Page 173 "a book called Mr. Weston's Good Wine"

Clockwise from top left: Theodore Powys (early); Theodore Powys (later);
various covers for "Mr. Weston's GoodWine"

From page 173 of the book:  "...Owen nonetheless had pulled out of his intantry coat a pocket-size, cloth edition of a book called Mr. Weston's Good Wine, in which Death, disguised as a well-dressed, English wine purveyor, visits a small town and brings with him a special kind of wine.  What a title to be reading in the freezing dark of this train, I thought, slouched on the seat next to him."



[Mr. Weston's Good Wine (by T.F. Powys, a younger brother of John Cowper Powys) is the unusual tale of the struggle between the forces of good and evil in a small Dorset village. Its action is limited to one winter's evening when Time stands still and the bitter-sweet gift of awareness falls upon a dozen memorable characters. During the book a child knocked down by his car is miraculously brought back to life; the sign Mr Weston's Good Wine lights up the sky; and the villagers soon discover that the wine he sells is no ordinary wine. (Text copyright by The Powys Society)]


[an excerpt from Mr. Weston's Good Wine]

"If you let Tamar run about these hills in the way she does," Miss Pettifer told Mr Grobe, "who can say what might not happen! I wouldn't be in the least surprised to hear that the girl had fallen in love with a hay-trusser--or a badger. Or she might set up housekeeping with an old raven in a tree top. If a girl is not taught to play hockey, she might be found in a wood talking to a serpent."

Page 242 "...the Germans refer to his condition as Zerrissenheit..."

Zerrissenheit. Clockwise from top left: "Study of a Head,"
1952, painting by Franics Bacon; still from the movie "Of Men and Gods";
sculpture depicting "Lost Faith"; photo of Richard Burton as Hamlet, 1953.

The New Cassell's German Dictionary defines Zerrissenheit as raggedness, want of union, inner strife. It comes from the verb zerreissen, to tear up, lacerate, dismember.



From page 242 of the book:  "...The Germans refer to his condition as Zerrissenheit, a state of being torn apart. It was thus that Owen hadn't been able to satisfy the demands of his own individual world with those dire necessities of the real, objective world. Zerrissenheit ran through his veins."

Page 172 "...this time to the 53rd Street station..."

From page 172 of the book: "..A week had passed, and the end of a night had found Owen, Army, and me making our way along Third Avenue once again, this time to the 53rd Street station."

Page 168 "...He thought of Gordes not because of the things he saw..."

From page 168 of the book: "...He thought of Gordes not because of the things he saw that morning but because of the art of seeing and placing."

Page 162 "...blinded by the miniature plastic statue of Christ..."

A statue of Jesus baring the Sacred Heart.

From page 162 of the book:  "...He'd knelt before her, blinded by the miniature plastic statue of Christ above her bed's headboard. It was a robed Christ, standing with one foot protruding from His gown, baring the sacred heart."

Photos courtesy of Deborah Zipoli.

This particular statue, made of plaster, is actually a few inches above a foot high.  My father picked it up unpainted in 1961, shortly after my folks moved us into their first own house, on Home Avenue, in Meriden, Conn.  My father had a little workshop downstairs in the cellar where he would make wooden figures of characters from the Flintstones or Mickey Mouse, out of some kind of pressed board (using a jigsaw).  He painted this statue and it's been in Mom & Dad's household ever since.

I could think of no better image from my past than this statue as a balance to what Joseph Sarjevo sees upon entering the hospital room.  Whose heart is not sacred? 



Page 166 "...the river valley made safe by the Roman general Marius..."

Left: a bust of Marius; Right: engraving of Marius in Carthage.

[Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman, noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the structure of the legions into separate cohorts.]


From page 166 of the book:  "...He looked up to the clear, night sky which brought him to this ancient river valley made safe by the Roman general Marius, against the barbarians, two-hundred years before Christ.  He watched the stars hold forth as Marius might have done before he crushed the Teutons, and he asked the ungrateful night horizon to help him fight his trepidation."
 

Page 164 "...Owen's Civil War General George Thomas at the battle of Chickamauga..."

Clockwise from top left: Painting of the battle; General George Thomas;
Thomas Nast rendering of "Lt. Van Pelt Defending His Battery";
Photograph of the Chickamauga countryside at time of battle.

Page 164 of the book: "...There I was, standing up to the seminal representative of my faith, not cowering but vastly lost within my untried courage. What was I doing arguing with a priest? I thought of Owen's Civil War General George Thomas at the battle of Chickamauga, Tennessee. Outnumbered 2 to 1 by the Confederates, he held his ground against Longstreet's crushing advances, placed like Shelby Foote said "between an anvil and a sledge." He was The Rock of Chickamauga. It was there, in front of Revenant, that I held my own ground, although I resembled nothing like a rock, and nearly folded between this spiritual French blacksmith and the door."