10: The Song of Roland.

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Then Song of Roland is reputedly one of, if not the actual, oldest of the medieval French chansons de geste, or songs of deeds.

The Penguin Classics version I am using is a translation by Dorothy L Sayers. I wonder how much she relished the gory details: the brains dribbling from Roland’s ears, the bowels gushing out of Archbishop Turpin’s side, the scalp cloven to the brains etc etc.

The Song first made its appearance in this form in the thirteenth century, shortly after the First Crusade. This is important because, although it is based on an actual incident in 778, the twist in the chanson de geste version is very important.

The actual incident concerned King Charlemagne, and his being approached by Saracen rulers in Spain for help in dealing with a mutual Saracen enemy. He agreed and entered Spain with them, conquered two major cities, and was besieging Saragossa, when he was called away. He left Spain via the Pyrenees pass of Roncevaux. Here his rearguard was attacked by Basques, who slaughtered them to a man, and left with their goods. It was Basque territory.

The version in the geste has the Saracens the enemy throughout, and the attack on the rearguard an agreement between a renegade Frenchman and the Saracens. The composer of the piece, like his audience, knew next to nothing of Islam, and so we come across some absurdities, some crazy assumptions.

Dorothy L Sayers was well aware of this; it was, as she says, an ignorance shared by Islam of the Christian faith, that the Thousand and One Nights shows similar crazy assumptions about Christian worship.

It is very important to remember that Count Roland of Brittany was the nephew of Charlemagne, and that it was rivalry with his step-father  – as in the old folk tales – Ganelon, that caused his death.

The Song of Roland consists of 291 ‘laisses’, that is, stanzas, of varying length. They all follow the same strict metrical pattern, however: this is syllabic verse, and each line is strictly ten syllables in length. The final syllables in every separate stanza are linked through assonance; each stanza has its separate rhyme scheme. All the lines are strongly end-stopped – there are no  enjambments. The main stresses of each line fall on the fourth and tenth syllables. As you can see, this was a very tight construction – and to keep it up for 4000 lines was quite a feat.

The first appearance of the chanson was as one of many legends and tales that circulated on pilgrim trails, and in local courts and gatherings. At just about 4000 lines it required quite a feat of memory. And so the tale is structured in such a way, with parallels, repetitions of motifs, events etc, to enable the reciter to be able to tackle the rather detailed subject matter fully, and with skill.

Whether it is a ring-structure or not, I cannot as yet tell. What do you think?  -

There are a great many paralleled motifs etc throughout. They are not, however, evenly divided between each half. There are indeed two distinctive halves:

- the first gives us the build up of the Saracen plot,

- and the second, after Roland’s death, the resolution, through the intervention of Charlemagne.

This intervention of Charlemagne is paralleled with the arrival of the Saracen Emir. The first battle consists of a run of descriptions of hand-to-hand combat where Saracens die; this, after the intervention of King Marsilion, is paralleled with a similar run but where the French soldiers die.

When Ganelon receives the commission from Charlemagne to act as envoy to the Saracens, he is offered the King’s glove, but it is dropped. When Roland receives commission to act as rear guard for the troops returning to France through the pass, he is given Charlemagne’s bow, and there is no incident. There are many such patternings in the piece.

The storyline is roughly as follows:

Saracen King Marsilion in Saragossa wanted Charlemagne and his troops out of Spain. He asked for a plan.

The plan was to promise that all the Saracens would convert to the Christian faith because they could not keep the up fight with Charlemagne any longer. They would send sureties, and agree to meet with Charlemagne in his court at Aix, in one year’s time. We find there was a reason for this delay, but later in the tale.

An envoy was sent out to Charlemagne. Roland said No, to the deal, but his step-father Ganelon said Yes. His reasons were more convincing: and Roland had a reputation as a hot-head.

Ganelon was sent out to test the Saracens. He met with Blancandrin, then King Marsilion, and in a long discussion came to an agreement that he would say they are trustworthy, if they attacked and killed Roland for him.

Back with Charlemagne Ganelon wangled Roland into being the rearguard of their exit from Spain.

They exited through the pass; at the last minute Roland and his rearguard were set upon by a huge Saracen army. Roland had a horn to blow in case of need, but refused repeatedly to use it.

12 Saracens boasted they would take Roland singlehandedly. In the fight all but 2 were killed, in single combat. Roland had 12 Peers of the French nobility as backup.

When the battle was joined fully the French won initially; when King Marsilion joined the fray it all turned against the French.

At last Roland blew the horn. Doing so exhausted him, weakened him. Charlemagne heard the distant sound, and Ganelon tried his best to dissuade him from turning back; by this time the battle was going very badly for the French.

Roland blew it a second time, after his second-in-command Oliver, was killed. The third time he blew it, the Archbishop Turpin was killed.

Although the Saracens were routed by then, Roland had received his fatal blow, and died. He broke the horn killing the man who attacked him as he lay dying.

Shortly afterwards Charlemagne arrived on the scene. He set troops to guard the bodies, then set off after the Saracens, and slew most.

King Marsilion was badly wounded: he had lost a hand, and died slowly. Not before reinforcements, sent for sometime previously to this, arrived from the East.

Charlemagne returned to the pass, and funeral and burial rites were recited for the slain. As he was about to depart the renewed Saracen host came upon them. The preparations for the battle were the same as the previous battle.

The fight was long and very fierce; it was decided in a hand-to-hand fight between Charlemagne and the Saracen Emir. Charlemagne was wounded, but slew his adversary. At which the Saracen host fled. They were chased, and slain: ‘No prisoners!’ Those who escaped went to Saragossa. Charlemagne besieged the city, and took it.

He eventually returned to Aix. Ganelon was tried, his case decided by hand-to-hand combat, and he lost. He was committed to torture, and death. Charlemagne’s troops returned to their homes.

St Gabriel appeared once more to Charlemagne, asked him to rouse his troops, there was another fight to be fought, at which:

“God’, said the King, ”how weary is my life!”

He weeps, he plucks his flowing beard and white.

This is the end. You do feel for him at this point!

 

And so –

You could say: the Song starts with Ganelon’s betrayal, and ends in his death.

You could also say that Ganelon’s betrayal played a major part in the ‘turn’ of the Song  – I would place the ‘turn’ on the blowing of the horn: it is from here that Roland is weakened as much by his efforts in blowing as the battle itself.

And Ganelon makes efforts to dissuade Charlemagne from responding to the horn. He was immediately arrested, and his trial and death set from there.

If this is so, then that is a major classic ring-structure turn.

But what about the opening scenes where King Marsilion and Blancandrin cook up their tactic?

If that is the opening of the ring then you could say that delayed promise is the major element:

- the delay of 1 year before joining Charlemagne at Aix – and to allow the armies from the East to arrive,

- the delay of Roland in blowing his horn: Oliver repeatedly asked him before the battle began (all those deaths could have been avoided if help had arrived in time ie when Oliver asked him – but then, Roland was known as a hot-head), and

- Charlemagne’s delay in executing the next battle that St Gabriel demands of him.

This one appeals most because the audience’s empathy is called upon to a greater extent, in order to recognise, and to emphasise the structure.

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One part that does especially fascinate me about these structures, are the degrees of perception, of listening awareness, demanded of the audience. One can imagine listeners competing to be the best and quickest to spot these structural elements; and to engage in and enjoy the discussions and counter discussions, around them. These would suggest an early, and maybe kinder, form of critique of the pieces.

Once the opening is set then the reciter can lift a strand from it to be the main element of the ‘turn’; and similarly at the ending. The piece can be ‘spun’ for each performance – although keeping all the elements, the re-emphasising of minor themes over the usual major ones could be quite possible.

In this respect, remember in Beowulf, the second ‘funeral’ section is a restructuring of a known tale that we also have, The Fight at Finnsburgh. In Beowulf we see the episode from underneath, as it were: not the glory of the victors, but consequences for the losers.

This, of course, is nothing new: Euripides was doing it in 415 BCE, with his Trojan Women, a drama about the consequences of the loss of the Trojan war on the women of the Trojans. The warriors, of course were out of it, dead, but the women…? Queen Hecuba a slave; to a king maybe, but still a slave. She would maybe have been one of the luckier ones: young women of the enemy: I would not expect much quality of life in the aftermath (to put it mildly).

Of course, there is another possibility: that by the time, 1200 or so, the Song was composed, the structuring by ring had been forgotten, lost or superceded, and what the composer of the piece was left with were half remembered constructive features.

It is certain the Song is constructed in two halves; it is certain there is a ‘turn’ – what is not certain, is that it is constructed as a chiasmus. There does not seem to be a build up and retreat using the same devices, motifs etc.

All the parallelisms and repeated patternings seem to be on a linear basis, rather than circular.

Alternatively the dynamic of the piece could be so well incorporated into the text, and its many details of characters and events, that it is not readily accessible to the reader. As I said above it could well be solely the province of the reciter to bring out structures, whether linear or circular.

This is appealing, because it hands back the work to the people – this is the province of the professional storytellers. And it is ground only recently being re-explored by Jack Zipes, and workers with modern storytelling.

The Book of Matthew by Matthew Welton, and Other Matters

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‘London sundays’

Snatches of summer in afternoon parks

are probably now as good as it gets.

Meeting beneath the clock that never works

then sloping off homewards as the sun sets

behind the bandstand must be the closest

anyone can come to finding again

the good, good feeling that will last and last

like a child’s holidays. Dusk comes. Then rain.

And love never really feels like some craze

that hits like gin, buzzes like Benzedrine,

and smells as good as coffee. In some ways

all it has to be is something between

a half-funny joke and some old rumour

from somewhere around, that arrives unrushed

like boredom, wears on like a bad winter,

and which spreads through rooms like sunlight and dust.

 

First of all we are alerted by the tenses used here: it is ongoing event: we have the memory and its commentary; we have an easy use of language that is part colloquialism, part advertising parody (as good as it gets), (smells as good as coffee). We also have the reference to Benzedrine usage: maybe what we are to read here is ‘street’ i.e. a current demotic that indicates no-nonsense concerns, concrete imagery, and sometimes ornate language.

So, Love is… and what he gives us is nothing like the glorified magazine experience, but something a bit more down to earth, something, as he says not crazy, but something more comfortable without losing its magical ability: and which spreads through rooms….

The rhyme scheme is particularly interesting, rhyming ababcdcd; but all a’s and c’s are consonantal rhymes, whereas b’s and d’s are assonantal. This gives a good flow to the piece, the rhythm not held to pause and pivot on any particular word or sound. The last stanza’s c-rhyme, ‘rumour-winter’ just about links on the r.  As an English writer, compared with a Scots’ writer’s pronunciation, Welton’s ‘r’ is light; the feeling of euphony is increased by this suggestion of rhyme. Rhythmically both rhyming words click together nicely, their ‘feminine’ endings suggestive of similar degrees of certain moods.

We get the regular rhyme scheme, the regular rhythm, and a de rigueur yet non-insistent iambic pentameter.

We must also note the lower case of sundays in the title. Already this alerts us to a something not strictly regular. The lowercase opens up the week to allow in expansiveness.

- Poetry’s ‘street cred’ is a tricky affair: in Simon Armitage it is mostly in the truncated rhythms; in Paul Farley more choice of subject matter. Glyn Maxwell’s ‘street’ has elements in common, like any contemporary writer hoping to make the scene, with music styles: there are the methedrine-tight rhythms and micro-beats of his middle period. He sets up semantic expectations, what used to be called ‘subverting the cliché’, and then twists further.

“The two things I am most concerned with in my writing are…” writes Welton, “: making music out of the sounds of words, and exploring the meeting-points of tradition and experiment.”

When we come to the long ‘Book of Matthew’ poem itself, things get rather complicated. It is a series of variations on a basic structure; thirty-nine variations in fact, of six ‘classes’, divided unequally into ‘sections’, and into ‘divisions’ within sections.

Class one: Abstract relations

Section 1: Existence

The wind around the orange-tree

brings on the smell

of nutskins mixed with whisky

mixed with lemons or rain,

and carries through

the grasses where the flowers

in the sun redden a little

……………………………………

…………………………..

 

becomes:

Section two: Relation

The wind around the orange-tree

brings on a smell

of caramel and kedgeree

or rubber or gum,

and carries through

the orchards where the flowers

in the sun gladden a little

…………………………….

…………………………….

 

: the language, parts of speech, producing stranger and stranger modes and sensual descriptions as the sections play out.

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I am reminded by this enterprise of Inger Christensen’s Watersteps, which takes us through five Roman piazzas, each with a fountain, and the same red car. There are eight similar ‘classes’ each with five ‘sections’, one for each piazza; and each ‘class’ has five components. This is a rigorous math.

One other common element to these two enterprises, besides strict mathematical gaming; a likeness for a continental weather setting, American, and/or greater-European; is a great value put upon sound, a euphonious quality to the poems.

Christensen has often been connected with the French Oulipo group. Although not a signed-up member, it can be seen that she uses many of their techniques. The most decisive are the use of strict mathematical superstructures, and insistence upon quality of sound.

And as I have demonstrated, both use a similar Oulipo approach. So, what do we have to positively connect Welton with Oulipo? We have this:

Dec 2008

‘A poetry event reflecting on the beauty and usefulness of mathematics, featuring Paul Fornel, French poet and member of the Oulipo Movement dedicated to the creation of Mathematical Poetry, Ross Sutherland, a specialist in computer-generated poetry, and Matthew Welton, whose poetry is admired for its structure and form.’

Ross Sutherland, member of Aisle 16, has recorded for Radio 1 a remarkable feat of a poem which uses only words consisting of the ‘o’ vowel, throughout the piece. If this reminds you of the George Perec novel, A Void (English title: and do not miss the pun), which in French completely avoids using the letter ’e’ in all words, then you’re on the right track. This usage also has particular meaning within the novel.

Oulipo is all about constraint:

Oulipo, the “Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle” or “Workshop for Potential Literature,” was co-founded in Paris the early 1960’s by mathematician and writer Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais. Oulipian writers impose constraints that must be satisfied to complete a text, constraints ranging across all levels of composition, from elements of plot or structure down to rules regarding letters. Oulipo thus pushes a structuralist conception of language to a level of mathematical precision; technique becomes technical when language itself becomes a field of investigation, a  complex system made up of a finite number of components. The informing idea behind this work is that constraints engender creativity: textual constraints challenge and thereby free the imagination of the writer, and force a linguistic system and/or literary genre out of its habitual mode of functioning…

One of the many listed Oulipo experiments is that of using multiple perspectives to explore a given situation. One published example of this is B S Johnson’s novel, House Mother Normal (1971), which offers a perspective per chapter from each of the members of a nursing home, in explaining (or not) the event of the story.

You cannot but wonder about Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book (1860), where the members of a court case each give their evidence, full of conflicting events, asides, and all the riches of the personalities involved.

Oulipo does acknowledge predecessors, designating them “anticipatory plagiarists” (: Mind Performance Hacks). One Oulipo virtue is a mischievous sense of humour.

Other successful texts include:

Queneau’s Cent Mille Millard de Poemes, a sonnet where there are 10 possible choices for each of the 14 lines, thus comprising 1014 potential poems….

Another possible equivalent experiment to ‘The Book of Matthew’ is Douglas Hofstadter’s book, La Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language (1997), which takes us through multiple translations of a single sixteenth century French poem, with greatly diverse results. How Oulipo is Hofstadter?

Another experiment in constraint used by Oulipo members is that of…

 

‘the S+7 method, where each substantive or noun in a given text, such as a poem, is systematically replaced by the noun to be found seven places away in a chosen dictionary.’

We enter the field of hermeneutics here, I think; and code-making.

Welton has said in interview:

As a reader and a writer I am always looking for stuff I haven’t come across before….

And, more importantly:

I’m far less interested in a prescriptive idea of teaching how to write – teaching dialogue or genre or form. I’m more interested that they come to terms with the relationship between their working processes and themselves.”

 

From this I think it is safe to assume we will not find Welton a paid-up member of Oulipo either.

So, how Oulipo is Glyn Maxwell, with his constraint in avoiding the regular placing of the main verb and definite article, in the poems of Out of the Rain, (1994)? We may also consider Simon Armitage’s Book of Matches (1993) where the constraint is one of time: the time it takes for a match to burn down is the time it takes to read the poem.

I think we have established now that many writers dabble with Oulipo techniques sometimes without knowing, and without becoming bona fide members.

Welton’s own playfulness brings in a deliberately skewed take-off of Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market:

Vodka she likes. Whisky also. And plums. And limes

And lemon-peel. Fried fruit. Dry beans. Deep soup. Warm

                                                                                        cream.

                        from ‘This is Delicious to Say’.

 

There are also distinct echoes of Wallace Stevens.

The gorgeousness of colour and sensual delight has a Modernist painterly feel; there is a Patrick Caulfield quality: almost like reading a John Stammers book cover. Having mentioned Stammers, let it be said both writers share a similar aesthetic of fine rhetorical flow, and where rhythmic, euphonic values, seem to take priority.

Overall this book has a disorienting effect, its sets up phrases, descriptions, and delivers something else; something slidey, shiny, scintillating.

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As we work through the ‘Book of Matthew’ piece, we get finer and finer distinctions of smells, or of smell-possibilities. This emphasis on smell, as well as the clear colour palette, adds up to the bright modernist painterly feel previously mentioned.

But do we? Is it not rather a purely textual piece: the smell distinctions as listings; the possibilities of smells as multiplying phonemes? Does this account for the giddiness we feel on reading the book as a whole? A rootlessness of meaning. The significance is intact in the tight structure; this gives us a sense of equivalents that are more textual than semantic.

What does the ‘Book of Matthew’ tell us about our lives, our world, our here-and-now? Need it tell us anything? All meaning is implicit in the act of using language, of evaluating appearance; in the phenomenology of our lives in the world.

Does it earn our trust? Do we go with it as a true record? What are its underlying discoveries/apprehensions? Trust, true-record, underlying discoveries: at what point did the commentator think these became relevant, a way in? The answer is, Afterwards, after reading. There is the poem, and there is the afterwards: there is the anticipation when approaching the poem, and there is the buzzing traffic of the mind afterwards.

For some writers, Ron Silliman perhaps, it is maybe their intention to meld anticipation, and the traffic, into the moment of the poem so there is only the poem: see Silliman’s Alphabet.

Maxwell in Time’s Fool (2002), has gone on to attempting the verse-novel (another nod to Browning perhaps?), and Sugar Mile (2005), a narrative for voices.

Christensen’s Butterfly Valley: Requiem  (2003): a series of fifteen conventional sonnets front further wonderful experiments in form.

And Welton?

… I will be publishing a new book with Landfill.

His recent book is We Need Coffee But, with Carcanet.

He has also published a number of chapbooks.

9: THE SEVEN VOYAGES OF SINBAD

The basic arc of the 7 Voyages is that of the story of the Porter, Sinbad, and his gaining of knowledge, wisdom, and, let’s not forget, entertainment. Financially he does very well out of it too: he is given 100 gold coins every story he attends.

- The Porter begins the series of tales, bewailing his lot as a porter of heavy goods. Stopping for a rest by a wealthy merchant’s house, he finds himself invited in, is introduced to all, and introduces himself to his host: Sinbad, a merchant and sailor. For six subsequent days he arranges his work around further audiences at the house so he can hear the tales the host has to tell. At the end of the whole tale he is a happier and wiser man: ‘The porter remained a constant visitor at the house of his illustrious friend, and the two lived in amity and peace…’.

There are many translations of the tale; a translation is, almost by definition, a version of the original. When we get to re-tellings of extant versions you get an idea of the variations possible through the ‘Chinese whispers’ of versions, and  versions of versions. For this study I went back to the version by Sir Richard Burton, 1885. One of the first, if not the actual first version in the Western world. The problem with this version is that it is part of the Sheharezade story, which keeps  coming in at ‘inappropriate’ moments in the storyline, in the form of breaks in the narrative, then resumptions, reputedly the following night.

- The merchant Sinbad’s story is as follows: he was the son of a wealthy merchant; upon his father’s death he inherited the fortune, and led a carefree and extravagant life. Pulled-up short by the realisation he had nearly squandered it all, he converted the last into merchandise and went out into the world to rebuild, or rescue what he could of his fortune.

There follows seven trading voyages, which turn remarkedly odd.

The main thing in favour of this version I am using is that it is still possible to discern an overall pattern to the voyages, which becomes lost in later versions

- the earlier voyages are voyages of acquisition: Sinbad’s whole intent is to regain wealth through trade.

-the latter voyages are decidedly voyages of exploration.

What is gained by exploration? Knowledge: of market-resources, trading-terrain, of conditions, regions and customs. But also an invaluable network of colleagues and contacts. What is gained is trust, honour and esteem. Wealth is only a metaphor for knowledge: worldly wealth, and spiritual wealth mirror each other in the overall tale.

So what happened to change matters? As you can guess, there is a central voyage where all changes – because, yes, the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, are structured in a ring.

Each tale has a repeating pattern of shipwreck, loss, or abandonment; and resolution. This last can come from the restitution of goods/fortune from a previous voyage; or earned honours from the present voyage.

Each tale ends as it begins with the merchant safely back home and turning once more to an indulgent lifestyle. Each tale employs a change of circumstances in the middle section – each tale is a complete ring in itself. They all add up to the overall ring of the Seven Voyages.

The changeover, in the fourth tale, is very well marked, and prepared for: it is a death experience. Where before, surviving shipwrecks and other catastrophes had been the case, in the fourth tale he is by custom of the land lowered into the grave pit with his dead wife, and a small supply of food, as well as the grave goods. That he survives is due to his total abasement: he must kill all subsequent burial spouses, and steal their food supplies. He escapes his death-experience by following a carrion-eating animal’s tunnel to a bleak shoreline. He has become that animal almost, crawling on all-fours. He brings out bales of grave goods as loot.

When he is rescued by a passing ship he offers the captain a priceless pearl, but the captain refuses: it is a matter of honour that he was recued, and not acquisition: honour is more important than wealth.

In the fifth tale, when Sinbad is rescued once more, the rescuers respond with friendship, recommending him to some workmen: ” Here is a shipwrecked stranger; teach him to earn his bread and Allah will reward you!’ This sets the tone for the remainder of the tales.

The changeover is marked, in the third tale, by escape from a huge serpent, by way of hiding inside a coffin he constructed from ship’s planks. We get a foreshadowing here of the death-experience to come.

So, how chiasmic are the tales?

In Voyage 1 he sets out to sea; the ship sets down at an island, which turns out be a long-basking whale. All escape but Sinbad. He drifts penniless to another island where men take him in; he helps them with their task of luring sea stallions to cover a land mare: the resultant horse is very highly valued. He is taken to their city and introduced to the king. He becomes a trusted courtier, and wealthy merchant; he learns all about the Brahmin and the castes of India. He finds a ship home, regains his initial merchandise, returns home.

I parallel this with the last one:

In Voyage 7 he sets out, the ship is wrecked by a whale. He ends up on an island where jewels glitter and liquid amber flows; the crew die of hunger one by one. He is about to give up himself, but makes a raft to see where the river would take him. He is rescued in the nick of time and taken-in by an elderly merchant. He becomes rich, marries the merchant’s daughter. After the old merchant dies he discovers he was from elsewhere, that the inhabitants of this land, pleasant as they are, are all worshippers of Satan. They leave, with their fortune intact, and return home.

We have the whale motif again, and the friendly inhabitants. This latter contrasts with the early voyages where the inhabitants of other lands are anything but friendly. There is also a religious dimension: the Brahmins, and Indian castes, are here paralleled with worshippers of Satan. A bit harsh,perhaps? Both sets of people are very pleasant, and indeed honourable. They just have this unfortunate  focus at the centre of their lives, that is not Muslim.

In Voyage 2 he sets out once more, is abandoned on an island: the ship sails without him as he falls sleep beside a stream. In the distance is a huge egg, he recognizes it from tales as that of the Roc bird. It arrives at sunset. In order to escape the island he ties himself to it, is taken far away to a cliff top. He unties himself and the bird flies off. Below him are huge serpents, but also priceless jewels scattered about. The serpents hide away as the sun rises, and he hides, inadvertently with one: it sleeps in the cave with him. He loads himself up with the jewels. During the day sheep carcasses are thrown down to stick the jewels to their bloody skins. He has heard of this too; ties himself to one. When the local people retrieve the carcasses he his shunned as an evil spirit, until he is able to convince them otherwise, with his payment of jewels. He is taken to safety and exchanges some jewels for merchandise, sails home trading successfully.

Parallel this with:

In Voyage 6 the ship becomes lost, and eventually wrecked on an island. It was scattered with previous wrecks, and bales of merchandise and treasures.  His crew members die one by one amongst all the wealth and precious jewels scattered about.; he himself builds a raft to allow the river to take him away, hopefully to safety. When he wakes he has been rescued. His rescuers marvel at his tale, take him to their king, who takes him in. He becomes a royal courtier in time. He becomes a kind of ambassador for his own monarch, Haroun al-Rashid, and is allowed home with all honours, a fortune, and his story embellished in gold.

The motif of treasures for all to take is repeated here. There is always a price, though. Jewels are, by themselves, useless, that men starve whilst surrounded by such wealth. In Voyage 7 his rescuers value highly the raft he escaped on. This can be read as the valuing of to one person a trifle, on another, of a possibly strange and miraculous object. The raft receives very high bids as it is auctioned – because it is made from rare Sandalwood.  This also is a highly meaningful image: the raft, the means of survival, and that it is the valued sandalwood, with all its ramifications of allegory. We also see here a paralleling of the honour and esteem Sinbad receives in the latter part of each voyage.

Voyage 3 gets nastier: ship wreck this time involves going off course, and being invaded by apelike creatures from an island, who steal the ship. Inland of the island they discover a huge, well-equipped house where they shelter. It is the house of a giant, who eats them one by one, one per night. They resolve to escape: build a raft during the day, and that night they blind the giant. As they drift off he appears with his mother and hurls rocks at them; some drown, and some escape with him. The next island is the abode of a giant serpent, which also eats them one by one. Sinbad escapes this fate by building himself a coffin out of ship timbers. The serpent cannot break it. Next day he is rescued by a passing ship, the only survivor. In this instance it is he, a man with cunning and wit,  who is picked up by a passing ship, and not an apelike creature as at the beginning of the voyage. The captain is amazed at his tale, and he is reunited with previous goods from Voyage 2.

Parallel this with:

Voyage 5 we once again encounter the Roc’s egg, the island – but a member of the crew breaks it and when the bird returns bombards the ship with rocks until it is smashed. The boat is wrecked. Sinbad lands on an island. There an old man begs him to take him over a stream, which he does. The old man will not let go, though and near strangles him. He has to be carried around like this for weeks, doing ‘his natural filth all back my back’. He is eventually dislodged by trickery, and killed by Sinbad. He is rescued; learns that it was the Old Man of the Sea, that few survive him. He is taken to the City of the Apes where he is encouraged to join some workmen throwing stones at apes in trees; they throw back coconuts, which are collected and sold at market. He makes a good profit and heads for home, trading on the way, hiring pearl divers and amassing a good quantity.

Here we have two major figures; the cannibal giant, and the Old Man of the Sea – both are tests and trials of a sort. In the earlier tale we see his fortunes fall and fall, while the latter sees his fortunes build. Both ships and rafts are bombarded with rocks. We also see here the apelike creatures who steal the ship, paralleled with the ‘City of Apes’, that is, a city built on the wealth the apes provide through their coconuts.

In the central Voyage 4 he not only marries, but becomes the King’s vizier, before his total abasement in the grave pit. I think the question being asked here is: what survives when all else is taken away, even one’s life? It is the life of the spirit, I think. The Fourth Voyage sees all shipwrecked, and the survivors drift to an island. Strange wild men take them to their king; he treats them extraordinarily well; Sinbad is wary, however, and soon finds that his fellow men are being fed adulterated food. They lose their wits, eventually grow corpulent on the fare, and are then eaten, by the king and company. Sinbad grows thinner and thinner. They take no interest in him, and he escapes. On the other side of this vast island he meets a gentle people, who take him in. He provides goods for them and becomes very wealthy by making saddles for their horses, for they have none. As written earlier, he marries, is honoured by their king, then undergoes the ordeal of the grave pit. The ring here centres around the subject of the bestiality of living solely in the physical body. He must die in the body and mind in order to be reborn as someone worthy of his life: the man must ride the body, and not vice versa.

The ‘Seven Voyages’ is clearly based on the Odyssey; both books share certain central characters and episodes. We find in both books the Old Man of the Sea, who plays such a role in Voyage Five. He is surely another take on the Phorcys character in the Odyssey. We also find a Circe story: in Voyage Four, the ship’s crew are entertained by the King who feels them adulterated food until they lose their wits, become bloated and witless creatures. The Cyclops episode is echoed in the Third Voyage down to the giant, and their blinding of him, the giant throwing rocks at their raft as the float away. Odysseus’ communing with the dead may parallel the death-event in Voyage Four. A shame about the Sirens and Princess Nausicca; that could have been interesting. In the Seven Voyages woman do not play any role whatsoever: Sinbad marries twice; his first marriage turns to disaster as his wife died; the second marriage , to the old merchant’s daughter in Voyage Seven, marked their joint desire to escape the company of unbelievers, and a final return home.

And this brings in another aspect of the ‘Seven Voyages’, what the hard-working Porter learns, and what Sinbad the spend-thrift earns: I think maybe what we have is the a vestige of a Sufi teaching tale. Either that, or it is an approximation of one. The tale may have accrued this ‘atmosphere’ as Orientalism became the fashion.

I’m already on strange ground with this – so might as well go ahead.

- Think of the Porter as the mind, going through it’s everyday, then the sailor Sinbad is the heart that sees more, and can learn. The two are in accord at the end, which is the object.

- Think of Sinbad the sailor, trusting his life to the unseen – that is, the sea, the rivers he launches his rafts on –  as the Sheik of the Sufi ‘circle’, the leader, whom the novice must submit in spirit to, must ‘become’ in order to liberate himself from the world, and become wholly ‘spirit’ incarnate. And then see the Voyages as the valleys of the seven ‘nafs’ – see the Qadiri Rifai Sufo Order. They can be seen as the trials and tests one must undergo in order to learn the value and meaning of the true way of being, and to rid oneself of falehood.

There are reputedly three stages of nafs: the Inciting gafs; the Self-accusatory nafs; the nafs of Peace. Is it possible to see the Seven Voyages in these terms. First indications would seem to suggest so. I do not wish to pursue this further; I am not sufficiently versed in the Quran, nor Sufi lore.

So why arrange them as rings? Is this a covert indication of the Sufi circle? As seen previously the ring device is a mnemonic device: once one can remember the way to the heart, the central change , then one will know the way on from there, by repeating various motifs, events in reverse order. Also once one knows the beginning then one has some indication of the nature of the change, and the ending. It is essentially a device of memory.

Memory plays a big part in Sufism, too: to remember, is to remember one’s true nature under the layers of distractions and false fronts that are the world. So, the ring is a device for remembering, but maybe as a Sufi story it is also a device for remembering that the act of remembering is at the heart of one’s self. (I must dig out that copy of Attar’s ‘Parliament of Birds’! Maybe even the ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’?)

As I said, on strange ground!

Notes: Celia Birtwell, Fabric Designer

The particulars of place, and the specifics of persons, are the main grid references in the career of Celia Birtwell.

There are many images for characterising her life: she is fireweed, blown seeds fruiting everywhere; she is honeysuckle, weaving and winding through her time and age to blossom with exotic scents; she is… it has to be a floral/faunal image, especially garden variety.

The grid points depict moments of surges of growth; these are interspersed by, at times long periods of quiet, of underground rooting.

Where the grid points of place and person coincide we see the major growth spurts.

The first grid point is Salford, (Manchester, northern England) the year 1941. You will not find her on the electoral register for that year; it was a year without a census.

Where was her schooling, who were her friends? She has learned that private is indeed private, but that a personal life can become public property.

Our next grid point is Salford College of Art, the year 1956. No records exist of her Textile Design course; I have enquired. Who, again, were her friends and colleagues?

Moving in on another trajectory we find Raymond (Ossie) Clark, Warrington (Lancashire, northern England), 1942: “Born in the middle of air raid!” voluble; lively; tyro. The meeting, ‘The Cona Coffee Club’, Tib Lane, Manchester. It was a ‘bring your own record’ place; already we have the ‘bright young things’; an identity of their own; the age of the teenager. This was Manchester waking up and hopping to a new rhythm.

And so they met, one incandescent and fiery, the other grounded, earthed, maybe a little pagan.

Like any wind that could stir in those static post-war years, it blew south. We next plot them separately in Notting Hill, London, 1961; Celia worked in the Wig Department of the Aldwych Theatre. They were provincials, Northern, working class; they had all the credentials for crashing London barriers. But the confidence to hawk designs around those venerable fashion houses came from set designer Anthony Powell, painter Hugh McKinnon. Her designs sold straight away.

The Clark-Birtwell collaboration became a working reality. We hit 1965, they had dedicated outlets: the Quorum Boutique, London, and stars queuing at the door.

Celia designed the fabrics, and Ossie tailored them into outfits, shirts, dresses. They clothed the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pattie Boyd, Marianne Faithful, Twiggy; later Jimi Hendrix, Telitha Getty, Paloma Picasso. From the fashion aristos to the real aristos.

1969 and the relationship became a marriage, with children. But that was not the age of marriage-with-children. Ossie loved the rock star scene, spent most of his time out there; Celia meanwhile hunted out Vita Sackville-West’s wonderful garden at Sissinghurst, and Kew Gardens; taking notes from Bakst’s Ballet Russe costumes; from Picasso, Matisse. The gaps opened up. They were always there. The marriage fell apart in 1973.

A booming business; a van driver who would one day provide live, happening music: Dave Gilmour pre Pink Floyd; Brian Jones camped out in a flat above the shop.

Paris 1969, and the person entering the graph was David Hockney, bronzed from California, suave from success. He produced the wonderful Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, now accorded Greatest British Painting status.  But the painting shows the strain of the relationship: the cat was not Percy but Blanche; the body language is all askew. It was originally read by the hip art establishment as a depiction of modern marriage: new establishment mores, full of alternative interests and directions, yet stable. She looked in that painting, she said, “too bovine”: she was not that placid, so acquiescent.

After the break-up Celia disappeared from the chart. She had regular work with the Radley label, but time was taken bringing up two sons, one needing extra care, and teaching at Art Colleges. This was the 70’s; and very remedial times where a woman’s, not to mention a mother’s, place in industry and fashion was concerned.

It was not until 1984 we see another grid reference, when Hockney encouraged her to launch once more into the marketplace. And the place, Westbourne Grove, her own shop.

Scoot to 2006 and her fabric and clothes designs for Top Shop sold out completely within forty-five minutes of the store opening its doors.

In 2007 we chart the Elle Decoration Design Award for Fashion Contribution to Interiors. Because her work now covers Fashion, Accessories, Furnishings, Wall Papers. With ranges of Classic, Couture, Jacobean fashions in glorious silks, with pink and gold designs, with silk organza, cotton and linen, sometimes flannel, her work continues to grow, expand, gain recognition.

I have given the grid readings but not the topography; privacy became something of a major concern in her life; she saw what happened to Ossie; the publication of the Diaries was one step too close. She shielded the children from the more lurid details.

The grid points can be read also as loom settings: the fabric woven is rich, strangely textured in places, but in the whole exquisitely pleasing and accessible, malleable and delightful.

She now has the stability, and a client-base to die for. She recently celebrated her 71st birthday.

 

8: SUNDIATA, An Epic of Old Mali

This Mali epic as we have it now is the consummation of a collecting together of oral legends. The legends are based around King Sundiata Keita, who consolidated and expanded the Mali empire; his period of governance was 1217 to 1255.

It is shocking on reading the story, how short people’s lives were.

The role of the griot is central to the story. The griot is the King’s counsellor, he keeps the tribal customs, histories, and musical and oral traditions. To be granted a griot is to be accorded great status. Sundiata is given Balla Fassekeas as his griot. Balla is captured by the sorceror King Soumaoro Kante’, however, before Sundiata comes into his power.

On one level it is a straight forward story of a king growing to greatness, overcoming a formidable enemy, and consolidating a mighty empire.

The telling of the story, however, reveals many levels and complexities.

To give an example of the complexity of storytelling let me show you the finding of Sogolon, Sundiata’s mother:

a soothsayer turned up at  the village of Niani and prophesied to King Naré Maghann Konaté that he would father a great warrior king. Some time later two hunters and a young woman came across King Nare’ and company as they were out hunting. They approached the king and told him this tale: as they were hunting they came across an old woman weeping, she begged them for food, which they shared with her. For their kindness she informed them that she was the spirit of the Buffalo of Do, no warrior could kill her; and she had already killed 77 warriors. There was only one way to kill her, which she told to the hunters, and gave them the requisite tools. They were to take the body to the local king who would be overjoyed and grant the one who killed the buffalo a choice of a wife amongst the women-folk of his town. But, the old woman said, they must only choose the ugly one with the hunchback; she also was an aspect of the buffalo woman. This woman would give birth to a warrior king. After telling the King this they presented him with the woman, Sogolon  Konde. She was the one the old woman said; the king married her.

As you can see from this we have a story within a story within a story: three levels of story. Add onto this the symbolic level: the Lion king marries the Buffalo woman.

The whole movement of the epic is based on two arcs superimposed and conflicting with each other, one where we build up to Sundiata’s eminence, is contrasted with his unfortunate beginnings: we have the auspiciousness of his prophecy and the inauspiciousness of his actual childhood.

Sundiata grows up unable to walk; the King in desperation marries another wife. This sets up all sorts of jealousy and supremacy problems between the wives. Sundiata is seven before he can stand and walk. Just before this time the King has died, and Sundiata who is supposed to be his choice, is judged physically incapable, and he and his family relegated, ridiculed, and subjected to mockery and increasing hostility.

As soon as Sundiata can walk he quickly learns hunting skills, warrior skills. All along his mental acuity has been high, his kindness supreme. The old kings’ new wife plots against him: she hires nine witches to catch him out and curse him; his kindness towards them, not knowing who they are, wins them over. He is warned of the plot.

Sogolon takes her family away for safety. She finds that many tribal kings have been bribed to turn them away. They travel out of Mali and into Ghana. There they meet kindness. It is when the travel to Mema that the old King takes them in. He has no children himself, and warms greatly to Sundiata. In all they spend six years with him. Sundiata grows into a strong and tactical warrior.

While in exile, however the sorceror King Soumaoro Kante’ has grown strong, attracted many followers, and moved in on the Mali tribes, and capital Niani.

Representatives from old Niani travel around in search of Sundiata. When they find him at Mema they tell of what has befallen Mali. Sundiata vows to return and destroy Soumaoro. The old king refuses to let him go. It is at this time that Sundiata’s mother, Sogolon; dies. The old king accuses Sundiata of being ungrateful, and a turncoat. Sundiata is a very powerful warrior by this time and commands most of the old king’s men. He has to let him go back. He takes half the king’s men with him.

As he returns many tribal people who resisted Soumaoro join with Sundiata. There are three main battles (and one night sorte), each time Sundiata is victorious but Soumaoro escapes using sorcery. The pursuit is long and bloody. It is only when Nana Triban, Sundiata’s half sister by his father’s new queen, and his own griot, join him, that he learns the way to defeat Soumaoro’s sorcery.

He is defeated, but not captured. Sundiata levels his city of Sosso; he re-enters Mali a victor and grants land and livings to all loyal tribes, shows mercy to the defeated, and rebuilds Niani on a greater, grander scale.

When we understand the dynamics of the story it shows itself as structured as a classic ring:

Chapter

The First Kings of Mali                -               Eternal Mali

Buffalo Woman                             -                 Niani

Lion Child                                       -                 The Division of the World

Childhood                                       -                 Krina

Lion’s Awakening                        –                 Nana Triban and Balla Fasseke

Exile                                                -                 Return

The turn is:       Boabab Leaves

These chapter headings will not mean anything to anyone who does not know the story (except perhaps Buffalo Woman, as outlined above).

The First Kings of Mali explores the history of old Mali prior to the period of the story. Eternal Mali follows up into the future, following this period.

Buffalo Woman (above) is paralleled with the chapter Niani, which deals with Sundiata’s rebuiling of his birthplace on a grander scale. Both his mother’s origins, and his birthplace of Niani, show the  disparity of tribes and people’s they contained; and how all divided peoples are reconciled in the rebuilding of Niani on a scale that can incorporate all.

Lion Child deals with the auspicious signs around the birth of Sundiata: the coming of Sundiata. The Division of the World with the coming into power of the prophesied King in his home land, his justice and his mercy.

In the Childhood chapter we see the humiliation and loss of prestige of Sogolan Konde in the Kings’s household, his taking of another wife; then, after the sayings of a soothsayer, the return  of Sogolon to favour. I parallel this with Krina, the last battle fought against Soumaoro because it is here Soumaoro at last openly declares war on Sundiata, as his father’s other wife does on his family. In this declaration of war there is a ritual verbal humiliation contest between both sides. This is similar to the constant humiliation and comments Sogolon and family undergo. And it is here that Soumaoro at last loses his sorcerer’s power to Sundiata and retreats, similar to Sogolon choosing exile.

Lion’s Awakening sees Sundiata’s family relegated from the main house, on the King’s death: their final humiliation, and Sundiata’s rise. Sologan accuses Sundiata on the basis that he cannot bring her boabab leaves as other children to their mothers as a token of love, honour. Sundiata at last rises, stands upright for the first time, and instead of leaves, brings her the whole tree. Already we see his prodigious strength, as well as sense of honour. In parallel, when Nana Triban come to Sundiata, she brings recompense for his years of humiliation: she believed in him despite being married off to Soumaoro, and to spite her husband brought the secret of his undoing to Sundiata. With the return of his true griot Balla Fesseke, Sundiata attains his true station, his completion as Warrior King.

Exile sees the family flee from danger at the new wife’s court in Niani. They have to leave Mali altogether because all local kings have been bribed to reject them. We see here, also, however, lasting friendships being made which pay off on his return. Return sees the return of the true King, with mighty army, and joined by the friends made in his youth and journey out.

The turn, Boabab Leaves has a very neat framing device. We see them received at the Mema court at the end of Exile. All are well received, Sundiata especially. The King actually speaks the Mandingo language, the same as Sundiata and family. This is important, it emphasises the connection. The King has no sons of his own, and Sundiata becomes a surrogate of sorts. It is here he learns the arts of warfare, shows his already latent skills, is even made a Viceroy. At the end of Boabab Leaves we see this warrior who the King has fostered and helped develop, want to leave. He refuses him the right.

From eager reception to bitter refusal of permission, and recrimination.

At the centre of this are the two representatives from old Niani, searching for Sundiata to deliver Mali from Soumaoro. They find him through the device of offering boabab leaves for sale in the market. They are unknown/not valued in Ghana. But they are in Mali. And so Sundiata learns the news. Sogolon dies here; there is a wrangling over her grave site. This focuses the theme on the importance of one’s home, home ground. The need to return.

We see in the storylines the conflicting themes of greatness, and humiliation, reflected on both Sogolan’s family, and on the city of Niani, as it is destroyed by Soumaoro: each reflects the other. This is a standard device in high story telling.

I think I have made a strong argument for a reading as a ring structure.

Mary Douglas’ argument was that such structures could be seen to be organic, in that the patterning of parallels, and rings, is due to the organising structure of our brains.

I cannot go along with this; for me it must be cultural. What connections can there be, then, between the predominantly middle-east cultures who used these structures and, say, a Mali epic? This was my question when I chose this work.

The writer references Alexander the Great throughout the piece as the acme of the Warrior King. The organising of the piece was by a writer familiar with some form of cultural, written, historical diversity. And a middle-eastern one at that.

It was shortly after the time of Sundiata that Mali expanded further, taking in among many areas the city of Timbuktu. In later years this city was to be become a major trading centre, and centre for Islamic culture and learning. The whole area fell to Moroccan invasion in the sixteenth century.

In the nineteenth century Mali became part of the French colonial expansion, only gaining final independence in nineteen-sixty.

As can be seen Mali’s sharing in the culture and fortunes of the Islamic, as well as the Western world, has been long and influential. Mali has been part of the sphere of literacy from early times.

‘Notes from an Odd Country’ by Geoffrey Grigson

Was a time I lived for a period in Bolton, a Lancashire ex-textile town. In my time  there it was making the most of its ex-ness by becoming a hub of academia.

One consequence of this was its outstanding public library. Nor were Bolton’s credentials solely based on this remaking of itself: the library archives housed an extensive collection of letters from a Bolton literary society (before such corresponding societies were disbanded by Government order for suspected fostering of sedition in the long aftermath of the French Revolution). The recipient, and correspondent? Walt Whitman.  The collection of letters and photographs is housed under the heading of the Bolton Whitman Fellowship, as they styled themselves.

That public library had more wonders in store, or should I say ‘stock’: some I bought up as I left the area, and the library, like most, sold off stock to make way for new.

And for the overall depletion of library services; to turn into what we have now – a rather sorry service. Anything of note now has to be requested from the central lending library, for a fee.

You have to know what you’re looking for, and how to look for it. All those fortuitous finds of books, materials, you had no idea existed…all that surprise and wonder, has gone.

One of those ‘treasures’ was a book, “Notes from an Odd Country’, by Geoffrey Grigson (Macmillan, 1970).

Grigson was… an awkward bugger; but by design, I think. I could tell you things, but… another time maybe.

He started off well: in the 1930s starting with his wife the most important poetry magazine of the decade, New Verse. The library archives also had originals of this magazine too.

New Verse was the main podium for the most energetic and lively writing of the period, W H Auden, Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender. Wyndham Lewis, pre-Blast, was a close friend. Anyone who was anyone…..

The story behind ‘Notes…’. was that circa 1968 Grison was driving through France to meet his family in Venice… No, re-wind, that was Seamus Heaney, same time or near enough, similar route too:

The smells of ordinariness

Were new on the night drive through France:

Rain and hay and woods on the air

Made warm draughts in the open car.

…………………………………..

A combine groaning its way late

Bled seeds across its work-light.

A forest fire smouldered out.

One by one small cafes shut

…………………………………..

(‘Night Drive’, Door into the Dark, 1969).

And most of those small cafes have gone now, sold up about ten or more years ago.

No, the Grigson family were driving across France (enroute to Italy?). What they found was a small side river off the mighty Loire; this was the Loir (no e), and the small village of Troo. Cliffside dwellings in Troo  appeared to be … cave houses? On closer inspection they were old and abandoned wine stores, carved out of the rock, and with new brick frontages: door, windows; the chimney was in the cliff top above.

G G was enchanted; they hired out every summer for years. The children attended the local school.

- It was here that Pierre de Ronsard took his daily walks;

- in this area that Rabelais first tasted delightful fruity Chinon wine (I’ve tried it, and it is!), and started out on the reckless career of Gargantua.

- around here that, newly released from long English arrest, that Charles d’Orleans had his chateau, his literary clique, and, it was rumoured,  that Francois Villon got to know the dungeons, following his banishment from Paris.

- It was also near here that Zola based and wrote ‘La Terre’.

- Claudel lived and wrote nearby.  “What do you think of Claudel in England?’ the woman asked Grigson, ‘ and without waiting for a reply she goes on and assures me that he is no less great than Shakespeare.’  Anyone who knows Claudel will know he was a Right wing bigot of a high order.

The book is illustrated with pencil drawings by Grigson.

So what is the book… about?

It consists of notes, expanded into meditations, observations, critiques. It is arranged into three sections: Spring, High Summer, The Fall. This is a device that helps record the locale of Tours, La Mans, Blois, Vendomes, the Beauce , the Loire and Loir, in all their variety and variousness.

It allows him to include his own translations of Ronsards’ poetry and memoirs of the region; of commentators on Ronsard and region etc.

Grigson records a visit and brief holiday by artist Ben Nicholson as he made his way to the opening of an exhibition of his work in Venice.

“The  convention of the rectangular canvas, which is the formalisation of the visioned space around one’s two eyes, upsets Ben, as a limitation. This… is one reason why he has admired Sunday painters… who combine their marks on a piece of cardboard, a torn box lid,……… There is a very real point here which reconciles me, almost…’

Always that ‘almost’, the last word.

Grigson glories in the balmy climate, the profusion of natural colour, flora and fauna – he was an ardent botanist, ornithologist… he was one of those who needed to know all about everything he encountered.

This being the time the Paris Riots of 1968 echo and resonate in the background. Occasionally they intrude; Grigson was enough of an old armchair socialist to be open to what was going on around him: the injustices as well the pleasures.

He was also enough of an old journalist to know to record all responses, both  Right (as he called them Gaullist) as well as Left, and middle, and the often frequent muddying of the two.

We read about the local character Maurice, wine growing: white wine (“few have the nerve for it now’ because it means leaving the grapes on the vine right until the last minute, just before the frosts hit.), and free thinker. Grigson uses him as a sounding board for many of his own explorations of the meaning of place. He records his responses even when he is distracted off-topic by something trivial. Tiredness, maybe. This brings out the multi-facettedness of the book, its glorying in variety.

“Swift: ‘I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular but some form of presecution.’

The resonance to Grigson of this passage must come from him being a clergyman’s son: Grigson senior was a wealthy Cornish (ex-Norfolk ) Anglican priest.

Variety:

‘A pleasant noise in this old-fashioned and I think I must say still backward France: the clip-clop of hooves drawing a trap, which comes up at this moment from the other side of the river. I prefer horse-droppings on the road to smears of oil on parking places; a preference – they look nicer – not a sentiment.’

Other local sounds:

‘…I recall walking home and hearing with extra pleasure one of the special noises of Troo.

…this noise could be described as the slow hitting of a soft anvil.

…………………………………………

A clear night, with three-quarters  of a moon, early summer, and here is this soft anvilling again – which is, in fact, the  noise of natterjack toads in unhurried conversation about their annually required sex.’

An incident with poet Roy Campbell circa 1944:

‘He fell out with me on account of something I had written about the poems of his friend Edith Sitwell…On the way from Broadcasting House to have a coffee, I encountered Roy in a ten-gallon hat stalking up the pavement. He raised a knocbkerry’ (walking stick) ‘, and threatened to crack it down on me… I dissuaded him, and he stalked on….’

The story went round and round. You know those office stories!

It was here that Jane Grigson first discovered the rich variety of local cuisines, and her second? career (gallery curator, wife, mother etc etc)  as cookery writer began.  In this connection:

“Last indulgence. We resolved to eat lark – petit des alouettes……… So how do they taste?…………extremely good, like roast pheasant in minature, plump ‘ (they are netted whilst fattening up for Winter in the wheat fields), ‘not at all like sparrows……..’

The Poetry of Rutger Kopland – 3

A Gregorian Peace

Where do journeys end? What were settings in the early poems, now become things in their own right; the world has been stripped down to its constituents. It is interesting to see how far Kopland has travelled when we compare this poem from 1993 with his earlier work:

                                     Among Cattle

                      And when the summer had come back again after all

                      And so we were sitting once more, drinking by the river.

 

                      His old arms still moved, to there, that world,

                      That slow, that eternal life of cattle in the distance.

                    

                      Every human being should be an animal, should die

                      In the autumn and be re-born in the spring.

 

                     Or every human being should be a river, should come

                     Without a longing to remain, leave without nostalgia.

 

                     So we were sitting there and drinking again, passing time,

                     Old stories, genever, but the sun went down the same.

 

                     And he went to sleep. Because the world went to sleep.

                     Black he sat by the river, black hole in the prospect.

Now deeply versed in our human myths of living, our hopes, fears, equivocations and failures to measure up: the tonal and emotional ranges these lines weave, and weave between, are immense. The language and imagery now is scrupulously placed.

The human being becomes as much an object of the world as any other of its constituents parts. And as such just as subject to its laws of natural science.

Kopland uses the image of a ‘patient instrument’: “we were made by an impartial attentive/patient instrument, the same/ that breaks us down again.” (Your Back). It is also an image for language, and by extension, our ability to comprehend everything, whether by reason or instinct. He examines with it the human dimension. Patient, in that it enables him, by the complex employment of the medium, to look calmly at our extremis: dementia, ageing, death. He sees an aged one’s back, he wants to see the person, not just his own response, or his version of that person; his instrument shows him, not love: “love is a word for something other /than what I was seeking…” (ibid), it shows him the commomplace that everyone ages; he also sees, through his training, profession, a medical anatomy chart. All these have their part, all are acknowledged.

Language, our distinguishing feature, also distances us from that of which we speak or write. Can it also bring the world to us:

 

                        “there must be something now the word morning

                       slowly lights up and it becomes morning

                       that held us together and lets us go

                       as we lie here like this.”

(In the Morning)  ?

 

His instrument‘s distancing effect allows him to see fables in our existence. His Message from the Isle of Chaos (1997) sits very well amongst Seamus Heaney’s fables in The Haw Lantern, and their background in the east European writers (Holub, Herbert in particular).

These examinations of ways and means, of what language allows us, bears extraordinary fruit in The Latest Findings:

 

                      experts

                      have searched in human brains

                       …………………….

                      they recorded:

 

                      “Night fell through the windows of our institute

                      moonlight stroked across the young breasts

                      of our female experimental person

                     …………………………………

                      We are still searching feverishly for formulae.”

Desire, human warmth, love, still escape the limits of our study.

More pertinently, the most important human apprehensions continue to fall outside the scope of our microscopes:

 

                    because happiness is a memory

                    it exists because at the same time

                    the reverse is also true

 

                    I mean this: because happiness

                    reminds us of happiness it pursues

                    us and therefore we flee from it

 

                                                    happiness

                    must exist somewhere at some time because

                    we remember it and it reminds us.

(What is Happiness?)

Richard Pool, reviewing for ‘Poetry Wales’ wrote of Kopland’s “existentialist poetry”. I find the writing more Phenomenological. Based on Husserl’s work, the present-day Phenomenologists present the experience of mind as a series of recursive mental events: echoes of echoes looping back and forth through our brain’s maps of world and body, that create an impression of one’s self. It is as though we continually restructure our maps on a daily basis, as the pattern at play in the brain changes.

The extra ingredient, the rider, is a sense of futurity: anticipation.

Here we have Kopland’s exploratory template as he explores and objectifies in his writing. There is an increasing sense of wonder, openness, what Belgian critic Herman de Coninck called the “Gregorian peace” of the later work (timeless rivalries: how the Catholic south never forgave the north ‘s breaking away, or abandonment of them… the wry dig of allotting a Gregorian peace to a Calvanistic northerner).

We now encounter titles like, Until it Lets Us Go (1997), even the title of the Harvill collection, Memories of the Unknown, or the recent book, What Water Leaves Behind. All of these exhibit, I would argue, a Phenomenologist sense of numinous wonder, where the world of objects is found to be the one reality, and our response to it is the possibility of happiness, love, desire, all the human responses. These objects are, as Phenomenlogist professor Dan Lloyd called, ‘the insensible dimensions that constitute reality.’

It is always best to let the writer have last say:

A Garden in the Evening

                 Things are happening here and I am the only

                 one who knows which 

 

                 I shall name them and also say why

     

                 there’s an old garden seat standing under the apple-tree

                 there’s an old football lying in the grass

                 there are old sounds coming out of the house

                 there is an old light in the sky

 

                 this is happening here: a garden in the evening

 

                 and what you don’t hear and don’t see – the places

                 where we dug holes

                 and filled them up again, weeping

 

                 I tell you this because I do not want to be alone

                 before I am.

 

Postscript

The story goes that ‘Rutger Kopland’ was involved in a bad car crash: night driving, a tree, a write-off.  He acquired a bad head injury; so much so he was unable to speak for a while, became frustrated, violent even. The story continues he ended up for a period in one of his own locked wards.

The upshot is he now restricts his activities severely: his readings, attending conferences, exhibitions all cut back to a minimum.

For further and more modern work by Rutger Kopland, see:

http://www.gedichten.nl/schrijver/Rutger+Kopland

There is a translation facility.