We all have our favourite Christmas songs. Most of these we like through sheer tradition – songs like Slade’s Merry Christmas Everybody (1973) or Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime (1979) are just as part of the Christmas landscape, ingrained by sheer repetition, as Christmas trees and Father Christmas. I have delved into Spotify to explore Christmas songs from way back, many of which you no longer hear on the radio but which nonetheless are often very enjoyable – check out Kay Starr’s (Everybody’s Waitin’ for) The Man with the Bag (1950) or Mitch Miller’s Must Be Santa (1960) to name just two worthy old classics (I’m also a fan of Bob Dylan’s cover of the latter).
However, the Christmas song that resonates the most with me remains Greg Lake’s glorious debut solo single in 1975, I Believe in Father Christmas. It manages to encapsulate the required Christmas magic whilst remaining a great piece of music in its own right. Greg Lake wrote the song initially with a view to protesting at the commercialisaton of Christmas, but the lyrics provided by King Crimson co-founder Pete Sinfield brought it back on track as a picture-postcard Christmas song (albeit with a theme of lost innocence as the narrator “saw through the disguise” and seems a bit disgruntled about broken promises regarding snow and peace on Earth, but never mind).
The instrumental melody between the verses comes from the “Troika” portion of Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite, written for the 1934 Soviet film of the same name, and provides a very Christmassy, sleighbell-heavy motif. This was added at the suggestion of Greg’s bandmate from ELP, Keith Emerson, who was no stranger to incorporating themes and motifs from classical music. An orchestra and choir were added too, contributing to an ebullient musical finale. The song was recorded at Abbey Road studios, and the video was shot on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, and in the West Bank.
The song was released in November 1975 and got to number two in the UK singles chart, held off the number one slot by a certain Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Lake commented: “I got beaten by one of the greatest records ever made. I would’ve been pissed off if I’d been beaten by Cliff (Richard).”
I don’t get out on boats very often, admittedly, but there is a very appealing aesthetic, isn’t there, of being on a boat in a slow-flowing river in the middle of summer? Think of punting down the river Cam, with the hum of insects in the hot air, a straw boater shielding your eyes from the sun, and a hamper full of posh grub and champers (and some friend doing the actual punting). I’m thinking Brideshead Revisited, though it does occurs that that would have been the river Churwell, it being based in Oxford, and anyway, the nearest I’ve got to that in recent years is hiring a rowing boat for half an hour on the river Nidd at Knaresborough.
And then there’s Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K Jerome, perhaps the single most representative novel to treat the general theme of messing about in boats. Published in 1889, the comic novel describes a two-week boating holiday on the Thames, from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back again. The three men consist of the narrator “J” and his two friends George and Harris, along with a fox terrier named Montmorency (and plenty of tea, whisky, and pipe tobacco). Their voyage is punctuated by stop-offs at boarding houses and pubs and historical sites, and the three men argue and squabble throughout the trip, alternating between comic riffs and bants, anecdotes, and musings about timeworn truths.
The book actually started out with the intent to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, inspired by a real-life boating holiday Jerome had spent with his wife on a Thames skiff. However, humorous elements began to take over (Jerome had already cut his teeth in the genre of humorous writing with his 1886 essay collection, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow) and he soon abandoned the travel guide idea in favour of the comic novel. He swapped out his wife for two real-life friends, George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel (called Harris in the book), who evidently offered more by way of comic resource than poor old Mrs Jerome (One Man and his Wife in a Boat perhaps doesn’t quite cut it)!
Three Men in a Boat, Penguin 1985
The book was a roaring success, and although his subsequent writings never quite hit those heights (his 1900 sequel about a cycling tour in Germany titled Three Men on the Bummel was only moderately successful), his humour lives on to this day in Three Men in a Boat which remains widely read and is as fresh and witty as the day it was written.
It probably comes as no surprise to learn that many of the comedy set pieces concern victuals; here’s an excerpt in which the gastronomically incompetent men try to puddle together an Irish stew from the leftovers in their hamper:
George gathered wood and made a fire, and Harris and I started to peel the potatoes. I should never have thought that peeling potatoes was such an undertaking. The job turned out to be the biggest thing of its kind that I had ever been in. We began cheerfully, one might almost say skittishly, but our light-heartedness was gone by the time the first potato was finished. The more we peeled, the more peel there seemed to be left on; by the time we had got all the peel off and all the eyes out, there was no potato left—at least none worth speaking of. George came and had a look at it—it was about the size of a pea-nut. He said: “Oh, that won’t do! You’re wasting them. You must scrape them.” So we scraped them, and that was harder work than peeling. They are such an extraordinary shape, potatoes—all bumps and warts and hollows. We worked steadily for five-and-twenty minutes, and did four potatoes. Then we struck. We said we should require the rest of the evening for scraping ourselves. I never saw such a thing as potato-scraping for making a fellow in a mess. It seemed difficult to believe that the potato-scrapings in which Harris and I stood, half smothered, could have come off four potatoes. It shows you what can be done with economy and care. George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an Irish stew, so we washed half-a-dozen or so more, and put them in without peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half a peck of peas. George stirred it all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to spare, so we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends and the remnants, and added them to the stew. There were half a pork pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in. Then George found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot. He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and put those in. George said they would thicken the gravy. I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water-rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say. We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not. Harris said that he thought it would be all right, mixed up with the other things, and that every little helped; but George stood up for precedent. He said he had never heard of water-rats in Irish stew, and he would rather be on the safe side, and not try experiments.
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) is perhaps not a widely known name outside of the States, but he was one of the greats of middle 20th century American art. His oeuvre was American Regionalism, the realist art movement that depicted scenes from the rural, small-town America of the Midwest. Land and people, painted by an artist with an appreciation for nature and the ability to fire the imagination. He was born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, into an established art-oriented family, his father being the celebrated artist and illustrator N C Wyeth. Andrew was brought up on the art of Winslow Homer, the poetry of Robert Frost and the writings of Henry David Thoreau, and was thus inspired intellectually as well as artistically.
One of Wyeth’s best-known works is his tempera painting Christina’s World, which is held in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; it was painted in 1948, when he was 31 years old. The work depicts his neighbour, Christina Olson, sprawled on a dry field facing her house in the distance, in Cushing, Maine. Christina had a degenerative muscular disorder that rendered her unable to walk, and she spent most of her time at home. She was firmly against using a wheelchair and so would crawl everywhere, and Wyeth was inspired to create the painting when he saw her crawling across the field.
Christina’s World
Christina’s World was first exhibited at the Macbeth Gallery in Manhattan in 1948. It received little attention from critics at the time, but Alfred Barr, the founding director of the MoMA, bought the painting for $1,800 and it gradually grew in popularity to the point that today, it is considered an icon of American art. The Olson house itself has been preserved and renovated to match its appearance in Christina’s World, and because of Wyeth’s profile, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in June 2011.
Philistines might say that they “don’t get” poetry because it’s dressed up in flowery language and they can’t understand it. If the objective is to tell a story or communicate a message, they wonder, why dress it up in poetic language so that the meaning is obscured and only serves to create work for the reader to tease out the meaning? Well, I don’t know if such radical philistines actually exist, but I do know that the beauty of poetry is part and parcel of its ability to challenge and inspire the imagination. Neuroscience-y types will tell you that poetic language bypasses the rational left hemisphere and enters the imaginal realm of the right brain, where metaphorical connections can be made and ideas fused.
Sometimes, though, the poet doesn’t even need to bamboozle us with fancy language – he can literally omit key information from the narrative altogether. One such poem that springs to mind is Walter de la Mare’s The Listeners which relies entirely on the reader’s imagination. The Listeners is one of de la Mare’s most famous poems and certainly one of his most atmospheric. Its theme is the nocturnal encounter between an unnamed “Traveller” and a house inhabited by mysterious “Listeners”. The poem is deliberate in its posing of questions without providing any answers; it’s for the reader to fill in the gaps or, more likely, simply bask in the mystery.
The key characters — the Traveller, the Listeners, and the mysterious “Them” for whom the Traveller has a message — are all unnamed and sparsely described. We know nothing about this Traveller (other than that his eyes are ‘grey’, a nondescript colour that is presumably quite deliberate) nor why he has come knocking on the door of this house. Who are the Listeners, to whom the Traveller declares that he has kept his “word”? We do not know what “word” he is keeping, nor to whom he is keeping it.
But who cares? De la Mare makes great use of sound imagery in this poem, creating a semantic field of sound to intensify the sense of atmosphere. We can imagine how these noises would cut into the silence of a forest by moonlight. The rap on the door, the flutter of the disturbed bird, the words that go echoing through the house, the horse chomping on the forest floor, and when he finally goes off into the darkness, there is the sound of “iron on stone” before the “silence surged softly backward”. The noises in the scene are almost an act of violence upon it.
By the poem’s end, we still don’t know what promise is being kept on this night, nor who the people involved are, but, at the very least, we’re intrigued…marvellous stuff!
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone.
Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was a German painter and printmaker and a leading light of the Northern Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg to a successful goldsmith, he lived in the same street where his godfather Anton Koberger was turning Gutenberg’s printing press into a huge commercial enterprise and publishing the famous Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). Albrecht learnt the basics of goldsmithing and drawing under his father and his precocious skills in the latter led him to undergo an apprenticeship under printmaker Michael Wolgemut in which he learnt the art of creating woodcuts for books. After his Wanderjahre – essentially gap years – in which he travelled to study under various masters, he set up a workshop and began to establish a reputation for his high-quality woodcut prints.
Dürer’s woodprints were mainly religious in nature, often in sets such as his sixteen designs for the Apocalypse, the twelve scenes of the Passion, a series of eleven on the Holy Family and Saints, and twenty woodcuts on the Life of the Virgin. He was also particularly renowned for his three Meisterstiche, master prints that are often grouped together because of their perceived quality, namely Knight, Death and the Devil (1513), Saint Jerome in his Study (1514), and Melencolia I (1514). He also made secular woodcuts, such as his famous Rhinoceros (1515), which he never actually saw but created his print using an anonymous written description and brief sketch of an Indian rhinoceros brought to Lisbon in 1515.
However, today we focus on his panel painting in oil, Self-Portrait (or Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight), held today in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Painted early in 1500, just before his 29th birthday, Self-Portrait is the last – and most personal and iconic – of his three painted self-portraits. It is remarkable for its directness – does it remind you of anyone? Yes, its resemblance to many earlier representations of Christ has not gone unnoticed: there are clear similarities with the conventions of religious painting, including its symmetry and dark tones, and full-frontal confrontation with the viewer. He even raises his hands to the middle of his chest as if in the act of blessing.
If that is the case, isn’t that blasphemy? Sounds somewhat dangerous, no? Perhaps we’re projecting too much intolerance onto the fifteenth (well, newly-sixteenth) century, or perhaps Dürer’s motivation was simply a way to (literally) imitate Christ, which could be seen as a good thing. Art historian Joseph Koerner interprets it squarely as a pioneering challenge to the norms of self-portraiture, albeit putting it in that particularly verbose way only art historians can do:
“By transferring the attributes of imagistic authority and quasi-magical power once associated with the true and sacred image of God to the novel subject of self-portraiture, Dürer legitimates his radically new notion of art, one based on the irreducible relation between the self and the work or art”.
Last week’s University Challenge asked which literary work opens with these lines: “We are at rest five miles behind the front. Yesterday we were relieved, and now our bellies are full of bully beef and beans”. Like a shot, I metaphorically spat out my cornflakes in a garbled attempt to get my answer out before the brainiacs on the quiz show – “err, err, I know this…orl-quiet-onza-western-front…”! I had recognised the line due to having only just read the book, giving me one of those serendipitously rare advantages in TV’s toughest quiz.
All Quiet on the Western Front (in the original German, Im Westen nichts Neues, literally “In the West, nothing new”) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Erich Maria Remarque, drawn from his experiences as a German veteran of World War I. The book is a first-person, present-tense portrayal of life in the German trenches in the Great War, a story of extreme physical and mental trauma, punctuated by boredom and ennui. The narrator, Paul, has come to the trenches straight from school – reminding us of the young age of these lads – and he is accompanied by several classmates, all spurred on by their teacher to enlist and none of whom will return home.
It is rightly considered to be one of the greatest war novels of all time, and it comes as no surprise to learn that it was one of the books banned and burned by Nazi Germany in the 1930s (who weren’t keen on the subversive “war is hell and really isn’t worth it” tone of the book). It has been translated to the big screen on three occasions, most recently, – and successfully – by Edward Berger’s 2022 adaptation, which won four Academy Awards.
When the novel isn’t focused on the nightmare of trench warfare, we learn of life during the “quiet” times in between action on the front line, marked in random order by boredom, black humour, camaraderie, and obsession with finding food to supplement their meagre rations. The excerpt I have chosen below describes one such illicit mission by Paul and his mate Kat to steal a goose from regimental headquarters. This theme of hard-won sustenance, which probably only those who have experienced genuine hunger can truly appreciate, is exquisitely described. It has an air of comedy caper about it, but ends with the sublime satisfaction of satiety, a rare moment of calm before the inevitable return to reality.
Kat hoists me up. I rest my foot in his hands and climb over the wall.
Kat keeps watch below.
I wait a few moments to accustom my eyes to the darkness. Then I recognise the shed. Softly I steal across, lift the peg, pull it out and open the door.
I distinguish two white patches. Two geese, that’s bad: if I grab one the other will cackle. Well, both of them–if I’m quick, it can be done.
I make a jump. I catch hold of one and the next instant the second. Like a madman I bash their heads against the wall to stun them. But I haven’t quite enough weight. The beasts cackle and strike out with their feet and wings. I fight desperately, but Lord! what a kick a goose has! They struggle and I stagger about. In the dark these white patches are terrifying. My arms have grown wings and I’m almost afraid of going up into the sky, as though I held a couple of captive balloons in my fists.
Then the row begins; one of them gets his breath and goes off like an alarm clock. Before I can do anything, something comes in from outside; I feel a blow, lie outstretched on the floor, and hear awful growls. A dog. I steal a glance to the side, he makes a snap at my throat. I lie still and tuck my chin into my collar.
It’s a bulldog. After an eternity he withdraws his head and sits down beside me. But if I make the least movement he growls. I consider. The only thing to do is to get hold of my small revolver, and that too before anyone arrives. Inch by inch I move my hand toward it.
I have the feeling that it lasts an hour. The slightest movement and then an awful growl; I lie still, then try again. When at last I have the revolver my hand starts to tremble. I press it against the ground and say over to myself: Jerk the revolver up, fire before he has a chance to grab, and then jump up.
Slowly I take a deep breath and become calmer. Then I hold my breath, whip up the revolver, it cracks, the dog leaps howling to one side, I make for the door of the shed and fall head over heels over one of the scuttering geese.
At full speed I seize it again, and with a swing toss it over the wall and clamber up. No sooner am I on top than the dog is up again as lively as ever and springs at me. Quickly I let myself drop. Ten paces away stands Kat with the goose under his arm. As soon as he sees me we run.
At last we can take a breather. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that in a moment. We intend to roast it at once so that nobody will be any wiser. I fetch a dixie and wood from the hut and we crawl into a small deserted lean-to which we use for such purposes. The single window space is heavily curtained. There is a sort of hearth, an iron plate set on some bricks. We kindle a fire.
Kat plucks and cleans the goose. We put the feathers carefully to one side. We intend to make two cushions out of them with the inscription: “Sleep soft under shell-fire.” The sound of the gunfire from the front penetrates into our refuge. The glow of the fire lights up our faces, shadows dance on the wall. Sometimes a heavy crash and the lean-to shivers. Aeroplane bombs. Once we hear a stifled cry. A hut must have been hit.
Aeroplanes drone; the tack-tack of machine guns breaks out. But no light that could be observed shows from us. We sit opposite one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby coats, cooking a goose in the middle of the night. We don’t talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have.
We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? formerly we should not have had a single thought in common–now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so intimate that we do not even speak.
It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young and fat. So we take turns. One bastes it while the other lies down and sleeps. A grand smell gradually fills the hut.
Then he says: “It’s done.”
“Yes, Kat.”
I stir myself. In the middle of the room shines the brown goose. We take out our collapsible forks and our pocket-knives and each cuts off a leg. With it we have army bread dipped in gravy. We eat slowly and with gusto.
“How does it taste, Kat?”
“Good! And yours?”
“Good, Kat.”
We are brothers and press on one another the choicest pieces. Afterwards I smoke a cigarette and Kat a cigar. There is still a lot left.
Autumn is in the air, a sign that is welcomed in my household, and one which triggers a swapping out of cushions and candles for ones befitting the season. Autumnal colours and aromas abound. My weekend walk was cooler and cloudier but the hedgerows were still full of late-fruiting blackberries, and the walk brought to mind that famous opening line of John Keats’ poem On Autumn, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Let’s talk about Keats…
Along with Shelley and Byron, Keats is the classic exemplar of the archetypal Romantic poet, the fay, tortured genius. In Keats’ case, he was also consumptive and short-lived, dying at 25 and thus – a bit like the 27 club of the modern era – being conferred everlasting legendary status. He trained to be a doctor and worked at Guy’s Hospital in London, but he had long resolved to become a poet and so spent more and more time devoted to the study of literature and the penning of lines of poetry.
Although he wrote epics, sonnets and elegies, Keats’ most famous and well-regarded poems were his odes, written in quick succession during an extraordinary spell of creativity in 1819, at his friend Charles Armitage Brown’s house, Wentworth Place on Hampstead Heath. He wrote Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Indolence, Ode on Melancholy, Ode to a Nightingale, and Ode to Psyche during the spring, and finally, despite worsening health and looming financial woes, To Autumn in September. This was to be his last major work before tuberculosis brought the curtain down on his career.
After his stay with Brown, Keats moved to Italy, seeking a more salubrious climate to aid in his recovery, but it wasn’t to be. I have visited the small room in the house by the Spanish Steps in Rome, in which Keats spent his last days. He died on the 23rd February 1821, and is buried in the city’s Protestant cemetery (as is his good friend Shelley).
Keats’ House, by the Spanish Steps, Rome
He was convinced that he had made no mark in his lifetime and in February 1820, when he knew that he was dying, he wrote: “I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov’d the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember’d”. Little did he know that he would indeed be remembered to posterity, more perhaps than he could ever have imagined – people like me, after all, are still writing about him over two hundred years later!
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Classics night at Cottage Road cinema is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving! Just as the dust settles on my recent blog about Bad Day at Black Rock, this month’s feature compelled me to write about another classic from the fifties, Sidney Lumet’s legal drama 12 Angry Men (1957). The film was Sidney Lumet’s directorial debut, so not a bad start given that it’s regarded by many as one of the greatest films of all time and that he was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards (he would go on to be nominated for three other films, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), the satirical drama Network (1976) and the legal thriller The Verdict (1982)).
12 Angry Men was adapted from a 1954 teleplay of the same name by Reginald Rose and tells the story of a jury of twelve men as they deliberate over whether the teenager that they have just seen charged with the murder of his father should be convicted or acquitted on the basis of reasonable doubt. As they troop into the jurors’ room it soon becomes clear that they all regard the case as open-and-shut: the accused is clearly guilty. They anticipate a quick unanimous agreement to a ‘guilty’ verdict after which they can return to their lives. However, when they conduct a preliminary tally of the jurors’ positions and the ‘guilty’ votes pile in, they are somewhat irritated to find that the twelfth man, played brilliantly by Henry Fonda, cannot in good conscience vote guilty. What ensues is a tour de force of psychodrama as every man is forced to question his morals, values and assumptions.
Almost the entire film is shot in the jurors’ room in which they are ensconced. It’s a hot summer’s night, the heat is sweat-inducing, the fan isn’t working, and most of the chaps are smoking, and it all adds to the claustrophobic, stifling tension of the scene. Fonda’s character, Juror 8, begins to calmly dismantle the assumptions that his co-jurors have so readily accepted. He outlines alternative feasible scenarios to the ones pressed by the prosecution and remains adamant that reasonable doubt exists. His arguments don’t at first find favour, but gradually, one by one, the other jurors come around to his point of view.
There’s some great acting talent on display here, with terrific performances from Martin Balsam, Ed Begley, Jack Klugman, Jack Warden, and Lee J Cobb. The dialogue is electric and the cinematography is in the realist style courtesy of Boris Kaufman who had recently won an Academy Award for On The Waterfront. The camera work contributes to the claustrophobia by gradually increasing the focal length as the film progresses, going from above eye-level, wide-angle lens at the beginning to lower angle, telephoto lens close-ups at the end.
Let’s watch juror 3, the hot-tempered and most passionate advocate of a ‘guilty verdict’, played mesmerizingly by Lee J Cobb, as his defiance as last man standing finally crumbles.
For some years now I have been interested in the Shakespeare authorship question: did the man from Stratford really pen the plays and poems attributed to him, or was he just a front for some other true genius? Anti-Stratfordians (those of the latter persuasion) point out that the sheer breadth of education, knowledge, experience and erudition displayed in the works of Shakespeare is simply incompatible with a man born to illiterate parents, raised in an unremarkable provincial town and educated (maybe) at his local grammar school. Evidence exists to show that the Shakespeare of Stratford engaged in grain-dealing, money-lending, and acting, and was a shareholder in an acting company…but nothing that shows he was an actual writer.
In a rigorous piece of research, Diana Price compared the extant documentary evidence of various kinds with two dozen other big-name Elizabethan poets and playwrights. She looked at the literary paper trails of the likes of Edmund Spencer, Christopher Marlowe, Robert Green and Thomas Nashe and found plenty of evidence of correspondences about literary matters, having patrons, having extant manuscripts, notice at death etc, but found precious little evidence in favour of the man from Stratford; look at the empty final column here (click to enlarge):
Elizabethan literary paper trail summary
It certainly seems strange that no-one seemed to notice when Shakespeare died – where was the fanfare? Some might point to Ben Johnson as one who explicitly lauded Shakespeare in his encomium To the memory of my Beloved the Author, Mr William Shakespeare, in his preface to the First Folio (the common name for the collection of 36 Shakespeare plays published in 1623), but this was published seven years after Shakespeare’s death. Plenty of standalone editions of the plays, with his name emblazoned on the cover, existed prior to his death, so why the radio silence?
The scholar Alexander Waugh, a leading Oxfordian (those advocating for Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford as the true author), has a field day with this poem, reminding us that Ben Johnson was known by contemporaries for his double meanings, classical allusions and use of numbers to reveal hidden meanings to the learned few. Waugh argues that Ben Johnson, along with all the other dramatists of the age, was “in the know” about the true identity of the writer of the Shakespeare plays, and he peppered his encomium with clues pointing to Edward de Vere.
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
There is no room in this blog to explore that argument, as compelling as it is, so instead let’s just take the content on its prima facie meaning. It is, after all, in praise of the greatest dramatist of all time, responsible for all those works of genius, and that praise is surely justified whoever that man was!
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name, Am I thus ample to thy book and fame; While I confess thy writings to be such As neither man nor muse can praise too much; ‘Tis true, and all men’s suffrage. But these ways Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise; For seeliest ignorance on these may light, Which, when it sounds at best, but echoes right; Or blind affection, which doth ne’er advance The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance; Or crafty malice might pretend this praise, And think to ruin, where it seem’d to raise. These are, as some infamous bawd or whore Should praise a matron; what could hurt her more? But thou art proof against them, and indeed, Above th’ ill fortune of them, or the need. I therefore will begin. Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give. That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses, I mean with great, but disproportion’d Muses, For if I thought my judgment were of years, I should commit thee surely with thy peers, And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, Or sporting Kyd, or Marlowe’s mighty line. And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek, From thence to honour thee, I would not seek For names; but call forth thund’ring Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles to us; Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead, To life again, to hear thy buskin tread, And shake a stage; or, when thy socks were on, Leave thee alone for the comparison Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. Tri’umph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age but for all time! And all the Muses still were in their prime, When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm Our ears, or like a Mercury to charm! Nature herself was proud of his designs And joy’d to wear the dressing of his lines, Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. The merry Greek, tart Aristophanes, Neat Terence, witty Plautus, now not please, But antiquated and deserted lie, As they were not of Nature’s family. Yet must I not give Nature all: thy art, My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. For though the poet’s matter nature be, His art doth give the fashion; and, that he Who casts to write a living line, must sweat, (Such as thine are) and strike the second heat Upon the Muses’ anvil; turn the same (And himself with it) that he thinks to frame, Or, for the laurel, he may gain a scorn; For a good poet’s made, as well as born; And such wert thou. Look how the father’s face Lives in his issue, even so the race Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines In his well-turned, and true-filed lines; In each of which he seems to shake a lance, As brandish’d at the eyes of ignorance. Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were To see thee in our waters yet appear, And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James! But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere Advanc’d, and made a constellation there! Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage Or influence, chide or cheer the drooping stage; Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourn’d like night, And despairs day, but for thy volume’s light.
Back in 2003, whilst on a cruise of the Black Sea, we dined each night with an elderly couple, Evan and Vivien Davies, who turned out to be charming and interesting company. They were clearly well-connected and rather posh, and Evan in particular had lived what sounded like a pretty adventurous life back in the day: British Commando during the war; member of Special Branch’s anti-terrorist unit, responsible for protecting Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin (1945-50); and Assistant Superintendent of Police, British Malaya (1950-52). We got on tremendously well despite an age difference of some four decades and I’ll never forget Evan, responding to being gently nudged by Vivien to calm down at one point, stating to the table: “I do apologise – I do tend to get giddy when in good company”! To cap it all, Vivien mentioned that she had recently attended the funeral of Sir Wilfred Thesiger…
Wilfred Thesiger! I knew that name…one of the greats of British exploration, perhaps the last great British explorer. Between 1945 and 1950 Thesiger criss-crossed the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula, with the help of the Bedu people with whom he acquired a lifelong bond, and with whom he endured hardships and real-and-present dangers on an almost daily basis. Carrying basic supplies and water stored in goatskins (to be refilled at waterholes perhaps hundreds of miles distant), Thesiger set out with his Bedu companions on camelback across hundreds of miles of arid, sun-bleached dunes and gravel plains. In certain areas where there were tribal tensions and they could be violently robbed of their camels, they had to be constantly on their guard and prepared to defend themselves, whilst in other areas Thesiger had to be passed off as a fellow Arab otherwise he could easily have been shot for being an infidel Christian.
Pestered by a friend to write about his experiences, he eventually wrote Arabian Sands, which was published in 1959 and is now considered a classic of travel literature. I have just got round to reading it and indeed it is a remarkable memoir. The insights into the lives of the Bedu are profound, and I was certainly taken with a couple of the characters in particular – bin Kalima and bin Ghabaisha – who became hard and fast friends with the man they called Umbarak. This paragraph sums up the sense of satisfaction that Thesiger derived from his experiences:
In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilisation; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship that was inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction that comes with hardship and the pleasure which springs from abstinence: the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.
This also informs the sense of loss that Thesiger expresses elsewhere when he bemoans the inevitable erosion of traditional Bedouin ways by the march of modernity and the large-scale development beginning to be brought to the region by the American oil companies. How he would have been astonished and dismayed by modern-day Dubai and Abu Dhabi!
Wilfred ThesigerArabian Sands book cover
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