Mont Ventoux

Leaf 125 – Art Inspired

 

Caspar David Friedrich - Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)
Kunsthalle Hamburg

This is the first of a loosely-linked triptych of poems, each inspired by a well-known painting (see, Leaf 126 and Leaf 127). The triptych begins with Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ (1818). But this first one is also influenced even more directly by a fascinating television documentary series which was first broadcast on British TV in the late 1980s. Written and presented by John Romer, it was a history of the Bible as viewed through the lens of Biblical archaeology. It was called ‘Testament’ (1988), and, at that time, it had a tremendous effect upon me. It still resonates in a number of different ways, and not least because of the beautiful poetry of John Romer’s words which manage to plait together the lucid threads of ordinary expression with mellifluous verbal-strands of the purest spun gold. The last episode, in which Romer describes the poet, Petrarch, as the first truly modern man – because of his reflections upon Petrarch’ s remarkable ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336 – has always stayed with me. So much so, in fact, that some thirty years or more since first seeing and hearing Romer recount it, I found myself penning the following tanka poem about it – this trek up a mountain in a fruitless search for God, viewing the divine instead as something which is found within the soul, something which is actually reflected deep within the very heart of earthbound nature. This is the essence of the Romantic ideal: the fact that we are at one with God and the world, if only we can open our eyes and see things as they truly are.

 

 

MONT VENTOUX

 

A letter written, ink scripted

straight from the poet’s soul;

this trip up a mountain –

in search of God, finding

all that’s hidden, in our hearts.