tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46386199585880966102024-03-08T11:33:48.311+00:00George SzirtesPoet and TranslatorGeorge Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.comBlogger2092125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-21571614100887117602020-12-29T10:42:00.000+00:002020-12-29T10:42:48.108+00:00The Death of Poets<p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://aniportalimages.s3.amazonaws.com/media/details/EoznHv2UwAAXNoMfe.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" height="399" src="https://aniportalimages.s3.amazonaws.com/media/details/EoznHv2UwAAXNoMfe.jpg" width="532" /></a></div><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><i>in memoriam</i> <b>Mangalesh Dabral</b> <i>1948-2020</i></p><p> </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The death of poets</p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">is no worse than of others.</p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">All the same I grieve</p><p class="p2" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">for those who, like me,</p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">labour at the very same</p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">minor precisions,</p><p class="p2" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">or find themselves borne</p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">on this or that gust of wind</p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">that blows through their words</p><p class="p2" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">and sends them flying.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><p> </p><span style="font-family: "Times New <span style=";">Talking of 'minor precisions' the first draft said 'fine precisions' which is ironic since, following the syllabic pattern, it is precisely that line that is one syllable short. Why should that matter? Hardly at all except that adopting a particular form is a kind of vow to stay with it, a personal thing between you and your promise, one that a reader is unlikely to notice. So 'fine precisions' became 'minor precisions'. That kept the high 'i' sound but it lost the assonance with the following 'find'. Then I remembered that when I wrote this, in bed as last thing, the phrase that flitted by me was 'fine particulars' which would have fitted the syllable count precisely. So I could change it to that now but I have used that phrase before in a poem, having picked it up, unconsciously at the time, from the American poet Anthony Hecht. The issue seems, well, 'minor' to the reader, but it is nevertheless a matter of 'fine' judgment to the poet. I still can't quite make up my mind.</span><div><span style="font-family: Times New <span style=;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: times;">But then this is 'precisely' what poets deal with, sometimes slowly and thoughtfully, sometimes fast and instinctively. I am generally of the second disposition at the time of writing. Not necessarily in redrafting. I think Mangalesh would understand and sympathise with such quibbles. The quibble is dedicated to the living self I met in person and to the living ghost of his poems.</span><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s3" style="background-color: #f0f2f5; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p class="p2" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s3" style="background-color: #f0f2f5; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p></div>George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-6202025914776145452020-10-16T12:14:00.001+01:002020-10-16T12:17:10.293+01:00SETTLED STATUS: WINDRUSH ON STEROIDS<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://ddlawuk.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/settled-status.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="765" height="306" src="https://ddlawuk.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/settled-status.jpg" width="459" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Having read, and now listened, to your dreadful stories of cruelty and incompetence in trying to achieve 'settled status' <span style="color: #040404;">I cannot but be aware that my situation is not like that of settled citizens of the EU such as yourselves. I was a refugee from Hungary in 1956 and have been a UK citizen since 1964. Becoming a British citizen however did not mean becoming English. I have long recognised the fact that it was easier to be officially British than to be unofficially English.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="color: #040404;"> </span><span style="color: #040404;">Having worked as an English language writer and translator from Hungarian for about forty years I now think it is even possible to become part of English literature without ever being quite English. Could I become Hungarian and start again after 64 years? I really don’t think so. That’s two close communities dispensed with.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #040404;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #040404; font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><p class="p1" style="color: #040404; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But there is a third community of which I am historically, culturally, and psychologically part, and that is Europe. We are all part of that community, however we understand it. Europe is a continent with a history of conflict between nations that were, at more or less the same time, out in the world dividing it up among themselves.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>That history has divided us in the past but has, since the Second World War, driven us together, till now, in political and economic terms. Those terms have been and continue to be under strain. And the world around us keeps changing. Nothing is stable.<br /><br />The EU has offered us peace for the most part if only because we have a common interest in keeping the peace. It has also tried very hard to operate as a power in the world where other major powers are growing ever more powerful.<br /><br />One of the reasons I voted against Brexit was because I felt Europe was stronger and less vulnerable as a single body rather than as a set of disparate nations. Now, even more,I fear the various schisms that are developing. I suspect the UK itself is falling apart partly, at least, because of terrible nostalgias about its imperial and military past. There are people here who are so much in love with a vanished past that they will do anything to preserve its attitudes at the cost of present unities. They depend on making enemies out of friends.<br /><br />I am not entirely out of sympathy with them. There are many values bound up in language and nationhood and I fully understand that it is very painful to lose them. But modern Britain increasingly depends on those who are not intrinsically part of it. People like you and I in fact. More you than I at my age. I am a minor cultural figure with various prizes for writing and translation but I am of negligible economic or social use. You are not.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>You – and all those moving round Europe – are literally the moving parts of the engine.<br /><br />Since I have lived here for sixty-four years I want to think a little about what the word 'here' has meant in that time and what it means now. It is a mere sketch and very simplified but it may suggest some kind of context as I see it.<br /><br />I don’t know how long you have felt unwelcome in this country but I suspect Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ campaign of 2012 will have aroused and spread and intensified that hostility. Officially, that hostility was directed at illegal immigrants, but how do you tell who is or is not illegal in the street, in the shop or at work? By their skin colour? By their accent? The way they move?<br /><br />And if the nation is served with a long diet of anti-EU suspicion and hatred, how is it likely to react to those who are here because of the EU? Don’t they take British jobs and British housing? Don’t they disturb our British way of doing things?<br /><br />Once you get to that point, of course, the difference between legal and illegal presence in the country has significantly narrowed. People are no longer people, many of them people doing valuable jobs. They become an alien statistic.<br /><br />Personally, I have never felt the latent hostility of my host country, a country that has been generous in the past, as many individuals still are, but, as the son of a mother who survived two concentration camps, I am aware that hostility is latent in people everywhere in the world and can be roused for any political purpose.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br /><br />That is especially the case in a country that was once proud of its identity and status but is uncertain about it now.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Modern Britain is a complex country with many strands it does not itself understand. A modern country is not a family affair. It is a state that is inextricably part of the world. But it is comprised of families, yours and mine and everybody else’s. My son has just married a French citizen resident for several years in the UK and they now have a bilingual son. What is to be their fate? What is to be ours?<br /><br />The Brexit process has been a short-sighted mess and the confusion and cruelty of the special status process is further proof of that.. I suspect the UK is slowly falling apart. The country – England particularly - is on edge and its nervousness has made it cruel. Cruel to you. It has a government whose fortunes have depended entirely on pushing Brexit and whose leader does not mind reneging on freshly written contracts.<br /><br />I have not said anything about those whose families originally came from outside Europe, whose problems are various and a direct product of British imperial history. Their positions are part of the same complex problem as yours and mine, but this occasion is not about them<br /><br />Hungary, the country of my birth is in an even worse condition. It is for me a source of despair. That does not help. Very little does at the moment. Covid least of all.<br /><br />Europe is an idea based on centuries of experience. Europe too is in trouble. Now is the time to hold together. My warm best wishes and hopes to you all.<br /><br /></span><br /></p>George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-61358302062154765742020-07-17T17:48:00.000+01:002020-07-17T20:19:15.559+01:00Femme Fatale by Tali Cohen Shabtai<div class="normal" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 16.8667px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">I enjoy being this kind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Of Femme Fatale<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">To be pleased over a poem<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">And not over a man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">On my way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">I do not leave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Any traces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Of my virginal womb<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Behind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">They wonder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">If I behave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">The way I live<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">My poetry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Much more<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">"Maiko"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">I show them things that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">You'd only show to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Enuchs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">They want<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">To learn Hebrew<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">And taste<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">My poetry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">First<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">I decided to impose<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Their words upon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">My symbols<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">They're always<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">Gone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;">When I do so.<br /></span><span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="UZ-CYR" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 13pt; line-height: 19.9333px;"><b>Tali Cohen Shabtai</b> is an Israeli poet. Born in Jerusalem, she began writing poetry at the age of six. At the age of fifteen her poems appeared in <i>Moznayim</i>, a prestigious Israeli magazine. She has written three books of of poetry since then, the most recent of them being <b>Nine Years Away From You</b> (2018). She spent some years in Oslo and the USA and her poems are noted for expressing spiritual and physical exile. Her work has been translated into many languages.</span></div>
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George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-71796259026104998572020-04-11T18:38:00.001+01:002020-04-11T18:42:12.386+01:00FIVE BAROQUE PLAGUE SONNETS<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "bodoni 72 book"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333px;">FIVE BAROQUE </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: "bodoni 72 book"; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 24.5333px;">PLAGUE SONNETS<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b>1 Smallpox<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<i>Science for the curious,</i> is what it says<o:p></o:p></div>
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on the slick caption. The curious are pressed<o:p></o:p></div>
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tightly into a book, still hoping to be blessed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Each bears a coffin at which someone prays.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Crosses, coffins and cowls determine them<o:p></o:p></div>
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according to the medieval scheme<o:p></o:p></div>
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of superstition, death and troubling dream.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s half cosmology, half stratagem.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Do smell them, Highness, as they struggle on.<br />
The plague exhausts them. Science moves off stage,<o:p></o:p></div>
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just one pale rider left and one bare field<o:p></o:p></div>
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to conjure with. And soon they are all gone.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are no options here except to yield<o:p></o:p></div>
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or else keep hoping someone turns the page.<br />
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<b>2 Black Death<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The man with broad-brimmed hat and bird-mask waits<o:p></o:p></div>
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a moment before entering. His scent<o:p></o:p></div>
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wafts by you, Highness, as presentiment<o:p></o:p></div>
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of what must follow. Watch how he operates<o:p></o:p></div>
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in his full gown. Observe how he inspects<br />
the body, turning it here and there at distance<o:p></o:p></div>
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with his cane, meeting no resistance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Note how he prods it. He’s the bird that pecks<o:p></o:p></div>
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at corruption. He sees the patient’s hands<o:p></o:p></div>
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are black with the usual buboes. This is all<o:p></o:p></div>
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by the script. It’s the very reason for his call.<br />
The plague is spreading. It makes strict demands.<br />
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We watch familiar birds hovering in the air.<br />
They will not ring the bell. Nor are we there.<br />
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<b>3 Cholera<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Everything begins somewhere. Everything is ‘here’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here is where the enemy starts his long<o:p></o:p></div>
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arduous campaign, launching the first spear.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He has no home, has no desire to belong<o:p></o:p></div>
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to just one place and so he moves about.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Two skeletons clench by a fetid pool,<o:p></o:p></div>
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and soon a table with a glass of stout<o:p></o:p></div>
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and cloudy water carry one to stool<o:p></o:p></div>
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another to feast. You watch a man collapse<o:p></o:p></div>
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at one point on the map, one street, and soon<o:p></o:p></div>
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everyone’s falling. Death runs from open taps<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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and drops from the singer’s mouth. There are few<o:p></o:p></div>
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remaining, Highness. We watch the sun at noon<o:p></o:p></div>
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rise ever higher, burning off late dew.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>4 Spanish Flu<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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The khaki flu. The extra years of war<o:p></o:p></div>
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that is no war. From country seats to huts,<o:p></o:p></div>
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from shacks to palaces. You can’t keep score<o:p></o:p></div>
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of numbers. State by state the country shuts<o:p></o:p></div>
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its eyes and mouth and soon begins to drown.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Its skin turns blue and within hours it’s dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The rest wear masks and camphor. The whole town<o:p></o:p></div>
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is dream terrain, a dull street-plan of dread.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The cull is on, Your Highness.. World is thinning.<br />
Let’s call it nature or divine constraint.<br />
It is the way we’ve lived since the beginning.<br />
Cover the doors in blood or chalk or paint.<br />
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That is the age-old troubled human scene.<br />
It’s time for better drugs and quarantine.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
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<b>5 Covid-19<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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Now here we are in quarantine, our ears<o:p></o:p></div>
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sharpened to the footsteps stalking us.<br />
We watch the passing of the empty bus<o:p></o:p></div>
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as one more phantom carrier appears<o:p></o:p></div>
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and swerves around us grinning as he goes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Elsewhere the poor are jammed into their rooms<o:p></o:p></div>
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to gaze from blocks that reek too much of tombs<o:p></o:p></div>
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intended for them, while the virus throws<o:p></o:p></div>
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its net across the whole estate like smoke.<br />
Observe, Highness, how some of them remain<o:p></o:p></div>
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still poorer, and while you and I should live,<o:p></o:p></div>
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survival will be harder to forgive,<o:p></o:p></div>
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though later it might serve for a black joke,<o:p></o:p></div>
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that you, Highness, might very well explain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-15092347727157824892020-02-22T09:44:00.000+00:002020-02-22T09:44:07.706+00:00Magda's BoyFilm by Anthony Wilks<br /><br /><a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/bookshop-events-films/magda-s-boy-how-george-szirtes-invented-his-mother">https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/videos/bookshop-events-films/magda-s-boy-how-george-szirtes-invented-his-mother</a><br />
<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-15483636837141755702020-02-08T18:16:00.000+00:002020-02-08T18:18:17.933+00:00NEW BORNS<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<a href="https://assets.aboutkidshealth.ca/AKHAssets/eye_concerns_newborn_babies.jpg?RenditionID=10" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="356" height="211" src="https://assets.aboutkidshealth.ca/AKHAssets/eye_concerns_newborn_babies.jpg?RenditionID=10" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">New
Borns</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">‘Who would bring a
child into this world?’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Alan,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For apples and arbutus, for
apemen and alphabets,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Barbara,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For boats, bats, bells,
barnacles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beermugs and beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would said, Catherine,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For camels and cobras, cold
and curmudgeons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said David,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For doughnuts and dreadlocks,
damsons and dogs,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Desks and deliciousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said, Ellen,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For ears and elephants, eggs,
earth and envelopes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Fingal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For fruit, for featherbeds,
fossils and frankincense,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Freedom and formaldehyde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Geraldine,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For gooseberries, geckos,
goldfinches, gorgonzola<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Helen,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For hoarfrost and hazelnut,
hairdos and hedgehogs,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Hotdogs and honeycombs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.</span></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<br />
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Ian<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For inkblots and India,
ice-cream and igloos<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Jennifer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For jellybeans, January,
jumbucks and jeopardy,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Joysticks and Jericho<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Kieran<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For Kettering, kilowatts,
kecks and Kilimanjaro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Lukas,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For leopards, lollipops.
limericks, linseed,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Letters and longing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Marlie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For mysteries, margarine,
mothers and mistletoe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Natalie,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For nuggets and nougat, for
night and for necklaces,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Nostrils and nostrums<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Ossie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For oranges, oblongs, offside
and orang-utans<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Pamela<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For pepper-pots, popinjays,
pickle and palaces,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Penguins and porridge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Quinn,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For quadrilaterals, quails and
quaint quackery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the worlds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Richard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For rodents and rattlesnakes,
roses and robots,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Reindeer and relevance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Stephanie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For Saturdays, sausages,
seagulls, serendipity,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Tom,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For tenterhooks, tambourines,
tablespoons, tangerines,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Toast and topography<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Ursula,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For umbrellas and
undergrounds, urns and Uruguay<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Vivienne,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For verdicts, variety, velvet
and viscousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">violets and vortices<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said William<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For woods, winds, waves,
woodchucks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would said, Xavier<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For xylophones, xylographs,
xiphoids and Ximenes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">x-rays and xenocrysts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Yolanda<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For yearlings and yesterday,
yarrow and you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Zoe,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">For zeniths and zithers, zeal
and zoology,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Zebras and zips<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would enter the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">What child with foreknowledge
would enter the world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I would, said Al,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Bonnie, Cal, Dot, Ed, Fee,
Gareth, Hattie, Imogen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Joe, Kit, Lol, Mo, Ned,
Orville, Pip, Queenie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Rosemarie, Sid, Tess, Uli, Vi,
Wendy,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Xi, Yann and Zero.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="BodyA" style="tab-stops: 35.45pt 70.85pt 106.3pt 5.0cm 177.15pt 212.6pt 248.05pt 283.45pt 318.9pt 354.35pt 389.75pt 425.2pt 456.6pt;">
<br /></div>
George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-41454939549820986962019-12-18T17:46:00.002+00:002019-12-19T14:30:40.601+00:00Prayer for my Daughter<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Magdalen_College%2C_view_from_the_cloister.jpg/450px-Magdalen_College%2C_view_from_the_cloister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="450" height="400" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c2/Magdalen_College%2C_view_from_the_cloister.jpg/450px-Magdalen_College%2C_view_from_the_cloister.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Magdalen College, Oxford</td></tr>
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<i>Somehow or other I succeeded in leaving this poem out of the New and Collected (2008). I did not mean to, it just went missing. Then recently, when I was in Munich, the man who had invited me, Helge, said it was this poem that I had read some fifteen years before at Cologne, that he remembered and that other people had liked so much.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Last night I read it at LUMEN, the cold weather harity in London, and one member of the audience has written to me and asked where she could find it. The answer was, 'nowhere'. But I have found it among old files, and here it is.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>It was written for our daughter, Helen, just about to go up to Oxford in 1994, the year we moved to Norfolk. It refers to the Yeats poem, of course, and quotes it too, but it refers to much else. Each time I wrote one part another part demanded to be written so in the end there were seven. It was both fun and moving to write.</i><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><b><span style="color: red; font-size: large;">Prayer
for my Daughter</span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">1.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">So here we are and here’s my
stanza,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">like a Clementi cadenza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">a penny-plain extravaganza,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">just to keep things neat but
sprightly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">in what might otherwise
politely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">decline into a straight
unsightly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">father-to-daughter patronising<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">advisory misadvising<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">lecture on vague points
arising,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">a Yeatsian prayer to admonish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">characteristics too Maud
Gonneish,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Fenian or Amazonish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">2.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">My stanza’s nineteenth century
capers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">are out of time. I read the
papers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">and know the new opinion
shapers,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I know their loose, sincere
demotic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">ironies and semiotic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">quiddities, but I’m Quixotic:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">though windmills are as quaint
as giants,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I continue in defiance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">of gravity or modern science<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">rhyming like a man demented<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">dolphin torn and gong
tormented<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">till the giants have relented.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">3.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Darling, tonight the whole
horizon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">closed like a lid. The traffic
sighs on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">rainy tarmac, men flit like
flies on</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">jets of wind, the river
fractures,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">and a streetlight manufactures<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">a wealth of frazzled broken
textures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">So beautiful: the petrol
station’s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">amber flatness, the quotations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">of lit shopfronts, the
impatience<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">of running clouds. The winter
races<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">into darkness, interlaces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">bodies in its breathing
spaces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">4. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">You see, I want to turn this
patter-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">song to deeper, graver matter,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">more throttle more carburettor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">I want to be a souped up,
solemn,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">portentous father, wise as
Solom-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">on not just a gossip column,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">someone you’ll take seriously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">whose works you’ll study
furiously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">not discard imperiously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">from some theory-laden
high-rise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">nor swat and squash flat,
wasp- or fly-wise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">but approve, applaud and
lionise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">5.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Walking last night I sought an
image<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">to offer you, a kind of homage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">to the wind’s wild scrape and
scrimmage,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">and noticed how the very
cheapest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">vulgarisms struck the deepest:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">the Woolworth lights, a
buckled leaf pressed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">to the pavement, a crisp
packet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">flying in the gust. I took it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">home with me, to store and
stack it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">in memory, imagination,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">to use it in some combination:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">a poem finding its occasion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br clear="all" style="page-break-before: always;" />
</span>
<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">6.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Some quick advice? Well just a
quickie:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware the sentimental-sticky,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware the choosy and the
picky,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware all those who talk in
torrents<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">The snobs who earned the
strict abhorrence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Of poor pale sickly
D.H.Lawrence,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware the Oxfordly superior,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware those with a smooth exterior,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">The cynic wiser and
world-wearier,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware the shady and the
murky,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware the
overprecious-quirky,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beware your father talking
turkey.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">7.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Out on your own. The
eighteenth hurdle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">safely past. The tales I’ve
heard all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">tend to make a man’s blood curdle,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">so to the prayer (I’m feeling
prayerful):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">Darling be wise, be good, be
careful,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">be water, fire and earth and
air-ful,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">find images beyond the kitchen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">that women used to bake and
bitch in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">from Halicarnassus to plain
Hitchin,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">may you, in darkness, be that
changing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">wind and light, your mind
free-ranging,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">sea-like, unplumbed, salt,
estranging,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">tender, yes, but not
kid-gloving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">neither too mousy, nor too
shoving,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">be fortunate, be loved, be
loving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">be all of these, be kind,
far-seeing,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">in short, beyond the you- and
me-ing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">all that befits a human being,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">what human beings may be made
for:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">life, unearned, unknown,
unpaid for,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";">that you were celebrated,
prayed for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment--><br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-40194463932061090912019-12-13T11:27:00.001+00:002019-12-13T16:36:02.546+00:00REFLECTIONS AND APPREHENSIONSOn the General Election 2019<div bis_size="{"x":16,"y":8,"w":653,"h":18,"abs_x":433,"abs_y":145}">
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<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>I think we are in rats’ alley</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Where the dead men lost their bones</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">These are not forecasts since I don't consider myself a soothsayer. They are, I would claim, reasonably founded apprehensions. I break them into three headings.</span><br />
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>1. Public broadcasting and media</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This morning Charles Moore barks at Nick Robinson. He is clearly excited. He is telling Robinson that the BBC should lose its licence fee. In fact he is forecasting it.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Johnson had hinted at this earlier. It is not that the BBC is biased towards Labour, it is that it can, on occasion, be hostile to a Tory (much as it can be hostile to a Labour spokesman.)</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Well, we can't have that! We cannot possibly support it. We must have a tamer more Tory BBC. and we will do it by turning it into a purely commercial operation, one ideally in the hands of one of our friendly billionaires, or, failing that, in hock to powerful commercial advertisers. That'll teach 'em!</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And as for Channel 4...</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This is the beginning of a very slippery slope since it is entirely a political decision. In that respect it is moving ever closer in step with with Viktor Orbán's Hungary where almost the entire national press and public media are government mouthpieces.</span><br />
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b>2 Brexit and the Red Wall</b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">No, I did not anticipate the scale of the Tory victory, and much of it through the collapse of Labour in the North of England. I am pretty sure Corbyn supporters have a point in arguing that Brexit lay at the heart of it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">BUT</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">... is it not extraordinary that the constituency I think of as the Brexit-maddened poor should vote for an Old Etonian, frequently-confirmed, habitual liar who has no interest in their condition?</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Contrary to Theresa May's mantra of <i>Brexit Means Brexit</i>, my contention is that Brexit has never meant Brexit. It has not meant any particular attitude to Europe either economically or politically. Brexit has meant all your grievances bundled into a single package that caters to your pride and insecurity. Europe has very little to do with it.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That pride and insecurity can only be intensified through presenting any case of potential revision as <i>betrayal</i> (a very popular rhetorical trope for Brexiters.) So not only have you been betrayed by an external Them (though any Them would do) but are now being betrayed all over again by an internal Them.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">In this case the internal Them were the Labour Party and the liberal-minded as well as radically-minded educated class (which includes most artists.)</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The issue extends far deeper than being a member of the EU. It is an existential issue of honour and anger.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hear people like Lavery, the Labour Party Chair, blaming the Remainers within the party for the loss.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">BUT</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">... instead of blaming the Remainers in the Labour Party I would go back to the referendum itself where we were told time and again how Labour - led by Corbyn - were putting the case for Remain.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That was a clearly lie. The fact is that 48% of the voters were left without a major advocate. Labour then pussyfooted around for almost three years before equivocating itself into the worst of all positions.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The position in which it could be accused of betrayal by both sides of the Brexit debate.</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p3">
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Meanwhile one Tory MP has already compared the fall of the Red Wall to the fall of the Berlin Wall.</span><br />
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That is about as foul and disgusting as you can get. That's the direction we are heading in.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span class="s3">3 </span><span class="s1">The Future is Another Country / Rats' Alley</span></span></b></div>
<div class="p4">
<b><span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's a moot but vital question whether the vote reflects the temporary mood of the country or is a sign of deep and significant change in it.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I hope it's mood and therefore temporary (since everything is temporary) but I am apprehensive about a deeper change.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That change (at least on the immediate level since there are always more reasons) began with the drive against immigrants. Not so much as a matter of control but as a matter of downright hostility: the "hostile environment" minted by May. Hostility kicked in immediately as it always does when a scapegoat is offered: it is simply well-tried historical mob behaviour.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The frustrations of any group of people can be offered a useful vent. Just as Brexit didn't mean Brexit, so the immigrant cause was a sign of a much deeper, much more complex malaise,. The individual strands of that malaise would take far too long to analyse.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Fintan O'Toole wrote well about it, maybe because the Burns adage is true: we lack the gift to see ourselves as others see us.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Factors, very crudely speaking, include: the end of the imperial era; the likely break-up of the United Kingdom; the financial collapse of 2008-9; the forces of globalisation, and the climate crisis. These forces play at least some part in the dramatic shifts across the world. They cause insecurities that certain political stances can look to address.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The guilt of empire is now entirely on England's shoulders and the load is all but intolerable. In Germany's case the guilt was clear and imposed as the result of a lost war. England did not lose that war or any other since. Not clearly and absolutely.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The reaction to guilt is hatred and distrust of those who impose it. Who imposes the guilt? As the poor will see it, it is foreigners and the liberal intellectual class who absolve themselves of it by blaming the very feelings that the poorest were told they were fighting for.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Trump wins. Johnson wins. There will be no national introspection under Johnson. There will be Churchillian bluster by the bucketload.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And where is this leading beyond mood?</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The old industrial and class loyalties are enfeebled. Cultural loyalties - the least articulate and least useful of loyalties - remain. Those loyalties can be manipulated by the powerful forces of bread and circuses. Give 'em the right sort of blustering pap and make them believe it emanates from their own souls. Do that and they're yours. Their own blusterers will drive you on. <i>Maybe faster and further than you think.</i></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">That is, of course, an apprehension, not a forecast. But it is not mere fancy. It is an option, and, I think, an ever more likely option.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">*</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">This then is rats' alley. How will life change there?</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Let's see how many hospitals are actually built, how many schools need support, how many genuinely affordable houses will become available, how much more exploitative the conditions of employment will become, how harsh the penalties imposed on those genuinely unfit for work, how many rough sleepers will be on the street, how many food packages will need to be distributed, and how far the cases of mental illness and suicide will rise.</span></div>
<div class="p4">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p5">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Rats' alley waits to discover the answers.</span></div>
<div class="p5">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p5">
<span class="s1" style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p6">
<br /></div>
George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-53479230165016092622019-02-19T16:15:00.001+00:002019-02-19T16:15:26.968+00:00The Photographer at SixteenThe Saturday Paper (Australia)<br />
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
On July 31, 1975 – in the midst of an uncharacteristically hot
English summer – Magda Szirtes, a Jewish Hungarian survivor of World War II,
took an overdose in her North London home. The ambulance dispatched to revive
her was delayed by a minor traffic accident on the way, and she died.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A small, sad, slightly absurd domestic tragedy – one that
could have easily slipped, like countless others, between the floorboards of a
cataclysmic century – except that Magda’s son, George, then a penniless young
teacher, would go on to become one of Britain’s pre-eminent poets and
translators. Over time he would learn about the larger circumstances of her
early life. He would be moved to visit her home country (and his birthplace).
And he would venture to recuperate, first in poetry and now in prose, something
of the character of her life and fate.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The result is a love letter from a son to his mother, rendered
unrequited by her absence. It’s a detective story, too, since the final suicide
note discovered by George’s father in the wake of Magda’s death was only the
last in a series. Responding to the suicide of Primo Levi in Turin at the age
of 67, Elie Wiesel said of most lauded literary survivor of the Holocaust that
he “died at Auschwitz forty years later”. In <i>The Photographer at
Sixteen</i>, George Szirtes goes in search of the initial blow that struck his
mother down. He then traces the slow course of its damage over time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
All this makes the work sound like a high-toned misery memoir,
but it isn’t. Szirtes, winner of the T.<span style="font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"> </span>S. Eliot Prize for poetry and the Man
Booker International Prize for translation, has no truck with the naked
theatrics of grief. Instead, he uses his considerable dual gifts – the gift of
language in the first instance, and the gift of subordinating one’s own self to
another self in the second – to substantiate the ghostly presence of a powerful
personality and a physically striking woman:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
“I have no wish to submit her to retrospective analysis,” he
writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 30.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I want to
report her presence and register it as it moved through life by moving back
into her own past with her. I want to puzzle over it and admire it while being
aghast at it. I don’t want to be certain of anything. I don’t want to come to
conclusions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
A challenging act of filial love, this: to record without
judgement, to feel his mother’s pain without embalming himself alongside her in
historic hurt. And yet he manages to do so, using a method that seems
counterintuitive but turns out to be both aesthetically rewarding and
respectful to the mystery of Magda’s past.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
As Szirtes explains above, he does so by running the memoir in
reverse: starting with his own relationship with his mother and then moving her
backwards, away from him, away from England, away from her husband and back
into the partial and incomplete record of her wartime and pre-war existence. He
releases her into history like a fish freed in the river from which it was
caught.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Magda Szirtes was Romanian by birth, Hungarian by cultural
affiliation and Jewish by dint of immemorial ties of blood. She grew up in a
middlingly prosperous middle-class family in the regional Transylvanian city of
Cluj, before leaving school at 14 to become a photographer’s assistant, a
hand-colourist of black-and-white film, and a would-be photographer herself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Budapest, home to Robert Capa, László Moholy-Nagy, André
Kertész and Brassaï, was a world capital of photography when she arrived in the
city as a strikingly attractive teen. But her socialist sympathies and Jewish
background made life in the wartime city increasingly fraught. Even after she
had met László Szirtes, the mild, gentle man who was to become her husband, she
lacked protection from larger events.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Those events saw her spirited away to the women’s
concentration camp of Ravensbrück, along with 150,000 others in 1944, and then
to Penig, a satellite camp of Buchenwald. When liberation by the Allies came to
these camps in April 1945, Magda was one of 80 women left in the sick bay after
the SS authorities initiated a final death march to Theresienstadt. Her son
reports that when Magda was rescued she weighed 38 kilograms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
George Szirtes’ imagination glances off Magda’s camp
experience; there is simply too much hurt and pain for that time to be fully
countenanced. What’s more, those events constrict her life in ways that deform
its broader arc.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What he does do is linger, beautifully, on her slow return to
health:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 30.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
There is
food, a carefully gradated increase in diet, the return of taste and smell. The
touch and feel of knife and fork and spoon and plate. The relative softness of
cloth, the simple cleanliness, followed by the slow rediscovery of the body as
pleasure, the rediscovery of the autonomy of one’s own self.</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 30.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
No, the real bitterness resides not in the camp experience,
but in its aftermath, when she returns home to discover her mother and brother
were murdered in Auschwitz, her father vanished; her former neighbours
indifferent to so much loss.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
For George Szirtes, born in Budapest in 1948, the family she
established so quickly – and which was obliged to flee to Britain in 1956,
following the Hungarian uprising – formed a kind of bulwark against that loss.
But it was not, could not, be wholly successful. The compassion the author
expresses in these pages is shadowed by guilt: that as a child and young man he
refused so much of her need, to be generous, to be affectionate, to be in
control of events. The universal rebellion of adolescence is here recast as an
unwitting cruelty to one who had already suffered too much.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
As a work of recompense, however, the work achieves its end
and more. It does honour to Magda Szirtes: it recalls her not as one who was
sick or damaged or dying but as “a woman in her prime”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span style="color: red;">Geordie Williamson</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i>MacLehose Press, 240pp, $29.99</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i>This article was first published in the print edition of
The Saturday Paper on Feb 16, 2019 as "George Szirtes, The Photographer at
Sixteen". </i><a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/subscribe"><span style="color: #ee3123; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Subscribe here.</span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-68748257047377835242019-02-19T15:59:00.000+00:002019-02-19T15:59:06.325+00:00Snapshots of a Captive SubjectThe Financial Times<br /><b>
Miranda Seymour JANUARY 25, 2019</b><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We seem to be born of secrets,” muses the author of this unforgettably sad book. “But isn’t everybody?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> What is it that makes a memoir exceptional? How does one invent the truth? Reading the Hungarian-born poet George Szirtes’s delicately forensic exploration of an impossibly passionate mother whose abrupt death, aged 51, in an ambulance crash in 1975 brought release from a life she could no longer defy, it becomes clear how little overtly dramatic content counts, compared with the sensibility — and, above all, the impulse towards honesty — of the writer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Evocative narrative sequences are the hallmark of Szirtes’s poems. His parents haunt them, as do his recollections of a carefree Budapest childhood that ended on the day in 1956 when a stray bullet ricocheted off little George’s toy watch, while corpses dangled from the lampposts lining the streets in which he played. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> There, or at Ravensbrück, the brutal camp from which his young Romanian-born mother was transferred to the horrors of Penig (near death from starvation, she would be rescued by a bewitched US officer in 1945), might have seemed obvious points at which to open Magda’s strangely triumphant history of torture, flight and survival. Szirtes, having pondered and reflected on his subject for a quarter of a century, opts for a subtler approach in The Photographer at Sixteen. Time is upended. We move from the moment of Magda’s death back towards her birth, enlightened by consequences that could never have been foreseen. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Like WG Sebald, the German-born writer known for his meditative juxtaposition of words and images, Szirtes makes careful use of photographs within his text; unlike Sebald, he subjects each to a piercing analysis. The sad heroism of his hardworking Hungarian father Laszlo — all Magda’s love was reserved for her sons, all her darkest suspicions for a husband who adored her — is stressed both here (tenderly clasping his wife’s wasted form for a family snap, while his huge owl-eyes steadily meet the camera’s gaze) and there (as he clowns for her in a zoo, playing at being the captive he truly is). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But it is Magda who emerges from these tiny images as the actual prisoner, struggling to manufacture magic from her confinement in a coldly colourless London suburb. (The open spaces of Australia had long been her dream.) Nothing escapes her son’s observing eye. She called George “little squirrel”, her only consolation. She baked him cakes “like a real mum”, dressed him like royalty. Examining the neat north London kitchen in which she perches, tiny as the pet sparrow she inadvertently crushed underfoot, Szirtes remembers the room’s disquieting feel: sticky as the grey gingham vinyl peeling from its surfaces. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> “It sticks to her too. She is trapped in it . . . Displacement hits you later than you expect, just when you think you have settled down . . . Your body is not where it ought to be . . . It is as if you had ghosted in but left your soul behind.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Here, following the abrupt end of Magda’s short, harsh life, the memoir has already begun its backward spool, an appropriate term for the history of a woman who specialised since girlhood in photographic improvement (there is nothing new about airbrushing). Unknown events pull the reader back to the gates of Ravensbrück, a place that Magda’s son denies his imagination the right to describe. Hints are dropped, of whippings, starvation, public rapings, full-body shaving, bromide-laced coffee to keep the female prisoners hygienically barren. Szirtes scarcely comments. A handful of bleak facts suffice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Criticism — Magda was plainly impossible to live with — is withheld. “It is her desperation I am describing, not her selfishness,” writes Szirtes. What emerges, present in every line, is the magnetic force of Magda’s personality, her hunger for a happiness that focused on the success — always under her direction — of her sons. Courteously opening doors for female teachers or strolling through Wembley’s staring streets in tight shorts and white shirts, Magda’s sons “were a laughing stock, but not to her”. Love was always a threat. How could they love her as she loved them? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> “The tide is sweeping her away from me,” the author states. Not so. Szirtes has made her monument. It is a courageous and remarkable achievement. I’ve read no memoir that moved me more.
</span><br /><br /><i> The Photographer at Sixteen, by George Szirtes, MacLehose Press, RRP£14.99, 208 pages</i><br /><br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-34966364210091226542019-02-19T15:51:00.002+00:002019-02-19T15:52:03.768+00:00Spellbinding Memorial to a MotherFrom The New European<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 14.4pt; mso-outline-level: 1; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-size: 14.5pt;"><br />CHARLIE CONNELLY on a stunning, tender new book in which the author traces a parent’s eventful life back from its tragic end</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">It comes to something when the council sending round a cleaner to a young George Szirtes’ house in south London while his mother was recuperating from a 1967 operation and that cleaner being David Bowie isn’t even close to being the most remarkable story in The Photographer at Sixteen, published next week by Maclehose Press. In a book full of warmth, grief, curiosity, wisdom, staggering anecdotes and a coming to terms with the vicissitudes of 20th century history, believe me when I say Bowie in marigolds is far from the prevailing image you take away at the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">It’s billed as a memoir but that doesn’t do justice to a book encompassing poetry, European history, travel and biography in its highly original telling of the author’s mother’s life and the extraordinary, heartrending events through which she lived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">“The ambulance was waiting at the junction,” the first chapter begins. “She had taken an overdose and time was short. The driver thought he saw a gap, moved forward, then stopped because the gap wasn’t big enough. The car behind ran into the back of the ambulance. The ambulance was damaged. The drivers got out and my mother died.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">As first paragraphs go that’s a pretty arresting one, signalling that this is to be no conventional narrative. The Photographer at Sixteen is a biography told backwards, beginning with the death of Magda Szirtes after an overdose during the summer of 1975 and working its way back through her remarkable life. This is a brave Benjamin Button of a format – Szirtes is one of our most celebrated contemporary poets but this is his first prose book – but it works extraordinarily well here, building suspense through aftermaths and consequences rather than omens and portents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">As first paragraphs go that’s a pretty arresting one, signalling that this is to be no conventional narrative. The Photographer at Sixteen is a biography told backwards, beginning with the death of Magda Szirtes after an overdose during the summer of 1975 and working its way back through her remarkable life. This is a brave Benjamin Button of a format – Szirtes is one of our most celebrated contemporary poets but this is his first prose book – but it works extraordinarily well here, building suspense through aftermaths and consequences rather than omens and portents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">By rights it’s a structure so unfamiliar to us it should feel stilted but such is Szirtes’ skill that he leaves the reader with a vividly-formed impression of a woman who found herself repeatedly at the heart of some of Europe’s most tumultuous events of the 20th century yet, despite living with a heart condition, survived them all to die on her own terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">How well do we know our parents? How well can we know them? We view them inevitably through the prism of their parental role, almost as if they materialised fully formed on the day we were born. There’s no set age for the realisation that our parents had lives before we came along but the arrogance of childhood makes it an astounding revelation when it comes. However close we are to them we don’t truly know our parents beyond the roles they play in our lives and, in our earlier years in particular, we’re not actually that interested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">How well do we know our parents? How well can we know them? We view them inevitably through the prism of their parental role, almost as if they materialised fully formed on the day we were born. There’s no set age for the realisation that our parents had lives before we came along but the arrogance of childhood makes it an astounding revelation when it comes. However close we are to them we don’t truly know our parents beyond the roles they play in our lives and, in our earlier years in particular, we’re not actually that interested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">When we lose a parent, however, it isn’t long before we start thinking of all the things we could have asked them, mulling over the things we wished we knew about them. What made them into the people they were? What were their hopes and dreams when they were young? Were they fulfilled? Had life turned out the way they’d hoped or expected? How did they really feel? Usually those questions only occur to us when it’s too late and we’ll never know the answers, but here Szirtes sets out to answer some of them even though his mother has been dead for more than four decades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">He hopes to learn why she behaved in certain ways and did certain things, not least taking her own life in 1975 at the age of 51, but mostly trying to gain a sense of who Magda Szirtes, mother, wife, refugee, photographer, ethnic Hungarian born in Romania, actually was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">The events of the first half of Magda’s life, through which the worst excesses of modern European history blundered back and forth, made her a person practically unknowable while she was alive, it seems, so how can we get to know her in death? Szirtes sets out with little to go on outside his own memories: a few photographs, some recorded conversations with his father, a scatter of documents and a single tape recording of Magda singing Happy Birthday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">He has no choice but to project himself onto these bare details that leave huge yawning gaps in Magda Szirtes, gaps that he has to fill amidst the danger of forsaking accuracy to conjure the woman he wants her to be. It’s impossible to be dispassionate when you’re talking about your mum.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">Along the way as we move backwards through Magda’s life we learn much about the European 20th century, not to mention experiencing vivid recollections of just how it feels to be a refugee. Fortunately most of us will never know the relieftinged fear of arriving somewhere new and unknown in just the clothes we stand up in with unspeakable horrors and danger still just behind us, gatecrashing our thoughts and haunting our dreams. This book may tell a refugee story from more than 60 years ago but the experience, emotions, hopes and fears remain exactly the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">Szirtes, his parents and his brother arrived in England after fleeing the fallout from the failed Hungarian uprising of 1956. On an early holiday to Hastings when the family has found a home and his father has found work, the young Szirtes looks out to sea and captures a little of what it was like settling in England as a political refugee, especially one from a land blighted for centuries by war, uprisings and invasions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The sea guaranteed there would be no shifting of borders,” he writes of the view from Hastings beach. “No foreign army would march in and overrun what the Hungarians called ‘the island nation’. The British Navy was the finest navy. The British Empire was the finest the world had ever seen. Britain had won the war and here we were on the very beach where Britain had last been invaded. And when was that? Almost 900 years ago. Think of that! What was it that mattered most in England? Freedom, said my father. Freedom.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">The recent media frenzy over the small flurry of people crossing the English Channel by boat is a perfect example of the demonisation and fear of the other that prevails today, the surest sign of a nation ill at ease with its own identity. They’re referred to as ‘migrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’, the latest nifty bit of dehumanising through simplifying of language that excuses having to think of them as human beings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">They’re the faceless threat, not people with skills, pasts, families, passions and plenty to offer the nation in which they seek to make a home now that their own is closed to them. We’ve all met someone with ‘legitimate concerns’ about immigration who when you point to their French son-in-law, Polish GP and Indian accountant reply, “oh no, I’m not talking about them, they’re all right”, as if in the run-up to Brexit they’ll receive a form from the Home Office asking them to list their ones-that-are-all-right. Chalk that up as a resounding success for the dog-whistling rabble rousers, because the climate has transformed since we were a welcoming island haven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">When the Szirtes family touched down in Britain on a BOAC plane in December 1956 with nothing between them but a toy typewriter case full of old family photographs and the clothes they stood up in they were received with unfailing compassion and warmth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">There was no home secretary manufacturing a phoney immigration ‘crisis’ and demanding to know why they hadn’t remained in the first country they reached. There were no navy vessels patrolling the English Channel because the biggest threat to this country is apparently half a dozen freezing, frightened Iranians in a semi-deflated rubber dinghy. Back then there was just practical help given willingly on the basic human agreement that we are all equal wherever we come from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">When a British Army officer registering the family at a reception camp in Wiltshire learns that George’s father László had worked as a plumber, “he was clearly pleased and declared that my father would have no problem finding work... It was like magic”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">When the refugees were asked, in order to help determine their welfare needs, to stand in lines corresponding to religious beliefs Magda, a decade after experiencing the worst of a traumatic war, was reluctant to line up with other Jews, such divisions and separations bringing back dreadful, still raw memories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">“My father assured her there was nothing to fear in England,” writes Szirtes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">The family moved from house to house at first, all arranged, furnished and paid for by refugee committees until they could get on their feet, but eventually they found a house in which they could settle and the Szirtes family “commenced Englishing ourselves as fast as we could”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">Yet while the refugee experience underpins the book it’s the enigma of Magda that overrides the narrative. We learn that she has a history of heart trouble, that her suicide isn’t her first attempt, and as the book gradually slips back through time we hear horrific stories of her experiences and marvel at how she could possibly have made it as far as that Wiltshire military camp, let alone build a whole new life from scratch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">It’s not giving too much away to say that Magda’s entire family was murdered during the war. It’s a common story of the Holocaust but one whose impact is no lesser for such an unimaginable burden for anyone to carry through life. Naturally she had high hopes for her two sons, channelling all her love into them as the only legacy of untold generations carrying on their shoulders the ghosts of people they’d never known.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">That sense of life’s fragility learned through trauma made for a mixed relationship as Szirtes grew up. Magda was assertively protective of her two boys: when a neighbour complained about the youngsters using a swear word in the garden she immediately sent them back out with instructions to swear as loudly and inventively as they could, for example.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">But there was also the suppressed anger at the antipathy the universe had shown to her suffering: Szirtes remembers being a small boy making a mess of his homework and his mother suddenly leaping out of her chair to strike him on the head with a plastic box.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "helvetica neue";">The more The Photographer at Sixteen progresses, the more it becomes a wonder that Magda hasn’t displayed more anger given the cards she was dealt. As we pass through her life in reverse there is frustration and relief, joy and darkness, concentration camps and betrayals, misunderstandings and losses, communism and fascism, hiding places and cross-border flits, all combining to make the photographer of the title a beguiling, heartbreaking yet ultimately elusive enigma. She’s brought to life beautifully in this unflinching, unfailingly warm account of a displaced, tragic, relatively brief life that for all its tumult ended at the roadside in a dented ambulance as drivers exchanged insurance details. One thing we learn from The Photographer at Sixteen that for some people circumstances conspire to leave them in control of only one thing – their own death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-24340355139008245352019-01-16T12:59:00.001+00:002019-01-16T12:59:44.478+00:00230: FURY AND NOWHERE FAST<br />
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>FURY</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Listening to Michael Gove this morning I feel such an upwelling of rage and despair I want to throw the radio across the room.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One Brexit-supporting commenter here the other day said he was very angry that Brexit voters were constantly regarded with contempt by Remainers. I wonder how he might feel if he were constantly called a traitor, regarded as a non-person, a citizen of nowhere, an outcast from 'the people', someone treacherously aligned with that wicked entity called Europe?</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Because that is what we - close to half of the country - have been treated to.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">And how would Michael Gove feel if he were an intelligent, skilful, gainfully employed, French EU citizen of this country with an English partner, paying English taxes, but left to dangle over the channel without guarantees, without specific terms. She who had loved this country has come to loathe it for its treatment of her. I don't blame her at all. Michael Gove bawling crude simplicities at her, talking over her, dismissing her with that overbearing whining, know-it-all sneer of a voice, sums up the character of the Tory Brexiteer.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">This to my angry, whining Brexiter. You won. Now do as you advised us to do within moments of your victory. Stop whining. 'Suck it up.' Take the loathing your cries of 'traitors' deserve. Enjoy what's coming.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>NOWHERE FAST</b></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Last night I was at LUMEN, reading a few translations along with illustrious others - Elaine Feinstein, Anthony Rudolf, Mimi Khalvati, Will Stone, Martyn Crucefix, Ruth O'Callaghan, Timothy Ades and more - in aid of the homeless. I had to leave at the interval to get the last-but-one train but I had checked the result from parliament.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">One person at the reading had advised me that there might be civil unrest. I saw no sign of it. Everything was normal. On the train people were lost in books or papers or phones. No one said anything about the vote. No one said anything much at all. It was as if nothing had happened but I wondered how many of them were thinking about the vote and where it left us. At Ely, where I was due to change, they were just locking their waiting room and I spent about fifteen minutes on the platform, nursing the feeble remnants of my cold which had more or less vanished but for a cough. There was nothing in the air, no omens of any sort, just the BBC updates on the phone.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">As to where the 230 vote defeat of May's deal does actually leave us, the immediate answer is: nowhere fast. Very fast. Some would rush us into a no-deal, others would look to escape by way of a new referendum.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Although I support a new referendum - we have a poster for it in the window - I don't imagine it would be a matter of sweetness and light if it did come about. It is likely to be foul tempered, verbally, and possibly physically, violent, and even more divisive than our current situation.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">We are not in a negotiating and discussing mood. We are in a dark, stomping-off, muttering and cursing mood. The gutter press has brought us here.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Now we too are in the gutter. And not exactly looking at the stars.</span></div>
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</span><span class="s2">This morning I discover that the translators who were supposed to be after the interval did not get to read at all because there were too many people from the floor.</span></div>
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<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-70028515416572930922019-01-08T11:35:00.002+00:002019-01-08T11:42:22.451+00:00On Brexit: The Uncivil War<br />
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<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2018/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000167430461_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqPw6h6usEMXF3qdE5C2AFDsA_v0WCVWjgTl1kMXi91w4.jpeg?imwidth=1400" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="800" height="250" src="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/tv/2018/06/24/TELEMMGLPICT000167430461_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqPw6h6usEMXF3qdE5C2AFDsA_v0WCVWjgTl1kMXi91w4.jpeg?imwidth=1400" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1">I watched it through to the end today. I know there are various takes on it, so here is mine.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I thought it was a brilliant, passionate play about England and its neglected people; people who made only a few fleeting appearances in the drama but were the deciding vote.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">It was, by the same token, an equally passionate play about those who exploited them. That aspect of the play was played as savage caricature, as an exploitation of misery made possible by contemporary technology. In that respect it was a play whose heart was clearly on the Remain side.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">The important point about the neglected was that they were neither patronised nor demonised in the writing. They were presented not as a rabid racist mob but as people who felt an understandable anger and suspicion regarding those they deemed to be responsible for their condition, an anger and suspicion that could easily be converted into racism and xenophobia for the purposes of the vote, though this was something the Cummings character only understood at the very end.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Some people think the play was too short to explore the whole phenomenon but I don't agree. It was the compression that turned a potentially sprawling exposition it into drama, and - as I read it -tragedy.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">The focus group was a little over-stereotypical and not wholly convincing but it served a dramatic purpose in the woman's breakdown. The Tories featured were mostly caricature of course, but they too had a necessary part in the form.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Tragedy has been defined as the downfall of a flawed hero. Cummings - as written by Graham and played by Cumberbatch - was a kind of autistic genius with a genuine perception of the way reality stacked up, but who - being entirely obsessed with his vision - had no regard for what his perception might lead to.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">In other words, Cumberbatch-Cummings had both the furious intellectual energy, the defiance of convention necessary to drive and dominate the action. That, in itself, is enough to make him a dramatic hero.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">The flaw was obvious throughout but held back until it could be displayed at the climax.<br /></span></div>
<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-29328298549083656702019-01-03T17:39:00.002+00:002019-01-03T17:45:18.363+00:00PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOANNA MILLINGTON<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Kind gift of Rich and Helen, Jo Millington came round to do a photoshoot of altogether some 80 pictures of us. Here is a selection of six for our joint seventieth birthday. The pictures are absolutely lovely. Thank you Jo, Helen and Rich.</div>
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<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-2764593298283520922019-01-03T17:20:00.002+00:002019-01-03T17:20:54.034+00:00MINDS AND HEARTS: SHAPING
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<span class="s1">I spent much of yesterday trying to put my next collection, due from Bloodaxe in 2020, into order. Not sure what to call it yet. 'Fresh Out of the Sky' is a possibility as it is the working title of the twenty-five poems about early experiences of England. Then there is a group of poems about music, some about contemporary uncertainties and some 'songs' that are essentially apprehensions about this or that thing.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As to form, there is a preponderance of terza rima, cinquains, and haiku sets.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I like to shape a book in what seems the best possible way in terms of narrative continuity or dramatic movement so it is a cumulative experience or at least one whose shape is perceived at some point as a shape. That is an area of meaning to me. It is what makes a book a book rather than a gathering.</span></div>
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<span class="s2"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/michael.carrino.7?__tn__=%2CdK-R-R&eid=ARAFyioNfzJHchuse3-S7X6l1YUmeHcghsKyhg2-tqcZV6TTmtlIC555-tqQHqO4qD-hsgHRKxIQXeEc&fref=mentions">Michael Carrino</a></span><span class="s1"> sent me a link to an article* that discusses the idea of fully thematic collections, what the author calls 'project' books. The article sets 'mind' against 'heart'.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Well, no-one is going to argue against 'heart' so that battle is won before it has started. It's a little like calling certain kinds of poetry 'academic'. Label applied: job done.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">These are all false dichotomies. Hearts have minds and minds have hearts. One feels what one thinks and one thinks what one feels.</span></div>
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<span class="s3">*<a href="https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.awpwriter.org%2Fmagazine_media%2Fwriters_notebook_view%2F31%2Fthe_poetry_project_book_a_marriage_of_heart_and_mind%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR2zIK1sjrdsN2lzEHXSu24Y6o06_Y62enUJ_AC3uOvrCZR6m-SfESSj8cg&h=AT06cJy4z9D0QE2YtTFxYTii3CufhvTcrj_r2BBiM3AYk-Ze9lOOH9J_mNohRybNdWVLflPj9OA0eu_JnRAOVjRYhxkphzVLGtlBJY35n4QfnuZpJ9Tg_yfXvDkaqJpDW-E3HWCCLpQb-sZ-rPbgPszy6E7wM60ggA"><span class="s2">https://www.awpwriter.org/…/the_poetry_project_book_a_marri…</span></a>?</span></div>
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<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-23893464430891971372019-01-01T12:22:00.000+00:002019-01-01T12:22:52.844+00:00SOX AND THE CITY<br />
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Socks used to be regarded as the dullest of Christmas presents. Not this year! Received from daughter a set of spectacularly coloured artistic socks, of which this is the most special. Socks by Marc Chagall, the favourite painter of my youth.<br />
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I am currently wearing them but photographed them unworn since, at the moment of writing, they are almost completely covered by my trousers and shoes.<br />
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I could, I suppose, draw up my trouser legs to display them in situ and photograph them for the purposes of display but it would be a rather strange gesture. Socks are somewhere between accessory and underwear. Ties are distinctly accessory: boxer shorts are underwear. One could have a Chagall tie or Chagall boxer shorts but neither is of quite the level of significance as Chagall socks. A flash of aesthetic sock offers a semi-discreet glimpse into the wearer's personality. Neither ties nor boxer shorts could be regarded as semi-discreet.<br />
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Socks are also the least glamorous item of clothing. Socks are anti-erotica. The sight of a naked man in his socks, however pornographically engaged, is enough to put desire into an immediate coma. Socks are a matter between a man and his feet.<br />
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Socks have none of the allure of tights, stockings or the old fashioned suspender belt as worn by women. I take my guidance from Cole Porter on this: "In olden days a glimpse of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking". Enough said.<br />
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Those lines could not be sung with any conviction about socks.<br />
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But since something has to come between my feet and my shoes while maintaining an intimate relationship with both it gives me a glow of inner confidence and surreal pleasure to know that Marc Chagall is down there, eye-to-eye with nature in the form of a cow. I may be sober at the top but it's carnival at my feet.<br />
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George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-61004498878128723012018-10-24T14:47:00.000+01:002018-10-24T14:47:17.986+01:00Sir Thomas Browne as Melville's Crack'd Angel A talk delivered at Dragon Hall for Sir Thomas Browne's birthday (1)
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<a href="https://spectator.imgix.net/content/uploads/2015/06/GettyImages-113626412.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=306&h=413" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="413" data-original-width="306" height="320" src="https://spectator.imgix.net/content/uploads/2015/06/GettyImages-113626412.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=306&h=413" width="237" /></a></div>
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G K Chesterton, who regarded Sir Thomas Browne as a mystic, thinks of him not so much as “a man who reverences large things … as a man who reverences small ones, who reduces himself to a point, without parts or magnitude, so that to him the grass is really a forest and the grasshopper a dragon.” To which he adds: “Little things please great minds.” </div>
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There are indeed delightful passages in Browne on the most apparently minor phenomena such as this personal favourite of mine from his notes on Bubbles:</div>
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“That the last circumference of the universe is butt the bubble of the chaos & pellicle arising from the grosser foundation of the first matter, containing all the higher & diaphanous bodies under it, is noe affirmation of myne; Butt that bubbles on watery & fluid bodies are butt the thinne parts of ayre, or a diaphanous texture of water, arising about the ayre & holding awhile from eruption. They are most lasting & large in viscous humidities wherin the surface will bee best extended without dissolving the continuity, as in bladders blown out of soap. Wine & spirituous bodies make bubbles, butt (not) long lasting, the spirit veering thorough & dissolving the investiture. Aqua fortis upon concussion makes fewe & soone vanishing, the acrimonious effluvium suddenly rending them. Some grosse and windy urines make many & lasting, wch may bee taken away or hindred by vinegar of juice of lemon; & therefore the greatest bubbles are made in fatt viscous decoctions as in the manufacture of soape & sugar, wherin there is nothing more remarkable then that experiment wherin not many graynes of butter cast upon (a) copper of boyling sugar presently strikes down the ebullitions & makes a subsidence of the bubbling liquor. Boyling is literally nothing butt bubbling; any liquor attenuated by decoction sends forth its evaporous & attenuated parts wA talk deliveredch elevate the surface of the liquor into bubbles.”</blockquote>
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What Chesterton so admired in mystics, the revering of small things as emblems of the great, is certainly in evidence here. After all there are few things smaller than a bubble. Nevertheless I very much doubt that Browne was a mystic in any common religious sense. The case I would like to make is that he is not so much a mystic as a scholar poet for whom juxtaposition offers a taste of the miraculous. </div>
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The rapid journey in the passage from Bubbles; from the universe down to vinegar juice and to windy urines, is balanced, in Browne’s phrase on, “thinne parts of ayre”. Those thin parts of air produce, for me, the magical elements of a poetry that shifts with perfect naturalness from one mode of discourse to another. It does so by way of an orotundity that is fully intent on its object while, at the same time, developing inventive personal ways of describing phenomena. That manner of proceeding establishes a fascinating voice that persists beyond the subject itself while remaining deeply implicit in the subject - a voice that, in its comprehensiveness and rapidly moving associations, exercises a powerful spell.</div>
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<!--EndFragment--><br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-38152325171766636622018-07-09T10:16:00.002+01:002018-07-09T10:51:49.774+01:00FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH ELIOT Little Gidding 8 July 2018<style type="text/css">
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I hope you will forgive me for beginning with myself but since I am not a scholar, let alone specifically of T S Eliot, I fear I have little or nothing to add to the academic knowledge of him or his work. You will get that soon enough [<i>Prof Seamus Perry – rather marvellous as it turned out</i>]. Please regard this as a brief hors d’oeuvre or prelude (even Prelude) of an Eliotean kind.<br />
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To begin, therefore, at the beginning I began to write poetry at school, at the age of seventeen, when instead of concentrating on the Physics, Chemistry and Zoology A levels that might have qualified me for medical school I started picking up thin volumes of poetry in the school library as a form of avoidance and distraction. I had no particular preference and next to no knowledge. I was of a refugee family without any substantial collection of books at home. I had dropped English Literature at O level. Poems were, if you like, another form of refuge. And sometime, soon after, following a conversation with a friend and fellow student, on the spur of the moment, I made up my mind to be a poet.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I tell you this to set a background for my reading of Eliot, to whose work I was introduced three years later, at art college in Leeds where I was studying Fine Art, hoping to become a poet and painter. The man who introduced me was Martin Bell, a poet deservedly well known in his day and, undeservedly, less well known now.<br />
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Martin came in once a week on a Wednesday afternoon and those interested in poetry could go to his room on the third floor and engage in discussion of the poems he put in front of us. Having begun my reading in a chaotic manner, lurching this way and that in my tastes over the three years, without any guidance, the poets that most appealed to me before then were a miscellaneous bunch: Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Keats, Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Lovell Beddoes and the French Surrealists, particularly Jacques Prevert, Robert Desnos and Max Jacob as well as the Liverpool Poets and others of the time. Most of these I discovered, some in translation, through the cheap paperbacks then published by Penguin or second-hand in book shops. The surprise was that my taste in the French surrealists and Rimbaud was echoed, as I was to discover on our first meeting, by Martin Bell’s own chief loves. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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But Bell was, above all, an admirer of Eliot and it was he who introduced me, and indeed the few others who attended his sessions, to Eliot’s work as well as to Lowell, Wallace Stevens, John Crowe Ransom, Alexander Pope, Sylvia Plath, and many others.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Eliot struck the deepest chord. It is, perhaps, strange that that should have been the case. Strange for me, a poorly read painter with English as only his second-language and, more importantly, one born of a Jewish family that could immediately recognise itself, according to Eliot, in those figures squatting on windowsills who were ‘spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp, / Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London. I myself was spawned in Budapest and was certainly patched and peeled as a boy in London. I was supposed to be of the same tribe as Rachel who was busily tearing at grapes with murderous paws and with the Jew who was underneath the rats and everything else on the Rialto. <br />
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It didn’t seem to matter. All that has since been explored by Anthony Julius and others and I don’t intend to make a meal of it here. I wasn’t going to let anti-Semitism stand in the way of the intoxication and overwhelming importance of the poetry, a poetry that, for me, transcended such things. What its power seemed to show was that it wasn’t opinions that mattered but some hidden, barely conscious form of life that produced its own gifts, its own voice and register, a voice proposing that the sense of the world was not the same as a view of the world.<br />
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It was the early Eliot that first grabbed me and it is that excitement I want to focus on today. It is the anxious, apparently assured, but fragile, broken Eliot, the man whose imagination had emerged from a mental explosion and was still covered in clumps of earth and splinters of glass, that I want to conjure. <br />
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It wasn’t so much the magisterial tone and mysteriously bitchy and twitchy high-brow quatrains of some of the 1921 poems, poems such as <i>A Cooking Egg</i>, <i>The Hippopotamus</i> and <i>Mr Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service</i> – smart, clever poems - that grabbed me, though they did leave a mark: it was, despite the anti-Semitic references, the high and low comedy of <i>Sweeney Erect </i>and <i>Sweeney among the Nightingales</i>. It was Sweeney meeting Agamemnon, and Sweeney meeting Ariadne. It was the comedy, the music and the elusive heave and depth of quatrains like:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>Paint me a cavernous waste shore</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Faced by the snarled and yelping seas,<br />
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Display me Aeolus above</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Reviewing the insurgent gales</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>Which tangle Ariadne’s hair</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>And swell with haste the perjured sails…</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But why was it so powerful? This was the first big step in Eliot for me and frankly I did not know what the poem was about but I took to heart Eliot’s view that poems could communicate before they were understood. What after all was ‘understanding’? Was it knowing references, reading codes and solving problems? Was a poem a problem to be solved? I didn’t think so – did not <i>feel</i> so - but even if that were the case – and knowing and reading were certainly useful once the poem had communicated<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>- not knowing things was no barrier. Something ran underground, some hidden line of power, something perhaps like the oldest subway line in Budapest that you can’t see at street level, but whose vibration you can still feel beneath your feet. Maybe that is what poetry has always been: a rumbling under your feet. Let me read the whole of <i>Sweeney Erect:</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">PAINT me a cavernous waste shore</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Display me Aeolus above</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Reviewing the insurgent gales</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Which tangle Ariadne’s hair</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> And swell with haste the perjured sails.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Morning stirs the feet and hands</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> (Nausicaa and Polypheme),</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Gesture of orang-outang</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Rises from the sheets in steam.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">This withered root of knots of hair</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Slitted below and gashed with eyes,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">This oval O cropped out with teeth:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> The sickle motion from the thighs</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Jackknifes upward at the knees</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Then straightens out from heel to hip</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Pushing the framework of the bed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> And clawing at the pillow slip.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Sweeney addressed full length to shave</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Knows the female temperament</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> And wipes the suds around his face.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">(The lengthened shadow of a man</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Is history, said Emerson</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Who had not seen the silhouette</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Of Sweeney straddled in the sun).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Tests the razor on his leg</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Waiting until the shriek subsides.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The epileptic on the bed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Curves backward, clutching at her sides.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The ladies of the corridor</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Find themselves involved, disgraced,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Call witness to their principles</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> And deprecate the lack of taste</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Observing that hysteria</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Might easily be misunderstood;</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Mrs. Turner intimates</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> It does the house no sort of good.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But Doris, towelled from the bath,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> Enters padding on broad feet,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> And a glass of brandy neat.</span></div>
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Part of that rumbling was the music, the sound-world of the verse. It made a gorgeous clashing noise in my inner ear in, for example, the consonant play of the first stanza: those bold anfractuous rocks, those yelping seas, and the wind blowing through the second stanza, where ‘Aeolus above’ is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>‘Reviewing the insurgent gales.’ The wind rises in the very name of Aeolus and is whipped to a frenzy by ‘reviewing’. These together constituted the sharp whistle of those insurgent gales driving the sea surge. The word in<i>surge</i>nt contained the <i>surge</i>. Language was doing double duty. This was more than clever: it couldn’t simply be filed away as workmanlike onomatopoeia. That wind blew through the very bones and must have arisen from the very bones of the poem.<br />
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Secondly, and just as important, was that which I could not then contextualise but which reeked of an urgent other world of histories, myths and precisions. They were in one sense – in their mysteriousness - the equivalent of the Georgian poet W J Turner’s ‘Chimborazo, Cotopaxi’ and ‘shining Popocatepetl’ names that in his popular poem, <i>Romance</i>, took Turner by the hand as a boy. But Turner’s exoticisms were moments without much foundation. The names in Eliot were the noise of a substantial, dense world, a world with import, within not without me, pressing at nerves, touching on sensitive spots. Even an essentially uneducated young man who, at twenty, had yet to write a half-decent poem could feel that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">It was a world that could also accommodate Sweeney and the landlady, the incident of the razor, the epileptic figure curving back, the shriek subsiding and finally the towelled Doris who enters padding on broad feet, bringing <i>sal volatile </i>and brandy neat. In fact it <i>had</i> to accommodate them in order to balance the poem. So an ambiguous low comedy that wasn’t quite comedy, at least no more comedy than one of those drawings of post-first world war Berlin by George Grösz, a comedy that, in this case, ended with the image of Doris, a character out of some domestic farce that might however turn sinister at any moment, a comedy that spoke of the graceless body rather than of the spirit, completed the register of a world in which anything could and did happen at once.<br />
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But all this was only preparation for <i>The Waste Land.</i><br />
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My personal condition in terms of literature, and poetry in particular, was somewhat better prepared by then than it would have been even a year or two before but it was still pretty scant. Yet, if I had to say what it was drew me to <i>The Waste Land,</i> as it did to much if not all of Eliot, it was the sense of recognition, a recognition of glimpses and glances. <i>The Waste Land</i> seemed to me a strange yet familiar world of ghosts, fractures, visions, terrors and anxieties, sudden unspecified desires, hot intimate tensions, apocalypses, panics, rapid changes of direction, half-heard echoes and a fierce dramatic sense of constant presence as if simply too much were happening all at once and that that too-muchness was the world. <br />
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I was, of course, fascinated by the various quotations and associations with regard to which Eliot made a few gestures in his notes. By this time I knew a little about the Fisher King, the Sybils and about Ezra Pound, could trace ‘Mein Irisch Kind’ to its source in <i>Tristan und Isolde,</i> had some kind of handle on Webster and Dante and Baudelaire, and had read a good deal of Shakespeare (I was secretly educating myself through primary texts). I had actually trodden Margate Sands in our first few months in England in 1957. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But while all this minimal, supplementary knowledge was of help in setting the narrative of the poem into some kind of order, it was never the supplementary knowledge – which, of course, I realised was not supplementary to Eliot but was the shattered archipelago on which he found himself<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>– but the direct insurgent gale of the verse and those intense brief voices and visions that, as they say, blew me away – and still does.<br />
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We know of course, through the drafts edited by Valerie Eliot, out of what chaotic flotsam and jetsam the poem arose and, from the various biographies, at what tension the material spurted out, in fragments and passages, the whole poem not one great planned-through voyage but one drowning after another, its narrative pruned into a kind of thematic coherence by Pound.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But, if there wasn’t one single overarching narrative, what was it that drove the poem?<br />
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I did once ask Martin Bell what he thought <i>The Waste Land</i> was about. Sex, he leered, and that made a certain sense: after all there was all that uncertainty about sexuality, about Tiresias, about the invitation of Mr Eugenides, the Smyna merchant to a weekend at The Metropole, about what happens on the floor of that narrow canoe, about the terrible edge-of-hysteria domestic scene with Vivienne, or indeed those arms downed with light brown hair in <i>Prufrock</i>, the daunting sexual power of Grishkin in <i>Whispers of Immortality</i> and, of course, the fear of impotence right at the beginning of <i>The Waste Land:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i> those burnings, those deserts, that drowning.<br />
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All that made a good case, especially to a Freudian-Marxist like Martin. Nor could I, or would I even now, deny the claims of that reading.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is clearly there. But <i>The Waste Land</i> draws its power from other sources too. From the visions of destruction in the First World War – <i>Prufrock</i> had been dedicated to Jean Verdenal <i>mort aux Dardanelles</i> – from the poem’s terrible regrets, from its loss of one identity after another, from its desperate desire to seek shelter in Christianity or some other religious domain, from its evocation of mystical hallucinatory states, from the Buddha balanced by Madame Sosostris, from those trawls along city streets and along rivers and canals. In other words, from the sheer bursting energy that is always at the point of exhaustion. <br />
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I would like at this point to read the last section of <i>The Waste Land</i>: <i>What the Thunder Said</i>. Here we begin with the last days of Christ, the crucifixion, with the road to Emmaus which then passes into the apocalyptic, possibly end-of-war view of nations including Europe, and an extraordinary vision of a vampire-like horror amid bats with baby-faces (a scene I immediately recognised from the nightmares of my childhood), before heading for the final exhaustion in thunder, to Ganga, through the Upanishads, to evocations of the themes of earlier Eliot poems and passages, the desolation by the Thames and that welter of cries from Dante, the Hymn to Venus, Gerard de Nerval, Thomas Kyd and then that final childlike rocking to and fro – Shantih, shantih, shantih - by way of consolation or faint hope.</span></div>
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<br /><a href="https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/waste-land-part-v-what-thunder-said"><b>WHAT THE THUNDER SAID</b></a> <i><b>(I read this. but the link to the Poetry Archive gives you Eliot reading it himself)</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">For me, it is as if, like all great art, <i>The Waste Land </i>were taking place in a continuous present. Furthermore, in my own condition, that present was entirely enveloping, full of echoes that shook me without my knowing quite why they did so. Perhaps I recognised the revolutionary Budapest of 1956 with its bullet and shell scarred buildings in those falling towers; perhaps the woman who drew her long black hair out tight was an incarnation of my mother and her black hair as she turned away from me to brush it; perhaps the voices of Eliot and Vivienne in the room and those of the group down at the pub echoed some experience of hearing my own mother and father at a point of tension and the presence of overheard unfamiliar others engaged in their own lives in some social space.<br />
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Perhaps all this was personal, or some core of it was. I chose to concentrate on it here because of its significance to me then, But also because the world it conjured is never quite dead. Not even now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Since we are at Little Gidding, a poem that harks back to themes in The Waste Land, I want to end with a few lines from Part I that seem appropriate to me in terms of the condition in which we find ourselves even on a day like this.</span></div>
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… There are other places</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Which also are the world’s end, some at the sea jaws,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city –</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But this is the nearest, in place and time,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Now and in England.</span></div>
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George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-65430910327285725582018-06-25T22:00:00.001+01:002018-06-25T22:00:36.808+01:00Worlds on Orwell and Writing:1 Political Purpose<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: red; font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;">Poet as Journalist and / or Insurrectionist</span><br />George Szirtes</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">“What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.” - <i>George Orwell, <b>Why I Write.</b></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">In previous years I felt no impulse, as Orwell put it, “to make political writing into an art”. As a poet I would secretly have agreed with Auden’s <i>In Memory of W B Yeats</i>, where he says that poetry makes nothing happen but survives in the valley of its saying, a way of happening, a mouth; and would have argued that that precisely was the point of poetry, that it did <i>not</i> set out with a specific intention to achieve an aim, but was deeper, more various and more troubling than that: an intuitive enquiry, through language, into some kind of intuitive truth.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">And I would have backed that up with Keats’s feeling that we hated poetry that had “a palpable design on us”. Poetry was not an advertisement for our views but an exploration of the nature of things, standing at an angle to action, not a spur to it, or means of it. That which Keats called ‘negative capability’ seemed to be the whole <i>raison d’être</i> of poetry..<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">It wasn’t that I felt that poetry should be closeted away from the public world but that its necessary engagement with it would be on other terms: as witness, clown, or prophet. Auden himself, in the same poem, suggested what the witness role might be when he wrote:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>In the nightmare of the dark<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>All the dogs of Europe bark,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And the living nations wait,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>Each sequestered in its hate…</i></span></div>
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That I understood very well. That was just the kind of Europe I was born into in 1948. It was journalism not agit-prop I liked and instinctively practised.<br />
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Hungary, my land of birth, has, like her neighbours, a nineteenth century tradition of revolutionary poetry, usually by poets very highly regarded at home and almost unknown elsewhere. Such poetry would usually go with a stirring tune like the Marsellaise and it would be as much the tune as the words that would enable the song to function as an anthem, as a kind of Liberty leading the people on the barricades. The trouble is that both sides of a conflict have anthems: for every Internationale there is a Horst Wessel song: the fierce absolutist moods they conjure have much in common.<br />
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There was an alternative way of addressing politics of course, as developed under Stalinism, either as samizdat and therefore dangerous, or couched in terms of fable, or surreal anecdote. The Penguin Modern European Poetry series of the 1970s was packed with examples of it in poets like Herbert, Holub, Bobrowski, Popa and so forth. Its excitement lay partly in its wit and sense of danger. We in Britain had next to no political pressure to say or not say such things: unlike, say Akhmatova or Mandelstam, we risked nothing. Our readership was not united by fear, poverty or other forms of repression: ever more they were disunited, free-floating political entities.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">There was class of course and regionalism, issues addressed by poets like Tony Harrison, and a lighter form of sharp but knockabout partisan politics as written and performed by Adrian Mitchell. Later we had Benjamin Zephaniah and Linton Kwesi Johnson.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But all these were poets writing as representatives of class or ethnic groups. I was not of any coherent British group: the more the groups were located the more I felt a permanent refugee visitor, an outsider.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">I was suspicious of most things that presented themselves as obviously and absolutely right and in relation to which one had to demonstrate that one’s heart was in the right place. Not that it was in the wrong place but that the demonstration<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>always seemed on the edge of a dangerous, mob-rousing falsehood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">It was, I thought, different for fiction: novels, by virtue of their interest in character, action, and setting, were bound, in one way or another, to be political. They could embody views. Not necessarily in the polemic sense that <i>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</i>, Upton Sinclair’s <i>The Jungle</i>, or Orwell’s own <i>1984</i> did but simply in that they were about action: what people did and what happened to them. Poetry was a more philosophical form, concerned less with the moral imperatives of what happens next, more with the very nature, in Auden’s terms, of happening.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Although I would have argued this then, and still could, I feel less secure with the argument.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Too much is happening now to be secure of anything. Too much has changed. Hungary, like much of Eastern Europe, has turned against our notions of democracy. The current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, announced his preference for what he calls “illiberal democracy” at a party summer camp some four years ago. The ‘illiberal’ part of that may be construed as simply an extreme form of social conservatism that despises qualities such as tolerance, diversity and the freedom to think and articulate one’s thoughts in public. There are echoes of this elsewhere in Europe, in Russia, Turkey, China, the USA and here too. Events move fast: the trajectory, it seems to me, is steep.</span></div>
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What can we, as writers, do in the face of this?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>I have openly expressed views on platforms such as blogs or Facebook and have written articles in various branches of the press including The Guardian, most particularly on the reception of migrants and about Hungary, for which latter I receive foul but low-level abuse. It is low-level because I am simply not that important. But it’s worth noting that I don’t write those articles specifically as a poet. I am simply a writer who has some specialist knowledge of Hungary. Being a poet is secondary. <br />
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The poetry part of it is difficult. The trouble is that the poetry I have written on the subject, or at least that part of it which strays beyond the journalistic sense of Auden’s dogs barking in the dark, is not necessarily good poetry as I have long understood and felt it. Sometimes it is what I like to think of as a wittier kind of doggerel with pretensions to genuine satire but writing it feels as though I am weaponising that which, at best, goes unarmed and naked. <br />
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The leads me back to the tension between what Orwell called aesthetic enthusiasm and political purpose. The poem that Orwell himself provides in his essay is a lively if heavy-footed example of it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>A happy vicar I might have been<br />
Two hundred years ago<br />
To preach upon eternal doom<br />
And watch my walnuts grow;</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>But born, alas, in an evil time,<br />
I missed that pleasant haven,<br />
For the hair has grown on my upper lip<br />
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.</i></span></div>
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It’s fun but he did not persist with it. The pre-Spain Auden of 1935 was doing it far better in his <i><b>Beggars Song,</b></i></span></div>
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"O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges<br />
To dine with Lord Lobcock and Count Asthma on the platinum benches<br />
With somersaults and fireworks, the roast and the smacking kisses"<br />
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Cried the cripples to the silent statue,<br />
The six beggared cripples.<br />
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Last week I was at Lumb Bank tutoring developing poets among whom was a seasoned foreign correspondent who had spent extended periods in Liberia and Rwanda reporting on the carnage there. Having come back he was turning to poetry to find a way of understanding events of which he had given factual accounts. It seemed vital for him to do so. The poetry is harrowing but formal and disciplined. It is not polemical. It is another kind of reportage as filtered through memory and the wounded imagination.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">But the combatants in those wars were listening to different songs and different words, such as those sung by revolutionary maid, Jenny, in Brecht’<i>s <b>Dreigroschenoper.</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>…And hundreds will swarm ashore around noon</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And will step into the shadows</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And catch all those folk by their door</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And bind them in chains and bring them before me</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And ask: Which should we kill?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And when they ask, who has to die.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>People will<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>hear me say: All of them! The lot!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And as each head rolls, I'll whisper: Hopp-la!</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And the ship with eight sails</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>And fifty cannons</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><i>Will sail off with me.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Alle! Hopp-la!</span></div>
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It is extraordinarily powerful, the power behind the polemic. Hearing it I feel ashamed and terrified and excited all at the same time. I no longer trust myself. I dread and envy Jenny.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Hopp-la! Hopp-la!</span></div>
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</style>George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-79554079846596890802018-06-25T13:14:00.001+01:002018-06-25T13:14:26.112+01:00Worlds on Orwell and Writing : 1 Introduction and Political Purpose (1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There
are various reasons one might write. George Orwell, in his essay, <i>Why I Write </i>(1946) suggested
four reasons. These are the four. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">“(i) <b>Sheer egoism.</b></span></em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Desire to seem
clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back
on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to
pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this
characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers,
successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The
great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about
thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live
chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also
the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own
lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should
say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less
interested in money.</span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">(ii)<b> Aesthetic
enthusiasm.</b></span></em><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"> Perception
of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their
right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the
firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an
experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The
aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer
of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for
non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of
margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from
aesthetic considerations.</span></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><b> <em style="text-indent: 30pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">(iii) Historical
impulse.</span></em></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 30pt;"> Desire
to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use
of posterity.</span></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="margin-bottom: 9.6pt; margin-left: 0cm; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 9.6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 30.0pt; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><em><b>(iv) Political purpose.</b></em> — Using the word
‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain
direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should
strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The
opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political
attitude.”</span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">E</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ach
of Orwell’s reasons was the subject of a pair of provocations in the form of ten-minute
thoughts or riffs offered for general discussion.<!--EndFragment--> Those discussions took the form of eight conversations, two on each of Orwell's reasons. </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">‘Conversations’
seems the appropriate word because unlike, say, a formal enquiry or academic
conference, conversations can range far and wide and the ostensible subject can
develop in a variety of ways. Like a creature growing legs it may scamper off
altogether elsewhere. But that’s the joy of conversation: it releases startling
ideas and possibilities.<br /><br />The conference was a sum of those provocations, possibilities, focusings and scamperings-off, with Jon Cook in the Chair and I as the recording less-than-angel. This is the record as a took it, editing it as best I can, trying to mark all the main points and hoping to be true to the character of the sessions.
<!--StartFragment-->
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The last shall be first it was
decided and political purpose took precedence. There may be all kinds of
reasons for this, including our heightened awareness of frightening political
developments in many parts of the world at the same time.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First Provocation: Political Purpose 1</span></b></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since the first paper was given by me, it is hard to give a proper account of
the discussion that followed but at the heart of the provocation was a
practical question. How does the writer respond to worrying developments in a
given political situation as a matter of urgency? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Writers may of course lobby
or collect signatures for petitions (as indeed I did) but one needn’t be a
writer to do that. What does help, if one has access to the press, is the
raising of issues through articles. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For poets, however, the provocation
suggested, quoting Auden and Keats, there may be a problem in the very
nature of the medium, something that resists its utilisation for a set
political purpose. There were of course
revolutionary anthems and, under repressive conditions, as in thirties Russia
and in post-war Eastern Europe, poems of subtle and ironic political
resistance. The provocation showed a certain distrust of the former. This was
not to suggest that poetry should not deal with politics but that it should be
wary of being used by specific groups as propaganda.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Political purpose, as Orwell defined it, consisted of the desire to push the
world in a certain direction. Was poetry the right vehicle for that?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">*</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The discussion that followed did
not focus on the specifics of poetry – there were few poets in the room - but
concentrated on the ways different kinds of politics might be addressed by
fiction and non-fiction, looking away from the urgency of the practical issue
at hand (in the case of the provocation, as situated in Hungary) towards the
deeper roots of what constituted the moral and political imagination and the
fierce moral currents surging through contemporary literature.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There was talk of the relationship between art and propaganda. There was
discussion of Orwell and gender. Who is the writer, the ‘I’ that makes the
observations, that is at the centre of events. Does the figure that does the
observing represent anyone else, some other group. We considered revolutionary poetry in, say
South America, the work of Shelley in <i>The Masque of Anarchy </i>as both a direct
response to a political event but also as a disruption of a courtly form and
its shifting onto a democratic sphere.</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-45740077948900002372018-05-02T16:02:00.000+01:002018-05-02T16:03:21.900+01:00Redneck<br />
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<a href="https://i1.wp.com/straightstoned.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Trump-Supporter.jpg?resize=550%2C300" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="550" height="217" src="https://i1.wp.com/straightstoned.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Trump-Supporter.jpg?resize=550%2C300" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
How it might go among the rednecks<br />
<br />
You and your folk have been here for generations. Sometimes they did well,
sometimes less well. You had your family ways and your community ways. You
weren’t great at school but you had some skill so you could either do what your
folks had done before like work on the land or at the factory or the warehouse
or on the road or rail; you could heave stuff, drive stuff, climb stuff, fit
stuff, mend stuff. And because this got dull at times you drank on a Friday or
Saturday night, sometimes other nights too, the rest of the time there was the
wife, the kids, the sport on TV or visits to malls. Folks in the city might
think you were dumb but you managed.<br />
<br />
Then times changed. You lost your job or had to transfer, things got tense at home
which led to more drinking and to the occasional fight which, according to you,
went both ways. There was a lot less money and everything cost more. You were
beginning to rot away and resenting it. Now you weren’t considered just dumb
but also reprehensible. Your old religion, if you had any left, your old
attitudes and whatever other ground you stood on, and some of it might have
been pretty bad ground but you don’t want others, especially smart privileged
people telling you that (and as time went on they told you that more and more)
was eroded. You were not only worthless but a drag on ‘civilisation’. Your
attitude to race was deeply wrong (even just the jokes, maybe especially the
jokes), your attitude to women, especially the smart women, was not only
reprehensible but wicked, contemptible even (don’t even start a joke about
that).<br />
<br />
And of course you are told you have been gifted with white male privilege. The
person telling you this is a middle-class educated young woman or some smartass
guy who is repeating her line. You are, they tell you, the most privileged
creature on earth. You have, they tell you, been exploiting and treading on
everyone especially that nice, angry middle-class girl with her nice apartment,
nice car, nice clothes and nice career. You, according to her and her kind,
including the presidential candidate, are in fact nothing but yet another bad
broken egg in a basket of deplorables. <br />
<br />
Then along comes one rich smart guy called Trump. And he ignores those that
despise you and ignores all they stand for. He farts in their faces. He tells
some home truths and some lies but even the lies are a kind of hitting back.
And you want to hit back because you still don’t have a job, you still live in
a slum, you still can’t afford health care, you still drink and scrap, and as
for the environment, the environment is where you live and where you must
scrape some kind of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This life is
not much like the lives of those used to swimming with dolphins.<br />
<br />
And you do have a gun if nothing else. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>those others – the liberals – they have nothing to say to you and never
have had. Who you gonna shoot? Yourself? Others? Maybe no one at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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-->George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-91163039138823735692018-04-06T15:54:00.000+01:002018-04-06T17:13:22.136+01:00All Too Human Tate Britain 26 Feb - 27 Aug 2018<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.creativeboom.com/uploads/articles/72/72f56086d20385cdf91e5832b61c847160ede78e_1100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="698" data-original-width="800" height="348" src="https://www.creativeboom.com/uploads/articles/72/72f56086d20385cdf91e5832b61c847160ede78e_1100.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jenny Saville; Reverse 2002-3</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The show is a survey, if necessarily incomplete, of what the catalogue deems to be 'painterly' approaches to the human figure by artists in Britain from Walter Sickert through to Jenny Savill, Celia Paul, Cecily Brown and LynetteYiadom-Boakye (which last room, apart from the marvellous Paula Rego then covers the lack of women and diversity, apart from F N Souza, elsewhere), the exhibition dips its feet into Sickert and Stanley Spencer, Chaim Soutine (is he an artist in Britain?) and, slightly oddly R B Kitaj, whose presence I welcome partly because he tends to get a bad press now for reasons I'd like to explore in the light of this show and partly because I was a fan of his work as a young working artist myself.<br />
<br />
Putting aside Bacon for now, the major figures to emerge are Freud and Rego, with Bomberg, Auerbach, Kossof and Michael Andrews in the rank immediately behind, though Jenny Saville's enormous single work, Reverse, is major enough to guarantee a prominent place for her among the others in the exhibition. I have never been able to develop a serious liking for either Ewan Uglow or William Coldstream whose concentration on recording simply doesn't engage or move me.<br />
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<br />
<br />
The pre-eminence of Freud and Rego is based upon their mastery in drawing with paint, and their unerring sense of the potential of the human figure. The human figures, in their work, are subtle but profound articulations of our condition. In Freud it is as if flesh and paint were the same thing. He seems actually to be making the flesh before our eyes. In that respect the artists he shares most with are the later Rembrandt, Rouault and Soutine, who must be in the exhibition only because his treatment of flesh and paint bears some relation to Freud and Auerbach's use of the medium. The condition in Freud is essentially a raw animality that is emphasised by the inclusion of dogs. 'We are such stuff as dogs are made of' is the underlying perception. We are vulnerable animals with basic appetites: we are made of the same paint. It is a deeply haunting perception.<br />
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<a href="https://www.creativeboom.com/uploads/articles/07/07fced9662e466a5a858f41d7d826e7e3bac727b_1100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://www.creativeboom.com/uploads/articles/07/07fced9662e466a5a858f41d7d826e7e3bac727b_1100.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Rego's figures are products of will and muscle. They are seldom if ever relaxed because should they ever relax they would immediately become victims. The price of life is constant tension. This, like Freud's, is a version of people in animal terms but their engagement in life is not purely through the body but through psychological perceptions. The paint in Rego is not quite like Freud's in becoming total nakedness: it is essentially descriptive but the description itself has a fearsome physicality. Rego's great predecessor in terms of drawing is Goya, her figures short, feet firmly planted, heavy-bottomed, fully earthbound, pressing against the ground. There are also hints of Beckmann and Balthus in terms of draughtsmanship and the handling of paint, but she stands clear of them.<br />
<br />
<br />
The big difference - and this is why I am writing the blog - lies in the use of narrative. Rego's works are, and have from the start, been based on narrative. The pictures tell stories, not overtly, not in clearly traceable referential terms, but with personal fields of reference, in personal retellings of preceding, iconic stories. Freud's do not present narratives. The studio<b> is </b>the narrative. People enter, remove their clothes and slob out without ever quite relaxing. That is the story. They slob out in their different ways, imposing different presences on us, but they do not invite a more detailed speculation. They are existential figures inhabiting an existential space.<br />
<br />
The twentieth century critical preference has been towards the non-narrative, the kind of painting that does not refer to events outside the painting or, if they do so, do it in obscure, metaphorical terms. The public has tended to feel different. They are not purists and like a story, so Grayson Perry suits them to the ground. So, for similar reasons, does Rego. The sneer at art schools in a certain period was that some particular painting was not art but <i>illustration</i>. It was like programme music as against symphonic form.<br />
<br />
In an age of deconstruction and theoretical reading the narrative has made something of a come-back, at least in political terms, and there is less elevation of what seem to be abstract values. The new narrative reading is not based on the popular idea of narrative-as-anecdote (it will never want to be popular in <b>that</b> way) but it still wants to use image as text.<br />
<br />
I am putting Francis Bacon aside as he is his own constant interpreter. After the war, in the immediate shadow of the bomb, the sense of mere physical existence - man as a poor bare forked animal - had come to the fore. Flesh was disturbing in its vulnerability and its own tendency to horror. Bacon focused on the horror and the physical, fleshly, caged beauty of that horror.<br />
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<br />
Bomberg, Auerbach and Kossof use paint like soil and press it this way and that so you feel they are trying to emerge out of a morass by sheer force, constructing the world as blunt, deep, flawed matter. Narrative-as-story or anecdote is of no interest to them. It is the physical world that has to be remade after so much violent unmaking. Michael Andrews grows more on me at every viewing. There is a sadness and glow to his best work that I find appealing.<br />
<br />
Celia Paul should be much better known. She emerges out of Kathe Kollwitz and Gwen John in my mind. She is on the Freud side of the equation not the Rego or Kitaj.<br />
<br />
Kitaj has suffered the worst of both the anti- and pro-narrative critics, chiefly because his narratives are relatively clear, high-serious, and literary and that combination associates him with a would-be-significant sort of 'illustration'. Some of that may be true but I don't care. What he is looking to articulate seems to me important and the ways he does it are intriguing. Besides, after roomfuls of narrow palettes based on earth and flesh he is a wonderful blast of colour.<br />
<br />
Interesting to note, in the light of our struggles with nationalism, how many of these artists were either not born in Britain or came from immigrant families.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-10493556834522948732018-04-06T13:18:00.002+01:002018-04-06T13:19:16.807+01:00What I am Losing by Leaving the EU 3<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.prruk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/andy-davey-2016-little-englander.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="800" height="286" src="https://www.prruk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/andy-davey-2016-little-englander.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I am not in any position to consider the economic repercussions though I should say I feel none too assured by those who would assure me in the heartiest tones. Good. I hope it works. I hope there is no growth in unemployment, no great rise in prices (er, there already is), no jobs that can't be filled for lack of those willing to do them, no hospitals denuded of EU citizen staff (85% of those tending to me at Papworth were EU agency staff). I hope that the atmosphere of hostility to foreigners does not intensify towards non-Europeans, that there will be no rise in hostility to Commonwealth, African and Asian citizens. I hope for all the good those promising good hope for, bar of course the extensive privatisations some have in mind.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I feel pretty sure I am losing the confidence of European friends who live here and European friends elsewhere. Those who are leaving are disappointed. Some are wrecked. Some are having to break up families. This is not some calamitous vision of the future. It is happening now. And when I go there, with my brand new patriotic all-singing all-dancing blue-black passport (and possibly my visa) I will come as a member of the divorced side of the family. We sued for divorce, we got it, we weakened you, where is my warm welcome and big hug? We told them we would be so much better off without them. They are civilised people of course and will be polite enough but something a little awkward will follow our progress.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And what sort of England will be left? I say England because that is where I am, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. A little smugger, a little more on the defensive, a little more likely to be hostile, to be living out the tail-days of its imperial history with an uneasy mixture of guilt and pomp.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I will continue to love it for all it has been to me. I will be counted among those who will defend it against wilder accusations. I will be prepared to perform the foreign anglophile role because, in many respects, that is exactly what I am.</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But it will be more work and a little hollower because what I loved was the England I have grown up in. I never loved it because it was the seat of all virtue. I loved it because it seemed - and was - accommodating, slow to anger, not prey to demagoguery, and actually rather humane and kindly in its personal dealings whatever its offices or corporations did. Those seemed worthwhile qualities. I am curious to see what will happen to them.</span></span><br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-46469684036475976462018-04-06T13:13:00.003+01:002018-04-06T13:13:59.815+01:00What I am Losing by Leaving the EU 2<br />
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/1_K_zone.png/220px-1_K_zone.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="220" height="400" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/21/1_K_zone.png/220px-1_K_zone.png" width="273" /></a></div>
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">That loss, not just for me, but for many other Remainers I expect, is essentially symbolic but it has political, social and economic aspects.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">We live in a globalised world in which global powers - some national, some supra-national, some sub-national - exercise great influence. Very few conflicts of interest or conflicts generally can be restricted to the local turf on which it is fought. Even a regional conflict, broad as that may be, hasrepercussions very quickly felt beyond itself.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Europe may be one thing and the EU another but they are not entirely distinct: there is a considerable if hard-to-define overlap. Europe as the EU is a political entity as well as an economic one. There are common interests - some economic, some political, some cultural - represented in it. Europe, broadly speaking, is under the umbrella of NATO and, less formally, the USA but the USA has its own interests and NATO may not be as effective as it was in the old dispensation with the old technology. Some form of solidarity is more than desirable; it is vital. Europe as a political entity is weakening and becoming worryingly fragile in the east, is unstable in the south and is now losing us in the west. I understand all kinds of security arrangements may continue to exist after we leave but they too will be more fragile, more fraught, more vulnerable. Are we stronger, better and more secure divided? No one ever is. Whom might we be divided against? You name it, any of the great powers would do, as would - thanks to technology - some fairly minor ones.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Brexit, from a geopolitical perspective, looks like part of a process of decadence and self-delusion to me. This is where the nostalgia brigade - the WW2 imagery, the Churchillian rhetoric, and the references to traitors and mutineers - seem, well, quite mad to me. As the song in Ghostbusters went: Who you gonna call? The empire? the Commonwealth? Yankee Doodle Dandy (the most likely, possibly only candidate)? Good luck with that Buccaneering Boris, D-Day Davies, and Roaring Rees-Mogg. Let's get those Captain Mannerings into shape!</span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">What about you, Jez? If we are nice to everyone (except Israel of course) will everyone be nice to us? Not my experience, comrade.</span></span><br />
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span class="s2"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-53898329988193718582018-04-06T12:55:00.002+01:002018-04-06T12:55:57.256+01:00What I am Losing by Leaving the EU 1<br />
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<div class="p1">
<br />
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I thought I had better ask myself this question if only that I might articulate it to myself more clearly by articulating it to others.</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In some respects, possibly in the mostly important respect, it is a symbolic loss. Symbols matter because they concentrate a set of related meanings into something concrete. And because that is what a poem does let me begin with a poem (originally a set of three).</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">*</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="s2">I am citizen of an overdressed republic</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">that knows itself as more than an illusion</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">and will keep donning clothes and moving on.</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">Sometimes I think I too am overdressed.</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">I think I should strip naked, walk the street</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">with nothing on, and face the filthy weather</span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="s2"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="s2">we emerge from. I think I is another</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">as we all are. I think it’s getting late</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">and dark. It’s hard to see. I smell the dust</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">that’s everywhere and settles. I know it mine.</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">I am in love. I am standing at the station</span><span class="s1"><br />
</span><span class="s2">waiting to board. I’m not about to panic.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><span class="s2"><br /></span></i></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">*</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The notion of Europe is a matter of identity - a complex 'overdressed' identity. That identity is far from a model of virtues. Europe has both a dark and bright history and my family and the people to which that family belongs - Central European Jews, rootless cosmopolitans - has experienced plenty of the dark side and will probably never be at complete ease with it. But neither are we - my family, my people - models of virtue. We are no more virtuous or innocent than any mortal. But the history is that we have been obliged to move from place to place, from country to country, often by force, sometimes deadly force. So nationalisms - that naturally exclude - always worry us. British nationalism no less than Hungarian nationalism than the nationalism of any nation. No sooner have we decided to assimilate and resolve to be of the nation than the nation wants us out and, it turns out, has always regarded us with suspicion.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Nor is the dark side of Europe entirely restricted to those who are already part of it. Through empire building and colonialism it extends far further. But - and this is important - not AS Europe. Colonialism was never a common European project. It was competition between nations drawing on commonly available resources. European ideologies certainly played a part but nations did not act in concert, in the name of Europe.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Europe in general, however, has usually - not always - offered us - and here I return to my specific tribe - alternative homes. It is a terrain we recognise, to which we have contributed and with which, therefore, we feel an affinity. Without Jews no Christianity. Besides, we are, traditionally, people of the book, and the book represents culture. We are part of it: it is part of us. Products of hand and mind are shared. When we are loyal to the nations in which we live we understand that the nation is not, culturally, an island. It has many specific characteristics, no doubt, characteristics that also become part of us. These local streets are our streets too, our fields and our institutions in that they represent us. They are quite specific objects of love and concern. But we know that at any time they might decide to throw us out.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">So, to some degree, our - I should now say 'my,' though I am not religious, not of a religious community, and very rarely consider myself as distinct entity separate from any that might read this page - attachment to Europe is a matter of insecurity.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I grew up with Europe as well as with England. I have grown through Bach, Mozart, Beethoven as well as with Vaughan Williams and Elgar and popular music and all the hybridities of literature, art, craft, any culture comprises. In football I support England and Norwich because that is where I live now. If I lived in Scotland I would possibly support Raith Rovers simply because I like the sound of the name, just as I also support Manchester United because of its historical associations. I am - like most people reading this - both local singular and universal multiple.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But I admit the insecurity. I feel am losing something valuable and vital to my personal existence in Europe. I am being torn from it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The EU is not the same as Europe of course, I realise this, but the referendum was never about the technical issues of EU membership. It was about much more. It was also about love, or a certain love relationship, a being-in-love relationship with an idealised object as the poem implies at the end.<br /><br /><i>[to be continued]</i></span></span></div>
<br />George Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.com0