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‘Nunc!’, which is being published by Constable, is a short, affectionate novel about the Prophet Simeon. Its chapters are lifted by cartoons from Jeremy Leasor.
For those of you who have not been to church for a while Simeon is the old chap in St Luke’s Gospel who waits and waits at the temple in Jerusalem on the instructions of an angel. The infant Jesus is brought to the temple by Joseph and Mary. Simeon takes the baby into his arms and breaks into the words of what we now call the Nunc Dimittis: ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.’ Having see Christ, Simeon knows he can die content. He is the first fatalist of the Christian age.
Jerusalem is ruled by rosemary-scented King Herod. By the bougainvillea in Deuteronomy Square, Reuben’s tea stall keeps customers sweet with lemon koloochehs. Onesimus the green-grocer piles his polished pears and pineapples in ziggurats, blind harpist Tabitha captivates bachelor Pharisees, Roman sentries doze; and the widower Simeon, beset by gout and befriended by a dog called Shlomo, watches the passing promenade. By day he dodges bossy superintendent Kedar. By starlit night he contemplates lost loves and the visits of a bad-tempered angel.
Quentin Letts’s delightful tales bring 1st century Jerusalem to quirky life and show how the prophet Simeon, whose Nunc Dimittis became one of the great canticles of Christendom, can help an ailing 21st century Englishman come to terms with his fate.Â
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