Mont St.-Michel: In Parallel

Introduction

In 1995 the photographer William Clift invited Paul Kane, a poet, to join him in a project which had been well underway for almost two decades. Clift had been frequenting two sites during that time, Mont St.-Michel, off the coast of Normandy, and Shiprock, in the New Mexico desert. Both places may be thought of as sacred sites: the abbey of Mont St.-Michel dates back to the eighth century, and the towering volcanic formation of Shiprock—or Tsé bit' a'í—figures prominently in the Navajo creation myth. The spiritual dimension of these sites underscores one of the implicit motivations for this joint endeavor: the attempt to render palpable the experience of being in a sacramental place. The following is an example of what they have discovered, drawing primarily from the Mont St.-Michel section, with photographs, poems and prose vignettes.

Prologue

Begin with a vision:
        In the bay, an island
        Embraced by sands, rivers
        And the tidal wash of the sea.

Or, begin with fire:
        A rock rises, folded forms
        Erode and the sea rushes in
        To lave the isolate shore.

Begin with a vision:
        A sword flames in the dream
        Of the bishop—shooting star
        In a chaos of night.

Begin with what you find:
        Shell, sea-bird, shadow;
        Rooftop, pillar, steeple;
        Someone in a room of stone.

The Guide

The guide, François, had spent many years studying the Abbey and Mont St.-Michel in general: its history, its architecture, the legends and stories that had accrued like so much lichen on its granite stones. But several years ago he ceased all such inquiry as no longer relevant or useful to his experience of the place. He began, instead, to listen. It was the stones themselves that spoke, he explained, and it was his heart that responded. This conversation—this conversion—utterly transformed his relations to the Mont, turning them inside out so that the architecture became a function of form and history a series of present events. The guide could not have been more appropriate for where we had gone, and he came with us because we shared a similar starting point.

Mme. Lebrec

Madame Lebrec lived in a house on the primary street that wound up the hill. In fact, she lived in two houses—one dating back to the thirteenth century and the other an edifice of the early nineteenth. The two were joined together, divided by a narrow staircase. The house had two stories below street level and two above, with the most striking space the ancient dining room under the kitchen. This room was so proportioned—the ceiling high, the fireplace immense, the large windows opening on to a private enclosed garden—that one felt elated just to stand there in the unexpected delight of so much impressiveness. Mme. Lebrec, herself, was no less extraordinary. One day she took us on an excursion across the treacherous sands to the little island of Tombelaine two miles away. It was all we could do to keep up with her as she strode along with her walking stick looking like some ancient and formidable genius loci. At eighty-five she was as sturdy as her home and as filled with embellishments of character. She had witnessed more changes on the island than most, not only because of her age but owing as well to her acute perceptiveness. She was quick—which is to say, she was very alive.

Processional

In the slate-gray morning before dawn—
when the paving stones are damp with dew
and the air savors of coffee and bread—
when the day's provisions are stacked against doors
and sparrows peck at the crust of baguettes —
when a footstep is heard at a distance, echoing,
and every sound's an event —
when shadows cling to the evergreen trees
and the sky glows with...