Countertenor Wins Eurovision!

 I gave up watching the Eurovision Song Contest long ago, round about the time when it stopped being funny, but I was interested to hear that last night's winner, name of JJ, is a countertenor with (some) Viennese classical training. A countertenor! Who saw that coming? Well, perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising, as the high male voice – usually categorised as falsetto – has been a remarkably persistent presence in pop music, from Frankie Valli and the Bee Gees to Prince and Antony (when he was Antony), not to mention Justin Hawkins and Tiny Tim. Until the nineteenth century, countertenor was a standard male voice in all forms of music, but by the mid-twentieth, when my musical taste was being formed, it was generally seen as something rather freakishly archaic and quaint, at least in the classical field. How times have changed – now fine countertenors are everywhere, playing a major part in the explosion of interest in Baroque music, and generally sweetening the soundtrack of life. 
  Having watched last night's winning performance – so you don't have to – I cannot say that it does much to sweeten anything, but heaven knows, worse things have won Eurovision. Immediately after watching it, I hastened to soothe my soul with my favourite countertenor Phillipe Jaroussky. Here he is, singing Handel with his perfect musical partner, Nuria Rial – glorious...

Two Poems

 This morning an online friend, a trusty source of good stuff, sent me a translation (or version) by Drew Nathaniel Keane of a poem by Cavafy that I didn't know. It's based on an anecdote about Nero in Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars...

He gave a careless shrug when he had heard 
The Delphic Oracle’s prophetic word: 
“Beware, my lord, the age of seventy-three” 
(For Delphi was renowned for verity). 
“I’m thirty now with years to plan for knives 
Before the gods’ appointed day arrives.” 
Reclining in his litter, bound for home, 
Delighted Nero journeyed back to Rome. 
 
When he returned, he felt a little drained; 
With news like this, how could he be restrained? 
Surrendering to pleasure on the way — 
To gardens and gymnasia by day, 
By night to dance and poetry and drink 
In torchlit theatres where bodies slink 
Whose dancing ever animates and soothes, 
The naked bodies of Achaean youths. 
 
Thus Nero rests, while on an arid plain 
Far to the west of Rome, in distant Spain, 
Old Galba drills his legions secretly, 
Old Galba who was spry for seventy-three. 

Historical irony hangs over this poem, for Nero was barely to reach 40 before he died, in an undignified assisted suicide (according to Suetonius), while Galba, his successor, was to reign as emperor for just seven months, before dying – in his 73rd year. 

My friend is an Emily Dickinson specialist, so I'll reciprocate with one of hers – also new to me – that I came across this morning: a fine poem about faith and doubt, and the great mystery that lies at the heart of things...

This World is not Conclusion.

A Species stands beyond – 

Invisible, as Music –

But positive, as Sound –

It beckons, and it baffles – 

Philosophy, dont know –

And through a Riddle, at the last – 

Sagacity, must go –

To guess it, puzzles scholars –

To gain it, Men have borne

Contempt of Generations

And Crucifixion, shown –

Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies –

Blushes, if any see – 

Plucks at a twig of Evidence – 

And asks a Vane, the way – 

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit –

Strong Hallelujahs roll – 

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul –

Siena

 Much have I travelled in the realms of gold... Well, a little, in the realm of gold that was the world of 14th-century Sienese art. Yes, I have been to see the great exhibition at the National Gallery – Siena: The Rise of Painting – and it was wonderful. My knowledge of Sienese art was sketchy, and I had somehow formed the impression that it was rather austere and forbidding. As I now know, this is very far from the truth: the Sienese art of this period is often intimate, humane and accessible, clearly feeling its way toward the naturalistic glories of the Renaissance that was to come. 
  The triptych above is by the first great Sienese master, Duccio. In it the Christ child is not much like a human baby, more a Pantocrator in miniature, but he is reaching out to play with his mother's head-dress, seeking, like any baby, to engage her attention. A couple of decades later, Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted his Madonna Del Latte, in which a decidedly real baby sucks happily at a decidedly real breast, and looks out at us, defiantly possessive. 

And here is Simone Martini's rendering of Christ Discovered in the Temple, in which Joseph, having recovered the missing youngster, is all repressed rage, and the young Jesus all surly defiance – a psychologically realistic scene that any parent of an errant child will recognise. 

These paintings have to be seen in the original, not in reproduction, partly because of the prevalence of gold backgrounds, which are often worked into sculptural shapes and decorative surfaces, presenting a rich textured world, not a flat radiance. Their impact is extraordinary, and this exhibition does them justice, with thoughtful hanging and captions that tell us enough but not too much (and not a whiff of woke anywhere). It's an exhibition that feels like a blockbuster but is actually on a fairly small scale. I left it feeling not exhausted but exalted. It was a joy. 
If you want to catch it, it is on for a while yet, until June 22nd. 

A Great Walk and A Real Pain

Last weekend I was walking in Ladybird Land again – that land of abundant may blossom, tall cow parsley and gambolling lambs. This time it was in Derbyshire, where, because of the more northerly latitude, things were very much as they had been in Buckinghamshire on Mayday. Happily the weather was every bit as glorious, with warm sunshine and blue skies (populated by crazily energetic swifts and graceful swallows and martins). With my cousin, I enjoyed a long (by my present standards) walk, taking in Lathkill Dale, Youlgrave and Bradford Dale, ending at the pub/hotel at Over Haddon, with its magnificent views – one of the best walks in all of the Derbyshire Dales, though at present the river in some stretches of Lathkill Dale is dry. The chiffchaffs and other warblers were singing lustily, and Orange Tips, Brimstones and Peacocks were flying in good numbers – also, much to my delight, my first Common Blues of the year, three of them, looking fresh and lovely, in Bradford Dale (last year I only saw one in the whole year). The following day began with the grand surprise of a Wall Brown (once common, now scarce) settling to bask briefly in my cousin’s garden, and continued with my first Small Copper of the year (last year I didn’t see a single one) at a nearby nature reserve, along with my first definite Red Admirals of the year – and they were very definite, as is the way of Red Admirals. But it was not all butterflies and walking: we also watched a superb film, which I heartily recommend to all who haven’t seen it – A Real Pain, the directorial debut of actor Jesse Eisenberg.
  As all the world probably knows by now, this tells the story of two mismatched cousins, once close, now far apart, who use their recently deceased grandmother's legacy to go on a Jewish heritage tour of Poland. Eisenberg co-stars as the more sane and settled of the pair, while Kieran Culkin plays his maddening but strangely charismatic loose cannon of a cousin, who at every point seems about to throw the whole tour into jeopardy. Both performances are superb, but Culkin's is simply astonishing. 'Funny, heartfelt and moving in equal measure,' one critic said of A Real Pain, and it is all of those things. I'm already looking forward to watching it again.

'The spinner of fine cobwebs!'

Browsing in the (excellent) bookshop of the Samuel Johnson House yesterday, I found Beerbohm's Literary Caricatures: From Homer to Huxley, selected, introduced and annotated by J.G. Riewald (Allen Lane, 1977). It's a generous selection, with helpful notes by Riewald, a Dutch academic and Beerbohm specialist, setting each caricature in context. Naturally I bought it – for a mere £6 – and I'm sure it's going to provide me with much innocent entertainment. 
  The caricature above shows Mr Henry James Revisiting America, and was inspired by the author's final visit to the land of his birth, in 1905. A variety of stereotype Americans are responding to the great man: an Indian chief exclaims, 'Hail, great white novelist! Tunibaya – the spinner of fine cobwebs!' A negro mammy is in ecstasies: 'Why, it's Masser Henry! Come to your old nurse's arms, honey!' A plainsman remarks: 'Guess 'e ken shoot char'cter at sight!' An effete Harvardian wonders 'What's – the matter with – James?' A Beacon Hill hostess answers, 'He's – all – right!' And so on. As for James, Beerbohm transcribes his unspoken thoughts in a fine parody of his late style: 

'So that in fine, let, without further beating about the bush, me make to myself amazed acknowledgment that, but for the certificate of birth which I have – so very indubitably – on me, I might, in regarding, and, as it somewhat were, overseeing, à l'oeil de voyageur, these dear good people, find hard to swallow, or even to take by subconscious injection, the great idea that I am – oh, ever so indigenously! – one of them...'

Indeed.
The original of this caricature can be found at Lamb House, James's home in Rye.

Swifts and Mowing

 Time was when this blog could be relied on to hail the arrival of the first swift of the summer – a moment as thrilling and heart-lifting (for me) as the sighting of the first butterfly – but somehow I seem to have got out of the habit. For the record, though, I saw my first Lichfield swift this year on the 2nd of May, a little earlier than usual, no doubt because of the unusually welcoming spring weather. Just the one, passing over, but then, the next day, a pair putting on a fine aerial ballet as they circled and swooped, fluttered and raced, chasing down the airborne insects.  
   These have been busy days chez Nige, with much family activity, but this afternoon I had time for an activity I find quietly therapeutic and, in its way, pleasingly productive – mowing the lawn. The whole business has been so much more pleasurable since I ditched the electric mower and converted to manual – no cables, no fuss, no hideous noise, just a soft nostalgic clatter and rasp as the blades rotate and cut. Now I am on to my second hand mower, much superior to the first, and bearing the reassuringly English name of Webb (the first was a Bosch, of all things). Always, inevitably, when I'm mowing, Larkin's 'Cut Grass' comes into my head – one of the very few poems I still have by heart: 

Cut grass lies frail:
Short is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

They die in the white hours
Of young-leafed June 
With chestnut flowers,
With hedgerows snow-like strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace. 

Larkin was a reluctant but diligent mower, who, when he moved to a house in Newland Park, Hull, had a lot of lawn to deal with ('for I have premises to keep, and miles to mow before I sleep' – not Larkin but a wag in a Peter de Vries novel). 'It has a huge garden –,' he wrote to Judy Edgerton, a regular correspondent, 'not a lovely wilderness (though it soon will be) – a long strip between wire fences – oh god oh god – I am 'taking over' the vendor's Qualcast (sounds like a character in Henry James).' It was an incident involving the Qualcast – a machine that is now preserved for posterity in the Larkin archive in Hull – that inspired Larkin's other great mowing poem, 'The Mower' – 

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found   

A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,   

Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.   

Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world   

Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.

The first day after a death, the new absence   

Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind   

While there is still time.

This would not have happened with a hand mower – just sayin'. 
(Incidentally, the ending of 'The Mower' was once quoted on The Archers – a moment almost as surreal as the time Nigel Pargetter, not the sharpest knife in the box, suddenly started spouting lines from the Georgics, in the original Latin. Even more incidentally, Larkin was a fan of The Archers, and used to fantasise about writing for them. That might have been interesting...) 

Mayday Walk

Yesterday – the warmest May Day on record – I was walking in the Buckinghamshire countryside. The hawthorn blossom was so richly abundant that it was like walking through an illustration of spring from a Ladybird book – and not just hawthorn: cow parsley in flower everywhere ('lost lanes of Queen Anne's Lace'), blue drifts of forget-me-nots, late bluebells still in flower, white comfrey, green alkanet, jack by the hedge, 'daisies pied and violets blue' in the fresh green grass. The horse chestnut candles were in full flower, the trees in young leaf, the sun shining gloriously – and there were butterflies galore: orange tips, brimstones, speckled woods, holly blues, peacocks, commas... All this and some peaceful towpath walking – no belligerent cyclists – and, from time to time, magnificent views across miles of rolling countryside. Although it was almost too hot for walking, it was a marvellous day, one to remember. 

  We covered no great distance, and our route was circular, beginning and ending in a village called Stoke Hammond (church locked, alas). This, as a plaque proudly announced, was one of the Thankful Villages of the First World War, one that lost none of its men. It's a subject I've written about before – here – so I won't repeat myself (but will correct my assertion that France has only one Thankful Village – it has 12).