The novel is set on Ménec, an island off the coast of Brittany. The narrator is a novice at the Ianua Vitae Convent. The Order she belongs to, the Sisters of the Parthenogenesis, is broadly Catholic, but many features of its worship are heterodox, with many pagan features. Nature worship is unusually prominent: many of the ceremonies take place at the Shrine of the Triple Well. Many of the narrator’s actions, which include defecating in church behind the altar and having a lesbian affaire, can hardly be considered mainstream. The inner truth towards which the Rule of the community is directed ‘was no less than the mystery of parthenogenesis, wherein the lunar soul that perceives and feels is fertilised – a long eclipse over – by the rays from its own inner sun, to bring forth at last the radiant Child.’ (p. 57)
It is only as the story unfolds that it becomes clear that Ménec is the island of the dead and that the Convent is a receiving-house for recently departed spirits. In truth, there are clues for the knowledgeable right from the title page. The title itself is a translation of Vidi Aquam, the scriptural verses traditionally recited during the rite of the Sprinkling with Holy Water during the Easter season. The epigraph is an extended and slightly modified quotation: I saw water coming forth from the Temple from the right side, alleluia: and all those were saved to whom that water came, and they shall say alleluia. The name of the convent reinforces the message: it is taken from an old Latin proverb mors ianua vitae: death is the portal to life.
At the convent, visitors continue to behave as they did in material existence, and to build round themselves the illusion of time and space. Death is a threshold, but the boundary between the living and the dead is not a sharp divide. Gradually, however, the characters adapt to their circumstances and the narrator, at least, achieves a measure of calm and leaves the island.
The author’s themes will be familiar to those conversant with her earlier work. The objectives of the Parthenogenesists, for example, are essentially those embraced by Colquhoun in The Waterstone of the Wise. Similarly, her concern for earth-bound spirits will be remembered from the pages of Goose of Hermogenes. Other elements – the scourging of the heroine, a scene is a brothel, the presence of monstrous vegetation, the island setting and the attempt to steal her treasure – are also found in the earlier novel. When the narrator passes her frequent comments on the Catholic Church and its liturgy, the reader can be confident that her views are those of Colquhoun: her comments on the importance of participating in ritual and the power of language in religious experience, for example, are also those expressed by Colquhoun in the Aylesford Review, a Carmelite publication. (1)
As in Goose of Hermogenes, the hermetic is embedded into the structure of the novel. In Goose of Hermogenes, progress through the narrative reflected progress through the stages of alchemical transformation. In I Saw Water, the author’s original intention was for the heroine to ascend through the Tree of Life from Chapter 1 (Malkuth) to Chapter 12 (Kether). In the final draft, a further chapter had been added and each was now associated with one of the alchemical elements. Colquhoun planned that, when published, each chapter would be printed on appropriately coloured paper. For example, those chapters attributed to elemental Air would be on yellow paper, whilst those attributed to elemental Fire would be printed on red.
The narrative is largely descriptive and naturalistic, but interspersed with uncomfortable dislocations in time and place. The dream-like quality of these passages is directly attributable to the fact that they are based on the artist’s dreams. Her archives show that Colquhoun began work on the novel in about 1967, selecting dreams from her dream diaries from as far back as 1939. In the sense that she selected, edited and re-arranged her dreams, I Saw Water is a collage novel, comparable in certain respects to the collage novels of Max Ernst. However, whereas Ernst generated visual images by cutting up his source material – engravings and woodcuts – and linking them with a text, for Colquhoun, the origin lay in the visual imagery of her dreams, transformed into words and then assembled to provide an overall narrative. The odd juxtapositions and sense of strangeness that pervades Colquhoun’s novel comes from the manifest content of the dreams rather than from the manner in which they were subsequently arranged. There are differences, too, in subject matter. For Ernst in, for example, Reve d’une petite fille qui voulut entrer au Carmel, the underlying theme is the seduction fantasy that is so central to Freudians. For Colquhoun, the theme is the spiritual growth of the heroine that was so central to her own occult enquiries.
The book was never published. Although it was generally liked by publishers’ readers, as one of them pointedly asked: who would buy it? (2)
Notes
1. Colquhoun, I. 1962-3. Liturgical Reformation. Aylesford Review, 5, 20-22
2. Notes and drafts of the novel are at TGA 929/2/1/31. The final typescript is at TGA 929/2/1/31/8.
continue to next section: The Sword of Wisdom
Back to previous section: Goose of Hermogenes