Art

Antonio Canova’s Sculpture of the Three Graces (1817)

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Back in May, my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed the Vic­to­ria & Albert Muse­um in Lon­don, and enjoyed, amongst oth­er things, its impres­sive col­lec­tion of sculp­tures, includ­ing this beau­ti­ful piece from the great Ital­ian neo­clas­si­cal sculp­tor, Anto­nio Cano­va. The Three Graces were daugh­ters of Zeus and com­pan­ions to the Mus­es, and were a cel­e­brat­ed sub­ject in clas­si­cal lit­er­a­ture and art. They are Thalia (youth and beau­ty), Euphrosyne (mirth), and Agla­ia (ele­gance), and the god­dess­es are depict­ed hud­dled togeth­er, nude, hair braid­ed and held atop their heads in a knot, the three slen­der fig­ures meld­ing into one in their embrace.

The sculp­ture is carved from a sin­gle slab of white mar­ble. Canova’s assis­tants would have rough­ly hewn out the mar­ble, leav­ing Cano­va to per­form the final carv­ing and shap­ing of the stone to high­light the Graces’ soft flesh. It was com­mis­sioned by John Rus­sel, 6th Duke of Bed­ford, who vis­it­ed Cano­va at his stu­dio in Rome in 1814. Bed­ford was cap­ti­vat­ed by the group of the Three Graces which Cano­va had carved for the Empress Josephine, the estranged wife of Napoleon Bona­parte (“I frankly declare”, he is report­ed to have said, “that I have seen noth­ing in ancient or mod­ern sculp­ture that has giv­en me more plea­sure than this piece of work”). Josephine had died in May of that year, and the Duke offered to buy the sculp­ture from Cano­va, but Josephine’s son claimed it (and that ver­sion is now in the Her­mitage, St Peters­burg) so Bed­ford com­mis­sioned a new one.

The com­plet­ed stat­ue was installed at the Duke’s home, Woburn Abbey. An 1822 cat­a­logue of the sculp­ture at Woburn summed up the appeal of the work: “in the con­strained flex­i­bil­i­ty with which their arms are entwined round each oth­er; in the per­fect sym­me­try of their limbs, in the del­i­ca­cy of detail, and exquis­ite­ness of fin­ish, in the feet and hands; in that look of liv­ing soft­ness giv­en to the sur­face of the mar­ble, which looks as if it would yield to the touch…this great sculp­tor has shown the utmost del­i­ca­cy and judge­ment”.

It is indeed remark­able to get “up close and per­son­al” with a great sculp­ture like this and mar­vel at the skill and del­i­ca­cy required to achieve such an exquis­ite fin­ish from a block of stone. Canova’s oth­er mas­ter­piece, Cupid and Psy­che in the Lou­vre, elic­its the same admi­ra­tion.

  

Anto­nio Cano­va
Film, TV, and Theatre

The Sales Speech in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

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David Mamet’s two-act play, Glen­gar­ry Glen Ross, was first staged in 1983, and won the Pulitzer Prize, remain­ing some­thing of a clas­sic of con­tem­po­rary the­atre. It was adapt­ed for film in 1992, by Mamet him­self, and it is almost a word-for-word tran­scrip­tion of the play, with the one excep­tion being this: the most famous, most quot­ed, and most pop­u­lar scene of the movie, which is the sub­ject of this blog, didn’t exist in the play but was writ­ten appar­ent­ly to bulk out the piece to film length.

In cre­at­ing the scene, Mamet arguably sets the tone for the entire movie. The movie fea­tures the pres­sured lives of real estate sales­men played by Jack Lem­mon, Ed Har­ris and Alan Arkin, strug­gling to close deals in this tough­est of tough rack­ets, and about to receive a vis­it from Blake (Alec Bald­win), the moti­va­tion­al speak­er from Hell, who has been sent from “down­town” to read the riot act. It’s excru­ci­at­ing stuff; it takes a while to dawn on the sales­men just how tough this grilling is going to be (“Put that cof­fee down. Coffee’s for closers only…”) and we gri­mace at the rit­u­al dis­em­bow­elling of the poor men (“You call your­self a sales­man, you son of a bitch?”).

Edi­fy­ing it ain’t, but nonethe­less it’s an act­ing mas­ter­class from all con­cerned: Bald­win dish­ing out the flak; Lem­mon like a rab­bit in the head­lights; Har­ris ini­tial­ly deri­sive and scep­ti­cal but then brow-beat­en and forced to endure the spiel; Arkin sub­mis­sive, silent. We can see and hear from the win­dows that out­side is dark and the rain tor­ren­tial; inside, the office is shab­by and bleak and Blake is an unre­lent­ing and piti­less tor­men­tor. Now imag­ine you’ve just been told that you’re fight­ing to save your job in this month’s sales con­test, in which first prize is a Cadil­lac Eldo­ra­do, sec­ond prize is a set of steak knives, and third prize is “You’re fired”. It’s stark, to say the least. You wouldn’t want to be in this game…

But hey, you’re not in this game — so sit back, relax, and enjoy not being on the receiv­ing end of this ver­bal mac­er­a­tion and instead observe the equal mea­sures of brava­do and human frailty exhib­it­ed in this won­der­ful­ly uncom­fort­able per­for­mance by some great Amer­i­can actors.

Alec Bald­win

 

 

Art

Claude Monet exhibits Impression, Sunrise (1874)

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In 1872, Claude Mon­et vis­it­ed his home­town of Le Havre in the north west of France and pro­ceed­ed to paint six can­vas­es depict­ing the port “dur­ing dawn, day, dusk, and dark and from vary­ing view­points, some from the water itself and oth­ers from a hotel room look­ing down over the port”. One paint­ing from this series was to become very famous.

Impres­sion, soleil lev­ant (Impres­sion, Sun­rise) was debuted in April 1874 in Paris at an inde­pen­dent exhi­bi­tion launched as an alter­na­tive to the offi­cial Salon de Paris exhi­bi­tions of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The exhi­bi­tion, by a group call­ing itself the “Société Anonyme des Artistes, Pein­tres, Sculp­teurs, Graveurs etc” was led by Mon­et, along with oth­er such future lumi­nar­ies as Edgar Degas, Camille Pis­sar­ro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sis­ley. Two hun­dred works were shown and about 4,000 peo­ple attend­ed, includ­ing, of course, some rather unsym­pa­thet­ic crit­ics.

Mon­et described how he came up with a title for the paint­ing: “They asked me for a title for the catalogue…it could­n’t real­ly be tak­en for a view of Le Havre, so I said: ‘Put Impres­sion’ “. While this title was appar­ent­ly cho­sen in haste for the cat­a­logue, the term “Impres­sion­ism” was not new. It had been used for some time to describe the effect of some of the nat­u­ral­is­tic paint­ings ema­nat­ing from the so-called Bar­bi­zon school of painters. How­ev­er, it was in crit­ic Louis Leroy’s review of the 1874 exhi­bi­tion, “The Exhi­bi­tion of the Impres­sion­ists”, for the news­pa­per Le Chari­vari, that he used “Impres­sion­ism” to describe this new style of work dis­played, and he said it was typ­i­fied by Monet’s paint­ing.

This term, then, ini­tial­ly used to both describe and dep­re­cate a move­ment, was tak­en up by all par­ties to describe the style, and Monet’s Impres­sion, Sun­rise was thus con­sid­ered to have encap­su­lat­ed the start of the move­ment. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

 

 

Claude Mon­et
Music

Luciano Pavarotti sings Nessun Dorma (1994)

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To opera buffs, Nes­sun Dor­ma has always been one of the great arias, but my, how the song’s pro­file was raised by its use as the theme song to the 1990 World Cup. That new audi­ence, num­ber­ing in the scores of mil­lions, asso­ci­at­ed the piece inex­tri­ca­bly with the one voice, that of Ital­ian tenor, Luciano Pavarot­ti. Many artists have record­ed their own ver­sions of the song – before and since — but it’s Pavarot­ti who is gen­er­al­ly cred­it­ed with per­form­ing the ulti­mate ver­sion of this song. The per­for­mance I embed below, from a show in Paris in 1994, shows exact­ly why it’s a jus­ti­fied claim. Pavarot­ti deliv­ers an emo­tion­al­ly charged and haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful piece of musi­cal the­atre. Check out the emo­tion on his face at around the 2.40 to 2.50 mark.

Inci­den­tal­ly, for me, Nes­sun Dor­ma does not ben­e­fit from an Eng­lish trans­la­tion or an under­stand­ing of the song’s con­tex­tu­al mean­ing in Gia­co­mo Puccini’s Turan­dot (though it con­cerns a prince, Calaf, and his attempts to win the hand of Princess Turan­dot), so I pre­fer to pre­serve its enig­mat­ic majesty by ignor­ing its mean­ing and just let­ting it be. It’s tru­ly pow­er­ful on its own.

Back in 2009, a few days after my mum’s funer­al, my fam­i­ly and I, after a vis­it up to Blyth and on our way back, called into Durham Cathe­dral, sig­nif­i­cant for my mum’s stone­ma­son dad hav­ing worked on this fine build­ing. It turned out that it hap­pened to be the day before Bob­by Robson’s memo­r­i­al ser­vice, and they were rehears­ing for it as we arrived. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Nes­sun Dor­ma had been cho­sen to be a part of the memo­r­i­al ser­vice (per­formed I believe, by vocal trio, Tenors Unlim­it­ed). Thus, in one of the world’s great cathe­drals, and still raw from my bereave­ment, I heard the resound­ing strains of Nes­sun Dor­ma. An unfor­get­table moment.

Nes­sun dor­ma! Nes­sun dor­ma!
Tu pure, oh Principes­sa
Nel­la tua fred­da stan­za
Guar­di le stelle che tre­mano
D’amore e di sper­an­za

Ma il mio mis­tero è chiu­so in me
Il nome mio nes­sun saprà
No, no, sul­la tua boc­ca lo dirò
Quan­do la luce splen­derà
Ed il mio bacio scioglierà
Il silen­zio che ti fa mia

(ll nome suo nes­sun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir)

Dilegua, oh notte!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
Tra­mon­tate, stelle!
All’al­ba vin­cerò!
Vin­cerà!
Vin­cerò!

Luciano Pavarot­ti 2000
Film, TV, and Theatre

Julie Walters in Victoria Wood’s sketch, Two Soups (1986)

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Vic­to­ria Wood’s col­lab­o­ra­tions with Julie Wal­ters over the years spawned many a rich reward. Wood’s wit pro­duced great ideas for char­ac­ters, and Wal­ters’ instinc­tive com­ic tim­ing and gift for nuanced phys­i­cal com­e­dy bril­liant­ly brought those char­ac­ters to life. The series of sketch­es around Acorn Antiques, for exam­ple, pro­vid­ed the ide­al show­case for Wal­ters to ham it up as the glo­ri­ous char­ac­ter that was Mrs Over­all, or more accu­rate­ly, the glo­ri­ous­ly inept actress that played the char­ac­ter in this send-up of low-bud­get, shod­di­ly per­formed, day­time soap opera.

The show­case I have select­ed for this blog, how­ev­er, is the sketch, Wait­ress (pop­u­lar­ly known as Two Soups), in which Wal­ters plays an elder­ly, deaf, shaky, and painful­ly slow wait­ress, serv­ing a cou­ple who are only too aware one of them has a train to catch and sim­ply want a quick meal. This sim­ple premise, replete with pos­si­bil­i­ties for that typ­i­cal­ly British com­e­dy of frus­tra­tion, is enough for Wal­ters to take the ball and run faster and fur­ther with it than prob­a­bly even Vic­to­ria Wood imag­ined at first.

Wit­ness Wal­ters’ shuf­fling gait, wob­bly head and fixed smile — this is phys­i­cal com­e­dy of the first order, and we’re laugh­ing before she opens her mouth. With her bad mem­o­ry and dan­ger­ous­ly mal­adroit han­dling of the crock­ery, this unfit-for-pur­pose wait­ress should have hung up her apron strings years ago, but for now let’s thank the for­bear­ance of her employ­er as we enjoy this infu­ri­at­ing but hilar­i­ous per­for­mance. Need­less to say, the couple’s plans for a quick meal are thwart­ed.

Julie Wal­ters
Art

The Book of Kells (c.800)

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The Book of Kells, held in Dublin’s Trin­i­ty Col­lege Library, is an illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script Gospel book in Latin, con­tain­ing the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment. It was cre­at­ed in a Colum­ban monastery in Ire­land around 800 AD, and it’s a mas­ter­work of West­ern cal­lig­ra­phy. It rep­re­sents the pin­na­cle of insu­lar illu­mi­na­tion (“insu­lar” deriv­ing from insu­la, the Latin for “island” and refer­ring to post-Roman art of Britain and Ire­land). It is also wide­ly regard­ed as Ire­land’s finest nation­al trea­sure, and although I haven’t yet made it past the pubs of Dublin to view it, it’s def­i­nite­ly on the list.

The illus­tra­tions and orna­men­ta­tion of the Book of Kells are exquis­ite. The dec­o­ra­tion com­bines tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy with ornate, swirling motifs. There are fig­ures of humans, ani­mals, myth­i­cal beasts, along with Celtic knots and inter­lac­ing pat­terns in vibrant colours, all scribed onto leaves of high-qual­i­ty calf vel­lum with iron gall ink (the stan­dard ink used in Europe, made from iron salts and tan­nic acid extract­ed from oak galls) and colours derived from a wide range of sub­stances import­ed from dis­tant lands.

The man­u­script takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, in Coun­ty Meath, which was its home for cen­turies. Its exact place of ori­gin is uncer­tain, although it is wide­ly thought to have been start­ed at Iona and then lat­er com­plet­ed in the scrip­to­ri­um at Kells itself. Regard­less, it’s true to say that the Colum­ban monks respon­si­ble for its cre­ation had skills in cal­lig­ra­phy honed to a remark­able degree.

Art

John Thornton’s Great East Window at York Minster (1408)

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The last time my fam­i­ly and I vis­it­ed York, we wan­dered out­side York Min­ster but our indige­nous fru­gal­i­ty (being our­selves of York­shire soil) baulked at the then-recent­ly intro­duced admis­sion fee of £10 to go inside. If you too vis­it York and find your­self in sim­i­lar fru­gal mode, let me advise you to take a hold of your­self, with an option­al shake, and remind your­self nev­er to put filthy lucre ahead of artis­tic splen­dour. For York Min­ster, as well as in itself being one of the great goth­ic cathe­drals of north­ern Europe, and thus replete with the resplen­dent archi­tec­tur­al beau­ty for which such cathe­drals are known, con­tains also the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the world, includ­ing the sub­ject of today’s blog, the Great East Win­dow.

Some call it England’s Sis­tine Chapel, and indeed, had it been done in paint, instead of in glass, it might well be con­sid­ered a rival to Michelangelo’s mas­ter­piece in Rome. How­ev­er, stained glass has always fall­en on the wrong side of that divid­ing line between fine and applied art, and thus it is seen pri­mar­i­ly as a craft. Let’s not fall for that one. The great east win­dow in York Min­ster is one of the tri­umphant achieve­ments of the Mid­dle Ages: 1,690sqft of art­ful­ly exe­cut­ed stained glass, recount­ing the sto­ry of the world from Cre­ation to Apoc­a­lypse.

It was in 1405 that John Thorn­ton of Coven­try was com­mis­sioned to glaze the east end of the Lady Chapel. A copy of Thornton’s con­tract for the win­dow sur­vives, spec­i­fy­ing that he was to draw all the car­toons, and paint a large num­ber of the indi­vid­ual pan­els. For all this Thorn­ton was paid a total of £56, and con­tract­ed to com­plete the job inside three years. For doing so, Thorn­ton received a £10 bonus, and proud­ly put the date of com­ple­tion – 1408 – at the very apex of the win­dow.

Doubt­less Thorn­ton had behind him a team of glaziers, hired local­ly or brought with him from Coven­try, but the paint­ing on the glass would pri­mar­i­ly have been his. It was Thornton’s task too to turn the commissioner’s high­ly the­o­log­i­cal and pre­cise con­cept into a work of art. And this he self-evi­dent­ly did.

While much medieval glass is dom­i­nat­ed by reds and blues, John Thorn­ton had a pen­chant for yel­low as his base colour. In addi­tion, the paint­ing in Thornton’s faces had greater real­ism (and metic­u­lous­ly drawn hair) than his rivals. The typ­i­cal Thorn­ton face is sen­si­tive, with eyes down-turned, a small mouth and a some­what promi­nent nose. What Thorn­ton was pio­neer­ing in his glass­work was the Euro­pean style – new to Eng­land – known as Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic. It is ele­gant­ly stylised work; for sure, the York com­mis­sion­ers were buy­ing cut­ting edge art, and, of course, good glass can’t be made with­out a cut­ting edge.

Film, TV, and Theatre

Jack Nicholson plays Badass Buddusky in The Last Detail (1973)

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Three sailors on a road trip. Two Navy lif­ers, por­trayed by Jack Nichol­son and Otis Young, are assigned to escort the hap­less 18-year old recruit, Mead­ows (Randy Quaid), from Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, to mil­i­tary prison in New Hamp­shire, after he was caught steal­ing from a char­i­ty, which unfor­tu­nate­ly for him hap­pened to be the favourite char­i­ty of the Admiral’s wife. “Badass” Bud­dusky (Nichol­son) and “Mule” Mul­hall (Young), are giv­en a week to car­ry out their duty, and ini­tial­ly aim to hus­tle Mead­ows to prison while keep­ing his per diem expens­es for them­selves, allow­ing for a bit of hol­i­day drink­ing and whor­ing on their way back.

As the dis­pro­por­tion­ate sever­i­ty of the eight-year sen­tence hand­ed down to Mead­ows dawns upon them, Badass and Mule change their objec­tive; now they want to show Mead­ows the best time of his life before he is incar­cer­at­ed. Numer­ous shenani­gans ensue, as the three eat, drink and fight their way across a nat­u­ral­is­tic 1970s Amer­i­ca.

Nichol­son is a mar­vel to watch. Ini­tial­ly in a sour mood and under­whelmed by this “detail” that has been hand­ed to him out of the blue, even­tu­al­ly the real­i­sa­tion of free­dom sinks in and the prospect of fun beck­ons, at which point Nichol­son ignites. His char­ac­ter, Bud­dusky, soon shows why he got his “Badass” nick­name. He lives in the moment, is high­ly impul­sive, and nev­er squan­ders an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a good time, like the scene in which he spots some Marines enter­ing the pub­lic lava­to­ries at the sta­tion. He prompt­ly fol­lows them in to start a ruckus, draw­ing Mule and Mead­ows into the caper by dint of mil­i­tary sol­i­dar­i­ty. After bat­ter­ing the Marines in typ­i­cal­ly chaot­ic fash­ion they charge reck­less­ly and hilar­i­ous­ly out of the toi­lets and the sta­tion itself to seek their next adven­ture.

The film was nom­i­nat­ed for three Acad­e­my Awards, but it failed to win any, and good crit­i­cal notices did not trans­late into box office suc­cess. A few months lat­er, Chi­na­town explod­ed onto the scene, and The Last Detail was some­what eclipsed. Nichol­son would soon go on to win an Oscar for One Flew Over the Cuck­oo’s Nest — and quite right­ly — but for me, his per­for­mance in The Last Detail is as fine an achieve­ment as that role.

Here, we’ll see two rep­re­sen­ta­tive scenes: first, a sim­ple mas­ter class in how to eat and rel­ish a ham­burg­er, Bud­dusky-style; and sec­ond, the infa­mous bar scene in which Badass com­plete­ly los­es it when the bar­tender refus­es to serve the under­age Mead­ows and con­trives to push all the wrong but­tons as far as Badass is con­cerned. The dis­turb­ing and high­ly intim­i­dat­ing over-reac­tion from Badass toward the bar­tender is then tem­pered by a huge release of ten­sion on the side­walk after­wards as they laugh like drains at their escapade. “I am a bad ass, ain’t I?” says Bud­dusky. Yes sir, you cer­tain­ly are.

Jack Nichol­son as Badass Bud­dusky
Film, TV, and Theatre

Laurel & Hardy in Thicker Than Water (1935)

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Stan Lau­rel and Oliv­er Hardy were arguably the most suc­cess­ful com­e­dy team of all time, thriv­ing dur­ing the ear­ly Clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood era of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s. Known and loved through­out the world under a large vari­ety of names (among them Dick und Doof
in Ger­many, Flip i Flap in Poland, and Cric e Croc in Italy), to the Eng­lish-speak­ing world they were of course Lau­rel and Hardy: Stan the love­able sim­ple­ton and Olly the ambi­tious but pompous butt of many a “fine mess”.

The duo, like W C Fields and the Marx Broth­ers, had deep roots in stage and music
hall before mak­ing the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion from stage to screen. Stan Lau­rel began his career, when he was plain Arthur Jef­fer­son, as Char­lie Chaplin’s under­study when they were both sta­ble­mates of “Fred Karno’s army”, Karno being an influ­en­tial the­atre impre­sario and pio­neer of slap­stick com­e­dy. Oliv­er Hardy, mean­while, was cut­ting his teeth per­form­ing vaude­ville and work­ing for the Lubin motion pic­ture pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, appear­ing in scores of one-reel­er movies, most­ly play­ing the “heavy”. Their paths began to cross when both worked for Hal Roach Stu­dios in the ear­ly 1920s, but it was in 1927 that the two shared screen time togeth­er in the silent com­e­dy films, Slip­ping Wives, Duck Soup, and With Love and Hiss­es. The pos­i­tive audi­ence reac­tions to the pair­ing was not­ed, and a com­e­dy duo was born, and then cement­ed as they trans­ferred so per­fect­ly to the advent of the talkies.

Their com­e­dy tim­ing was impec­ca­ble, their phys­i­cal com­e­dy honed to per­fec­tion. With a pair of unmis­take­able, born-for-com­e­dy faces and phys­i­cal mor­phol­o­gy, just look­ing at a pic­ture of them is enough to bring a smile to the face. Whilst so much ear­ly com­e­dy has become dat­ed, the com­e­dy of Lau­rel and Hardy remains time­less, a whole eighty-odd years lat­er. Tes­ta­ment to their endur­ing charm is the large group of mod­ern-day Lau­rel and Hardy fans known as the “Sons of the Desert” (tak­en from their 1933 film of the same name) with chap­ters all over the world. A few years ago I took the fam­i­ly to a screen show­ing of some Lau­rel & Hardy reels at Birstall, and was both amused and reas­sured to see some of the chaps in the audi­ence sport­ing the trade­mark Sons of the Desert fez! I was equal­ly delight­ed to see my young daugh­ters lap­ping up the phys­i­cal com­e­dy and gig­gling at these gags from a dis­tant age.

Here, I have cho­sen a nice clip of the two get­ting into typ­i­cal­ly amus­ing both­er, with Olly, as usu­al, pay­ing for his impe­ri­ous and blus­ter­ing treat­ment of Stan, by com­ing off con­sid­er­ably the worst. It’s from the 1935 film, Thick­er Than Water.

 

Lau­rel & Hardy
Poetry

Robert Browning’s How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix (1845)

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In 490 BC, the Athen­ian army defeat­ed the invad­ing Per­sian army in a bat­tle on the plain of Marathon, rough­ly 26 miles north of Athens. Accord­ing to leg­end, and brought down to us via the writ­ings of Herodotus, Lucian and Plutarch, the Athe­ni­ans then ordered the mes­sen­ger Phei­dip­pi­des to run ahead to Athens and announce the vic­to­ry to the city. Phei­dip­pi­des raced back to the city in the intense late sum­mer heat. Upon reach­ing the Athen­ian ago­ra, he exclaimed “Rejoice! We con­quer” and then col­lapsed dead from exhaus­tion.

This trope, of the long dis­tance chase to deliv­er vital news, we see again in Hen­ry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride (1860). This told the (high­ly embroi­dered) tale of Paul Revere’s valiant ride to Con­cord to warn the mili­tia that the British were com­ing, thus pro­mot­ing him in Amer­i­can cul­ture to the sta­tus of hero and patri­ot of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion.

In the same spir­it – though this time whol­ly imag­i­nary – is Robert Browning’s How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. The poem is a first-per­son nar­ra­tive told, in breath­less gal­lop­ing meter, by one of three rid­ers, only one of whose hors­es, the nar­ra­tor’s brave Roland, sur­vives to ful­fil the epic quest. The mid­night errand is urgent — “the news which alone could save Aix from her fate” — but what that good news actu­al­ly is, is nev­er revealed. The sequence of towns flash­ing by between Ghent and Aix-la-Chapelle is true to life, though they are char­ac­terised only by the asso­ci­at­ed times of night, dawn, and day (also a fea­ture of Paul Revere’s Ride) as the nar­ra­tor charges through them.

This poem is one of my ear­li­est mem­o­ries of poet­ry, from school­days, and its rol­lick­ing move­ment and sense of adven­ture res­onates with me now as it did then. There is a record­ing of Brown­ing him­self recit­ing the poem on an 1889 Edi­son cylin­der, but it’s far too crack­ly for our pur­pos­es, and besides, he for­gets the lines and gives up after the first verse (“I’m ter­ri­bly sor­ry but I can­not remem­ber me own vers­es”) so instead I offer this more mod­ern and pro­fes­sion­al ver­sion!

 

Robert Brown­ing

Commentaries on excellence in art, music, film, and literature