The Theopoetics of Space: John Bradburne, a Pilgrim in Paradise

These introductory notes to the volume only partially account for the rich and diverse themes within John Bradburne’s theopoetics and his sacred spaces. The depth and variety of his literary expressions invite thoughtful exploration, raising intriguing questions about how he fits within various conceptual and theoretical literary frameworks, as a challenge to interpretation and translation. His work draws inspiration from many influences, reflecting a vibrant tapestry woven from his life and spiritual experiences across India, the British Isles, Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Holy Land, and Africa. The selection of John Bradburne’s geographical spaces features his postwar travels: pilgrimages across the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and his final destination in southern Africa. In particular, it focuses on geographical spaces and sites recognised as holy in different spiritual traditions spanning across time and religious literature. The common thread weaving through the chapters is his condition of wanderer and vagabond, a pilgrim “who knows not what to seek,” signposted by his spiritual development, contextualized within historical dynamics and personal events, focusing on his first visit and image of a country, and his subsequent visits, as in the case of Italy and Holy Land. Foregrounded in the literature of travel writing, Italy cannot be severed from its Roman mythological past and papal present, and medieval Franciscanism Spaces for the Soul: Localising John Bradburne’s Poetics xi (chapter one); his second time in Italy features his call to the mystic marriage to Our Lady, while he would have been on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Jerusalem. There is the first pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and after many years his second visit and encounter at the Western Wall with the Hassidic and Orthodox Jews (see chapters two and three). Regarding the poems on the Hassidim of his second time in Jerusalem, there certainly was the influence of Geza Vermes, his friend at the Louvain College. Vermes needed an introduction to the English language and John had given him the Oxford Book of English Verse,1 accidentally triggering in Vermes the passion to study and translate the Qumram and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Vermes 1999, 79). Chapter four outlines the conceptualization and imagery of the theological space of Zion, and the New Jerusalem is critically compared and contextualized in the Millenarian Ethiopian Orthodox ideal of the Ark and Zion announced in the songs of Bob Marley: the Rastafarian link is not so abstruse, as the derivation from the Psalm is the common source as well as the idealism of the Promised Land after Exodus. Ironically, the end of the Zimbabwe Liberation War or the “Chimurenga” (1964–79) saw the death of John in Mashonaland. The proclamation of the state of Zimbabwe saw the coming of Marley to Harare (ex-Salisbury) with his “Zimbabwe” song. The year before, “Redemption Song” – with its incendiary verses: “But my hand was made strong by the ’and of the Almighty” – coincided with John’s death and Marley’s diagnoses of cancer. In the wake of Bradburne’s theopoetics and key symbols is the parallel with the Messianic strain of a Zion in Africa, whether inspired by Ethiopia or Mashonaland, which is a powerful message. Subsequently the theme of the Ark and Ethiopian Orthodox theology based on the Trinity and Marian cult has a strong correspondence with Bradburne’s key themes, as well as the Ark and its significance. The translation of these key concepts from one language of faith to another consequently links the topic of chapter five. These recurrent theological concepts and key terms expressed in his verses bridge with chapter five, which focuses on the question of translation and interpretation across languages, critically considering the surface smoothness of translatability in words like the Trinitarian faith and his theopoetics, starting from translation as hermeneutics (Steiner 1975) and the biblical interpretation and translations in the West (Kelly 1979), linking to the German-Jewish scholars like Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig and Gershom Scholem, and eventually the approach to the recent concept of “translationality” (Blumczynski 2016; 2023) applied to poetics and scriptural texts. The intricacy of the issues also enhances the question of Introduction xii John’s puns and multilingualism in poetic translation in decolonial studies of inclusion (Bandia 2020a). The symbol of the “Word” and Bradburne’s approach are foregrounded as problematic. On the other hand, it is only through interpretation and translation that tensions between constellations of meaning and significance along with transcultural factors are foregrounded enabling knowledge of literary traditions impacting worldview (Pym 2021). Thus, the sixth chapter attempts to ascribe a place for Bradburne’s poetics in the scene of comparative postcolonial literature and world literature, determined by his diasporic identity and spirituality, from his colonial days in India, his European and British background and Anglo-Catholicism, and his life and poetic production in transitional southern Africa, bridging the thematic focus of sacred spaces with other chapters. Consequently, this provides the localisation of his work as a poet in the scene of global world literature and his mysticism and imagery of landscapes. Chapter seven is on Bradburne’s arrival and stay at the leper colony of Mutemwa, for him now the New Jerusalem in Mashonaland, with the lepers, the wretched of the earth, now the Chosen People, and highlights his shift in perceiving Africa as the true Zion, which is alive with the community of lepers inspiring some of the most touching verses, dedicated to each one of them, as in the first verses of “A Ballade of the Leaping Lepers” (1973) This people is as ancient as the world Yet not so old as cannot hold its youth Despite extremities benighted, furled Into naught gives hint on thoughts of truth The concluding chapter eight ends the circle of the poet’s geographical and spiritual spatiality expressed in his recollections of a world of innocence and references to children’s literature and nursery rhymes, expressed in verses and his private letters to his mother. In his later years, when the guerilla and government repression was becoming more violent, his memory goes back to a space of innocence and a return to Fairyland or Maryland, as he calls it. Our Lady morphs into Titania, the Queen of Fairyland, where intratextual citations from Disney cartoons, television, and a world of fantasy creatures highlight the interrelationship between verbal depictions and visual imagery, and references to the rich tradition of late Victorian book illustrations and paintings are beyond mere conjecture. Bradburne’s originality and unique position in the world of literature and spatial poetics account for his theological references while actively engaging in the space of life with God and his lepers. His best verses denote the power of the space of love he had cut himself in the physical reality of the huts among the lepers. Also, it was Spaces for the Soul: Localising John Bradburne’s Poetics xiii the time he was exiled and lived on Mount Chigona in a tent, where he wrote by candlelight or by the light of the moon. The focus on geographical landscapes serves a profound purpose, transforming them into realms of theological significance – a notion captured in the title’s reference to theopoetics. At the heart of it all is Bradburne’s unwavering love for all living beings, which drove him to dedicate his life to a leper colony in Mashonaland, Zimbabwe. This commitment not only rejuvenates his vision of Jerusalem and Zion within the African context but also deepens our understanding of the divine calling he embraced. Throughout the final decade of his life, his enduring affection for his homeland and the land of Saint Francis shines through in the relationship with all the creatures, and the lepers, whom he takes to bathing and treating their plague, and eventually in the erection of a little chapel. Here, the lush landscapes of Africa beautifully evoke the rolling hills of Umbria, blending his memories with his profound sense of belonging. Africa was the Call he received, to which he responded, and is the fulfilment of his three spiritual wishes: to serve the lepers, to die a martyr, and eventually to be buried in a Franciscan habit. He now lies in the graveyard of the Mission of Chishawasha, near Harare, buried among Jesuit missionaries. This volume is not on the life of Bradburne, as others have done this majestically, like Didier Rance, and years earlier John’s companion in India and Africa John Dove, SJ. It is also not about the poetry and the thought of John Bradburne, which has been the herculean task of David Crystal, Bradburne’s discoverer, who also edited his works and set up the online archive. Yet, reflections and citations deriving from these two books are inevitable. More humbly, it is an attempt to squeeze between these two towering pillars and raise the question of Bradburne’s literary contextualization, debating whether to collocate him within the main literary trends and concepts, providing elements for further debate and delving into the still unexplored areas of the magnitude of his output, or else if he is entitled to be a solitary literary case, sui generis. One critical question emerges here: could Bradburne be ascribed to many disciplinary slots and shelves posterior to his poetic writings (the more significant part of his letters is also in verse), which derive from the places and turbulent times he lived in? His temporal collocation is among the interstices of the dying colonial empire, and the decolonial and postcolonial theories and practices came to the global scene, with their clusters of geographic, spiritual and diasporic topography. Topophilia concerns memory and identity against loss and displacement. We have tried to locate his spiritual Introduction xiv identity in the spaces of geography, and reached the conclusion that his spiritual poetics was that of God, a theopoetics of sacred spaces, and that this is a challenging perspective as it accounts for his definition and localization in terms of theoretical and applicative concepts of comparative literature and postcolonial literature in the international scenario, and the literature of nature and the sacred of the twentieth century (Burton-Christie 1994). With the new trends and widening horizons in the realm of theories and practices of postcolonial and decolonising literatures, translanguaging, comparative literatures, and international or global comparative literatures, he would comfortably fit in as an author, if not for the astounding quantity of his writing (see Cao et al. 2023; 2024; Domínguez et al. 2014), then for the recognised multilingual mixing and translanguaging (see Gilmour and Steinitz 2020; Jones, Preece and Rees 2020). More comfortably, he also has his place in institutionalised critical and literary approaches that, if existing, were hardly codified and conceptualised, as the debating trend on world literature in the global and postcolonial age indicates (Apter 2013; Damrosch 2003; 2020; Damrosch et al. 2022; Damrosch and Tiwari 2023).