Max Richards shares: 5, Lesley Chamberlain, Vincent Van Gogh, and Leo Tolstoy

As said in the Denise Levertov essay on this site, really the Opening to this collection of records and responses to the death of Max Richards (1937-2016), I have been spending time thinking about Max’s long interest in religion, of faith lost or found. He taught on this subject as an English Professor at La Trobe University, but it's challenges were always personal and he had both a serious and a bemused consideration of what it might all mean. As for example in this brief exchange of emails, prompted by his awareness of my keen interest in the writings of Lesley Chamberlain, especially her work on Russian spirituality and philosophy. The Les in “the big les discussion” is not a reference to Chamberlain but Les Murray. That month I conducted a reading group at the Carmelite Library on spirituality in his poetry.

4/15/13, Max Richards wrote:

Van Gogh and The Joy of Living

Posted on January 24, 2013 by lesleychamberlain at http://lesleychamberlain.wordpress.com

Remember Van Gogh’s 1885 painting Still-life with Bible? Here it is, number 117 in De la Faille’s catalogue. You can see the original in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The Bible though it glows with authority is illegible. You can just see in this reproduction the while smudges that the artist used to create that effect. Meanwhile the novel, by Emile Zola, and clearly labelled La Joie de Vivre, waits to be read as the new gospel. The painting reflected Vincent’s tense relationship with his father, Pastor Johannes van Gogh. VvG had tried and failed to make the Christian mission his way of life, although not, according to his sister, without becoming ‘groggy on piety’. A turning-point was his rejection by the Church in Amsterdam on the grounds that his Latin was too poor. What do I need Latin and Greek for in order to help people? was the painter’s adequate reply.

On 15/04/2013, at 1:53 PM, Philip Harvey replied:

Thanks Max. I had no idea Lesley Chamberlain had a blog.The paragraphs here do not surprise me coming from LC, who has an arm's length attitude to religion. I don't share her view of the painting or of Van Gogh. Tolstoy was one of his heroes, and I mean late Tolstoy, the full-on abandon everything Tolstoy. His art moved way beyond the confines of Dutch life, but not Christianity. Interesting that she is taking up Zola, I wonder where it will go? Philip

And on 18/04/2013 Max writes:

Dear Philip,

I almost made it to the big les discussion, but our man at westpac foiled me by a date with him unavoidable.

Hoping you had a good time without me.

And hoping to make it next time.

As for Van Gogh and God, I have just stumbled on this -

Vincent van Gogh ascribed the saying "Religions pass away, but God remains", actually byJules Michelet, to Hugo.

this from wikipedia on hugo, glanced at because I have begun Les Mis in the new Vintage trans by Julie Rose of Sydney, though how far I will persevere is hard to say.

Just the first seven chapters are stupendous, prodigious, etc.

Best to you three from Max

about to see whether Parsifal the met movie at the nova is something we are strong enough to see through...

Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy?

This is one of two short papers given by Philip Harvey at the first Spiritual Reading Group session for 2014 on Tuesday the 18 th of February in the Carmelite Library in Middle Park. He also gave a paper on that occasion, which can be found on the Library blog, entitled ‘A Rationale for Purgatory’ . Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls in one of her books how her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, would say that when reading poetry we can spend a great deal of time discussing what it means, but the first and main question about a poem is not what does it mean, but why was it written. That is the place to start. Here are eleven reasons that I offer quietly to help us think about this poem: Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy? You may have other reasons and these are invited. We will spend most of our time today looking at meanings, but also at why. I wrote these out as they occurred to me, so there is no priority order. 1. He wrote the poem because ...

The Walk (Seamus Heaney)

This poem was read aloud at Janet Campbell’s funeral in Hamilton in Victoria in December 2006. Janet was a great lover of poetry all her life, a great reader of poetry, and she read everything of Seamus Heaney. Indeed, when she worked in Melbourne or London bookshops Janet would grab hold of Faber pre-publication copies of Heaney if they came into the backroom, and disappear for days, copying lines onto postcards for her friends, transferring lines into her lifetime of diaries. Diaries that were also a lifeline. Janet read everything, but Heaney was one of the regulars. Seamus Heaney keeps a tight line. He is rarely though completely opaque and the way into this poem is the word ‘longshot’. We only find in the second of the two poems that we are being asked to look at two photographs. Or, at least, poems that are like photographs. Or, better still, strong memories that have taken on in the mind the nature of longshots. The two poems in one are reminders of close relationships. ...

The Poetry of Rowan Williams

Rowan Williams delivers the twelfth John Rylands Poetry Reading last year This is a paper given by Philip Harvey in the Hughes Room at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne on Sunday the 6 th of December as one in an Advent series on religious poets. The original title of the paper was ‘The text that maps our losses and longings’. Everything Rowan Williams says and writes reveals a person with a highly developed sensitivity to language, its force, directness, instantaneousness, its subtlety, indirectness, longevity. A person though may speak three languages fluently and read at least nine languages with ease, as he does, and still not engage with language in the way we are looking at here. Because Rowan is unquestionably someone with a poetic gift. By that I don’t just mean he writes poetry, I mean he engages with the life of words, their meanings, ambiguities, colours, their playfulness, invention, sounds. We find this in those writings of his that delibe...

READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

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