CULTURAL MEMORY AS TRADITION AND SACRAMENT IN DAVID JONES’ POETRY
CULTURAL MEMORY AS TRADITION AND SACRAMENT IN DAVID JONES’ POETRY

Summary/Abstract: In this paper two aspects of cultural memory in the poetry of the twentieth-century Anglo-Welsh poet, essayist and artist, David Jones, will be discussed: tradition and sacrament. Jones works with a specific understanding of cultural traditions as living traditions, created by poets performing their bardic function (as well as by other artists), with later stages of the tradition building on and adding to, but not cancelling out, earlier stages. His theory of tradition can be illuminated with reference to the work of theoretical writers such as John Henry Newman and Alasdair MacIntyre (as well as with reference to his own theoretical writings). Jones believes that the poet’s function is to embody the cultural tradition by producing poetic works in which the tradition is “really present”, and sees this process as analogous to religious sacrament – he performs this function himself in his poetry, as well as explaining it in his theoretical writing. His aspiration is also to gather together as much as he can of his local cultural tradition for inclusion in his works, in order to save it, by re-embodying it in his contribution to the continuation of the tradition. The idea of art works as containing truths which are “really present” can be theorised in terms both of Catholic (Thomistic), as in Jones’ own theorising, and of phenomenology and hermeneutics – statements by Hans-Georg Gadamer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty will be compared with Jones’ formulations. This paper will outline the theory behind Jones’ understanding of the concepts of tradition and sacrament in relation to poetry, as well as showing how he performs the embodying function, and at the same time thematises it, in his poetry.

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