Named of Some Other Name

Readers of David Jones often either celebrate or abhor the fact that Jones was a Christian. What many of them do not realize is that Jones was an artist who happened to be a Christian, and his faith actually made him a more powerful and important artist. Jones is so important because of the way he saw the world, and his effort to make his vision experienced by his audience. One of Jones’s important beliefs was that “Myths and archetypes from all periods of the world’s history may find their true fulfillment in the symbolism of Christianity” (Blamires 68). Jones specifically portrays this view in two of his major works—the drawing “Aphrodite in Aulis” and the poem “The Tutelar of the Place.” The female figures depicted in these works are ones that people from all creeds and religions can recognize as the symbols of motherhood, love, sex, warmth, and beauty. Jones is able to work from the particulars he knows and enhance their meaning by relating them to something universal that everyone can understand. It is this very tactic that makes his works so effective. Jones actually felt that the female entity was one and the same for everyone, simply called by some other name. By creating several works that encapsulate all female-cult figures into one deity, Jones shows us the universality of symbolism and religion that many choose to ignore.

This concept of “all female cult-figures” wrapped into one has further evidence from several of Jones’s personal letters and writings. In a letter to Rene Hague, Jones says, “As I have written somewhere, the figure is all goddesses rolled into one—wounded of necessity as are all things worthy of worship—she’s mother-figure and virgo inter virgins—the pierced woman and mother and all her forety...

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Haas, Brad. "Analysis of Aphrodite in Aulis." David Jones Class. United States, Takoma Park. Mar. 2012. Lecture.

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Hague, Rene, ed. Dai Greatcoat. Boston: Faber and Faber, 1980. Print.

Jones, David, Paul Hills, and Nicolete Gray. "Aphrodite: Goddess and Courtesan." David Jones. London: Tate Gallery, 1981. 60-62. Print.

Jones, David. "The Tutelar of the Place." The Sleeping Lord. Lundinii: Faber, 1974. 59-64. Print.

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