Salvation from Time and Oblivion

In Living with a Visionary John Matthias tells a terrible story but makes of it an accomplished work of art. The book, which combines poems and prose, concerns his wife of fifty years, Diana, and her descent over some eight years into a hallucinatory state caused by Parkinson’s disease, as well as her eventual death from this, combined with Covid. In this situation husband and wife become locked together in an increasingly isolated and frightening situation. Matthias does all he can to help his wife, but together they become virtually imprisoned in their home, where they are reduced to a poor diet. The experience eventually affects Matthias’s
balance of mind and brings him close to death.

The bare bones of the story hardly suggest what Living with a Visionary is: a beautiful love story, and a poetic masterpiece. It is divided into three sections: ‘Three Poems’, ‘Living with a Visionary’ and ‘Some of Her Things’, and has a short ‘Author’s Note’ and an informative ‘Afterword’ by Igor Webb. The primary focus of the work is on Diana, a beautiful, talented English woman, widely admired by students and staff at Notre Dame University where she works as an art historian, and deeply loved by her husband. This focus is, it seems to me, a feature of great elegies: the subject mourned is placed centre stage, and illuminated in all his or her otherness. This salvation of the beloved person from time and oblivion is the aim the poet serves, even when closely involved ...