Et in Orcadia ego

When that the holy season of pasch was overpast, the jarls busked them both for the tryst. The jarl Magnus Erlend's son gathered into two ships leal and trusty and large-hearted men, as many as had been sworn, and held course for Egil's Isle. They sailed upon a calm and a blissful sea-road, but that one billow rose and broke about the helm-bound jarl. Was meikle marvel in the two dove-ships anent that token. And the jarl saith, 'The sign sheweth I fare fast to my life's close. For there will be brought to birth soon a dark foretelling anent the jarl Hakon. Rest ye sure of that. My kinsman Hakon cometh his own gait to this tryst.' Fell then a sudden death-dread upon the ships, and voices that urged return, and hands were held out yearningly towards the hither healthful shore. The jarl Magnus maketh true response, 'Fare yet forward, not I but God is helmsman here.'

Úvodní řádky nejsou citací z nějaké ságy, ale z románu skotského (či přesněji orknejského) básníka a spisovatele Georgea Mackay Browna (1921-1996) s názvem Magnus. Pokud bych dílko měl nějak popsat, asi nejvýstižnější by bylo říci, že se jedná o román v obrazech. Osm kapitol - osm obrazů malovaných slovy se točí kolem postavy Magnuse Erlendssona, jednoho z orknejských knížat, který bývá často označován jako Magnus mučedník.

První polovina románu poměrně čtivě přibližuje události ze života jak samotného Magnuse tak obyvatel Orknejských ostrovů na přelomu 11. - 12. století. Po těchto "nevinně" vyhlížejících kapitolkách však v druhé polovině čtenáře čeká překvapení - kapitola s příznačným názvem "The Killing" totiž nepojednává o mučednické smrti svatého Magnuse, ale "omezuje" se pouze na události, které jeho smrti předcházely. Dle legend a ság se totiž v noci předtím, než byl zavražděn ukrýval v kostelíku na ostrově Egilsay - a právě myšlenky či opět lépe řečeno obrazy, které vyvstávají v Magnusově mysli když je svědkem a účastníkem mešní oběti jsou dle mého soudu vrcholem této knihy. 

Člověk v masce zvířete tažen k hrubě opracovanému balvanu. 

Člověk veden holou bílou chodbou do jasně osvětlené malé čtvercové místnosti. 

Člověk na kříži.

"With difficulty, for that he was an old man and his bones full of stiffness, the priest raised high the Bread of Heaven (for in the Mass, after the angels have borne up to the tables of heaven the mortal bread of man's sowing and reaping and baking - a tithe of his labour - that same bread by the utterance of five words is drenched, interwoven, imbued, possessed, informed with divinity, and is sent down again to be immortal food for the souls of men)...

The chalice was elevated. The priest mingled the broken bread with the wine, figuring forth Christ's resurrection - the man smiled at the beauty of the symbolism. The priest consumed the Host. A moment later he set the Precious Blood to his lips. All things, thought the man, are being done well and in order. The dust that was his mouth opened and shut on the word he could not find in the dream: Sanctus. The word pilsed like a star in the murk of the nave. (...)

The man trembled with cold and expectation. The priest looked at him, touched with one finger a Host in the paten: he was being summoned again to a feast of unimaginable splendour and majesty. Dare he go, empty-handed and naked as he was? This much wast true, the priest had shriven him before the Mass; he had laid aside the patched filthy coat of sins that he had brought with him to the island."

"That was the one only central sacrifice of history. I am the bread of life. All previous rituals had been a foreshadowing of this; all subsequent rituals a re-enactment. The fires at the centre of the earth, the sun above, all divine essences and ecstasies, come to this silence at last - a circle of bread and a cup of wine on an altar.

Out of earth darkness men set the bread on their everyday tables. It is the seal and substance of all their work; their very nature is kneaded into the substance of the bread; it is, in an ultimate sense, their life. They bring a tithe of this earth-gold to the holy table. At the moment of consecration, the bread - that is to say, man and his work, his pains, his joys and his hopes - is utterly suffused and irradiated with the divine. Hic est enim corpus meum."