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- Herausgeber: Lives and Letters
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
The essays, reviews, memoirs and other writings collected here for the first time conjure up one of the great critical imaginations of our time. Grouped into four sections (Art and Poetry; Autobiography and Travel; Literature; and Religion, Politics and Philosophy), they demonstrate the wide range of Muriel Spark's knowledge and interests, and throw into relief the people, places and ideas that inspired her throughout her life as a working writer. The book includes perceptive essays on literary figures including the Brontës, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and Robert Louis Stevenson; engaging accounts of visits to John Masefield, Edith Sitwell, and Louis MacNeice's home (in the absence of its owner); and reflections on the sermons of Cardinal Newman and the Old Testament book of Job as perennially rich sources of spiritual nourishment. The novelist's eye for the telling detail is evident in portraits of the cities - Venice, Rome, Ravenna, Istanbul - which Muriel Spark visited or in which she made her home. As Penelope Jardine puts it in her preface, this book tells many things'.T
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THE GOLDEN FLEECE
ESSAYS
MURIEL SPARK
Edited by Penelope Jardine
CONTENTS
PREFACE
Good literary essays, in particular, have sustaining and stimulating qualities, like deep wells and clear rivers.*
Muriel Spark asked me to collect her essays, reviews, journalism, interviews, broadcasts, speeches, opinions – in other words, her prose writing – and make a selection for publication, while helping her with her other work: that is to say, keeping an eye on her books with publishers all over the world, business correspondence, card indexes and filing. (Her archive is extensive and mainly to be found in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa.)
In the long-ago summer of 1991 Muriel rented a house for the month of July on the German island of Sylt in the North Sea, off Denmark. We drove up to North Schleswig and put the car on a double-decker open train, which raced out to the island on a causeway from Niebüll. Sylt is a popular holiday island, long and thin, with one side exposed to the elements with sand-dunes and cliffs; the other, landward side, faces a shallow inland water with a ribbon of sand inhabited by wading birds. Here, in Kampen, I spread out a lifetime of Muriel’s essays and reviews.
Little did I know then how many years were to pass before I would have sorted these down to a selection for this volume. Soon after this almost idyllic holiday, Muriel decided she must have a hip operation and that was the beginning of years of pain for her, operations to put things right which didn’t, and which took up all her days and nights and energy. What she did achieve in those following years was quite astonishing. She published her own volume of autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, in 1992 and, despite being in and out of hospital until 1995, she continued to publish and write. In 1996 she published a new novel, Reality and Dreams. She was to publish two more novels (Aiding and Abetting and The Finishing School) before she died in 2006.
Those latter years were, unfortunately, not as peaceful as they should have been: family problems and an unauthorised biography took away a lot of joy and undermined her courage. Her sense of adventure was not diminished, however, and we set off for long journeys by car to Spain, to Portugal, to Berlin, for congresses, British Council events and literary festivals.
In a 2003 interview, when she had just finished her last novel, Muriel said that she was going to concentrate on another volume of memoirs. She made notes and yes, she meant this then, but in fact her next book was to have been another novel, Destiny. I think she really was not inspired enough to write about herself and all the difficulties as well as all the joys of her life. She knew them all, they were past, they no longer interested her. Besides, she felt, as Graham Greene did, that as you went on your autobiography involved too many other living people. She really wanted to get on with the excitements of creation and the idea for a new novel nearly always crept into her dreams and devoured her attention.
Journalists demand to know ‘What is your favourite book?’, ‘Who is your favourite author?’, ‘What book would you like to have written?’, ‘Which writer do you admire most?’, ‘Who has influenced your writing?’ and so on. By nature, a writer’s journalism must contain a certain amount of autobiography. Some of Muriel Spark’s answers provided here to such questions reveal, I think, huge areas of her experience and idiosyncrasies, which are not to be found in essays on Cardinal Newman or reviews of C. Day Lewis’s poems. I hope that some of the short pieces and pensées in this volume will therefore, in some measure, fill the gap of Muriel’s unwritten memoirs.
So, after many interruptions, I sorted these prose pieces down to a selection of her thoughts on art and poetry, her autobiographical pieces and travel, her writings on literature and finally some mixed religious, political and philosophical essays and reviews. The outcome is a book which, I believe, tells many things, mainly about the author Muriel Spark, and I hope throws light on how she felt when young, in tune with the solitary sadness of the Brontës; how she was inspired as a writer and became a Roman Catholic from reading Cardinal Newman; how amused she was by some of the curiosities that came her way to review, such as Our Dearest Emma, the crazy Abbot Aelred (who is not included here) and the fashionable tattooist Professor Burchardt; her empathy with Mary Shelley waiting for Shelley’s boat to return to San Terenzo and her later struggle in London to support her son, Percy, so like Muriel’s own hard times, as, virtually, a widow or a single mother she fought to support her own son.
I would like to say here that the essay, often quoted by scholars, entitled ‘My Conversion’, published in Twentieth Century, CLXX, autumn 1961, was not an essay of Muriel Spark’s but an interview she gave to a priest, who wrote his own version of what she said in reply to his questions. They were not her own expressions: it was his essay, and it was his title. In fact she had nothing to ‘convert’ from. She embraced Christianity of her own free choice, first Anglicanism and then Roman Catholicism. Her family were mixed Jewish and Protestant and they didn’t object. Her father rarely went to the synagogue because, as a working man, he was working on the Sabbath. Her mother seems to have hedged her bets and had menorah, crosses and Buddhas, as well as a statue of the Venus de Milo for good measure. For them, what was good for Muriel was good.
I am struck, on reading the many essays and reviews of half a century ago, by the extent to which God and religion have now gone out of our daily lives. In the 1950s and 1960s it was natural that in any article, book or radio talk on the arts, literature, music, painting, and also science, these subjects would almost always be viewed or reviewed in relation to our inner spiritual values, with references to God, some deity at least, and religion in general.
I found that most of the pieces I selected fell into some sort of category, such as ‘Art’ or ‘History’ or ‘Travel’. Inevitably, there is a preponderance of writing which could be defined as ‘Literature’: essays on other writers, reviews of books, opinions on the classics. Muriel reviewed weekly for the London Observer for approximately ten years; consequently there are many short commentaries on books of the time with interesting titles that have entered the language, such as Not Waving but Drowning or The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner. It was tempting to include these here for their charm, like credits in early films which ‘introduce’ Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe or James Dean. But they didn’t in the end quite merit selection.
I have begun this book with the essay titled ‘The Golden Fleece’, since it was one of Muriel’s earliest essays, published in 1948. The story of this ancient Greek myth must have appealed to Muriel’s early passion for the savagery of the Border Ballads and as a story it lacks none of the many dramas of life: love, adventure, adversity, betrayal, success, triumph, cruelty and loss. It is all there.
For the sake of avoiding repetition, I have had to omit a paragraph or two in some of the pieces, indicated by ellipses. Very occasionally I have added a missing word, indicating this with square brackets. In the case of certain essays where history has altered the truth of some statements, I have left the original text and provided footnotes. Some of the early essays probably do not incorporate recent scholarship, but I have included them for what they say historically.
Titles have been chosen according to my instinct. Muriel Spark’s own titles for her pieces were frequently changed by newspaper editors. Sometimes Muriel’s original title has prevailed, but not always, since the newspaper’s published title can be more appropriate. Occasionally I have given a simplified version in preference to either, such as just ‘Venice’ for ‘Venice out of Season’ or ‘Venice in Fall and Winter’. Even Venice has changed since those far-off days of 1981: every season is in season and you may no longer visit Venice without tourists.
It has been difficult to trace some of the many reviews from earlier days, their titles, publishers and dates. There are also some existing typescripts without provenance, telling nothing of whether they were ever published and if so when and by whom. And in one or two cases even Muriel herself was not sure whether she had written something or not and whether it was published. The information online is not entirely reliable either.
Fortunately Muriel kept her mind until the last day of her life and was always lucid. I asked her to look at most of the articles that have been included here and tell me whether she would like them published or not. She read them again, rejecting several and lightly touching up others for spelling, punctuation and meaning. I have tried to follow her instructions, which included ‘tick’, ‘OK’, ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’, ‘to be revised’, ‘omit’, ‘touch up’, ‘hold’, ‘combine’. These were quite easy to agree with, but of course I could not ‘touch up’ or ‘revise’. Some of these pieces are in the present book, un-touched-up and not revised. Others have been dropped.
Although I have sought to include a wide selection, I have eliminated many essays, and reviews in particular, on books or subjects which I suspect are no longer of general interest. I have here and there chosen a piece of writing which I think shows Muriel Spark’s thoughts on a subject of curiosity, such as ‘Cannibalism’ or ‘Tattooing’, or a reply to a question which shows an aspect of her life, such as ‘My Most Memorable New Year’s Eve’. Tattooing was at the time of writing less fashionable than it is today and a rarity outside of sailors’ dockside bars.
There arose the difficulty of placing an essay in a suitable category. Essays on subjects such as ‘Cats’ I feel instinctively belong to ‘Art and Poetry’, but are also suitable to be placed here under ‘Autobiography and Travel’. They might even be at home in ‘Religion’ or ‘Philosophy’. There is no end to where cats might not pop up.
Many of the early reviews mention ‘Mr’ or ‘Miss’ So-and-So, which now feels old-fashioned. In most cases I have changed this by omitting the titles and inserting first names.
Like her character Mrs Hawkins in her novel A Far Cry from Kensington, Muriel was always ready to help a friend with sensible and good advice. She was not over-influenced by other writers, but some certainly encouraged and inspired her: the Poet Laureate John Masefield for his narrative talent and charm; Cardinal Newman for his clarity of vision and exquisite prose; Max Beerbohm for his style and wit; Henry James for his wonderful stories and perspicacity.
Muriel Spark was a natural-born communicator: few people who saw her on stage at a reading or public event will have forgotten her wit and sense of irreverent fun. In 2003 she answered a journalist from Il Messaggero newspaper in Rome by saying, ‘It is my first aim always to give pleasure.’ In this she was similar to Nabokov, who also wrote with brevity and wit. In his Introduction to Nabokov’s Lectures on Russian Literature, Fredson Bowers specified that ‘the magic Nabokov felt so keenly in literature should be aimed at pleasure’. Even the literary critic Frank Kermode, in his Preface to Pieces of My Mind, wrote of criticism that ‘in paying tribute, or even when cavilling, … [it] must also give pleasure, like the other arts’.
Many students and fans have testified over the years to the way in which Muriel Spark’s books changed their lives. As a writer she was enormously hard-working and utterly dedicated, to the exclusion, often, of many passing distractions. This did not mean that she did not enjoy life greatly when it came her way, but that first and foremost came her work and she fought like a tiger to get this out to the world to read. Her work was truly a vocation for her. She took literature in a sense as a religion. She believed in her talent for writing and had plenty to say, so that she devoted herself to it as to a calling. In her essay ‘What Images Return’ she wrote: ‘Myself, I have had to put up a psychological fight for my spiritual joy.’
Muriel did not actually think of herself as ‘exiled’ from anywhere. The OED defines ‘exile’ as ‘penal banishment, long absence from one’s country, also figuratively, and a banished person (lit. & fig.)’. She was not banished literally or figuratively, and returned to Scotland to visit throughout her long life, but she did not live there again or feel exiled from the life there. It was more a place of memory, where you have lived but no longer live, like visiting the past to which you are unable to return. She had a difficult life and her sharp wit, what John Updike once called her ‘sweet sting’, which she used to amuse and brighten people up, was her own courageous way of overcoming difficulties. None of her several biographers seems to have picked this up – neither her brave and generous spirit nor the optimism and joy of her personality, which I hope show in the autobiographical pieces.
Muriel Spark’s novels are fundamentally story-telling and, like the student in Vladimir Nabokov’s class at Cornell who was asked his reason for taking the course, I too join the course here ‘because I like stories’. So I start with a story, not a new one but an old, a very old one: the exciting story of Jason and the Golden Fleece.
Penelope Jardine 2014
*Muriel Spark, in her book choice, Sunday Telegraph Review, 30 November 2003 (Frank Kermode’s collection of essays, Pieces of My Mind).
PART I
ART AND POETRY
Art is an act of daring
The Finishing School
The Golden Fleece
One of the most interesting commissions ever entrusted to a goldsmith was that given to Jehan Peut of Bruges, in 1432, by the Duke of Burgundy, for twenty-five collars of the Order of the Golden Fleece. In the archives of Lille there still exists a record of 1080 livres received by Peut for his work. We can imagine with what pride he applied his skill to every feature and lineament of the insignia, which was to become the symbol of one of the most coveted Orders of Chivalry in Europe.
‘The golden fleece’ has had a mystical significance in the literature of the world since the third century BC. The story, although a familiar one, loses none of its charm in the re-telling. According to the old Greek legends, two young relatives of the King of Thessaly named Helle and Phrixus had so incurred the displeasure of their stepmother that she decided to kill them. She was prevented from doing so, however, by a golden ram with wings, sent by the gods to carry the boy and girl away. Helle fell off the ram’s back into the sea, now called the Hellespont after her. Phrixus came safely to land at Colchis, where he immediately sacrificed the ram as a thanksgiving to Zeus. The ram’s marvellous golden fleece he hung upon the branch of a tree, in a garden guarded by a fierce dragon.
Legend tells us further how the King of Thessaly, desiring to dispose of his nephew Jason, the rightful heir to the throne, claimed that the golden fleece belonged to his household. Believing that the recovery of the fleece was an impossibility, the King commanded Jason to fetch it, hoping that he would be lost through the perils of the journey. Jason was undaunted. Runners were dispatched to all parts of Greece, calling on the heroes of mythology to join the young prince on his dangerous mission. Hercules the giant, Orpheus the singer, Canthus the soothsayer, the twins, Castor and Pollux, and many others came flocking to take part in the adventure. In high spirits the gallant company set sail in the Argo, unconcerned that the way to the golden fleece was fraught with direst peril.
However, after many trials, the fleece was finally won with the help of Princess Medea of Colchis, who afterwards married Jason. We are told with what joy and expectations Jason brought the golden fleece back to Thessaly. Instead, however, of regaining his place as heir to the kingdom, Jason fell foul of his uncle, who dispossessed and banished him. Such is the legend.
It was Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, who founded the Order of the Golden Fleece on the day of his marriage (January 10) to Princess Isabella of Portugal in 1429–30. History does not record the year with exactitude, nor is it known whether or not Philip was inspired by the ancient legend or whether he chose the name from some other motive. We know, however, that the House of Burgundy had become so powerful during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as to rival the Crown itself.
Philip the Good was himself a man who lived a life of high purpose – he devoted himself to the development of culture and learning, and became an enthusiastic protector of the arts. He had records made of Burgundian customs, and the commerce and industry of France thrived under his encouragement. It would seem reasonable to conjecture that, having decided to install a new European Order of Chivalry, Philip turned to the Golden Fleece because of its significance as a symbol of spiritual intervention.
Whatever be the true reason, it is clear that in its design the insignia was in no sense a rich ornament lavishly set with precious gems as one might have expected in those days of rich embellishment and ornamentation. The collar was made of steel, the pattern in the form of an arrangement of the letter B (Burgundy), alternating with firestones. From this simple collar hung the symbolical Golden Fleece forming the badge. The enamelled ring from which the badge hung bore the legend ‘Pretium laborum no vile’ – ‘Not an unworthy reward for our labours’. The Knights were encouraged to wear their insignia constantly, which they did with dignity and pride.
The ceremony of conferring the Order of the Golden Fleece was an elaborate one. A Knight of the Order in a capacity of ‘godfather’ presented the new member, and a Secretary of high rank delivered a speech of presentation in French. The collar and emblem of the Order were the Knight’s property throughout his lifetime, but at his death they reverted to the Order.
At first the Knights of the Golden Fleece were limited to thirty-one, including the Sovereign, who was the Grand Master, but it was later declared that any number might be created from among Catholics; in the case of Protestants, Papal sanction was required. The Knights’ primary duty was to aid the Sovereign in times of war and danger. Periodic meetings or Chapters of the Order were held at which all disputes between Knights were settled.
Who, then, were these Knights of the Golden Fleece who fire our imagination by their chivalry and valour? At first they were chosen from the distinguished houses of Burgundy, the Netherlands and France – men who conformed to the founder’s ideal of knightly honour and noble birth. Not all the subsequent Grand Masters of the Order, however, possessed such lofty principles as its founder. As time went on the dispensation of the Order sometimes became a matter of diplomatic expediency.
Although the Order of the Golden Fleece was bestowed for the most part on royalty and men of noble rank, it has not been exclusively so, for in 1898 the Crown of Spain conferred this honour on the President of France, Felix Faure, in recognition of the mediation of France at the termination of the Spanish-American war.
As the dukedom passed from Philip to his son Charles the Bold, so did the Order of the Golden Fleece continue under the aegis of the House of Burgundy. However, when Charles’ daughter Mary married Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, a gallant but unreliable gentleman, the Grand Mastership of the Fleece came into the possession of the royal House of Hapsburg. Maximilian’s son, on his accession to Castile in 1504, brought the Grand Mastership of the Order to Spain, where it remained until the Hapsburg dynasty became extinct on the death of Charles II.
The Order of the Golden Fleece then reverted to Austria, having been claimed by the Emperor, Charles VI, who installed the Order in Vienna with great pageantry, in 1713. This action was bitterly contested by Philip V of Anjou, inheritor of the Crown of Spain by the will of Charles II. Philip V maintained that the Grand Mastership of the Fleece was irrevocably bound to the throne of Spain, and at the Congress of Cambray he formally protested against the Emperor of Austria’s claim. The dispute was settled temporarily by the intervention of England, France and Holland, but a state of ferment still existed, and it was not long before Spain and Austria were again involved in heated argument. No definite solution was ever found. It came to be tacitly accepted that the Order existed in both countries, becoming known either as the Spanish or the Austrian Order of the Golden Fleece.
The Austrian branch of the Order permitted a red ribbon to be substituted, except on occasions of ceremony, when a Knight of the Golden Fleece must have presented a magnificent appearance. On such occasions he wore a surcoat of deep red velvet lined with white, over which was thrown a purple velvet mantle, white-bordered and lined with white satin. Gold embroidery encrusted with firestones further adorned this splendid attire. His cap was of purple velvet, gold-embroidered, with a small hood attached, and his shoes and stockings were Burgundian red.
Edward IV of England, a kinsman through marriage of the House of Burgundy, was the first English monarch to receive the Order of the Golden Fleece.
Henry VII was invested with the Order in 1491, the year of his signing of the Treaty of Medina del Campo with Maximilian of Austria – a security against their mutual enemy, France.
By his betrothal to Catherine of Aragon, in 1502, Henry VIII was elected to the Order at the 77th Chapter, and his contemporary, James V of Scotland, also became a Knight of the Order. A wardrobe Inventory of James V, dated 1539, records ‘The ordure of the Empriour with the golden fleis’.
The history of this romantic Order of Knighthood is recorded for us in the tapestries and embroideries at Berne, embellished with the arms of Burgundy and the insignia of the Golden Fleece, in the banners at Saint Gall, bearing the Fleece device, and in the paintings which remain to us of those men who attained the honour. Notable among these is the Duke of Wellington – one of the few Englishmen to receive the Order – and whose portrait wearing the Golden Fleece is to be seen at the National Portrait Gallery.
[1948]
The First Christmas Eve
It is always good to see a painting in the very surroundings in which it was conceived and made. Frescoes have a greater chance of resting in their original home than other forms of pictorial art, and this is especially fortunate in the case of the fifteenth-century Tuscan artist Piero della Francesca. His mural sequence, La Leggenda della Vera Croce (The Legend of the True Cross), for instance, is in perpetual harmony with the interior of the Church of Saint Francis, in Arezzo, whose walls it enlivens. His Madonna del Parto (Madonna of Childbirth), although it has been shifted, remains in its native pastoral and fertile environment near the spot where Piero painted it, some time after 1450, on the wall of a church later demolished.* Originally, the fresco was the only adornment of a tiny cemetery chapel which replaced the church, situated below the quiet Tuscan hill town of Monterchi. The picture (which has been moved again to a spot nearby) is easily accessible from the road between Arezzo and Sansepolcro, birthplace of Piero della Francesca and repository of many of his richest works.
Piero’s mother came from Monterchi, which is probably why, at the height of his maturity, he accepted the commission to depict the Madonna in so quiet and unimportant a place. Everything about this painting is dramatic. The Madonna is in the last stage of her pregnancy. The Nativity is imminent.
Piero della Francesca was a humanist with a deep sense of the sublime. His Madonna (Our Lady of Childbirth) is a substantial country woman and at the same time a majestic, archetypal figure. In no way is she the sort of Italian girl whom anyone might want to help with her problem: this lady has no problem, she has a purpose. She stands in an ermine-lined tent, a tabernacle.† She is larger than the angels who, like theatre functionaries, draw back the curtains for the audience, the entire human race, to witness Mary’s marvellous condition at this hour. She is wearing a practical maternity dress, which unlaces at the side and in the front to accommodate her splendid bigness with child. Her right hand loosens the lacing of her dress, her left hand rests on her hip, palm upward, in a peasant-like gesture of pride, almost defiance. She wears a halo of burnished gold which mysteriously mirrors the pavements of the original church, but not her own head, so that she, like the angels, seems to be transparent in the light of eternity. She bears this halo with the dignity of a local woman of Tuscany balancing a basket of fruit on her head. The curtains of the womb-like tent part to reveal her – as if, about to deliver her child, she is herself about to be delivered from a vaster, cosmic womb.
It is a Christian devotional picture, that of the first Christmas Eve. But the Madonna del Parto, with her radiant and aloof regard, her eyes focused somewhere beyond the ages, seems equally to belong to the ancient reaches of mythology and to our human destiny.
In Piero’s time there was great theological controversy. The Renaissance questioned everything. What was the nature of the Virgin? Was she just an ordinary woman or was she of the divine essence? Questions about spirit and substance were argued endlessly. What is spirit? What is substance? To-day we know more about substance than ever before, but the more we know the more it is recognised that we know nothing. Five hundred years have taught us nothing new about the life of the spirit. Piero della Francesca, like all great artists, did not accept any dichotomy between spirit and matter. There is no spirit without substance; the whole of nature is impregnated with spiritual life. His Madonna del Parto, one of the few pregnant Madonnas, is both human and touched with divine revelation. It is a work that reposes in its own mystery: Life emerging into the life of the world, Light into its light.
[1984]
* According to my local telephone directory, which features the fresco on its cover, the Madonna del Parto was probably painted in 1445 and discovered at Monterchi in 1888. It has been moved to a local school-house in Monterchi, where it is exhibited in a greatly reduced form with much photographic analysis and information to justify its partial obliteration. Parts of the painting which were not done by Piero della Francesca were removed. When consulted earlier as to whether the fresco should be moved for exhibition in America, the eminent art historian Sir John Pope-Hennessy emphatically said, ‘No, on no account should it be moved.’
† This ‘ermine-lined tent or tabernacle’ has been removed.
Love
There are many types of love. In ancient Greece from whence all ideas flow, there were seven main words for love. Maternal love is like, but not the same as, love of country or love between friends. And love of fellow men and women which the old Bibles called charity is also something akin to these, but different.
What I’m writing about here is exclusively the love we mean when we are ‘in love’; and it includes a certain amount of passion and desire, a certain amount of madness while it lasts. Its main feature is that you cannot argue about it. The most unlikely people may fall in love with each other; their friends, amazed, look for the reason. This is useless; there is no reason. The lovers themselves may try to explain it: ‘her beautiful eyes’, ‘his lovely manners, his brains’, and so on. But these claims never fit the case comprehensively. For love is inexplicable. It is something like poetry Certainly, you can analyse it and expound its various senses and intentions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.
It is said that love is blind. I don’t agree. I think that, on the contrary, love sharpens the perceptions. The lovers see especially clearly, but often irrationally; they like what they perceive even if, in anyone else, they wouldn’t. They see the reality and something extra. Proust, one of the greatest writers on the subject of love, shows, in his love-story of Swann and Odette, how Swann, civilised, well-bred and artistic, saw perfectly clearly that Odette was vulgar, promiscuous and not at all a suitable partner for him in the Parisian world of his time. Right at the end of a section of the book Swann even resigned himself to the loss of Odette: ‘After all, she was not my style’; nevertheless, at the beginning of the next chapter Swann is already married to Odette, because he adored her, and couldn’t resist her, even while unhappily knowing and loving the worst about her.
Falling in love is by nature an unforeseen and chance affair, but it is limited by the factor of opportunity. The number of people in the world any one person can meet is comparatively few, and this is usually further limited by occasions of meeting. In The Tempest, Miranda exclaims when she first sees Ferdinand:
I might call him
a thing divine, for nothing natural
I ever saw so noble.
But if she had never seen Ferdinand – if there had been no storm, no shipwreck, to bring him into her life? Undoubtedly this nubile maiden would eventually have become infatuated with Caliban. Even though she has said of him,
’Tis a villain, sir,
I do not love to look on.
– Miranda would inevitably have become enamoured of the monster, knowing him, by comparison with her father, who was taboo, to be hideous; because Caliban was the only available male within her range of opportunity. Prospero, of course, was aware of this danger.
To-day there is an English aristocratic family, of which the four daughters have all married dukes and earls; and, goes the apocryphal story, when the mother is asked how she managed to marry her daughters ‘so well’, she replies, ‘They never got to meet anyone else but dukes and earls.’ If the story isn’t true, it’s to the point.
Love is not blind and it is also not deaf. It is possible to fall in love with a voice, a timbre, a certain way of talking, a charming accent. Many inexplicable love affairs, especially those of the long past where we only have photographs or paintings to go by, would probably be better understood if we could hear the lovers speak. Many a warped-looking and ill-favoured Caliban has been endowed with a winning, mellow and irresistible voice. Many a shapely and gorgeous Ferdinand caws like an adenoidal crow. And the same with women – one often sees how a husky, sexy voice takes a raddled face further in love than does a little-girl twang issuing from a smooth-cheeked nymph.
The first time I was aware of two people in love was when an English master and an art-mistress at my school got engaged. They observed the utmost discretion in front of the girls, but we registered their every move and glance when they happened to meet in the corridors. We exchanged endless information on this subject. These two teachers were not at all lover-like. Both were already middle-aged, and alas must now be dead. He was tall and gawky with a long horse-like face, and eyes, too, not unhorselike. She was dumpy, with the same shape over and under her waist, which was more or less tied-in round the middle. They were both pleasant characters. I liked him better, because he was fond of English literature; she, on the other hand, was inclined to stick her forefinger on to my painting and say, ‘What does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything.’ Which of course was true, and I didn’t take it amiss. The only puzzling thing about this love-affair was what he, or anybody, could see in her. What she could see in him was also difficult to place, but still, he had something you could call ‘personality’. She, none. We pondered on this at the same time as we noted how he followed her with his eyes – they were dark, and vertically long – and how she, apparently oblivious of his enamoured long-eyed look, would stump off upon her stodgy way, on her little peg-like legs, with never a smile nor a light in her eyes. One thing we learned: love is incomprehensible. He saw the same person as we saw, but he saw something extra. It never occurred to us to think that perhaps she was an excellent cook, which might very likely have been the magic element in the love-affair. It might also have been the case that neither of them had really had time to meet anybody else.
Observing people in love has a certain charm and sometimes, entertainment value. But to my mind watching them actually making love is something different. I find it most unappealing to walk through a London park on a mild spring day and find the grass littered with couples making love. It turns me up, it turns me off. I don’t understand how voyeurism turns people on.
With animals, strangely enough I feel the opposite. I live most of the time in the Italian countryside, and nothing is more attractive and moving than to look out of the window on a sunny morning, as I did recently, and see a couple of young hares making love. He hopped towards her, she hopped away. He hopped and she hopped through the long grass, till at last he hopped on. Then, too, not long ago, driving with a friend down a country road we had to stop while a horse mated with a mare. There were a number of cars but we all lined up respectfully and with deep interest for it was known that the owner of the horses, who was standing by, depended for his living on events like this, and was delighted that the horse had at last arrived at his decision, even in the middle of the road. The horse mounted the mare slowly, laid his nose dreamily along her flank, entered her precisely, and performed without bungle. The horse-coper radiated joy and success. The horse and mare moved off casually into a field and the caravan of cars went its way.
The aspects of love that one could discuss are endless. But certainly, as the old songs say, love is the sweetest thing, and it makes the world go round.
[1984]
Ravenna: City of Mosaics
Ravenna is a pleasant northern Italian town practically on the Adriatic coast. The city and its surroundings are flat, which makes for easy walking and accounts for the city’s bicycle-cult. Bicycles are parked thickly, leaving the streets comparatively free of standing cars. I live in Tuscany and Rome and am used to the southern and central Italian cities which teem with expansive human life and self-conscious beauty. But Ravenna gives a clean, rational, hard-working impression. There are arcades and shopping-malls. Its modern industries of oil-refining and fertiliser production are outside the city, along the coast. Since Ravenna was bombarded during World War II, most of the buildings are modern or reconstructed, but fortunately still not tall enough to dwarf such landmarks of antiquity, as a leaning tower (preserved under the tutelage of the local Lions Club), the churches, baptisteries, the Cathedral.
In Ravenna is the tomb of the exiled Dante Alighieri who finished the Divina Commedia there shortly before his death in 1321. The tomb is a quaint edifice of the eighteenth century, altogether inadequate to the grandeur of its purpose. Byron lodged in Ravenna during his courtship of the Countess Teresa Guiccioli and was involved in the city’s violent politics; the site of his lodgings is commemorated by a plaque.
But Ravenna is not essentially a city of exteriors. Its truly great marvels are the mosaics on the interior walls of its early medieval (sixth-to seventh-century) monuments – what Byron called ‘…her pyramid of precious stones… / Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues / Of gem and marble…’ (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage).
Ravenna was from the earliest times on the Eastern trade route. The important period of its history began in the fifth century. Rome was on the wane, her troops were evacuating Britain and Gaul to defend Italy. Ravenna, now a few miles inland, was then on the sea coast, a famous Roman port that had been built by the Emperor Augustus. It was always busy with exotic traffic. One can imagine the poet John Masefield’s ‘Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir’ coming into port with its ‘cargo of ivory / And apes and peacocks / Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine’.
The art of mosaic mural designs and representations constructed of small coloured stones and glass, often on gold foundations and imbedded with mother of pearl, had already appeared in Italy by the end of the Roman Empire. By the classic process of invasions, battles, murders and usurpations, Ravenna fell within the power of the Visigothic emperor, Theodoric, largely to whom and to whose Byzantine successor we owe the marvels of cultural heritage preserved in Ravenna to-day. No photography can really convey the effect of these mosaics. The nature of mosaics is based on prismatic reflections. Picture postcards and photographs are very good for depicting the close-up details, but the total impression can only be got by being there, inside those buildings, and walking around. From every point of contemplation a new aspect emerges from each picture.
Mosaics are more durable than other pictorial arts; they are less likely to be badly restored or faked. The work of restoration and preservation of Ravenna’s mosaic treasures in recent times has been particularly fine and diligent, involving centimetre by centimetre attention and minute toothpick treatment of the original cementing.
It helps to know that in those early days, and to those artists and their patrons, theology was politics, and that many of these mosaic murals were inspired by the Arians, a heretical, powerful and, in many ways, noble branch of Christianity. The Arians acknowledged the human supremacy of Christ but denied his Godhead. It is also useful to know that the monuments belong to three periods: the imperial, fifth century, influenced by the adventurous Catholic Roman Galla Placidia and her brother Honorius; the period of the Arian Theodoric, in the fifth and sixth centuries; and the Catholic Byzantine period dominated by the Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora, who was attached to the Monophysite heresy which held that in Christ there existed the divine nature alone.
There is always a connection between an art form and the thought process of the people to whom it spoke. Just as Renaissance art, with its defiant portraiture, its flowing robes and hair, its fluid religious figurations, addressed itself to a new humanistic spirit, bursting with adventure and bold concepts of good and evil, so do the mosaics of the early Middle Ages, still and tranquil, gleaming in their own spiritual light, reflect the encroaching oriental sensibility.
To know something of the history of these records of faith, triumph and civilisation, adds to their appreciation. But if the nuances of Western history between the late fifth and seventh centuries are not your vital passion, you can, with equal and marvellous profit, simply plunge into the glory of colour and light that liven the walls and domed ceilings of Ravenna’s monuments, as did Henry James, lamenting ‘the thinness of [his] saturation with Gibbon and the other sources of legend’.
The sites of interest fall within a rectangle and are of easy access. Most of the interiors are lit by means of a coin machine, so it is advisable to take a supply of small coins.* Any itinerary is equally dramatic in its effect, but it is perhaps more logical to start with one of the oldest examples. This is the small but sumptuous Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, built in the form of a cross, an oratory bejewelled with symbols. A semi-circular cupola represents a deep blue, gold-starred sky surrounded by the Lion of St Mark, the Bull of St Luke, the Eagle of St John and the Angel of St Matthew. Each alcove is decorated with lively animal symbols mingled with more stylised abstract designs. The predominant colour is greenish blue. Above the entrance shines a picture of the Good Shepherd and six mystic yet realistic sheep. Here, too, are the famous drinking doves, symbols of souls quenching their thirst for peace, perched on the edge of their vase.
In all the mosaics of Ravenna, bird, flower and animal symbols abound. One can only marvel at the patience of the artists who executed them, grading the stones from dark to light with the fidelity of mural painting and the added dimension produced by the cut of each tiny stone.
Not far from this mausoleum is the Basilica and Presbytery of San Vitale, one of Ravenna’s patron saints. Its exterior is a geometrical arrangement of octagons, rectangles and curves unique in Europe, combining the genius of Rome and Byzantium. The interior is vast and harmonious. The dazzling mosaics here are both Roman and Byzantine, clearly distinguishable in the cursive scenes in the choir and the more stylised and rigid pictures in the apse. Here again colourful wild life abounds among biblical narrative episodes. And the stern, patrician, Empress Theodora attended by her ladies faces her husband, the Emperor Justinian, flanked by his men. Theodora, reputed to have begun her career as a dancer and prostitute, had a formidable influence over her husband, his army and politics. She instituted strict laws against the prevalent traffic in young women, and for the protection of divorced women. She was violently ruthless with rebels. But here, she is dignified and serene, and, as always with oriental mosaics, I have the impression of deep silence.
The Arian Baptistery belongs to the end of the fifth century. In 561 it was reconsecrated to Catholic use. The octagonal chapel stands near the Church of Spirito Santo, formerly an Arian cathedral. The picture in the centre of the domed ceiling shows Christ being baptised, his nude body half submerged in transparent water. This miracle of mosaic portraiture conveys an unusual youth-Christ, patient, fully human and somewhat astonished.
The Neone Baptistery near the Cathedral (early fifth century) has a similar medallion-type depiction of Christ’s baptism, with an older Jesus, among water motifs, and, as in the Arian baptistery, the central medallion is surrounded by a spoke-like design formed by the Twelve Apostles. Looking up, one receives the impression of a vividly patterned, iridescent bowl. The baptismal font, the adult immersion, is octagonal, faced with marble and porphyry and inset with a pulpit of Greek marble. This is a wonderful point from which to look up and around the richly decorated interior, whirling as it seems to do, both towards and away from the gazer. The Cathedral itself holds many features of sculptural interest, especially a marble pulpit, decorated with carved lambs, fish, peacocks, deer, doves and ducks – an ecological sermon in itself. Whatever the symbolic import of the animal motifs, plainly those Christians valued their wildlife and household beasts.
Another jewel-box is to be found in a small oratory inside the Archbishop’s Palace, adjacent to the Cathedral. This is remarkable for its portraiture. Particularly fascinating is a representation of Christ as a soldier in a short kilt and cloak.
The famous Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo was built by the Arian Theodoric and later reconsecrated to the Catholic church. Its immediate effect is of total majestic harmony. The architecture and the mural decorations, although not all of the same period, blend together in one conception. On each side of the long central nave three levels of friezes surmount the pillars. The lowest level bears, on one side, a formal procession of Martyrs, and on the other, a corresponding procession of stately Virgins, the latter culminating in a breakthrough of eager movement as the Three Kings, almost running, approach an enthroned Madonna.
In this church the transition between the heresy of the Arians and the restored Catholic religion can be clearly seen. Near the door is a mosaic picture of the Palace of Theodoric, whose Arian saints were originally shown there. These heretics were later replaced, but not by orthodox saints: their places were tactfully ‘covered’ by a series of quaint mosaic curtains. Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo is such a pleasing place, such an immaculately detailed, wide, serene, statement of faith and art, one should spend as long as possible walking around. It deserves at least two visits.
The Basilica of Sant’ Apollinare in Classe (Classe is a fraction of Ravenna, now about four miles from the present city) owes its survival from Allied shelling to the intervention of ‘Popski’ (Vladimir Peniakoff), the celebrated World War II commander. His ‘private army’ of twenty-two men was an independent demolition squad. In his book Popski’s Private Army he tells how he prevailed on his gunners to postpone an attack on Sant’ Apollinare in Classe for twenty-four hours while he sent a party to visit the bell-tower where Germans were believed to be posted. The rumour proved untrue and the church was saved. He is commemorated by a grateful plaque in the cloister. This monument now enjoys the support of the Rotary Club. Sant’ Apollinare in Classe has an apse of breathtaking loveliness. The mosaic picture on the arched ceiling portrays a glorious jewel-encrusted cross symbolising Christ in a still, sublime, pastoral surrounding. Marble columns of great dignity line the wide central nave. Groupings of columns are one of the most effective features of the church.
All this being said, there is still everything left unsaid about the treasures of Ravenna. In the National Museum are fine collections of carved marbles dating from early Roman times, ancient woven materials, ivories, ceramics. The Church of Saint John the Evangelist was founded by Galla Placidia as a votive offering for her survival from a storm at sea during her return to Ravenna from Constantinople in the year 424. This is the oldest church in Ravenna and was seriously war-damaged. It has a wall display of salvaged mosaic pavements, the most attractive of which are naïf representations of scenes from the thirteenth-century Fourth Crusade. The Church of St Francis is striking for its crypt constantly under water, but observable from the upper church; it is partly paved with its original fifth-century abstract mosaics. Outside Ravenna, along the Adriatic coast, are the pine woods beloved of Dante in his latter days, and of Boccaccio and of Byron. These woods are not, by their nature, very dense. But, menaced by the modern environment, they are thinning out.
[1987]
* No longer necessary.
The Art of Verse
Verse is often considered an inferior form of poetry. Not so. It is a literary form by itself, a craft verging on art. At its best the practice of verse emerges as poetry. We talk of the nonsense verses of Edward Lear and of Lewis Carroll although they do draw strength from the poetic imagination.
Poets who practise ‘free verse’ are seldom aware of what they are freed from: the study of verse is a sadly forgotten one. In my view poets cannot work freely unless they are fully experienced in the makings of verse. There are verse forms to be considered, lengths of lines, rhymes internal and external; rhythms regular and sprung, the use of alliterations; in short, the raw materials which are the musical basics of poetry.
I know of no great poet who has not been fully acquainted with the study of verse; and I am convinced that any poet or indeed anyone who writes prose, would benefit from a knowledge of what verse is, and from the actual practice of villanelles, triolets, rondeaux, Shakespearean sonnets, Petrarchan sonnets, kyrielles, chants royal, to mention some. Each has a distinct function in the conveyance of meaning and artistic pleasure. The various forms of metre were themselves the subject of a verse written by the nineteenth-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort,
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long:
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng –
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hasten with a stately stride:-
First and last being long; middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred racer.
From this example can flow an infinity of inspired irregularities.
There is far more to creative writing than just to sit down to write and simply vent your feelings. Shakespeare, our Mozart of literature, knew well the emotive and aesthetic power of metrical variation:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into the air, into thin air;
And how well suited to the conversational form were the measured Alexandrine metres of the nineteenth-century poet Arthur Hugh Clough in his narrative poem, ‘Amours de Voyage’:
Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female?
Really, who knows? One has bowed and talked, till, little by little,
All the natural heat has escaped of the chivalrous spirit.
Rhyme is no longer popular, except for comic verse, although some poets have told me that the search for an adequate rhyme-ending has sometimes been the fruitful source of a new image and even meaning. It is a mnemonic, and in this way a rhymed poem is easier to remember. It can also hypnotise. W.H. Auden’s rhymed poetry is wonderfully thought-inspiring. In the hands of Dylan Thomas a rhyming word is always in the right place. As a mere excuse for the line ending, though, rhyme is indeed boring. No technique can really make a poet.
