Film, TV, and Theatre

Kenneth Branagh’s St Crispin’s Day Speech, Shakespeare’s Henry V (1989)

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The Hun­dred Years’ War (1337–1453) was a series of wars between Eng­land and France involv­ing England’s claim to the French throne. In the cam­paign of 1415, England’s Hen­ry V sailed for France and besieged the fortress at Harfleur, cap­tur­ing it in Sep­tem­ber. The Eng­lish army then marched across the French coun­try­side towards Calais, only to be inter­cept­ed by the French army near the vil­lage of Azin­court. Henry’s troops were exhaust­ed, hun­gry, sick, demor­alised, and pitiably out­num­bered (accord­ing to some esti­mates, by some 36000 to 9000 troops).

It didn’t look good. Hen­ry need­ed to rouse his men for bat­tle like nev­er before, and he gave them a speech which not only roused them, but spurred them to a vic­to­ry that would resound through­out the ages as the famous Bat­tle of Agin­court. It was the morn­ing of Octo­ber 25th (St Crispin’s Day).

That Henry’s speech occurred is agreed by his­to­ri­ans to be a fac­tu­al event. How­ev­er, it was left to the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion of William Shake­speare, two hun­dred years lat­er, to envis­age Henry’s words and com­pose the über-gal­vanis­ing “St Crispin’s Day Speech” that has come down to us in his play, Hen­ry V.

What a speech! If any­thing could get you up and off to face the French, it’s sure­ly inspi­ra­tional words such as these:

We few, we hap­py few, we band of broth­ers;
For he today who sheds his blood with me
Shall be my broth­er…
…gen­tle­men in Eng­land now a‑bed
Shall think them­selves accurs’d they were not here
And hold their man­hoods cheap…

Lau­rence Olivi­er famous­ly deliv­ered this call to arms in the 1944 film of the play, made as a morale-boost­er for the war effort. How­ev­er, for me there is no bet­ter deliv­ery than this mes­meris­ing per­for­mance by Ken­neth Branagh in the 1989 ver­sion. Watch this, and allow your­self to be fired up, but please resist the temp­ta­tion to hit a French­man!

PS almost cer­tain­ly apoc­ryphal, but a great sto­ry nonethe­less, is the claim that, in the real life speech, Hen­ry V told his men that the French had boast­ed that they would cut off two fin­gers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could nev­er draw a long­bow again. After the bat­tle, Eng­lish archers were show­ing French cap­tives those fin­gers as if say­ing “See – my fin­gers are still here”. This is now known as the “V” for vic­to­ry ges­ture!

Ken­neth Branagh, Hen­ry V
Literature

G K Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

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G K Chester­ton is best known for his series of quirky sto­ries about ama­teur sleuth and Roman Catholic priest, Father Brown. How­ev­er, it is his 1908 nov­el The Man Who Was Thurs­day which is for me his abid­ing mas­ter­piece, a piece of lit­er­a­ture I have returned to per­haps five or six times in order to recap­ture its deli­cious prose and oth­er­world­li­ness. I even put this old and won­der­ful­ly designed book cov­er onto a T‑shirt!

 At first glance, The Man Who Was Thurs­day is a sus­pense­ful mys­tery sto­ry, a thriller, but it soon becomes appar­ent that this is no mere detec­tive sto­ry; lit­tle is as it seems in this mys­tery, and we find our­selves in deep­er waters than expect­ed. The nov­el­’s sub­ti­tle offers us a clue to this: A Night­mare.

Gabriel Syme is a poet and a police detec­tive; Lucien Gre­go­ry, a poet and bomb-throw­ing anar­chist. At the begin­ning of the nov­el, Syme infil­trates a secret meet­ing of anar­chists and gets him­self elect­ed to it as “Thurs­day,” one of the sev­en mem­bers of the Cen­tral Anar­chist Coun­cil, in the sud­den full knowl­edge of a ham­strung and pet­ri­fied Gre­go­ry.

Syme soon learns, how­ev­er, that he is not the only one in dis­guise, and even as the masks come off, the biggest ques­tion – for both the read­er and the char­ac­ters – is who is Sun­day? What is the true iden­ti­ty of the larg­er than life char­ac­ter who is the supreme head of the anar­chists? The sto­ry unfolds thrilling­ly, and through­out it all we are treat­ed to Chesterton’s exu­ber­ant prose, clever dia­logue and grip­ping style. His wit shines through every scene.

Let’s read an exam­ple of this style, and how Chester­ton con­structs a creep­ing sense of jeop­ardy. Syme, the detec­tive who is dis­guised as a poet, has engaged the anar­chist Gre­go­ry and, on con­di­tion of hav­ing sworn him­self to absolute secre­cy, is tak­en to meet the high­ly dan­ger­ous anar­chist coun­cil. Just pri­or to the arrival of the rest of the anar­chists, Syme lets Gre­go­ry into his own secret…

“Gre­go­ry, I gave you a promise before I came into this place. That promise I would keep under red-hot pin­cers. Would you give me, for my own safe­ty, a lit­tle promise of the same kind?”

“A promise?” asked Gre­go­ry, won­der­ing.

“Yes,” said Syme, very seri­ous­ly, “a promise. I swore before God that I would not tell your secret to the police. Will you swear by Human­i­ty, or what­ev­er beast­ly thing you believe in, that you will not tell my secret to the anar­chists?”

“Your secret?” asked the star­ing Gre­go­ry. “Have you got a secret?”

“Yes,” said Syme, “I have a secret.” Then after a pause, “Will you swear?”

Gre­go­ry glared at him grave­ly for a few moments, and then said abrupt­ly—

“You must have bewitched me, but I feel a furi­ous curios­i­ty about you. Yes, I will swear not to tell the anar­chists any­thing you tell me. But look sharp, for they will be here in a cou­ple of min­utes.”

Syme rose slow­ly to his feet and thrust his long, white hands into his long, grey trousers’ pock­ets. Almost as he did so there came five knocks on the out­er grat­ing, pro­claim­ing the arrival of the first of the con­spir­a­tors.

“Well,” said Syme slow­ly, “I don’t know how to tell you the truth more short­ly than by say­ing that your expe­di­ent of dress­ing up as an aim­less poet is not con­fined to you or your Pres­i­dent. We have known the dodge for some time at Scot­land Yard.”

Gre­go­ry tried to spring up straight, but he swayed thrice.

“What do you say?” he asked in an inhu­man voice.

“Yes,” said Syme sim­ply, “I am a police detec­tive. But I think I hear your friends com­ing.”

G K Chesterton
G K Chester­ton
Music

Barbara Bonney sings Schubert’s Ave Maria (1994)

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A few years ago I was for­tu­nate enough to hear Schubert’s Ave Maria being rehearsed for a forth­com­ing wed­ding in the glo­ri­ous sur­round­ings of Ripon Cathe­dral. The lofti­ness of the cathedral’s Goth­ic archi­tec­ture pro­vid­ed a fit­ting acoustic res­o­nance to show­case such a lofty piece of music.

Franz Schu­bert com­posed the piece in 1825, and actu­al­ly it wasn’t tech­ni­cal­ly an Ave Maria at all (an “Ave Maria” being music writ­ten specif­i­cal­ly as a prayer to the Vir­gin Mary and for use in the litur­gy) but was called Ellens drit­ter Gesang (Ellen’s Song), and was part of his Opus 52, a series of set­tings based on Sir Wal­ter Scott’s epic poem The Lady of the Lake. It didn’t take long, how­ev­er, for the com­po­si­tion to devel­op into the “all-pur­pose” Catholic piece that’s so pop­u­lar today (although many con­ser­v­a­tive Catholics won’t play it at wed­dings or funer­als pre­cise­ly because it’s non-litur­gi­cal).

Any­way, it is pop­u­lar for good rea­son. It has a won­der­ful­ly lilt­ing refrain and offers the right singer an excel­lent vehi­cle with which to approach son­ic beau­ty. It’s been sung by every­one from Shirley Bassey to Bey­on­cé, but for real ful­fil­ment of its poten­tial, it calls out for a full, round and rich sopra­no voice. To that end, lis­ten to this ver­sion by Amer­i­can sopra­no, Bar­bara Bon­ney. Less of a house­hold name per­haps than Maria Callas, say, or Joan Suther­land, but nev­er­the­less Bar­bara Bon­ney exhibits an immac­u­late artistry on this record­ing of Ave Maria.

Bar­bara Bon­ney

 

 

Film, TV, and Theatre, Poetry

W H Auden’s Night Mail (1936)

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In the 1930s, a group of British film­mak­ers, led by John Gri­er­son, under the aegis of the GPO Film Unit, was behind an influ­en­tial out­put of doc­u­men­tary films that became known as the British Doc­u­men­tary Film Move­ment. Of the films it pro­duced, the best known and most crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed was Har­ry Wat­t’s and Basil Wright’s Night Mail (1936), fea­tur­ing music by Ben­jamin Brit­ten and poet­ry by W H Auden. Auden wrote his poem espe­cial­ly for the doc­u­men­tary, which fol­lows the Lon­don, Mid­land and Scot­tish Rail­way (LMS) mail train from Lon­don to Scot­land. The poem acts as a sort of verse com­men­tary over the footage of the steam loco­mo­tive, and helped to estab­lish the doc­u­men­tary as some­thing of a clas­sic.

Auden’s lan­guage is inge­nious; glo­ri­ous use of metaphor and clever rhymes, four-beat lines rhyth­mi­cal­ly deliv­ered to mim­ic the pump­ing of the rods and pis­tons of the loco­mo­tive. You can almost hear the train chug­ging along. The per­son­i­fied train is effi­cient, reli­able, stead­fast, trust­wor­thy – there is a remit, after all, to sell the mer­its of the postal ser­vice, and Auden sat­is­fies the spec. As the pace picks up to match the accel­er­a­tion of the train, the rhymes become quick and punchy, and become inter­nal rhymes (Let­ters of thanks, let­ters from banks) rather than line-end rhymes; a rapper’s delight.

And read along here:

This is the night mail cross­ing the Bor­der,
Bring­ing the cheque and the postal order,
Let­ters for the rich, let­ters for the poor,
The shop at the cor­ner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beat­tock, a steady climb:
The gra­di­en­t’s against her, but she’s on time.

Past cot­ton-grass and moor­land boul­der
Shov­el­ling white steam over her shoul­der,
Snort­ing nois­i­ly as she pass­es
Silent miles of wind-bent grass­es.
Birds turn their heads as she approach­es,
Stare from bush­es at her blank-faced coach­es.
Sheep-dogs can­not turn her course;
They slum­ber on with paws across.
In the farm she pass­es no one wakes,
But a jug in a bed­room gen­tly shakes.

Dawn fresh­ens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glas­gow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelp­ing down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of appa­ra­tus, the fur­naces
Set on the dark plain like gigan­tic chess­men.
All Scot­land waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.

Let­ters of thanks, let­ters from banks,
Let­ters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipt­ed bills and invi­ta­tions
To inspect new stock or to vis­it rela­tions,
And appli­ca­tions for sit­u­a­tions,
And timid lovers’ dec­la­ra­tions,
And gos­sip, gos­sip from all the nations,
News cir­cum­stan­tial, news finan­cial,
Let­ters with hol­i­day snaps to enlarge in,
Let­ters with faces scrawled on the mar­gin,
Let­ters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Let­ters to Scot­land from the South of France,
Let­ters of con­do­lence to High­lands and Low­lands
Notes from over­seas to the Hebrides
Writ­ten on paper of every hue,
The pink, the vio­let, the white and the blue,
The chat­ty, the cat­ty, the bor­ing, the ador­ing,
The cold and offi­cial and the heart’s out­pour­ing,
Clever, stu­pid, short and long,
The typed and the print­ed and the spelt all wrong.

Thou­sands are still asleep,
Dream­ing of ter­ri­fy­ing mon­sters
Or of friend­ly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Craw­ford’s
Asleep in work­ing Glas­gow, asleep in well-set Edin­burgh,
Asleep in gran­ite Aberdeen,
They con­tin­ue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and long for let­ters,
And none will hear the post­man’s knock
With­out a quick­en­ing of the heart,
For who can bear to feel him­self for­got­ten?

Auden and Brit­ten
Film, TV, and Theatre

Peter Sellers plays Lionel Mandrake in Dr Strangelove (1964)

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Stan­ley Kubrick’s black­est-of-black com­e­dy film, Dr Strangelove, was con­ceived as a straight thriller, based on Peter George’s book about the threat of nuclear war, Red Alert. The direc­tor, how­ev­er, increas­ing­ly found him­self struck, dur­ing the writ­ing process, by a per­sis­tent comedic thread that sug­gest­ed itself and which even­tu­al­ly forced him to embrace and run with it. A good thing too…and there could have been no bet­ter way to run with this comedic ele­ment in the fledg­ling movie than to engage Peter Sell­ers’ ser­vices.

Kubrick had worked with Sell­ers on Loli­ta, and it was prob­a­bly Sell­ers’ dis­play of char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion in that movie that moti­vat­ed Colum­bia Pic­tures to insist on cast­ing him in Dr Strangelove in mul­ti­ple roles. Sell­ers plays three char­ac­ters: US Pres­i­dent, Merkin Muf­fley; wheel­chair-bound, inge­nious mad Ger­man sci­en­tist, Dr Strangelove; and – the sub­ject of this blog post – British RAF exchange offi­cer, Group Cap­tain Lionel Man­drake.

The por­tray­al of Man­drake is a bril­liant dis­play of under­stat­ed comedic act­ing. The slow­ly-dawn­ing real­i­sa­tion that his com­mand­ing offi­cer, Gen­er­al Rip­per (him­self bril­liant­ly played by Ster­ling Hay­den), has become unhinged and para­noid and has put in motion a seem­ing­ly unstop­pable series of events that will cul­mi­nate in nuclear con­fla­gra­tion; his des­per­a­tion to extract from Rip­per the “recall code” to bring back the nuclear bombers that are swift­ly on their way to Rus­sia; and his fran­tic efforts to con­tact the Pres­i­dent and to avoid nuclear apoc­a­lypse when he finds he might hold the only key to do so…Sellers’ duty-bound and stiff-upper-lipped group cap­tain is a per­for­mance of sheer genius.

There is such a pletho­ra of superbly writ­ten and deliv­ered lines that there are too many to sin­gle out. Take ten min­utes to enjoy them all – as I guar­an­tee you will – in this mon­tage of Man­drake scenes.

Peter Sell­ers in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s DR. STRANGELOVE (1964). Cred­it: Sony Pic­tures. Play­ing 5/22–5/28.
Film, TV, and Theatre, Music

Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, as used in Brief Encounter (1945)

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Sergei Rachmaninoff’s sec­ond Piano Con­cer­to in C Minor stands on its own as a mas­ter­piece of the late Roman­tic peri­od, but what a great idea it turned out to be, to pair it with David Lean’s clas­sic love sto­ry of 1945, Brief Encounter.

It was Lean’s col­lab­o­ra­tor, pro­duc­er Noël Cow­ard, on whose one-act play the film was based, who insist­ed on the use of his favourite piece of music, despite there being a com­pos­er, Muir Math­ieson, wait­ing in the wings to write an orig­i­nal score. With all due respect to Math­ieson and how­ev­er his score might have turned out, the use of Rach­mani­noff, played by Aus­tralian pianist Eileen Joyce and the Nation­al Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, raised the film’s emo­tion­al lev­el sky-high.

The film is told in flash­back, as the lead char­ac­ter of Lau­ra (Celia John­son) sits in her liv­ing room with her hus­band, star­ing into space, lis­ten­ing to the Sec­ond Con­cer­to and think­ing about her time with anoth­er man, Alec (Trevor Howard). She remem­bers the day they met, at the café in the train sta­tion. When a piece of grit gets in her eye, Alec, a doc­tor, removes it, and a bond starts between them, quick­ly devel­op­ing into love as they  embark on a series of clan­des­tine assig­na­tions.

This love sto­ry is doomed, of course, as Lau­ra is a mar­ried moth­er and we are deep in the ter­ri­to­ry of 1940s mid­dle-class man­ners. Grant­ed, the strait-jack­et­ed morals and lin­guis­tic quirks of the times leave us in no doubt that the film is a peri­od piece, but it right­ly remains a huge­ly pop­u­lar British movie.

The devel­op­ment, and inevitable demise, of the rela­tion­ship is sub­tly under­pinned by the repeat­ing strains of Rach­mani­nof­f’s music. The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of his piece, mean­while, is demon­strat­ed by its con­sis­tent­ly top­ping the Clas­sic FM Hall of Fame, firm­ly secur­ing its sta­tus as Britain’s favourite piece of clas­si­cal music. Watch and lis­ten to a pleas­ing mon­tage of Brief Encounter to Rach­mani­nof­f’s music below:

Celia John­son and Trevor Howard
Art

Michelangelo’s Pietà (1499)

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The Vir­gin Mary has fea­tured prodi­gious­ly in Chris­t­ian art for many cen­turies. There are numer­ous gen­res of her depic­tion includ­ing the famil­iar Madon­na and Child, and the Madon­na Enthroned, the Ador­ing Madon­na, the Madon­na of Humil­i­ty, and sev­er­al oth­ers.  One such, the Pietà (Ital­ian for “pity” or “mer­cy”), is a sub­ject that depicts the sor­row­ing Vir­gin Mary cradling the dead Jesus, and is most often found in sculp­ture. Today’s sub­ject is the Pietà of Michelan­ge­lo, com­plet­ed in 1499 and resid­ing in St Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Vat­i­can City.

There is no doubt­ing the sub­lime genius that cre­at­ed this piece. Carved from a sin­gle block of Car­rara mar­ble, Michelan­ge­lo cre­at­ed, with con­sum­mate skill, a coher­ent and mov­ing piece of art incor­po­rat­ing both Clas­si­cal and Renais­sance ten­den­cies.

The fig­ures are delib­er­ate­ly out of pro­por­tion owing to the dif­fi­cul­ty of depict­ing an adult man cra­dled full-length in a woman’s lap. When design­ing Mary’s mea­sure­ments, Michelan­ge­lo could not impose real­is­tic pro­por­tions and have her cra­dle her adult son as he envi­sioned, so he had to make her body over­sized. To ame­lio­rate this com­pro­mise on her form, Michelan­ge­lo carved out cas­cad­ing sheets of drap­ing gar­ments, cam­ou­flag­ing her true full­ness. The result is a tri­umph of form; observe the mon­u­men­tal drap­ery, the youth­ful face of Mary, the anatom­i­cal treat­ment of Christ’s elon­gat­ed body…

Michelan­ge­lo was 24 when he com­plet­ed this sculp­ture, and his fame became assured long before he com­plet­ed his oth­er mas­ter­pieces such as his David (com­plet­ed 1504) and the Sis­tine Chapel ceil­ing (com­plet­ed 1512)

 

Michelan­gelo’s Pietà
Music

Bob Dylan sings Mr Tambourine Man, Newport Folk Festival (1964)

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Era defin­ing. Voice of a gen­er­a­tion. Urban poet. Folk trou­ba­dour. No, not Justin Bieber; I’m refer­ring to Bob Dylan and in this post I’m look­ing at Dylan’s per­for­mance of Mr Tam­bourine Man at New­port Folk Fes­ti­val in 1964.

Dylan played the influ­en­tial and long-run­ning fes­ti­val for three con­sec­u­tive years from 1963 to 1965.

His first appear­ance in 1963 was as a guest of Joan Baez, and though lit­tle known out­side Green­wich Vil­lage, he was tak­en to heart by the folkies. That year saw the begin­nings of inter­na­tion­al suc­cess with Dylan’s break­through sec­ond album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, which he had com­plet­ed that May. Its com­bi­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al folk with a per­son­al and authen­tic edge and a social mes­sage, proved a hit with an ever-widen­ing demo­graph­ic of music fans.

Skip for­ward to 1965. His final year at New­port gave us the great Elec­tric Con­tro­ver­sy, when Dylan walked on stage clutch­ing a Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er gui­tar and backed by a full elec­tric band, shock­ing the folk purists in the audi­ence, and pro­vok­ing bewil­der­ment, con­ster­na­tion and an icon­ic place in musi­cal his­to­ry. Inci­den­tal­ly, that gui­tar sold at auc­tion a cou­ple of years back for just short of a mil­lion dol­lars!

But we return to the year of his sec­ond appear­ance at New­port, 1964, when the young Dylan was now estab­lished as a ful­ly-fledged “protest singer”, his ris­ing star in momen­tous upward tra­jec­to­ry and the new dar­ling of the fes­ti­val goers. Here, we watch some delight­ful­ly infor­mal and upfront footage of his ren­di­tion of Mr Tam­bourine Man, lis­tened to by a polite­ly enthralled audi­ence (and a bizarrely pok­er-faced guy, stage-left).

The song is gen­tle and dream-like, flow­ing repet­i­tive­ly through the same three major chords, so typ­i­cal of Dylan. Lyric-wise, it’s replete with anoth­er Dylan trait, the mul­ti­ple rhymes that some­how pull togeth­er coher­ent­ly despite what should be the increas­ing implau­si­bil­i­ty and dimin­ish­ing returns of string­ing so many rhymes togeth­er (take note, rap­pers of the world). What’s it about? Death, musi­cal inspi­ra­tion, drugs, weari­ness, doubts about the effi­ca­cy of the protest move­ment to change the world, a “tam­bourine man”…take your pick, or just let the music take you to a nice cor­ner of your mind! Here’s the boy from Duluth him­self, hav­ing been announced as the “boy who ran away from home sev­en­teen times and got brought back six­teen”…

 

Bob Dylan
Music

Lale Andersen sings Lili Marlene, 1939

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With­out any doubt the most pop­u­lar song of the Sec­ond World War was Lili Mar­lene. Record­ed by Dan­ish cabaret artiste Lale Ander­sen in 1939 under the title Das Mäd­chen unter der Lat­er­ne (“The Girl under the Lantern”), the song sold a mere 700 copies on release and fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty.

There it might have remained had not a sol­dier, work­ing for the Ger­man forces radio sta­tion in occu­pied Bel­grade, been sent to scour Vien­na for some records to broad­cast to Gen­er­al Rommel’s Afri­ka Korps. One of the records he found in Vien­na was Lale Andersen’s record­ing of Das Mäd­chen unter der Lat­er­ne, and it was first played over the air on 18th August 1941.

It became an instant favourite with Rom­mel’s men, and for the next three years Radio Bel­grade played it almost every night at 9.57pm, as the clos­ing record. It also became a huge hit through­out Nazi-occu­pied Europe and was soon picked up by the British Eighth Army in the desert. It also soon assumed its sim­ple alter­na­tive song title, Lili Marlene (some­times spelled Lili Mar­leen, Lil­li Mar­lene etc).

In his mem­oir, British sol­dier Fitzroy Maclean describes the song’s effect in the spring of 1942 dur­ing the West­ern Desert Cam­paign: “Husky, sen­su­ous, nos­tal­gic, sug­ar-sweet, her voice seemed to reach out to you, as she lin­gered over the catchy tune…”

The next year, Maclean was para­chut­ed into the Yugoslav guer­ril­la war, and the song once again played its part:

“Some­times at night, before going to sleep, we would turn on our receiv­ing set and lis­ten to Radio Bel­grade. For months now, the flower of the Afri­ka Korps had been lan­guish­ing behind the barbed wire of Allied prison camps. But still, punc­tu­al­ly at ten o’clock, came Lale Ander­sen singing their spe­cial song, with the same unvary­ing, heart-rend­ing sweet­ness that we knew so well from the desert…Belgrade was still remote but, now that we our­selves were in Yugoslavia, it had acquired a new sig­nif­i­cance for us. It had become our ulti­mate goal, which Lili Mar­lene and her nos­tal­gic lit­tle tune seemed some­how to sym­bol­ise. ‘When we get to Bel­grade…’ we would say. And then we would switch off the wire­less a lit­tle guilti­ly, for the Par­ti­sans, we knew, were shocked at the strange plea­sure we got from lis­ten­ing to the singing of the Ger­man woman (sic) who was queen­ing it in their cap­i­tal.”

It’s not hard to imag­ine the Tom­mies, and Jer­ries alike, crowd­ed round their “receiv­ing sets”, smok­ing fags and dream­ing of Lili Mar­lene…

Lale Ander­sen
Poetry

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

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It’s 25th Octo­ber 1854, and the Bat­tle of Bal­a­cla­va, one of the piv­otal bat­tles of the Crimean War, is in full flow. Lord Raglan, com­man­der of the British forces, has sent a mes­sage order­ing the approx­i­mate­ly 600 horse­men of the British light cav­al­ry (the “Light Brigade”) to pur­sue and har­ry a retreat­ing Russ­ian artillery bat­tery. Dis­as­trous­ly, how­ev­er, due to a mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the chain of com­mand, the Light Brigade is instead sent on a frontal assault against a dif­fer­ent artillery bat­tery, one very much well-pre­pared and defend­ed.

The Light Brigade comes under with­er­ing fire from three sides, is bad­ly mauled, and is forced to retreat in chaos. The assault ends with very high British casu­al­ties, no deci­sive gains, and the event goes down in his­to­ry as one of the most woe­ful of mil­i­tary blun­ders…

Just six weeks after the event, Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson pub­lished his nar­ra­tive poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. Its lines empha­sise the val­our of the cav­al­ry in brave­ly car­ry­ing out their orders, regard­less of the obvi­ous out­come. The poem bequeaths to us the famous phrase:

Theirs not to rea­son why,
Theirs but to do and die

Nowa­days, we casu­al­ly use the phrase “ours not to rea­son why” to shrug away a dubi­ous man­age­r­i­al deci­sion. In the poem, how­ev­er, we are left in no doubt as to what the sol­diers were com­mit­ting them­selves to:

Can­non to the right of them,
Can­non to the left of them,
Can­non in front of them
Vol­ley’d and thun­der’d;
Stor­m’d at with shot and shell,
Bold­ly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hun­dred

The met­ri­cal scheme of the poem lends itself to the des­per­ate charge of the horse­men, the breath­less­ly short lines, drummed out like hoof-beats, cre­at­ing a dra­mat­ic imme­di­a­cy. Phras­es like “jaws of Death” and “mouth of Hell” vivid­ly depict the hope­less­ness of the assault.

Read it in full (as you lis­ten to it here)

 

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the val­ley of Death
Rode the six hun­dred.
‘For­ward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!’ he said:
Into the val­ley of Death
Rode the six hun­dred.

II
’For­ward, the Light Brigade!‘
Was there a man dis­may’d?
Not tho’ the sol­dier knew
Some­one had blun­der’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to rea­son why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the val­ley of Death
Rode the six hun­dred.

III
Can­non to the right of them,
Can­non to the left of them,
Can­non in front of them
Vol­ley’d and thun­der’d;
Stor­m’d at with shot and shell,
Bold­ly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hun­dred.

IV
Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gun­ners there,
Charg­ing an army, while
All the world won­der’d:
Plunged in the bat­tery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cos­sack and Russ­ian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shat­ter’d and sun­der’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hun­dred.

V
Can­non to right of them,
Can­non to left of them,
Can­non behind them
Vol­ley’d and thun­der’d;
Stor­m’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of the six hun­dred.

VI
When can their glo­ry fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world won­der’d.
Hon­our the charge they made!
Hon­our the Light Brigade,
Noble six hun­dred!

Ten­nyson
Paint­ing by Richard Caton Woodville, 1894

 

Sur­vivors of the charge

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