entry
May
2006
Tennyson, Vesuvius & St. Telemachus
This photo of the 1944 eruption of
Vesuvius is courtesy of Herman Chanowitz.
Photo restoration by Tana A. Churan-Davis.)
If it weren't for Mt.
Vesuvius (and other volcanoes, I suppose), I would not
have found out how the gruesome gladiatorial games
that the Romans enjoyed so much came to an end.
In researching the Geology of the Bay of Naples, I
came across abundant material, of course, on the
atmospheric effects of volcanic eruptions. Somewhere, I
had read a verse by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, used to
describe the eruption of Krakatoa in the late nineteenth
century.
Accordingly,
I wrote:
...the great
explosion of Krakatoa in Java in 1883 produced
atmospheric effects on a global scale and even
more poetry, this time by Tennyson: 'Had the
fierce ashes of some fiery Peak/ Been hurled
so high they ranged round the World?/ For day
by day through many a blood-red eve/ The
wrathful sunset glared.'
Tennyson
I left it at that, just the way I
had copied it. It sounded good and very
Krakatoa-like. However, just the other day, a kind
gentleman from Japan, Dr. M. Iguchi from Tokyo,
wrote me and asked (1) if the use of word 'World'
was correct, for he recalls reading the same verse
with "globe'', and (2) if I would be so kind as to
tell him if that was the entire poem or if it was an
excerpt from a longer work, and, if so, which one? To work, to work. Indeed, I had misquoted the line. (But, of course, it is really the fault of the person I copied it from!) It is, in fact, 'globe'. The four brief lines come from a much longer poem (80 lines, in all) by Tennyson. The poem is entitled "St. Telemachus" and is from Tennyson's last published volume, The Death of Oenone, Akbar's Dream, and Other Poems, which appeared in 1892.
Not only did I
misquote the line, but I skipped one line and
truncated another, such as to destroy the original
context. The first 11 lines are:
| Had the
fierce ashes of some fiery peak Been hurl'd so high they ranged about the globe? For day by day, thro' many a blood-red eve, In that four-hundredth summer after Christ, The wrathful sunset glared against a cross Rear'd on the tumbled ruins of an old fane No longer sacred to the Sun, and flamed On one huge slope beyond, where in his cave The man, whose pious hand had built the cross, A man who never changed a word with men, Fasted and pray'd, Telemachus the Saint. |
St.
Telemachus, also known as Alamachius was a monk who
was called by an inner voice to go to Rome in about
the year 400 a.d. He attended a gladiatorial combat
and tried to stop the combatants from killing each
other. He was stoned to death by the angry mob, but
the emperor Honorius (who ruled from 395 to 423), a
Christian, got the point and banned the games. Thus,
St. Telemachus' place in Christian history is as the
one responsible for ending the gladiator games.
Thank you, Mt. Vesuvius.
And, of course, Dr. Iguchi.
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