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George Mackay
Brown
Recovering from his first attack of tuberculosis in 1941, the young
George Mackay Brown wandered out of the sanatorium on to the streets of
Kirkwall, and presently stood for the first time in the nave of St
Magnus Cathedral. According
to his Autobiography, the experience was intense.
“I can’t remember the details
except for the one thought – I would like to be buried in this
place.”
Fifty years later,
on St Magnus Day, Orkney’s poet was carried out of the great Viking
church on his last journey home to Stromness and its quiet kirkyard by
the shore. The time and the
place could not have been more appropriate.
Ever since that youthful moment of revelation, the Cathedral of
St Magnus and the Saint himself had loomed large in the poet’s life
and work.
George Mackay Brown saw the martyrdom of Magnus as the supreme
event in the long history of the islands, and it fired his creative
imagination to a degree matched only by the Nativity and the Passion,
and of course, his beloved ‘Hamnavoe.’
But the Orkney
landscape is haunted by its history.
The poet’s funeral cortege passed within yards of Maeshowe, one
of the greatest of all megalithic tombs, built so as to allow the
setting sun at midwinter to reach through the long entrance passage and
cast its dying rays deep into the heart of the tomb.
Half a mile to the west lies the great ring of Brodgar, and two
miles beyond that, on the Atlantic coast, the incomparable Neolithic
village of Skarabrae. Little
wonder that this poet chose to stay at home and find his inspiration and
subject matter in Orkney and its people, across the full sweep of their
long history.
Despite his
apparent insularity, George Mackay Brown was always something more than
just a very good regional writer. What
set him apart was the transcendent vision by which he transformed the
familiar Orkney scene into something timeless and universal.
His work is imbued with a deep sense of compassion, a gentle
humour and a quiet assurance that all shall be well and all manner of
thing shall be well. He was
a religious poet who achieved some of his finest work in a non-Religious
context.
His technical
mastery was supreme, both in prose and verse.
He was beyond question one of the great wordsmiths of our time.
These qualities attracted a world-wide readership. George Mackay Brown was never a best seller, despite winning
numerous awards and being short-listed for the Booker prize in 1994.
Nevertheless, his books were published in a dozen or more
countries, and every year brought a stream of visitors to his door from
Europe and America, Israel and Japan.
Visitors were received with quiet courtesy, though morning callers were
usually confronted by a faded old notice pinned to the door, announcing
that the writer was not at home. He
was of course very much at home, closeted in his kitchen for the daily
three hour stint with his biro.
His preference for the humble ballpoint may have reflected his habitual
distrust of modern gadgetry. It
also accorded with the view expressed in his lyric ‘The Poet’ (one
of this year’s Poems on the Underground) that the
poet’s “true task” is “interrogation of silence”.
However, George’s own attitude was usually a trifle less
romantic. He maintained
(with an almost straight face) that hand-written manuscripts could earn
extra money, and that even his humble shopping lists were faithfully
filed away for posterity!
Beneath the shy exterior was a very funny man:
a born raconteur with a rich store of anecdotes and a marvellous
gift of mimicry.
In the summer of 1970, the Orkney poet and the Manchester composer met
for the first time, in the remote valley of Rackwick.
For Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, that chance encounter turned out o
be one of the key moments in his life:
”It was an epiphany which determined my future – I was bowled over
by the place and the people and soon settled in Rackwick, renovating the
smallest and most remote of the roofless cottages – the one
recommended by George.
”Since then I have written all my music here.
Not only did I feel the place blessed by George’s Rackwick
poems, but I myself felt blessed by his approval of my move. He and his work effected a magic which informed and
transformed my own creation. I
have set many of his poems, and we collaborated on several projects,
perhaps the most ambitious of which was the opera The Martyrdom of St
Magnus, with which the first St Magnus Festival opened in 1977.
”George was a staunchly supporting friend, the most modest and
unassuming of men, and an exemplary creator, whose work has defined and
refined for me, over a quarter of a century, my perceptions of Orkney,
as expressed in my music; he
must be the most positive and benign influence ever on my own efforts at
creation.”
The composer finished his Sixth Symphony in Rackwick on the day of the
poet’s death. He
dedicated the work to the memory of his old friend.
George Mackay Brown was a visionary with his feet firmly on the ground,
and a strong sense of his place in the local community. Every week, for well over a quarter of a century, he wrote a
column for the local paper. His
last contribution appeared two days before his death. Characteristically, it was a welcome to Spring, and a salute
to April, his favourite month of the year.
Alas for his fellow Orcadians and for his many friends across the
globe, April 1996 was the cruellest month.
© Archie Bevan, December 1996
Reproduced with the kind permission
of Archie Bevan
Archie Bevan, Stromness, 2001
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