Poetry

Sylvia Plath’s Daddy (1962)

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High above the Calder val­ley in West York­shire lies the vil­lage of Hep­ton­stall, and in its church­yard lies, rather incon­gru­ous­ly, the grave of famous Amer­i­can con­fes­sion­al poet, Sylvia Plath. Hers is a wretched tale of depres­sion, end­ing ulti­mate­ly in her sui­cide in Feb­ru­ary 1963, but her lit­er­ary lega­cy is a pow­er­ful one, albeit only ful­ly recog­nised posthu­mous­ly (she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982, twen­ty years after her death). The major­i­ty of the poems on which her rep­u­ta­tion now rests were writ­ten dur­ing the final months of her life.

Plath had arrived at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty from her native Mass­a­chu­setts and had already won awards for her poet­ry when she met young York­shire poet Ted Hugh­es in Feb­ru­ary 1956. By June they were mar­ried. They moved to the States for a cou­ple of years before return­ing to Lon­don, where Sylvia had her daugh­ter Frie­da, and lat­er Tawn­ton in Devon, where her son Nicholas was born. In July 1962, she dis­cov­ered that Hugh­es was hav­ing an affair and the cou­ple sep­a­rat­ed.

Plath had already expe­ri­enced dif­fi­cult prob­lems with her men­tal health and had already under­gone elec­tro­con­vul­sive ther­a­py by the time she’d met Hugh­es. The sep­a­ra­tion pre­cip­i­tat­ed an even-fur­ther down­ward spi­ral. She con­sult­ed her GP, who pre­scribed her anti-depres­sants and also arranged a live-in nurse to be with her.

The nurse was due to arrive at nine on the morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 11, 1963, to help Plath with the care of her chil­dren. Upon arrival, she found Plath dead with her head in the gas oven, hav­ing sealed the rooms between her and her sleep­ing chil­dren with tape, tow­els and cloths. She was 30 years old.

I have select­ed this poem, Dad­dy, read aloud by Plath her­self. Its theme is her com­plex rela­tion­ship with her Ger­man father, Otto Plath, who had died short­ly after her eighth birth­day. It is haunt­ing and dis­turb­ing, with dark imagery and the expres­sion of an inscrutable emo­tion­al trau­ma that we can only guess at. Plath’s ren­di­tion of her poem, with its dis­qui­et­ing mul­ti­ple use of “oo” vow­el sounds, gripped me, when I first heard this, all the way through to its raw and bru­tal con­clu­sion.

You do not do, you do not do   
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot   
For thir­ty years, poor and white,   
Bare­ly dar­ing to breathe or Achoo.

Dad­dy, I have had to kill you.   
You died before I had time——
Mar­ble-heavy, a bag full of God,   
Ghast­ly stat­ue with one gray toe   
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freak­ish Atlantic   
Where it pours bean green over blue   
In the waters off beau­ti­ful Nau­set.   
I used to pray to recov­er you.
Ach, du.

In the Ger­man tongue, in the Pol­ish town   
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is com­mon.   
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.   
So I nev­er could tell where you   
Put your foot, your root,
I nev­er could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.   
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hard­ly speak.
I thought every Ger­man was you.   
And the lan­guage obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuff­ing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.   
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vien­na   
Are not very pure or true.
With my gip­sy ances­tress and my weird luck   
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luft­waffe, your gob­bledy­goo.   
And your neat mus­tache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panz­er-man, panz­er-man, O You——

Not God but a swasti­ka
So black no sky could squeak through.   
Every woman adores a Fas­cist,   
The boot in the face, the brute   
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the black­board, dad­dy,   
In the pic­ture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot   
But no less a dev­il for that, no not   
Any less the black man who

Bit my pret­ty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.   
At twen­ty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,   
And they stuck me togeth­er with glue.   
And then I knew what to do.
I made a mod­el of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.   
And I said I do, I do.
So dad­dy, I’m final­ly through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,   
The voic­es just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vam­pire who said he was you   
And drank my blood for a year,
Sev­en years, if you want to know.
Dad­dy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart   
And the vil­lagers nev­er liked you.
They are danc­ing and stamp­ing on you.   
They always knew it was you.
Dad­dy, dad­dy, you bas­tard, I’m through.

Sylvia Plath
Poetry

John Betjeman’s The Subaltern’s Love Song (1941)

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Sir John Bet­je­man (1906–1984) was Poet Lau­re­ate from 1972 until his death in 1984, though both poems that I dis­cuss here in this blog were writ­ten way back in 1937 and 1941 respec­tive­ly. He was a life­long poet but also a jour­nal­ist and TV broad­cast­er and some­thing of an “insti­tu­tion” in Britain, pop­u­lar for his bum­bling per­sona and wry­ly com­ic out­look. He was known for being a staunch defend­er of Vic­to­ri­an archi­tec­ture, and he played a large part in sav­ing St Pan­cras rail­way sta­tion (and many oth­er build­ings) from demo­li­tion.

Indeed, Bet­je­man bemoaned all that he saw slip­ping away in the wake of the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of Britain. The town of Slough had acquired up to 850 new fac­to­ries just before the Sec­ond World War and was the epit­o­me of all that he saw wrong with moder­ni­ty, the “men­ace to come”. His poem Slough begins:

Come, friend­ly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now

Some­what harsh, per­haps. On the cen­te­nary of Betjeman’s birth in 2006 his daugh­ter Can­di­da Lycett-Green apol­o­gised to the peo­ple of Slough on his behalf and said that her father had regret­ted writ­ing the poem. He may well have regret­ted pick­ing on a par­tic­u­lar town but I doubt that his sen­ti­ments had changed regard­ing the chang­ing urban archi­tec­tur­al land­scape.

The first poem of Betjeman’s I came across was arguably about anoth­er world in the process of being sub­sumed by the march of progress and the Sec­ond World War. The Subaltern’s Love Song is a gen­tle poem reflect­ing the mid­dle-class cul­ture of Sur­rey at the time it was writ­ten in 1941. The sto­ry is imag­ined, though the muse of his poem was very real: Miss Joan Hunter Dunn worked at the can­teen at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don where Bet­je­man was work­ing. He was so tak­en by her that he was inspired to write the poem, imag­in­ing him­self as a sub­al­tern (a junior offi­cer in the mil­i­tary) in her thrall through­out a breath­less series of sum­mer activ­i­ties that ends in their engage­ment.

Eleven qua­trains of flow­ing ten-syl­la­ble iambic rhythm tell the unfold­ing sto­ry of the imag­i­nary love affair, and it does it with wit and sparkle. Let’s leave aside the fact that its writer was mar­ried at the time!

Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Fur­nish’d and bur­nish’d by Alder­shot sun,
What stren­u­ous sin­gles we played after tea,
We in the tour­na­ment — you against me!

Love-thir­ty, love-forty, oh! weak­ness of joy,
The speed of a swal­low, the grace of a boy,
With care­fullest care­less­ness, gai­ly you won,
I am weak from your love­li­ness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won,
The warm-han­dled rack­et is back in its press,
But my shock-head­ed vic­tor, she loves me no less.

Her father’s euony­mus shines as we walk,
And swing past the sum­mer-house, buried in talk,
And cool the veran­dah that wel­comes us in
To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,
The view from my bed­room of moss-dap­pled path,
As I strug­gle with dou­ble-end evening tie,
For we dance at the Golf Club, my vic­tor and I.

On the floor of her bed­room lie blaz­er and shorts,
And the cream-coloured walls are be-tro­phied with sports,
And wes­t­er­ing, ques­tion­ing set­tles the sun,
On your low-lead­ed win­dow, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

The Hill­man is wait­ing, the light’s in the hall,
The pic­tures of Egypt are bright on the wall,
My sweet, I am stand­ing beside the oak stair
And there on the land­ing’s the light on your hair.

By roads “not adopt­ed”, by wood­land­ed ways,
She drove to the club in the late sum­mer haze,
Into nine-o’clock Cam­ber­ley, heavy with bells
And mush­roomy, pine-woody, ever­green smells.

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,
Oh! Sur­rey twi­light! impor­tu­nate band!
Oh! strong­ly adorable ten­nis-girl’s hand!

Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,
Above us the inti­mate roof of the car,
And here on my right is the girl of my choice,
With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

And the scent of her wrap, and the words nev­er said,
And the omi­nous, omi­nous danc­ing ahead.
We sat in the car park till twen­ty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

John Bet­je­man
Literature

J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls (1945)

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A whole new gen­er­a­tion of kids study­ing GCSE Eng­lish are dis­cov­er­ing J B Priestley’s 1945 play, An Inspec­tor Calls. It seems to be every­where at the moment: as well as being on the syl­labus in schools, the Nation­al Theatre’s pro­duc­tion of the play was doing the rounds again nation­al­ly when the lock­down hit. Sad­ly, I just missed out on that, hav­ing seen the poster too late, but I did find a DVD of the 1954 film for a quid in a char­i­ty shop, and snapped it up.

You may well be famil­iar with the sto­ry: set in 1912 in a well-to-do north­ern Mid­lands house­hold, in a soci­ety divid­ed by class dis­tinc­tion, we find the Bir­ling fam­i­ly assem­bled in cel­e­bra­tion of their daugh­ter Sheila’s engage­ment to Ger­ald Croft. The patri­arch, Arthur Bir­ling, is feel­ing pleased with him­self, as his busi­ness is doing well and he is on an upward social tra­jec­to­ry, improved even more by the social stand­ing of the Croft fam­i­ly into which Sheila is mar­ry­ing. Their evening, how­ev­er, is inter­rupt­ed by the arrival of Inspec­tor Goole (“Poole” in the film ver­sion).

The Inspec­tor, played mas­ter­ful­ly by Alis­tair Sim in the 1954 film, has some ques­tions for all the mem­bers of the fam­i­ly and Ger­ald Croft, in turn, con­cern­ing a girl who has just com­mit­ted sui­cide in the gris­ly man­ner of drink­ing bleach, a sign of her des­per­ate men­tal state. It becomes appar­ent that each per­son has had some involve­ment with this poor girl, albeit in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances, and each has played some part in her descent and degra­da­tion. The unfold­ing of the sto­ry­line is sub­tle and we the audi­ence are grad­u­al­ly drawn in as details are revealed and it dawns on us that every­one present has some con­nec­tion.

Telling­ly, the char­ac­ters react dif­fer­ent­ly to Inspec­tor Goole’s rev­e­la­tions. The old­er ones refuse to accept their respon­si­bil­i­ty; the younger ones — Sheila in par­tic­u­lar — approach an epiphany. Priest­ley lays bare the self-impor­tance of the old­er gen­er­a­tion of the Bir­lings with­out flinch­ing. It is a bril­liant decon­struc­tion of the human con­di­tion.

Here is Alis­tair Sim (bet­ter known per­haps for his cross-dress­ing com­e­dy per­for­mances in the St Trini­an’s movies) in a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly com­pelling scene from the film.

J B Priest­ley
Music

The Kinks’ Autumn Almanac (1967)

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When I look back at this blog’s cov­er­age of influ­en­tial British rock bands of the six­ties, I see that the “big three” of The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones and The Who have all had their moment in the spot­light. There’s anoth­er band of the time, though, that arguably deserves to be count­ed in a “big four” and that is the band formed in Muswell Hill in 1964 by Ray and Dave Davies, name­ly The Kinks.

Unlike the afore­men­tioned bands who unar­guably achieved the sta­tus of inter­na­tion­al leg­ends of rock, the Kinks nev­er ful­ly cap­i­talised on their oppor­tu­ni­ties and tal­ents. For exam­ple, although the band emerged dur­ing the great British rhythm and blues and Mersey­beat scenes and joined those bands spear­head­ing the so-called British Inva­sion of the Unit­ed States, the con­stant fight­ing between the Davies broth­ers (a pop-cul­tur­al fore­run­ner of the Gal­lagher broth­ers, if ever there was one) led to a tour­ing ban in 1965.

As well as the volatile rela­tion­ship between the broth­ers, the song-writ­ing style of Ray Davies some­times took the band away from the expect­ed com­mer­cial music their con­tem­po­raries were striv­ing for. He sim­ply had too much wit and intel­li­gence and eclec­ti­cism, draw­ing on British music hall, folk and coun­try music to inform some of his out­put. Take 1968’s The Kinks Are the Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Soci­ety album: released the same week as the Bea­t­les’ White album, it con­tained a col­lec­tion of char­ac­ter stud­ies and med­i­ta­tions on a dis­ap­pear­ing Eng­lish way of life, all bril­liant­ly observed. Sad­ly, in a com­mer­cial world dom­i­nat­ed by psy­che­delia and effects ped­als and the Sum­mer of Love, The Kinks had turned down the dis­tor­tion on Dave’s gui­tar, and the album sunk with­out a trace (despite it lat­er becom­ing estab­lished crit­i­cal­ly as an all-time clas­sic).

Despite such occa­sion­al com­mer­cial fail­ures, the band remain one of the most influ­en­tial bands of all time, and you only have to look at the songs to know why. You Real­ly Got Me and All Day and All of the Night basi­cal­ly intro­duced the idea of the three-chord riff; and did much to turn rock ‘n’ roll into rock. Glo­ri­ous­ly melod­ic, sto­ry­telling songs abound: Sun­ny After­noon, Water­loo Sun­set, Ded­i­cat­ed Fol­low­er of Fash­ion, David Watts, Come Danc­ing, Lola. A host of future pop stars cit­ed their influ­ence and held them in high esteem (just ask Damon Albarn or Paul Weller).

A per­son­al favourite of mine is Autumn Almanac, a charm­ing vignette of Baroque pop released in 1967; here’s a Top of the Pops appear­ance to appre­ci­ate, and the lyrics below to remind us of just how Eng­lish-pas­toral-roman­tic Ray Davies could get.

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly cater­pil­lar
When the dawn begins to crack, it’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yel­low
So I sweep them in my sack, yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

Fri­day evenings, peo­ple get togeth­er
Hid­ing from the weath­er, tea and toast­ed
But­tered cur­rant buns, can’t com­pen­sate
For lack of sun because the summer’s all gone

La la la la, oh my poor rheumat­ic back
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

I like my foot­ball on a Sat­ur­day
Roast beef on Sun­days, all right
I go to Black­pool for my hol­i­days
Sit in the open sun­light

This is my street and I’m nev­er gonna to leave it
And I’m always gonna to stay here if I live to be nine­ty-nine
‘Cause all the peo­ple I meet, seem to come from my street
And I can’t get away because it’s call­ing me, come on home
Hear it call­ing me, come on home

La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa

The Kinks
Poetry

Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken (1916)

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One pos­i­tive con­se­quence of the lock­down has been, for me and sure­ly for many oth­ers, the re-dis­cov­ery of the ben­e­fits of walk­ing the trails near one’s home. Vir­tu­al­ly every day through­out this peri­od I have strode out and delved into the woods, walk­ing wher­ev­er the mood takes me and dis­cov­er­ing that the myr­i­ad of criss-cross­ing trails allow for a near-infi­nite choice of dif­fer­ent routes to take. Cou­pled with the coin­ci­dent good weath­er and the sea­son­al bloom­ing of the blue­bells, these jaunts have been a source of great plea­sure.

Occa­sion­al­ly, I make out a quite faint trail, per­haps once used but for some rea­son now large­ly untrod­den and over­grown, and I take it, putting me in mind of that famous poem The Road Not Tak­en by the Amer­i­can Robert Frost, in which he says:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by

This idea of “The Road Not Tak­en” has tak­en off in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion and you can find its key lines on mugs, fridge mag­nets and in greet­ing cards, and it has an Eat-Pray-Love-style vibe about it. Of course, the first inter­pre­ta­tion a read­er is like­ly to leap to, read­ing the lines above, is one of indi­vid­u­al­ism and self-asser­tion (“I don’t go with the main­stream, me”), but actu­al­ly, when you read the poem, it’s not quite that sim­ple: the two ways “equal­ly lay / In leaves no step had trod­den black” and “the pass­ing there / Had worn them real­ly about the same”, which is to say, they’re inter­change­able. So it’s not real­ly about well-trod­den ver­sus untrod­den, or going with or against the crowd; it’s a sub­tler com­men­tary about ran­dom choic­es, about freewill ver­sus deter­min­ism. Like in the movie Slid­ing Doors, some split-sec­ond, this-way-or-that-way choic­es are bound to beget marked­ly dif­fer­ent con­se­quences, but you can nev­er know before­hand which is right. Such is life.

What­ev­er its inter­pre­ta­tion, its gen­e­sis actu­al­ly sprung from a sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­al source. Frost spent the years 1912–1915 in Eng­land, where he befriend­ed Eng­lish-Welsh poet Edward Thomas who, when out walk­ing with Frost, would often regret not hav­ing tak­en a dif­fer­ent path and would sigh over what they might have seen and done. Frost liked to tease Thomas: “No mat­ter which road you take, you always sigh and wish you’d tak­en anoth­er!”.

So it’s iron­ic that Frost ini­tial­ly meant the poem to be some­what light-heart­ed when it turned out to be any­thing but. It’s the hall­mark of the true poet, though, to take an every­day expe­ri­ence and trans­form it into some­thing much more. Frost cer­tain­ly suc­ceeds in imbu­ing his short poem with an enig­mat­ic appeal. Here it is in full, and may the roads you choose in life’s jour­ney be the right ones!

Two roads diverged in a yel­low wood,
And sor­ry I could not trav­el both
And be one trav­el­er, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the under­growth;

Then took the oth­er, as just as fair,
And hav­ing per­haps the bet­ter claim,
Because it was grassy and want­ed wear;
Though as for that the pass­ing there
Had worn them real­ly about the same,

And both that morn­ing equal­ly lay
In leaves no step had trod­den black.
Oh, I kept the first for anoth­er day!
Yet know­ing how way leads on to way,
I doubt­ed if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Some­where ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by,
And that has made all the dif­fer­ence.

Robert Frost
Art

Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir Poster Art (1896)

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Le Chat Noir (you prob­a­bly don’t need that trans­lat­ing!) was a 19th cen­tu­ry night­club in the bohemi­an dis­trict of Mont­martre in Paris. It opened in 1881 at 84 Boule­vard de Roche­chouart by the impre­sario Rodolphe Salis, and closed, after a six­teen year glo­ry peri­od, in 1897, not long after Salis’ death. It is thought to be the first mod­ern cabaret: a night­club where the patrons sat at tables and drank alco­holic bev­er­ages whilst being enter­tained by a vari­ety show on stage and a mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

Le Chat Noir soon became pop­u­lar with poets, singers and musi­cians, since it offered an ide­al venue and oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice their acts in front of fel­low per­form­ers and guests. Famous men and women of an artis­tic bent began to patro­n­ise the club, includ­ing poet Paul Ver­laine, can-can dancer Jane Avril, com­posers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, artists Paul Signac and Hen­ri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and many oth­ers from the move­ments of sym­bol­ism and the avant garde.

The cabaret also pub­lished a week­ly mag­a­zine (also called Le Chat Noir), fea­tur­ing lit­er­ary writ­ings, poet­ry, polit­i­cal satire, and news from the cabaret and the local art scene. The icon­ic poster art, which most peo­ple will recog­nise (and a few may even have it in mag­net form on their fridge) was by Swiss Art Nou­veau artist and print­mak­er, Théophile Steinlen.

Yep, my fridge!

Steinlen was in his ear­ly twen­ties and still devel­op­ing his skills as a painter when he was encour­aged by fel­low Swiss artist François Bocion to move to the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of Mont­martre. Once there, Steinlen was intro­duced to the crowd at Le Chat Noir, which led to com­mis­sions to do poster art for them and oth­er com­mer­cial enter­pris­es. Here’s a selec­tion of his poster art, start­ing with the famous La Tournée du Chat Noir (pro­duced for when Salis took his cabaret show on tour). All Stein­len’s posters have an endur­ing appeal, and I’d bet that all of them are famil­iar to you.

Théophile Steinlen

 

Literature

Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children (1906)

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In com­mon with many, I first dis­cov­ered Edith Nesbit’s The Rail­way Chil­dren via the pop­u­lar film ver­sion made in 1970 and broad­cast on TV on and off ever since. I can con­jure up many mov­ing images from that movie that remind me of the sev­en­ties: the two heav­i­ly-pet­ti­coat­ed girls and their short-trousered broth­er bound­ing down hills, flag­ging down trains with red, home­made flags ; the good-heart­ed and proud sta­tion mas­ter played by Bernard Crib­bins; the emo­tion­al reunion of Bob­bie with her father on a steam-cov­ered plat­form. The book ver­sion I didn’t read until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly, read­ing it out loud to my daugh­ter over the course of sev­er­al evenings – and we both loved it.

You prob­a­bly know the sto­ry: it revolves around a fam­i­ly who move from Lon­don up to rur­al York­shire into a house near the rail­way sta­tion, after the father, who works at the For­eign Office, is impris­oned after being false­ly accused of spy­ing. The chil­dren befriend a chap they call the Old Gen­tle­man who reg­u­lar­ly takes the 9:15 train near their home; he is even­tu­al­ly able to help prove their father’s inno­cence, and the fam­i­ly is reunit­ed. The fam­i­ly also takes care of a Russ­ian exile, Mr Szczepan­sky, who came to Eng­land look­ing for his fam­i­ly and Jim, the grand­son of the Old Gen­tle­man, who suf­fers a bro­ken leg in a tun­nel.

The book was first seri­alised in The Lon­don Mag­a­zine dur­ing 1905 and then pub­lished in book form in the fol­low­ing year. It’s inter­est­ing to pick up on pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions from news that was cur­rent at the time. The theme of an inno­cent man being false­ly impris­oned for espi­onage, but final­ly vin­di­cat­ed, may well have been influ­enced by the Drey­fus Affair, which had been a promi­nent news item a few years before the book was writ­ten. Nes­bit will have aligned her­self, no doubt, with Émile Zola’s famous open let­ter in sup­port of the wrong­ly-accused Alfred Drey­fus, J’Ac­cuse.

Nesbit’s own involve­ment in pol­i­tics also pro­vid­ed inspi­ra­tion. Nes­bit was a polit­i­cal activist and co-founder of the Fabi­an Soci­ety in 1894 (she even named her son Fabi­an). She was friends with two real-life Russ­ian dis­si­dents, Sergius Step­ni­ak and Peter Kropotkin, an amal­ga­ma­tion of whom Nes­bit prob­a­bly had in mind for her Mr Szczepan­sky.

We also see ref­er­ences to the then-cur­rent Rus­so-Japan­ese War, in which Japan suc­cess­ful­ly halt­ed Tsar Nicholas II from tight­en­ing his grip on Manchuria and Korea, and Nes­bit has an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sub­tly express her hos­tile opin­ions of Tsarist Rus­sia. I’m not sure if Nesbit’s oth­er books (she pub­lished around 60 books of children’s lit­er­a­ture, includ­ing the Psam­mead series and the Bastable series) sim­i­lar­ly reveal sub­tle polit­i­cal threads with­in them but you wouldn’t be sur­prised now, would you?

Here’s the clip from the film where Bob­bie (Jen­ny Agut­ter) spies her return­ing father amidst the steam on the plat­form and runs to him cry­ing “Dad­dy, my Dad­dy”. I well up every time.

Edith Nes­bit
Dance

Gene Kelly’s Dance Scene in Singin’ In The Rain (1952)

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2011’s mul­ti­ple award-win­ning movie, The Artist, was an homage to the Hol­ly­wood of the late 1920s dur­ing its dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion from silent movies to the “talkies”, and very good it was too. It wasn’t the first movie to find its inspi­ra­tion from that time, how­ev­er: 1952’s Sin­gin’ In The Rain, right­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est Hol­ly­wood musi­cals of all time, also tells the sto­ry of silent movie stars caught up in that tran­si­tion to a new era. It also hap­pened to con­tain one of the most famous dance sequences ever per­formed: Gene Kelly’s joy­ous rou­tine as a loved-up dream­er on a rain-soaked side­walk.

The sto­ry of the film’s mak­ing is an inter­est­ing one and on the sur­face may well have result­ed in a mish­mash of songs and ideas; the movie start­ed out as essen­tial­ly a van­i­ty project for MGM pro­duc­er Arthur Freed. Freed had spent the 1920s as a lyri­cist, writ­ing songs for talkies with Nacio Herb Brown. By the 1940s, he was head of his own MGM unit, and want­ed to cre­ate a musi­cal from his own back cat­a­logue (his song Sin­gin’ in the Rain had in fact already been used in the movie The Hol­ly­wood Revue of 1929). Bet­ty Com­den and Adolph Green were hired to write the screen­play and, real­is­ing that the songs were very much of their era, “it occurred to us that rather than try to use them in a sophis­ti­cat­ed, con­tem­po­rary story…they would bloom in some­thing that took place in the very peri­od in which they had been writ­ten”. The tran­si­tion from silent to sound thus pro­vid­ed the most appro­pri­ate — and as it turned out, per­fect – vehi­cle for Freed’s songs.

Don Lock­wood (Gene Kel­ly) and Lina Lam­ont (Jean Hagen) are a glam­ourous on-screen cou­ple who are also hyped by the stu­dio as hav­ing an off-screen romance, although in real­i­ty Don bare­ly tol­er­ates Lina and Lina only con­vinces her­self of the hype due to her own self-impor­tance. They are embark­ing on a new silent movie but their pro­duc­er realis­es late on that he has no choice but to con­vert it to a talk­ing pic­ture, due to the suc­cess of (real-life) movie The Jazz Singer. The pro­duc­tion is beset with dif­fi­cul­ties, of course, where­from much com­e­dy ensues, and Don falls for cho­rus girl Kathy Selden (Deb­bie Reynolds).

Gene Kelly’s famous umbrel­la-twirling dance scene took three days to film, and despite run­ning a 103°F fever for the whole peri­od, he achieved a piece of cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry. Mod­est as ever, he would attribute the number’s suc­cess to the crew, musi­cians, and com­posers. Upon the movie’s release in April 1952 audi­ences flocked to see it and, despite being large­ly ignored by the Oscars (unlike The Artist), it was a tri­umph. Get a load of Kel­ly’s charm and appeal in his famous scene here…

Poetry

William Wordsworth’s Daffodils (1807)

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The verges near where I live are sea­son­al­ly awash with daf­fodils, as no doubt are yours if you live vir­tu­al­ly any­where in the UK, so what bet­ter time to take a look at that clas­sic poem that reg­u­lar­ly makes its way into the nation’s favourite poem lists, name­ly William Wordsworth’s I Wan­dered Lone­ly as a Cloud (aka Daf­fodils)? I’m less cer­tain about nowa­days, but when I was young, this poem was the one that lit­er­al­ly every­one knew. If pushed to quote a line of poet­ry you could always fall back upon “I wan­dered lone­ly as a cloud” in the same way you might have said “To be or not to be” if pushed to quote Shake­speare.

Wordsworth was the man who helped to launch the Roman­tic move­ment in Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture when, in 1798, he pub­lished Lyri­cal Bal­lads with Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge. As well as being a vol­ume of poems by the two men, the work includ­ed a pref­ace expound­ing the poets’ lit­er­ary the­o­ry and prin­ci­ples. They want­ed to make poet­ry acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son by writ­ing verse in com­mon, every­day lan­guage and with com­mon, every­day sub­jects as the focus. This was against the grain, of course — how often do we find an artist, famous to us today, push­ing the bound­aries of con­ven­tion in their own time?

Although ini­tial­ly received mod­est­ly, Lyri­cal Bal­lads came to be seen as a mas­ter­piece and launched both poets into the pub­lic gaze, so when in 1807 Wordsworth pub­lished Poems, in Two Vol­umes, includ­ing Daf­fodils, he was already a well-known fig­ure in lit­er­ary cir­cles. Wordsworth had talked of poet­ry being “the spon­ta­neous over­flow of pow­er­ful feel­ings: it takes its ori­gin from emo­tion rec­ol­lect­ed in tran­quil­i­ty”, and Daf­fodils is the per­fect illus­tra­tion of what he meant ( For oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pen­sive mood, They flash upon that inward eye, Which is the bliss of soli­tude…) .

It was inspired by Wordsworth and his sis­ter Dorothy hav­ing come across a long and strik­ing swathe of daf­fodils whilst out on a stroll around Ull­swa­ter in April 1802. Dorothy was a keen diarist who record­ed her own feel­ings about the daf­fodils, and this like­ly helped William frame his poem, and indeed, Wordsworth’s wife Mary also con­tributed a cou­ple of lines to the poem: it was a real fam­i­ly affair. If you want to remind your­self of the poem beyond its immor­tal open­ing line, here it is…

I wan­dered lone­ly as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of gold­en daf­fodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Flut­ter­ing and danc­ing in the breeze.

Con­tin­u­ous as the stars that shine
And twin­kle on the milky way,
They stretched in nev­er-end­ing line
Along the mar­gin of a bay:
Ten thou­sand saw I at a glance,
Toss­ing their heads in spright­ly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund com­pa­ny:
I gazed—and gazed—but lit­tle thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pen­sive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of soli­tude;
And then my heart with plea­sure fills,
And dances with the daf­fodils.

William Wordsworth
Music

Aram Khachaturian’s Adagio From Spartacus (1954)

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Khacha­turi­an! A great name, for a start, that I recall see­ing writ­ten on the back of one of those com­pi­la­tion albums of clas­si­cal music, owned by my par­ents. That album was actu­al­ly a great intro­duc­tion to the clas­sics; it’s where I first heard The Flight of the Bum­ble­bee, The Ride of the Valkyries, The Blue Danube, The Hall of the Moun­tain King, and, in the case of Khacha­turi­an, the fren­zied Sabre Dance.

Aram Khacha­turi­an was born in 1903 in Tblisi, Geor­gia, of Armen­ian extrac­tion (I think it was that patronymic suf­fix, -ian, com­mon to Armen­ian sur­names – such as Kar­dashi­an – that added a cer­tain some­thing). Fol­low­ing the Sovi­eti­za­tion of the Cau­ca­sus in 1921, Khacha­turi­an moved to Moscow, where he enrolled at the Gnessin Musi­cal Insti­tute and sub­se­quent­ly stud­ied at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry. He wrote sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant con­cer­tos and sym­phonies, but he is best known for his bal­lets Gayane (from which comes the Sabre Dance) and Spar­ta­cus (from which comes the focus of this blog, the cap­ti­vat­ing Ada­gio of Spar­ta­cus and Phry­gia).

Spar­ta­cus fol­lows the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of the famous glad­i­a­tor-gen­er­al, Spar­ta­cus, the leader of the slave upris­ing against the Romans in 73 BC (which actu­al­ly hap­pened, inci­den­tal­ly, and was exhaus­tive­ly chron­i­cled by Plutarch, but that – as I so often have to say – is anoth­er sto­ry!).

The Roman con­sul Cras­sus has returned to Rome from his lat­est con­quests in a tri­umphal pro­ces­sion. Among his cap­tives are the Thra­cian king Spar­ta­cus and his wife Phry­gia. To enter­tain Cras­sus and his cronies, Spar­ta­cus is sent into the glad­i­a­to­r­i­al ring and is forced to kill a close friend. Hor­ri­fied at his deed, Spar­ta­cus incites his fel­low cap­tives to rebel­lion, and ends up free­ing the slave women, includ­ing Phry­gia. The Ada­gio marks their cel­e­bra­tion.

It open with a del­i­cate syn­co­pat­ed rhythm from the strings, and a series of trills on the flute. A slow ascend­ing scale is played by the cel­los, and the oboe eas­es the music into the famous ‘love theme’ for the first time. It’s tremen­dous stuff and read­ers of a cer­tain age will almost cer­tain­ly remem­ber its use as the theme music to the TV pro­gramme, The Onedin Line.

Below, I present a ver­sion of the bal­let per­formed by Anna Nikuli­na and Mikhail Lobukhin of the Bol­shoi Bal­let. In addi­tion, below that, I have cho­sen anoth­er ver­sion: a piano-only ren­der­ing of the music, and I include it because it is just too exquis­ite to omit. The pianist is Matthew Cameron, who, as well as being a vir­tu­oso con­cert pianist, appears to be good-look­ing and, accord­ing to his web­site, col­lects antique his­toric swords, with a col­lec­tion dat­ing back to the 9th cen­tu­ry. Hat tip!

Aram Khacha­turi­an

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