Sunken Cathedrals

On honeymoon in May, I read Philip K. Dick's Galactic Pot-Healer - not one of his best, but that still leaves it head & shoulders above a lot of other authors' work. A central motif in the story, indeed it might even be called a character, is the sunken cathedral of Heldscalla, which the pot-healer (ceramicist) of the title is sent to try and raise.

This year* marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the French composer Claude Debussy, and to celebrate this the BBC Proms season features a number of his works, including a prelude he wrote in 1910 called La cathédrale engloutie - The Sunken Cathedral**.

I am currently reading Atlantic Britain by Adam Nicolson, the story of his adventures in a small boat around the western coast of the British Isles. In chapter three, entitled 'Islands', Nicolson describes his visit to The Skelligs, off the Irish mainland. He describes them thus:

"... they seemed to be a pair of cathedrals, a black double Chartres ... with their naves and chancels sunk beneath the sea ..."

*I find I am writing this on the exact day of his birth, August 22.

**just before writing this, I went downstairs where my wife was listening to Joanna Newsom's album Ys; Debussy's work is based on an ancient Breton myth in which a cathedral, submerged underwater off the coast of the island of Ys, rises up from the sea on clear mornings when the water is transparent.