NO DOUBT scientists will tell us there are perfectly rational explanations for the current volcanic activity in Iceland. But surely the involvement of angry gods cannot be completely ruled out.
The latest outbreak has coincided uncannily with publication of the long-awaited Black Report into Iceland’s banking scandal. And as large deposits of volcanic ash invade Irish airspace, causing the sort of civil disruption trade unions can only dream about, the eruptions seem to have a message for us too.
It’s unclear yet what the message might be: but my guess is that it’s aimed at the financial community and has something to do with the importance of large deposits – ash, cash, whatever – in general.
Bigger eruptions are still feared in Iceland, literally and metaphorically. So if the gods really are involved, let’s hope they’re not as angry as they were in South East Asia in 1883. On that occasion, they lost the head altogether, conspiring in a massive volcanic event that put the small island of Krakatoa on the map and, simultaneously, almost took it off again.
Heard 3,000 miles away, the explosion involved is thought to have been the loudest sound on Earth in recorded history. It threw four cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere and created huge tsunamis that crossed the Indian Ocean, killing thousands. When the event was over, Krakatoa was an even smaller island than before.
If not quite so catastrophically, the effects were felt around the globe. The clouds of ash, shot up to altitudes of 30 miles, gradually spread out and created strange visual effects in the sky. Seen from certain parts of the Earth, the sun turned blue. And for two years afterwards, in a blessing the angry gods may not have intended, the dust also created some of the most spectacular sunsets ever seen.
At least one poet recorded their appearance. Here’s Gerard Manley Hopkins, mercifully dropping the alliteration (and indeed the poetry) that he was normally so fond of, as he describes the scene at Stonyhurst, England, in December 1883.
“The glow is intense; it has prolonged daylight and optically changed the season; it bathes the whole sky. It is mistaken for the reflection of great fire, more like inflamed flesh than the lurid red of ordinary sunsets, and lines the clouds so that their brims look like gold, brass, bronze or steel. It gives to a mackerel or dappled cloud rack the appearance of quilted, crimson silk, or a ploughed field glazed with crimson ice.” Painters were awestruck too. Although it dates from a few years later, Edvard Munch’s The Scream – mentioned here only the other day – has been partly attributed to the Norwegian artist’s memory of those sunsets. And we know that a less celebrated painter, closer to home, was directly inspired by the phenomenon.
Percy French is now mainly remembered as a composer of many humorous songs, such as Phil the Fluter’s Ball, and of a few more poignant ones, most notably The Mountains of Mourne. But in his time he was an all-rounder, whose talents ranged from banjo-playing to civil engineering (in which he belatedly emerged from Trinity College Dublin with a qualification).
Indeed, it was while working as a Government engineer in Cavan – in the glamorous role of “inspector of drains” – that French acquired yet another of his passions: landscape painting.
The muse was not Cavan’s drains, lovely as they may be. No. His daughter later recalled that circa 1884, when he was 30, French was “completely bowled over” by a series of extraordinary sunsets on Lough Sheelin. As a result of which: “he went out every evening and tried to capture in paint colours which were due to volcanic dust”.
He painted prolifically then and later, and was not very precious about the results: often using the pictures to pay for board and lodgings, or just giving them away. And no more than the engineering, it was not the paintings that brought him fame.
Instead, he made his name and fortune through the songs, and by performing in a stage show built around them.
Even so, his watercolours – especially the landscapes – are highly prized now. Happily, the best collection is also available for public viewing, courtesy of the North Down Percy French Society (www.percyfrench.org), in Bangor.
His paintings will also be among the subjects discussed at this year’s Percy French Summer School, (www.percyfrench.ie) which will be held at Castlecoote House, Co Roscommon, in July.
Maybe by then, the Icelandic volcano gods will have calmed down. And with the air traffic delays forgotten, perhaps the current eruptions will be remembered only for the dramatic lighting effects they created, inspiring another wave of landscape art.
In the meantime, I leave you with the thought that the 30-year-old Percy French – drain inspector by day, painter of Krakatoan sunsets by night – was the ultimate exemplar of a famous Oscar Wilde observation. “We are all in the gutter,” Wilde said, “but some of us are looking at the stars.”
fmcnally@irishtimes.com