Aimez-Vous Brahms?

This question was the title of a 1959 novel by Françoise Sagan – but don't worry, I haven't become a late-life Sagan fan.
There was a time, in the latter part of the 19th century, when, in an early outbreak of identitarianism, the musical world divided into lovers of Brahms, and therefore of the established Romantic tradition, or  lovers of Wagner, and therefore of 'new music' and new musical directions. So how you answered the question mattered. For myself, I've had problems with both men, but recently I have definitely been coming round to Brahms, mostly by way of his chamber music, but also with a new appreciation of his symphonies – a CD of the great Carlos Kleiber conducting the Fourth opened my eyes. And then I discovered, to my surprise, that Glenn Gould was fascinated by Brahms's late intermezzos, and rated his own recording of them among his best: 'It's the sexiest interpretation of Brahms's intermezzi you've ever heard – and I really think it's perhaps the best piano playing I have done.'
   In his (best) collection, The Cost of Seriousness, Peter Porter has a short, enigmatic poem titled 'A Brahms Intermezzo' –

                         The heart is a minor artist
                         hiding behind a beard.
                         In middle age
                         the bloodstream becomes a hammock
                         slowing down for silence – 
                         till then, this lullaby,
                         arpeggiated thunder
                         and the streams running
                         through Arcadia. I, too,
                         says the black-browed creature,
                         am in this vale of sweetness,
                         my notes are added to eternity. 

I wonder if this beautiful, melancholy piece was the intermezzo Porter had in mind?

A Joyful Rehang

 Yesterday I was in London, having a long lunch with an old friend. Before lunch, having a little time to kill, I retreated from the London hubbub into St Martin's In The Fields – surely the least numinous church in England, more like a Georgian assembly room, but at least it's quiet and peaceful. After lunch, having a little more time to kill before my train back, I went to have a look at the rehung National Gallery and, well... suffice to say, I staggered out half an hour or so later dazed with aesthetic bliss – this rehang is wonderful! It's a radical rehang too, affecting virtually every room, and bringing large numbers of paintings out of storage and into the galleries. Although the gallery as a whole can still be clearly read as a chronological history of western art, paintings from different periods have been placed together to brilliant effect, and, best of all, the great masterpieces have been given the space to work their unique magic, rather than being embedded in the 'context' of a time-bound narrative. My brief visit wasn't nearly long enough, but I spent the whole of it reeling from space to space in a kind of ecstasy – the great gallery has never looked better, or delivered more sheer delight. This rehang has been given the title The Wonder Of Art, but it might better be called (but for some unfortunate associations) The Joy Of Art. 'It must give pleasure,' Wallace Stevens wrote of his 'Supreme Fiction'. The rehung National Gallery does, and it gives it abundantly.

Bromide, Quinine and Croquet

 So there I was, strolling through the garden in front of Heene Terrace in Worthing – a fine sea-facing terrace of 1865 – when I spotted a smallish yellow-orange butterfly dashing about in a tearing hurry to be somewhere else. There was only one thing it could be – and, sure enough, it was: a male Clouded Yellow! This was a glorious late-season surprise, the first Clouded Yellow I've seen in several years. Of course it didn't settle so that I could have a proper look – they never do. 
   Other than that... Well, the rail journey gave me ample time to progress with my reading of Rosamund Bartlett's Chekhov: Scenes from a Life, a biography that tells the story of his life and art through the places he lived in and the places and landscapes (natural and man-made) that most inspired and moved him.  Thus we follow him from his boyhood in provincial Taganrog, on the edge of the southern steppe, to Moscow and St Petersburg, Siberia and Sakhalin Island, the French Riviera and Yalta – and his beloved country estate, Melikhovo. There, I was interested to learn, he had two 'assistants' in the form of his pet black-and-tan dachshunds, Bromide and Quinine (named by his sister Masha). These arrived as puppies, a gift from his friend Nikolai Leikin, and on arrival at Melikhovo they 'were fantastically happy to get here. They raced around all the rooms jumping up affectionately on everyone and barking at the servants ... In the morning, when I was walking them in the garden, they caused panic in the breasts of the yard dogs, who had never in all their lives seen such monstrous creatures...' Quinine was especially affectionate, and in the evenings would put her front paws on Chekhov's lap and gaze at him adoringly. The feeling was mutual, and Chekhov was equally fond of Bromide (known as Brom). 
   The dachshunds, like the yard dogs, led a free and easy life, fathering and giving birth to litters of puppies, one of them the result of an incestuous union. Chekhov wrote of Quinine giving birth three times a year to 'puppies who were a strange mixture of crocodile and mongrel'. Sadly, both dogs were to die, probably from rabies, six years later, during the last summer Chekhov spent at Melikhovo.

  I was also interested to learn that, at Melihkovo, Chekhov was a keen player of croquet, a game I'd always thought of as quintessentially English. It was, in fact, hugely popular in Russia towards the end of the 19th century, and remained so, even into Soviet times. Chekhov became such an enthusiastic player that he would insist on continuing games even as night fell and matches had to be lit to see where the balls were. Scenes from a Life is full of such fascinating and unexpected details, and particularly illuminating about Chekhov's relationship with the landscapes he loved, especially the steppe (his first 'literary' story was 'In the Steppe'). 'Chekhov was a landscape painter,' Bartlett writes, '– in prose.' 

'It is a seaside resort...'

 I shall be down in Worthing (again, on family business) for the next few days...

A Centenary

 Today is the centenary of the birth (in Miami, Florida) of Donald Justice, a very fine poet who is still undervalued – indeed, he's barely known on this side of the Pond – but whose works will surely last. Patrick Kurp pays fitting tribute on Anecdotal Evidence. I shall simply post a Justice poem, one of my favourites...

Thinking about the Past

Certain moments will never change, nor stop being—
My mother's face all smiles, all wrinkles soon;
The rock wall building, built, collapsed then, fallen;
Our upright loosening downward slowly out of tune—
All fixed into place now, all rhyming with each other.
That red-haired girl with wide mouth—Eleanor—
Forgotten thirty years—her freckled shoulders, hands.
The breast of Mary Something, freed from a white swimsuit,
Damp, sandy, warm; or Margery's, a small, caught bird—
Darkness they rise from, darkness they sink back toward.
O marvellous early cigarettes! O bitter smoke, Benton...
And Kenny in wartime whites, crisp, cocky,
Time a bow bent with his certain failure.
Dusks, dawns; waves; the ends of songs...

'He turned round to me again... and he just went under the water.'

On this day in 1979,  J.G. Farrell, author of Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and The Singapore Grip, died in bizarre circumstances, apparently falling into the sea from a rock he was fishing from at the remote Sheep's Head peninsula in West Cork. He had been living there for a while, enjoying a quiet life, working on his next novel, and relaxing by fishing for his dinner. Nobody knows exactly what happened on that day, but the weather was rough, with a storm brewing, and the likeliest explanation is that either a freak wave or a sudden strong gust of wind swept him into the water.
   By chance, an acquaintance who was out walking with her children and a friend came on the scene just after Farrell had fallen, and saw him in the water: 'We could see that he'd got boots on,' she recalled, 'and I was always telling them you mustn't go near the sea with boots – it's dangerous. I turned round to Sarah [her daughter] and she said, "Quick, Mummy, he's fallen in the water." And so I said I would go down, and that put them into hysterics. We could see him in the water – just his head. I said, "I'm going to go down to reach to him", but the children said, "No, you'll fall in." We called to him to take off the boots. But he didn't even attempt to take the boots off. He was quite close to me, only within about eight feet. He looked up at the boys and then round at me. I called to him to try and come towards me – because he was staying dead still. He wasn't moving his arms, but his head was completely above the water ... He looked at me, and then he turned round and looked at the children. He turned round to me again… and he just went under the water.'

  I imagine that scene, and the terrible feeling of helplessness, must have given the poor woman – and her children – many bad dreams. The probability is that Farrell was already on the brink of death by the time they saw him. He was physically weakened by the polio he contracted as a student at Oxford in the 1950s, and had probably succumbed quickly to hypothermia. His body was found later on the far side of Bantry Bay, and there was speculation in some quarters that his death was the work of the IRA or British Intelligence, while others spoke of suicide, but the coroner's verdict was clear and surely right – accidental drowning. A terrible accident, and a sad loss.

One from the Right

 A while back, I wrote about 'early disclosers', people who insist on telling you their (invariably dreary) political views as soon as they meet you. At the time of writing, I had never come across anyone whose views might be labelled 'right-wing' who has similarly made a point of declaring them at the first opportunity. Today, however, in the supermarket check-out queue, I was buttonholed by a chap who lost no time in telling me that he had stood as the UKIP candidate in some nearby rock-solid Labour seat and attracted an impressive (I think) 960 votes. He intends to stand for Reform in the next general election, as he thinks Nigel Farage is one hell of a fellow, and after that his plan is to become Minister of Transport in the Reform government – this because he is very exercised about the number of traffic roundabouts in Walsall, and the fact that the lights on pedestrian crossings stay on red even after all pedestrians have crossed the road. I fear his plans are a little unrealistic, not least because, as he told me, he is 81 years old, rising 82 – although, to be fair, he looked little more than 60, and is clearly fizzing with energy. By the time I was paying for my shopping, he had turned away and engaged two women in conversation, but I don't know if he was regaling them with the same routine. Anyway, it made a nice change to meet someone from the 'other side' who was keen to share their political views – though I would have preferred almost any other subject. 

All About Eve

 Last night BBC4 showed the classic 1950 movie All About Eve. It's a film I've seen before – at least twice, I think – and each time I was duly impressed, but it was only last night that I realised just what an amazing all-round masterpiece it is. The performances of all three principals – Bette Davis as ageing Broadway star Margo Channing, George Sanders as kingpin theatre critic Addison deWitt, and Anne Baxter as Margo Channing's scheming nemesis – are each perfect in every detail. Much of the acting is done by Bette Davis's and Anne Baxter's wonderfully expressive eyes, registering every tiny nuance of emotion. George Sanders's method doesn't make much use of the eyes, of course, but his is a powerhouse performance, a perfect blend of suave urbanity and veiled menace. And the script – well, the script (by the director Joseph Mankiewicz) is so good, so tightly written and so pitch-perfect, it would have made a fine film even without acting of this calibre. 
  As is often the case with films that seem so perfectly cast that they could never have been otherwise, All About Eve could have looked very different. The role of Margo Channing, so perfect for Bette Davis, was originally intended for Susan Hayward, and among others considered for the role were Marlene Dietrich, Gertrude Lawrence, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford and Ingrid Bergman. The part was actually given to Claudette Colbert, but she had to pull out because of an injury – and only then did the finger of fate finally swing round to Bette Davis. Similarly, Anne Baxter was only given the role of Eve after the first choice, Jeanne Crain, fell inopportunely pregnant. Making a film, even a masterpiece, is a tortuous process, and no one really knows what the end result will be until it's up there on the screen. 
  All About Eve was released in 1950 (and won a clutch of well deserved awards, including six Oscars). That same year also saw the release of another classic film about an ageing actress, Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard – and at least one other masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon. It was quite a year... 

Digging

 My two youngest grandsons, like all boys of a certain age, enjoy digging holes. My brother and I certainly did, and were quite prepared to entertain the possibility that, if we dug deep enough, we would get all the way to Australia. After all, we had been told, against all the evidence, that the Earth was round (just as we had been told, also against all the evidence, that it was spinning around at some incredible speed, and – every bit as implausibly – circling the Sun). So maybe one day, if we dug hard enough, we might emerge, blinking, in the land of the kangaroo and the kookaburra. Anyway, it was fun just digging as deep as we could get, and we occasionally turned up odd shards of terracotta and bits of cheap blue and white china (no clay pipes, alas, and rarely a coin). Once we dug an unusually large hole in the garden and covered it up with sticks and leaves to disguise it. Unfortunately our father happened to be passing that way a little later, and suddenly disappeared up to his thighs in the ground. To our relief, he was more amused than annoyed. He was always a boy at heart... 
Here is Richard Wilbur, in a fine poem, recalling his digging days: 

Digging for China

“Far enough down is China,” somebody said.
“Dig deep enough and you might see the sky
As clear as at the bottom of a well.
Except it would be real–a different sky.
Then you could burrow down until you came
To China! Oh, it’s nothing like New Jersey.
There’s people, trees, and houses, and all that,
But much, much different. Nothing looks the same.”

I went and got the trowel out of the shed
And sweated like a coolie all that morning,
Digging a hole beside the lilac-bush,
Down on my hands and knees. It was a sort
Of praying, I suspect. I watched my hand
Dig deep and darker, and I tried and tried
To dream a place where nothing was the same.
The trowel never did break through to blue.

Before the dream could weary of itself
My eyes were tired of looking into darkness,
My sunbaked head of hanging down a hole.
I stood up in a place I had forgotten,
Blinking and staggering while the earth went round
And showed me silver barns, the fields dozing
In palls of brightness, patens growing and gone
In the tides of leaves, and the whole sky china blue.
Until I got my balance back again
All that I saw was China, China, China.

Owls

I'm sure my readers need no reminding that today is International Owl Awareness Day. This is good news for me, because (a) I'm very fond of owls, and used to be able to make a pretty convincing Tawny Owl hoot, though the power seems to have deserted me now, and (b) it gives me an excuse to share one of my favourite Edward Thomas poems, 'The Owl' – 

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;

Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof

Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest

Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,

Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.

All of the night was quite barred out except

An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,

No merry note, nor cause of merriment,

But one telling me plain what I escaped

And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,

Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice

Speaking for all who lay under the stars,

Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

And here is another, very different poem titled 'The Owl', by Walter de la Mare, its tortured syntax evoking a tortured state of mind – a long way from the poet's more familiar quiet lyricism:

What if to edge of dream,
When the spirit is come,
Shriek the hunting owl,
And summon it home —
To the fear-stirred heart
And the ancient dread
Of man, when cold root or stone
Pillowed roofless head?

Clangs not at last the hour
When roof shelters not;
And the ears are deaf,
And all fears forgot:
Since the spirit too far has fared
For summoning scream
Of any strange fowl on earth
To shatter its dream?

And here is yet one more poem titled 'The Owl', a charming and musical lyric by Tennyson –

When cats run home and light is come,
    And dew is cold upon the ground,
And the far-off stream is dumb,
    And the whirring sail goes round,
    And the whirring sail goes round;
         Alone and warming his five wits,
         The white owl in the belfry sits.

When merry milkmaids click the latch,
    And rarely smells the new-mown hay,
And the cock hath sung beneath the thatch
    Twice or thrice his roundelay,
    Twice or thrice his roundelay;
         Alone and warming his five wits,
         The white owl in the belfry sits.

'Orange merchants', 'orange children'...

In the course of researching my butterfly book, I read as many butterfly poem as I could find – and most of them, barring Emily Dickinson's fantastic flights and Janet Lewis's wonderful The Insect (you'll find it at the end of this post) – were pretty unsatisfactory, tending to be more about the poet than the butterfly, and almost never evoking a particular species. Well, now I've found two poems (and potentially 61 poems) devoted to a singles species – the Monarch.
  The two poems are in an interesting Everyman's Library anthology, Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems – poems that, to quote the Introduction, 'respond to earlier poems – they argue with, elaborate on, recast, poke fun at or pay tribute to their inspiration'. The two Monarch poems are in the section 'Variations on a Theme', though they could equally well have been in 'Rebukes and Rebuttals', or indeed 'He Said, She Said'. The first is by Robert Duncan, a poet I might well have read in my deluded youth when I was very taken with the 'New American Poetry', but I remember nothing of his. He was a big figure in the avant-garde literary and artistic world in his day, and indeed on the gay scene (according to Wikipedia, he had an affair with Robert de Niro's father, an abstract painter). Here is a charcoal drawing of him in old age, by R.B. Kitaj –

– and here is the poem:

Roots and Branches

Sail, Monarchs, rising and falling
orange merchants in spring's flowery markets!
messengers of March in warm currents of news floating,
   flitting into areas of aroma,
tracing out of air unseen roots and branches of sense
   I share in thought,
filaments woven and broken where the world might light
   casual certainties of me. There are

   echoes of what I am in what you perform
this morning. How you perfect my spirit!
   almost restore 
an imaginary tree of the living in all its doctrines
   by fluttering about,
intent and easy as you are, the profusion of you!
awakening transports of an inner view of things. 

(That's a terrible last line, isn't it?) And here is the poetic response of Alison Hawthorne Deming – a much better poem than the original, I would say:

The Monarchs, 58

   Sleep, Monarchs, rising and falling
with the wind, orange children tucked in your 
   winter bed,
teachers of patience and faith
   dreaming in the eucalyptus dark,
accumulating in your cells the photons that tell
you when to move, a sense
   I share in mind,
that makes the blue world
   light up, electric. It's too late

   to just let the world be and think
it will mend. Yet how you, little nothings, perfect
     my spirit!
   almost erasing
the actual ruin of living and all its doctrines
   with your evolved sleep –
delicate and frail as you are, the profusion of you
awakening in me soundings of the past
   that name the future.

Why the number? It turns out that this poem is number 58 in a sequence of 60 inspired by the extraordinary migration of the Monarch butterfly, and published under the title  The Monarchs: A Poem Sequence. So, there are 59 more Monarch poems out there...

Allan Ahlberg (and more Moore)

 Sad to hear the news that the children's author Allan Ahlberg has died, albeit at a ripe age (unlike his wife and collaborator Janet, who sadly died aged just 50). Between them the Ahlbergs created some of the best children's books of their time, several of them true classics which will surely endure as long as children's books are read: Each Peach Pear Plum, Peepo, Burglar Bill and Funnybones, at least. Later in his career he also wrote a rather wonderful autobiographical work, The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood, in the crisp, never waste a word style of the children's books. 'My mother, who was not my mother, I see her now, her raw red cleaner's hands twisting away at her apron, as she struggled to speak. Adoption was a shameful business then in many people's eyes, the babies being mostly illegitimate' – as was Ahlberg, born in South London and taken by his adoptive parents to Oldbury in the West Midlands. His childhood there, loving but impoverished, is very much the one we see, in all its fondly recalled detail, in Peepo. 
  One of the pleasures of grandparenthood is sharing with the grandchildren books that we read to their parents, and it has been a joy rediscovering those Ahlberg classics. What a legacy Allan and Janet left. 

(And here, as an addendum to Wednesday's post, is Gerald Moore again, this time accompanying Janet Baker in Richard Strauss's beautiful 'Morgen', the last of his Four Last Songs –