Literature

J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (1945)

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A whole new generation of kids studying GCSE English are discovering J B Priestley’s 1945 play, An Inspector Calls. It seems to be everywhere at the moment: as well as being on the syllabus in schools, the National Theatre’s production of the play was doing the rounds again nationally when the lockdown hit. Sadly, I just missed out on that, having seen the poster too late, but I did find a DVD of the 1954 film for a quid in a charity shop, and snapped it up.

You may well be familiar with the story: set in 1912 in a well-to-do northern Midlands household, in a society divided by class distinction, we find the Birling family assembled in celebration of their daughter Sheila’s engagement to Gerald Croft. The patriarch, Arthur Birling, is feeling pleased with himself, as his business is doing well and he is on an upward social trajectory, improved even more by the social standing of the Croft family into which Sheila is marrying. Their evening, however, is interrupted by the arrival of Inspector Goole (“Poole” in the film version).

The Inspector, played masterfully by Alistair Sim in the 1954 film, has some questions for all the members of the family and Gerald Croft, in turn, concerning a girl who has just committed suicide in the grisly manner of drinking bleach, a sign of her desperate mental state. It becomes apparent that each person has had some involvement with this poor girl, albeit in a variety of different circumstances, and each has played some part in her descent and degradation. The unfolding of the storyline is subtle and we the audience are gradually drawn in as details are revealed and it dawns on us that everyone present has some connection.

Tellingly, the characters react differently to Inspector Goole’s revelations. The older ones refuse to accept their responsibility; the younger ones – Sheila in particular – approach an epiphany. Priestley lays bare the self-importance of the older generation of the Birlings without flinching. It is a brilliant deconstruction of the human condition.

Here is Alistair Sim (better known perhaps for his cross-dressing comedy performances in the St Trinian’s movies) in a characteristically compelling scene from the film.

J B Priestley
Music

The Kinks’ Autumn Almanac (1967)

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When I look back at this blog’s coverage of influential British rock bands of the sixties, I see that the “big three” of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who have all had their moment in the spotlight. There’s another band of the time, though, that arguably deserves to be counted in a “big four” and that is the band formed in Muswell Hill in 1964 by Ray and Dave Davies, namely The Kinks.

Unlike the aforementioned bands who unarguably achieved the status of international legends of rock, the Kinks never fully capitalised on their opportunities and talents. For example, although the band emerged during the great British rhythm and blues and Merseybeat scenes and joined those bands spearheading the so-called British Invasion of the United States, the constant fighting between the Davies brothers (a pop-cultural forerunner of the Gallagher brothers, if ever there was one) led to a touring ban in 1965.

As well as the volatile relationship between the brothers, the song-writing style of Ray Davies sometimes took the band away from the expected commercial music their contemporaries were striving for. He simply had too much wit and intelligence and eclecticism, drawing on British music hall, folk and country music to inform some of his output. Take 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society album: released the same week as the Beatles’ White album, it contained a collection of character studies and meditations on a disappearing English way of life, all brilliantly observed. Sadly, in a commercial world dominated by psychedelia and effects pedals and the Summer of Love, The Kinks had turned down the distortion on Dave’s guitar, and the album sunk without a trace (despite it later becoming established critically as an all-time classic).

Despite such occasional commercial failures, the band remain one of the most influential bands of all time, and you only have to look at the songs to know why. You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night basically introduced the idea of the three-chord riff; and did much to turn rock ‘n’ roll into rock. Gloriously melodic, storytelling songs abound: Sunny Afternoon, Waterloo Sunset, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, David Watts, Come Dancing, Lola. A host of future pop stars cited their influence and held them in high esteem (just ask Damon Albarn or Paul Weller).

A personal favourite of mine is Autumn Almanac, a charming vignette of Baroque pop released in 1967; here’s a Top of the Pops appearance to appreciate, and the lyrics below to remind us of just how English-pastoral-romantic Ray Davies could get.

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar
When the dawn begins to crack, it’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yellow
So I sweep them in my sack, yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

Friday evenings, people get together
Hiding from the weather, tea and toasted
Buttered currant buns, can’t compensate
For lack of sun because the summer’s all gone

La la la la, oh my poor rheumatic back
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

I like my football on a Saturday
Roast beef on Sundays, all right
I go to Blackpool for my holidays
Sit in the open sunlight

This is my street and I’m never gonna to leave it
And I’m always gonna to stay here if I live to be ninety-nine
‘Cause all the people I meet, seem to come from my street
And I can’t get away because it’s calling me, come on home
Hear it calling me, come on home

La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa

The Kinks
Poetry

Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken (1916)

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One positive consequence of the lockdown has been, for me and surely for many others, the re-discovery of the benefits of walking the trails near one’s home. Virtually every day throughout this period I have strode out and delved into the woods, walking wherever the mood takes me and discovering that the myriad of criss-crossing trails allow for a near-infinite choice of different routes to take. Coupled with the coincident good weather and the seasonal blooming of the bluebells, these jaunts have been a source of great pleasure.

Occasionally, I make out a quite faint trail, perhaps once used but for some reason now largely untrodden and overgrown, and I take it, putting me in mind of that famous poem The Road Not Taken by the American Robert Frost, in which he says:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by

This idea of “The Road Not Taken” has taken off in the public imagination and you can find its key lines on mugs, fridge magnets and in greeting cards, and it has an Eat-Pray-Love-style vibe about it. Of course, the first interpretation a reader is likely to leap to, reading the lines above, is one of individualism and self-assertion (“I don’t go with the mainstream, me”), but actually, when you read the poem, it’s not quite that simple: the two ways “equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black” and “the passing there / Had worn them really about the same”, which is to say, they’re interchangeable. So it’s not really about well-trodden versus untrodden, or going with or against the crowd; it’s a subtler commentary about random choices, about freewill versus determinism. Like in the movie Sliding Doors, some split-second, this-way-or-that-way choices are bound to beget markedly different consequences, but you can never know beforehand which is right. Such is life.

Whatever its interpretation, its genesis actually sprung from a surprisingly literal source. Frost spent the years 1912-1915 in England, where he befriended English-Welsh poet Edward Thomas who, when out walking with Frost, would often regret not having taken a different path and would sigh over what they might have seen and done. Frost liked to tease Thomas: “No matter which road you take, you always sigh and wish you’d taken another!”.

So it’s ironic that Frost initially meant the poem to be somewhat light-hearted when it turned out to be anything but. It’s the hallmark of the true poet, though, to take an everyday experience and transform it into something much more. Frost certainly succeeds in imbuing his short poem with an enigmatic appeal. Here it is in full, and may the roads you choose in life’s journey be the right ones!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost
Art

Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir Poster Art (1896)

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Le Chat Noir (you probably don’t need that translating!) was a 19th century nightclub in the bohemian district of Montmartre in Paris. It opened in 1881 at 84 Boulevard de Rochechouart by the impresario Rodolphe Salis, and closed, after a sixteen year glory period, in 1897, not long after Salis’ death. It is thought to be the first modern cabaret: a nightclub where the patrons sat at tables and drank alcoholic beverages whilst being entertained by a variety show on stage and a master of ceremonies.

Le Chat Noir soon became popular with poets, singers and musicians, since it offered an ideal venue and opportunity to practice their acts in front of fellow performers and guests. Famous men and women of an artistic bent began to patronise the club, including poet Paul Verlaine, can-can dancer Jane Avril, composers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, artists Paul Signac and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and many others from the movements of symbolism and the avant garde.

The cabaret also published a weekly magazine (also called Le Chat Noir), featuring literary writings, poetry, political satire, and news from the cabaret and the local art scene. The iconic poster art, which most people will recognise (and a few may even have it in magnet form on their fridge) was by Swiss Art Nouveau artist and printmaker, Théophile Steinlen.

Yep, my fridge!

Steinlen was in his early twenties and still developing his skills as a painter when he was encouraged by fellow Swiss artist François Bocion to move to the artistic community of Montmartre. Once there, Steinlen was introduced to the crowd at Le Chat Noir, which led to commissions to do poster art for them and other commercial enterprises. Here’s a selection of his poster art, starting with the famous La Tournée du Chat Noir (produced for when Salis took his cabaret show on tour). All Steinlen’s posters have an enduring appeal, and I’d bet that all of them are familiar to you.

Théophile Steinlen

 

Literature

Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children (1906)

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In common with many, I first discovered Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children via the popular film version made in 1970 and broadcast on TV on and off ever since. I can conjure up many moving images from that movie that remind me of the seventies: the two heavily-petticoated girls and their short-trousered brother bounding down hills, flagging down trains with red, homemade flags ; the good-hearted and proud station master played by Bernard Cribbins; the emotional reunion of Bobbie with her father on a steam-covered platform. The book version I didn’t read until relatively recently, reading it out loud to my daughter over the course of several evenings – and we both loved it.

You probably know the story: it revolves around a family who move from London up to rural Yorkshire into a house near the railway station, after the father, who works at the Foreign Office, is imprisoned after being falsely accused of spying. The children befriend a chap they call the Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15 train near their home; he is eventually able to help prove their father’s innocence, and the family is reunited. The family also takes care of a Russian exile, Mr Szczepansky, who came to England looking for his family and Jim, the grandson of the Old Gentleman, who suffers a broken leg in a tunnel.

The book was first serialised in The London Magazine during 1905 and then published in book form in the following year. It’s interesting to pick up on possible inspirations from news that was current at the time. The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage, but finally vindicated, may well have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, which had been a prominent news item a few years before the book was written. Nesbit will have aligned herself, no doubt, with Émile Zola’s famous open letter in support of the wrongly-accused Alfred Dreyfus, J’Accuse.

Nesbit’s own involvement in politics also provided inspiration. Nesbit was a political activist and co-founder of the Fabian Society in 1894 (she even named her son Fabian). She was friends with two real-life Russian dissidents, Sergius Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin, an amalgamation of whom Nesbit probably had in mind for her Mr Szczepansky.

We also see references to the then-current Russo-Japanese War, in which Japan successfully halted Tsar Nicholas II from tightening his grip on Manchuria and Korea, and Nesbit has an opportunity to subtly express her hostile opinions of Tsarist Russia. I’m not sure if Nesbit’s other books (she published around 60 books of children’s literature, including the Psammead series and the Bastable series) similarly reveal subtle political threads within them but you wouldn’t be surprised now, would you?

Here’s the clip from the film where Bobbie (Jenny Agutter) spies her returning father amidst the steam on the platform and runs to him crying “Daddy, my Daddy”. I well up every time.

Edith Nesbit
Dance

Gene Kelly’s Dance Scene in Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

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2011’s multiple award-winning movie, The Artist, was an homage to the Hollywood of the late 1920s during its difficult transition from silent movies to the “talkies”, and very good it was too. It wasn’t the first movie to find its inspiration from that time, however: 1952’s Singin’ In The Rain, rightly regarded as one of the greatest Hollywood musicals of all time, also tells the story of silent movie stars caught up in that transition to a new era. It also happened to contain one of the most famous dance sequences ever performed: Gene Kelly’s joyous routine as a loved-up dreamer on a rain-soaked sidewalk.

The story of the film’s making is an interesting one and on the surface may well have resulted in a mishmash of songs and ideas; the movie started out as essentially a vanity project for MGM producer Arthur Freed. Freed had spent the 1920s as a lyricist, writing songs for talkies with Nacio Herb Brown. By the 1940s, he was head of his own MGM unit, and wanted to create a musical from his own back catalogue (his song Singin’ in the Rain had in fact already been used in the movie The Hollywood Revue of 1929). Betty Comden and Adolph Green were hired to write the screenplay and, realising that the songs were very much of their era, “it occurred to us that rather than try to use them in a sophisticated, contemporary story…they would bloom in something that took place in the very period in which they had been written”. The transition from silent to sound thus provided the most appropriate – and as it turned out, perfect – vehicle for Freed’s songs.

Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) are a glamourous on-screen couple who are also hyped by the studio as having an off-screen romance, although in reality Don barely tolerates Lina and Lina only convinces herself of the hype due to her own self-importance. They are embarking on a new silent movie but their producer realises late on that he has no choice but to convert it to a talking picture, due to the success of (real-life) movie The Jazz Singer. The production is beset with difficulties, of course, wherefrom much comedy ensues, and Don falls for chorus girl Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds).

Gene Kelly’s famous umbrella-twirling dance scene took three days to film, and despite running a 103°F fever for the whole period, he achieved a piece of cinematic history. Modest as ever, he would attribute the number’s success to the crew, musicians, and composers. Upon the movie’s release in April 1952 audiences flocked to see it and, despite being largely ignored by the Oscars (unlike The Artist), it was a triumph. Get a load of Kelly’s charm and appeal in his famous scene here…

Poetry

William Wordsworth’s Daffodils (1807)

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The verges near where I live are seasonally awash with daffodils, as no doubt are yours if you live virtually anywhere in the UK, so what better time to take a look at that classic poem that regularly makes its way into the nation’s favourite poem lists, namely William Wordsworth’s I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (aka Daffodils)? I’m less certain about nowadays, but when I was young, this poem was the one that literally everyone knew. If pushed to quote a line of poetry you could always fall back upon “I wandered lonely as a cloud” in the same way you might have said “To be or not to be” if pushed to quote Shakespeare.

Wordsworth was the man who helped to launch the Romantic movement in English literature when, in 1798, he published Lyrical Ballads with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. As well as being a volume of poems by the two men, the work included a preface expounding the poets’ literary theory and principles. They wanted to make poetry accessible to the average person by writing verse in common, everyday language and with common, everyday subjects as the focus. This was against the grain, of course – how often do we find an artist, famous to us today, pushing the boundaries of convention in their own time?

Although initially received modestly, Lyrical Ballads came to be seen as a masterpiece and launched both poets into the public gaze, so when in 1807 Wordsworth published Poems, in Two Volumes, including Daffodils, he was already a well-known figure in literary circles. Wordsworth had talked of poetry being “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”, and Daffodils is the perfect illustration of what he meant ( For oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye, Which is the bliss of solitude…) .

It was inspired by Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy having come across a long and striking swathe of daffodils whilst out on a stroll around Ullswater in April 1802. Dorothy was a keen diarist who recorded her own feelings about the daffodils, and this likely helped William frame his poem, and indeed, Wordsworth’s wife Mary also contributed a couple of lines to the poem: it was a real family affair. If you want to remind yourself of the poem beyond its immortal opening line, here it is…

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth
Music

Aram Khachaturian’s Adagio From Spartacus (1954)

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Khachaturian! A great name, for a start, that I recall seeing written on the back of one of those compilation albums of classical music, owned by my parents. That album was actually a great introduction to the classics; it’s where I first heard The Flight of the Bumblebee, The Ride of the Valkyries, The Blue Danube, The Hall of the Mountain King, and, in the case of Khachaturian, the frenzied Sabre Dance.

Aram Khachaturian was born in 1903 in Tblisi, Georgia, of Armenian extraction (I think it was that patronymic suffix, –ian, common to Armenian surnames – such as Kardashian – that added a certain something). Following the Sovietization of the Caucasus in 1921, Khachaturian moved to Moscow, where he enrolled at the Gnessin Musical Institute and subsequently studied at the Moscow Conservatory. He wrote several significant concertos and symphonies, but he is best known for his ballets Gayane (from which comes the Sabre Dance) and Spartacus (from which comes the focus of this blog, the captivating Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia).

Spartacus follows the trials and tribulations of the famous gladiator-general, Spartacus, the leader of the slave uprising against the Romans in 73 BC (which actually happened, incidentally, and was exhaustively chronicled by Plutarch, but that – as I so often have to say – is another story!).

The Roman consul Crassus has returned to Rome from his latest conquests in a triumphal procession. Among his captives are the Thracian king Spartacus and his wife Phrygia. To entertain Crassus and his cronies, Spartacus is sent into the gladiatorial ring and is forced to kill a close friend. Horrified at his deed, Spartacus incites his fellow captives to rebellion, and ends up freeing the slave women, including Phrygia. The Adagio marks their celebration.

It open with a delicate syncopated rhythm from the strings, and a series of trills on the flute. A slow ascending scale is played by the cellos, and the oboe eases the music into the famous ‘love theme’ for the first time. It’s tremendous stuff and readers of a certain age will almost certainly remember its use as the theme music to the TV programme, The Onedin Line.

Below, I present a version of the ballet performed by Anna Nikulina and Mikhail Lobukhin of the Bolshoi Ballet. In addition, below that, I have chosen another version: a piano-only rendering of the music, and I include it because it is just too exquisite to omit. The pianist is Matthew Cameron, who, as well as being a virtuoso concert pianist, appears to be good-looking and, according to his website, collects antique historic swords, with a collection dating back to the 9th century. Hat tip!

Aram Khachaturian
Art

Sir Henry Raeburn’s The Skating Minister (1790)

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Several times, in a former job role, I had occasion to travel by train to Edinburgh’s Waverley Station and from thence to our site in Livingston, where I would do my thing, stay overnight, and make the return journey home the next day. Although usually the booked train tickets allowed little room for extracurricular activities, there was one occasion on which I managed to engineer a couple of spare hours to visit Edinburgh’s National Gallery. It’s a five-minute walk from Waverley Station, past the Walter Scott monument and along Princes Street Gardens, and it is well worth the effort.

One of the more unusual of its collection is Henry Raeburn’s The Skating Minister. Painted around 1790, it depicts the Reverend Robert Walker, minister at Edinburgh’s Canongate Kirk, skating on Duddingston Loch. It was practically unknown until 1949 (when it was acquired), but has since become something of an icon of Scottish culture, painted as it was during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is today rare for Duddingston Loch to be sufficiently frozen for skating, but in the Little Ice Age that encompassed the 18th century, the loch was the favourite meeting place of the Edinburgh Skating Club, of whom Robert Walker was a prominent member.

Sir Henry Raeburn was Edinburgh’s own, too. Born in Stockbridge, a former village now part of Edinburgh, he was responsible for some thousand portraits of Scotland’s great and good. He was disinclined to leave his native land and, as a result, his renown in Scotland is not matched in England where the names of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough dominate the portraiture of the period. But in the Scottish National Gallery, he is far from forgotten, and his Skating Minister will remain a firm favourite there for years to come.

 
Poetry

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s A Psalm Of Life (1838)

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The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) is probably best known over here in the UK for his Song of Hiawatha (which I for one remember doing at school), but also in his native US for his commemorative poem about that iconic event of the American Revolution, Paul Revere’s Ride. He also composed the epic poem Evangeline, about that shameful episode in British history known as the Great Upheaval, or the Expulsion of the Acadians, during the French and Indian War of 1754-1763. This was the forced deportation by the British of thousands of the largely civilian populations from the Canadian Maritime provinces to other colonies (including Spanish Louisiana where the Acadians would become “Cajuns”, but that’s another story).

In addition to the lengthy storytelling poetry, however, there is also a short and simple poem for which Longfellow is celebrated, the inspirational A Psalm of Life. First published in 1838 in the New York magazine The Knickerbocker, it is a subtle glorification of life and its possibilities. As with Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata and Rudyard Kipling’s If, the poem is didactic in tone: an invocation to mankind to follow the right path and think positively about life.

Its subtitle is What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist, which creates some context: it is a psalm in response to a psalm. It is an objection to the idea, gleaned by the narrator from listening to some biblical teaching, that this human life is not important; that we are made of dust and will eventually return to dust. No! he says – life is real, it’s serious, and this is not a drill…your body may return to dust but you have a soul so don’t squander your time here by worrying about death. As the seventh stanza says, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time…

I can’t do other than endorse that thought! Now, read on…

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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