The supreme god

Published 16 June 2003

Bryan Appleyard pays homage to the British Museum on its 250th anniversary

The British Museum was 250 years old on 7 June. Among many other celebrations, two are especially worth mentioning. They embody all the greatness and ambiguity of this institution. One is a poem, now displayed on the London Underground, and the other is a four-foot-high wooden statue from the south-western Pacific, which is currently on display in the BM's Reading Room. The poem by William Empson is "Homage to the British Museum", about this statue, A'a, though it may be called Tangaroa.

Empson, who died in 1984, is primarily known as a wonderful literary critic. But he was also a fine poet, though often perversely dry and academic. With this poem, however, he was writing at a much higher level. Just the first line should be enough.

There is a supreme God in the ethnological section . . .

A supreme god has become an exhibit. The irony is cosmic. But there is a further irony, unknown to Empson. He probably assumed he was looking at Tangaroa, the creator of the world - hence his use of the word "supreme" - and a divinity known on many Pacific islands. But, according to Lissant Bolton, curator of the Pacific and Australian collection, we cannot be sure.

A'a's reign ended in 1822 when, encouraged by visitors from the London Missionary Society, the chiefs of the island of Rurutu converted their people to Christianity. The statue was handed over to the LMS and, from there, found its way to the BM. The culture and religion of Rurutu were orally transmitted. Prior to 1822, therefore, the statue is entirely without written documentation. Furthermore, the population was, at the same time as its conversion, afflicted with disease and social disintegration. If you asked the islanders today about the statue, they might know something of its significance, but, almost certainly, their account would be suffused with Christian belief.

The poem continues:

A hollow toad shape, faced with a blank shield.

He needs his belly to include the Pantheon,

Which is inserted through a hole behind.

Again, there may be an inaccuracy here. When the statue was first found it had 24 figures inside its hollow body. These were subsequently lost. Empson assumes they were smaller gods inside his supreme god. But A'a may simply have been a box to transport them via canoe - the islanders were great navigators. At the same time, the word "Pantheon" induces a pause. It may just mean the collection of local gods, but, to western ears, it invokes a specific Roman building. This supreme god of a polytheistic faith could, it is implied, have contained all the polytheisms at the root of our own culture.

At the navel, at the points formally stressed, at the organs of sense,

Lice glue themselves, dolls, local deities,

His smooth wood creeps with all the creeds of the world.

"Lice" is a little unfair. The figures carved on the surface of A'a's body are vivid and human. Empson then asks us to "absorb the cultures of nations". We hesitate, partly because of the difficulty of the task he has invoked, but also because "People are continually asking one the way out." Then comes the pivotal line:

Let us stand here and admit that we have no road.

A shift of perspective suddenly transforms the off-hand irritation with people who can't find their way out of the museum into a terrible, general truth. There is no way out of the museum. Like the supreme, hollow god, this building contains all things, ourselves and the god included. The last four lines hover urbanely but anxiously over this crisis.

Being everything, let us admit that is to be something,

Or give ourselves the benefit of the doubt;

Let us offer our pinch of dust all to this God,

And grant his reign over the entire building.

There is an infinite regression here. The god has been relativised by making the museum absolute. But then the last three words could have been "the entire world". Instead, the use of "building" further relativises the museum. This, too, has become an exhibit in which we can permit, somewhat patronisingly, Tangaroa to reign and then get on with our roadless, godless lives.

There are, I admit, other possible readings. Empson's most famous critical work was called Seven Types of Ambiguity and there are at least that number at work in these 16 lines. But the theme is clear: what does it mean to have a god, a supreme god, in a museum?

A'a, like the poem, is a masterpiece. He inspired Henry Moore as well as Empson. His presence is formidable; he exudes superhuman power. As art, we can understand him. Indeed, only by turning him into art can we understand him at all. We don't know if he is A'a or Tangaroa; we don't know what he meant nor what function he served, other than that he embodied the universal religious impulse to explain and propitiate the uncontrollable world in which we find ourselves.

Above all, we cannot begin to understand the oral culture that made him. Such cultures, as Bolton points out, are intrinsically mobile. Their stories are retold in deference to the politics of the moment. Even to the islanders, the meaning of A'a would continuously change over time. A western-educated anthropologist arriving on Rurutu would come up with his conclusions, but, ten years later, they may be utterly wrong. We seek out literature and monuments to solidify history, to hold it in place, but the only solidity the islanders would know would be their landscape, and even the meaning of that would constantly change.

It is possible to get sentimental about this. Most people do. To Captain Cook, the bearer of Christianity and the Enlightenment - and his successors, including us - the palm-fringed beaches of the Pacific islands were visions of paradise. And it is a paradise we tainted with the imposition of our faith, the importation of our diseases and the looting of treasure such as A'a. We might even say that in our increasingly mobile, virtual world, we are returning to a postmodern version of that paradise, learning the forgotten lessons of Rurutu.

Dream on. Bolton shudders at the idea, describing it as "the trivialisation of everything that makes life important". We may not know much about A'a, but we do know that he wasn't playing games. Seriousness oozes from the smooth wood of his body and the "blank shield" of his face. We may be able to hold him in our museum, but we can't lure him into our lives to ornament our ersatz spiritualities.

But the mobile faith that made him has gone. Like us, he has no road, no home to go to. He was given up, along with their faith, by the islanders and he found his way to that greatest of all the Enlightenment's temples, the British Museum. And there, in the Reading Room, he now stands, bent-kneed and swollen-bellied, a supreme god.

Empson was over-fond of ambiguity, but I do not think his title had two meanings. His poem is, indeed, a homage to the British Museum. Preserving things in museums is what we do; it is the best that we can do. Things change. Gods come and go. Buildings crumble. But, just for now, go to Bloomsbury to wish the BM a happy birthday and offer A'a your pinch of dust.

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