Description
Book SynopsisRavage: An Astonishment of Fire draws together MacGillivray's extensive research into the life and work of Norwegian-Shetlandic poet Kristján Norge, who vanished from Eilean a’ Bhàis in the Outer Hebrides in 1961. Comprising two previously unpublished manuscripts by Norge, Optik: A History of Ghost (1950) and Ravage (1961), this collection also includes rare original material, giving insight into Norge's troubled existence and mysterious disappearance.
Optik: A History of Ghost, the opening triadic poem, typifies Kristján Norge's early work and is a meditation on Greek optics, horary ghostliness and illumination by fire. Composed in 1950, Optik draws on letters twelve and thirteen of the correspondence between scientist-inventor Sir David Brewster and Sir Walter Scott on natural magic, to isolate the figure of 'John Christ' whom Norge positions as a visionary homunculus created from the saline ash of alchemical phantasmic experiments.
Ravage is the centrepiece of the collection, a numinous tract written in the months preceding Kristján Norge's disappearance in 1961, convinced he was a demon. Washed up in a storm, subsistence on Bàs had proved an increasing strain on Norge, who felt his self-exiled status intensively. In response to both this isolation and the unexpected revelation of his demoniacal status, Norge evolved a complex amnesiac system, aware that if only he could forget this singular aspect of himself, then release might follow. Inevitably cryptic, this Norgesian schema has been recovered from fragments concealed at ten sites on the Scottish island. Norge's impression of Eilean a’ Bhàis as an underworld threshold leant weight to his suspicion that the island was indeed attracting the Sluagh nam Marbh, or Host of the Dead, a Gaelic westerly wind of malign voices that allegedly imparted the knowledge of his demonhood to him.
Optik: A History of Ghost and Ravage are supplemented by additional archival materials which flesh out Norge's intellectual and personal concerns. Among these is a detailed schema of his amnesiac process, items of correspondence, maps, photographs and logbook entries. A work of fiction entitled The Wind of Voices, which is based on this mercurial period in Norge's life, concludes the collection.
MacGillivray is the Highland name of writer and artist Kirsten Norrie. She has published three other poetry books, The Last Wolf of Scotland (Pighog/Red Hen, 2013), The Nine of Diamonds: Surroial Mordantless (Bloodaxe Books, 2016) and The Gaelic Garden of the Dead (Bloodaxe Books, 2019).
Trade Review'Violent and formal' – the phrase is John Berryman’s – in a language both lupercal and arboreal, MacGillivray’s The Gaelic Garden of the Dead is magnificent. It is neither violent or formal for its own sake, but rebels against complacent, lyrical histories in voices compressed to a haunting and haunted diamond precision. What vivid strangeness, for instance, to hear again the unsung recusant poet, Mary Queen of Scots, in our secular millennium? The chromatic lines balance splendidly on the razor-edge between imaginary and real time, making her a high modernist in the tradition of her great voice-walkers and forebears Burns, Scott, and MacDiarmid. You are holding in your hands a spell of sibylline leaves.
-- Ishion Hutchinson
Table of ContentsNote On the Text Foreword by MacGillivray I. OPTIK: A HISTORY OF GHOST Kristján Norge, 1950 (ms 1.01) I GLANCE II GLINT III GLARE II. RAVAGE Kristján Norge, 1961 (ms 1.02) Poem Astonishments of Fire The Palatine Graffito, (acc. 1.01) SPECULUM ANTE The Star-Ravaged Co(r)pse Mirror of Smoke: Articulate Flame الجبھة (Lunar Mansion X) Mirror of Flame: Articulate Heat Sequences for a Tariff Mirror of Heat: Articulate Fire The Charred Arrow Shaft Mirror of Fire: Articulate Wood Meat Spirit Mirror of Wood: Articulate Charcoal Sump Mirror of Charcoal: Articulate Animal Knightless Animal Mirror: Articulate Trial Craven Mirror of Trial: Articulate Recall Wounded Centaur Mirror of Recall: Articulate Smoke Legere SPECULUM RETRO The Dead Reckoning III. ADDITIONAL MATERIALS Kristján Norge (acc. 1.01) Kristján Norge's Amnesiac System essay by MacGillivray Fear Eun Lota essay by MacGillivray on Kristján Norge Reversible Halts poem by Kristján Norge An Aerial View of Hell first draft poem by Kristján Norge Travails of A Spirit-Ravaged Skeleton by Kristján Norge TRAN-QUIL-ITY essay by Kristján Norge Notes on Optik by Kristján Norge Photograph of letter from The Poetry Review to Luce Moncrieff Dubhan Island Maps Photograph of lion skin wrist band owned by Norge Photograph of Norge's ancestors crofting on Shetland Photograph of centaur card used by Norge Photograph of Norge's polished steel shaving mirror Photograph of scraps from Dubhan Crofthouse Photograph of letter to Luce from Kristjan Norge Amnesiac System by Kristjan Norge Photograph of diary entries by Luce Moncrieff Photograph of Luce Moncrieff's loom Photograph of Kristján Norge walking on Dubhan Photograph of logbook entries by Kristján Norge IV. APPENDIX THE WIND OF VOICES Acknowledgements MacGillivray bibliography
