The Lark Ascending

About Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish

Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine was born of a languid afternoon of conversation on a sunny tavern lawn. Taking its name from the pleasant afterlife dreamed into being by sailors, cavalrymen, and other adventurous spirits, Fiddler’s Green gathers friends, good cheer, and a bit of magic to create a better world not someday, but now.

In ecclesiastical terms, the word “peculiar” refers to a district outside the jurisdiction of the Church. It’s also a good word for describing my own view of reality, and likely yours as well. And so here is a “peculiar parish magazine” for anyone who doesn’t feel the need to have their inner life directed by others. If it is peculiar that we wish to govern our bodies and souls ourselves, then let us be peculiar.

The conversation continues, and there is room for you in it. Each of us is on our own journey, both in this world and whatever lies beyond it. Sometimes the path is well lit; at other times it is obscured. Your wanderings have brought you here, and I hope you’ll stray for a while with me and the other souls gathered at Fiddler’s Green.

Clint Marsh [Publisher]

Description

A Peculiar Parish Edition by George Meredith & J.G. Folivéli.

He rises and begins to round,

He drops the silver chain of sound . . .

So begins “The Lark Ascending,” George Meredith’s triumphal ode to the skylark’s song, the bucolic English countryside, and the restless strength of the human spirit. Over the course of 122 breathless, shimmering lines, the poem traces the soaring arc of the dawn bird’s flight. Those whose eyes follow its aerial path feel their hearts rise with it, ever higher.

Written in 1881, Meredith’s poem takes inspiration from Shelley’s “Ode to a Skylark” and in turn inspired Ralph Vaughan Williams’ violin masterpiece of 1921. One century on, our Peculiar Parish Edition is offered in humble commemoration of the “silver chain” of influence wrought by the best of the arts.

George Meredith (1828–1909) was an English novelist and poet. Nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he was in his lifetime called “the dean of English writers” and “the last great Victorian.” Shortly after his death, the Times Literary Supplement observed that Meredith’s mind was “so rich, so full, that one wonders where there is another mind so rich, outside Shakespeare, in English literature.”

J.G. Folivéli is a comics author and illustrator. Her art explores themes of ambiguity and transformation as seen in the works of such artists as William Blake, Jean Cocteau, and Leonor Fini. After studying in Liège at ESA Saint-Luc and earning a master’s degree in comics from the city’s Académie des Beaux-Arts, Folivéli currently lives in Toulouse, France.