Mary' Mantle

Anna Szabó T. Birth, Rebirth and the Bells of Silence What is the mantle of Mary, and why is it important? The Virgin of Mercy is a subject of early Christian art, there are a lot of paintings showing people sheltering for protection under the outspread cloak or pallium of the Holy Virgin. It was fashionable in Italy from the middle ages, and is also found in other countries, mostly Spain, Latin America, but also in Europe. In Italian art it is known as the Madonna della Misericordia (Madonna of Mercy), in German as the Schutzmantelmadonna (Sheltering-cloak Madonna), in Spanish as Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia, in French as the Notre-Dame de la Merci. In Hungary this topic has a special appearance: the statue of the Blessed Virgin in the church adorned with a real mantle and real festive clothes. In Hungary the Holy Mary is often called Boldogasszony, this means literally Happy Woman (of course it comes from Beate Virgine, but in Hungarian it seems to have a richer in meaning than the Blessed Virgin, because „asszony” means married woman, so Mary is a Happy Mother or happy wife – she is not (only) the virginal lilly of the valley, not the aetheral image of a young girl, but her beauty radiates a ripe form of femininity. As a woman artist trying to understand the feminine traumas about which women had to remain silent, repressing what happened in order to survive in a male-centered society, I think that our famous Hungarian saying: „a woman’s apron must cover everything” is very problematic. But what about Mary’s mantle? She is the epitome of maternal love, the mother of Christ the Redeemer, so she has to accept sinners and pure alike. I am puzzled by this, because earthly women are not meant to be made of pure forgiveness. As a protestant myself, I didn«t have much to to with Mary, but this polite distance has changed abruptly and drastically, when I was expecting my first son. Knowing the story of Christ that Mary had to accept without questioning God’s will, I was terribly afraid, knowing that I will give birth to a mortal being, and thus will condemn him to the human condition. I was in constant revolt against Mary’s blind acceptance, her gentle servility. It was a good time for the devil’s voice starting to whisper inside me, trying to talk me out of having children. He said: War everywhere, why give life then? Your man may leave you, better die then. Your son will be ill, without a cure. You”ll be alone, and oh so poor. Love him to death, go, choke him with kisses, leave him, for he should know what he misses. Hold him tight, he cant live without you, shout at him, and don”t let him bind you. Your son will grow up to be a looser. Your daughter full of sin, evil will chose her. His life will be pure corruption. Prone to agressive eruption. The law: kill or let them kill you. There is no God who can heal you. Later on with a small child, and a new baby in my lap, in my nightly terrors, in my sleepless despair, I was searching for some, or rather: for any consolation, because I was overwhelmed by the pains and anxiety of motherly love. At the time, I was much preoccupied with Mary's fate, with knowing that what she was undertaking was superhuman, and yet, obeying the command, she was also human, a humble servant of a bigger cause. Earthly mothers, on the other hand, are sometimes afraid of the responsibility they have, and this is a test of faith. It's a metaphysical fright, not just the awareness of growing up. In the darkest moments this is the temptation of the abyss, of a godless void, where nothing has meanig, and nothing at all has. Anyone who has experienced it, knows it. This is my poem written at the time (in my own translation), the title is: On faith Who thought it will be like this? To be strong, to hold them in my arms, to be their protective warm parental lap, to be their almighty, to be a comfort in all their silly troubles, to be the one who's always there to give, against a whole ocean to be a firm stone wall, the one to be trusted, he one to rely on. It's a trap, a deceit, I cry from the depths, help me, somebody! This gift is a knife, the game is all bloody, help me, somebody! How could I protect them, how could I look out? Help me, somebody! My peace burnt offering on my own fire, how did I dare to play god? I had blind trust – in what? I lie in the dephts, I cry in the dust, somebody help me! No one should say the world is good as it is, If there's no one to help me, If there's no one to help me like one helps a child, If there's no one to carry the burden for me, Who burns for me, who shines for me,, who is ready to die for me in the end! Who is mother and father and child in one, and never wavers, and always stands firm, who understands all our silly troubles, and to touch us, she opens her arms: soft and caressing holds our face in her two soft palms. It was only now, after so many years and two grown-up sons, right when I was preparing for this exhibition, that I realised what it meant, that Mary said yes, what her blind acceptance involves. She was not giving birth in order to give him over to death. She gave him over to eternal life. This is what Mary, the woman clothed in the sun had to communicate to me after Kinga Ráthonyi promted me to look at her again. Ráthonyi showed me the mantle of Mary from another aspect. Mary’s dressed in the sun, her cloak is made of pure sunrays – this picture finally suits me. This is pure consolation. Me, as a protestant, should not believe in relics, or the sacred aura of objects, be it a mantle or any other type of earthly matter, but I surely believe in art – in the „beauty is tuth, truth is beauty” slogan, as we know it. The calm face of all the Virgin Mary and child statues console me and help me. Even the mantles themselves are consolation, without the actual body being present. In my eyes the heaviness and stability of these virginal mantles also resembles the the „suba”: the traditional thick hairy sheepskin coat of the Hungarian shepherds, which protected them from rain and hail. The coat of the shepherds (here’s another Christian symbol) lend their human form a strangely monstrous, almost animal appearance. When standing on the big flat Hungarian plains they resemble a rock, they seem like a mountain full of grass, becoming a part of nature. Moreover, the Hungarian expresion „suba alatt” (under the „suba” coat) means „on the quiet” or in secret – something like sub rosa; it’s a telling sign, that roses are also used it the exhibition. Roses with their many petals are the most secretive plants, and the ultimate mytical rose, the rosa mystica is Mary herself, fusing carnality and purity. Speaking of roses, one must also think of the mandorla, the almond-shaped, very much femnine framing that surrounds the virgin Mary on many of her depictions: an opening flower, a most secret organ, and also two protective palms, pressed against each other in prayer. The roses of this exhibition also sorround an empty space on a bed, encapsulating a secret – the bed itself might be a wedding bed, or the birthing bed, or the deathbed. The writings of Ráthonyi on Mary’s stone-like mantles reminded me of another Hungarian garment, the sheepskin jacket called „ködmön”, which has rich embroidery. Embroidery is strangely also called „írottas” or „írásos” in Transylvanian Hungarian, which means: written – so the ornamental folk garments are „written” on with a needle. Kinga Ráthonyi’s method of writing on the surface of her porcelain objects is both of ornamental and ritual nature, it is pure aesthetics and also a primeval cry, the joy of looking and the mystery of prayer in the same time – they have meaning and they do not have meaning, because meaning is simply not needed. Or rather: another meaning, another method is needed: our complete merging with the meaning. Being one with, in T. S. Eliot”s words, „the heart of light, the silence”. As I was watching these fragile, yet full-bodied artefacts in this tower in Tallin, observing the crenels, the embrasures of the wall all rhyming with the – possibly - richly erotic slits of the mantels which are carefully set the niches of the wall, I was also reminded of another image: Mary as the rampart of the world, the Virgin as a bastion against the forces of darkness. There is a strange contradiction here: out of the opening full of light – the window – comes death (when the tower is under attack, this is the place where the arrows can enter), but out of the one full of darkness – the empty Mary mantle – comes life: a baby is (or was) born. I was fully taken by the sheer paradox of it – how a masculine fortress (used in wars) and a feminine fortress (used in birth) merge, how they contradict and also complement each other. And as I was continuing this train of thought, contemplating the primeval shape and ancient-looking surface of these sculptures, other things came to my mind: the strange old natural-looking burial moulds, which are also place of rebirth by the association of their bulging belly-like form („from womb to tomb”), and the indian tents – the themes of a former Ráthonyi exhibition - which are also primeval objects of worship. These porcelain statues, empty inside, are containing, by the sheer shape of their entrance or opening, both the male and the female principles. Standing in the empty tower with the artist, I was listening to the wind blowing through this attick, the wuthering heights above us, and the sound of the wind evoked the Arvo Part house which I wisited yesterday, and then I realised that the tower is like a bell and the wind provides its chime – and charm –, and I also realised that these Mary”s mantles also resemble bells. Old, heavy churchbells and small delicate prayer bells. However, these are bells lack their meaning, the very clappers – as Mary”s body, the naked carnal presence is missing from the robe, from the mantles represented in this exhibition. These statues are all empty bells, to be filled with our own music. Or, for believers, the virginal music of the Holy Mother herself. After realising this, I quickly checked the notion „empty bell” on the internet, and I found out that a site called Empty Bell is an online place for Christian meditation, and there is another site with the same name which promotes Buddhist and Christian dialogue. Emptiness is the final secret of both religions – or rather: the space of the Great Unknown. Empty bell is also a metaphor of silence, a place where visions and visitations may freely appear. My first vision in this empty tower, under the empty bell-shaped form of this very roof, was that these Mary’s mantles are not just empty bells, but bells containg the negative shape of the clapper, for on their surface the reverse form of clapper, the bell „tongue” as we call it in Hungarian, is present. Everything is there, without any possibility of phisical usage. I mean: what is a bell good for, if it cannot toll? - but instead of the rational and logical, the wordly use, there is the metaphorical and the metaphisical: the void being filled, the sound being heard. Silence contains every sound, as white light contains colours. This is the mystical experience, the synaesthesia of the mind, the tintinnabulation (as Arvo Part called it) of all our senses. It takes our all, it ravages, it means our total fusion with the deity. We can talk about the visual, but not about the visionary. This is when poetry comes into the picture, the fantasy begins to evoke images and metaphors. As the Virgin Mary prayers, the most important forms of Marian devotions, invoke her by calling her using a litany of diverse titles, now I begin my own litany: Mary is love, love is fire. Fire of the Anagama kiln, and anagama means cave. Mary is fire in the cave, our firm belief in something that makes us human: home, metaphysics, memory and longing. Mary is the womb, which bears a fruit. (Isis is called in the ancient tradition „she who is given birth to the fruit of the earth”) Is this fruit gentle? For Jesus also said: “I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled!” We have homes with fireplaces. Churches with candles. There is the fire of love in our hearts and the fire of thoughts and ideas in the bony edifices of our skulls. The tongues of flame signify the power of speech, braveness of utterance, and persuasive force of language. How strong is this prayer that Kinga wrote on her statues: Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen. Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieri­bus,  et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus. Sancta Maria mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.” Mary”s mantle, as shown here, is also a natural object. It’s the broken shell of a sea urchin, it resemle the shells of marine animals – but Mary is Stella maris, the star above the sea. It s an egg: the mystical night inside, the void of creation, to be filled with the initiating Word. It’s a spaceship. It’s a brain. It’s a lung. It’s a heart. It’s breakable. It’s unbreakable. It is the shape of love. „If someone builds a mausoleum for a dog, don”t laugh at it. Learn to love so intensely that it becomes ridiculous.” Mary of Guadalupe said: „and give all my love, compassion, help, and protection, because I am your merciful mother, to you, and to all” „ Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.” Yet, the shell is empty. The visible represents the invisible: the bodily presence of Mary is missing. She is the woman clad in the sun, so the darkness inside the shells is in fact blinding light – one has to make the leap of faith, has to accept this paradox, if these objects, these works of art truly represent something more than just misteriois beauty. Inside the cave, inside the tent, inside the womb, the tomb, the catacomb, inside our very scull, there is light in darkness, a spark which defeats time. Immortality is encoded in the flesh, it is written in the very genes, and tombstones teem with writing, and catacombs with strange symbols. In matter, in the folds and crevices of heart and brain and lungs, there is information, long sequences of rules, written with the intensity and discipline of a prayer, the rosary of our functions are automatically repeating themselves, praying for life, for unbroken continuity. Runes and rules might or might not be understood, are visible or hidden, but they are there to do their job. Creation is the key word, the sheer magic and transcendence of it, it transcends the limits of our brain. In our creational myth our God has started it. Adam, or adamah, which means earth, was formed out of red earth, of clay, and his body, dust to dust, returned to earth at the end. On the contrary, Mary, the earthly woman, is not touched by God’s hand, she only hears the angels voice and bows to it – the concept of conceptio per aurem, or conception by ear, was popular during the middle ages. God repeats here the "Let there be light" sentence - and there was light. How different is her mantle from the apocaliptyc rider in the Revelations: „He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God” - this word of god kills all its enemies. On the contrary, Mary’s cloak is giving life for always and ever. Her mantle covers all creation. In her is life, and that life is the light of men. Let me finish my litany with a poem I wrote to Kinga Ráthonyi for this exhibition opening. Let us all be protected by Mary’s mantle, represented here by these gripping and beautiful works of art. Mary's mantle is the air. Erth is her womb, she carries us. Mary's mantle is water. She gives us her holy blood to drink. Mary's mantle is the forest. Her breath gives us life. Mary's mantle is light. She sees and shows, she enlightens us. Mary's mantle is music. She lifts us up, transforms our souls. Mary, never-ending Enfolding love. Mary, never asking, Our little mother, please protect us. Let your clouds soar, Blessed Mother of God. We see your tears fall, as you weep for the world. You cry, but you still trust us, Comforting us with wonders. You soothe us when howling, hungry, We fall asleep, caress us.