#Beethoven250 #Wordsworth250

There’s a lovely Peanuts cartoon strip by Charles M Schulz that I won’t reproduce here for fear of breaching copyright laws. I think I can describe it, though, without incurring the wrath of the courts. Schroeder is playing away at his little piano, his head bent towards the keyboard, lost to everything but the music he is making. And Lucy, who has a crush on Schroeder, sits by the piano, and tries to make conversation. She is looking, she says, for the answer to life. What is the answer, Schroeder?

Suddenly, without warning, Schroeder stops playing, and erupts. “Beethoven!” he bellows at her. “Beethoven is it, clear and simple!! Do you understand?” Such is his ferocity, that Lucy literally flips back into the air. When she lands again on the ground, Schroeder is back playing his music again, head down towards the keyboard, oblivious once more to all save the music.

I suppose this can be read as a joke at Schroeder’s expense – of a man who, immersed in his private passion, has no time for, or interest in, the human relationships he might be cultivating. But actually, I am on Schroeder’s side in this. For what is the answer to life if not Beethoven?

I suppose those on Lucy’s side (“Good grief!” she ends up saying to herself) will insist that cultivating human relationships, and thereby acknowledging our commonality and our shared humanity, overrides all else, and renders private obsessions at best trivial. But I can’t say I am entirely happy to go along with that. I don’t think it is to devalue the importance of these aspects of life to assert, or to re-assert, that aesthetics are also vitally important. Nietzsche famously asserted that life could only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon, and, while I don’t know that I’d entirely go along with this either, I don’t think I have the temerity to disagree with old Freddie on this matter: for, really, if the answer to life isn’t Beethoven, then what is?

Or Shakespeare. Or Michelangelo. Of course, when we list the names of artists, we are referring to their works; and those works that strike us with awe and with wonder, that give us glimpses into the fullness of life, and impart a sense of something far more deeply interfused, are more, much more, I’d submit, than of merely peripheral importance, something merely to be indulged in when one has nothing better to do.

Next year is the 250^th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. Now, some may argue that it’s pointless to celebrate the birthday of someone who is no longer around to accept birthday felicitations, but, since the only really objective test we know of for artistic greatness is the Test of Time, passing this almighty test does seems to me well worth celebrating. I knew nothing of Beethoven till my late teens: he had been, to me, just a name. When, aged seventeen or so, I started to take an interest in this classical music lark – purely out of curiosity – I went first of all to those composers I knew to be the “heavyweights” – Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Bach took a bit of time, I must admit, and even now I’m not sure I have come close to absorbing his music adequately; but the other two won me over right away. I have particularly fond memories of the summer of 1978. I was 18 years old, and, earlier that year, with the cheque my parents had sent me for my 18^th birthday, I had bought a box of long-playing records of the nine symphonies of Beethoven. (For those interested in these matters, the performances were by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Böhm.) What an era of discovery that was! I remember listening to those works, and pacing up and down the room in excited agitation, my fists clenched, my head whirling, unable quite to believe that mere music could affect me so powerfully.

Years have passed since then. Indeed, decades have passed since then. And that sense of discovery is, inevitably, no more, since one cannot discover afresh what one has already discovered. So, although I no longer pace up and down the room like some inebriated arse, these symphonies have now, as it were, entered my system, in much the same way that the plays of Shakespeare have: they are permanent fixtures inside my mind,  things that I am aware of even when I am not consciously thinking about them.

Soon, other works by Beethoven followed – concertos, string quartets, piano sonatas, the titanic Missa Solemnis, that flawed-but-who-cares opera Fidelio … all works that have taken possession of my mind, that are now part of me. And if this isn’t worth celebrating, then what is? If this cannot give life some semblance of that meaning that Lucy was asking about, then what can?

There is another important 250^th anniversary next year of another great artist: William Wordsworth. Wordsworth didn’t enter my mind so dramatically as Beethoven had done. Perhaps appropriately, given his quieter voice, he entered my mind more insidiously. Indeed – and it pains me greatly to think what I prat I must have been in my younger days – for many years, I thought his reputation overblown; I thought of him as somewhat effete, blabbering on childishly about how lovely the daffs were beside the lake and beneath the trees. It took several years, and what I like to think of as a greater maturity, to realise that this very well-known poem wasn’t talking about how lovely the daffs were this year: he was describing how our minds may find significance – meaning, if you will – in earthly things, in seemingly minor things, and how it is possible for memory to re-create this significance in our minds. And that he can talk about matters so profound in a language that even a child could understand is a testament not to childishness, but, quite the contrary, to an extremely high degree of sophistication. Over the years, I can think of no poet whose work has come to mean more than me. So much so, indeed, that, as perspicacious readers of this post will no doubt have noticed, I find it hard to express my thoughts without borrowing a line or two from him.

Different though these two figures were in temperament, there are points where their minds do seem to touch. Both were initially enthused by what was happening in France, only to recoil afterwards. And both found in Nature a sense of divinity – not a Divinity that, as Creator, stands outside and above Nature, but one whose presence is immanent within it.  The “still, sad music of humanity” that Wordsworth heard in Nature is also the music Beethoven often composed. And in the final movement of Beethoven’s 6^th symphony, the “Pastoral” – still possibly my favourite of the nine – Beethoven inspires a sense of reverence and of awe – not in contemplation of some other world beyond this one, but in this world, right here, in the here-and-now.

If all this sounds very facile, I can only plead that it is pointless my trying to express in my own inadequate words what Wordsworth expressed in his. This is why I find it so damn difficult to write about poetry. To express adequately what Wordsworth’s poetry makes me feel, I really need to have Wordsworth’s own genius with language. And of music, I am even less qualified to write. But such considerations haven’t, frankly, inhibited me yet. And since I am, after all, a blogger who blogs specifically to talk about all the things I love; and since it is only right that Wordsworth and Beethoven should both be celebrated next year; I suppose I should risk the reader’s ridicule and at least have a go.

Watch this space, as they say.

On re-reading “Middlemarch”

This is not intended to be a review.

Indeed, nothing on this blog is intended to be a review. Since I want to write on this blog about all the various things I love, I have found myself writing about some of the most exalted of literary creations – Hamlet, Don Quixote, The Brothers Karamazov and what not. For me to claim to review such works seems a trifle presumptuous. If I am reviewing anything at all, it is myself: I am merely recording how my own individual mind responds to these works – sometimes, I hope, with insight, but more frequently, I fear, with incomprehension.

It is with this in mind that I come to Middlemarch, a novel that has not really been very close to my heart. I first read it some twenty-five years ago, and I remember admiring it greatly. But, in contrast to many other novels I have admired, I have not in those intervening years felt the desire to revisit it. And furthermore, the memories I had of it were vague: nothing from it seemed have lodged very firmly in my mind. These facts in themselves I found intriguing. For, after all, there are a great many readers, highly intelligent and cultivated and with unimpeachable literary taste, who not only think very highly of this novel, they refer to it as the novel they love best. Even as the “greatest novel” they have read. Of course, we don’t need to go into tedious disquisitions on the redundancy of the concept of “best” or “greatest” in such matters, or of literature not being a competitive sport: when someone speaks of Middlemarch being the “greatest” novel they have read, I understand what they mean – that not only is it a novel of surpassing merit, but that it is also the novel that speaks to them most directly, most profoundly; that it is the novel that resonates most insistently in their minds and hearts, that provides most that unmistakable tingle in the spine that Nabokov speaks of as being the ultimate arbiter of literary greatness. That Middlemarch is a novel of surpassing greatness I have never doubted, but I was curious to see whether, after so long a gap, this novel would now resonate with me – whether I, as a reader, have developed sufficiently since my earlier reading to allow this novel to enter my consciousness in a way it had not done before. Whether, in short, it would now give that tingle in the spine.

And if not, why not.

That it is a magnificent creation, I already knew. Even at that first reading, I was struck by its breadth and depth of vision. But that may be a strange thing to say about a work that remains doggedly within a single location (the Warwickshire town of Middlemarch, a fictional version, it is believed, of Coventry), dealing with everyday people in this everyday setting, and not finding, nor even seeking for, any sense of transcendence. All that is solid remains solid: the light it is seen in is no visionary or ethereal light, but very much the clear light of day. Wider national politics enter into it, but only insofar as it affects local people going about their daily business: there is no overarching political vision, any more than there is an overarching religious or spiritual vision. Eliot gives us small people leading small lives, and refuses to look beyond this.

In a very fine essay of Wordsworth’s The Prelude (“The Noble Community of the Living and the Dead: Community in The Prelude”, included in The Cambridge Companion to Wordsworth) Lucy Newlyn draws a parallel between Eliot’s work and Wordsworth’s, quoting two surprisingly similar passages from each:

                      Magnificent
The morning was, a memorable pomp,
More glorious than I ever had beheld.
The sea was laughing at a distance; all
The solid mountains were as bright as clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn—
Dews, vapours, and the melody of birds,
And labourers going forth into the fields.
Ah, need I say, dear friend, that to the brim
My heart was full? I made no vows, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be—else sinning greatly—
A dedicated spirit. On I walked
In blessedness, which even yet remains.
– From The Prelude (1805 text), iv, 330-45

 

She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving—perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labour and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.
– from Middlemarch, Chapter 80

The parallels are apparent, quite apart from the similarity of what is described – human figures within a larger landscape. In Wordsworth, the landscape is perceived first, and only then the figures (the “labourers going forth into the field”), with the grandiloquent diction in the earlier part of the passage giving way to more everyday speech. In Eliot, the process is reversed: the people are seen first (“the man with the bundle on his back, and a woman carrying her baby”), and only afterwards the largeness of the landscape they are in, and the register of the diction moves this time from the everyday to the magnificent. But both the poet in the first excerpt, and Dorothea in the second, feel it to be a moment of revelation. Wordsworth tells us that although he did not himself make a vow, vows were nonetheless made on his behalf: what these vows were he does not spell out: he tells us that he must be a “dedicated spirit”, but dedicated precisely to what he does not tell us, because, given the context, he does not need to. Eliot is more explicit: Dorothea realises she is not detached from the life around her, that she could not merely look on with a disinterested eye. This is the “bond” Wordsworth speaks of – the bond with life, with one’s fellow beings, an awareness of being, ineluctably, a part of something larger than oneself.

And for Eliot, what was larger than one’s individual self was humanity – other individual selves, collectively forming a greater unit. And this greater unit is not restricted merely to those now living. Wordsworth had written in the eleventh book of The Prelude:

                        There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble Living and the noble Dead.

To which Eliot would probably have added “and the noble Unborn”. For the bond that Wordsworth speaks of links us not only to generations past, but also to generations yet to come. The famous last lines of Middlemarch make this clear:

… for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

However seemingly mundane and quotidian our lives may be, however seemingly insignificant, we are part of a living bond both with generations past, who have prepared the ground for us, and for generations yet to come, for whose sake, whether we realise it or not, we are living now. To recognise our part in this noble community of the Living and the Dead and the Unborn is to be part of the “involuntary, palpitating life”; it is to “feel the largeness of this world”.

So far, so Wordsworthian. But Eliot’s view is nonetheless, it seems to me, somewhat different from Wordsworth’s. For Wordsworth was concerned also with intimations of immortality, with that sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, that sense of a presence that is both immanent in humanity, but which also transcends it: but these concerns weren’t Eliot’s. There are no “spots of time” in Eliot’s fictional world; or, rather, if there are, they do not look beyond humanity. The sense that Dorothea gets of an attachment to, and an active involvement with, something larger than her individual self, is not so large as to transcend humanity or to point towards eternity. This is not to say that Eliot’s vision is smaller than Wordsworth’s – merely that, for all its apparent similarities, it is differently directed. For, to Eliot, there was nothing larger than humanity; and this “involuntary, palpitating life”, this great human chain of generations succeeding each other, not only leaves no time to contemplate eternity, it makes such contemplation redundant.

We often speak of nineteenth century fiction as “realistic”, but this is mere lazy generalisation. It is not merely that so many giants of nineteenth century fiction had little or no interest in photographic verisimilitude – Gogol, Dickens, Melville, Dostoyevsky, etc. – it is also that there are many different shades of what we lazily term “realism”. Tolstoy and Eliot, for instance, may both be described as “realist” writers: they both depicted the solidity of this world, the chains of cause following effect; they tried both to come to at least some sort of understanding of the endlessly complex rules that govern our lives, our minds. And yet, in Tolstoy, there are times when these rules, however fascinatingly complex they may be, seem to be suspended: when, for instance, Andrei, wounded on the battlefield of Austerlitz, sees that vast overarching sky above him, and wonders why he hadn’t seen it before; or when Anna is close to death, and she, Karenin, and Vronsky, all seem to enter some strange heightened plane of consciousness. There is absolutely nothing like this in Middlemarch. Andrei’s moment of epiphany in seeing that sky seemed to make all human affairs appear small. Similarly, much later in the novel, when the dying Andrei resigns himself to death, all of human life, even that of his own sister and son, or of Natasha whom he loves, appears insignificant. Such a sense of human insignificnce is very alien to the world of Middlemarch: here, Dorothea’s moment of epiphany connects her to the rest of humanity, which is the highest truth there is, or can be. And as for the heightened state of consciousness that Anna, Karenin and Vronsky find themselves in, there is no room for that in Eliot’s world; here, our everyday state of consciousness, with all its “involuntary, palpitating life”, is rich enough.

Once again, none of this is to say that Eliot’s artistic vision is necessarily narrower or smaller than that of Tolstoy, or of Wordsworth: it is merely, once again, differently directed. Tolstoy too had depicted this involuntary, palpitating life in all its dizzying variety, but had searched for some underlying and unifying principle, that Wordsworthian “sense sublime … that rolls through all things”. He had possibly not succeeded in that search, but the sense of questing seems to me unmistakable. In Eliot, even that questing is absent. If Tolstoy had missed that sense sublime, Eliot does not even think to look for it.

Flaubert had also missed this sense sublime that rolls through all things. He missed it not because he could not find it, but because he was convinced it did not exist. And this saddened him. All language could do, he famously lamented in Madame Bovary, was to batter away at an old, broken kettle, when all the time he longed to “move the stars with pity”. But Eliot had no thought of moving the stars with pity, or any such nonsense. This involuntary, palpitating life, far from being a battered and broken old kettle, was the thing itself: one need not search for anything beyond, as Tolstoy did, nor even lament, as Flaubert did, the absence of anything beyond. Taken for what it is, it is enough in itself: the everyday little events, taken just for what they are, are enough to fill out a novel of epic proportions. That a thousand-page novel, each page engrossing, could be created out of what Flaubert regarded as a battered and broken old kettle, is in itself a powerful statement of Eliot’s artistic and moral vision. Eliot presented this world, neither searching for any other, nor lamenting its absence. In this sense, Eliot was, perhaps, the most realist of all the realists.

Eliot is often judged, correctly, to be a writer of profound moral sensibility, but is also often judged, this time incorrectly, of being finger-wagging and judgemental. After all, if we are to take our part in this involuntary and palpitating life, then we must extend our imaginative sympathies to understand those who form that greater humanity of which we, as individuals, are a part. To understand is not necessarily to forgive or even to excuse, but it is something to be aimed towards for its own sake. Take Bulstrode, for instance. A man who has made a fortune by questionable means, who has deprived others of what is rightfully theirs to enhance his own wealth and standing, and who now parades his apparent respectability, and indulges in all sorts of religious humbug: it is hard to imagine any author extending to so despicable a person any sympathy. But even Bulstrode Eliot tries to understand, insisting that he is not really a hypocrite:

There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs.
– from Middlemarch, Chapter 61

I suppose it can be said that Eliot was harsh on Rosamond (Eliot never did care for self-centred airheads, especially if they were also pretty and blonde), but even here, there is an attempt to see things from her perspective: she too, after all, is someone who has entered into a marriage with unrealistic expectations, and has found herself disappointed; and, unlike Dorothea, she doesn’t even have the consolations of contemplation and of introspection, being by nature incapable of either.

***

I said at the start of this post that I was not going to “review” Middlemarch. I think I have kept my promise: after some two and a half thousand words, I find I have barely mentioned Dorothea Brooke, and haven’t mentioned at all Tertius Lydgate – the two principal characters whose two parallel lives form the backbone of this novel.

Fortunately, Middlemarch is possibly the most blogged about of all classic novels, and there is no shortage either of plot synopses, or of analysis. (And if it is detailed analysis you are looking for, may I recommend this by Rohan Maitzen: it is excellent.) I started this post merely trying to understand, by talking to myself here, why it is that, despite admiring this novel immensely, and thinking it a majestic achievement, it did not make my spine tingle in the way Nabokov thought a good novel should. Even in this my second reading, that spine resolutely refused to tingle. It’s not because George Eliot’s vision is too small, or too narrow: far from it. And it’s not because of her moral sensibilities. I suppose it’s because George Eliot is way too sensible and level-headed; and because I, personally, prefer those writers who have about them that touch of madness. But if I do not place Middlemarch amongst my own favourite novels, I can at least understand why so many do. And with that, I am more than satisfied.

A sentimental post to start the year

That there hath pass’d away a glory from the earth.

There comes a time in middle age when the Ghosts of one’s Christmases Past begin to outnumber even the most optimistic of estimates of the Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come. Since I have long passed that tipping point, and the weight of Christmases Past lies so heavily in the balance, I trust I may be excused for focusing on the former rather than on the latter. And as I do so, it is hard not to feel, as Wordsworth did, that there has indeed passed away a glory from the world. Now, before I am accused of sentimentality – as is usually the case when I try to speak of such matters – let me expand a little.

Something has changed – something is very different now from what it had been in our childhood years, and the difference, as any smug commentator will tell you, is in what has changed in ourselves rather than in the outside world. Wordsworth – never the sentimentalist despite ignorant claims to the contrary – recognized this. The innocent brightness of a new-born day, he knew, is lovely yet. There’s no point asking where is fled that visionary gleam: it’s still there – we just can’t perceive it any more, and that’s all. It’s the way things are: no point lamenting the inevitable. But Wordsworth himself, though determined to find strength in what remains, could not help lamenting. We cannot, after all, stop feeling things merely because “there’s no point to it”.

One of the most touching of these laments is the poem “The Oxen” by Thomas Hardy, written in the darkest days of 1915, when he was an old man of seventy-five years, and when Europe, as if justifying the prophetic pessimism he had expressed in his novels years earlier, was in the process of tearing itself apart. In this wonderfully touching poem, Hardy looks back on childhood innocence and naivety; but the poem is not really about either: it is about one’s longing for a time when such innocence and naivety had been possible. There may not be any point to such longing, but we feel a great many things that have no point to them. That such longing is futile does not make it ridiculous, but, rather, imbues it with a profound sadness.

I find a similar lament in a piece that is often regarded merely as candy-coated decorative fluff – in the score of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. It is, of course, a perennial Christmas favourite, to be wheeled out every year along with the crackers, the Christmas tree, the mince pies, and the Dickens; and few, I think, will deny its charm. But what frequently is denied is its profundity. Tchaikovsky himself, we are told, considered the subject matter to be too light, and although, being a consummate professional, he gave it his finest craftsmanship, what he withheld was his artistry. It is merely decorative, merely a bit of fluff.

I have never been able to reconcile myself to this view, as I find the music genuinely and very deeply moving. I can’t deny that it is full of music that is decorative; neither can I deny that its subject – a Christmas Party, a child’s subsequent entry into a world of fairy tales, and her journey to the Kingdom of Sweets – is very slight, even, perhaps, trivial. But I was very interested to read recently this excellent piece by music critic Gavin Plumley, in which he argues that The Nutcracker is a piece that deserves to be taken seriously. Whatever Tchaikovsky’s initial feelings about the nature of his commission, he argues, the composition of the piece was taken very seriously indeed, and not merely in terms of craftsmanship.

Although it’s always dangerous relating a work of art to the artist’s biography, it was good to have confirmation of what seems to me obvious from the music – that, far from being decorative fluff, it is a serious and deeply felt work, and a response to an emotionally shattering event (the death of Tchaikovsky’s sister). As Plumley puts it, “The Nutcracker undoubtedly poses much larger questions than is often suggested”. But what exactly those “larger questions” are is not obvious, and different listeners will have different views on this.

To me, these larger questions are not about mortality: Tchaikovsky kept that for his 6th symphony, a work that, for me, in many ways complements The Nutcracker. Neither is The Nutcracker, as is often suggested, about Clara’s progress from childhood to womanhood: true, the nutcracker become a handsome prince, but I can detect no eroticism in the music, nor any indication of Clara’s sexual awakening. Indeed, she and the Nutcracker Prince go to the Kingdom of Sweets, which hardly suggests leaving childhood behind. These are not what I see in this piece, although what I do see seems difficult to articulate.

One thing that never ceases to strike me about the score (the full score, that is, and not the series of bleeding chunks that form the suite) is a sense of tenderness, a sense of yearning, and a profound melancholy that seems quite at odds with its alleged light-hearted fluffiness. Is there anything in all music that is more tender or yearning than that beautiful passage at the start of the forest scene towards the end of Act One? Or what about the passionate longing in the Act Two pas de deux? (“How is it possible to make so much just out of a simple descending scale?” Britten had wondered.) The underlying seriousness of passages such as this bleeds, as it were, into the rest of the score, infusing even the most joyous of numbers, the most seemingly uncomplicated of childlike dances, with a sense of something more deeply felt – something more deeply interfused, as Wordsworth might have said.

The Nutcracker depicts childhood innocence and naivety, but, as with Hardy’s poem, these are not, for me at least, its central themes: at the centre of this piece there is, I think, our adult longing for childhood innocence and naivety. And this longing, Tchaikovsky knew as well as did Wordsworth or Hardy, is futile: no matter how fervently we may long, we can never return to our childhood state. Indeed, this state of blissful innocence may never really have existed in the first place. But that does not prevent us from longing for it. It is this sense of futility of such longing that infuses this otherwise joyous music with so profound an underlying sense of sadness: I find it almost heartbreaking in its poignancy. Longing for something that can never be attained is a familiar Romantic trope: in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, for instance, this longing was for erotic fulfilment; here, it is for a childhood that is for ever gone.

That, at least, is how it seems to me. Underlying the joyous festivities of The Nutcracker (for it is indeed joyous), I seem to hear a lament similar to what I find in so much of Wordworth’s poetry, or in Hardy’s “The Oxen”.

Tchaikovsky’s next great masterpiece, his last, was his 6th symphony – an unblinking stare into the face of death itself, and among the most shattering of any works of art, in any medium. If The Nutcracker is Tchaikovsky’s Song of Innocence (albeit innocence seen from the perspective of experience), his 6th symphony is his Song of Experience. They are two very different works of, for me, comparable artistic stature. While one looks back at the Christmases Past, evoking its joys but imbuing these same joys with the profound sadness for that which is lost, the other looks heroically and unflinchingly at what is Yet to Come. As another poet put it, we look before and after, and pine for what is not.

Happy New Year, everyone!

“There Was a Boy” by William Wordsworth

Some time ago, deciding that I needed to write more about poetry in this blog (though not quite certain how to go about it), I started a series that I called, rather foolishly, “Poem of the Month”. The intentions were good: I really had meant to write about a poem each month. However, since that first Poem of the Month back in April, I have been most remiss on the matter. I suppose this blog is too freewheeling in nature – I tend to write about whatever takes my fancy, really – for any regular series such as this to be viable. However, I don’t want to give up on the idea altogether. So “The Poem of the Month” continues – as long as it is understood that it does not imply that I’ll be writing about a poem every month.

***

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander! many a time,
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills,
Rising or setting, would he stand alone,
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him.—And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
Of silence such as baffled his best skill:
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

This boy was taken from his mates, and died
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale
Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs
Upon a slope above the village-school;
And through that churchyard when my way has led
On summer-evenings, I believe that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies!

Wordsworth’s blank verse is based on underlying iambic pentameters, as is the blank verse of the two other undisputed masters of the form in English – Shakespeare and Milton. But Wordsworth sounds very unlike either: his tone is almost invariably conversational. While Shakespeare’s blank verse has an irresistible dramatic impulse (hardly surprising, given that it occurs in his dramas); and while Milton’s blank verse is grand and sonorous; Wordsworth’s blank verse seems to give the impression that he is sitting next to us, not orating grandly, but conversing – conversing in a voice that is gentle, quiet, but firm. This conversational effect is achieved partly through his avoidance of words not generally used in everyday speech (although when he does from time to time break this rule and introduces words such as “vicissitude” or “diurnal”, the effect can be electric); and also through a simulation of the kind of thing we tend to do in conversation – drifting off from one subject to another, parenthetical comments leading on to other matters so that the original subject is forgotten, and so on.

Consider, for instance, the sonnet “Surprised by Joy”, Wordsworth’s infinitely touching lament for his dead daughter. The opening line strikingly tells us that he has come across an unexpected joy, but almost as soon as he starts to tell us about this, another thought – that his daughter, with whom he had instinctively wished to share this joy, is no longer there – overtakes it. The rest of the sonnet is about his loss: whatever joy it was that is referred to in the first line is now seemingly forgotten. Only seemingly, of course: a poem, especially a poem as tightly knit as a sonnet must be, cannot be as rambling as our conversation often is. But in simulating this rambling that is typical of conversation, Wordsworth gives us the impression of conversation. And he also, vitally, I think, uses this conversational mode to leave certain things unsaid. He leaves unsaid what this “joy” is that is mentioned in the opening line; however, the word “joy”, so strikingly introduced, resonates in our mind even as we go on to read of the most inconsolable grief. And the impression is conveyed of a certain joy that is present even in the midst of heartbreak – a joy that cannot be spoken about directly because our language is not designed to communicate directly matters so intangible.

Much of greatest poetry does seem to me to communicate various matters that language, as commonly used, is not designed to communicate. The poet uses any feature of language he can – sounds, sonorities, syntax, and rhythm; imagery and symbolism; and so on – to communicate these various matters. Wordsworth adds to this armoury things that are mentioned as if in passing before being seemingly forgotten, but allowing these passing references to colour the rest in the reader’s mind.

This particular poem, “There Was a Boy”, appeared in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, and later, in an expanded form (the form given above), in the 1805 edition. It was later incorporated into the posthumously published 1850 text of The Prelude (V, 364, et seq.) but it seems to me more effective as a standalone fragment, purely because its fragmentary nature itself communicates something important. The tone, as so often with Wordsworth, is conversational, and the opening line gives the impression that we are coming in in the middle of a conversation, and that much has already been said to which we have not been privy.

There was a boy…

It’s almost as if Wordsworth is giving a specific example of a general principle. This general principle he has presumably been discussing earlier, but that was before we had started listening, and so, we don’t know what it is. We are only allowed to hear this specific example, of this boy who had once been (and who presumably is no more), and from this specific example, we must try to infer as best we can the general principle that it illustrates.

Immediately after these first four words, Wordsworth seems to drift off for a while, addressing not us, but nature itself:

…. ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander!

And then, in the next few lines, Wordsworth describes how this boy, in the evening, would mimic the hooting of the owls, encouraging them to answer him. Whatever the general principle was that Wordsworth might have been talking about before the poem starts, it is the specific that he details, lingering lovingly on each specific point. The vocabulary used is almost without exception the vocabulary we would use in everyday conversation, with the occasional word thrown in, such as “interwoven”, reminding us that, for all its everyday speech, this is, after all, a poem. No, not “thrown in”: carefully placed. But the conversational tone gives the impression of its just being “thrown in”.

The word “interwoven” seems important to me. It is used here to describe the boy’s fingers as he makes the sound of the owls, but it has, I think, other associations. It reminds me of the similar word “interfused”, that Wordsworth used so unforgettably in the “Tintern Abbey” poem, written at roughly the same time as this one:

…And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused…

The boy, in mimicking the sound of nature, becomes interwoven with it; and nature itself seems interwoven with something else. This sense of interweaving becomes clearer in the following lines; for once the noise of the birds dies down, there follows “a silence that baffles his best skill”. “Baffle” of course has multiple meanings – to frustrate; to impede progress; and various other shades of meaning in between. All of these must be considered. The boy is “baffled” – he is perplexed by this silence; and at the same time, this silence impedes his skill in mimicking the owls, for it contains within it something that is greater – something, perhaps, “more deeply interfused”. For it isn’t complete silence. As the boy listens to this silence, he perceives in it “with a gentle shock of mild surprise … the voice of the mountain torrents”. And, moving from the aural to the visual, the “visible scene would enter unawares into his mind”. Nature itself invades the boy’s being, with “all its solemn imagery”. But if Nature itself is an image of something else, Wordsworth is again silent on what it is an image of.

The “voice of the mountain torrents” has now entered into the “heart” of the boy; and now, the “visible scene” is received into the bosom … not of the boy, as may be expected, but of the “steady lake”:

…. received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

The boy is at this stage so much part of the Nature around him, there is no reason to distinguish any more between them.

But what is received into the bosom of the steady lake is startling – so startling, indeed, that it seems to me to lie at the very heart of this poem:

…and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

“Uncertain heaven”. What does Wordsworth mean by this? That we are uncertain whether or not the scene described really is heaven? Or that we know this to be heaven, but are uncertain about the nature of what we experience here? This ambiguity lies at the very heart of this remarkable poem, but Wordsworth, having dropped his hints, moves on. As we generally tend to do in conversation.

In many ways, this poem seems to me a sort of expanded sonnet. In a regular sonnet, the last six lines tend to give us a somewhat different perspective on what we had read in the first eight: we get something similar here – the last, shorter section of the poem giving us a different perspective on what we have read so far. Wordsworth had shown us the boy when he had been alive; but, as the past tense used in the opening line had told us, that boy is no more. And he is no more not because he has grown up and become an adult, but because he is dead. He died, Wordsworth tells us quite directly, before his twelfth birthday, and is buried in a churchyard that “hangs” on a slope above the village school. The verb used here is interesting, as it has been used strikingly in the earlier section in the poem:

Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening…

He had “hung” listening to the silence, and had allowed himself to become part of the Nature that was around him. Now, he “hangs” again, in death; and in death, as in life, he is become a part of, and at one with, Nature, with the “rocks and stones and trees”.

The last four lines are almost prosaic: these lines could very easily be used in conversation. But what we have read so far imparts to these lines a tremendous depth of feeling:

And through that churchyard when my way has led
On summer-evenings, I believe that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies!

So great is the discrepancy here between the everyday nature of these words and the intensity of feeling communicated by them, it is hard to imagine anything more laconic and understated. And more Wordsworth will not say – presumably because more cannot be said: language is after all limited in what it can directly express. Beyond what Wordsworth has already said, he is “mute”, as mute as he is by the boy’s grave. But enough has been said to allow us a glimpse of something – something that the poet may have been talking about before we joined his conversation.

Three steps to heaven

1. Take a holiday in the Lake District in northern England. Even at the height of summer, one can find solitary places where you can take in some of the most spirit-stirring of landscapes. Take in as much of this as you can, while trying to remember various bits and pieces of Wordsworth.

I don’t really know this region too well, but it’s like a bit of the Scottish Highlands – which I know a bit better – transplanted across the border. 

2. Come home, settle into your armchair, and reacquaint yourself with those half-remembered lines from Wordsworth. Experience again that sense of the eternal suffusing the real.

That last line should be by Wordsworth, but it isn’t. It comes from a limerick that rather neatly summarises Wordsworth’s “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality”:

In childhood ’tis easy to feel
Th’eternal suffusing the real,
    But as the beholder
    Grows steadily older
It doesn’t seem such a big deal.

3. To maintain this elevated frame of mind, listen to a good recording of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Pour yourself a good glass of whisky while you’re at it.

The music of Beethoven, born coincidentally in the same year as Wordsworth, often makes me feel the same way that Wordsworth’s poetry does. I prefer not to go further down this route, as I have not the first idea how to describe these feelings.

The Pastoral Symphony does seem to me particularly Wordsworthian in feel. There are many fine recordings of it. For the record, I listened to the recording featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. 

And the whisky I poured myself was a rather fine bottling of Bruichladdich.

And there you have it: three steps to heaven.

Well, it worked for me.

I won’t bore you with all my holiday snaps, but here are a few of Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage. the bearded chap you see in one of them is me.

I’ll be back to my more usual posts once I’ve got back out of the holiday frame of mind.

My Ideal Bookshelf

It’s nearly Christmas. Let’s indulge ourselves a bit.

There is a book, and, inevitably, a website, called “My Ideal Bookshelf”. In this book, various celebrities are asked to list up to twelve books that are particularly important to them for various reasons. Now, as I like to think I am something of a celebrity myself, I was a bit miffed at not being asked to contribute to this. Sure, we lesser mortals are invited to contribute our ideal bookshelves to the website mentioned above, but I am loftily ignoring this: it’s celebrity or nothing for me!

Fair enough, nothing it is…

If you are thinking that this is an excuse for yet another dreary list, you’d be perfectly correct. But as I say, it’s nearly Christmas. Let’s indulge ourselves a bit!

Here’s my ideal bookshelf:

The reasoning behind the choices of most of the titles is self-explanatory. First of all – going from left to right – comes the Complete Works of Shakespeare. I was eleven when my parents took me to see King Lear at the Edinburgh Festival: Timothy West, then only in his 40s, played Lear on the bare stage of the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh. Obviously, at that age, I took in but a fraction of it, but I was so excited by what I had seen, that I remember I could not get to sleep that night. That Christmas, I asked my parents for the Complete Works. There are at least a dozen or so of these plays that remain a constant presence in my mind. To celebrate – if “celebrate” is indeed the word I am looking for – my 50^th year, I read through all these plays, in the order (as far as can be ascertained) in which they had been written. And I try to read at least one play each month. Life without these works would be unimaginable.

Then comes Rabindranath Tagore. Someone asked me once whether, given my obviously Bengali name, I knew the works of Tagore. Some of it, I replied: he wrote prolifically for decades, and I certainly haven’t ploughed through it all. Did I like his work? Well, I replied, as an educated Bengali, I don’t really have an option. His songs were probably the first music I ever heard; that extravagantly bearded visage was as familiar to me in my earliest childhood years as were pictures of my own family. Later in life, it did, I admit, come as a surprise to discover that, despite all the idolatry – which for many years put me off – his works actually are rather good. Extraordinarily good, indeed. Despite translations (which I am not qualified to judge, as they are not intended for me), the true extent of his literary greatness will be accessible only to native speakers. And for those native speakers who have come under his spell (and it is hard not to), a volume of Tagore’s poems is virtually a mandatory choice on the Ideal Bookshelf. But which volume? Even restricting oneself to poetry, his vast output cannot be contained in a single volume. After much thought, I chose Geetbitan, a collection of all his song lyrics. Literally thousands of them, covering just about every shade and nuance of human feeling imaginable. Tagore was among the greatest of songwriters (he composed the melodies as well as writing the words), and even when you don’t have the tune running round your head when reading them, these exquisite lyrics stand up perfectly well as poetry. There aren’t many song lyrics that do that.

Then comes Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which I won’t write about here as there is already a fairly long and recent series of posts in this blog about this extraordinary novel. And speaking of extraordinary novels, there’s also Dickens’ Bleak House: I won’t write about this either, as I have done so only quite recently. Tolstoy and Dickens are the two novelists whose works mean most to me personally.

Next, I have chosen the Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James. I have always wondered why it is I so dislike fantasy literature, find myself bored by science fiction, and yet enjoy the unreality of a creepy ghost story. Not any type of ghost story, though: the ones I like are the ones in which the solidity of the real world is very strongly projected, so that that the intrusion of the irrational, when it appears, is transgressive. The sort of story, indeed, of which M. R. James was the master. Why do I enjoy these stories so much? Well, let’s not go too deeply into self-psychoanalysis: that sort of thing is bound to be a load of simplistic tripe anyway. But the Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James remains a constantly on my bedside table.

Piled on top of these books in my picture are six paperback volumes of the major plays of Ibsen, in the translations by Michael Meyer. Yes, I know, it’s cheating: they’re six volumes. But each volume is so indispensible that I couldn’t leave any of them out. And in any case, these volumes could easily be stitched up together into a single large volume.

I came to Ibsen in my twenties, and was fascinated by the strange world he created. He is known primarily as a “social dramatist” – i.e. as a dramatist who dealt mainly with social issues. That is indeed how I used to think of him myself. But reading his plays, I found myself transported into the deepest and most mysterious regions of the mind itself: worlds opened up that were new to me, and which fascinated me. I still probably don’t understand what many of them are about, but, perhaps for that very reason, they continue to fascinate.

Then come two more novels – Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (which I read again some two years ago, and on which I have written a series of posts on this blog) and Joyce’s Ulysses. The latter is widely considered a sort of High Altar of Modernism, and has a reputation of being excessively difficult: that’s rather unfortunate, since, quite apart from anything else, it’s about as fun as any book I have read. I can still dip into it and read passages purely for enjoyment. Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, I have rather a difficult relationship with. I first encountered his works as a teenager, and was overwhelmed: the impact these novels had on me was almost visceral. But as I became older, doubts started to creep in: Are these novels not merely hysterical? Aren’t they unstructured, rambling, undisciplined? Was not my love of these novels merely a consequence of my teenage immaturity? And yet … and yet, scenes and themes and characters and images from these novels remained seared into my mind when other novels, apparently much better-written, had vanished without much trace. These novels, in other words, left behind the strongest of aftertastes. So I started, rather guiltily I suppose, to re-enter Dostoyevsky’s world. And I realised that these novels have to be taken on their own terms, and that there is no other novel that is even remotely comparable. Yes, I still frequently find myself wondering what the hell certain passages are about; I still find myself shaking my head at other times and thinking this won’t do. But that excitement I had experienced as a teenager remains. And I’m not sure why,

I suppose if I love Tolstoy because his vision of the world I find enriching; if I like Dickens because I love entering into that idiosyncratic fictional world of his; then I love Dostoyevsky because I enjoy having a fight with him. And I have had some good fights with him, and have come away from them bloodied but invigorated. Dostoyevsky’s novels are exploratory rather than declamatory, and, as with the plays of Ibsen, they explore regions that, had it not been for these works, would have been completely closed to me.

Now, the Sherlock Holmes stories. In the picture above, these appear in a lavish three-volume set (a birthday present from my wife on my 50^th birthday); but since they can also be found contained in a single volume, I’m claiming this as one choice. I still have vivid memories of checking out The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes from Bishopbriggs Public Library when I was about 12 or so, and it was love at first sight; and this love hasn’t flagged since. These stories have been a constant companion to me for many, many years now, and, as with the ghost stories of M. R. James, have become the best of old friends, and lifelong companions. I tried in this post to explain why I love these stories, but I think I gave up after a while: there are certain things that resist explanation.

I finish with two volumes of poetry – by Yeats, and by Wordsworth – sandwiching Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey Into Night. It strikes me writing this post that a great many of the books that mean most to me reach back into my late childhood, and my teenage years: I suppose those are the years during which my literary taste was formed. And I certainly remember watching on television, aged twelve, the National Theatre production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night featuring Laurence Olivier in one of his legendary roles. I was mesmerised. That play has a hold on me still that I cannot explain: even other plays by Eugene O’Neill don’t resonate with me the way this one does. Once again, I am not sure I understand why.

And, of course, I want some poetry on by ideal shelf. I already have the song lyrics of Tagore, and the plays and poems of Shakespeare; add to these Wordsworth and Yeats, and I think that would keep me happy. As I explained in an earlier post, I like Wordsworth’s tone of voice – civilised and eloquent, the voice of someone conversing with me rather than of someone declaiming to me. But with that conversational tone, he can depict emotions and states of mind that seem transcendent, and contain intimations of immortality. Yes, we all know that we wrote much, especially in his advanced years, that was mediocre and worse; but we should judge each writer by their best, and the best of Wordworth – “Tintern Abbey”, “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality”, “The Solitary Reaper”, the 1805 text of The Prelude, some of the finest sonnets since Shakespeare, etc. etc. – would quite easily fill a good-sized volume. And despite their apparent plainness of diction, they affect me more than I think I can explain.

I do not write much about poetry on this blog, and that is mainly because I am not sure how to write about it. Poetry tends to affect me like music: I know what it makes me feel, but am not sure why. I suppose the only way to write about poetry is to provide close analysis of the rhythms, the sounds, the imagery, etc. – but there are many who can do that sort of thing far better than I possibly could. I did try to write about some poems by Yeats once on this blog, but I’ll not provide a link to it: it wasn’t, shall we say, among my best posts on here. So I will restrict myself here to giving some rough impressions of what Yeats’ poetry makes me feel. There’s the early stuff, of course – the “Celtic twilight” poem: these are products of the fag-end of Romanticism, with their alluring sensuality and the infectious folk rhythms. But even here, those rhythms aren’t always what one would expect from folk poetry: they are considerably knottier; and the themes became increasingly complex and ambiguous, the mythology more arcane. And it is fascinating tracing the development of Yeats’ poetic style as it moves almost seamlessly from a youthful Romanticism into a personal and very passionate form of modernism. For the older Yeats got, the more passionate he became. “Give me an old man’s frenzy,” he says at one point; and there is indeed a sort of frenzy in his poetry, a passionate striving and longing for he knows not what. Perhaps he remained a Romantic after all.

***

Well, that’s it folks – that’s my pre-Christmas indulgence done with. Now, the real indulgence starts: I already have bottles of malt whisky and Armagnac lined up for a most convivial and alcoholic festive season, and am looking forward to two idyllic weeks with the family.

And with my books, of course!

On joy: a scene from “Anna Karenina”

When Levin had gone to Moscow to propose to Kitty, he had met her at the ice rink. He had tried “not to look at her for too long at a time, as one avoids looking at the sun”. But, as with the sun, “he saw her without looking at her”.

But Levin was rejected. Returning to his farm, he had tried to forget about her by throwing himself into his work. And he thinks he has succeeded. A simple life of toil on the land. Perhaps he might even marry a peasant woman. And the hurt he had received would be forgotten. But even as he thinks about such things, after a night spent out in the open, in the early hours of the morning, a carriage passes by. And inside the carriage is her.

Bright and thoughtful, filled with a refined and complex inner life to which Levin was a stranger, she was looking beyond him at the glowing dawn.

Just as the vision was about to disappear, her truthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and a look of surprise and joy lit up her face.

He could not be mistaken. There were no other such eyes in the world. There was no other being in the world able to focus for him the whole world and the meaning of life.

Levin looks up at the sky which, that last night he had spent in the open, had seemed to him somehow sympathetic to his thoughts. But now, it seems different:

There, in that inaccessible height, a mysterious change had by now taken place … Over half the sky was spread a carpet of fleecy clouds growing gradually smaller and smaller. The sky turned pale blue, became brighter and answered his questioning glance always with the same tenderness and the same remoteness.

And Levin realises that living a simple life of toil, married to a peasant woman, however good and virtuous, is not for him: it is she he loves.

***

Of the many passages of Anna Karenina that have haunted my mind since my most recent reading, this one particularly haunts me. What I think particularly strikes me about it is that the sight of Kitty awakens in Levin a sense of joy, and also, at the same time, re-opens his wound, sharpens the pain.

And the two emotions do not, I think, contradict each other. We tend to think of joy nowadays as but as an excess of pleasure; we think the difference between the two is but a difference in degree, and label both with that banal and vapid coinage “feelgood”. But joy, true joy, is, as Tolstoy reminds us, something quite different: it is something that can strike us even as it causes pain. After all, one of the most heartfelt expressions of grief in the English language opens with the words “Surprised by joy”.

For Wordsworth too knew of the complexities of joy:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused

A joy can bring pain, and it can also disturb. Not much of the “feelgood” here. And it can take us also by surprise. In his sonnet “Surprised by joy”, Wordsworth does not tell us what had occasioned his joy – merely that he was “surprised” by it. And when he had turned instinctively to share his joy with his daughter, he remembered what he had known all along: the joy could not be shared with her, for she was dead. It is not her he had forgotten: far from it – she had been continually present in his mind. What he had momentarily forgotten was her absence from the real world.

Rabindranath Tagore, in one of his most famous poems, also meditates on this: if one is absent from this world, but present in one’s mind, then in what sense, if any, does she, can she, exist?

You are not before the eye,
You have made your home in the midst of the eye itself.
[Translated with startling inadequacy by myself]

And from here to the closing lines, the poem soars with a sense of ecstasy – with a sense sublime of something more deeply interfused. (And this I will not attempt to translate: the sounds and rhythms Tagore uses to communicate this ecstasy are not available in English, and to fall short would, to my mind, be to misrepresent it.) The joy that is depicted in the closing section of this poem does not wipe out the pain, nor even mitigate it: but it is a joy nonetheless. And similarly with Wordsworth’s sonnet: it is significant that this almost unbearably poignant expression of grief and pain is introduced with an evocation not of gloom or of despair, but of joy.

In our modern times, we tend not to believe in the concept of transcendence: if the material word is the only world there is, then there can be nothing to transcend to, and all feelings, all emotions, are either merely “feelbad” or “feelgood”: “feelgood” is what we should all strive for, as this, after all, is the sole purpose of living; and “feelbad” is what you take anti-depressants to ward off. This is perhaps why I come away from so many modern novels with the sense that I have witnessed merely small, insignificant people experiencing small, insignificant feelings. But with Tolstoy, I feel I am in a much bigger world. No other writer, I think, has depicted the physical surfaces of our lives so meticulously; but Tolstoy depicts also a sense of transcendence, even though we can but vaguely know what those regions may be that we are transcending to. He depicts that sense sublime of something that is more deeply interfused – something that refuses to be pinned down, but which we cannot ignore without diminishing ourselves. It is in that sense of joy we feel even as we grieve, even as we feel pain – even as we are disturbed. It is certainly what Levin feels when he unexpectedly catches sight of Kitty in the carriage.

[All passages quoted from Anna Karenina are taken from the translation by Kyrill Zinovieff and Jenny Hughes, published by Oneworld classics]

The late greats

Liszt’s famous summary of Beethoven’s career – “L’adolescent, l’homme, le dieu” – accords well with what we perhaps feel ought to describe the career of any great artist: for surely, the more an artist experiences of life, the more profound and wise their vision of it must be; and the closer they are to death the more clearly they must see beyond. Even though a moment’s reflection reveals such thoughts to be sentimental drivel, we find it difficult to escape that vague notion that there is, that there must be, something special about the late works of an artist. We almost imagine that closeness to death confers upon a great artist the ability to glimpse beyond, and we look in those late works for a greater awareness of mortality; a sort of transfigured farewell, of sense of the ethereal, of the other-worldly.

For those readers who have read the paragraph above thinking “Speak for yourself, mate!” I suppose I should offer an apology: it is possibly not “we” at all who look for other-worldly wisdom in late works – it is “I”. But it is not unusual to substitute the first person plural for the first person singular as a means of pretending that one’s personal concerns are of more general interest, and I certainly am not above such a cheap trick. So “we”, I think, remains. We look for transcendent wisdom in late works; and what we look for, not unsurprisingly, we often find.

Take late Shakespeare, for instance: leaving aside those inconsequential late collaborations – Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen – Shakespeare finished his dramatic career with three plays – Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest – that look beyond the tragic towards a state of almost mystical reconciliation in which all losses are restored, and sorrows end. Surely there’s something a bit other-worldly about that, no? Or late Beethoven, when he had entered his dieu stage, according to Liszt’s formulation: who has ever listened to Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, the Missa Solemnis, or those late string quartets, without hearing sounds that seem to come from some other world? There’s Mozart as well – writing music of transcendent serenity in his clarinet quintet, his last piano concerto, his clarinet concerto, and meditating on death as only a dying man could in his unfinished Requiem Mass. There’s Schubert, who composed a string of masterpieces in his last year when he must have known he was dying, each of these masterpieces haunted by the shadow of death. There’s Mahler, whose Das Lied von der Erde and 9th Symphony seem almost to depict a passage from this world to the next. Ibsen’s late plays, too, seem increasingly to move away from the realism he had himself pioneered into a world where all solidities seem to melt away. Or there’s Tagore, whose very spare, almost minimalist final poems, written in extreme old age on what he must have realised was to be his death-bed, express a spiritual turmoil and an anguish that render them almost too painful to read. All of these artists reacted to death in different ways – but can it be doubted that they were all, in these late works, meditating on their mortality? Similar observations can no doubt be made in the visual arts: could Titian’s Pietà, for instance,have been painted by anyone other than by a man of genius on the point of his own death?

We must, of course, be careful here. Any artist who practises his or her art over a long period of time undergoes changes in style, in approach, and even in themes: this is because we all change over time, we all have new concerns, new perspectives. That an artist’s style in old age is different from that of his younger self is nothing too surprising. Artists renew their art: those who cannot inevitably decline in their artistry, and are eventually remembered primarily or even solely for their earlier work (Wordsworth is a very obvious example of this). And yes, artists may – as, no doubt, we all may – consider death more intently as they closer they come to it, but it is sentimental to imagine that mere proximity to death can give one greater insights into its nature. Yes, it is true that the works of Schubert’s last year, written in the shadow of death, were haunted by it: but then again, so is his D minor string quartet (“Death and the Maiden”) which was written some five or so years before his death when he was still in his mid-twenties. It should really not be surprising that people who think profoundly about life should think profoundly about death also, and that closeness to death is not a necessary condition for the latter. For instance, I cannot think of any novel that more closely concerns itself with death than does Anna Karenina: and yet, it was written in Tolstoy’s vigorous middle age, in his late 40s, when he was in his prime of health and still had another thirty and more years to live.

There are so many other examples one can think of. Beethoven’s late works were written in his 50s, and, as far as I know, there’s nothing to indicate that Beethoven was aware of his approaching death at the time. Indeed, the great slow movement of his late A minor string quartet explicitly celebrates his recovery from illness. (In the score, the movement is headed “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart” – A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Divinity, in the Lydian Mode). Neither is there any evidence to indicate that Mozart, aged only 35, was aware of his impending death when composing what we now think of as his late works. And if Mahler’s final works are about death, it is hard to think of any of his works, even his very first symphony, that isn’t. That his late style was different from his earlier style does not necessarily make it more profound: great though that 9^th symphony is, is his magnificent 2^nd symphony any lesser a work of art simply because it was composed earlier?

But despite all that, we – all right, if you insist, I – cannot help but look for that extra wisdom and profundity that we – I – feel ought to be present in late works. Hell, I even listen to Wagner’s Parsifal once in a while to see if this final masterpiece (for masterpiece it clearly is) makes sense this time round. I listened to it again lately: but once again, it eluded me. Obviously the old bore meant something by it all, but I can’t get anything more out of it than a series of extraordinarily beautiful sounds. I tried reading up on it a bit this time: I found buried away in that cluttered little room I call my library Lucy Beckett’s much acclaimed Cambridge University Handbook on Wagner’s Parsifal; and I also came across this very interesting website on the opera. But I must admit, I am none the wiser. Somewhat better informed, perhaps, but none the wiser. (Nonetheless, I do recommend both book and website to those who are more receptive to this strange work than I appear to be.)

But what can one say about a late work, written by an artist approaching his eighties and who knew that this work was to be his last, but which, far from wandering awe-struck into the ethereal shades of the other world, rejoices all the more firmly in the solidity of this one? Of a work written by a man who has known personal grief and tragedy, but who, on leaving life, could only express for it his unreserved love? Who meditates not on what may or may not come, but looks instead to what is, and celebrates it with all the vigour and vitality and exuberance and unshadowed joy that one more usually, though perhaps erroneously, associates with youth? Yes, I am thinking about Verdi’s Falstaff. And I am thinking also that I must write a post on this miracle some day – if only I knew where to begin…

Why read?

Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks,
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double.

The sun above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow,
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Why is Willie Wordsworth telling us in a book not to read books?

Why read? What’s the point? Let us leave aside textbooks, which we need to pass our exams and get good jobs. Let us also leave aside books of non-fiction – international politics, molecular biology, ancient history, that sort of thing – books from which we may learn things: it is generally agreed that knowledge is a good thing – although, even here, there are dissenters: Charles Clarke, a former Secretary of Education (my italics), publicly questioned while in office the point of learning about a subject such as medieval history. I hate to think what the erudite Mr Clarke may have to say about learning such matters as literature, or art history, or music. Let us focus on literature. Why study it? What is there to study, after all? Why even bother reading it?

I mean, of course, all that arty-farty stuff. All that Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Proust – that stuff we don’t really like, apparently, but pretend to because we are posers. What’s the point? It’s not as if it makes anyone a better person: as we all know, many high-ranking Nazis were tremendously well cultured, and reading Ulysses certainly won’t make anyone more likely to help a blind person across the road. And it’s not going to make anyone richer either. As Mr Clarke so perspicaciously noted, pursuit of what is usually termed “High Culture” ain’t going to contribute to the economy.

This puts those of us who love literature – who, indeed, feel it an indispensable part of our lives – on the defensive. We enjoy it, we say weakly. And as soon as we say this, we open ourselves to a second onslaught. Oh, you enjoy it, do you? Jolly good! So why do you expect us to subsidise your enjoyment? I am not sure how this debate progresses in other countries, but in Britain, at any rate, this is the point when class comes into it, even – or, perhaps, especially – from those with solidly middle-class backgrounds: why should we working people subsidise your middle class enjoyments? Why do you expect us working classes to subsidise your operas and your classical music concerts and your Royal Bloody Shakespeare Companies? At this point, one can either become aggressive oneself in response (as I tend to do); or one may simply hide for cover. But one realises that even though good answers exist – as I think they do in such cases – these answers are complex and subtle, and cannot be expressed when the “debate” comprises of no more than merely an angry exchange of prefabricated soundbites. Which – let us face it – is the standard of virtually all that passes for debate on the net.

So let us try to move away from the volleys of angry soundbites, and consider this matter with a bit more care. Let us, for the moment, restrict ourselves to literature; and, even there, let us restrict ourselves to what we may term “imaginative literature” – i.e. poetry, drama, fiction – the sort of thing often denounced as a waste of time or, at best, a mere diversion or an entertainment, and considered of no greater value than any other type of diversion or entertainment. Why read these books? The answer may not be easy, but the question, however tentatively, however uncertainly, needs to be addressed.

For me, the greatest literary artists are those whose visions pierce beyond the surface of things – the “pasteboard masks”, as Ahab calls them:

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the living act, the undoubted deed – there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?

The greatest of literary artists see things beyond the surface, and, furthermore, have the skill to communicate something of what they see. This doesn’t often make for easy reading, or even for comfortable reading, or, indeed, for any kind of reading at all that can reasonably be classed as “entertainment”. But it can make for rewarding reading. Such works are rewarding because by giving the reader glimpses beyond the pasteboard masks, beyond what is merely visible on the surface, they open up areas of thought and of feeling that would otherwise have been inaccessible.

Of course, not every reader will respond equally to every writer’s vision. For instance, I find myself responding keenly to the artistic vision of a Tolstoy or a Dickens, and also, increasingly, despite grave reservations and for reasons I find difficult to articulate, to Dostoyevsky; I find myself utterly in thrall to the dramas of Shakespeare and the poetry of Tagore; Wordsworth, Ibsen, Yeats, Chekhov, Greek tragedy, Eliot’s Middlemarch and Joyce’s Ulysses, and many, many others, are all, I find, very close to me. On the other hand, I find it hard to feel much for Austen except a somewhat grudging admiration from a respectful and decorous distance; I have ambivalent feelings about Hardy; D. H. Lawrence I simply do not understand; and the works of Woolf, I am sorry to say, I find merely tedious. Everyone will have their own lists of what they find themselves responding to or not responding to – inevitably so, as we all have different personalities, and different perceptions, the differences often subtle and nuanced. And, as we grow and develop over time, what we respond to can change even as we change as people; sometimes, what we read may even be the agents of this change. But one has, I think, to trust each other’s judgement (and I mean judgement, and not merely unthinking opinion, of which there is no shortage), and accept that something may be of great value, even if one cannot immediately see that value for oneself. This is why discussion on such matters is so important: without discussion, without exchanging our thoughts and perceptions with each other, and refining our own thoughts and our perceptions in the process, we may well become imprisoned within the limitations of our own minds. The internet should, in theory, be the ideal platform for such exchanges, instead of the vapid exchange of soundbites it all too frequently is.

If all this makes the reading of literature sound very difficult – well, it is. Let us not pretend otherwise. Let us not pretend that the masterpieces of Tolstoy or of Dickens are merely stories to be lightly enjoyed, much as one might enjoy, say, airport thrillers. Let us not pretend that it’s all simply “entertainment”: it isn’t.

Does it follow, then, that the likes of Tolstoy or Dickens are somehow superior to “mere entertainment”? No, I don’t think so. In the first place, I wouldn’t attach the adjective “mere” to the word “entertainment”. Dickens himself started his literary career as a “mere” entertainer, and, even in his most artistically sophisticated works, he never forgot the importance of “mere” entertainment: art and entertainment are not necessarily incompatible. But they can be, and we must allow for that. And if any reader, out of personal choice, prefers “mere” entertainment to profundity of vision, then that is an entirely valid choice to make. But the other choice is valid also.

However, it is hardly a matter of one or the other: a lover of Middlemarch may well enjoy rousing adventure stories, and the lover of hard-boiled detective thrillers may thrill also to the depth of insight of a Gustave Flaubert. Sometimes, the same work can serve several different purposes simultaneously: a work such as Pride and Prejudice can delight those who look merely upon the surface, and can also reward those who peer beneath. Whatever boundary there is between artistry and entertainment is porous to such a degree that the boundary itself should not, perhaps, be insisted upon. But it doesn’t follow that all books should be judged solely or even primarily on their ability to entertain; and neither does it follow that books that entertain should be privileged above those that don’t, but which, nonetheless, have riches of a different sort to offer.

For if the entertainment value of a book is privileged above other aspects; or if, as is sometimes the case, the very validity of these other aspects is denied; then we inevitably, I think, end up sidelining serious literature away from the mainstream. This is because those books that set out to do more than merely divert are often difficult books, and require effort from the reader. Reading, after all, is not a passive activity: where the content is complex, or intricate, or profound, the reader has to make what is often an immense effort to engage with it. But if that which requires effort and that which doesn’t are deemed to be of comparable value, then there is no reason, and certainly no incentive, for anyone to tackle books of the former category in preference to the latter; or, should they do so, give books of the former category the attention and the effort they demand. I fear we may have already arrived at such a state.

But let us hope my fears are unjustified: after all, the barbarians were always thought be at the gates. But in answer to the question “Why read serious literature?” we should, instead of offering the weak reply “it entertains”, be vociferous in proclaiming that imaginative literature, at its best, is capable of enriching our lives, and that we have developed means so sophisticated to make our lives richer is among the defining marks of our civilisation itself. As Wordsworth himself no doubt knew, reading his poetry in the seclusion of one’s study can be every bit as enriching as experiencing at first hand the evening sun’s “freshening lustre mellow”.

“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens

Everyone knows A Christmas Carol. It’s about as famous as the story of Christ’s Nativity itself. Even those who have never opened a book know at least the outline of the story. No matter how frequently it is derided for its tweeness or for its alleged sentimentality (usually by those who haven’t read it), its popularity, some hundred and seventy years after its first publication, seems as great as ever, and it continues to be loved by readers of all levels of sophistication. It has been filmed for both the big screen and the small countless times, and appetite for further adaptations doesn’t seem to have dampened. Every Christmas, theatrical adaptations appear on countless stages. Everyone from the Carry On team to Blackadder to the Muppets to the scurrilous (but nonetheless very funny) Viz magazine has parodied it, confident that their intended audience would pick up the reference. Its themes and motifs turn up in all sorts of unexpected places. If you turn to, say, Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Illych, the opening scene presents us with a group of businessmen who mention in bored and unconcerned tones the death of someone they had known: this scene is taken directly from the fourth part of A Christmas Carol, in which former colleagues of Scrooge speak in similarly unconcerned tones about Scrooge’s death. Or consider Ingmar Bergman’s film Wild Strawberries, at the start of which the protagonist has a vision of his own funeral; as the film progresses, we see marks of Dickens’ novella all over it: in both cases, a miserable old sod is redeemed after revisiting his own lost past.

That so many people know about the story without having read it is, of course, a tribute to the power of Dickens’ work; but it also means there are a great many misconceptions about it. It is still regarded as essentially “twee” – which, I see, is defined as “affectedly dainty or refined”. I suppose it can’t be denied that Dickens is often whimsical in this work, and, to certain readers, that whimsicality may well appear “affectedly dainty or refined”. But those who actually do read it are often taken by surprise by its emotional power; and, as with those who come to Capra’s film It’s a Wonderful Life with similar preconceptions, they are taken by surprise by how dark so much of it is. It is true that the novel ends in a mood of joy – and, this being Dickens, the joy is presented in a whimsical manner rather than with the seriousness of a Schillerian Ode. But the joy has been hard-earned. Before we reach that joy, we have to glimpse into the abyss.

It is towards the end of the third part that we are prepared for what is to come. The Spirit of Christmas Present reveals two children under his robes. But these are not by any means cute, Disneyesque children:

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

‘Spirit, are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no more.

‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want.’

There is so much to comment upon in just this one passage. Amongst other things, very few writers would use the adjective “menacing” where the adverb “menacingly” would seem the more obvious choice (“…and glared out menacing”), but Dickens had a superb ear: that sentence, he knew, had to end strongly with a stressed syllable. The rhythms and the sonorities of this passage could hardly be improved upon. And the effect, even out of context, is, for me, chilling.

And then, immediately, we are with the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. He shows Scrooge a dead man, and then takes Scrooge into what is effectively Hell. This is a world from which all feelings we like to imagine as human are missing. The woman who used to clean in the dead man’s house has robbed the dead man of everything – even the shirt off his back – and, in this dark place grimed with more than merely physical filth, she attempts to sell them. Scrooge, at the stage of his education, can feel the absence of what should be sacred, and he recoils at it. Does no-one have any feelings for this man who has died? In reply, the spirit shows him people who had been debtors to the dead man, and who, despite knowing they shouldn’t, are merely relieved by the death of their creditor. But this is not what Scrooge wants to see. Does no-one feel any tenderness?

It is at this point that we are taken to what, I think, lies at the heart of the story. We are shown the Cratchits mourning their dead child. Some have accused Dickens of being sentimental in this passage: I think such people are too embarrassed by naked emotion: this passage is, for me at least, the most convincing depiction of grief I think I have come across in fiction. And it is by no means placed in the story gratuitously: Scrooge needs to see for himself how deeply human beings can feel for each other. He needs to see that even the pain they feel marks them out as human.

In Michael Slater’s recent biography, we are told that Dickens was a man enthusiastic reader of Wordsworth. This does not surprise me. Wordsworth had spoken in The Prelude of a community of the living and the dead:

There is
One great society alone on earth:
The noble living and the noble dead.

Wordsworth had also depicted in his poem “We are Seven” a child who insists that he and his siblings make seven, even though several of his brothers and sisters are dead. Here, the Cratchits’ child is dead: but he remains nonetheless one of the family. No – this is not sentimentality: this is a true depiction of true emotions, and something Scrooge – and all the other Scrooges of this world – need to witness. There is nothing “dainty” about this, and certainly nothing “affected”.

(I also think Dickens had taken from Wordsworth the Rousseau-esque idea of the essential innocence of childhood, of corruption only appearing as one becomes older: Scrooge as a child had been quite innocent; it was only as he had started to become older that corruption had set in. And if he is to be reformed, he must first be given a glimpse of his childhood state.)

The last part of A Christmas Carol is, of course, pure joy. But it has been earned. It has been hard-earned.

A Christmas Carol seems to me the greatest of modern myths, and it resonates as powerfully as any myth of any period. It is difficult to imagine a time when people won’t know the story of how Scrooge was reformed. For me, it is essential reading for this time of year. Dickens wrote four other Christmas Books, of which three are very fine (The Battle for Life is the sole failure). But none matches this, one of the greatest masterpieces, I think, of a very great writer.