From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Webster)
Subject: Re: Julian of Norwich
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 16:41:25 GMT

Annette Young asks about Julian of Norwich--a fortuitous query, because
if there's anyone who could understand a self-described "Angel of the
Odd," it's that uniquely odd angel, anchorite of the Church of St. Julian
at Canisford, Norwich.

Holly Hendricks provides liner-note info:
>It is said that Julian spoke to her God in a vision, asking why
>evil was necessary in the world.  In reply, she was told that it 
>was indeed necessary, but that "all will be well; all manner of
>things shall be well".  In one of her visions, her discussions
>with her God, she reported: "He did not say that you would not be
>belaboured; He did not say you would not be travailed.  He did say 
>you would not be overcome."

It was the "all will be well" business that the Indigo Girls' "you
know it's all right" refrain brought to mind.  But there's so much
more to Julian!  The first time I dipped into her heady mystical
prose, I had just read _Madame_Bovary_ for the first time, so my
mental video screen flickered right from Emma B. clutching her
_prie-dieu_ with an intoxicating brew of sexual and religious passion
co-mingled, to Julian--"a simple unlearned creature living in this
mortal flesh, in the year of our Lord 1373"--who wishes devoutly
to be granted a share in the sufferings of her god:  "I would I had
been, that time, with Madgalen and with the others that were Christ's
lovers, that I might have seen, bodily, the passion that our Lord
suffered for me--that I might have suffered with him as did those
others that loved him."  And indeed she does get very sick, and her
pain opens a window to a world of ecstatic experience.  Julian is
nothing if not a *visual* writer: she really gets going on the 
physical details of the crucifixion--the rain of round scale-like
drops of blood, the changing colors of the dying face, the painful
desiccation of the flesh.

When I first saw paintings by the pre-Raphaelites, such as Dante
Gabriel Rossetti's portraits("Beata Beatrix") of Lizzie Siddal,
I thought, "Finally, a picture of Julian..."  I recall that Julian's
visions were re-discovered, to great popular acclaim, in the mid-
19th century.  Was she, in fact, an influence on the pre-Raphaelites?

I've been thumbing, just now, through my books on the history of
hysteria, and although they cover the pre-Raphaelite fascination with
this type of "illness" (in quotes because: who's to say it's illness?)
they don't mention the popularity of Julian's _Revelation_ in the
late 19th century.  I'd be curious to hear more about the impact of
Julian's imagery on the art of that time...

		*	*	*	*	*

  "I saw his sweet face as it was then, dry and bloodless with
   the pallor of a dying man: deathly pale with the anguish.
   The pallor became more death-like, first taking a bluish tinge;
   and then, as death affected the flesh more deeply, a brownish
   blue.  His passion was shewed to me essentially in his blessed
   face--wherein I saw these four colours--and particularly in
   his lips, which were before a fresh and vivid red, pleasing
   to the sight.  This changing colour in his dying was pitiful
   to see.  And also, as I gazed, his nostrils were clogged and
   dried, and his sweet body became brown and then black--the
   fair, fresh and lively colour of him changed and turned by 
   the fever into this dying dryness.  For in that time our
   Saviour died upon the Rood, there was a sharp/dry wind--I
   saw it--dreadfully cold.  And when all the precious blood
   that could flow from his blessed body was bled out, there
   yet remained a moisture in the sweet flesh of Christ.  But
   the loss of blood and the pain within, and the blowing of
   the wind and the cold from without, met together in the
   sweet body of Christ; these four dried up the flesh of
   Christ as time went on.  The pain, sharp and bitter as it
   was, was yet long-lasting--I saw it..."

				--from the 8th revelation of 
				   Julian of Norwich


I had no idea it would be so hard to pick a passage and just type
out a few lines: the music of her prose-poetry is such that it's
hard to stop--I found myself drawn into the rhythm and typing in
a sort of trance.  At any rate, you can see what I mean about how
visual she is.  "I saw it," she repeats throughout.  "I saw it."
And the way she makes lists in her head--four colors, four drying
agents--tends to support her assertion that she had the visions at
one point, then wrote them down later.  Can't you just see her counting
on her fingers during the revelation, trying to make sure she won't
forget: "Let's see now, the colors were pale, then blue, then brownish
blue, then black..."?  

What a writer...

						--Fiona Webster