Walter De La Mare’s The Listeners (1912)

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.

Wal­ter de la Mare

Albrecht Dürer’s Self-Portrait At Twenty-Eight (1500)

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”.

Albrecht Dür­er, Self-por­trait at Twen­ty-Eight

Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet On The Western Front (1929)

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.

Erich Maria Remar­que

John Keats’ Ode, To Autumn (1819)

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.

John Keats

 

Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957)

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.

Hen­ry Fon­da as Juror 8
Sid­ney Lumet

 

Ben Johnson’s Encomium To Shakespeare (1623)

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.

Ben John­son

 

Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands (1959)

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 The­siger
Ara­bi­an Sands book cov­er

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

You could have safe­ly bet that at some point in this series of blogs I was always going to vis­it a cer­tain trin­i­ty of British uni­ver­si­ty dons who have done more for the lit­er­ary fan­ta­sy genre world­wide than, well, any oth­er trin­i­ty of uni­ver­si­ty dons. Huge. Immense. The Ronal­do, Mes­si and Mbap­pé of children’s fan­ta­sy lit­er­a­ture — I am talk­ing of course about Lewis Car­roll, C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien. If your bet had been an accu­mu­la­tor you would be quids in, too, because I shall cer­tain­ly be vis­it­ing C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien at some point in the future, but for today let’s look at the grandad­dy, that long-time maths pro­fes­sor at Christ Church Oxford, Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son AKA Lewis Car­roll (1832–1898).

Lewis Car­roll, what an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter! First and fore­most, he was a math­e­mati­cian and long-time uni­ver­si­ty schol­ar, spe­cial­is­ing in geom­e­try, alge­bra and log­ic; under his real name, he pub­lished eleven books on maths-relat­ed sub­jects. He was also an avid puz­zler and is cred­it­ed with the inven­tion of the “word lad­der” – you know it, that puz­zle that involves chang­ing one word into anoth­er, one let­ter at a time. He loved word play, amply dis­played in his non­sense poems Jab­ber­wocky (1871) and The Hunt­ing of the Snark (1876).

How­ev­er, it is of course Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land (com­mon­ly Alice in Won­der­land) for which Lewis Car­roll will be for­ev­er remem­bered. As we all know, it details the sto­ry of a girl named Alice who falls through a rab­bit hole (and boy, don’t we hear that phrase a lot these days: “going down a rab­bit hole”?) into a fan­ta­sy world of anthro­po­mor­phic crea­tures. Car­roll first out­lined his sto­ry whilst out on row­ing trips on the Thames near Oxford which he often under­took with mem­bers of the Lid­dell fam­i­ly (Hen­ry Lid­dell being the Dean at Christ Church).

When he told the sto­ry to Henry’s daugh­ter Alice Lid­dell, she begged him to write it down, which he duly did and then passed the man­u­script to anoth­er friend and men­tor, the nov­el­ist George Mac­Don­ald. The enthu­si­asm of the Mac­Don­ald chil­dren for the sto­ry encour­aged Car­roll to seek pub­li­ca­tion, and so he approached Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ers, who loved it. After the pos­si­ble alter­na­tive titles were reject­ed – Alice Among the Fairies and Alice’s Gold­en Hour – the work was final­ly pub­lished as Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land in 1865 (fol­lowed up of course by Through the Look­ing-Glass, and What Alice Found There in 1871). The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

The artist John Ten­niel pro­vid­ed a bril­liant set of wood-engraved illus­tra­tions for the book, of which we can see a gallery of some of the uni­ver­sal­ly famil­iar char­ac­ters here:

Lewis Car­roll

Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Kalevala Paintings (1890s)

Greece has its Ili­ad and Odyssey, Italy its Aeneid, Por­tu­gal its Lusi­ads, Ice­land its Eddas, Ger­many its Nibelun­gen­lied, Britain its Beowulf and Le Morte d’Arthur, and India its Mahabara­ta and Ramayana. I am talk­ing of course about nation­al folk-epics, those lit­er­ary mas­ter­pieces that were orig­i­nal­ly an oral canon of folk-sto­ries per­co­lat­ed down through the mists of time and lat­er writ­ten down and inte­grat­ed into the world­view of its peo­ple.

Well, Finland’s was the epic poet­ry col­lec­tion known as the Kale­vala, which was devel­oped quite late — dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry — but still from ancient tra­di­tion­al folk-tales. The Kale­vala was an inte­gral part of the Finns’ nation­al awak­en­ing in the era of the Grand Duchy of Fin­land when they were under the yoke of the Russ­ian empire, and it was instru­men­tal in the devel­op­ment of the Finnish nation­al iden­ti­ty, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to inde­pen­dence from Rus­sia in 1917.

This nation­al awak­en­ing coin­cid­ed with the so-called Gold­en Age of Finnish Art rough­ly span­ning the peri­od 1880 to 1910. The Kale­vala pro­vid­ed the artis­tic inspi­ra­tion for numer­ous themes at the time in lit­er­a­ture (J. L. Runeberg’s The Tales of Ensign Stål; Alek­sis Kivi’s The Sev­en Broth­ers), music (Jean Sibelius), archi­tec­ture (Eliel Saari­nen), and of course the visu­al arts, the most notable of which were pro­vid­ed by one Akseli Gallen-Kallela.

Born Axél Walde­mar Gal­lén in Pori, Fin­land, to a Swedish-speak­ing fam­i­ly (he Finni­cised his name in 1907), Gallen-Kallela first attend­ed draw­ing class­es at the Finnish Art Soci­ety before study­ing at the Académie Julian in Paris. He mar­ried Mary Slöör in 1890 and on their hon­ey­moon to East Kare­lia, he start­ed col­lect­ing mate­r­i­al for his depic­tions of the Kale­vala. He would soon be inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the inde­pen­dence move­ment as he pro­duced his scenes from the old sto­ries.

The most exten­sive paint­ings that Gallen-Kallela made of the Kale­vala were his fres­coes, orig­i­nal­ly for the Finnish Pavil­ion at the Expo­si­tion Uni­verselle in Paris in 1900, but paint­ed again in 1928 in the lob­by of the Nation­al Muse­um of Fin­land in Helsin­ki where they can be seen to this day. How­ev­er, many stand­alone works exist too; here’s a flavour of his art, though if you want to know what they depict you’ll have to read the Kale­vala!

Alek­si Gallen-Kallela

L M Montgomery’s Anne Of Green Gables (1908)

Ah, the book­shelf in our class­room dur­ing my lat­er years at pri­ma­ry school, I remem­ber it well. Replete with titles and illus­trat­ed cov­ers promis­ing tales for chil­dren of adven­ture and der­ring-do in exot­ic lands: Robin­son Cru­soe, King Solomon’s Mines, Trea­sure Island. It had all the girls’ clas­sics, too: Black Beau­ty, Lit­tle Women, What Katy Did, Hei­di, and Anne of Green Gables. Of course, I nev­er read any of the lat­ter books…until recent­ly, that is, when I final­ly read L M Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, hav­ing been inspired to do so by watch­ing Netflix’s excel­lent Cana­di­an TV adap­ta­tion, Anne with an E (2017).

The nov­el was pub­lished in 1908 by Cana­di­an author L M Mont­gomery (Lucy Maud Mont­gomery 1874–1942). Set in the late 19ᵗʰ cen­tu­ry, it recounts the adven­tures of 11-year-old orphan girl Anne Shirley sent by mis­take to two mid­dle-aged sib­lings, Matthew and Mar­il­la Cuth­bert, who run their farm in the close-knit com­mu­ni­ty of Avon­lea in Prince Edward Island, Cana­da. They had planned to adopt a boy who could help them with the farm work and so when Anne arrives, their first instinct is to send her straight back. How­ev­er, her exu­ber­ant plead­ing per­suades them to keep her for a tri­al peri­od and soon her per­son­al­i­ty wins them over.

Amy­beth McNul­ty as Anne Shirley in “Anne with an E”

Anne is talk­a­tive to the extreme, huge­ly imag­i­na­tive, dra­mat­ic, an extrac­tor of joy from life wher­ev­er it may exist, and a touch­stone of youth­ful ide­al­ism, if a lit­tle prone to defen­sive­ness over her red hair, freck­les and pale com­plex­ion. She is also insis­tent that her name should always be spelt with an “e” at the end, hence the title of the TV adap­ta­tion. In this she was played impec­ca­bly by Amy­beth McNul­ty, the more so now that I have read the book and see how accu­rate­ly she nailed the char­ac­ter. The whole series turned out to be a large­ly faith­ful ren­der­ing of the book and cer­tain­ly it was a heart-warm­ing depic­tion of a sim­ple turn-of-the-cen­tu­ry lifestyle in rur­al Cana­da, well wroth the watch.

Since its pub­li­ca­tion, Anne of Green Gables has sold more than 50 mil­lion copies — that’s actu­al­ly not far behind J K Rowling’s Har­ry Pot­ter books albeit hav­ing had a cen­tu­ry longer to sell copies! And it has that acco­lade for good rea­son, so who knows, I may even have to delve into Black Beau­ty or Hei­di next?

Anne of Green Gables, 1st edi­tion book cov­er
L M Mont­gomery

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