmuting the war experience into a war
liturgy.
The pattern of this liturgy is borrowed from sacrificial myths. David Jones
draws on pagan and Christian rituals. Fertility rites and religions of vegetation —
such as the sacrifices to Balder in his Grove, or to Diana Nemorensis, Diana of the
Woods, — are combined with Old Testament sacrifices and the immolation of Christ,
as it is enacted in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic mass. For David Jones, pagan
and Christian myths harmonize, as they hold in common the offering and killing of a
victim to satisfy some divinity.
In In Parenthesis, the victim — or victims — is a group of soldiers: privates
such as John Ball or Dai Great-Coat, with their officers such as Mr. Jenkins. So, this
liturgy deals with a corporate victim, that could be described as a fellowship of
infantrymen. They stand for the many men of all regiments involved in the fighting.
In a liturgy the characterization of each individual is not essential as they are figures
rather than characters; but David Jones succeeds in making them both real and
emblematic. Take John Ball for instance: on the one hand he is a true-to-life private,
clumsy, ill at ease with the “disciplines of the war”, by no means a hero, but a good
decent fellow who “does his bit” — on the other hand he is the emblem of the docile,
innocent victim, who did not choose to be sacrificed, but accepts his victimization.
John Ball, like his chums, is both a real Tommy and a liturgical figure.
Now, this liturgy does not concern the sacrifice only; actually, the killing does not
take place until the very end of the poem. In Parenthesis is the liturgy of the soldier’s
progress, more precisely the progress from soldier to victim. It is not enough to be an
infantryman doomed to be a victim; he must become worthy of being a victim, so that
he may be accepted and gratified by the divinity. This war liturgy is less concerned
with the enacting of the sacrifice than with the shaping of the soldier into a proper
victim. In Parenthesis is more than the story of a journey from England to Mametz
Wood, it is more than a march up to a sacrificial wood, it is about the victim’s
initiation.
Let us consider the progress of this initiation. Any liturgy is a kind of
performance, of dramatization, and consists in “doing” and “saying”. In In
Parenthesis, the “doing” is based on the journey of a troop of soldiers from England
to their slaughter on a wooded hill at Mametz. This march and the liturgy are divided
into seven stages and cover a seven-month period. In Parenthesis is therefore based
on a seven-action scheme. (We must not forget that seven is a sacred number). This
dramatization gives an abstract of any infantryman’s experience. David Jones has
selected the characteristic events and trials any foot soldier went through in that war
of attrition: crossing the Cannel, training in France, going up the line, a period in the
trenches, rest behind the frontline, preparations for the attack, and the assault which
ends in a slaughter. These seven stages make the seven parts of In Parenthesis, or
the seven acts of a concise, comprehensive and representative dramatic action, which
is a paradigm of the war. Likewise, the four and a half years of the war are shortened
to seven months, thanks to a synthesis in time. These devices are necessary in a
liturgy, as it gives a condensed and symbolic sequence of events.
I. The seven stages, or seven “doings”, of this war liturgy:
1/ Part I of In Parenthesis is a rite of admission. The march from the camp in
England “initiates the liturgy of a regiment departing” and the sergeants’ orders are
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“ritual words”. Crossing the Channel amounts to going through the gate to a
sacrificial area. The war zone in France is considered by David Jones as a “Waste
Land”, which is not only a wrecked area, but also a place of trial, as in Malory’s Le
Morte d’Arthur. That gate is also compared to the gate to Hell. On disembarking, the
soldiers are beginning a descent into Hell, and as it is well known, on such a journey
there are many hurdles to be cleared, and the will and strength of the hero are
severely tested. Thus, the soldiers are entering the field of hazards and trials.
2/ In Part II, the admission is followed by a noviciate. These newcomers, destined to
become victims, get acquainted with the ways and spirit of the fighting soldier. They
are instructed in tactics and the handling of weapons, and their bodies are made
stronger by parades and long marches. These novices, also called “catechumens”, are
taught by “tall guardsmen, their initiators” and prepare for their baptism of fire.
This baptism of fire is the first crucial moment of this war liturgy; it takes place
right in the middle of In Parenthesis, half-way along the sacrificial march. It is a
sacramental act, turning the novices, or “catachumens”, into fully qualified victims.
This baptism is performed in two stages: the first one, in part III, is an initiation; the
second one, in Part IV, is the baptism,proper.
3/ The Initiation (in Part III) is an initiation to a chtonian mystery. The descent into
Hell, which had been foretold when the troops landed in France, is now taking place.
The soldiers march to the frontline, down narrow, winding trenches in the dark.
Symbolically, they go “past the little gate” to the Chapel Perilous, walk through “the
long, strait, dark entry” of the palace of Mars, which in Chaucer is based on the
description of Hades, and through the eight gates Arthur had to pass in his
“Harrowing of Hades”. They reach the frozen regions of the Celtic underworld where
the “long-barrow sleepers” of Mac Og lie, and the baleful “dogs of Annyn” bark. As in
many initiation rites these troops wander in the dark; but an ominous moon is
lurking over their heads and sheds its intermittent light on this waste land. She is a
feminine figure, and is identified with Diana, the Queen of the Woods, to whom
human victims were sacrificed. At the end of In Parenthesis, the soldiers will die in
her grove. Now in Biez Wood, they get acquainted with the hazards of war, and they
have joined the community of “professed” soldiers. They are like monks who after
their noviciate are worthy of their profession of religious vows. Talking of these men,
David Jones writes: “The ritual of their parading was fashioned to austerity, and bore
a new directness.”
4/ This “new directness” leads to a baptism of fire on Christmas Day (25 Dec. 1916) in
Part IV. For the first time the troops are under fire; and from the trenches they can
see Biez Wood, close to Mametz Wood, the place of their future immolation. This is a
grim baptism, fraught with ominous signs. First, it takes place in a Waste Land or
King Pellam’s Laund, (which is the title David Jones borrowed from Le Morte
d’Arthur and gave this section). Furthermore, this baptism ironically takes place on
Christmas Day: in the trenches, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, is already seen as the
victim to be sacrificed on the cross on Good Friday. One is also reminded of the
baptism inaugurated by Christ, when it is said that he will baptize in Spirit and fire.
By fire Jesus meant the Holy Spirit; but here, the troops are baptized in the fire of
guns and rifles. In fact, they are baptized in death.
5/ The last three parts of In Parenthesis make up the liturgy of immolation. It starts
in Part V with a vigil. The battalion are at rest behind the lines. The mood is grimly
