EW: Do you think the current levels of suffering and unhappiness are the signs of a crisis that is entirely new, or do you think these are problems that have been around in one way or another for some time?
AP: I think that there’s a crisis in the sense of people finding it more and more difficult to live. So there’s a crisis in health, so to speak, and obviously we live in a very polluted environment as well. But the scale of envy and competition in this culture is too much for them to bear.
To put this as crudely as possible: I think that capitalism drives people mad. Once you live in a world in which competition trumps collaboration, it’s as though there’s no shared project; we’re all competing with one another for limited resources. So I think it’s good that it’s become a matter of concern in the public realm that people are really suffering. I think it’s also important that there are many descriptions of what they’re suffering from, because the risk is of thinking that what we need are solutions to mental health problems, whereas actually we need political solutions, and the mental health problems are symptoms of a political catastrophe that is occurring.
END OF QUOTE
Adam Phillips discusses his book “On Wanting to Change” in Paris
I have read but a little Samuel Beckett- one play and a novel but his persona I find intriguing and his clearly having studied Joyce interests as well. I found a tome-like collection of his poetry second hand and have been looking at some of his translations from French. He translated Rimbaud, Breton and the surrealist poet, Paul Eluard. I notice that a collection of the latter’s poetry is soon to be published in both French and English. Beckett also translated a poem called “Delta” from Italian by Eugenio Montale. Beckett too wrote fluently in French and demonstrates his fascination for arcane usage. Here is an example-
Tristesse Janale
C’est toi, o beauté blême des subtiles concierges,
La Chose kantienne, l’icone bilitique;
C’est toi, muette énigme des aphasiques vierges,
Qui centres mes désirs d’un trait antithétique.
O mystique carquois! O flèches de Télèphe!
Correlatif de toi! Abîme et dure sonde!
Sois éternellement le greffé et la greffe,
Ma superfétatoire et frêle furibonde!
Ultime coquillage et palais de la bouche
Mallarméenne et emblème de Michel-Ange,
Consume-toi, o neutre, en extases farouches,
Barbouille-toi, bigène, de crispations de fange,
Et co-ordonne enfin, lacustre conifère,
Tes tensions ambigues de crête et de cratère.
Using Google Translate and adjusting this curious poem reads-
Sadness Janale
It is you, o pallid beauty of the subtle concierges, The Kantian Thing, the bilious icon; It is you, mute enigma of aphasic virgins, Who centers my desires with an antithetical trait.
O mystical quiver! O arrows of Telephus! Correlative of you! Abyss and hard probe! Be eternally the grafted and the graft, My superfluous and frail furious!
Ultimate shell and palate of the Mallarméan mouth and emblem of Michelangelo, Consume yourself, o neutral, in fierce ecstasies, Smear yourself, bigène, with mire contractions,
And finally coordinates, coniferous lacustrine, Your ambiguous tensions of ridge and crater.
Essentially this seems difficult although each stanza has a cluster of meaningful concerns. There are many fascinating words with allusions to place names and classical studies. The imperious voice of the poem marked by imperatives is not without a comic undertone or so it seems to me. It has made me aware of Beckett’s command of the French language and his dreamlike imagery.
In both of these collections the sea and its various moods features. It is not just this that endears me in each case but it is that element that prompts me to write about them today. It is raining once again here in Cornwall and it is as the mists mizzle gather over the bay that I find myself in somewhat melancholy mood to respond to these collections.
Derek Mahon
Essentially this is a collection of essays by different writers together with Mahon’s poems. Here is one example- the poem-“The Sea in Winter” which was written for Desmond O’Grady. There are so many lovely passages in this poem which is fast becoming a favourite.-
Portstewart, Portrush, Portballintrae-
Un beau pays mal habité,
policed by rednecks in dark cloth
and roving gangs of tartan youth.
No place for a gentleman like you.
The good, the beautiful and the true
have a tough time of it; and yet
there is that Hebridean sunset,
The coast in winter, something familiar here in West Cornwall evokes feelings as in these engaging couplets:-
The sea in winter, where she walks,
vents its displeasure on the rocks.
The human factor appears too beside these images or pathetic fallacies-
………………………….; the spite
mankind has brought to this infernal
backwater destroys the soul;
it sneaks into the daily life,
sunders the husband from the wife.
Sunder seems a significant word here, perhaps evoking “thunder” and reminiscent of the biblical separation of “asunder”. ( The chariot and horses of fire “parted asunder” Elijah and Elisha (2 Kings 2:11). So we are situated on the bleak edge of the sea. Though not quite in the same mood state as T.S.Eliot-On Margate Sands./I can connect/Nothing with nothing./The broken fingernails of dirty hands./My people humble people who expect/Nothing.
“I grew to love the poem’s complicit sense of ennui,bordering on but never quite reaching desolation, ‘living on the edge of space’; the memorable turns of phrase and allusive colour, both classical and contemporary; the sense of redemption just out of reach; the agonizing, trapped uncertainty of the writing life; all balanced against the consolation of confident, impeccable poetry.”
Evelyn Holloway
Evelyn’s book is published in English and German by Edition Sonnberg which is based in Vienna, where Evelyn was born in 1955. Perhaps the most interesting poem, it is for me, is Meeting which tells of Evelyn encountering Samuel Beckett in Oxford where she was a student in October 1973. I find that even with my poor German having the text in both languages somehow broadens the comprehension of the text.
Suddenly I see his face
stepped down from book covers,
a furrowed face, a landscape of thought
I waited for Godot,
saw people stuck in bins,
so many figures of his universe,
Now to return to the sea, a sea of memories- some perhaps repressed…….
ERRINERUNG IST EIN OZEAN OHNE SALZ
Ich kam hier um das Wrack zu sehen,
musste tiefer tauchen, tiefer.
Farben sind dort begraben,
Stimmen von der Zeit verschluckt.
Irgendwo in diesem Chaos,
ich bin irgendwo
verlassen,gefunden, und wieder verlassen
Atmen fällt schwer hier unten
Kunstweke hinter Mauern versteckt
Errinerung ist ein Ozean ohne Salz.
So that the memory can appear like a sea too, but one without salt. Memory and dreams have perhaps links to Vienna but the salty sea is close by in St Ives.
Here are just a few lines from WE ARE DANCING ROCKS (WIR SIND TANZENDE FELSEN)
We will outlast you.
Our salty eternity does not count the years.
We do not mourn the sand swallowed by the sea.
We are dancing rocks.
Her collection Words through Walls is published by Wieser Verlag ISBN 978-3-9504320-8-4
I am currently reading a book about a doomed society on the brink of Fascism. Where publicity takes the trivial and ephemeral and promotes it as serious journalism. Set in a city where it is important to be seen in the right places. A society where there is a strong underlying current of racism. A place where a spectacle is required every evening to entertain manual workers, secretaries and shopkeepers. A city where greed and cheap, unreliable information dominates the public space. This could be London; this could be today.
In fact this is Berlin in 1930 where a man whose name roughly translates as Cheeseburger sings sickly romantic songs and becomes the equivalent of a Tik Tok celebrity – reports about him soon dominat the front pages of the city’s many newspapers and journals. Such is Käsebier Takes Berlin, a demanding book ably translated from the German by Sophie Duvernoy. (You can improve your knowledge of Berlin Argot at https://www.fluentu.com/blog/german/berlin-slang/)
Not the least interesting aspect of this novel (early metrication??) are the cultural references to be found in the notes- from Schiller to Fontane including scenes of the famous, louche “Romanisches” cafe. If you enjoyed the recent series on KaDeWe on BBC you will enjoy this spectacle of the frantic Weimar period.
Then there is the evocative smell of newspapers hot off the press. Journalists who become frustrated by sub-editors who cut their best phrases and compositors who have a scarcely veiled contempt for content as long as it fits elegantly on the front page.
Finally Berlin itself as it was in the pre-war period is touched upon; the Biergartens beside the Spree, the absurd architecture of prosperous flats and yet the strange variations in property prices. This latter caused by insecurities in the currency together with the speculations of dodgy developers. This too gives Tergit’s Weimar novel contemporary relevance.
I am not here following the caretaker Prime Minister who has resigned but not. He appears to live in some sort of borderland theatre which has become boring beyond belief; I am referring to Boris Drayluk’s collection of poems My Holywood published by Paul Dry Books. I have just finished Jonathan Coe’s Mr Wilder and Me and am currently reading Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist which seem to form a suitable background on which to project Drayluk’s moving collection.
His collection begins with a mixture of recollection and nostalgia-
This much is clear :the good old days have passed
Some giant fig trees, a few pygmy palms
deep broken shade on disenfranchised grass;
This magnificent collection by the Editor-in-Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books has many lovely poems. Dralyuk has a stirring feeling for the dilapidated landscape of Los Angeles and a wide understanding of the hinterland of European Culture. He is a skilled translator and his poems have a deep moving quality appropriately relieved by wit and humour. Here is one short example-
OLD FLAME
Above the tongue-tip is an air so blue
I can compare it only to how you
who once consumed me in a yellow heat,
now scarcely singe me when we meet.
Dralyuk writes of loss and passing time and of memory under the condition of exile. I particularly enjoyed Stravinsky at the Farmer’s Market; here are two stanzas.
Christopher Isherwood is a disciple, slipping
off to the Viertals on the weekends far from Swami,
swimming naked. In Brentwood, Schoenburg lobs grapefruits
and insults at Feuchtwanger’s wife.
Herr Doktor Faustus, exile is no bargin.
You move von heute auf morgen.
Stravinsky lunches at the Farmer’s Market.
The Firebird is plucked, Petrushka’s henpecked.
Here there are layers of sorrow portrayed in a dream-like landscape. Here is a photograph of the poet and a YouTube interview on this collection.
If I should go away, Beloved, do not say ‘He has forgotten me’. For you abide, A singing rib within my dreaming side; You always stay. And in the mad tormented valley Where blood and hunger rally And Death the wild beast is uncaught, untamed, Our soul withstands the terror And has its quiet honour Among the glittering stars your voices named.
Alun Lewis is a poet whose writing is associated with the Second World War in which he died in Burma in 1944. It is then naturally a poetry of partings, separation and yet shows the tenderness which is expressed in the poem above. See also https://allpoetry.com/Alun-Lewis
However, it is the following lines which grasped my attention and which are shown here from a poem called Destruction:-
In this intriguing passage, the viaduct arches feels like an image, perhaps from a dream suggesting transportation, crossing a gulf as well as the industrial Welsh scenery which it also evokes. The polluted river contrasts remarkably with the dreaming girl. I discover that attar of roses, also called otto of rose, essence of rose, or rose oil, fragrant, colourless or pale-yellow liquid is an essential oil distilled from fresh petals. This is followed by a striking consideration of the fragility of the poet’s writing and how it can be affected by the sudden hostility of his own feelings- the destructive feelings which he acknowledges. This too is beautifully expressed in a line of tragic s sounds- “Like a schoolboy’s sling that slays a swallow.” A swallow that might be otherwise be free to rise to otherwise unreachable places. Lewis goes on to compare this to the devastation of war with words that must remind a contemporary reader of the current conflict in Ukraine-“the impersonal drone of death Trembles the throbbing night” so that possible connection is broken as the viaduct is destroyed.
This link for what is possibly Alun Lewis’s most famous poem is also worth exploring:-
I have read for the second time now an article in the TLS by someone who goes by the name of Docx. This curious appellation reminds me somehow of XTrapnell, a strange character in Antony Powell’s “Dance to the Music of Time”. In this article, a book review, Docx pins down the theatrical absurdity of Johnson’s manipulation of Parliament and reiterates the latter’s motivation in his illegal prorogation of Parliament. He touches on the psychology of Boris, recently referred to as delusional by the Leader of the opposition and quotes D.W.Winnicott’s notion of the False Self to underline the splits in the man’s psyche. Johnson avoids guilt and the expectation is that paranoia features as his acting becomes increasingly absurd.
This acting resembles the theatre of the absurd which once was called Pataphysics. The loss of meaning which we see in the plays of Beckett and Ionesco is acted out on the floor of the House of Commons. The audience of Conservative MPs are complicit in the act and the opposition, though more in touch with compassion, find it difficult to bring the charade to a meaningful conclusion.
I have just finished reading the most remarkable life story of Richard Brinley Sheridan which is written by the outstanding Irish writer and political commentator, Fintan O’Toole. It is called A Traitor’s Kiss. There are many reasons for recommending this book so I shall confine myself to just three. Firstly, because it so closely illustrates this connection between politics and the theatre. Sheridan’s father, with whom he had a particularly interesting oedipal conflict, taught rhetoric so that Sheridan imbibed and used the power of heightened speech in his drama and in his political speeches. One only need consider the figure of Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals to grasp his power over language. Secondly, O’Toole’s explanation of the basic integrity of Sheridan’s love for Ireland, democracy and far sighted anti-imperialist radicalism is thoroughly illuminating with respect to Eighteenth Century political shenanigans. Thirdly, the biography is imbued with a real feeling for the duelling, the striving for status, the struggle against poverty, the wenching and resulting illegitimacies pursued in the chaotic Regency times. The reader comes away with some understanding of the complexities of both Whig factions and the decide lack of safety considerations within the candlelit Drury Lane theatre.
The article which underlined for me this connection between politics and the theatre was an edited version of a lecture given on behalf of the Voltaire Association in the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford on March 17th. It was given by the Harvard Professor, Robert Darnton and entitled Despotism Centre Stage- Theatricality and violence in Paris on the eve of revolution. It appeared in the March 25th, 2022 copy of the Literary Supplement and so very fascinating that I have read it several times to appreciate just how the masses in the streets of Paris, the Parlement and the Chatelet Court all became embroiled in a political carnival in which magistrates acted out their remonstrances (a forcefully reproachful protests) with speeches and gestures so that Paris itself became a free for all vaudeville. with the aristocracy and the monarchy as the players caught in a tragedy. Here is a small example of the scenes on the streets leading up to the Revolution:-
For anyone who wishes to hear the lecture itself:-
The drama acted out in those few days goes some way towards understanding the current conflict in the Ukraine; Putin’s response to Gorbachev’s reforms over 30 years ago.
Once again I have been reading Christopher Reid and again finding his poetry both lyrical and accessible. I recently found a poem in his collection, “For and After“(2003) which is intriguingly entitled Bermudapest and is dedicated to Clariisa Upchurch and her husband George Szirtes. It begins:-
A place I’ve never been, but which, at back of my mind’s eye, I know I’ve seen:
its stately apartment blocks beginning to melt in the mid-morning blaze, its beach cafés
loud with the laughter of chess-players and philosophers. And there’s the postcard view you’ll know it –
Now although the title has an ambiguity about it perhaps suggesting an imaginary destination, I can only read a few lines and think upon the city of Odesa. A city about which I only know but a few matters but one whose cosmopolitan nature makes it onto my wish list for a visit. Having seen those famous steps in Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” in the early 70s started my interest. Re- kindled by a minitrek to Istanbul and Princes Island then I bought Neil Acherson’s Black Sea. Then again reading about the trade of the Euphrasi family in de Waal’s Hare with the Amber Eyes stimulated my interest further.
Reid’s lovely poem talks of a lively city with…..
loud with laughter
of chess players and philosophers.
And there’s a postcard view-
you’ll know it
However, the city which has grasped my imagination through reading this poem is awaiting the armed assault of the invader. The sandbags surround the elegant statues. The town where Pushkin was in exile which was always a cosmopolitan treasure awaits another barbarous incursion .A large portion of the dwellers have already left their homes fearing the sort of destruction meted out to Mariupol now some 13hours journey away to the East.
There is a certain irony in the last lines in which a guitar playing poet flavours his words with…
The lines above come from Stephen Romer’s title poem in his 2008 collection Yellow Studio. This poetry book (Oxford Poetry Series ISBN978 1 90303985 4)I purchased having read some of his critical writings in the TLS (or was it the LRB?) Getting to understand a new poet inevitably takes time and I find that I have reached the point where actually I want to reassess my favourites; Auden, MacNeice, Yeats and Mahon). However, my interest in French Poetry remains strong and Romer is perhaps the leading translator. Incidentally, Romer keeps reminding me of the corresponding poetry and translations from German by Michael Hofmann. Here is a clip finding Romer reading at Worcester College, Oxford in 2019 about the warmth of the South,the approach of Spring, Air BnB and other matters.
Perusing the collection my eye was caught by the poems about returning to Paris.:-
Returning here
under the cold blue
the rue des Saules
is absurdly tender
with its pink house
on the corner
and the château des Brouillards
with its ruined vineyard
and secret trees
still a world on its own
(For more information on the misty castle opposite Renoir’s house see
Another section of Yellow Studio deals with the poets relaxation and remembering a friend/lover recently lost ;an elegy conceived in the garden and about the house. It is called Pottering About.
any sign of neglect or decay
weighs on my conscience
when you were always the one
somewhere at work among the birdsong
and the appleboughs, the place marked
by a stupendous oath
as the Allen Scythe choked
or where the odd chainsaw
was hurled into the undergrowth
and I dreaming on
among my books
in the yellow attic room.
Here is Stephen Romer in more sombre mood reading at Trinity College, Cambridge in 2018
Leon Brenner is an energetic and creative Philosopher and Lacanian Psychoanalyst who lives and works in Berlin. Last week he gave a Zoom talk on the subject of The Dermic Drive in Autism in which he followed this, his schema:-
Counter to the ways it is conceived through both cognitive and identitarian approaches, autism might be productively thought of as a unique subjective structure that sits alongside the classical Freudian structures of psychosis, neurosis, and perversion. Earlier psychoanalytic thinkers have linked autism and the onset of autism to the supposed experience of early disturbances in ‘skin function’. In this talk Dr Leon Brenner will expand this notion of ‘skin function’, exploring its relation to and confection in language. Conceiving the skin as a potential modality of the Freudian drive (Trieb) – the dermic drive – Dr Leon Brenner will seek to unpack how the different relations to and with the Other such a drive would instantiate allow fresh insights into our understandings of autism.
Here is what R,D.Hinshelwood has to say in clarification in his book, A Dictonary of Kleinian Thought-Among the previous psychoanalysts studying this subject three in particular drew my attention. Esther Bick whose work included infant observation, the relation between skin sensations and feeling contained, the creation of the experience of the body as an internal space. Bick worked with Donald Meltzer and together they arrived at the concept of Adhesive identification: The possible failure to develop such an integrating primary object (space) appears to be confirmed in work with autistic children (Meltzer et al., 1975) [see AUTISM]. Bick and Meltzer (Meltzer, 1975, 1986) collaborated in describing the ways in which autistic children develop without a sense of internal or external space. Their relationship with objects appears to be a ‘sticking on to’ the object, a mechanism called adhesive identification.
2 Hinshelwood also explains the manner in which mimicry replaces the normal development of internal psychic space-
projective identification cannot be properly employed because of an absent sense of internal space (see INTERNAL REALITY). Meltzer (Meltzer et al., 1975) took up these ideas and found them important in research into a child-analytic technique with autistic children. Meltzer described a child who
tended to draw pictures of houses, in which there was a house on this side of the paper, and there was a house on the other side of the paper and when you held it up to the light, you saw that the doors were superimposed, you know, a kind of house where you open the front door and step out the back door at the same time. (Meltzer, 1975, p. 300)
In the course of this collaboration, Bick and Meltzer began to recognize a pattern in these ‘second-skin’ formations (see SKIN]. Bick typically called it an act of mimicry. However, what they began to realize was that the mimicry represented the experience, and phantasy, of sticking to an object as opposed to projecting into it [see 13. PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION]. A lapse in developing a sense of internal spaces leads to a tendency to relate to objects in a two dimensional way, without depth [see AUTISM]:
The following are some thoughts in no particular order which I had during this engaging seminar:-
This evocative song has been in the background since contemplating this whole issue with it’s phrase “wake up to reality”. Sung here by Frank Sinatra https://youtu.be/C1AHec7sfZ8
There is a particularly interesting chapter in Betty Joseph’s collection “Psychic Equilibrium and Psychic Change” on the analysis of a patient with a rubber fetish in which she discusses the use of projective identification of excitement, oral sadism and how she was able to contain, explain and resolve these issues within the analytic sessions.
It would seem that the elastic and adhesive properties of relationships can be expressed vividly by means of cartoon characters. In particular it is possible to think of matters like “bouncing back” being “caught on the rebound” as well as “sticking together through thick and thin” as well as someone “sticking to another like glue” somewhat unpleasantly or uncomfortably.
penwithlit 