the
GEORGE MACKAY BROWN website
Essays on GMB and his work
George Mackay Brown: a hero's journey
Sue Tordoff
All
his life George Mackay Brown wrote about heroes.
Magnus was the superstar in his repertoire, but others from the
Orkneyinga Saga, or those like Ranald Sigmundson born from his
imagination in
The
Hero is an archetype featured in myths, legends and fairy tales in all cultures.
Jung described archetypes as the name given to recognisable and enduring
patterns in the psyche. In myths,
collected psychological knowledge and wisdom is passed down to new generations.
GMB created his own myths against the Orkney background, stories about
connections between earth and people and something spiritual he sometimes called
God. But did he make an heroic
journey of his own?
The
Hero used to be considered as an archetype for the elite; Richard the Lionheart,
Magnus, Jesus. In the last century,
growth in psychological understanding has made the hero archetype more
accessible to everyone. Personal
journeys of many kinds began to be seen to have heroic aspects.
What
are the defining qualities of a Hero? A
hero must have integrity. He has a
sense of being alone but develops through his journey or quest a sense of
community with people and with the earth. There
is risk to be faced on the journey; dragons to confront, rescues to be made,
treasure to be discovered. In the
present-day heroic journey this symbolism translates into taking personal risk,
confronting personal challenges, taking time to rescue or save some aspect of
the community or of the self, and discovering the personal treasure of
self-knowledge, knowledge of the true self behind the persona.
The ultimate achievement is acceptance, serenity and integration.
There
are several archetypal aspects to the hero's journey.
A common manifestation, the Hero-Warrior, was not open to GMB.
Although of an age, he didn't enlist.
Around the age of twelve he contracted measles, resulting in damage to
his lungs, ears and eyesight. His
hearing recovered, but lungs and eyes had developed a permanent weakness and he
lost the physical ease with which he'd eagerly played football, or climbed the
steep Stromness closes. When he was
19, pulmonary tuberculosis was diagnosed. Although
the prognosis was not good at that time, he had no fear of dying and felt, like
Keats, he was perhaps half in love with death.
He
also recognised in himself "the mingling of innocence and ferocity in
boys". What was he to do
without the usual outlets for these natural aggressions and energies?
Not without a struggle, he used these unexpressed instincts as fuel for
his writing. GMB's characters were
often great warriors, sometimes like Magnus, in the spirit of the holy warrior.
Another
aspect of the heroic journey is the Innocent who feels abandoned or who falls
from a state of grace to disillusionment. GMB
was undoubtedly a sensitive child; he recounts how he once fainted when a tinker
came to the door, so unused was he to coping with strangers in the sheltered
haven of Stromness. He suffered
agonies of shyness as a young teenager, and writes in his biography of his great
fear of losing his mother. So great
was his fear of abandonment that he took to following her at a distance whenever
she went shopping.
Against
this perhaps vulnerable background, three events gave him a premature sense of
the inconstancy of life; the onset of war with people he knew dying in an air
raid; the death of his father when he was, at 18, just beginning to relate to
him about his poetry; his awareness of the “smouldering” tubercle which
might flare up at any moment.
The Innocent, suffering fear of abandonment and lacking self esteem, looks for a
rescuer; GMB found one of his first in the person of Francis Scarfe, published
poet and critic, who lodged with him and his mother for some time during the
war. They wrote their poems at the
same table in the evenings, exchanging their work for comment.
Apart from nurturing his burgeoning writing skills, GMB credits Scarfe
with an important role at this time, with "strengthening his spirit to opt
for life."
He
found another form of rescue, this time a negative form, in alcohol.
In 1948, Stromness opened its first bar for 25 years.
GMB had his first encounter with the "creamy frothy nectar" and
soon after with "John Barleycorn".
Drinking released him into a new world where everyman is a poet, where he
found riches of emotion otherwise stoically and traditionally suppressed.
In other words, he began to appreciate what was beneath the social and
personal masks of his friends and acquaintances, what he called the complexities
of the ordinary person. One can see
from his writings that he began to develop insights into himself too.
In the beginning however he was frequently brought home drunk, and felt
that in the eyes of society he was a wastrel, a judgement with which he agreed
for many years. In his own eyes, he
fell from grace.
But
the insights alcohol released were incorporated into his writing.
Many short stories are concerned with drink problems, with a search for
meaning and, though not often overtly delineated, with a search for god or
spiritual meaning. An overt
exploration of these themes appears in the short story
Celia, published in A
Time to Keep, and many of his other seemingly simple characters are deeper
because of it. He was writing
out his wastrel quality and in doing so, transmuting it to the level of the
heroic quest. By the 1980's he
reported that his thirst for alcohol had dissipated and writing had taken over
as his daily task. He had worked his
way through this strand to achieve integration at least in part.
There is a clue to another strand of the Innocent aspect of the heroic
journey; at the end of his life he was asked in an interview if wisdom came with
age. "No, not at all," he
replied with typical modesty, "a bit more disillusioned, tending to see
through shams and pretensions."
Another
offshoot of the Innocent searching for a rescuer was GMB's impracticality.
He lived with his mother until her death when he was 57, and by his own
admission he had not mastered many household tasks beyond making tea and toast,
boiling an egg or frying a piece of fish for himself when she was away.
After his mother's death, his many friends rallied whenever it was
necessary, whether it was decorating his sitting room or showing him how to cook
a new dish or obtaining a new fridge.
In
GMB's writing career, Edwin Muir was instrumental in getting his first poems
published. He writes that he was lucky not to have to hawk his work round
countless publishers before acceptance. Muir
spared him that and in a way helped to preserve innocence and prevent the early
disillusionment so many writers suffer. Harper's
Bazaar published the poems Muir sent and GMB received his first generous cheques.
More
positively, the Innocent has a way of retaining childhood wonder even into
adulthood, and GMB certainly embodied that.
His sense of the marvellous in the ordinary was pronounced and constantly
came through in his writing, whether describing seascapes, daffodils in the
wayside ditches or lighting the obstinate fire in his sitting room.
There
is an archetypal aspect of the heroic journey called the Martyr.
GMB did not develop what is commonly called a martyr-type personality,
nor was he a martyr in the larger sense that Magnus was.
Rather his suffering came through illness.
He had recurrent battles with tuberculosis and bronchitis.
Breathing was often difficult, he describes one bout as "every
breath is an act of small heroism". Towards
the end of his life, he also had a "skirmish with cancer".
During his many stays in hospital and sanatorium, he invariably wrote,
producing among other things a hospital magazine and a series of poems about the
imaginary beginnings of the sanatorium in Foresterhill,
a collection containing some fine work. He admired the martyr principle embodied
in his personal heroes too, in Magnus and Jesus particularly, writing profoundly
about Magnus in short story, play, novel and poem, and about the holy story in
prose such as The Sixth Station,
and in many poems, several included in Following
a Lark.
Once again, writing was the expression of these strands of his
heroic journey.
In
his autobiography, GMB writes movingly about the periods of depression he
experienced throughout his life, and about his illnesses.
He saw his suffering as part of the suffering of the world, not comparing
but sharing with, for example, an AIDS patient or a child victim of war.
He found comfort in the Mass as it reaffirms Christ's suffering and
sacrifice. This suggests he had, in
his own fashion, integrated the Martyr aspect of the Hero's Journey.
Another
archetypal aspect of the heroic journey is that of the Wanderer.
A Hero must travel and face the unknown, leaving behind oppressive
conditions in order to fulfill his quest. Although
it is well known that GMB rarely left Orkney, in the 1950's he felt oppressed by
the confines of Stromness, describing it as the desert.
When he had the chance to study at
On
a personal level, the Wanderer is a lone figure and though GMB had many caring
friends, it seemed he never lived with anyone in a romantic relationship.
At an early age he faced the prospect of his death, the greatest and
loneliest unknown. He went on to explore his ideas in his own way and followed
his vocation to be a writer. In the beginning he earned little, but he felt he
was good for nothing else and pursued his course.
In doing this he transcended bouts of illness and depression, leaving
behind such oppressive conditions to travel within and express his imaginal
explorations through writing.
The
last archetypal aspect of the heroic journey is the Magician, pivotal figure in
many of our legends. Traditionally
this was a position of much power and wisdom, reserved only for the few.
In some societies, this aspect might have been the priest or shaman.
Today, with a move away from patriarchal society and organised religion,
and with a corresponding increase in individual responsibility, we might
consider that we can become, symbolically, our own magician or priest.
What would that mean?
The
Magician of legend embodied the collective wisdom, healing and knowledge of
society. In his positive incarnation
he used his attributes for the good of all.
He could intercede with the gods, and with the environment to produce
harmony. He was in tune with the
energy of the universe and there was a sense of interconnection and interaction.
GMB's connection with the "wheel of summer light and winter
darkness" was paramount and imbued his writing with a sense of rhythm and
life. In writing prolifically about
the seasons, the equinoxes and solstices, the need of ancient tribes to relate
to their environment, he communicated to his readers the sense of harmony and
connection he felt modern life had lost. He
was a contemporary guardian of collective lore, charging himself with the task
of preservation and handing it on to future generations.
Archetypal
aspects of the heroic journey are experienced cyclically and not necessarily in
linear fashion, sometimes overlapping. GMB's
travels through the stations of the year symbolised a deeper journey through
life which, while holding a strong sense of community, he made alone in the
tradition of the Wanderer. This
aspect may have been expressed through mental exploration rather than physical,
but stood no less chance of integration because of that.
The wonder of the Innocent did not diminish in later life, having a
different level of resonance and strength brought about by self-discovery.
It became integrated in even the most mundane of his writings: the
"wash of lyricism" he couldn't resist is evident throughout the 25
years of his weekly writing for the local press. Innocent and Wanderer interplay
with the Magician aspect.
The
sagas that so attracted GMB were written when religion permeated every day life,
whether going into battle or sowing and reaping a harvest, and GMB identified
with that. He thought it was a
quality largely lost to the western world. In
simple yet never naive language he showed the reader connections and
interconnections with earth, with the community and with each other.
And deep within that, an awareness of spirit and spirituality.
GMB's
mid-life conversion to Roman Catholicism was a profound step for him, a
celebration of the opening of his spirit to what it needed.
This framework and comfort for his spiritual life completed him, and
later gave him confidence to step forward past the 70th milestone, as
he wrote in a poem commemorating his 70th birthday:
The
road winds uphill, but
A
wonder will be to sit
On the
stone at last –
One star
in the west.
Towards
the end of his life, GMB had a pre-occupation with silence.
Certainly silence represented a way of communing with the natural world,
and with spirit or God. He described
life as a brief stir between silences, and the last lines of the poem A
Work for Poets (from the collection Following
a Lark) written on his gravestone in Warbeth Kirkyard overlooking Hoy Sound
is characteristic:
Carve the runes
Then be content with silence.
Perhaps
it was his knowledge of approaching silence that gave him confidence to express
more overtly his undoubted religious feelings, which had been private for so
long. In the introduction to Following
a Lark published in 1996, the last year of his life, he describes how the
poems are written "mainly in praise of the light, and to glorify in a small
way the Light behind the light, that gives life and meaning to all the creatures
of earth."
*
Two
questions asked at the beginning of this essay were:
What
was the basis for this abiding interest in heroes and the journeys they made?
and
Did he make an heroic journey of his own?
Because
of GMB's birth place and circumstances, the Orkneyinga Saga soon caught his
attention and then his imagination. The
reason for his abiding interest in the heroes within it can be clearly seen in
context of the conditions of his life. Physical
limitations and a sensitive nature combined to deter him from travelling outside
Orkney except on rare occasions, and the nature of his mind was well disposed
for journeying within. Many of his
stories are epic voyages, whether personal or actual, myths taken out of time
and made appropriate for our times. In
short he was attracted to the sagas and writing about them gave him the means to
express potentials that would otherwise have remained dormant.
If
we look again at the requirements of the heroic journey, we can see that his
life undoubtedly embodied many aspects of the personal heroic journey.
Though he made his journey alone (without a partner) he had a well
developed sense of community. He
persisted in developing a writing style that could have been called
unfashionable, a style full of lyricism and meaning instead of the rather
obscure academic writing which he felt was becoming the mainstay of British
literature. In doing this he himself
became something of a rescuer, and his love of words, nuance and image is
eloquent testimony to the value of resonant poetry.
The
demon or dragon he confronted was drink. Though
rarely satisfied with his work, in his autobiography he states that Time
in a Red Coat contains some passages he felt "glad to have
written". It was published in
1984, when he says he had largely lost the thirst for drink.
A decade later, he said "this year, more poems than ever have come
.... I think a few of them are as good as anything I have ever done."
The long battle with alcohol was not in vain; his writing, informed by
his experience, improved even according to the rigorous standards he set for
himself.
And
the personal treasure he discovered was self-knowledge and acceptance, indicated
in his autobiography and poems.
Near the end of the road
The wind of before and after
Begins to shake the tatters of a man's life.
He
sensed a withdrawing into himself: "An
old man withdraws into a narrower circle, just as in November, the light
lessens." But his treasure also
included his faith which, just as in saga times, sustained him daily in
everything he did and balanced any disillusionment he felt.
A new poem published the year of his death shows the balance between the
falling away of the old and the optimism of the new:
We may note, page by page, the new
And the old works of time; how all
Fall into ruins, or go dancing
Towards green April harps.
Forever, somewhere, are joy and dancing.
We
are used to thinking of our popular heroes as larger-than-life and rather
dashing. Perhaps George Mackay
Brown's personal heroic journey, made with gentle humour, self-deprecation,
insight and sense of spiritual connection within himself and within the wider
universe, is more fitting for our times.
*