The poem begins “Nel Mezzo,” as does Dante’s masterpiece, halfway through life. James Joyce quotes the line in Ulysses and Tarn agrees “Nel mezzo / as man always is.” This particular man afflicted with one of the more disgusting, incurable diseases of his age, is on pilgrimage to the hospital chapel of Saint Anthony’s Monastery in Issenheim, a town in Alsace (France), where an image on an altarpiece there is reputed to have healing powers for all kinds of disease. There he

This is the altarpiece (c.1526) painted by Matthias Grünewald (c.1475-1528), an artistic effort that shared with Mel Gibson’s popularized movie version, The Passion of the Christ (2004), the goal of rendering the Crucifixion in such gruesome detail that Jesus’ sacrifice would make renewed sense to believers. Despite the grim subject matter, though, how can we read this as anything but gallows humor? The poem demands an open flexible attitude, a willingness on the part of the reader to laugh, be chilled, be entranced, always to be amazed at the utter strangeness of human life.

The poem continues its commentary on other scenes, both from the Grünewald piece and another masterpiece located in the same town, with a sharp eye:

And then

If this seems like somewhat familiar terrain, wait a bit. The poem returns to explore further the central torture panel and then turns to the artist who created it, a man whose identity has been nearly lost in history, a man whose surname is not his own, but the “Green Forest” surname of another.

Such is the power of art, returning to image of tree and crucifixion and binding the two figures, artist and subject, together in searing images. All of the passion of the altarpiece bursts from the words on the page.

The concluding stanza brings us back into our own nel mezzo. The poet acknowledges the serendipity of Grünewald being largely unknown, “virtually nothing left to pin him down,” other than

These last lines remind me of Horace’s claim to immortality through his art. In Odes I.1, he claims that by means of the work he has created, he will strike the stars with the top of his head. In the final poem III.30, he claims success; that in adapting Greek measures to the Latin language, a monument more lasting than bronze, as he calls it, he will not altogether die (non omnis moriar). The artist Grünewald, or whoever he really was, achieved a kind of immortality through an interpretation of the crucified Christ, a figure whose life is even more legendary and subject to debate and scrutiny than Grünewald’s. The two figures share a stage of miasmic identity and the burden of constantly shifting historical interpretation. “Mathis at Issenheim” speaks about death; but it is also about art and possibility and meaning and personal authenticity.

Returning to the words of Tarn’s challenge, that we go beyond facile engagement with any multi-layered piece of literature and identify its truly “interesting” aspects, I’d speculate that not every reader would find this poem the most compelling in the collection, but any reader who gives these poems the careful reading they deserve will find something profound to “interest” them. There are parts of parts of parts here aplenty, a spirited hunt for wholeness. And that is an understatement.