Feline Philosophy

 I don't like to repeat myself too often, but I see that on this day five years ago I was writing about John Gray's rather wonderful Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. I'm looking after (i.e. feeding) the Lichfield family's cat while they're away for a few days down South, so there's my excuse.
'Be More Cat' was the title of this one...

'Lately I've been reading too many books at once, with the result that (slow reader as I am) I haven't finished one in a while. However, I have now read all 111 pages of John Gray's commendably short and typically brilliant Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life. Like all his work, it makes for a bracing, eye-opening read, and its pages, however few, are, as Dr Johnson would say, 'full of matter'. Never wasting a word, Gray surveys a wide horizon, touching on several religions and the thoughts of various philosophers (beginning with the cat-loving Montaigne). As ever, he coolly undermines all our illusions about ourselves and puts us in our place – our place being in the animal kingdom, from the other inhabitants of which we are distinguished chiefly by a morbid self-consciousness that leads us to fear death, to see our lives as meaningful narratives, and to devote ourselves to such dubious causes as the pursuit of happiness.
  Cats, needless to say, are unaffected by any such concerns and simply get on with living their lives, fulfilling their conatus. In this they are like all other non-human beings, but undeniably cats are a special case: they are the only undomesticated animals with whom we share our lives (or rather the only undomesticated animals who deign to share their lives, in part, with us). Cats were never domesticated; they are using us at least as much as we are using them for our human needs (vermin control, companionship, relaxation, something to care for, a show of affection). Unlike dogs, they never become ingratiating quasi-humans but remain absolutely themselves: even in terms of morphology and genetics, it is difficult to tell wild or 'feral' cats from 'domesticated' ones.
  What can we learn from them? Nothing by precept, of course, but everything by example: they have much to teach us, Gray argues, about how to live, and indeed how to die. As long as they are fed and their equilibrium is not seriously disturbed, cats live fearlessly, contentedly, without anxiety and without ambition. When their time has come, they die quietly, and when they have nothing particular to do, they sleep. One of the 'Ten Feline Hints on How to Live Well' that are listed at the end of the book is 'Sleep for the joy of sleeping – Sleeping so that you can work harder when you wake up is a miserable way to live. Sleep for pleasure, not profit.' Indeed.
  The first of the 'hints' is 'Never try to persuade human beings to be reasonable', and a later one is the almost folksy 'Forget about pursuing happiness, and you may find it'. But these are indeed only 'hints', and the last of them is 'If you cannot learn to live a little more like a cat, return without regret to the human world of diversion'. Which is what most readers will probably do, but, after reading this remarkable book, they will return chastened, stimulated, and even a little wiser. 

Still Wonderful

 Last night I watched It's A Wonderful Life again. I see that I last watched it at the start of this year, and wrote about it here, under the title 'It's a Wonderful Film'...

'This wretched flu continues to toy with me mercilessly, one day giving every indication that it's coming to an end, the next surging back with renewed vigour, draining me of all energy. It's been quite a ride. And somewhere along the way, in keeping with Christmas tradition (one not observed for several years), the decision was taken to watch It's a Wonderful Life. This was not wise: I had overlooked the state of emotional frailty the flu had plunged me into. The result was that the titles were barely over before liquefaction set in, and by the end I was a wrung-out emotional wreck of a man, beyond help. The film is notoriously one that can wring tears from the stoniest heart, so a man in my condition was asking for trouble...
  What is it about It's a Wonderful Life? Like A Christmas Carol – with which it has clear parallels, not least in the Scrooge-like character of Mr Potter and in its time-shifting vision of what might have been – it has the power of fable, and it has a Dickensian simplicity. Essentially both A Christmas Carol and It's A Wonderful Life dramatise the same conflict, between a view of the world (Potter/Scrooge's) in which the 'bottom line' is everything and human beings merely interchangeable economic units, and one in which bonds of social and familial affection, custom and ceremony count for more than profit-and-loss and create something of infinitely greater value. George Bailey is a man at the point of breaking under the relentless pressure to surrender to the grinding logic of Potter's ruthless accounting and betray the community that he has done so much to build. Of course we know how it will end, but Frank Capra's storytelling and (in particular ) Jimmy Stewart's performance are so compelling that the film gains power as it goes along, building such a head of emotional steam that by the end... well, there won't be a dry eye or an unwrung heart. Okay, it's sentimental, it's hokey and all the rest, but It's a Wonderful Life is also a cinematic masterpiece of rare potency. 
  By the way, when George Bailey is granted a vision of how 'Potterville' (the former Bedford Falls) would have ended up but for him, the pleasure-crazed asocial dystopia – all cocktail bars and gambling dens and low dives – seemed, mutatis mutandis, sadly reminiscent of the centres of some of our depressed English towns today. This represents, I suppose, the triumph of 'limbic capitalism' – capitalism relentlessly titillating the pleasure centres to keep us coming back for more of what does us no good at all.'  

I had forgotten that I had a festive flu at New Year, and had forgotten also the useful phrase 'limbic capitalism', which I shall recommit to memory. All I have to add is that It's a Wonderful Life gets better – richer and deeper – with every viewing, and that it seems to me now that Potter's brand of capitalism could also be characterised as 'crony capitalism' – he has everyone in his pocket, up to and including at least one Congressman (who is told to wait outside while Potter holds a meeting) – and as 'machine capitalism', in which the mechanical engine of market forces careers blindly on, regardless of social context, regardless of human costs. Both of these dehumanising forms of capitalism, I need hardly add, are characteristic of our time – more so, in fact, than of the times portrayed in the film, where in the end the benign, humane form of capitalism represented by Bailey, a form based on mutuality and affective social bonds, does in the end prevail. Never mind – now we have limbic capitalism to keep us happily sedated while the machine rolls on. 

But enough of these mournful numbers. Today is also the 160th birthday of that wonderful painter and printmaker Felix Vallotton (and tomorrow will be the centenary of his death). Here is a summery still life featuring an appetising melon and a beautiful little bunch of nasturtiums –

Boxing Day

 

Well, my festive 'cold' reached something of a peak (or trough) yesterday, and I had to absent myself from the festivities for a chunk of the afternoon and lie down in a darkened room. It was just like the old days, i.e. the days of my working life, when every Christmas (or so it seemed) I would be struck down by ever more prostrating versions of flu. Yesterday, I rallied after a restorative glass of champagne heavily laced with the wonderfully medicinal Fernet-Branca. Helped by more champagne, a good white burgundy and a couple of glasses of Cynar, I made it through the rest of the day, and even slept well. Today I have a rather alarming cough, but I enjoyed a brisk walk in frosty sunshine – clear Christmas weather for once, instead of the usual miserable rain. I've also been enjoying my musical Christmas present – Music For A While, L'Arpeggiata's album of improvisations on Purcell. Here, from that album, is the gorgeous voice of countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, singing the beautiful 'Evening Hymn' (words by William Fuller, who was Dean of St Patrick's before Swift)...

Christmas Eve!

 Here, by way of food for Christmas thought, are two Nativity poems by the great R.S. Thomas.
First –

'Christmas Eve! Five
hundred poets waited, pen
poised above paper,
for the poem to arrive,
bells ringing. It was because
the chimney was too small,
because they had ceased
to believe, the poem passed them
by on its way out
into oblivion, leaving
the doorstep bare
of all but the sky-rhyming
child to whom later
on they would teach prose.'


   And then –

'The moon is born and a child is born, lying among white clothes as the moon among clouds.

They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.'

   The painting is Lorenzo Lotto's Adoration of the Shepherds. 

And I wish all who browse here a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Cold and Smith

Apologies for the hiatus. I was away at the weekend and, since coming back, have been afflicted with a stinking 'cold' – yes, just in time for the festivities, though I'm hoping it might be a short-lived one. Anyway, I see that today is the 220th birthday of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism and, ultimately, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. As it happens, I bumped into two missionaries for this Church in Lichfield the other day. Both young men were, as you'd expect, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and squeaky-clean (I read somewhere that the CIA recruits heavily from among the Mormons, as they are about the only candidates who can never be compromised). They made the mistake of asking me what I believed, and it was a pleasure to see the regret spreading over their faces. When I told them I had to be on my way, they were probably relieved.
  The young missionaries, unsurprisingly, assured me that those mysterious golden plates discovered by Joseph Smith were genuine, inscribed with a genuine archaic language, and entirely reliable in their account of the indigenous American tribe of Israel. Well, each to his own. Having had a look online, I now know that Smith, having run into all kinds of trouble from his opponents, was finally killed by an angry mob, and that his death made him the first American presidential candidate to be assassinated. You live and learn. 

Swearing

 As someone who swears rather a lot (never in print, of course), I was pleased to come across this excellent research-based report on 'Why swearing makes you stronger'. Not only is swearing, as we all know, big, and clever, and enjoyable; it can also boost your performance, at least when it comes to holding your hand in ice water or doing chair push-ups (whatever they are). I'm sure I also heard recently of research showing that swearing can relieve acute pain, and that one word in particular – that old favourite, the f-word – was by far the most effective, offering the optimal combination of fricative, short vowel and plosive. 
 At school we were told that using swear words was the sign of a limited vocabulary, despite the evident fact that profane language greatly extended our vocabulary, creating a kind of auxiliary lexicon, capable of conveying quite subtle shades of meaning (well, sometimes). The richness of profane language, and its capacity for creating neologisms, is attested by the number of dictionaries devoted to it, from Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue to Eric Partridge's Shakespeare's Bawdy, Green's Dictionary of Slang, and (on a somewhat less scholarly level) Roger's Profanisaurus. The Australian branch of the English language has been especially productive of picturesque profanities, and the late Barry Humphries – particularly in his Les Paterson persona – was a virtuoso of vulgarity, creating a fine array of new terms the world never thought it had need of (see his extremely filthy book The Traveller's Tool and its invaluable glossary, also the adventures of Barry Mackenzie). But enough of this filth. 

Baptised On This Day

On this day in 1770, the newborn Ludwig van Beethoven was baptised. I imagine he bawled lustily.  Beethoven was the musical hero of my boyhood and adolescence. Right up until pop and rock claimed me – it was the golden age, after all, mid-sixties to mid-seventies – Beethoven was the god of my worship, with all other composers taking their places on the steps of his celestial throne. I immersed myself totally in his symphonies and piano sonatas, even playing what I could of the latter (which wasn't very much). When, some years later, I returned to the classical music fold, I began to have doubts about the great Ludwig Van B, especially the symphonies, while my explorations led me, rightly and inevitably, to another supreme musical deity, J.S. Bach, and to the endless beauties of Schubert. However, I returned to Beethoven, discovering the great string quartets, hearing the symphonies performed with a lighter touch and brisker tempi than in my youth, and of course going back to the piano sonatas. Now, if the whole of western music, bar the works of one composer, were to disappear overnight, I would save Bach, but the god of my worship is now a triune deity – Bach, Schubert, Beethoven (with Mozart knocking on the door). Happily my trinitarian tastes were gratified by the recent release of Vikingur Olafsson's Opus 109, a musical journey towards Beethoven's sonata of that number by way of Bach and Schubert. But I'll sign off with one of the Beethoven masterpieces that won me back to him – the breathtakingly beautiful Cavatina from his Opus 130 string quartet. Beethoven himself declared that 'never had his own music made such an impression on him', and that he had composed it 'truly in the tears of melancholy'. Here it is played by the Kodaly Quartet...

'It will be February there...'

Selecting a Reader

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon, 
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
"For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned." And she will. 

This disarming opener begins Ted Kooser's collection Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems, which I have just acquired. Kooser, whom I hadn't heard of until recently, is a successful poet (as poets go) who has been much praised – by, among others, Dana Gioia – and also looked down upon by some as being altogether too much the plain-speaking down-home midwesterner (and too popular and accessible?). Having sampled his work, most of it in the form of very short poems, I can see what the harsher critics mean – some are a little flat, a little thin, a little too easy. However, many quite escape that characterisation. Take this haunting vision of The Afterlife – 

It will be February there, 
a foreign-language newspaper
rolling along the dock
in an icy wind, a few
old winos wiping their eyes
over a barrel of fire;
down the streets, mad women
shaking rats from their mops
on each stoop, and odd,
twisted children,
playing with matches and knives.
Then, behind us, trombones: 
the horns of the tugs
turning our great grey ship
back into the mist.

    – And what is going on here?  

The Skeleton in the Closet

These bones once held together
on the strength of rumour.
The jaws which bit down hard
on the truth were stuffed at last
with a velvet glove. Now
all the foolishness is dust
and mothballs and the eyes
of children darkening
the keyhole. There's nothing
to see in here but two boots
full of golden teeth
and a fancy riding cape
with shoulder pads.

    There's certainly nothing hokey about this one –

They Had Torn Off My Face at the Office

They had torn off my face at the office.
The night that I finally noticed
that it was not growing back, I decided
to slit my wrists. Nothing ran out;
I was empty. Both of my hands fell off
shortly thereafter. Now at my job
they allow me to type with the stumps.
It pleases them to have helped me,
and I gain in speed and confidence.

  And how's this for a birthday poem? Not exactly celebratory...

Birthday

Somebody deep in my bones
is lacing his shoes with a hook.
It's an hour before dawn
in that nursing home.
There is nothing to do but get dressed
and sit in the darkness.
Up the hall, in the brightly lit skull,
the young pastor is writing his poem. 

Natural Theology

 When Tennyson sat his Cambridge entrance examination, it consisted of four subjects – Latin, Greek, Algebra and Natural Theology. Of those, the first two are in steep decline, especially Greek, though 'classical studies' in various forms are still on the curriculum. Certainly the days are long gone when an easy familiarity with Latin and Greek, with ancient history and classical mythology, were part of every educated man's (and many women's) mental world. Algebra, I presume, survives as a branch of mathematics (one I could never master), and was perhaps regarded as a useful training in abstract reasoning. As for natural theology, surely nobody now would regard it as a 'core subject', but rather as something that might turn up in theology or philosophy courses, or perhaps in the study of the history of science. However, for much of the 19th century, and into the 20th, natural theology was very much alive. It's a form of theology that seeks to demonstrate that theological ideas – especially of the existence of God – can be reached by way of reason alone; that there is no need for revelation. The most famous exemplar of this approach was William Paley, whose Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature was a hugely popular and influential book. But there was always strong criticism from the likes of Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard and, more recently, Karl Barth. Not to mention God Himself, who in Psalm 50 rebukes the wicked for thinking that He is just like one of them: 'Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself'. This quotation stands at the head of a knotty, punishingly long poem by Browning – 'Caliban Upon Setebos; or, Natural Theology in the Island'. In this, Shakespeare's Caliban attempts to understand the god he worships, Setebos, through observing how the natural world works, and inevitably finds himself looking in a mirror, discovering a cruel god of arbitrary and jealous power, lording it over nature just as he does himself in his smaller realm. Here's a link to the poem, if you're feeling strong...  
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43748/caliban-upon-setebos

Some trace of natural theology perhaps survives in the idea that there are inherent 'Laws of Nature' or 'natural rights'...

Young Tennyson

One of my birthday presents, and a very welcome one, was Richard Holmes's The Boundless Deep, the first of a projected two-volume biography of Tennyson. I've just started reading it, and am enjoying it hugely. I've long been fascinated by the early life of Tennyson, partly because of his connection to a county I (mostly) love, having spent many boyhood holidays there – Lincolnshire – and in particular to the beautiful and little-visited Lincolnshire Wolds. I've written before about this 'Tennyson Country', on the blog and in this book, and Holmes evokes the young poet's life there, amid his troubled but brilliant family in the Somersby rectory, beautifully. 
  The first poem quoted in the book is 'The Kraken', a strange and unsettling work, written when Tennyson was still a student, and not published until much later –

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

This was one of the first poems of Tennyson's that brought me up short in my precocious exploration of Tennyson's verse, or those portions of it comprehensible to a boy of ten or less. Sometimes, at that stage, it was little more than those sonorous opening lines – '"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon"..., 'The woods decay, The woods decay and fall...', 'The splendour falls On castle walls...', 'On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye...', 'Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me...', 'With blackest moss the flower-pots Were thickly crusted, one and all...', and of course 'Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward...' – but I went deeper into several of the poems. Especially I was quite entranced by 'In Memoriam', reading it all through, and even learning parts of it by heart (I had a memory then). If this sounds like precocity, it is nothing to the boy Tennyson, who at the age of seven, Holmes informs us, could recite Horace's Odes by heart. Not much later, he had Pope's translation of the Iliad by heart. All of the eleven Tennyson siblings were bookish and wrote poetry: his sister Mary collected '132 sonnets and fugitive pieces', brothers Frederick and Charles were considered serious poets, and altogether eight of them (including Alfred) had their work published in adult life – this despite the 'fatal inheritance' that hung over them all, especially the boys: 'lethargic drifting, disabling depression, alcoholism, mental instability, or simply black spiritual despair'. With all of which Tennyson struggled throughout his early years – and, thanks to poetry, prevailed. 

'To live is so startling...'

 It's Emily Dickinson's birthday today (born 1830, in Amherst). She wrote that 'To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else' – but it left her time to write, in her short life, large numbers of the most extraordinary poems of the nineteenth (or any) century.
Let's celebrate the birthday with one of her cheerier numbers – 

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged — a Summer Afternoon —
Repairing Everywhere —

Without Design — that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers — understood —

Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay —
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud —

Where Parties — Phantom as Herself —
To Nowhere — seemed to go
In purposeless Circumference —
As 'twere a Tropic Show —

And notwithstanding Bee — that worked —
And Flower — that zealous blew —
This Audience of Idleness
Disdained them, from the Sky —

Till Sundown crept — a steady Tide —
And Men that made the Hay —
And Afternoon — and Butterfly —
Extinguished — in the Sea —

Speaking of butterflies – if I may lower the tone for a moment, don't forget this little book, perfectly proportioned to be a Christmas stocking-filler...

'An echo of what the light said...'

 R.S. Thomas wrote the justly famous Advent poem 'The Coming' (which has appeared here before) – 

'And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.'

Thomas also wrote another fine poem simply titled 'Coming', which seems to be more about the Second Coming, but considers the coming of Christ to Earth as something recurrent, part of a mysterious creative process of unfolding, 'invisible as a mutation'...

'To be crucified
again? To be made friends
with for his jeans and beard?
Gods are not put to death

any more. Their lot now
is with the ignored.
I think he still comes
stealthily as of old,

invisible as a mutation,
an echo of what the light
said, when nobody
attended; an impression

of eyes, quicker than
to be caught looking, but taken
on trust like flowers in the
dark country toward which we go.'

Birthday

Today Tom Waits and I complete 76 years on this Earth. I've written a song for the occasion – it goes to the tune of 'Seventy-Six Trombones' –

Seventy-six years old, and I'm feeling fine,
Seventy-six years old, and I'm glad – 
And when I've lived eight more, I'll be all of eighty-four,
And the prospect doesn't seem half bad.
etc.

All yours, Tom. 

Others, especially those afflicted with a tender conscience, have taken their birthdays rather more seriously. Take the seventeenth-century nonconformist cleric Philip Henry (whose father had the delightful job title Keeper of the Orchard at Whitehall Palace)...

'He was born at White-hall, in Westminster, on Wednesday, August 24, 1631. being Bartholomew-day. I find usually in his Diary, some pious Remark or other upon the Annual Return of his Birth-day: As in one Year he notes, that the Scripture mentions but two who observed their Birth-day with Feasting and Joy, and they were neither of them Copies to be written after: viz. 𝑃ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑜ℎ, Gen. 40.20. and 𝐻𝑒𝑟𝑜𝑑, Mat. 14.6. 𝐵𝑢𝑡 (saith he) 𝐼 𝑟𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑏𝑠𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐻𝑢𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑛 𝑖𝑛 𝐼𝑛𝑖𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑦, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑆𝑖𝑛. And when he had completed the Thirtieth Year of his Age, he noted this, 𝑆𝑜 𝑜𝑙𝑑, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑛𝑜 𝑜𝑙𝑑𝑒𝑟, Alexander 𝑤𝑎𝑠, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑞𝑢𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 (saith he) 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑦𝑒𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑑𝑢𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑, 𝑚𝑦 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓. At his Thirty third Year he hath this Humble Reflection; 𝐴 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑚𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑝𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒, 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝐼 𝑑𝑜 𝑡𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑑𝑒𝑒𝑚 𝑖𝑡? And at another, 𝐼 𝑚𝑎𝑦 𝑀𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑎𝑠 𝐶𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑎𝑟 𝑑𝑖𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑓𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑢𝑝𝑜𝑛 𝐴𝑙𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟'𝑠 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝐴𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠, 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝐼 𝑎𝑚, ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑚𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝐼 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝐺𝑜𝑑, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑜𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒. And (to mention no more) when he had lived Forty two Years, he thus writes; 𝐼 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑡𝑜 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛, 𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝐼 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑠𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑠, 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐷𝑎𝑦 𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑛 𝐸𝑎𝑟𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝐻𝑒𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑛. This last Note minds me of a Passage I have heard him tell of a Friend of his, who being grown into Years, was asked how old he was, and answer'd, 𝑂𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑖𝑓𝑡𝑦: Which (said Mr. Henry) he should not have said; for if he was going to Heaven, it was the 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 side of Fifty.'
— 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐰 𝐇𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐲, 𝐴𝑛 𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐿𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑀𝑟. 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑖𝑝 𝐻𝑒𝑛𝑟𝑦, 𝑀𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐺𝑜𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑙 𝑁𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑊ℎ𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑐ℎ 𝑖𝑛 𝑆ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑒, 𝑊ℎ𝑜 𝐷𝑦'𝑑 𝐽𝑢𝑛𝑒 24, 1696, 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑆𝑖𝑥𝑡𝑦 𝐹𝑖𝑓𝑡ℎ 𝑌𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐻𝑖𝑠 𝐴𝑔𝑒 (1698). 

Well, there'll be none of that chez Nige...

'The harsh rumour of yesterday' – and today...

Here is a poem for our time – a time when Jew-hatred, the oldest hatred of all, is resurgent yet again. This simple, touching account of a family celebrating Passover is by Charles Causley. 

Seder

The room is at first sight a winter room:
The tablecloth a fresh snowfall ordered
With frail matzot that splinter at the touch
Like too-fine ice, the wine glasses of hard
Snow-crystal. To the shifting candle-flame,
Blood-glint of wine against the polished green
Of garlands, white of bitter herbs, and on

Its ritual dish the shankbone of the lamb.
A chair stands empty for the celebrant,
Unfree, who cannot celebrate; the wine
Poured for Elijah; the half matzah snugged
In a napkin for a young child to find.
The reading of the Haggadah begins.
Let those who are an hungered come and eat

With us. Those who are needy come and keep
The Passover with us. Though we dwell here
This year in exile and in bondage, next
Year we are free. Prayers in a mash of tongues.
Why does this night differ from other nights?
A boy is asked. Another at the door
Open it that Elijah enters in

To blazon the Messiah, drink the wine
Of the unending promise, share the hope 
Of Passover. Kisses, embraces as
The feast is ended. We disperse beneath
Uncounted stars as measureless as those 
Children who marched into the wilderness.
Laughter. Yom Tov. A Good Yom Tov, they say,

This family, sometime traders in salt
In Novgorod: doctor, attorney, truck-
Driver, schoolteacher, mail-clerk, student, nurse,
The smiling grandparents, from whom God hid
His face, their eyes in shadow from the harsh 
Rumour of yesterday. Every one
A trader still in necessary salt. 

Causley, a poet admired by the not-easily-pleased Philip Larkin, was much more than a 'Cornish poet', or a 'children's poet'. 'Seder' comes from the late collection A Field of Vision, which also includes the beautiful 'Eden Rock', about which I have written before. 

Christmas Movies

 I see the British Board of Film Classification has conducted a poll to find the nation's favourite Christmas film. The results are pretty bizarre. I suppose if It's A Wonderful Life didn't exist, you might go for The Muppets Christmas Carol or Elf, or even, at a pinch, Home Alone – which in the event came top by a considerable margin – but mark what 'the nation' voted into the number two spot: Love Actually, one of the most powerful emetics in cinema history. Has the world gone mad? (Yes, of course it has, but what can you do?). 
As it happens, the other night I watched, on my son's recommendation, what turned out to be a very fine Christmas movie. This was The Holdovers, a comedy drama from 2023, directed by Alexander Payne and starring the great Paul Giamatti (whose performance as John Adams was one of the best I ever saw on TV). The Holdovers is set in 1970 at an upmarket boys' boarding school in Massachusetts, where Giamatti is Paul Hunham, a dedicated old-school classics teacher trying to uphold standards in an institution largely dedicated to raising money from rich parents and ensuring that even their stupidest sons never fail their exams. Hunham finds himself forced to stay behind through the Christmas break to supervise a handful of pupils who have nowhere to go, mostly because their parents don't want them around. This unhappy group soon dwindles to one – the unhappiest of them all, a troubled older boy called Angus Tully. The film follows the evolving relationship between Hunham and Tully and the black cafeteria manager  Mary Lamb, who has lost her son in Vietnam. As we learn more about these three, each of them in some way bereft, a fascinating drama (with plentiful moments of comedy) develops, one that kept me gripped through to the richly satisfying end – and with absolutely no Yuletide schmalz along the way. Highly recommended. 

Christmas Is Coming...

 December already, and Advent. I was in the cathedral yesterday for a candlelit ceremony of readings and music, including the Great 'O' Antiphons. The choir was on top form, creating some quite extraordinary harmonies; the cathedral was chock full; and the whole occasion was beautiful, numinous and joyful. I'll be back, at least for the Festival of Lessons and Carols. 

And meanwhile, in parallel with Advent, the Xmas juggernaut of consumer excess, which got under way at least a month ago, trundles on, more oppressive and dispiriting (at least to me) every year. Soon I shall be writing Christmas cards, one of the less irksome tasks of the season – and, as it happens, have just come across this apposite poem by the Midwestern poet Ted Kooser – 

Christmas Mail

Cards in each mailbox,

angel, manger, star and lamb,

as the rural carrier,

driving the snowy roads,

hears from her bundles

the plaintive bleating of sheep,

the shuffle of sandals,

the clopping of camels.

At stop after stop,

she opens the little tin door

and places deep in the shadows

the shepherds and wise men,

the donkeys lank and weary,

the cow who chews and muses.

And from her Styrofoam cup,

white as a star and perched

on the dashboard, leading her

ever into the distance,

there is a hint of hazelnut,

and then a touch of myrrh.

 

Kooser, who is still with us (in his 80s), is a poet I had not heard of before, a writer of short, accessible but subtle and very accomplished verse. His poems, to quote Dana Gioia, offer 'small but genuine insights into the world of everyday experience' and he makes no effort to court 'the specialised minority readership that now sustains poetry'. I'm going to be seeking out more of his work, and might well pass some of his poems on to the specialised minority readership that sustains Nigeness. 

'Not the worship of ashes...'

 Recently I wrote about Richard Wilbur's precept: 'In poetry, all the revolutions are palace revolutions' – in other words, all true revolutions take place within the living tradition, the poetic heritage; nothing is overthrown, the tradition lives on (this applies only to true revolutions, not rebellion for its own sake, which leads nowhere). Yesterday I came across another quotation that I think expresses perfectly the value of tradition: 'Tradition is not the worship of ashes but the preservation of fire.' This formulation was coined by a musicologist called Constantin Floros, and is taken from his study of Mahler's symphonies (which I haven't read, being no great fan of those works). 'The preservation of fire' is indeed what a living tradition is all about, and when it is based on the worship of ashes it is no longer alive – at which point the time is ripe for another palace revolution. Poetry could probably do with one now, though heaven knows where it would come from or what it would look like. At present the living tradition appears to be very much more alive in music than in poetry... 

Radical Harmony

  Yesterday I was in the wicked city, having lunch with an old friend and visiting the pointillism exhibition, Radical Harmony, at the National Gallery. This display of paintings from the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, seems to have had lukewarm reviews, for some reason – I guess it's a style of painting that can seem rather sterile and limited. For myself I love it, largely because it was favoured by Seurat, one of the greatest of all late-19th-century painters (IMHO). The National Gallery has one of his that has never before been seen in Britain – Le Chahut (the Can-Can), a late and intriguing work that seems to suggest that Seurat, towards the end of his too-short life, was going to move off in new, unexpected directions, perhaps towards something more geometric and abstract, less naturalistic. 

I was glad to see a small-scale version of Les Poseuses (for my money, one of the great paintings of its time) and several of the coastal views painted by Seurat and Paul Signac. There is also Seurat's extraordinary portrait drawing of Signac, a miracle of ultra-delicate draughtsmanship. 
For me the revelation of the exhibition was Theo Van Rysselberghe, a Belgian artist I had barely heard of. The stricter pointillists were sniffy about his work, as he strayed from the technique, mixing it with other, looser manners of applying paint to canvas – but the results, especially in his portraits, could be rather wonderful. Among the large portraits on display are a lovely one of his wife –

and an equally impressive portrait of Anna Boch, an artist and collector, who has the distinction of being the purchaser of the only painting Van Gogh sold in his lifetime (La Vigne Rouge) –

And here, for good measure, is Maria Sèthe at the Harmonium . Maria was the wife of the Belgian architect and designer Henry Van de Velde – 

Van de Velde also painted, and his restful, vaguely melancholy Twilight caught my eye – 

Needless to say, these are not paintings that reproduce very well, and you really do need to see them. The exhibition, which is on a manageable scale and is not attracting blockbuster crowds, is on until February. I'd recommend it to anyone at all interested in post-impressionist art. 

What Would Captain Mainwaring Say?

 Born on this day (in 1920) was the actor Buster Merryfield, who achieved fame as 'Uncle Albert' in the sitcom Only Fools and Horses, which I rate as the best long-running British sitcom ever (though, like most, it ran a little bit too long). His career path was quite extraordinary, indeed unique, as I wrote here back in 2013... 

'Born on this day in 1920 was Henry Merryfield. A big strapping 9lb baby, he was immediately nicknamed Buster by his granddad, and Buster he remained, to the point where scarcely anyone knew his real name. As Buster Merryfield, he achieved fame late in life, playing the seafaring Uncle Albert (catchphrase 'During the war...') in the massively successful sitcom Only Fools and Horses.
 Something of a fitness fiend, Buster had been a boxing champion in his day, and was a PT and jungle warfare instructor 'during the war' - at which time he also got his first taste of the biz we call show, serving as an entertainment officer. However, when hostilities ceased, he was already married and about to become a father, so he elected to take the safe option – returning to the then National Westminster Bank, where he had been employed before the war.
  The amazing thing is that he stayed there until his retirement. While spending much of his spare time in amateur theatricals, Buster Merryfield didn't turn professional until after he had retired from what was by then NatWest. He had clocked up 40 years of service, man and boy, and risen to be manager of the Thames Ditton branch in Surrey. Surely this was the most unlikely bank manager ever – and surely the only bank manager ever to make the switch to much-loved sitcom stalwart. He must also have been alone among bank managers in having his face framed by such a mighty beard – what would Captain Mainwaring say?

'Busy, curious, thirsty fly!'

 The recent cold snaps have put paid to the last of the summer's wasps and flies, though the latter have hung around rather longer. When it come to flies, I (unlike Mrs N) take the line favoured by Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy: 

'Go—says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzz’d about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him;—I’ll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going a-cross the room, with the fly in his hand,—I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:—Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape;—go poor devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?—This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.'

For all their deplorable habits, flies are marvellous little creatures, wonderfully made, even beautiful if looked at closely and without prejudice, and their habit of scrupulously 'washing their hands' is endearing. Their vision operates at such a speed that our attempts to catch them are usually doomed: they see our approaching hand moving in slow motion and escape at their leisure.
Uncle Toby was not the only one with a soft spot for the fly. Browsing in my recently purchased India-paper anthology, I came across this, by William Oldys: 

On a Fly Drinking Out of His Cup

Busy, curious, thirsty fly!
Drink with me and drink as I:
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up:
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short and wears away.

Both alike are mine and thine
Hastening quick to their decline:
Thine's a summer, mine's no more,
Though repeated to threescore.
Threescore summers, when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one!

 Oldys was an important antiquarian and bibliographer, but a man of irregular habits, whose debts landed him in the Fleet prison for two years, before he was rescued by friends who paid off all he owed. The Duke of Norfolk appointed him Norfolk Herald Extraordinary and Norroy King of Arms. However, the College of Arms describes him as 'a noted antiquary and bibliographer but wholly ignorant of heraldry and known for being "rarely sober in the afternoon, never after supper" and "much addicted to low company".'

What the Camel-Sparrow Ate

 The excellent Public Domain Review recently posted a photograph, from around 1930, of the contents of an ostrich's stomach, extracted post mortem. It's a fascinating collection of objects, including two handkerchiefs and a buttoned glove (this was a zoo ostrich), a length of rope, and various metal objects – coins, tacks, staples, hooks and a four-inch nail (which, sadly, was the cause of death). Here's a link –  https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/contents-of-an-ostrich-s-stomach-ca-1930

It would seem, than, that there is some truth in the idea that the ostrich 'digesteth hard yron', as in the poem by Marianne Moore –

He 'Digesteth Hard Yron' 

Although the aepyornis
   or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
   with them in size—the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream—was and is
a symbol of justice.

   This bird watches his chicks with
   a maternal concentration—and he’s
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks—his legs
   their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the leopard

   is not more suspicious. How
   could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young
used even as a riding-beast, respect men
   hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand
making the neck move as if alive
and from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches

   might be decoyed and killed! Yes, this is he
whose plume was anciently
the plume of justice; he
   whose comic duckling head on its
great neck revolves with compass-needle nervousness
when he stands guard,

   in S-like foragings as he is
   preening the down on his leaden-skinned back.
The egg piously shown
as Leda’s very own
   from which Castor and Pollux hatched,
was an ostrich-egg. And what could have been more fit
for the Chinese lawn it

   grazed on as a gift to an
   emperor who admired strange birds, than this
one, who builds his mud-made
nest in dust yet will wade
   in lake or sea till only the head shows.

	.	.	.	.	.	.	.

   Six hundred ostrich-brains served
   at one banquet, the ostrich-plume-tipped tent
and desert spear, jewel-
gorgeous ugly egg-shell
   goblets, eight pairs of ostriches
in harness, dramatize a meaning
always missed by the externalist.

   The power of the visible
   is the invisible; as even where
no tree of freedom grows,
so-called brute courage knows.
   Heroism is exhausting, yet
it contradicts a greed that did not wisely spare
the harmless solitaire

   or great auk in its grandeur;
   unsolicitude having swallowed up
all giant birds but an alert gargantuan
   little-winged, magnificently speedy running-bird.
This one remaining rebel
is the sparrow-camel.

This is a poem that vividly evokes the ludicrous but admirable flightless bird (not the last large flightless bird, pace Miss Moore), but is also about much more: the persistence of the past, endurance and survival, heroism and greed. The notes are impressive in themselves, citing Lyly's Euphues – 'the estrich digesteth hard yron to preserve his health' – and a range of other sources, notably George Jennison's Animals for Show and Pleasure in Ancient Rome.  Maybe the 'poet friend' quoted by Kay Ryan in her essay on Moore* was right: 'They should have taken away her library card.' But she is magnificent, formidable. Ryan goes on: '... how can we not find Marianne Moore formidable since she's so hard to understand? I think we just have to read her until we can contain the complexity that we cannot resolve. That is a bigger kind of understanding. At that point, the poet is no longer "formidable". A word or two becomes sufficient to invoke the complex spirit. We feel, now, an affection, a human affection, and a receptiveness which we could not feel when we were fighting with particulars.' Very true, I think, and of other poets than the magnificent Miss Moore.

*Collected in the wonderful Synthesizing Gravity (2020).   

Everyone's writing about this, so feel free to ignore...

 I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw the headline – 'Lockdown could have been avoided entirely'! Had the farcical Covid 'inquiry' at last, having expended just shy of £200 million of our money, managed to produce a glimmer of sense? No, of course not, as I soon discovered. The gist was that lockdown could have been avoided if we'd, er, locked down a week earlier: it was the predetermined narrative of 'too little, too late' yet again. Earlier and more drastic action, it was said, would have saved 23,000 lives, according to 'computer modelling' – the same deeply flawed computer modelling that came up with such preposterous projections throughout the epidemic. There's an interesting graph on the Spectator website, showing a mighty Himalaya of projected deaths – projected by computer modelling – looming over something more like an alluvial plain, the near-flatline of actual Covid deaths. This 'inquiry' was set up with its conclusions ready made – that Boris Johnson's government fouled up and must be blamed, and that the only thing wrong with the harsh and oppressive measures taken was that they weren't harsh and oppressive enough, or go on for long enough. In the teeth of all the evidence, lockdown is unquestioningly presented as a life-saver on a grand scale, with no acknowledgment that, overall, the countries with the lightest (or non-existent) lockdown regimes had the best outcomes in terms of mortality, and those with the tightest regimes had among the worst. So, nothing has been learnt, and the next time will be even worse – especially if it happens under Starmer, who, when the final lockdown was belatedly lifted, predicted that this 'reckless' act would lead to 50,000 extra deaths in what would forever after be known as the 'Johnson variant'. This, oddly, did not come to pass. 

'The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr Dickens...'

 Good news from Birmingham (for a change) – the city is to unveil a Blue Plaque at its fine neoclassical town hall to commemorate Dickens's first public reading of A Christmas Carol.
A contemporary report chronicled the event thus: 

'The first of the Readings generously given by Mr Charles Dickens on behalf of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, took place on Tuesday evening, December 27, 1853, at the Birmingham Town Hall, where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two thousand persons had assembled. The work selected was the CHRISTMAS CAROL. The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr Dickens enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge's nephew, to the hideous mirth of the party assembled in Old Joe the Ragshopkeeper's parlour. The reading occupied more than three hours, but so interested were the audience, that only one or two left the Hall previously to its termination, and the loud and frequent bursts of applause attested the successful discharge of the reader's arduous task. On Thursday evening Mr. Dickens read THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. The Hall was again well ruled, and the tale, though deficient in the dramatic interest of the CAROL, was listened to with attention, and rewarded with repeated applause. On Friday evening, the CHRISTMAS CAROL was read a second time to a large assemblage of work-people, for whom, at Mr. Dickens`s special request, the major part of the vast edifice was reserved.
.........
At the close of the reading Mr Dickens received a vote of thanks, and "three cheers, with three times three". As soon as the enthusiasm of the audience would allow him to speak, Mr Dickens said:-"You have heard so much of my voice since we met tonight, that I will only say, in acknowledgment of this affecting mark of your regard, that I am truly and sincerely interested in you; that any little service I have rendered to you I have freely rendered from my heart; that I hope to become an honorary member of your great Institution, and will meet you often there when it becomes practically useful; that I thank you most affectionately for this new mark of your sympathy and approval; and that I wish you many happy returns of this great birthday-time, and many prosperous years."

Not only was this Dickens's first public reading of the Carol; it was his first public reading of any of his own works. It clearly gave him a taste for such performances, to which he devoted much of his later career, exhausting himself in the process with readings of terrific emotional intensity – notably his famously terrifying reading of the murder of Nancy from Oliver Twist. Dickens judged the success of that one by how many ladies had fainted with horror in the course of it. 

In our own day, a public reading of all three hours of A Christmas Carol would be unlikely to attract many takers (even if it was given by Andrew Scott, whose one-man Chekhov, Vanya, was such a hit). But we do have the inimitable Count Arthur Strong currently touring the country with his, er, somewhat tangential take on A Christmas Carol. Here's a preview...

'And then they clearly flew...'

A slight thing this, but it caught my eye, and I think it does say something, or enact something, true about the line between prose and poetry... 

Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov 

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.