Category: Literature

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Classics Literature Poetry

Musings on Catullus, Housman and Stoppard

From Catullus 64

Peliaco quondam prognatae uertice pinus
dicuntur liquidas Neptuni nasse per undas
Phasidos ad fluctus et fines Aeetaeos,
cum lecti iuuenes, Argiuae robora pubis,
auratam optantes Colchis auertere pellem
ausi sunt uada salsa cita decurrere puppi,
caerula uerrentes abiegnis aequora palmis.
diua quibus retinens in summis urbibus arces,
ipsa leui fecit uolitantem flamine currum,
pinea coniungens inflexae texta carinae.
illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten.
quae simul ac rostro uentosum proscidit aequor,
tortaque remigio spumis incanuit unda,
emersere feri candenti e gurgite uultus
aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes.
illa, atque haud alia, uiderunt luce marinas
mortales oculi nudato corpore Nymphas

It is said that formerly pines sprung from Pelion’s peak
swam the liquid waves of Neptune
To the waves of Phasis and the lands of Aeetes,
When the chosen youths, the strength of Argive manhood
Choosing to run away with the Golden Fleece from the Colchians,
They dared to traverse with swift ship through the salty waters,
Sweeping the azure sea with fir oars,
For whom the goddess herself occupying the citadels in the highest cities
Made the flying chariot with a light wind,
Fitting the pine timbers to the curved keel.
She first stained inexperienced Amphitrite with sailing;
But which likewise plowed the fickle wave with curved ship’s beak
And the water, twisted by the rowing grew warm with foam,
Aquatic Nereids emerged their faces from the white eddies
Admiring the apparition
On that day, and hardly any other, mortals saw with their own eyes
Marine nymphs, with naked body,

I had just been reading the Stoppard play about Houseman in which this passage is referenced called “The Invention of Love”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Love

In a recent discussion at Jewish Book Week 2021, Hermione Lee mentioned that this was Stoppard’s favourite play. It was first published in 1997 and given it’s themes I wondered if it’s writing had any connection with Stoppard’s feelings about Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. This very interesting play can be viewed on You Tube but sadly the quality of the sound is not very good.

I think it is interesting that Stoppard who appears not to have had a University Education appears so interested in the minutaie of recondite and eclectic matters such as logical positivism (Jumpers) or textual analysis as in this play.

Isn’t it interesting how the road not taken, so to speak, may become so interesting one’s later in life. This was seemingly the case about higher education with Tom Stoppard who has become so formidably well read and erudite. I was thinking too of James Callaghan a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979. He became so very interested in Education and seems to have engendered the changes that resulted in the National Curriculum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Callaghan#Personal_life

The other major figure that springs to mind is George Orwell. However, my most recent encounter with Orwell portrays him rather more as the man of action and not perhaps very interested in University Education as that of describing authoritarian atmosphere of the minor Prep school. I was reading fairly recently an account by Rayner Heppenstall in his engaging account Four Absentees which mentions the time the author spent with Orwell in their Camden flat-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayner_Heppenstall

It is difficult to imagine what Orwell might have chosen to read had he gone to University and then again he was young at a time well before the expansion of University Education. Perhaps, he is now studied under the area of Media Studies. There appears to be considerable debate about his writing. Personally I found his diaries which I think appeared in Penguin around 1988 absorbingly interesting.

Darcy Moore's Blog |ORWELL COLLECTION - Darcy Moore's Blog

Orwell and Stoppard are both concerned with language and truth. When looking at this play, there is a debate about the relative merits of poetry and academic scholarship as well as the human relationships. Houseman the classicist obsessed by the scientific and heterosexual Jackson. Obsessed too with such close textual analysis that he seems to missed his first in Greats. How might he be diagnosed or labelled nowadays one wonders.

After recently reading Three Rings by Daniel Mendelsohn (A tale of Exile, Narrative and Fate) I have been tempted to explore diversions and must now return to the text above.

The first two lines above do not appear to make a great deal of sense in English. My Heinemann edition translated by F.W.Cornish (Erstwhile Vice-Provost of Eton) 2nd Edition 1914 gives-

Pine-trees of old, born on top of the Pelion, are said to have swam through the clear waters of Neptune to the waves of Phasis and the realms of Aeetes, when the chosen youths, the flowers of Argive strength, desiring to bear away from the Colchians the golden fleece...

Now the obvious difficulty in getting the poetry here is the number of allusions with which the text is crammed. The sort of associations that in Keats time many were familiar. Looking them up…..

Pelion is simply there as a mountain today and looks gorgeous too.

Pelion: the forgotten Greek peninsula with alpine treks and sandy beaches – but no tourists

Phasis appears to be beautiful -The Rioni river, as it is called in classical sources.  Ancient Greek Φᾶσις as it says in Wikitionary! Aeetes may be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ae%C3%ABtes, an ancient King of Colchis who has been represented thus:-

Aeetes

“The flowers of Argive strength” is rather lovely and associated with gladiolus flowers which suggest not only strength but honour and moral integrity. Gladius being Latin for sword. Argive refers to the ancient city of Argos and obviously not the on-line delivery store! Argos (Ancient Argos, located in the Peloponnese in Greece, was a major Mycenaean settlement in the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100 BCE) and remained important throughout the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman periods until its destruction by the Visigoths in 395 CE)

The full import of Catullus 64 may be found at https://www.ancient-literature.com/catullus-64-translation-2.html

Finally, there is a little possible alternative at line 14 where freti might replace feri above and seems to mean narrow-anyway freti candenti sounds rather nice though I cannot quite make sense of it. It seemsto refer to a white narrow watery space I am told. See https://nodictionaries.com/text-word-note/1731849-remigio-spumis-incanuit-unda-emersere-freti-candenti-e-gurgite-uultus-aequoreae and according to Cornish might instead mean “wild visages” of the emerging Neriads in the spume of the churning oars. Houseman and probably Stoppard would doubtless be intrigued by these codd. (Codices) Referring to the different manuscripts. Cornish in my book -1st Edition 1912 refers to 7 different manuscripts- one of which is in the Bodleian and one of which is no longer extant but 6 of the others are derived from it. Codex Veronensis.

Categories
Classics Literature Poetry

World Poetry Day-Ovid in Exile -from Tristia Book 3

Barbarian Incursions

Hero And Leander by Granger | Leander, Art, Hero

If such waters had once been yours, Leander,

those straits would not be guilty of your death.

Since the dolphins can’t hurl themselves into the air,

harsh winter holds them back if they try:

and though Boreas roars and thrashes his wings,

there’s no wave on the besieged waters.

The ships stand locked in frozen marble,

and no oar can cut the solid wave.

I’ve seen fish stuck fast held by the ice,

and some of them were alive even then.

Whether the savage power of wild Boreas

freezes the sea-water or the flowing river,

as soon as the Danube’s levelled by dry winds,

the barbarian host attack on swift horses:

strong in horses and strong in far-flung arrows

laying waste the neighbouring lands far and wide.

Some men flee: and, with their fields unguarded,

their undefended wealth is plundered,

the scant wealth of the country, herds

and creaking carts, whatever a poor farmer has.

Some, hands tied, are driven off as captives,

looking back in vain at their farms and homes.

some die wretchedly pierced by barbed arrows,

since there’s a touch of venom on the flying steel.

From https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/OvidTristiaBkThree.php#anchor_Toc34217042

Categories
Book Reviews Literature Poetry

Listening to Reid

Well, perhaps I have had too much time on my hands and a surfeit of Government adverts on Classic F.M. The latter causing my blood pressure to rise despite the compensating soothing by a combination of the symphonies and the smooth and slightly manic A.A. (Alexander Armstrong). Despite the irritations of the lockdown the discovery of the variety of poetry of Christopher Reid. It is the gift that keeps on giving without the unpleasant associations of that phrase. Here is the great man talking about Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney.

At the University of Huddersfield
Prose
Prose pays a call on poetry.
A seafaring tower block,
palatial, proud pristinely white
as if fresh from the drawing board
of some high minded architect,
has arrived to inspect
the tired old city.

From Reid's latest collection The Late Sun

There is something subtle and gentle about this poet that reminds me of the best headmaster that I taught under. He can be amusing, eloquent and engaging even with quite short poems like the following from his Selected Poems published in 2011.

Categories
Book Reviews Literature Poetry

Reading and Pondering Reid

Once again, magically

and without official notification,

it was the time of the year

for the pale-blue butterflies to arrive.

From Reid’s Collection “Katerina Brac“

Well indeed, the weather has picked up and the magnolia is in blossom in the gardens. I have just been reading the new collection of poems by Christopher Reid entitled “The Late Sun“ and finding it simply excellent. My favourite poem in his collection at the moment is a collaborative translation with Renata Senktas from the Polish of Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyński. It is called from A Trip to Świder

Reid’s poem begins:-

Stars like musicians.

August like a green bird.

The stars play, The wind dances.

And August sheds feathers.

The poem proceeds with such short pellucid sentences and builds in a dream-like imagist manner the vision of this extraordinarily beautiful suburb of Warsaw. The full version of this may be found at https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/a-trip-to-swider-konstanty-ildefons-galczynski











The poem ends with a literary allusion and is infused with a gentle melancholy-





Children in prams, woodpeckers,
a birch growing at a slant,
the river, and the blind man
who drank beer at the station;





and this house with its pointed roof
hidden among raspberry bushes,
and this shadow… as in Three Sisters
by Anton Chekhov.





An informative Polish Website at https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/a-playful-nostalgia-for-a-lost-world-renata-senktas-and-christop interestingly comments that, “hermetic as it sometimes appears, A Trip to Świder is carried along by its musical brio, its dream-like marriage of fantasy and truth, and its kaleidoscopic blending of dissimilar tones and images, which, to quote Czesław Miłosz, “chase one another with the speed of a hurtling train”.“





The Late Summer is replete with great poetry and well worth the effort to read over and over. As a result of reading its 79 pages and not having presently been otherwise engaged by a novel- too many new webinars-I have found much to ponder over between cafetieres of coffee- the poems open up vistas of travel and return to the delights of London. Which thought reminds me of my first encounter with Reid via the wonderful poem-play “The Song of Lunch” world-wearily but delightfully intoned by Alan Rickman with Emma Thompson.















		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Solitude and Nostalgia-the paintings of Valentin Serov

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

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As someone has commented on You Tube underneath the above, “Wonderful , soulful, expression of Imperial Russia from many aspects just before the Black Curtain of the war that aesthetically affects us into our era!” There are even colour photographs of that strange era in Russia before the Revolution that show the huge contrasts in wealth and also the peaceful landscape which is evoked like a distant Edwardian Summer. Serov died in 1911 having left behind masterpieces of portraiture including his own famous self-portrait. His style was realistic and is still much beloved by the Russian people.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Serov





Russia in Original Photographs, 1860-1920 Paperback – 1 May 1983
by Marvin Lyons





I have just discovered this film which looks good too-





Nostalgia [DVD]





Finally there is an excellent paper, well worth thorough consideration by Stacey Novack called “The Politics of Nostalgia” at https://publicseminar.org/2016/11/the-politics-of-nostalgia/


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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“Nostalgia” a poem by Boris Pasternak

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

To give this book a dedication
The desert sickened,
And lions roared, and dawns of tigers
Took hold of Kipling.





A dried-up well of dreadful longing
Was gaping, yawning.
They swayed and shivered, rubbing shoulders,
Sleek-skinned and tawny.





Since then continuing forever
Their sway in scansion,
They stroll in mist through dewy meadows
Dreamt up by the Ganges.





Creeping at dawn in pits and hollows
Cold sunrays fumble.
Funereal, incense-laden dampness
Pervades the jungle





.Boris Pasternak





Does this poem convey the feeling of nostalgia to you? Geographically widespread there is certainly a sense of some disorientation. From “cold sunrays”, which suggest a Russian winter, to Kipling’s jungle or the Ganges or even the desert. The heat finds it hard to penetrate into the hollows and even the sunrays seem to fumble on their way to the losses of funereal dampness. 





The poem shows Pasternak’s knowledge of Kipling and perhaps the first stanza refers also to Blake’s “Tiger, tiger burning bright”. Both, of course are political poets and the possible symbolism here might be imperial. However, it is the voracious hunger for the irretrievable which pervades the beasts-





A dried-up well of dreadful longing
Was gaping, yawning










		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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If you forget me -Pablo Neruda

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

 





“I want you to know
one thing.





You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.





Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.





If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.”





This poem contains some moving imagery which reminds me of ice and fire. Glowing embers and decay which are capable of re-igniting. Images which are intangible and sadly to me at least it conveys ambivalence. He is dependent upon being loved and his memory depends upon this too. There is a deep fragility here which makes the poem more beautiful. There is also the strong possibility of exile under discussion. The ash appears to rise like a prayer towards Heaven like little sailing boats of childhood dreams.





Further discussion is at https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/chile/articles/the-most-famous-poems-by-pablo-neruda/





Neruda (2016) | Official Trailer HD - YouTube





 





 


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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“In Exile” and “Quarantine” – two poems by Eavan Boland

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

This poem may be found in Eavan Boland’s book of collected poems on page 157 and it is from her sequence outside history. It starts thus:-





The German girls that came to us that winter and





the winter after and who helped my mother fuel





 the iron stove and arranged our clothes in wet





thicknesses on the wooden rail after tea was over,





 





spoke no English, understood no French.





We are in Boland’s childhood in Ireland and the political situation in Europe has isolated these girls and put them into linguistic isolation, perhaps similar to that experienced in childhood. This long starting sentence sets the lamenting pace with which this poem is infused. She continues to say that they spoke rapidly; “syllables in which pain was radical, integral; and with what sense of injury the language angled for an unhurt kingdom….I never knew“





Renowned poet Professor Eavan Boland dies at 75 | Stanford News





 





The memory of these exile voices reminds Boland of her own exile from the darkness of Ireland and “the drizzle in the lilac, the dusk at the back door” but also of “the tinkers I was threatened with” She is imagining the guttural voices some forty years on and the sadness and pain mixed with these sounds as she reexperiences her loss of her homeland, now teaching in America.





These searing memories she recalls in a very different place-





“Among these salt boxes, marshes and the glove-tanned colours of the sugar maples, in this New England town at the start of winter. ” She appears to miss the past and its pains and ends by saying memorably that; “Here in this scalding air my speech will not heal.I do not want it to heal”





This poem I find appealing to the sense we presently have of dislocation due to the Covid crisis. Trying to retrieve some sense of the normal everyday and usual social interaction. In a sense we have all become exiles and I hear Leonard Cohen’s “and all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them” There are reminders for me in this poem of the sense of loss of control which so many feel with Brexit and the separation from the cultural and political values which Europe aspires.







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-rtWprRGI







 


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Histories of War as seen by two indispensible Poets-Part Two

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

The St Ives September Festival had a range of controversial poets come to visit. I remember there being a huge stir when D.M.Thomas came to read and the proctor’s of moral rectitude in the unlikely form of delegates from the Town Council were said to have occupied the back row to ensure that an unseemly did not take place. Then Gavin Ewart arrived one evening to give a reading in the decorative surroundings of the Penwith Gallery. I am most vague as to when I heard him -around the mid eighties I think. I remember how he was said to have been influenced by Auden and spending a very entertaining evening listening to the poet reading in an amusing and cultured voice that sounded very English some edgy and clever poems. I have been reading Martial at the moment and I have an inkling that Ewart might well have been entranced by that Latin satirist.





Gavin Ewart : London Remembers, Aiming to capture all memorials in London





Consider the poem which is entitled “The Death of W.S.Gilbert at Harrow Weald” which may be found on the net. It tells of the demise of the famous lyricist of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas:-


Imagine that flat glassy lake in 1911,


a very Victorian part of the prosperous house,


(architect: Norman Shaw),


a beautiful hot summer’s day in 1911.


It proceeds to describe how two Victorian ladies in “decorous bathing garments” enter the lake where the younger gets into difficulties and Gilbert plunges to the rescue:-


He swims to her, shouts advice: ‘Put your hands on my shoulders!’


She feels him sink under her. He doesn’t come up.


She struggles to the bank, he is dead of heart failure.


and finishes with a typical Ewart touch in the next stanza with sweet advice to older men not to fool about with ladies –


But all the same it is good to die brave 


on a beautiful hot summer’s day in 1911.


Returning to the theme of my previous posting I think this a great poem-




This sanitisation of what war means and how it can falsely be portrayed parallels my previous posting of the poem by Tom Paulin.


 


 


		


	


	

		
		


			

		


		
	


	






	



	


		
			

				
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Histories of War as seen by two indispensible Poets-Part One

		


			

		


		
	





	


		


			

Tony Harrison: The bard of Beeston | Prospect Magazine





 





Tony Harrison is a poet whom I feel I know rather well from his television appearances. He seemed to be on the box quite a lot around 2000 or so. By any criteria his is a radical poet from Leeds. In my imagination I see him as a radical voice from that period along with another favourite poet, Tom Paulin. Harrison is an engaged poet from Leeds and is probably best known for his long poem “V” which was published in 1985. He is an immensely clever poet immersed in his Northern background with which is radicalism is associated and his broad knowledge of the classics. He is a playwright, a film-maker and a translator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Harrison





In the poem which I discovered recently he is addressing his view of history. How the past has been recorded is an issue that perhaps becomes more pressing as we age. There is much debate about statues currently, who we should remember and what is both consciously and unconsciously addressed. What should we pass on to future generations and how to counteract distressingly current propoganda. This poem comes from the new edition of Selected Poems by Tony Harrison published by Penguin – you can find it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Harrison He is travelling with his children over moorland-





Past scenic laybys and stag warning signs





the British borderlands roll into view.





They read: Beware of Unexploded Mines





I tell my children that was World War II.





Those borderlands are becoming politically more controversial, there is a simple rhyme-scheme with those dangerous residues beneath the surface. The poem makes the link between khaki uniforms and cavalry twill. It brins to mind the smart casual wear demanded of upper ranks in their so called leisure time. The areas forbidden to play are those marked off by signs and fences which remind the reader of enclosures and the imperial system of trade providing employment in a regulated manner to mill workers. The latter similarly having their time divided by tolling bells.





Mill angelus, and church tower twice as high.





One foundry cast the work-and rest-day bells-





the same red cottons in the flags that fly





for ranges, revolutions, and rough swells.





The alliterative Rs remind us not only of the Union Jack but that to some it was considered the butcher’s apron. The rough swells is almost classical ( Homer’s wine-dark sea) and rowdy posh boys with the ambivalent firing ranges in the background.