Sarah Klassen

(Click here for text of Klassen's poem.)

In the poem “Artist and Medium,” made up of six stanzas with four lines each, Klassen explores the subject of martyrdom for one’s faith through the dilemma of artist Jan Luyken, illustrator of The Martyrs’ Mirror. As Luyken deliberates over his mediums, his techniques, the emotions he wishes to portray, and in the end, his final product, we are led into Klassen’s views on martyrs, as well as her struggle to comprehend this extreme act of faith.

The first phrase of this poem,“Martyrdom like radiance of a clear night sky/can leave you baffled,” sets the tone for this piece ripe with taunting contradictions and perplexing inquiries. After this opening statement, we are taken immediately into the thought process of Luyken in his attempts to create the most honest and accurate depiction of a burning at the stake. Again we are asked to ponder the theme of the incomprehensible nature of this act; even this experienced artist and writer, who has put to canvas and page some of life’s greatest events, cannot find the brushstrokes that would do a martyr’s death justice, in all its beautifully twisted mind-boggling impressiveness. The idea of dying for one’s faith seems almost ludicrous to us, being totally removed from any sort of context of martyrdom as we are -- it is so distant from our understanding and so outside of our experience. We have such freedoms that we have become utterly complacent in our own commitments, thus, such a shocking act seems desperately absurd. Even as a talented artist, Luyken is stumped by the whole idea and must move to another medium to find the proper tools to accurately represent such an experience - in copper etching he finds this perfect option (third stanza).

Klassen’s use of language in the second and third stanzas to portray Luyken as he delves into this new medium is representative of her feelings towards martyrdom -- “delicate brush strokes” cannot capture the intensity, so he must move on to something more searing. Instead he must make his art by “dribbling acid on copper plate,” which is such a paradoxically burning yet cold image in comparison to his habitually delicate creative tendencies. Such an horrific act needs a different medium than that which is used to paint the “pale tones” of morning and evening, or to compose the words he crafted into love songs. This burning at the stake calls for the dangerous severity of a “needle,” which he chose after contemplating the violently wrenching imagery of “this/triumphant dying: a song torn from between charred lips/the way a sword’s torn from the heart.”  It is through this phrase found in stanza two that Klassen shows us Luyken’s revelation of the need for a harsher, more brittle and austere medium to share the horrors of such a death.

In stanza three the poem begins to explore the complexities and paradoxes of such a death by drawing various comparisons. It is almost a game of tug of war for the artist as he attempts to determine that balance between the juxtaposed emotions he wants to bring forth in his creation. It speaks of him being pleased with the way he etches each of these aspects into being -- it is as if he is almost relieved because he has finally taken a step towards dismantling his unsettledness as he begins to define somewhat this concept that is so huge and non-categorical and frightening in that it is outside human comprehension. Klassen continues on to define faith as she places this word poignantly in the physical centre of her poem (stanza four). Here we seem to have a searching for motives or driving forces in a quest for a greater understanding of this seemingly ridiculous self-sacrifice.

All of this brings Klassen to a culminating reflection on the joy and absurdity found intermingling in faith, life and death. The poem begins with aspects of beauty and creation (in art as well as the natural world), moves into sorrow, and to death at the end -- but then there is this final last reach for God, illustrating that last grasp for continuance and hope found in the afterlife. As she describes the physical body of the martyr in the fourth stanza, she speaks of its bondage and uses vocabulary that cuts and grates, but couples this with images of freedom: “bones stripped clean” have a certain ring of purity to them, as they hint at the move closer to death and therefore the purity of the new life to come.  The images of the taunters are comparable to the crowds that taunted Jesus on the cross, as are the reaching hands -- the angry fists of the crowd reached out to Jesus, the soldiers reached out greedily to tear his clothes and stab his side, and his family and friends reached out, stretching longing hands to their dying loved one.

In the final stanza, where enjambment is used especially well for emphasis, Klassen speaks of the “greedy flames” in a negative tone as she refers to the “doomed” martyr, but with a certain aspect of hope as she speaks of the “impatient soul” soon to be reunited with God. It is as if the poet, as she brings the poem full circle, even after all of her labourious efforts to discern what dying for one’s faith is all about, cannot decide how to view this act -- is it a powerful statement of faith and commitment, the ultimate in selfless witnessing and example-setting? Or is it a selfish, unsacrificial ploy to speed the journey to God’s side and the bliss of the heavenly realm? As she relates this event to Jesus’ crucifixion, what is she saying of Christ’s death and the idea of salvation? We are never really presented with a conclusion, and the analogy of the title itself can illustrate to us that, as we can each use our own media to create and to interpret the world around us in art, so it is with faith -- definitions and doctrines vary from person to person as we each attempt to create our own most accurate interpretation of all that we experience, and thus, there are no certain answers.