Late Tuesday / Very early Wednesday

Just back from London where the Palladio exhibition, featuring, among others, work by C, is opening. A dash down from class for me, writing reports all the way down. Place was packed. C had gone down earlier and was talking daughter H and R when I spotted them in the throng. Son T arrived about 8pm. Two ex-MA students from the art college were there. I hadn't expected to see them, so we talked about what they were doing now. One is writer in residence at the Hackney Empire, writing plays. The other is about to set off on a long walk abroad.

Expensive works, up to £40K, some sold. C's two drawings are in the window, facing the street so you have to be outside to see them, on the other hand you can't help but see them as you are passing and as you enter. Her painting is rich and painterly, whereas most employ minimal paintwork, very little contrast in light, more form than drama.

By the time I rise there will be a new American president. Some of my university students are planning to stay up all night. The car radio was full of it on the way home, nothing actually happening, just mile after mile of expectation. I expect little will change either way except the mood, and that will change enormously if Obama wins, which I expect he will.

Studs Terkel

II wanted to note the death of Studs Terkel and do something a little more substantial than that but I am run ragged for time at the moment and see that Ms Baroque has done an excellent job already so I am going to direct you to her. Thats what I call proper work.

Oral history is marvellous. There's a reasonable amount of it in Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor, where he simply quotes a few voices. East Anglia has its own classic with Ronald Blythe's Akenfield. Terkel's way is tougher, more urban, more driven, more unsettled perhaps. His own site gives recordings here, and here he is in YouTube.



One question, and away he goes. The man can talk too. He turns away from the interviewer to the audience and takes off.

I would say more but am considerably tired tonight. Just read him, or rather those who speak to him, through him.

Oral history is about what is thought to be dispensible, ephemeral, what disappears without fuss, but is in fact the voice holding its space, placing itself, briefly, but squarely in it. A solid cube of breath. All it takes is a little encouragement, a great deal of patience, endless curiosity and a touch of kindness. Oh, and editing. The cube of breath is carved to be true to itself. You hear the voice in Mayhew, as a cry, a passing comment. Terkel gave people that and more.

Sunday Night is...

Sonic Youth: Sugar Kane. The great MM in doomy counterpoint.



That first passage, after the brief intro dialogue, where the music comes in and MM hurries down the dark train corridor is, I think, quite beautiful. The lyrics can be found here.

It begins:

Youre perfect in the way, a perfect end today
Youre burning out their lights, and burning in their eyes
I love you sugar kane, a-comin from the rain
Oh kiss me like a frog, and turn me into flame
I love you all the time, I need you 8 to 9...

*

... and this, from here...



George Szirtes from Neil Astley on Vimeo.


The choice of passage was Bloodaxe's. I am not quite sure of this deeply factual piece of narrative as best place to start in Metro, which is more sense of place than family saga, but it's nice to have Pearl there. Meet Pearl. Lily is hiding somewhere as usual.

Green Dragon etc

Well it's a pretty place. Richard Hogwart of The Guardian writes of it, saying:

There are joys to cling to. The other day, going to visit my own parents, I stopped in the market town of Wymondham, Norfolk, three miles from their care home. A friend of mine lives in the town, which is lovely. There are winding old streets, a market cross, and the superb Wymondham Abbey, which was started in the 12th century and is staffed exclusively by very nice people.

Bill Bryson lives nearby, and he could live anywhere at all. We had lunch in the Green Dragon pub. It was one of those sunny but freezing days, so the wood-fired stove in the snug was quite as welcome as the real ale.

It is true. There are five pubs near us in Wymondham. The Green Dragon above - the nearest - is the Hobbiton model. Tiny. You practically have to sit in the fire rather than near it. Elsewhere we have the Agatha Christie model and the American Werewolf in Norfolk model.



As for Mr Bryson, we once sat next to him at the local Thai, so he is around.

On Friday and Saturday nights the young hang around doorways and the market cross with little to do. The Kurdish kebab shop does good trade at that time. Every so often a boy racer rips down the street at sixty. The Chinese takeaway is pure Edward Hopper. Two chippies. We are a mixed population, local, indigenous and poor, plus middle-class, educated and commuting. A few bohos, probably including us. The full pastoral. The Dog Beneath the Skin 2008.

*

Cracow and Frankfurt seem like a dream now. Cracow feels very clear but Frankfurt is a set of locations in light rain. This is the Herbert poem I chiefly talked about in Cracow, suggesting that when it first appeared in England we were all Hamlets requiring a Fortinbras to bury us.

Elegy of Fortinbras
for C.M.

Now that we’re alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight’s feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier’s funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
there will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums drums I know nothing exquisite those will be my manoeuvres before I start to rule
one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras
wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit
you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one’s hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock’s dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince


(translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz)

*

The argument modulated from here into one about Herbert's mystical dry-eyed stoicism regarding stones, pebbles, chairs and other inanimate objects. I may put up bits of the paper here.

Overheard

I am walking from one building to another while behind me three male students are discussing their appearance at the Halloween Ball tonight.

One says: I am going as a lump of cheese.

The second says: I am going as a Tory.

The third adds: I am going as a Russian billionaire.

I once went to a fancy dress party dressed as the man with the world's worst cold. You want style? You want elegance? I give you style and elegance. C accompanied me as a living jigsaw puzzle. No one attempted to take her apart and put her together again, unless it was me at some later stage.

Going as a piece of cheese could be tricky. So much more difficult than going as a Tory. And yet, I wonder what the identifying marks of the Tory are. The boy could do a Bullingdon, but wouldn't that just be all-purpose Oxbridge posh? He might be taken for Anthony Andrews or Jeremy Irons. Would he wear a Boris Johnson mop? But that would be going as a particular Tory. Russian billionaire? Again it seems easier than cheese, but how would one tell a Russian billionaire from an Estonian or even French one?

But this is exactly why people go to university. To make fine distinctions. Would you sooner go as Brie or Jarlsberg? Could you pass muster as Dolcelatte or Wensleydale? You see? It takes a degree. The staff? Old goat's cheese.


*

Ah, the important issue of Ross and Brand. It will seem to you as though I have been avoiding it. Well (folds his arms, stares straight ahead) one could regard it as a straightforward breach of one or other semi-existent BBC guideline. Or (unfolds arms, examines fingernail) as a lamentable decline in broadcasting manners. Or, alternatively, (scratches his ear) as the vacuous on-air fartings of vacuously rich blaggers. Or (takes out some loose change from his pockets and examines it in a vague, unfocused way) a betrayal of trust in ringing up a person on a private phone, making puerile schoolboy noises then playing the recording of it in public (he brightens up a little and looks briefly interested). Or (suddenly relapses, looks vacuous himself, eyes begin to droop) as a particularly repulsive episode in the snotnosed, shitfaced lives of the younger generation. Or (heads falls forward, sounds of snoring)....

Home late...

...and pretty exhausted, despite which it will be a day at UEA for me tomorrow. Arrived home to find many copies of the double-whopping New and Collected Poems waiting complete with C's splendid cover, plus the handsome volume of Dr Sears's anatomy of my verses that I am almost afraid to read in case he pronounces me subtly dead. And some copies of my new Márai translation, Esther's Inheritance.

More tomorrow. This is tired stuff. Here's a picture of Frankfurt scraped off the web. I was disappointed not to find the four people shown at the bottom of the picture ready and in position. Not even the dog! O eternal disappointment! Now C will have to scrape me off the floor.

Wet morning in Frankfurt

Very grey,with fat rain threatening to thicken and scurry. Arrived yesterday afternoon, caught taxi to hotel in a Turkish area of town, or at the edge of it, next street up. A nice bookshop there, its window filled with poetry. Stoppped for a kebab lunch then to meet K at the middle of the nearest bridge. We walk along the embankment to the, mostly re-created, medieval centre where we have coffee. Then to the Judische Museum where I am to talk with Cecile Wajsbrot.

The city mayor attends and about forty people. As a conversation it is more a series of monologues about views of Israel. I make my only substantial point, that being that people should have the opportunity to live somewhere where they are not in a perpetual, vulnerable, minority and where they can have some say in defining themselves rather than being defined by others. Also, that since one has to die anyway, I'd rather die in a dignified manner of my own choosing within the normal terms of human life, and if that means being killed resisting humiliation I would sooner do that than be humiliated and dead anyway, thank you.

It's easy enough, you'd think. This doesn't apply solely to Israel, of course, but to all, including Palestinians. But it does apply to Jews too, as much as to Muslims or Christians or atheists or anyone else, and, it seems to me, Israel is the only place that can happen for Jews. Which does not mean I have any particular desire to live there or even visit, though if I were invited I would accept. It would no doubt be a strange experience for me since I have never lived in a Jewish milieu nor do I even desire to live in such. I am talking about basic human dignity, and while I am far from romantically idealistic about this to the extent as to think such dignity is immediately achievable, we ought damn well to try.

Then to dinner in a nearby restaurant by the river, K, her parents, Cecile, a friend and our friend Eva and Raphael from the museum. Spend the meal talking about art, the differences in language and manners between Hungary, Germany and England. Three of the four of us are rooting for Obama, the fourth is worried by him. Not long to wait now.

The New and Collected has arrived at home. I will be the last to see it. 500 pages of about thirty years writing. A bargain at the price, if you ask me, but then why would you? See that horse? It's got a mouth. Ask it.

Home in the evening, thank heaven. C waits, open armed. Work waits, sharp clawed.