Sunday, May 29, 2011

Commonplace Book

"Come hither, ye whom the pride of youth and health, of birth and affluence inflames, who tread the flowery maze of pleasure, trusting to the fruition of ever-circling joys; ye who glory in your accomplishments, who indulge the views of ambition, and lay schemes for future happiness and grandeur, contemplate here the vanity of life! behold how low this excellent young man is laid! mowed down even in the blossom of his youth, when fortune seemed to open all her treasures to his worth!"

from The Adventures of Count Fathom by Tobias Smollett (Chapter Sixty)

Saturday, May 28, 2011

C. Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life by Sean Day-Lewis (1980)

This biography is remarkable for the fact that it is a family piece - a son's biography of his father. Day-Lewis says in his introduction that he was warned off it as an enterprise, because of the heroism/destruction dualism of many father/son relationships, at least from a psychologist's point of view. But I think the results speak for themselves: it is a portrait from the inside (at least to some extent) and therefore has a unique message. There is a sense throughout it of insight, of febrile knowledge tingling close to the source, which is invaluable. Day-Lewis is a sympathetic biographer without being in any sense hagiographic. He is quite happy to intensely document, for example, the adverse reaction to his father's work in the last 10 or so years of his life in many quarters, but also to reveal quite objectively where he thought that was governed by malice rather than insight. Every now and then one gets a sense of being too close to some subject which pinches, where the author reveals a peculiar reaction to some event which still obviously hurts or confuses. But the very few of those are more than balanced by a simple and straightforward prose style and its contrastingly rich and moving portrait.

Commonplace Book

"Just freedom in the abstract, general freedom, means anarchy, which may be an ideal state of things but is not a possible state of things."

Cecil Day-Lewis, quoted in C. Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life by Sean Day-Lewis (Chapter 5)

Monday, May 23, 2011

Commonplace Book

'"...Might may win many battles; Might and Right together can win most battles; Right by itself - without money and without friends - counts for nothing."'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Book II, Chapter XII)

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Credo by The Human League (2011)

Well, it's been out a while, and the dust is settling. And a fair amount of dust was kicked up! Wildly divergent views abounded, from the howls of 'worst album ever' to awards of five stars out of five and adoration. I suppose what I'm interested in, true to my form, is the wider view. I'm interested in what I can divine in this group of 11 songs which has pop-forever qualities in it. There is a lot on Credo which is not forever, material which is very much of the now, and will make us wonder 'Why did they do that?' in time to come. Particularly there's a lot of "robo-disco" (and I use that phrase only because I read it in a review somewhere) deadening repetition, a slightly noughties-electro-clique retro which is a bit disappointing. Probably from anyone else a lot of this material would still be fairly impressive, but from a group which can really hit the heights of pop, if not belt through them, it's not quite enough. That said, the I-Monster production is very savvy in other much more alive ways; some of these songs have minor texturing and rich layers of sound which are an absolute joy.

Phil's lyrics are preponderantly good on this one. Gone is the slight lyrical awkwardness of songs like Love Me Madly? from 2001's Secrets, where an inspired notion was spoilt in tads by word-mashes which didn't quite hold up. Not the crazedness, however. Night People's talk of houses and rhyming mouses, let alone the extraordinary freezers, cheeses, Caesar's, pleases combo of the second verse is carried off with such gorgeous deadpan aplomb I, for one, couldn't be happier. Where he seems let down on this album is with the choruses - I think his weakness with them really shows up the need for the right sort of co-writer to help the League really explode to their fullest. Too many of these songs feel just a little deadened where that point is reached. Verses which have all the promise in the world are not followed up on.

It's interesting to rearrange this album on your machine of choice. I tried it in alphabetical order and all sorts of stuff came out of it. How much better the poorest song, Single Minded, sounds straight after Privilege, revealed as its bedfellow in a darker more experimental feeling. Breaking the Chains as an opener is a revelation. And so on......

The likening which is still working for me about this one is that of Body Language after Fever for Kylie Minogue. It was a slinkier softer-edged album with great interesting elements but the contrast could not have been greater in the standout-track analysis. Fever had a tranche of spectacularly pop-wise and radio-squelching tracks, Body Language none, really, or none on anything like the same level. Credo is Body Language after the Fever of Octopus and Secrets. Lots of stunning small elements and a few songs where pretty much everything comes together well, and because it's The Human League, that's a great experience. But, I don't want to say it but I will because it's true, NO absolute killer songs which will blast any listener away like Shameless could have done, or Liar, or Reflections, or Cruel Young Lover, or Never Again, or........ Night People is the closest possibility: the more I hear it the more I like it, but I still can't quite get past my first reaction. The chorus is too needly. It rips little shreds off you in a way that is just past stunning and heading toward niggling. But it's a close run thing, there are plays of it where I'm off in the clouds and dreaming it...lovely old club-voguing, late 70s retro in a good way.

Well, bloody good luck to them, even if Credo is a 'minor' HL album. They're still here after all this time. There are 'stories' circulating saying that Phil is thinking of one more album only where all old members of the group will have the opportunity to take part. I'm less interested in the old members and a lot more concerned about ONLY ONE MORE ALBUM! Aaaaaargh. No way. While you're still alive Phil, Jo, Sue, don't leave us without. You provide a soundtrack to our lives that we would sorely miss.

Friday, May 20, 2011

The Aeneid by Virgil (19BC)

This was an exercise in getting a classic under my belt. Many of those are an unalloyed pleasure. This was not quite that. It is a story initially of wandering - the Trojans, post-Iliad, trying to find a new place in the world, led by Aeneas. An experiment with Dido in Carthage turns sour and the wandering begins again. They end up on the site which will later become Rome and encounter the Italians, just a small tribal group at this time. There occurs the phenomenal battle which will see the Italians under Turnus defeated and Aeneas victorious - and crucially the Roman Empire established. For this story is Rome justified, and many of the players must have been ancestors of notable Romans of Virgil's time. They are woven into the heroic myth in huge numbers. The other obvious element of note is the work of the gods - great Jove, Aeneas' mother Venus, and Turnus' champion Juno. A myriad of minor deities flit through the story, influencing on one side or another. The most satisfying parts are those in the midst of the battle, where spears fly poetically, or swords penetrate with fire in their thrust, and heads are sheared off, or sides split open, or throats gouged, or brains run through! This prose translation by JW Mackail may, I think, not be the ultimate experience of this material. I think a poetic translation may be called for.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Commonplace Book

'...There are thoughts which are companions having a language, and there are other thoughts which rest in a painful sleep upon our souls till the dumb weight of them brings us to dust. Grief, despair, the desire of beauty, the sorrow of partings, the thirst of ambition, the attachment to friends are not small contemptible weaknesses [...] A strong man has living blood in his veins and he shows his character not by despising - still less in denying his emotions - but in exalting them. And that is no light achievement...'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Book II, Chapter V)

Friday, May 13, 2011

Commonplace Book

'"I cannot help thinking that Flaubert will as little influence your views as he would mine. He has the morals of a sick devil and the philosophy of a retired dancing-master!"'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Book II, Chapter III)

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Commonplace Book

'"...Often do the Days and varying change of toiling Time restore prosperity; often Fortune in broken visits makes man her sport and again establishes him..."'

from The Aeneid by Virgil (Book Eleven)

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Letters to Mrs David Ogilvy 1849-1861 (1974)

This volume not only collects the 38 remaining letters which Browning wrote to Ogilvy, but also Ogilvy's biographical essay on Browning, a group of Ogilvy's poems which were mentioned in or covered the time of the letter-exchange, and a short excerpt from Mary Russell Mitford's recollections about Browning. The letters are effusive and classically 'bohemian' and 'upper middle chattering class' in the period before either of those terms really existed. My exposure to Browning is limited to a few poems, so her political leanings and fascination with children came as a surprise. Their children are a major talking point between the two women, and the portrait of Pen Browning in particular, with his delicacy and bright outspokenness, his strange clothes and very mixed Anglo-French-Italian vocabulary, is intriguing. These letters were almost all written from Italy, many from the famed Casa Guidi in Florence, and are bathed in sunlight and generally radiant with Browning's improved health as a result. Ogilvy's poems in Appendix B are really moving and strong pieces. We also get a sidelong view of Robert Browning and other literary and political figures of the time (Browning was an enthusiastic supporter of Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III) which lend more colour to an already full picture.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Commonplace Book

'Hope is the heroic form of despair.'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter VII)

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Commonplace Book

'...The faults of those who love us are more acceptable than the virtues of those who treat us with neglect...'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter VI)

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Commonplace Book

'...There is perhaps no strength so great and abiding as that which follows from a resisted temptation. Every dangerous allurement is like an enchanted monster, which, being conquered, loses all his venom and changes at once into a king of great treasure, eager to make requital...'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter V)

Commonplace Book

'...Politicians are now of three kinds - the sugary, the soapy and the feathery. The first cover their vile opinions with sweetness; the second affect to keep other people's opinions clean; the third make their opinions so light of wing that they can fly away at a moment's warning...'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter V)

Monday, May 2, 2011

Commonplace Book

'...few indeed attain the grandeur of madness. To be seriously mad is a fine thing; it shows that the gods have had somewhat to say to you...'

from The School for Saints by John Oliver Hobbes (Chapter III)