The Golden Fleece

by Muriel Spark

  Golda Meir had an appointment that afternoon with Mr Andreotti, Prime Minister of Italy. During her visit to Italy she was treated in the best possible manner by the Italian State and Government; although her visit was a private one she was given the facilities of a state visit. It was not until her arrival at the Israeli Embassy, just before a press conference, that she was told about the Alessandrini version. During the conference she diplomatically stuck to the negotiated version of her papal audience. ‘Mrs Meir,’ asked a journalist, ‘have you seen or heard about the statement that the Vatican issued following your meeting with the Pope? At least some people are describing it as a diplomatic slap in the face…’ This was understating the case. People were describing it as a stab in the back, Borgia-style, and the Italian papers for the most part protested strongly on the subject. ‘I’m very appreciative that the Pope found it possible to receive me and very happy that the audience took place,’ Mrs Meir told this conference.

  Next day, the Pope saw fit to send Mrs Meir further presents: a two-volume rare edition of the Bible splendidly bound with his coat of arms and a Vatican Library catalogue.

  Two days later, Alessandrini gave an interview to a Jewish correspondent of the English-language Daily American, published in Rome. He gave it as his personal opinion that Israel over-played their Prime Minister’s visit, ‘irritating the Holy See and forcing it to issue the second statement’. He denied that the statement was all his own work: ‘anyone who knows how the Vatican works also knows I could hardly have thought up that statement myself’. He said his statement was meant to contradict an Israeli announcement that the meeting was held at the Pope’s initiative.

  Thereafter Mr Alessandrini was unobtainable on the subject. His assistant explained: ‘A verbal declaration is not an official declaration.’ – ‘What’s the difference?’ – ‘One is verbal and the other is not.’ – ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand the distinction and I’d like an appointment with Mr Alessandrini.’ – ‘Mr Alessandrini wrote the statement himself. Mr Alessandrini can’t say any more.’

  Is it possible, we onlookers in Rome asked ourselves, that the Church has changed its scapegoat overnight? – It is no longer the Jews, it is Alessandrini.

  Another voice from the Vatican, this time of an archiepiscopal timbre: ‘Alessandrini didn’t do it. He was only obeying orders. The tone and the timing were deplorable, especially the tone.’ – ‘Well, it was ordered by someone in the Secretariat?’ – ‘Nobody will ever know.’

  Still, everyone did want to know what was going on back there in the Vatican. The lack of any public relations system adequate to modern times only serves to increase the zeal of the lay-inquisition. In the Vatican, that strong octopus, none of the right hands of which knows what the left are doing, there are other communications-offices besides the press office. ‘What happened,’ another personage of communications explained, ‘is that the audience was to have been kept secret until afterwards, but the news was leaked to the Israeli cabinet and it got in the press too soon.’ – ‘Is this official?’ – ‘No, I believe I read it somewhere in the newspapers.’

  Next, in reply to some pages of written questions submitted at the suggestion of another good-hearted Vatican personality came the note: ‘That [Archbishop Giovanni] Benelli [of the Secretariat of State] was party to the statement is I should say certain. Whether he vetted the final version, much less so. That the Pope saw it in advance is extremely unlikely.’

  Yes, but the most important question was why the second statement was substituted for the first, at the last moment behind the Israelis’ back.

  ‘Arab pressure,’ was the general answer.

  Meantime, on her return to Israel, Mrs Meir had a heart-to-heart interview with the Hebrew newspaper Ma’ariv about her visit to the Pope. She confirmed: ‘Our Ambassador in Rome was told, “If you request a meeting with the Pope there will be a positive response.”’ Mrs Meir then dropped some amazing news about the audience itself: ‘Right at the start I didn’t like it at all. Right at the start the Pope told me he found it difficult to understand how the Jewish people, who should conduct themselves mercifully, should react, in their country, so harshly. I can’t stand it,’ said Mrs Meir, ‘when they talk like that … So I said to the Pope “Your Holiness,” (that’s how I addressed him all during the conversation, and he called me “Your Excellency”), “do you know the first memory of my life? The Pogrom of Kiev! When we were merciful, and didn’t have a country and were weak, then they took us to the gas chamber.”’

  The important thing, Mrs Meir was at pains to stress, was that the meeting took place. But the idea that a modern Pope could be so far out of touch with reality as to start weighing in to a modern Prime Minister (the first woman head of government to be received in the Vatican) on the level of the old-time Renaissance moral admonishment of the Jews, rather gave the outsider to blink.

  The audience did not literally start in quite so abrupt a manner. Certainly, there was an exchange of courtesies. The Pope declared himself honoured on this historic occasion and Golda Meir expressed herself honoured on the historic occasion. The talk proceeded, according to Mrs Meir, in an atmosphere of tranquil solemnity.

  It is clear, now, that late on the night of January 14th, having heard the news of Golda Meir’s visit planned for the following day, the representatives of the Arab States with whom the Vatican has formal diplomatic relations, put a concerted pressure on the Pope’s Secretariat of State to make a counter-statement.

  The Secretary of State is Cardinal Jean Villot, and there is no need at all to go into all the creepy demonology of what personality cited by which ‘source close to the Vatican’ is responsible for foreign diplomacy, because Cardinal Villot is responsible for his department, as in real life. Of the two under-Secretaries of State, Archbishop Benelli was plainly put in charge of the Arab countries’ complaints. The Arabs had not been consulted. They felt aggrieved. In a panic, late at night Vatican time, at least after 9 p.m., the bulletin was drafted. And if the Pope did not see the actual wording, then he is not exercising his authority enough. He must have been told of the new statement, and his moralising approach to the Prime Minister of Israel was very probably a reaction to the embarrassment he felt. ‘The whole affair was harsh, it was not Christian,’ said a Catholic Priest in Rome whose entire job is Christian–Jewish relationships. ‘Do you think the Vatican’s hand-out suggests that the Israelis alone are responsible for the plight of the Palestinian Arabs?’ – ‘Yes, coming at that moment, the statement can’t mean anything else. We have to stop blaming the Jews for everything and look into ourselves. It was not Christian.’

  Estimates of the number of Roman Catholics in the world put the number at probably between 500 and 600 million. The Reformation never took hold in Italy, and although the Ecumenical Council indicated to Italian Churchmen the existence in the world of another estimated 500 million Christians who don’t acknowledge the Pope as their leader, the notion that the Pope is not the spokesman for the whole of Christendom has not yet sunk in.

  ‘It may be,’ said an official of the World Council of Churches (which represents 400 million non-Roman Catholics), ‘that the Pope sometimes says something of such spirituality that the whole world says “Amen”. But it can never be said that the Pope speaks for the whole of Christianity.’

  In her interview with Ma’ariv Golda Meir spoke happily of the Pope’s gratitude for the Israelis’ care of the holy places in Jerusalem. ‘He said thank you three times: thank you, thank you, thank you.’ That is delightful, but it does not mean that the Christian shrines in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel are largely under control of the Catholic Church. The Greek Orthodox Church is the title-holder to vastly more of the holy places on Israeli territory than any other church. Strong interests in the Holy Land by way of hospices, study centres, schools and shrines are held by numerous other non-Catholic bodies, not all of whom share the Pope’s anxiety for the internationalisation of Jerusalem.

&nb
sp; None of them, so far as one can gather, shares the view that the Vatican’s diplomacy on the visit of Mrs Golda Meir is much of a contribution towards resolving the conflict in the Middle East.

  The British Methodist, Lord Soper, who is Secretary of the Society for Christian–Jewish Relations, said forcefully, ‘You can quote me as saying that the Pope’s treatment of Golda Meir was gratuitous and uncalled-for. The Christians should be the last to preach the virtue of mercy to the Jews.’ Lord Soper said, with some reason, that we might all have sympathy with the Palestinian Arabs and see their point of view, but the occasion of the Prime Minister of Israel’s visit was not the moment to express it. ‘Mrs Meir,’ he said, ‘behaved with great dignity under the circumstances.’

  At the Church of England communications office, a spokesman said they frequently went along with the Pope. But he knew very well from his dealings with Jews that they did not know very much about the development of the Christian church, just as he supposed the Christians knew too little about them. It would be easily assumed by the young Israelis that the Pope spoke for the whole of Christianity.

  ‘Back to the Middle Ages,’ was the comment of a young Greek Orthodox priest. ‘When the Jews are in question the Pope speaks when he shouldn’t and fails to speak when he should. For us, the days of hatred and contempt between Christians and Jews are past. Our relations with the Jewish people in Israel are good: on both sides, respectful indifference, tolerance. Our dialogue with the Jews is mainly concerned with interpretations of the Old Testament.’ On the question of the Pope’s stated efforts towards conciliation he said, ‘It’s out of date.’

  From another official of the World Council of Churches: ‘Mrs Golda Meir might well come and visit us in Geneva. She might very well do so.’

  Then, from the Presbyterian spokesman of the Church of Scotland: ‘I don’t think that in any way anyone could say that the poverty and defencelessness of the Palestinian refugees solely rests with the Israeli Government. One would obviously ask what about the use to which Jordan has put UNESCO aid.’ It was probably unnecessary to ask, once more, if he thought the Pope had spoken for the whole of Christianity. However, this Scottish Churchman drily replied, ‘The Pope speaks only for the Roman Catholics.’

  And not always for the Roman Catholics. In Rome the people like to do things in style. The natural Italian sense of hospitality was afflicted by what went on behind the high sheltering walls of the Vatican. Whatever their feelings about the Middle East, Italians felt the incident set a poor example in ethics and taste. ‘She would never have been treated like that if she had gone to visit King Hussein,’ was one of their more memorable remarks.

  [1973]

  Ritual and Recipe

  One learns with surprise that Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice, by Garry Hogg, is the first book devoted entirely to this subject to be published in England. It is intended for the general reader who, accustomed to coming across scattered references to cannibalism in anthropological studies, will probably find the more concentrated effect of this work rather alarming.

  Garry Hogg has made intelligent use of Missionary Society transactions and missionary letters, as well as the best anthropological works. It appears that the motives for cannibalism are sometimes more simple than is popularly thought. Though the custom can often be attributed to primitive religious rituals, magic and tribal revenge, some cannibals – notably those of the Fiji Islands up to at least the end of the nineteenth century – ate human flesh because they liked it. Moreover, the author tells us, once the taste for human flesh has been indulged it has been widely found to develop into ‘a fierce and eventually unappeasable lust for flesh which no mere animal flesh can satisfy’.

  Cannibalism was fairly universal in ancient times. The Irish ate their dead; the Scots ate their enemies. Hogg’s researches cover the cannibal habits, rituals and gruesome recipes of several continents, and his work ends with a brief outline of the Mau Mau’s more politically deliberate man-eating activities.

  [1958]

  The Next World and Back

  Never has so much been written about a place of which nobody knows a thing. When religious Victorians put about that the Hereafter was not a place but a State of Being, the sublime Cardinal Newman opined that the idea of place was inherent in that of the after-life.

  It is a place where I would like to go and come back to write a book about. But to the most sophisticated of travellers it is Hamlet’s ‘Undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveller returns’. I must say most of the Christian ideas of Heaven are fascinating as a visitor’s project but no place to settle. I would love to see the Heaven predicted by the anonymous medieval singer of England:

  Thy walls are made of precious stones,

  Thy bulwarks diamonds square;

  Thy gates are of right orient pearl,

  Exceeding rich and rare.

  But it would be uncomfortable, as is Ezekiel’s vision of the firmament, noisy with the wings of massive angels. Dante’s Paradiso is to me a fireworks show.

  Nor would I be content in a general place where all good souls are supposed to go. Oh God, imagine finding yourself seated in a celestial omnibus next to Billy Graham! Far rather would I reside in the shady groves of the pagan outsiders, Aristotle, Virgil, Socrates.

  As for Hell, there is no visiting that place. To my mind it is the essential void. ‘Hell is empty,’ cries Ferdinand in The Tempest, ‘and all the devils are here’. With that, few would disagree.

  [1990]

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Part I. Art and Poetry

  The Golden Fleece

  Apart from the Poetry Society editorials, this was one of Muriel Spark’s earliest known essays, published March 1948 in Argentor, The Journal of the National Jewellers’ Association (London).

  The First Christmas Eve

  Essay on the Madonna del Parto fresco by Piero della Francesca, Monterchi, commissioned by and published in Vanity Fair, December 1984, under their title ‘Spirit and Substance’.

  Love

  Commissioned by Mademoiselle, but first published in Partisan Review, 1984. (A mangled version, with unauthorised insertions, changes and abridgements, was also published in the London Daily News, February 1987.) Published in volume form in The Norton Book of Love, 1998.

  Ravenna: City of Mosaics

  Commissioned by and published in The New York Times magazine Sophisticated Traveler, Part 2, ‘Legendary Cities’, 4 October 1987, under their title ‘Ravenna’s Jeweled Churches’. Reprinted by Antique and New Art, Winter 1990, under their title ‘The Ravenna Mosaics’.

  The Art of Verse

  Broadcast 13 February 1999 on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme and subsequently published in The Scotsman, 1999 and in the Literary Review, December 2000/January 2001.

  Ruskin and Read

  Review of Peter Quennell’s Selected Writings of John Ruskin (Falcon Press, 1952) and Herbert Read’s The Philosophy of Modern Art (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), published 1952.

  Robert Burns

  Reviews of Dirt and Deity by Ian McIntyre (London: Harper Collins, 1995), published in the Daily Mail, Saturday 21 October 1995, under their title ‘Auld Acquaintance, Not Forgot’; and of The Tinder Heart by Hugh Douglas (Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1996), published in The Sunday Times Books, 23 June 1996, under their title ‘Highland Flings’.

  Andrew Young

  Extract from ‘What You Say and How You Say It’, review of Andrew Young – Collected Poems (London: Jonathan Cape, 1950) with wood engravings by Joan Hassall, published in Poetry Quarterly, Winter 1950/51.

  Giacomo Manzù

  Interview with the sculptor, commissioned by and published in Architectural Digest, May 1988 and republished on the death of Manzù in Scotland on Sunday, February 1991.

  The Desegregation of Art

  The Blashfield Foundation Address to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York, 1970, published in Proceedings of The American Academy of Arts
and Letters, 1971 (New York: Spiral Press). Reprinted in The Month, 1972.

  The Wisdom of Mr T.S. Eliot

  Review of The Confidential Clerk at its opening at the Edinburgh Festival, published in the ‘Edinburgh Festival Diary’ of the Church of England Newspaper, Friday 11 September 1953.

  Ingersoll Foundation – T.S. Eliot Award (1992)

  Speech of acceptance of the Award, given at the Drake Hotel, Chicago, 12 November 1992.

  Pensée: T.S. Eliot

  Extract from ‘A New Voice on an Old Theme’, review of Michael Mason’s poem The Legacy (Sheed & Ward), published in the Journal of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association, October 1953.

  The Complete Frost

  Review of The Complete Poems of Robert Frost (London: Jonathan Cape, 1951), published in Public Opinion No. 4662, Friday 30 March 1951.

  John Masefield

  Introduction to Muriel Spark’s biography of the poet (London: Peter Nevill, 1953 and New York: Coward, McCann, 1966; reissued London: Macmillan, 1962), with a note to the new Hutchinson edition (1991) and Pimlico reprint (1992). Also published in The New Yorker magazine, 26 August 1991, under the title ‘Personal History: Visiting the Laureate’. (Original text taken from Muriel Spark holograph manuscript ‘Gutch Memorandum’, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh.)