A SILENCE FULL OF BELLS - MARIAN PRAISE POETRY BY LUKY WHITTLE PhD

 

LUKY WHITTLE PhD

Dr Luky Whittle hails from Amsterdam, the land of windmills and tulips. Since her early teens she has lived in the vibrant culture of South Africa. Dr Whittle's fascination with the Christ Child and His holy Mother Mary stems from her earliest memories. Interest in Marian theology led her to the United States where she researched the almost forgotten nun-poets genre. It is the belief of this professor of English that nun-poet contributions to Marian praise poetry should not be lost to future generations. The work of this group of highly creative and greatly talented women-poets contains profound spirituality. "A Silence full of bells" ensures that their contributions will never be forgotten. 

This anthology presents a body of poetry hitherto practically unknown and uncommented upon in literary histories – in the main, that of North American nun-poets of the 1920’s to the 1950s. Many of these nun-poets, far from being sequestered from the world in remote cloisters, were active in the world; many were members of the Catholic Poetry Society of America, founded in 1931. Their literary work, however, if disseminated at all, generally saw the light of day only in very ephemeral publications, and had thus within two decades became all but inaccessible to readers until Dr Luky Whittle returned it to its rightful place among the writing of the modernist period in her doctoral dissertation “Images of Mary”. The poems anthologized represent a selection from the work of the nun-poets investigated in that study, with the addition of several nun-poets working in later decades and in other countries, including South Africa. The poems have been chosen on the basis of the religious faith and devotion which they reveal, and the immediacy with which they engage the reader. Hence, the focus in this introduction is on the spiritual significance of the works, rather than on literary-theoretical critique.

In the twentieth century, despite two world wars and related atrocities, as well as the continuing influence of aspects of nihilism, existentialism and (post-) modernism, and the apparent decline in Marian devotion in the years after the conclusion of the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council in 1965, there have been periods of great interest in Out Lady, both in the decades when the poems selected for this anthology were written and in the present day, when the approach of a new millennium (the bi-millennium of Christianity) brought with it a renewed reverence for the Mother of God, evidenced inter alia in the phenomenon of Medjugorje (which is still under consideration by the Church). Hailed as the Theotokos (God-bearer) by the Council of Ephesus as early as 431 AD, Mary was in 1950 proclaimed by Pope Pius XII to have been assumed body and soul into heaven – the long-awaited dogmatic confirmation of another age-old belief. So, too, even a secular publication such as Life Magazine thought it accurate to announce in its Christmas edition of 1996 that “Two thousand years after the Nativity, the mother of Jesus is more beloved [and] powerful than ever”.

Clearly, the Catholic’s recognition of this love and power is as strong today as in the decades when the nun-poets whose poetry is anthologised here were active. In the words of Fr Frederick M Jelly OP (1997:133):

 
            As mysterious as the eschatological doctrines might be, we who are still living in
            the Pilgrim Church are bonded with our brothers and sisters in the heavenly
            Church from throughout space and time, and are helped on our pilgrimage of
            faith by our liturgical and private devotions in relation to the intercession and
            mediation of Mary and all the saints, as well as by the inspiration of their holy
            lives in Christ, the Crown of all the saints.

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