Favourite Poems: My Own John Poynz by Sir Thomas Wyatt

A while back I posted a list of my fifty favourite poems, and this was one of them. It's one of the more obscure poems on the list (most of them are not obscure at all). And even this isn't all that obscure, because I encountered it in the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Still, it's not a poem you ever hear quoted.

I have a strange kink whereby I don't want to know too much about the context of my favourite poems. I've read about Sir Thomas Wyatt before, but I don't remember many of the details. I think he was in love with Anne Boleyn, and wrote an excellent sonnet about her. Or was that his son, also called Thomas Wyatt? Or his father, also called Thomas Wyatt? I don't know. I'm pretty sure there were at least two Thomas Wyatts. One of them was involved in a rebellion and executed, or maybe both. You may be itching to enlighten me on this score. If you do, I promise you I'll have forgotten your clarification within hours.

Anyway, I think this is a very fine poem. It's similar to "The Fisherman" by W.B. Yeats. It has the same resounding and scornful invective against degenerate cultural tendencies, the same proud insistence on standing apart rather than running with the mob. I love the way it slowly but steadily gains pace, as example follows example and image follows image.

There are only one or two natural virtues that I've had all my life, but one of them is the sort of disdain for wealthy and powerful elites that Wyatt expresses here. I'm not talking about envy or resentment, but rather a complete lack of interest. I'm not one of those conservatives who delights in all the trappings of royalty and aristocracy. I'm all for a ceremonial monarchy, but all the splendour and majesty leaves me cold. Plutocracy has the same effect on me.

I love the savage irony of:

None of these points would ever frame in me;

My wit is naught; I cannot learn the way.

Being an anglophile, I also love the tirade against decadent continentals, compared to the yeomanly virtue of a true Englishman. And I also like the Catholic-bashing. Religious and national allegiances shouldn't come into our enjoyment of poetry. (Yes, there's a bit of a contradiction in that paragraph.)

My favourite line in the whole poem is: But here I am in Kent and Christendom. For years that's the line that's come to me when I'm enjoying the sensation, or imagining the sensation, of feeling safely ensconced on home ground, in some way or other.

There is a whole genre of poems like this, in which a poet appeals to a friend to enjoy simple joys, far from the madding crowd. There's Milton's "Lawrence, Of Virtuous Father Virtuous Son" and Tennyson's "To The Rev. F.D. Maurice". And probably others, although I can't think of them.

Mine own John Poynz by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Mine own John Poynz, since ye delight to know
The cause why that homeward I me draw,
And flee the press of courts, whereso they go,
Rather than to live thrall under the awe
Of lordly looks, wrappèd within my cloak,
To will and lust learning to set a law:
It is not for because I scorn or mock
The power of them, to whom fortune hath lent
Charge over us, of right, to strike the stroke.
But true it is that I have always meant
Less to esteem them than the common sort,
Of outward things that judge in their intent
Without regard what doth inward resort.
I grant sometime that of glory the fire
Doth twyche my heart. Me list not to report
Blame by honour, and honour to desire.
But how may I this honour now attain,
That cannot dye the colour black a liar?
My Poynz, I cannot from me tune to feign,
To cloak the truth for praise without desert
Of them that list all vice for to retain.
I cannot honour them that sets their part
With Venus and Bacchus all their life long;
Nor hold my peace of them although I smart
I cannot crouch nor kneel to do so great a wrong,
To worship them, like God on earth alone,
That are as wolves these sely lambs among.
I cannot with my word complain and moan,
And suffer nought, nor smart without complaint,
Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone.
I cannot speak and look like a saint,
Use willes for wit, and make deceit a pleasure,
And call craft counsel, for profit still to paint.
I cannot wrest the law to fill the coffer
With innocent blood to feed myself fat,
And do most hurt where most help I offer.
I am not he that can allow the state
Of him Caesar, and damn Cato to die,
That with his death did scape out of the gate
From Caesar's hands (if Livy do not lie)
And would not live where liberty was lost;
So did his heart the common weal apply.
I am not he such eloquence to boast
To make the crow singing as the swan;
Nor call the liond of cowardes beasts the most
That cannot take a mouse as the cat can;
And he that dieth for hunger of the gold
Call him Alexander; and say that Pan
Passeth Apollo in music many fold;
Praise Sir Thopias for a noble tale,
And scorn the story that the Knight told;
Praise him for counsel that is drunk of ale;
Grin when he laugheth that beareth all the sway,
Frown when he frowneth and groan when is pale;
On others' lust to hang both night and day:
None of these points would ever frame in me.
My wit is nought—I cannot learn the way.
And much the less of things that greater be,
That asken help of colours of device
To join the mean with each extremity,
With the nearest virtue to cloak alway the vice;
And as to purpose, likewise it shall fall
To press the virtue that it may not rise;
As drunkenness good fellowship to call;
The friendly foe with his double face
Say he is gentle and courteous therewithal;
And say that favel hath a goodly grace
In eloquence; and cruelty to name
Zeal of justice and change in time and place;
And he that suffer'th offence without blame
Call him pitiful; and him true and plain
That raileth reckless to every man's shame.
Say he is rude that cannot lie and feign;
The lecher a lover; and tyranny
To be the right of a prince's reign.
I cannot, I; no, no, it will not be!
This is the cause that I could never yet
Hang on their sleeves that way, as thou mayst see,
A chip of chance more than a pound of wit.
This maketh me at home to hunt and to hawk,
And in foul weather at my book to sit;
In frost and snow then with my bow to stalk;
No man doth mark whereso I ride or go:
In lusty leas at liberty I walk.
And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe,
Save that a clog doth hang yet at my heel.
No force for that, for it is ordered so,
That I may leap both hedge and dyke full well.
I am not now in France to judge the wine,
With saffry sauce the delicates to feel;
Nor yet in Spain, where one must him incline
Rather than to be, outwardly to seem:
I meddle not with wits that be so fine.
Nor Flanders' cheer letteth not my sight to deem
Of black and white; nor taketh my wit away
With beastliness; they beasts do so esteem.
Nor I am not where Christ is given in prey
For money, poison, and treason at Rome—
A common practice used night and day:
But here I am in Kent and Christendom
Among the Muses where I read and rhyme;
Where if thou list, my Poinz, for to come,
Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.

One Word That Makes Me Shun Any Video, Blog Post, etc. (When it's the First Word in the Title.)

"How..."

Especially when the word doesn't really apply and it's just an attemptedly cute appeal to self-improvement. ("How C.S. Lewis changed my life", that kind of thing.)

Exceptionally Exciting-- a Repeat

(This blog post is less than a year old, but I'm repeating it because its topic has been much on my mind today. Hey, it's blog, I can do that.)

As I've mentioned before, I browse the website TV Tropes a lot. A lotta lot. It might be my favourite way of relaxing, decompressing, kicking back, and so forth. And it has been for at least a decade.

Today, I came across this sentence on TV Tropes: "A San Francisco youth made national news when saw the movie Rocky eighty-one times (and possibly more) during its first-run release in 1976 and 1977. After the twenty-seventh viewing, the theatre started letting him in for free."

I don't know why, but this sort of thing makes the Christmas tree of my imagination light up, flash, and play holiday tunes.

What sort of thing do I mean? Well, anything to do with an exception, an irregular situation, a freebie, an informal arrangement, or an anomaly.

For instance: I once read that the Abbey National Building Society, having a branch very close to the (only ever fictional) address of 221B Baker Street, employed a full-time secretary to answer Sherlock Holmes's mail. And this is true!

For instance: one year in secondary school, when I was about sixteen, a quirk of the timetable meant that we had an English class sandwiched between two physical education classes. So the teacher let us stay in our gym clothes for that class.

For instance: I once went to a takeaway and bought some garlic sauce. Just that. The guy behind the counter threw in a good amount of chips, free of charge and unasked.

For instance: on Liechtenstein's national day, all the citizens are invited to a party in the Prince's castle.

For instance: once, when I was a kid, my school organised a treasure hunt. I remember me and my brothers going into the vegetable shop in the shopping centre to ask about a particular clue. The shopkeeper gave us a mysterious, knowing look, reached under the counter, and handed us an envelope. This completely floored me.

For instance: in the film Wayne's World 2, the protagonist says: "Everybody in the world has Frampton Comes Alive. If you lived in the suburbs, you were issued with it. It came in the mail with samples of Tide."

Please note, the appeal I'm talking about doesn't just apply to freebies or special privileges. It can go the opposite way, too. It pleases me when someone has a special power or obligation.

I've just discovered, from a quick internet search, that barmen don't really have the right to confiscate someone's car keys. But apparently, businesses did once have the right to cut up your declined credit card. Both ideas appeal to me.

When I was a kid, and I went a long time between haircuts (as I always did), I'd regularly get this taunt from other kids: "The barber has a warrant for your arrest." The idea always charmed me.

In 2003, Coke was banned from being sold in UCD Student's Union shops because of controversies about their operations in Colombia. That was lifted more recently, but now it's banned because the sugar content is too high. It's a bummer that you can't get a Coke in UCD when you want one, but I enjoy the anomaly.

Speaking of Coke, for many years it was forbidden to use the name Pepsi in their corporate headquarters in Atlanta. You had to say "the imitator" instead. (For real. Look it up, if you don't believe me.)

In New Jersey, you can't operate petrol pump yourself-- you have to get a petrol station attendant to do it.

And then there are the anomalies of convention. If children were to knock on your door and demand sweets on 364 days of the year, you'd send them packing. But on Halloween night, it's almost mandatory to indulge them. (Or, as the carol puts it about another season, "Once in a year it is not thought amiss to visit our neighbours and sing out like this...")

Then there are some interesting rules and arrangements in the history of cinema, often done as publicity stunts. For instance, Alfred Hitchcock's rule that nobody would be admitted into Psycho after the film had begun. (Back then, films played on a loop.)

Then there are William Castle's various gimmicks, such as "fright insurance" for the audience.

In the 1967 film Wait Until Dark, the gimmick was that cinemas turned off all their lights (except the EXIT signs) in the final scene, which is set in complete darkness.

Anyway, you either get what I mean now, or you don't. Does anyone share this fascination, or this pleasure? I'd be interested to know that.

Obviously, this goes a long way towards explaining this blog post!

Do you think this is a stupid blog post? It might be, but I bet there's none other like it out there...

Why Do Words Fall Out of Use?

I've just been reading a book from 1900, and it contains this sentence: "Vivid memories of those days survive, coloured by Bible stories, conned and repeated, and the prints and the chromos which were a part of the familiar apparatus."

Let's put aside the interesting word "chromo", which presumably means colour illustration. I'm interested in the phrase "conned and repeated".

You probably know the archaic meaning of 'con', in this context. It meant to learn by rote, to swot up on, to cram. But why has it ceased to be use in this sense? Why does any word or term cease to be used?

I mean, think about it. Hundreds of millions of people are speaking English every day, and using it to describe any number of ideas and activities and events. Shouldn't every possible resource be drawn upon repeatedly, in that great babble? Isn't that what you'd expect?

Was it perhaps the pejorative meaning of con, as in "to swindle, to trick", that made people back away from using it in the other sense?

But how does that explain all the other archaic terms that just disappear? (I think the one I lament the most might be "brown study": "I fell into a brown study", that is, a reverie.)

A little further on in the book, I came across another word that has fallen out of use: "collegian". There seems no earthly reason why that one should have disappeared, or all but disappeared.

Every time you open your mouth you are shaping the language. Think about that! (Unless, of course, you are opening it to put a doughnut inside, an operation of which I heartily approve.)

Look Thy Last

This stanza regularly intrudes itself upon my thoughts:

Look thy last on all things lovely,
Every hour. Let no night
Seal thy sense in deathly slumber
Till to delight
Thou have paid thy utmost blessing;
Since that all things thou wouldst praise
Beauty took from those who loved them
In other days.

For years, I've thought it was Thomas Hardy, but it's actually Walter de la Mare-- as I've just discovered.

More recently I've been thinking: why just "lovely"? Look thy last on all things seems better advice, and something I'm increasingly trying to do. Even though I have no reason not to expect two or three more decades on this earth, or perhaps even more.

Beidh Lá Eile ag an bPaorach

This is one of my favourite Irish proverbs. 

The literal translation is "Power will have another day". "Power" is an Irish surname, so it's basically an assertion that you're not finished yet, or that you'll bounce back.

God knows who the original Power was or what he was bouncing back from.

Poems I Like: The Fascination of What's Difficult by W.B. Yeats

I gave a library tour today and a student (actually a prospective student) asked me my favourite poet. Nobody ever asks me great questions like this. People ask me the same kind of questions they ask you, I'm sure: how long does it take you to get into work, what did you do at the weekend, do you have any holidays booked, etc? I hadn't even mentioned poetry. (Incidentally, the student told me his own favourite poet was Rudyard Kipling, a choice I wholeheartedly praised.)

Anyway, there is only one answer for me: W.B. YEATS.

Yeats seems to me to be so much the greatest English language poet that I wonder why everyone doesn't agree with me. Nearly everything he wrote was brilliant.

"The Fascination of What's Difficult" is one of his lesser poems, but it's still a great poem. Presumably we've all experienced this fascination; doing something the hard way rather than the easy way, just for the sake of it. And feeling no choice in the matter!

There's something about Yeats poems that I can best describe by the term "contour". I have this notion that you could replace the words of a Yeats poem with almost any other words, as long as you preserved the sentence structure and rhyme scheme, and you'd still have a good poem-- the "bones" are that strong. (I've even thought of doing this myself). Very often he had a long, sinuous, tentative line followed by a short, punchy line. But that's just one example in his box of tricks.

The Fascination of What's Difficult

The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

"Give Me Just Sixty Seconds..."

Does someone believe that beginning a YouTube ad like this is really going to get me to listen? It makes me even likelier to skip them. (Oh, and telling me not to skip is guaranteeing that I will skip.)

Honestly, I don't see why ads can't evolve to get their essential message into five seconds.

And I wonder why they don't just have someone tell a joke. I'd probably stay for the punchline.

I'm sure they know their business, though.

Me, Frank and Stan

 

Some Lines on Corpus Christi by John Bradburne

I encountered them in an email from the John Bradburne Society today.

If you don't know about John Bradburne, I encourage you to make his acquaintance. Apparently he is the most prolific poet in English

I wouldn't call any of his poetry great, although of course, I've only read a tiny fraction of his huge outpout. He has an unfortunate tendency towards incongruity and bathos. However, I really like these four lines:

Jesus of Nazareth is in each tent
Where rests with us The Blessed Sacrament:
Worship the God of nature and do well,
Do better and adore Emmanuel.

Is Modern Life Banal, or Is It Just Me?

That's the question I keep asking myself, especially recently.

Don't people who consider themselves "sensitive", "soulful", "deep", "poetic", etc. etc. say this about every era?

Wasn't Wordsworth lambasting England in 1802 because "plain living and high thinking are no more"?

Didn't G.K. Chesterton deride his era of "frock-coats" and "stovepipe hats" (both of which now seem impossibly elegant to us), though he also complained about a "dwarfish contempt for the present?"

Didn't William Morris thunder against the utilitarianism and ugliness of his era?

And Thomas Carlyle?

And John Ruskin?

And W.B. Yeats?

And everybody?

And yet...I can't help it. I feel crushed under the banality of the twenty-first century all the time-- the supermarkets, the office blocks, the identikit suburbs, the moronic patter on the radio, the omnipresent political correctness, the all-pervasive irony and "self-awareness", the general lack of seriousness and solemnity and sublimity.

Well, maybe I don't feel like this all the time. But a lot of the time. I have a positive craving for "re-enchantment", whatever that means, and feel an urgent duty to be an agent of this however I can.

And yet, I can't help feeling that someone who wandered into the twenty-first century from the Middle Ages, or perhaps even any other time, might consider it a paradise beyond imagining, and want to kick me for my ingratitude.

Did You Ever Want to Read a Blog Post on the Scripture Knowledge of P.G. Wodehouse?

Well, here it is! Courtesy of the Gospel Coalition, who seem like a spiffing bunch of coves.

Mention of P.G. Wodehouse and the Bible inevitably reminds me of the legendary prize-giving scene in Right-Ho Jeeves, when a completely hammered Gussie Fink-Nottle distributes prizes to schoolboys-- not realizing that three different people have spiked his orange juice with whiskey, in an effort to give him some Dutch courage. His examination of one of the prize-winners is hilarious:

"Well, G.G. Simmons."

"Sir, yes, sir."

"What do you mean--sir, yes, sir? Dashed silly thing to say. So you've won the Scripture-knowledge prize, have you?"

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Yes," said Gussie, "you look just the sort of little tick who would. And yet," he said, pausing and eyeing the child keenly, "how are we to know that this has all been open and above board? Let me test you, G.G. Simmons. What was What's-His-Name--the chap who begat Thingummy? Can you answer me that, Simmons?"

"Sir, no, sir."

Gussie turned to the bearded bloke.

"Fishy," he said. "Very fishy. This boy appears to be totally lacking in Scripture knowledge."

The bearded bloke passed a hand across his forehead.

"I can assure you, Mr. Fink-Nottle, that every care was taken to ensure a correct marking and that Simmons outdistanced his competitors by a wide margin."

"Well, if you say so," said Gussie doubtfully. "All right, G.G. Simmons, take your prize."

(This scene is sometimes described as the funniest in all English literature, and I can't think of one which deserves that title better. Of course, there's a lot more to it than just the passage above.)

Poems I Like: "The Woman of Three Cows" by James Clarence Mangan

Some lines from this poem came into my head just now, so I've decided to include it in my series.

James Clarence Mangan is fairly well-known in Ireland, but I would be surprised if anybody (other than people interested in Ireland) know him abroad. He died in 1849. He was the archetypal romantic poet, known for his cloak, poverty, doomed love affair, and addictions.

Mangan wrote some very moving and lyrical poems, but this isn't one of them. This is a sparkling piece of satire or social commentary, translated from an Irish original.

The main thing I love about this poem is simply its virtuosity. It hops, skips, leaps, and jumps. Mangan is in complete command of the format. He comes up with rhyme after rhyme for the refrain "woman of three cows", with an impression of sheer effortlessness. Its emphatic metre is a pleasure in itself.

I also like the gusto of the poem. Somehow I imagine Mangan greatly enjoyed writing it. He was truly a Byronic figure in both senses; he had Byron's romantic melancholy, but also Byron's mordant comic glee, when the mood took him.

The Woman of Three Cows is the sort of person who, until recently, had a stock description in the Irish vernacular: "Tuppence-ha'penny looking down on tuppence."

Mangan was an Irish nationalist, and it's wonderful how he's stitched allusions to Irish history through the whole length of the poem. You'd expect this in a patriotic lyric, but somehow it's even more powerful in a piece of invective like this, where the Irish historical references (many of which are lost on me) simply form the background, the world of the poem. I'm constantly sad and ashamed that Irish writers just dropped the Gaelic Revival, or the Celtic Dawn, or whatever you want to call it, a few decades after independence. It had room for infinite variation.

I've said above that this isn't a moving and lyrical poem. That's not quite true. Although it's basically a satire, there are some loftier strains in it, such as this one:

O, think of Donnell of the Ships, the Chief whom nothing daunted --
See how he fell in distant Spain, unchronicled, unchanted!

It had never occurred to me before, but this poem is quite reminiscent of Tennyson's "Lady Clara Vere de Vere" (the poem from which the film Kind Hearts and Coronets takes its title), although Tennyson's poem is not comical.

Mangan throws Irish dialect words in liberally enough. "Agraw" means "my dear"; "Movrone" means "alas!", and "inagh"...to be honest, I don't know what that one means.

Trigger warning: the last verse contains an endorsement of violence towards women. We must remember Mangan never attended a sensitivity training course.

The Woman of Three Cows by James Clarence Mangan

O, Woman of Three Cows, agraw, don't let your tongue thus rattle!
O, don't be saucy, don't be stiff, because you may have cattle.
I've seen -- and, here's my hand to you, I only say what's true --
A many a one with twice your stock not half so proud as you.

Good luck to you, don't scorn the poor, and don't be their despiser,
For worldly wealth soon melts away, and cheats the very miser,
And Death soon strips the proudest wreath from haughty human brows;
Then don't be stiff, and don't be proud, good Woman of Three Cows!

See where Momonia's heroes lie, proud Owen More's descendants,
'Tis they that won the glorious name, and had the grand attendants!
If they were forced to bow to Fate, as every mortal bows,
Can you be proud, can you be stiff, my Woman of Three Cows!

The brave sons of the Lord of Clare, they left the land to mourning;
Movrone! for they were banished, with no hope of their returning --
Who knows in what abodes of want those youths were driven to house?
Yet you can give yourself these airs, O, Woman of Three Cows!

O, think of Donnell of the Ships, the Chief whom nothing daunted --
See how he fell in distant Spain, unchronicled, unchanted!
He sleeps, the great O'Sullivan, where thunder cannot rouse --
Then, ask yourself, should you be proud, good Woman of Three Cows!

O'Ruark, Maguire, those souls of fire, whose names are shrined in story --
Think how their high achievements once made Erin's greatest glory--
Yet now their bones lie mouldering under weeds and cypress boughs,
And so, for all your pride, will yours, O, Woman of Three Cows!

The O'Carrolls also, famed when Fame was only for the boldest,
Rest in forgotten sepulchres with Erin's best and oldest;
Yet who so great as they of yore in battle or carouse?
Just think of that, and hide your head, good Woman of Three Cows!

Your neighbour's poor, and you, it seems, are big with vain ideas,
Because, inagh! you've got three cows, one more, I see, than she has.
That tongue of yours wags more at times than Charity allows,
But, if you're strong, be merciful, great Woman of Three Cows!

Now, there you go! You still, of course, keep up your scornful bearing,
And I'm too poor to hinder you; but, by the cloak I'm wearing,
If I had but four cows myself, even though you were my spouse,
I'd thwack you well to cure your pride, my Woman of Three Cows!

Misty

I've been reading about British comics recently. I grew up reading British comics: The Eagle, Battle, Roy of the Rover, and Transformers. (Yes, Transformers was British. There was a British comic separate from the American comic.)

Reading an article about British comics in the eighties, I was surprised to learn that there was a girls' horror comic called Misty. In fact, there were several girls' horror comics.

I find this fascinating in itself-- it's so niche!-- but it also "triggered" an important memory from my childhood, which I've mentioned before on this blog.

I don't know exactly how old I was at the time of this memory. I'm not even entirely sure where I was. I know I was in Limerick, visiting my aunt and uncle on their farm, but I don't remember if I was in the car we arrived in, or if I was in the house-- or both.

Anyway, I found a girl's comic, and I had a strong reaction to this-- though I don't remember whether it was subconscious or conscious. I didn't even realize that here were girl's comics. The realization that such a thing existed astonished and delighted me.

That was the same night that I saw more stars than I'd ever seen before or (it seems) that I've ever seen since. It wasn't my first time on the farm, so I'd been away from the light pollution of Dublin. But for some reason my uncle and aunt weren't there when we arrived this time, and we were standing outside the house for quiet a while. I had lesiure to look at the sky. Every time I looked, it seemed there were more stars.

The sense of discovery, wonder and the exotic of both these occurrences-- the girl's comic, and the starry sky-- runs together in my mind, and is best expressed by the famous lines from Keats:

Then felt I like a watcher of the skies
When some new planet swims into his ken..

The funny thing about the girl's comic was that it was so similar, in one way, to the boy's comics that I was familiar with, and yet so different in other ways. Real meaningful diversity seems to me one of the most precious things in the world. And no difference is more primordial than the man-woman difference. I think it's well expressed in Adam's words on first seeing Eve: "This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." The first thing Adam expressed was belonging and similarity, not otherness-- as essential as otherness is to the man-woman relation.

(I think whole tracts could be written about the relationship between familiarity and otherness. They seem to need each other, and to blend into each other, without ever collapsing into each other. The progressive notion that "othering" is an act of aggression seems to me like an assault on life and joy.)

But aside from the man-woman aspect, my sense of joy and discovery-- "here is something that was always there, that's a whole world to be explored, but whose existence I didn't even expect"--  is something that I frequently experience in other contexts. I wish there was a word for it. "Discovery" doesn't cover it. "Startling discovery" is better, but doesn't quite do it.

I can barely remember anything of the comic itself, apart from a few significant details. I remember a story about a girl in some sort of Himalayan-type mountain range, that involved some sort of magical monastic character (good or bad, I can't remember), and also featured an avalanche.

I've tried to identify this story using the internet. Obviously, it's not much to go on, but I did learn that Himalayan adventures and magical monastic figures were quite a standard in girl's comics of this time. And this, to me, is very interesting.

I know next to nothing about Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan, but it's interesting that we all carry a sort of mental set (in the sense of a film-set or a theatre-set) of this part of the world around with us, as seen through fiction and imagination. I recognized it even when I was a kid. You can call it a set, an atmosphere, an idyll, a stereotype, a cliché, a romanticization-- whatever you choose to call it, I think it greatly enriches life. And such "sets" don't only apply to regional and national cultures, but to everything-- historical periods, ways of life, stages of life, sports, hobbies, political groups, genres of fiction, etc. etc.

I rejoice the more such "sets" there are in the world, and I fret at the loss of them. I think the loss of them is just another name for disenchantment. And the fact that these sort of girl's comics no longer exist-- not to mention their male equivalents-- seems to me a loss of enchantment.

(Although I've just learned of a UK comic called Phoenix which was launched in 2012, and seems very similar to the sort of comics I knew growing up. That's heartening-- especially as it's not a revival aimed at adult, despite the title.)

Favouritism

There's been quite a flap about the fact that Sir Keir Starmer, according to an interview in The Guardian, admitted that he didn't have a favourite novel or poem. This provoked various opinion pieces indicting him as a soulless robot. (This happened a little while ago, but I've only heard about it today.)

I think it's a stretch to call someone soulless because they don't have a favourite poem or novel-- to say the least. But it has got me thinking about favourites, and the whole business of having favourites.

Personally, I've always had favourites. I like having favourites. I like thinking about favourites, and deciding on favourites, and awarding favourites.

I've realized that other people are different. In fact, lots of people make a face if you ask them for their favourite film, book, etc. "I don't really have a favourite", they reply, in the same tone that people say: "I don't have a television."

I find this irritating. Back when I was on Facebook, I asked people to their name their favourite film (or something), but added: "If you're one of those tiresome, precious people who don't have favourites, just tell me a few that you especially like." (Or something like that.)

Anyway, I'm a favourites kind of guy, for good or ill. Here are a few of my favourites.

1) Favourite overall author: G.K. Chesterton.

2) Favourite poet: W.B. Yeats.

3) Favourite poem: "Ulysses" by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

4) Favourite song: "Night Fever" by the Bee Gees.

5) Favourite film: Groundhog Day.

6) Favourite horror film: either The Wicker Man or Dead of Night (1945).

7) Favourite word: Kaleidoscope.

8) Favourite book of the Bible: Ecclesiastes.

9) Favourite Shakespeare play: The Tempest.

10) Favourite TV show: The Office (US)

11) Favourite dinner: Steak, chips, pepper sauce, onions, peas, Coke.

12) Favourite colour combination: Red and white.

13) Favourite sound: the hum of voices in the air. (Runners up: the sound of cheering and commotion coming from far way, the sound of billiard balls hitting each other, the sounds of a busy train station in the morning.)

14: Favourite female beauty: Kate Beckinsale circa her Van Helsing period.

15: Favourite environment: the cinema.

16: Favourite animal: Crow.

17: Favourite place: Chiocca's, an eatery (more precisely, a ratskeller) in Richmond, Virginia.

18: Favourite phrase: Softly falling snow.

19: Favourite historical period: the 1970s.

(I do have this in common with Sir Keir: I can't name a favourite book. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis is one candidate. Dead as Doornails, a memoir of literary Dublin in the forties and fifties by Anthony Cronin, is another.)

The Magic of a Title

Recently I've found myself musing on the title of a book I read many years ago, certainly more than ten  years ago: University Ghost Story by Nick DiMartino.

To be pedantic, I didn't actually read it. I listened to it on MP3 Player. I was going through a phase of listening to audio-books at this time. It never really stuck, but I have a few warm memories of the practice.

Ridiculous as it sounds, I can't remember whether University Ghost Story was a good book or a bad book. I can't even remember the plot.

But I like the title very much! It's so simple, and strangely audacious. I remember wondering how nobody had ever called a novel University Ghost Story before.

I've worked in a university for my entire working career-- twenty-five years on the fifteenth of October (on the same date that, by coincidence, this blog will be fifteen years old). I love the atmosphere of universities but it's a constant struggle to appreciate it, for it not to become invisible to me.

Some titles never cease to enchant me, like (as I've mentioned many times before) The Winter's Tale. They seem to have a concentrated sort of existence. A good piece of fiction draws on broad human experience, a particular aspect or territory of existence; it's already a concentration; and the title is a concentration of that.

A Quotation I Like

The list of G.K. Chesterton quotes that I treasure would be very long. Here is one that isn't even one of my favourites, but I still really like it:

Mr. Shaw has no living traditions, no schoolboy tricks, no college customs, to link him with other men. Nothing about him can be supposed to refer to a family feud or to a family joke. He does not drink toasts; he does not keep anniversaries; musical as he is I doubt if he would consent to sing. All this has something in it of a tree with its roots in the air. The best way to shorten winter is to prolong Christmas; and the only way to enjoy the sun of April is to be an April Fool. When people asked Bernard Shaw to attend the Stratford Tercentenary, he wrote back with characteristic contempt: "I do not keep my own birthday, and I cannot see why I should keep Shakespeare's." I think that if Mr. Shaw had always kept his own birthday he would be better able to understand Shakespeare's birthday—and Shakespeare's poetry.

The passage occurs early on in Chesterton's book George Bernard Shaw. I don't think I've ever read the whole book.

I treasure this passage because it's a sort of photo-negative of what I would wish for, both for myself and everybody else. The more living traditions the better; the more college customs the better; I wish we had more toasts and sing-songs. In this passage, Chesterton is describing something which has no exact word to cover it. I know, because I've often looked for one.

Alas, there isn't nearly enough of such things in the world for my liking, and certainly not enough in my own life. In fact, there's hardly any in my own life. My attempts to create traditions and running jokes and customs have been almost entirely unsuccessful. Nobody is interested. Even when it comes to this blog, all my little traditions-- posting "The Burning Babe" by Robert Southwell at Christmas, changing the colours to reflect the liturgical seasons, throwing in random pictures of Dirk Benedict-- never really provoked the slightest interest or amusement.

Yes, I want cheese with this whine.

I often want to ask people about their personal traditions, school traditions, etc. But I suspect they'd just think I was trying to be whimsical. It's socially bad form to talk about anything that's actually interesting.

Happy St. Kevin's Day!

Today is the feast-day of St. Kevin of Glendalough!

One of his name-sakes is the footballer Kevin Keegan, who played in the seventies and eighties and became a manager in the nineties and millennium. And I swear a Kevin Keegan quotation came into my mind this morning, without me realizing the saints' day connection.

Keegan credits his career to the encouragement of a nun. He went to Catholic school, got married in a Catholic church (and he's been married to the same woman for fifty-one years), and I even found one reference to him giving a talk to a school on his faith.

Although he was a legendary player and manager, Keegan's greatest talent might be his commentating. He regularly came out with glorious gaffes that have come to be known as "Keeganisms". Here are my five favourites, though I won't vouch for their authenticity. (I suspect they're all kosher as they regularly appear on lists of Keeganisms.

1. "“Life wouldn’t be worth living if you could buy confidence because the rich people would have it all and everybody else would… would have to make their own arrangements." (This is my favourite.)

2. "There'll be no siestas in Madrid tonight."

3. "The 33 or 34-year-olds will be 36 or 37 by the time the next World Cup comes around, if they're not careful."

4. "England can end the millennium as it started– as the greatest football nation in the world."

5. "Despite his white boots, he has real pace."

There are lots more out there. You can find them pretty easily.

I also like (non-ironically) Keegan's hit single from 1978, "Head Over Heels In Love With You", both lyrically and musically.

(Incredibly, as I was about to publish this blog post, I discovered that Kevin Keegan announced he has stage four stomach cancer just yesterday. I thought of not publishing it out of respect, but then I thought...well, it's clearly an affectionate post, I hope, and it's highly unlikely that him or anyone in his family will see it. But if they do, I assure them of my prayers. God bless him and them! But if anyone thinks this is the wrong choice, let me know.)

The Sources of Energy

I was re-reading my diary entry for Halloween night of 2023. That night, I watched The Wicker Man from 2006 (not exactly my choice) and I was also reading a book called Christmas: A Biography by Judith Flanders. What I wrote really does express some of my most enduring and powerful feelings, whatever that may mean to anyone else.

My entry refers to "the sources of energy", a phrase from Freud that I've come to think as "talismanic", as I put it. I encountered it more than twenty years ago in A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson. Freud (a staunch atheist, of course) used it when he was urging a friend to raise his son as a Jew: "If you do not let your son grow up as a Jew, you will deprive him of those sources of energy which cannot be replaced by anything else." Of course, I'm not thinking of its application to Judaism per se (for all my profound respect for Judaism), but rather its application to tradition and the sacred and everything that is excluded by mere rationalism.

I was glancing through a book, Christmas: A Biography. I was moved by the description of the Puritans in America. Even though I love Christmas, I’ve always been strangely sympathetic to the Puritan antagonism to Christmas. Perhaps because it means they’re taking it seriously. It’s the same way I’ve always had a sympathy for book burners and people who riot at plays.

I felt very moved and even agitated, thinking of holidays and traditions, observances, rituals, customs, all that kind of thing. Halloween and the Wicker Man and the Christmas book and thoughts of poetry all ran through my head.

My whole life seems to be about going against the stream of utilitarianism and rationalism and sameness and disenchantment. Observing holidays and reading long poetry and cultivating eccentricity and attending Mass and praying the rosary and reading the Bible somehow all seem to be a part of this. What Freud called “the sources of energy”, a phrase that seems talismanic to me and that recurs to me over and over again.

I guess I feel a sort of faith that it’s the poetic, the symbolic, the immaterial, the imaginary, the intangible, the visionary that really fuels culture and society. And even if it isn’t, even if the dialectical materialists are right, I will always be on the side of those things. And I feel a contentment and eagerness in thinking of that.

I don’t think it’s incompatible with Christianity at all. I think all good things are compatible with Christianity. The important thing is not to lose sight of what’s MORE important. People and their welfare are more important than traditions. Eternal salvation is the most important thing. But that doesn’t mean that these things AREN’T important. They contribute to the joy and meaning of life, and I think they are also ennobling and may well be an aid to salvation.

Reading poetry, especially long poetry, is particularly important. Even if it has no immediate benefit. It’s so counter-cultural it’s immeasurable.

In Praise of Solemnity, Revisited

In my last blog post, I used the word "solemnity", and linked to the poem "In Praise of Solemnity" that I published here eleven years ago. I decided it would bear re-posting. It's the closest thing to a "verse essay" I've ever written and it articulates many of my abiding feelings about solemnity, "kitsch", irony, and several other important subjects.

If you're the kind of person who thinks Monarch of the Glen (the painting below) is kitsch, or who has ever sarcastically used the phrase "ye olde tea-shoppe", then you might be the kind of jerk I'm reacting against in this post. As for me, I'm a different kind of jerk.

In one line, I complain about the blanket coverage of sport at the weekends (on radio, for instance). This isn't an attack on sport itself, or even spectator sports, or even commercialized spectator sports. I'm not one of those people who talk snootily about "sportsball", and in fact, such people annoy me greatly. I think sport is a valuable part of life. Actually, if I rewrote the poem, I would remove that reference, just to put as much clear blue water between me and the "sportsball" crowd. But I'll let it stand for now.

In Praise of Solemnity

Call it pomposity, bombast, what you will;
Call it vulgarity, but I crave it still;
The cinema called the Odeon or the Lux;
The epigraph of Everyman's Library books;
Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy guide--
The monument that is not too proud for pride
Splendid in bronze or marble; the public house sign
That blazons "licensed to sell beers and wine"
In gold italics; The Monarch of the Glen;
The silhouette of ladies and top-hatted gentlemen.

I have seen so much of death, this past two years;
The awful shock when a whole life disappears;
The empty words at the funeral home, the walk to the grave;
Name after name some adoring mother and father gave
Etched onto stone. It won't let me forget
The rarity of every heartbeat, every breath.

They cannot convince me that life is a trivial thing;
A pretty toy that a man should be ready to fling
Away with a laugh; (were mine to be sacrificed
I would leave it with tears and agony, just like Christ);
The world may rebuke me with taking life seriously;
But I cannot get my tongue round the verb to be
As easy as that. Existence itself should shame
The whimsicalists who teach us that life is a game.

But let there be games, and laughter, and nonsense, and sport,
And idleness, and whimsy of every sort.
Let life be complete, let life be filled to the brim
And overflowing. But-- should all life be a whim?
What relish has laughter, when laughter goes on all the time,
When mirth may not even give way to let in the sublime
For a half hour, or less? As love is to aimless lust
True mirth is to this. I don't want to laugh if I must.

But laughter itself has its dignity stolen away
And the man who walked into a bar is considered passé--
For a joke is a rite, and a joker a ritualist,
And a punch-line's too formal a thing to allow to exist
In a era when randomness stands for all humour, all art,
All beauty, all meaning; a world with a whirligig heart.

But on a clear night, when I go out and look at the stars
How painfully, painfully, all our frivolity jars
With so lofty a sight; those pinpricks of iciest flame
In the ocean of night put our freaks and our follies to shame;
Under the clear silver gaze of the stars and the moon
How can a man not feel degraded to play the buffoon?

But still we have gameshow on gameshow, and hip-hop, and memes,
And bachelor parties with weird and un-wonderful themes,
And twelve magazines about cars on the newsagent shelves
And eighty-eight photos on Facebook we took of ourselves
All exactly the same. We have advertising campaigns
About doughnuts and dogfood and toothpaste and hard-to-shift stains
And the news gives us Hollywood gossip and fighting in court
And Saturday morning to Sunday evening of sport,
And playwrights write plays about nothing, and artists splash mud
On a canvas, and newspaper critics declare it is good,
And in the museum there are interactive displays
Where once there were exhibits. Nobel laureates praise
The lyrics of rappers, and nobody thinks this is odd;
Oh man! Man! The heir of the ages! The image of God!

Enough! We belong to eternity. We have a soul.
All around us, unthinkable clusters of galaxies roll;
Behind us lie millions of years, and before us our doom;
Imagination and wonder find limitless room
In the ocean of being. Around us, our brethren, mankind;
Each one with a measureless soul and a fathomless mind;
And calling us onwards, the joy that is higher than mirth,
The joy of the unsmiling stars and the serious earth,
The dim light of dusk and the pale light of dawn, and the ghost
Of the myriad dead; all the joy that moves us the most;
The joy of the straight-faced urchin consumed in his game
Or the worshipper's eyes lit up by the candle's soft flame
Before his saint's shrine, or the lover lost in his love,
Or the girl alone in a field, agape at the glories above.

Blanchardstown Oratory

I was going through my archives and I came across this photograph of the oratory in Blanchardstown shopping centre. I've been there about a half a dozen times, including attending several Masses there. I'm quite drawn to it, it has a solemn and catacomb-like atmosphere.

It was common to have oratories in Irish shopping centres, back in the day. The Omni Centre in Santry has one, with Eastern Orthodox icons on the walls. The Ilac Centre had one up until a few years ago. Naturally, new shopping centres don't.

The shortest Mass I ever attended, by far, was in the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre oratory. I think it lasted all of six minutes. (I was so surprised I checked my phone as soon as it was ever.) I don't think this is a good thing, although I tend to prefer short Masses to long one. (An Australian friend told me once that Irish-Australian Catholics are known for their preference for short Masses. The more pious will happily attend several Masses a day, but they want them to be short. Personally I prefer short Masses because otherwise my concentration and sense of reverence lags.)

I don't know how easily it can be seen in the photograph, but in this oratory, the window at the back is behind a wall so you only see the light filtering out from it. I like that very much. It's very solemn. It satisfies my priggishness and my craving for solemnity.

Sometimes I think there should be completely dark rooms in every building, where somebody can go and sit periodically and then re-emerge into the wonder of light.

The Feast of the Holy Trinity

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, the first Sunday after Pentecost. I've just learned that it was instituted in 1344, so it's way older than I assumed.

This is probably my favourite Sunday of the year because priests have to preach a doctrinal homily on Trinity Sunday.

I knew one priest whose Trinity Sunday homily was always about St. Augustine, trying to write a tract about the Trinity, walking along the seashore. He came across a child carrying water into a hole he'd dug in the sand, with a bucket. (Well, that was his version.) Asking him what he was doing, the child said he was trying to fill put the sea into the hole. Augustine drew the obvious moral.

So that's a bit of a dodge. But generally priests make an effort to preach something solid on Trinity Sunday.

The Decline of Hiberno-English

Last year I was on a beach on the Beara peninsula of West Cork. Until recently, the local accent was regarded as particularly strong. Beside me were two women speaking in the local dialect. Further away was a group of children, who I assumed were from Dublin. Then one of the women called them and I realised that the children were in fact local. Within one generation, the local speech had been replaced by the metropolitan variety.

A depressing quotation from a very interesting essay on the decline of Hiberno-English.

As the essay points out, the decline of the Irish language is a familiar lament, but the loss of Hiberno-English is rarely mentioned. However, I'm increasingly worried about this as well. I'm currently reading a novel written in 2000, by an Irish writer born in 1926. It's full of dialect words and turns of speech which are already archaic.

I think everyone is obliged to push against cultural homogenization however they can. Personally I have started peppering my everyday speech with Irish language words. It's a bit awkward and I've only made a tentative start, but I'm determined to keep it up.

I'm sick of fatalism. I think everyone should be doing something. Perhaps not to do with the Irish language, or Hiberno-English, but with the protection and promoting of some sort of endangered tradition. Learn and sing an old song, revive an old game, observe a lapsed holiday such as Oak Apple Day or St. John's Eve, do something.

And if you are already doing something (and you probably are)...well done!

Living in a Post-Significance Society

I'm writing this blog post feeling tired and disillusioned, and it's a good mood in which to write about something that really bothers me about the modern world.

This is it: that modern society spends so much time talking and writing about things whose significance (or even whose existence) it simultaneously denies, or at least downplays.

God is probably the main one. Modern society isn't inherently atheistical, but it does seem to insist that we can't have any real knowledge of God except (perhaps) for direct numinous experience. There is no coherent theology. So the modern world is full of talk about salvation, hell, eternity, grace, Nirvana, karma, enlightenment, etc. etc. but none of it really means anything. It might be a metaphor or it might be meant literally or it might be something in between. There's no way of knowing.

Nationality is another example. The modern world is committed to the idea that, ultimately, nationality doesn't matter and it would be best if there was no such thing. And yet-- it can't stop talking about it. Stand-up comedians constantly resort to national character or national quirks as material. Film-makers and novelists and poets use it for "flavour". Indeed, the whole idea of "diversity" can't get away from nationality and ethnicity, because what else is diversity built out of? What are the colours of that rainbow?

The same applies to sex. I won't labout the point here. It's an article of faith today that differences between men and women are mostly socially constructed, and basically undesirable in any case. And yet-- they are the theme of countless romantic comedies, songs, poems, conversations, etc. Perhaps not the innate differences, since these are denied or minimized, but the perceived (or socialised) differences at least. For instance, you might have a book about a woman trying to make her way in the tough world of sports management. The underlying assumption is that it would be best if there was no difference between the masculine and feminine realms-- at least, not enough of a difference to create a "fish out of water" scenario-- and therefore it would be best if the book had no reason to exist. Society is basically hostile to the man-woman difference, but it can't stop chewing on it. Becase we have to chew on something.

(The fact that people subconsciously want these differences to endure seems obvious to me. A few years ago, I came across a book called Sea State by Tabitha Lasley in which a female journalist chose to spend a year, or some period of time, on an oil rig-- presumably one of the last purely masculine environments in existence. She has an affair with a rigger who, as the Guardian reviewer solemnly informs us, has attitudes to women and immigrants which leave much to be desired. Do I need to point the moral here?)

And what about life itself? Life itself no longer seems to be the bedrock, since euthanasia is becoming increasingly accepted. There's nothing sacred or ultimate or self-justifying about life. When it becomes irksome, we can (and perhaps should) just shrug it off. Life isn't sublime or infinitely valuable in itself. It's not holy.

There's no innate meaning or purpose or direction to anything. We are left observing the phenomena passing through consciousness-- "Hey, look, that's cool!". There's nothing to build on, nothing to delve into. Everything "is what it is", which I think should be the motto of the modern world-- for all its notorious (and highly selective) denials of reality.

I will probably take this blog post down soon because it's so whingy. (Even though I came back to it overnight, no longer feeling tired but still disillusioned.)

In Praise of Sitcoms

(A few years ago, I wrote this article for the short-lived Irish Catholic magazine Leaven.)

One of the last shared experiences I had with my father, who died in May 2019, was watching the American situation comedy Frasier together. For more than a year, we watched three or more episodes most nights. We went through all eleven seasons several times.

Is this an unworthy activity to have as my last shared experience with my father, before his final illness? I suppose it would sound better if it was fishing, or building a model town together, or having long conversations about the eternal verities. A shared immersion in a particular piece of pop culture seems ignobly passive and consumerist.

And yet, I have very happy memories of this last phase in my relationship with my father. I wouldn't wish it to have been different. It deepened a conviction that I'd felt already; that the situation comedy, far from being a trashy and disposable genre by nature, can be a powerful vehicle for exploring the human condition and modern society.

I'm here talking about situation comedies which are, more or less, realistic. I'm not talking about surreal sitcoms such as The Young Ones, or fantastical sitcoms such as the science fiction comedy Red Dwarf. I mean sitcoms which concentrate on the daily lives of fairly ordinary people; shows such as Frasier, Cheers, Only Fools and Horses, Friends, and so on.

One great difference between the sitcom and other forms of fiction--such as the novel, the drama, or cinema-- is its episodic nature. Movies are one of the great loves of my life, but they do have this limitation: that, for the most part, they are confined to the great crises and dramas of human life. This represents a very small fraction of the whole. Most of life is lived on the plains, not in the peaks or the abysses.

The situation comedy can occupy itself with events that play a big part on human life, but that are rarely seen (except in passing) in movies and novels; sick days, traffic jams, a trip to the dentist, a pub debate, swimming lessons. One famous episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, a seventies British sitcom following two friends who live in the North of England, has them doing their utmost to avoid learning the result of a big soccer game, to the extent of hiding in a church and finding themselves in an uncharacteristic discussion of God and eternity. Another episode I think of in this regard is "The One with All the Thanksgivings", a Friends episode in which the characters are reminiscing about their worst Thanksgiving experiences, which we see in flashbacks. I find this episode quite profoundly evocative of life's journey-- holiday memories are something we are all familiar with, and they are generally freighted with bittersweetness and significance.

Television dramas which are lauded as great rarely represents ordinary life. I haven't actually seen many of the recent shows hailed as masterpieces, such as Breaking Bad or The Sopranos. But, from what I know of them, they tend to concentrate on extraordinary people in extraordinary situations. Although it's true that all good fiction speaks to the universality of the human condition in some way, the great strength of the sitcom is that it elevates ordinary suburban life as something interesting, something meaningful, something full of possibilities. It enchants ordinary life.

Another strength of the sitcom is that, in a strange way, it emphasizes the dignity of the individual. Each of the characters tends to pass through the full spectrum of human emotions and vicissitudes; each has their moments of humiliation, their moments of triumph, their phases and fads, their infatuations and disillusionments. Seeing them fall flat on their faces allows is to laugh at our own failures and idiocies, and takes the sting out of them. Seeing them get up again encourages us. Life, the sitcom reassures us, is episodic.

The sitcom tends to be a window into social and cultural history, in a way that entertainments which aim to be more enduring, and to appeal to international markets, do not. There are frequent references to current TV shows, popular songs, political controversies, advertising slogans, and so on. One example of this is a discussion about the discovery of North Sea Oil, in the British seventies sitcom Porridge. Another example is a passing mention of a pub shove-ha'penny tables in the British eighties sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles.

Finally, the sitcom is a sentimental genre. Sentimentality has a bad reputation in our time, but it is after all the glue which holds ordinary life together. We are sentimental about family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, pets; those we deal with most often. The sitcom tends to view its characters as we view those we deal with every day; exasperating, pompous, fickle, touchy, ridiculous, and, ultimately, loveable. At the end of the episode, equilibrium returns, friends and family are reconciled, and the world goes along on its old and reliable way. I particularly like, in this regard, this piece of dialogue from Only Fools and Horses, in which the wheeler-dealer brothers have a falling-out:

Del: Alright Rodney, alright, why don’t you do that small thing. You decide where you go, what you do and with whom you do it, because I’m finished with you– I’ve washed me hands of you– as far as I’m concerned you don’t exist, right? And Rodney?

Rodney: What?

Del: Been raining, them roads’ll be treacherous. Drive carefully.

All in all, I don't regret spending much of my last months with my father watching Frasier.

Fr. Walter Macken RIP

I was saddened recently to hear of the death of Fr. Walter Macken, whose life is recalled here in the Garvan Hill blog. It's an interesting slice of social history as well as a fitting tribute.

Fr. Macken was a priest of Opus Dei. I'm not involved with Opus Dei myself, but I've been invited on two occasions to give short talks in their student residence in the city centre. On one of those occasions, Fr. Macken was there, and I found him very kind and courteous. 

I also live in a parish run by Opus Dei. That's how I heard about Fr. Macken's death. (I'm always grateful the parish offers Mass at 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and 9 p.m. on Sundays.)

Fr. Macken was the son of Walter Macken, an Irish novelist who died in 1967. I was an avid reader of his novels in my teens. I didn't just read them once, but (in three instances) several times over. He's perhaps most celebrated for his trilogy of Irish historical novels, but I didn't like those much. I much preferred his novels about ordinary people. My favourite was I Am Alone, a novel that was actually banned in Ireland (I've only learned that now).

I Am Alone follows the experiences of Pat, an Irish emigrant in London...are you yawning just from that description? Actually, it wasn't boring at all, nor was it worthy or whingy. It describes Pat's efforts to find a job in London, his experience lodging with a landlord who's a religious fanatic, his work as a labourer on a building site (and how difficult he finds it), his hopeless love for a beautiful woman who he finally realizes is shallow and selfish, and his eventual marriage to a woman who is not beautiful but is much more worthy of his affections. He also becomes friends with a man who turns out to be involved with the IRA (the pre-Troubles version). I forget what happens to the friend, but Pat does not approve of his activities. The book ends with the birth of his child, who arrives safely after a nerve-wracking labour sequence.

I returned to the book again and again because of Macken's ability to describe the flow of consciousness. Not in a gimmicky Joycean way, but in a very realistic and observational way. For instance, when Pat gets off the boat and takes a train through England, he's taken aback to see how green the fields are, then wonders if he expected them to be red. There's another passage which describes a visit to a pool hall, in the early days of his marriage, when he knows he should be going home to his wife, but he can't help staying for another game, and another... The atmosphere of the pool hall is brilliantly captured, as well as the particular frame of mind of lingering somewhere when you know you should be somewhere else.

Above all, I loved I Am Alone because it took as its subject ordinary life-- it's a very "low concept" novel. It caught the texture of ordinary life brilliantly, which is something I greatly prize in writers.

I also loved his novel The Bogman, about a local poet and songwriter in a loveless marriage. Some of the little poems included in the book are excellent. I also liked (though to a lesser extent) Quench the Moon, the story of a would-be writer and poet enduring poverty and other trials.

I wasn't at all surprised to hear that Walter Macken's son became a priest. His novels are not pious at all, but religion and the clergy are presented in a sympathetic and very human way. (I particularly remember, in I Am Alone, a scene in which Pat unsuccessfully tries to persuade his wife-to-be to become a Catholic. She's insistent she wants to remain Church of England. When he points out to her that she doesn't even go to church, she says: "It doesn't matter. I was born Church of England and I'm going to die Church of England." Pat admits to himself that he rather admires her for this. I think it's probably an accurate description of an ordinary Church of England member at that time, and for some decades after.)

Like J.P. Donleavy or some other writers, he seems to belong to a particular phase of my life, and I can't really imagine revisiting him. But he fed my imagination in his youth, and I'm saddened to hear of his son's passing.

The Right to Exist

I've been reading Pope Leo's new encyclical. I was very struck by this line: "Indeed, the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to preserve their own identity and to contribute their unique qualities to the family of nations."

This is literally all I am asserting when I call myself a nationalist-- this and nothing else.

The question is, how is this to be preserved? It seems to me (and, I think it fair to say, to millions of others) that social and cultural forces are at play today which threaten this very right. But I haven't heard any recommendations from the Vatican on what to do about this.

I suspect (perhaps unfairly) that the Holy Father was not thinking of Western or developed nations when he wrote this. But it certainly applies to them, too.

Pope Francis said similar things in his own writings, arguing for "the globalization of the polyhedron" rather than "the globalization of the sphere". But how is this to be achieved?

Tolkien is Now a Doctor of the Church!

Well, not quite, but it's quite remarkable that Pope Leo has quoted Gandalf in his first encyclical, which is about artificial intelligence.

I haven't read the encyclical yet, though I've read a few analyses of it. But here's the quotation:

The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” Tolkien's mother would be very proud!

Having It Both Ways

I came across this book cover today. Doesn't it illustrate the contradiction of identity politics, and of the politicization of the arts and humanities?

Dull People Hype Silence Because They Have Nothing to Say

I don't actually believe this. Well, not entirely.

But it's an expression of my irritation at the whole cult of silence. To love silence makes you deep; to love discussion, animation, and activity makes you shallow. Supposedly.

Apparently (at least people always say this), silence is undervalued in the modern world, despite all the bookshop shelves groaning under the weight of books on mindfulness, contemplative prayer, and introvert pride. (I'm an introvert. I'm not in the slightest bit proud of it.)

Celebrated arty films such as Solaris (the 2002 remake) or the aptly-named Into Great Silence (a bunch of Carthusians monks going about their day) are full of long moody shots and minutes on end without any dialogue. Trippy! Profound! Uncompromising!

When I get especially irritated at the cult of silence, I think of pointing out one place that is very silent indeed. Well, you've probably guessed it. The graveyard.

Of course, all this won't do. The Bible (and doubtless all wisdom literature) is full of injunctions to silence. So I should probably just shut up myself.

Should Tradition be Causative?

As regular readers will know, I'm very interested in tradition. OK, I'm obsessed by tradition.

Today I found myself mulling over the phrase "in the tradition of...". What does it mean, exactly?

For instance, there's often talk about Kingston-upon-Hull's tradition of poetry. Philip Larkin is the big name, along with Andrew Marvell. There's also Stevie Smith and a good few others. Anyway, a surprising number of celebrated poets are associated with Hull.

But is this really a tradition? Or is it just a coincidence? Or can a coincidence be a tradition?

Conversely, I remember someone pointing out how the Harry Potter books (and films) are very much in the tradition of Enid Blyton. But this does seem to be a tradition in a more causative sense. Rowling was a huge fan of Enid Blyton in her girlhood.

More importantly, perhaps, is anybody exercised by such questions other than me?

More on Distraction

In a previous post, I wrote this:

T.S. Eliot famously wrote that modern man is "distracted by distraction from distraction". It's a valid point, but...surely people need some kind of distraction, or at least some kind of occupation. What is it we're supposedly being distracted from, anyway?

The Christian might say "worship". The socialist might say politics, or the improvement of the human species. The hippie (I think that we still have hippies even if they aren't classic hippies) might say "love" or "human connection" or some such thing. Or perhaps we come down to the ideal of pure being-- whatever that is. Whatever anyone might say, people who complain about modern distractions must believe we're being distracted from something.

I'm very sympathetic to the argument made by Wally in the wonderful movie My Dinner with André, when he reacts against his rather hippie-ish friend, who is talking about various workshops he's led and which seem similiar to Sixties "happenings" or modern mindfulness exercises.

Wally says: "The whole point, really, I think, was to enable the people in the workshops, including yourself, to somehow sort of strip away every scrap of purposefulness from certain selected moments. And the point of it was so that you would then all be able to experience, somehow, just pure being. In other words, you were trying to discover what it would be like to live for certain moments without having any particular thing that you were supposed to be doing.

"And I think I just simply object to that. I mean, I just don’t think I accept the idea that there should be moments in which you’re not trying to do anything. I think, uh, it’s our nature, uh, to do things, I think we should do things, I think that, uh, purposefulness is part of our ineradicable basic human structure, and…and to say that we ought to be able to live without it is like saying that, uh, a tree ought to be able to live without branches or roots, but…but actually, without branches or roots, it wouldn’t be a tree, I mean, it would just be a log. Do you see what I’m saying?"

I agree with Wally, but at the same time, I also find myself-- at other times, in other moods-- sharing in this disapproval of "distraction". "Distraction" seems to be the only word.

The idea of distraction seems to be clearly present in the New Testament, principally in the parable of the sower: "He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful."

Then there's that wonderful passage from the first letter of James: "For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was."

I'm also reminded of this wonderful passage from Miracles by C.S. Lewis, a book which went a huge way towards getting me to accept a supernatural worldview. I quote the entire passage, first because it's relevant, but also for its own sake: "And yet . . . and yet . . . It is that which I fear more than any positive argument against miracles: that soft, tidal return of your habitual outlook as you close the book and the familiar four walls about you and the familiar noises from the street reassert themselves. Perhaps (if I dare suppose so much) you have been led on at times while you were reading, have felt ancient hopes and fears astir in your heart, have perhaps come almost to the threshold of belief—but now? No. It just won’t do. Here is the ordinary, here is the “real” world, round you again. The dream is ending; as all other similar dreams have always ended. For of course this is not the first time such a thing has happened. More than once in your life before this you have heard a strange story, read some odd book, seen something queer or imagined you have seen it, entertained some wild hope or terror: but always it ended in the same way. And always you wondered how you could, even for a moment, have expected it not to. For that “real world” when you came back to it is so unanswerable. Of course the strange story was false, of course the voice was really subjective, of course the apparent portent was a coincidence. You are ashamed of yourself for having ever thought otherwise: ashamed, relieved, amused, disappointed, and angry all at once. You ought to have known that, as Arnold says, “Miracles don’t happen.” "

So, while I'm very sympathetic to Wally's critique of the notion of "distraction", I think it only really applies to a distraction from this weird idea of "pure being" or "the moment". I'm much more sympathetic to the critique of distraction when it applies to an ideal, or a view of ultimate reality-- and Christianity fits both of these definitions.

I could also apply it to the ideals of the Gaelic Revival which ebbed away in the middle of the twentieth century. It's hard to believe that television, consumerism, and pop culture had nothing to do with this. The Irish people weren't won away from the ideals of the Irish Revolution by all this trash culture. They were distracted from them-- several generations holding onto those ideals in an increasingly nominal way, until finally they were peeled off like a scab.

When I think of my own attempts to live up to my ideal of "priggishness", the foe of this seems to be a sort of distraction. The lower is the enemy of the higher. It's always easier to gorge on light entertainment than to read poetry. It's always easier to be facetious than to try to sustain a mood of solemnity. Contemplation is often held to be the highest human activity, but it's also boring, or tends to be.

In this regard (and I will close on this quotation) I find John Ruskin's defence of monotony in the arts to be interesting: 

"From these facts we may gather generally that monotony is, and ought to be, in itself painful to us, just as darkness is; that an architecture which is altogether monotonous is a dark or dead architecture; and of those who love it, it may be truly said, "they love darkness rather than light." But monotony in certain measure, used in order to give value to change, and above all, that transparent monotony, which, like the shadows of a great painter, suffers all manner of dimly suggested form to be seen through the body of it, is an essential in architectural as in all other composition; and the endurance of monotony has about the same place in a healthy mind that the endurance of darkness has: that is to say, as a strong intellect will have pleasure in the solemnities of storm and twilight, and in the broken and mysterious lights that gleam among them, rather than in mere brilliancy and glare, while a frivolous mind will dread the shadow and the storm; and as a great man will be ready to endure much darkness of fortune in order to reach greater eminence of power or felicity, while an inferior man will not pay the price; exactly in like manner a great mind will accept, or even delight in, monotony which would be wearisome to an inferior intellect, because it has more patience and power of expectation, and is ready to pay the full price for the great future pleasure of change. But in all cases it is not that the noble nature loves monotony, anymore than it loves darkness or pain. But it can bear with it, and receives a high pleasure in the endurance or patience, a pleasure necessary to the well-being of this world; while those who will not submit to the temporary sameness, but rush from one change to another, gradually dull the edge of change itself, and bring a shadow and weariness over the whole world from which there is no more escape."