Hesperos

EDITED BY P.] . FI NGLASS , C. COLLARD,

AN D N. ] . RICHARDSON

A wide-ranging collection of articles on Greek

poetry honouring the achievement of the
distinguished clas sicist , Martin West.
ILS
Telephone: 020 7782 5000 Fax: 020 7782 4966 letters @the-tls.co.uk

464 pages, Hardback Ed ito r Peter Stothard (e di tor@ the- tls.co. uk)
978-0-19-928568-6, £85 .00/$155.00 Assista nt to th e Editor Maureen Alien (editor@the-tls.co.uk) 020 7782 4962
Deputy Editor Alan J enkins (deputy@the-tls.co.uk)

M ary Beard Classics, Aocieot History (mb I27@ hermes.cam.ac.uk)

Gilbert Murray Reassessed
Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics
EDITED BY CHRISTOPHER STRAY
A timely reassessment of one of the best-known
and most influential of all classici sts.
412 pages, Hardback
978-0-19-920 879-1, £65 .00/$120 .00
M ichael Ca ines Bibliography, Film, Theatre, Refereoce (theatre@the-tls.co.uk)
J am es Ca mphell Americao Literature, Scotlaod (scotus@the-lls.co.uk)
Lu cy Dall as. Website, 10 Brief (TLS_lnternet_Editor@newsint.co.uk)
Lind say Duguid Fictioo, Eoglish Literature (fiction@ lhe-tls.co.uk)
Will Ea ves Music, Architecture, Art History (arts@the-Ils.co.uk)
Da vid Horspo ol History, South Asia, Sport (history@ the-tls.co.uk)
M ick Iml ah Poetry, Archaeology, Irelaod, Eoglish Literature (mick.imlah@lhe-tls.co.uk)
Robert Ir win Midd le East, Islam (alhambra2@gmail.com)
Ala n Jenkins Commeotary, Eoglish Literature (deputy@the-tls.co.uk)
Toby Licht ig Website, East Asia, Eoglish Literature (TLS_lnternet_Editor@newsint.co.uk)
Da vid McKitte r ick Bibliography (dmckitterick@gmail.com)

CLAS S rcs
Maren Meinhar d t Science , Psych ology, M edi cine (maren.meinhardt@the-tls.co .uk)
Redm ond O'Hanl on Natural History (science@the-tls.co.uk)
Robert P otts Production, Australas ia (australasia @the-tls.co.uk)
J ohn Ryle. Africa, Aothropology (t1s@ryle.net)
Rup ert Sho rtt Religioo , Latio America, Spain (rupert.shorttOthe-tls.cc.uk)
M art in Smi th Pictures (images@the-Ils.co.uk)
FROM OXFORD Pet er Stothard
Ga len Strawson
Politics, Classics (editor@the-tls.co.uk)
Philosophy (tlsphilosophy@mac.com)
Adrian Ta hourdin France, Italy, Letters to the Editor (adrian.tahourdin@the-lls.co.uk)
Homer in the Twentieth Century Anna Vaux. Biography, Social Studies, Learned Journals, Travel (anna.vaux@lhe-tls.co.uk)
Between World Literature and the Eliza het h Winter Germaoy, Russia, Jewish Studie s (elizabeth.winter@the-tls.co.uk)
Western Canon
Managing Director J ames Macl\tla nus (caro line.jo hns ton @new sint.co. uk)
EDITED BY BARBARA GRAZIOSI
AND EMILY GREE NWOOD Displ ay Adve rtising Linsey Kenh ard (Iinsey.kenhard@newsint.co.uk) 020 7782 4974
Classified Advertising Lu cy Smart (Iucy.smart@newsint.co.uk) 020 7782 4975
Explores the crucial place of Homer in the shifting
Head of M ar ketin g Jo Coga n (jo.coganOthe-tls.co.uk]
cultural landscape of the twentieth century.
CLASSICAL PRESENCES
33 6 pages, 7 halftones, Hardback Co r res ponde nce an d deliver ies Times House, I Peooio gtoo Street , Loodoo E98 IBS
97 8-0-19-92982 6-6, £ 55.00/$99 .00 Subscriptions tls @subscription .co .uk 0 1858 43878 1; US/Ca nada cus tsvc_ time sup l@fulco inc.co m
1-800 370 9040 Subscriber a rchive webmasler@the-t1s.co.uk
Ba ck issu es 020 7740 0217 Ils@ocsmedia.net

The Nation and its Ruins
Antiquity, Archaeology, and National
Imagination in Greece
YANNIS HAMILAKIS
The first investigation of the production and u se
in Greece of the material, as oppo sed to the simply
literary, classic al past.
CLASSICAL PRESENCES
374 pages, numerous halftones, Hardback
978-0-19-9230 38-9, £60.00/$110 .00
Lucretius
EDITED BY MO NICA R. G ALE
An up-to-date collection of influen tial scholarly arti-
cles, including three translated into English for the
first time.
OXFORD READINGSIN CLASSICALSTUDIES
4 52 pages
Paperback, 978-0'19'926035-5 , £32.50/$4 7.95
Hardback, 9 78-0-19-926034-8 , £85.00/$150 .00
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Available from all good bookshops, or from OUPdirect
lel: 01536 741727 I Email: bookorders.uk@oup.com
www.oup.com/ukfor special offers, sample chapters, and news
oody Alien ' s Mighty
W Aphrodite tran splanted
the go ddess 10 late- twentieth-
centur y New York City . Joan
Breto n Co nnelly, in her new
book , Portrait of a Priestess,
has gone one better : Ancienl
Greek women, far from liv-
ing largely invisible, mar gin-
alized lives, we re "wise-
cra ckin g, independenl, opin-
ionaled, sty lishly dressed" -
rather like midd le-cl ass,
educated, mod ern wes tern
feminists, in fac t. For our
reviewer James Davidson , not
only was the high visibility of
wome n - pri e ste sse s
pro stitutes - in Greek ritual
the exception, rath er than the
ru le; th ere is an " unp leasant
side" 10 the post- 1970s,
"forward-thinking" wave in
femini st studies of antiquity.
"A lot of wo men in the
modern and in the ancient
Joan Bret on Co n ne Ily
wor ld are not we lcome at this
cheerleaders' part y."
" Big book, big lroub le" ,
w as th e view of the poet-
scholar Callimachus in the
da ys of the Alexandrian
library: Mic hael Silk , review-
ing a very big book, a co llec-
and tion of ess ays on the history
of Ancienl Greek , is trou bled
10 find thal the language ' s
" m ost spec ia l ach ie vem ent"
- the rad ical poetic ex plora-
tion s of Pindar, Heracl itu s,
Aesch ylus - are bar ely dis-
cu ssed . Rud yard Kipling
made some rad ical ex plora-
tions of his own , in Eng lish -
and, dur ing the First World
War, in the murky wor ld of
the Submar ine Ser vice,
mak ing a dive, encourag ing
a young lieutenant' s poetic
efforts, and writing ar ticles
and poems that saluted the
"cold-blooded" courage of
the subma riners bUI also
evoked their "Trade" of
destruction and "absolute
loss" . Daniel Karlin, in a
preview of some unpublished
Kipl ing letters, lells thi s
rem ark ab le story in Com-
men tary.
" No ne of this is calculated
to make anyone but aspiring
specialists long to join the
Londo n literary wor ld", says
Karl Mi ller abo ut V. S.
Na ipaul' s memories of "his
peop le" ; in fact it "can look
at mom ent s like a cann ibal' s
feast" , But, to lea ven the
malice, there is com edy and
Na ipaul' s "brilliant simplicity
of spee ch" : bon appetit,
AJ

TL S OCT O BER 5 20 07

Worshipping women
An upbeat vision of the place of priestesses in Ancient Greece shows its own cultural
bias: the assumption that sex and the sacred do not mix
ncient Greek women lived lives
A tha t wo uld be far mo re recogniza-
ble to the women of Iran or Saudi
Ara bia today than to the wo men
of the modern West. Th eir skin was pa le
from a life in the shadows. When they were
not indoor s they covered up with a vei l.
Hen ce part of the preparations of the cross -
dressing, co up -p lotting wome n of Aris -
toph anes' Ecciesiarusae co ns ists of lett ing
their ski n get tanned by secre t ex posure to the
unaccustomed rays of the sun. Men kept we ll
away from women they were not related to,
and eve n husband s and wives often slep t in
different , sex -separated, parts of the hou se.
Decent wo men were not supposed eve n to be
spoken of in the public wor ld of me n, accord-
ing to the fu nera l speec h penned for Pericl es
by Th ucydides . For a woman eve n to allow
herself to be seen at a window or leaning over
the sill of a Dutch do or was dangerou s for her
reput ation, and eulog ists at wed dings were
adv ised to pre face their pra ise of the bea uty
of the bride wi th an " I have heard". In Cre te
the fine an ad ulterer had to pay was ha lved if
the woman was seduced in a hou se that was
not her hom e, and in Athe ns no charges at all
co uld be laid aga inst a man who sed uced a
woman who we nt to and fro "s how ing ly"; as
if by the very fact of appearing in public she
was an no unci ng that she was anybo dy's .
G iven thi s back grou nd, it is per haps not
surpr ising that fun erals we re viewe d as dan -
gero us opportu nities for men with adultero us
intent. They prov ided rare occasions for a
man ac tua lly to ge t a loo k at ano ther man 's
women, and for a wo man to see what might
be on offe r instea d of her old man (w ho was
often a cousin or an uncle and usually twent y
years olde r than her - a man her father had
arranged for her to marry when she was a
littl e girl and withou t, of co urse , asking her
op inion) . At least, when the go -between
arrived with a secret prop osit ion, she might
rem emb er a handsome yo ung face in the
mo urn ful crow d that smiled at her when
nobo dy was lookin g, and might not be dis-
appo inted when on a subse q uen t night , her
hu sband away, she held a lamp up to the face
of the intru der the slave -g irl had been asked
to let in, hopin g to see same face agai n.
Greek wome n were ma rgi nal in more
substantial ways than hein g kept o ut of sight
and unspoken of. They co uld own only per-
sonal possession s, such as cloth es, jewels and
hand- maidens, but not land or hou ses or busi-
nesses. Th ey co uld not file lawsuit s or defend
themselves, and even trivial transactions had
to be effec ted by means of their official male
repr esentative or kyrios . They had, of co urse,
no vote, no role at all in po litics, and were
mis tresses only of their own dom ain, their
hom e, its servan ts and its co nta iners.
O n the other hand, there were the priest-
esses . And there we re rather a lot of them,
centre- stage in some of the Greek wo rld 's
CLAS SICS
l AM E S D A VIDSO N
l o an Br et on Co nne l ly
P ORTRA IT OF A PR IESTESS
Wo men and ritual in ancient Greec e
456 pp. Princeton University Press. $39.50 ;
distributed in the UK by Wiley. £26.95.
978069 1 12746 0
most imp ortant cults . Ge nera lly spea king,
the sex of the priest reflected the ge nde r of
the divinity: for eve ry cult of a lady-god , a
lad y-pri est was in charge . An d Gree ce had
some might y go ddesses, notabl y Hera, Ath-
ena, Arte mis and Ap hro dite. The most impor-
tant cult in ma nly Argos, therefore, was pre-
side d over by the priestess of Hera , and the
figur e who led the wors hip of Ath ena Po lias,
the ce ntra l city-c ult of woman-ma rginalizing
Athens, was a woman. No t o nly were their
30.9.07 Brighton
Britain's b est known sea side pi er is th e
sta r ti ng place for one of m any protest s
at the latest round of repression in
Bu rma. Formal British r esponsibility
for the country ende d in 1947 : th e
d efeat of Japanese forces by th e
" for gott en army" is seen as a last gasp
of Britlsh Imperialism. Students today
ca r r y portraits of Aung San Suu K yi,
whose fatber, independence leader
Aung San, wa s as sa ssinated that sa m e
year. Wbetber th e politicians of
TL S OCTO BER 5 2007
names know n, but they also had a publi c ro le
in these intrinsicall y politic al festivals. Th e
"regnal" year of the priestess of Hera at
Argo s co uld be used to date histori cal events.
So, famously, Thucy dides notes that the
Pe loponnes ian wa r began "in the fort y-eighth
year of the priesth ood of Chrys is, in the
ephorate of Aenesias at Sparta , and in the last
month but two of the arc ho nship of Pytho-
doru s in Ath ens" . So me yea rs later Chrys is
dozed off in the temple, havin g left a lamp
too close to some des icca ted wrea ths . The
temple burn t do wn aro und her and she fled to
neighbouring Phlius whic h had a famous
grove of asy lum, afra id of what the men of
Argo s wo uld do : "she had been priestess for
eig ht yea rs of the war and half of the ninth
when she fled". The Argives invok ed a law
that allowed them to replace her, and a new
priestess, Phae inis, was installed . The fact
that Chrysis is named alongsi de archo ns and
London got off too ligbtly for tbeir
previous failings wa s a qu estion raised
in the TLS tbis April b y the critic
Su Lin Lewis, d escribing bow th e
dismantling of th e Burmese monarcb y
and ro yal co ur t in 1886 p re saged "one
of the most impressive attem pts
at losing bearts and minds tbat a
nation-building project bas ever
accomplisbed • • • r endering almost
impossible the ac ceptance of alien
colonial institutions".
3
ephors , that she is forc ed to flee for fear of
what the Argives will do to her, that the
Argives have a law in place that allows them
to sack her for derelicti on of dut y, underli nes
the fac t that priesthood was a public
responsibility, that priestesses were "sacred
off icials" of the state. Ce nturies later, in
106/5 BC, her happier namesake, a priestess
of Athena Poli as, was vo ted a crow n and
other qu ite ex traor dinary honour s by the
peo ple of De lphi for he r role in an exceptio n-
ally lavish sacred pilgri mage from Athe ns
(Pythais), an awa rd to the sac red represent a-
tive of her entire co mm unity.
Joan Bre ton Co nnelly ' s Portrait ofa Priest-
ess is the biggest, full est and mos t up-to-date
study of these imp ortant women from the
time of Hom er throu gh to the early years of
Chris tianity . Beautifully illu strated and sub-
sta ntially docu ment ed , it is also highl y arg u-
ment ative an d certa inly more ambitious than
merely a cata logue of know n pri estesses,
their images and a descripti on of their fun c-
tion s, which wo uld have been eno ugh of a
subjec t in itself. For Connelly , "on the other
hand , there were the pries tesses" does not
mean that these we re exce ptions to the rule,
nor eve n that the pro minence of wo me n at the
level of the sac red some how compensa tes for
their invisibility elsew here, but that our pic-
ture of the place of Greek wo me n in socie ty
as a who le must be substantia lly adj usted.
Tha t dece nt wo men were not suppose d to be
talked about is a literar y mirage , according to
Co nne lly, show n to be false by the fact that
th e nam e s of priestesses appear in in scrip-
tion s; I suspec t that Thu cydid es, who me n-
tion s C hrys is and nex t to no oth er wo ma n,
might have been less than bowl ed over by
such an inconsistency.
The question of whether wo me n co uld
atte nd the Athenian theatre gives a good
flavou r of her app roac h. O n the Euro pean
side of the Atlan tic at least, it is ge nera lly,
though not uni versa lly, ag reed that they were
not, as a rule, amo ng the audience . If a
woman appearing at a door or at a fu neral
caused so much anx iety, if wo me n see n drink-
ing with men were brand ed pro stitutes, one
wo uld sure ly have heard abo ut it if wome n
spe nt ho urs and hour s a day eac h year
sq ueeze d amo ng the tiddl y crowds of sweaty
men (with no separate toilet faciliti es) durin g
the days-lon g festivals of Dionys us, gigg ling
at satyr-pha lluse s and Aristop ha nic obsceni-
ties abo ut their ad ulteries, or bored eno ugh to
allow their eyes to wa nde r du ring one of
So pho cles' cho ral odes to make eye co ntac t
wi th so meone of the opposi te sex. It wo uld
have been a uniqu ely remarka ble ex perience
for both sexes, and one that sure ly wo uld
have been rem ar ked upo n. For Con nelly,
however, the fact that some imp ort ant priest-
esses had front- ro w sea ts in the Hell enistic
theatre on which thei r offices we re insc ribed
Continued on page 4
4

Contin ued from page 3

CLASS ICS 3 James Davidson Joan Breton Con ne lly Port rait of a Priestess is an arg ume nt in favo ur of the beli ef that
Mi chaeI Silk A.-F. C h r is tid is A Hi story of Ancient Gree k women who we re no t priestesses did ind eed
A. J . Bo yIe William FitzgeraId Marti al - The wo rld of the epigram atte nd the theatre. Only our cultura l biases
prevent us fro m see ing thi s trut h.
LETTERS TO T HE ED ITOR 6 Democracy at war , Wai ting for Godea u, ' Deutschland uber alles, etc A nd these wo men were not me rely not as
publicly repr essed as we have been led to
POEMS 8 David Mason Prayin g wi th a Friend believe; they were also sass y, bossy and op in-
22 Sarah Wardle Is ion ated. The exis te nce of dress co des at the
sanctuary of Andan ia proves that women
LIT ERARY CRIT ICISM 9 Brian Vickers Andrew Laird, editor Ancien t Lit erary Cr iticis m were not "shrinking vio lets" , and had to be
Gert tid ing, ed itor Histori sches Wtirterb uch der Rhetorik co nstrai ned by law fro m flashy dressing. The
fact that the "independent-minded" priestess
MEMOIRS 11 KarI Miller V. S. Naipaul A Writer' s Peop le - Ways of lookin g an d fee ling of the Eleusinian godde sses was sa id to have
refused to issue a publi c curse aga inst A lcibia-
ESSAYS 12 Mi chaeI K er ri gan M ario Vargas LIos a The Temptation of the Impossible - Victor
des on the gro unds that she was "not a curs ing
Hugo and " Les Mi ser abl es"
priestess" provides an " image of the self-di-
BIO GR APHY 13 Lindsay Duguid L aura Thompson Aga tha Christie - An Eng lish myster y rected priestess .. . prob abl y influ enced by an
ancient realit y in which the priestesses were
COMMENTARY 14 Daniel KarIin W hen the blow ge ts home - Ru dyard Kipling' s songs of the acc ustomed to spea king their ow n mind s".
subma rine The fact that a speec h attributed to Dina rchus
Hugo Williams Free la nce was entitled " Diadikasia [adjudi catio n of riva l
Then and Now TLS November 27, 1998 - Aga tha Christie claims] of the priestess of Dem eter aga inst the
hierophant" shows that "priestesses had the
ARTS 17 Muriel Zagha Complic ite Season (Ba rbica n Ce ntre) authority to take legal action aga inst those
Judith Flanders C h r istop he r WheeIdon Morph oses/Th e Whee ldon who over-reached into areas of their con trol".
Company (S adler 's We lls) The "for ward-looking" David Lewis
Sameer Rahim Ca r son Mc Cullers The Mem ber of the Weddi ng (Yo ung Vie) managed to cut throu gh his cultura l biases
Nora Mahony Justin Young Moonwalkin g in Chinatow n (So ho Thea tre) to see the truth that Aristophanes' Lys istra ta
wo uld necessarily have ca lled to mind
FICTION 19 MiMIy Szegedy-Maszak Sander Marai The Re bels Lysimache, the long- serving priestess of
Sean O 'Brien Pawel Huelle Cas torp Athena Polias. Wha t is more, a late anecdote
M artin Schifino L aura Restrepo De lirium say s that one Lys imac he, poss ibly the sa me
one, refu sed to give water to the mul eteers
FICTION IN BRIEF 21 C h r is top he r Rush Will who had carried the sacred things to the
Sophie G ee The Sca ndal of the Season Acropolis, lest her action becom e "ancestral
J ean-Francois Parot The Chatelet App rentice traditi on" . For Connelly thi s reveals a
Peter Robinson Frie nd of the Devi l "clever, fun, wisecracking Lys imac he" ,
David Lale Las t Stop Sa lina Cruz
whose fu n-loving charac ter wo uld have been
know n to her fell ow citizens and recogn ized
POETRY 22 Jane Yeh Annie Freud The Best Ma n That Eve r Was
- "the inside jo ke" - in Ari stoph anes'
John G reen ing Su san Wi ck s De -Iced
Lysistrata. For me , on the other hand, thi s
SOC IAL HI STO R Y 23 Jon Barnes Deborah Blum Ghos t Hunt ers anecdo te reveals (along with ma ny others
Eric Ormshy Gerard HeIferich High Co tton - Fo ur seasons in the Mi ssissip pi that Connelly ci tes) wo me n who knew thei r
Delt a sac red respon sibilities and, in publi c at leas t,
imm ersed themsel ves in their role.
PSYC HOLOGY & 24 Andrew Scu ll Ca r la Yanni The Arc hitec ture of Madn ess - Insane asyl ums Co nnelly presents her vision of Gree k
ME DIC INE in the United States wome n - she sh ows littl e inter est in d istin-
Druin Burch Atul Gawande Better - A surge on's notes on performance guishing between wo men of different tim es
and places - as a new forward-thinking wave
IN BRIEF 26 Su san RonaId The Pirate Quee n in fem inist studies of antiq uity, a move
Bill Bryson Shakespea re away fro m moan ing about rep ress ion and
Harry Patch, with Ri chard Van Emden The Last Fighting To mmy opp ress ion. Th at Co nne lly is rid ing a wave
Benazir Bhutto Daught er of the Eas t seems indi sput able. Up bea t visions of
Louis Menand Discovering Mo dern ism ancient Gree k women have been all the
Edith Wharton The Demanding Dead rage for some yea rs now . But that this move
K atrin H immler The Hi mmler Bro thers repre sen ts "forward-thinking" I don ' t believe .
Dore Ashton a n d Joan Banach, ed itors The W riting s of Rob ert Th ere is an unp leasant side to thi s joll y new
Mo therwe ll identifi cation-feminism that Co nnelly so
blith ely embraces , pro udl y parti al, selectively
ART HI STOR Y 28 Theodore K. Rabb Patinir and the Inventi on of Land scape (M useo de l Prado, M ad rid) subjec tive.
Al ejand ro Vergara, editor Patini r and the In vention Fo r an upb eat vis io n seems to mean
of Landscape " wo me n like us", " wo me n" meaning " decent
wome n", and "like us" mea ning "like mo dern
31 This week 's co ntributors, Crossword
Western wo me n" , wise-cracking , ind epend-
NB 32 J. C. An obsession wi th war , Roy Campbell' s verse , Gra ha m Gree ne ent, opi nion ated, stylis hly dressed . That
on C D means that a lot of wome n in the mod ern and
in the ancient wor ld are not we lco me at thi s
cheerleaders ' par ty . It is a door policy that
becomes especially obv ious whe n Co nnelly
nose-h oldin gly deign s to touch upon the
relig ious role of the girls who are less than
full y decent , the co urtesa ns: "A third area of
popu lar preoccupa tion merits o nly the
briefest me ntion. This is the ' myth ' of Gree k
Cover picture : Pallas de Velletri, Helmeted Athena; Roma n copy of a Greek origina l attributed to Alka mene s or Cresilas, c420 - IOBC, whic h can be seen in the priestesses in the service of sacre d pro stitu-
Louvre, Pari s © Bridgem an Art Librar y; p2 © Richard Wiese ; p3 © Max Coope /new steam ; p l l © Ti me & Life picture s/Getty Image s; p I3 © Popperfoto: p l4
tion , for which there is no firm ev idence". In
© Gett y Images; p iS © Getty Images; p17 © Mari lyn Kingwi ll; p l8 © Dee Con way; p25 © Rose Linco ln Photo /Har vard University New s Office
fact , a lot of ev ide nce , cons tantly added to,

TL S OCTO BER 5 20 07

has been addu ced to con firm that there were
indeed some rather direct link s between pros-
titut es, court esans and the sac red in the Gree k
wo rld. A lthough one might we ll spend a littl e
useful time wo ndering if such ev ide nce is
"firm" or whether the ma le sources who tell
us straightforwardly that sac red pros titution
ex isted were , qu a male, simply slande ring the
Oth er as usual, it should at least be talked
about in a book subtitled Women and ritua l in
ancient Greece. Sac red pro stitution is not yet
a myth , nor even a "myth" , in the ordin ary
und erstanding of that ter m, ho wever mu ch
mod ern scholars wish it we re.
A sa crific e to th e goddess Athena (detail),
on an Attic black-figure a m ph or a; from
th e book under r eview
Thi s excl usion of an en tire class of ancien t
wome n from the categ ory of "women" natu-
rally leaves some startling gaps in Co nnelly 's
acco unt. On e of her mo st interesting chap ters
concerns pries tesses playing the role of their
goddesses and being de picted in those roles .
Imm ediately one think s of the hetaira (co urte-
san) Phry ne, describ ed as zakoros (tem ple-
atte nda nt) and prop hetis (represen tative) of
Aphrodite, know n to have taken on the ritu al
role of the goddess "coming o ut of the water"
in a festival on Aegin a - sight of which pro -
vided the model , it was said, for Praxiteles'
famou s Aph rodit e "Coming out of the
Water" , the "first fem ale nud e" . A statue of
the co urtes an (as her self) was placed beside
that of Aphrodite in Thes piae in the Templ e
of Eros , the city 's most important cult, a cult
that ma ny think Phryne found ed. Unacco unta-
bly, Co nnelly omit s to menti on any of this
ve ry relev ant material.
Similar ly, the book opens with a famou s
image from the inside of a drinking-cu p, of a
w oma n c arry ing a sac rific ial bask et pourin g a
libation at a flamin g altar. Co nnelly uses her
as a laun ch pad for discu ssion of "problems of
significa tion" and the need to be "open to
signifiers that have previou sly gone unr ecog-
nized" . She neglects to mention that the
incen se-burner behind the wo ma n is a pretty
stro ng sig nifier for one parti cul ar cult, that of
Aphrodite, which may help to ex plain the
sce ne on the other side of the cup, which like-
wise passes wi tho ut menti on : me n offering
bags of mon ey to courtesa ns an d "flute-
girls". Th e cultura l bia s here is the assump-
tio n that sex and the sac red do not mi x. But
CLAS S ICS
for a man who drank from thi s cup in a men' s
roo m, a flut e-girl in the offin g, a co urtesan on
his lap, the ima ge of a wo man at an altar
might not have see med so unto ward a sub-
ject, whe n he noted what kind of god dess the
wo man was wors hipping - and whe n may be
he thou ght wha t kind of wo man might devote
herself to such a go ddess , and wha t kind of
favour she might be hopin g for.
The probl em with Porta it of a Priestess is
that by using the priestess as a raft to rescu e
Gree k women in general from "oriental seclu-
sion" and restore them to the genealog ies of
the West, Co nnelly plays down the ano ma-
lou sness of the priestess and therefor e does
not need to deal with it. And yet - if we can
suspe nd the difficult questions of whether the
male publ ic sphere is necessaril y the onl y
guara ntee of dignity, respon sibility and signif-
icance, whether it is bett er to be menti on ed in
public speec hes than to be ignored by them,
and whe ther separation necessaril y impli es
oppressi on - it is no t too hard to see how
the priestess fits into the ge nera l pattern of
gen de red space.
O n the positi ve side, priestesses are pre-
em inently associ ated with, and ind eed show n
with, keys to the temple interior s, guardians
of what is inside, and therefore with the invio-
lability of the residence of the cit y-godd ess
as if of the cit y itself. On the negative side , a
wo man with no publi c personality may pro-
vide a safe r repr esent ati ve of the co mmunity
on a transcen dental level , a more secure signi-
fie r of a degree of separation of Church from
State. Putting the keys to the templ e in the
hands of a powerful politi cian with enemies
and interests and we ll-know n op inions about
war and peace co uld have ca used all kind s of
confli cts. A wo man might better be see n to
repr esent a more purel y sacre d interest, a
blank er page, an emptier vesse l, as far as the
men were concerned , to fill a more purely reli-
gious role. If a man voiced the words of
Apo llo at Delphi , one might we ll wo nde r
who was spea king; when an unedu cated
woma n uttered prophecies in hexameters, it
see me d that on e was hear ing th e vo ice of
god . Indeed , the male proph et s of Apo llo at
Didym a ca me to be hated by the citi zens of
Mil etu s for some betr ayal of sac red tru st, and
were slaughtered by Alexand er with the Mil e-
sians ' app arent approval. Wh en the prophets
were replaced, it was a wo man who took on
their role. Therea fter the oracle pro spered.
Yet thinking abo ut how the priestess might
emerge as a city's sac red rep resent ati ve not
in spite of, but bec ause of, the ge neral excl u-
sion of wo men from public life, does nothing
to miti gate the priestess 's significa nce , and
we sho uld be grateful to Co nnelly for ga ther-
ing togeth er so man y texts and (espec ially)
images, as well as offer ing so me interesting
theori es abo ut thi s striking ph enom enon. Her
final oh ser vati on s ahout th e ne w w orld of
Christianity - "the end of the line" - und er-
line how mu ch effo rt wa s needed to ma ke it
see m strange to see a wo man standing next to
an altar in the role of chief medi ator between
the community of beli ever s and their god.
Gree k wo men may have led lives that would
be more recogni zable to the wo men of Saudi
Ara bia and Iran , but there is no equivalent
of the ancient priestess to be found among
the ranks of the mull ahs and imams. If
there were, who can doubt that for both the
wome n and the men, it wo uld make a very
con siderabl e differenc e?
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
Speech, speech
inguistics, most lingui sts believe,
L is a science and mu st therefore
be value-free . In rece nt years,
Deborah Camero n has cha llenge d
this ass umption ex plicitly, as oth ers have by
implic ati on: one thi nks of William Labov' s
fa mous defence, in Language in the Inner
City, of the spec ial streng ths of Black A mer-
ican spee ch pattern s. So me vers ions of some
langu ages can ind eed be show n to have
spec ial streng ths , and oth ers the oppos ite,
throu gh conside ration of what is done in
them and with them.
In these ter ms, anc ien t Greek ca n cl aim to
be very special altoge ther. The claim is some-
tim es associated with the idea that ancient
Greek " survives" (as modern Gree k), makin g
Greek the oldes t langu age in Europe . That
line of thou ght is unhelpful. If, as see ms
likely, all langu ages, past and present , deri ve
fro m com mon sources (may be 2 milli on
years ago), all langu ages are eq ually old .
Continuity of labels is beside the point. It
is largely an accide nt of politi cal history
whether we give earlier and later versions of
a langu age the same name. We do not call
any descend ant version of Latin (no t even
Itali an ) "Latin" . Conversely, we give the
sa me name to both ancient and modern
descend ant vers ions of Greek, alth ough
ancient and modern Gree k are about as alike
or unlik e as classical Latin is like or unlik e
Itali an. Until the movem ent for nation alliber-
ation from Ottoma n rule in the ear ly nine-
teenth century, native Gree k spea kers them-
selves ge nera lly ca lled the ancient lan guage
"Hellenic" and their own "R omaic".
No : anc ient Gree k is special, becau se it is
the medium of the first momentous culture,
and particul arly literature, of the Western
wor ld. It is certainl y also true that "the Gree k
langu age" , from antiquity to no w, has a long
and distin ctive histor y. Recor ds begin with
the Mycenaea n Lin ear B tablet s in the thir-
teenth century B C. The Greek recorded there
is mor e or less a sing le dialect versio n, alon g-
side, no doubt, other vers ions, unr ecorded
(their com mon, proto- Hell eni c ancestor - an
independe nt branch of the Indo-European lan-
guage famil y - had prob abl y begu n to differ-
entiate itself into separate dialects as early as
the third mill en nium ). W hen records resume
in the eighth ce ntury, the age of the first
alpha betic inscription s an d the Hom eri c
epics, large-scale dialect differenti ation is
app arent. Fro m this point until the Macedo -
nian unific ation of Gree ce by Philip and Alex-
and er in the late fourth century, there is no
single Greek lan gua ge, hut a spec tru m of
loca l, thou gh mutu all y intelli gibl e, dialects :
Dori c and Nor th-Wes t Gree k, Aeolic, Atti c-
Ioni c, Arcado-Cypri ot.
In addition, we encounter a rem ark able
series of literar y dialects. Fro m Hom eric epic
in the late eig hth ce ntury to the Hipp ocr atic
med ica l corpu s of the fifth /fo urth , most litera-
ture is not in any particular local dialect, but
in a ge nera lized version (the Hippocratic writ-
ings are in a genera lized Ioni c) or else in a dis-
tinctive hybrid (epic comes in arc haizing
Ioni c, with Aeoli c elements). And the dialect
used acknow ledges not the local speec h
5
MI CHA E L S I L K
A. -F . C h r i s t i d i s , e d i t or
A HI S TOR Y OF ANC IE NT GR E EK
From the beginnings to late antiquity
1,660pp. Cambridge University Press.
£ 140 (US $250).
978052 1 83307 3
hab its of the co mpose r, but the tradition, an d
presum ed ori gins, of the ge nre : epic poetr y
afte r Hom er, for exa mple, is compose d in a
sub-Ho meric dialect mix, irrespective of the
provenance of the co mpose r.
This complicated pattern is subve rted, in
prose most obvious ly, by Athe ns 's politi cal
and cultural hegem on y in the fifth century and
Mace do nian unifi cation in the fourth . Athe-
nian prose writers write almos t exclusive ly in
Attic , and it is a modifi ed form of Attic - the
"common" dialect , or koine - which the
Mace do nians then institutionalize across the
Greek-spea king world. Th e koine remain s the
Greek standa rd, spoke n and writte n, until and
beyond the end of cla ssical antiquity, with the
Greek Bibl e its lasting monument. And this
koine is the dir ect ancestor of mo dern Gree k,
despite striking com plications en ro ute. The
chief of these is the challenge to the vernac u-
lar by success ive versions of archaizing
Greek, from the rev iva l of classical Attic in
the first centuries AD to the katharevousa , or
"purified" form of the modern langu age,
which was made the offici al idiom of Gree k
natio nhood in the nineteenth century. This
was only fin ally displaced by dem otic ("po pu-
lar") Gree k in 19 76 , two yea rs afte r the co l-
lapse of the Co lonels' reg ime , since whe n the
modern "language question" - katharevousa
or dem otic? - is ostensibly laid to rest.
These pro positi ons and developm ent s,
among others, are variously ex po unded,
illuminated and ev aded by the eighty co ntrib-
utor s to the remar ka ble co llec tio n of 143
essays in A History of Ancient Greek: From
the beginnings to late ant iquity - with about
half of the authors specialists in lingui stics,
and abo ut the sa me prop orti on nati ve Greek -
spea kers. Edited by the late A.-F. C hristidis,
the book is a revised and ex panded Engl ish
vers ion of a collec tion whic h appea red in
Greek in 200 1. Th e title is misleadin g.
" History" impli es a cohere nt narrati ve,
which this is not (tho ugh man y of the articles
are historic ally incl ined) . Then aga in, "begin-
nin gs to late antiq uity" is misleadin g too,
because the ran ge is grea ter, and in both
chro no log ica l direction s: the spa n ex te nds
from the di stant realm s of lingui stic prehi s-
tor y to "the fortunes of ancient Greek" in
mod ern tim es.
" Big book , big troubl e" , op ined the poet-
scholar Ca llimac hus in the days of the Alexan-
dri an library; and one can safely predi ct , too ,
that a volume so big (and so pricey) will be
co nsulted mor e than read, and con sult ed by
library users, but few others , in the yea rs
ahead . But if its size (a nd its organiz ation )
makes it awk ward to use, it is certainly not
to be ignored. It has a distin gui shed cas t.
Continued on page 8
6
Tocqueville
Sir, - I was astonis hed by the ref-
erences to A lexis de Tocq uev ille
in Sam anth a Ellis's review of Joh n
Patri ck D iggin s' s new book about
Euge ne O' Neill (In Brief , Sept-
ember 28). I ca n' t make out whether
it is your reviewer, or Mr Diggin s,
or O' Neill him self who thinks that
Democracy in America is "a study
in the traged y of fru strati on" , or
find s in Toc quev ille "grim fatal-
ism" , but if wor ds mean anything
the distorti on is preposterou s.
Tocqueville wro te his book to per-
suade his cont empo raries that dem o-
cracy was acceptable and that the
United States had a splendid futur e;
and he ex plicitly denied bein g a
fatali st. On the last page of his book
he writes , "... Provid enc e has not
crea ted the hum an race entirely free
or entirely ens lave d. It is true that it
has dr awn a circle of fate ro und
each and every man which he ca n-
not esca pe; but , within its vas t lim-
its, man is powerful and free ; and so
it is wi th nation s". I really can' t see
the point of mi srepr esentin g him .
HUGH BROGAN
Department of History, Univer sity of
Essex , Wivenhoe Park , Colc hester.
----~,---
What authors say
Sir , - In his review of my book
Shakespeare's Humanism (June
15), Andrew Hadfi eld too k the
opportunity to have a go at Bri an
Vicke rs. Wh at he objec ted to was n' t
anythin g that Vickers had actua lly
said in Appropriating Shakespeare,
but rather the sor t of opinions that
Hadfi eld ima gin es anyone who
tak es a criti cal view of T heory mu st
hold. Vick ers protested at the way
he 'd been mi srepr esent ed (Le tters,
Jun e 22).
Hadfi eld reads Shakespeare's
Humanism in the sa me crea tive
way. In the first sen tence of his
review he says I claim that Twelfth
Nig ht was a dec adent play . I made
no such cl aim. Wh at I did say was
that Purit an pamphleteer s wo uld
have regard ed it as a dec adent play,
which is quit e another matter. He
says I fail to distingui sh bet ween
sex and ge nde r. I devoted a subs tan-
tial part of my first chapter to a
discu ssion of sex and ge nde r, the
bi ologi cal an d e nv iro nme nta l fac-
tors that may influ ence ge nder ident-
ity, and the probl ems that arise
whe n sex and ge nde r are see ming ly
in conflict. He says I "refuse to read
The Merchant of Venice as a play
about race". Wh at I actually wrote
was : "the co nfl ict between Jews and
Christians is undeni abl y at the
centr e of The Merchant of Venice".
He says I suggest that "Shylock is
sim ply wro ng" . I argued the oppo-
site, nam ely that the pla y "goes
out of its way to challenge such a
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Democracy at war
Sir, - I am tempted to qu ote Azar
Ga t back at him and say that his
reply (Lette rs, September 28) to
my review is so breatht akin gly
muddl ed an d ignor ant as to verge
on the amusing. But I wouldn' t
be so rude. Here are answe rs to
his four points, which he reckon s
vag uely at "a few". (1) He has mis-
read my rev iew . I do not think and
have never claim ed that "only
culture determin es" anything . But I
dissent , for reasons ex plained in my
review, from Gat's redu ctioni sm ,
ex treme materialism, and determin-
ism; (2) my po int abo ut chim-
pan zees and bonob os is that they
have such different cultures that
their co ntras ting practic es in organ-
izin g violence are understood bes t
----------~,----------
reducti ve app roach to ethica l and
political question s". He says I wa nt
to "prove that Sh akespeare stands
above the co ntinge nt". The ce ntral
arg umen t of my boo k was that
Shakespeare was a produ ct of his
age and its po litics, not of our age
and its polit ics, as man y Th eori sts
see m to believe. He says I cite "vir-
tuall y no work written after 1985". I
referr ed to over a hundred book s
and articles publi shed afte r 1985.
He says that my app roac h is
"fa miliar and dated". The neo-
Dar wini sts I cited in my acco unt of
the mod ern challe nge to Theore tica l
anti-essentialis m can hardl y be
describ ed as dated when they have
only been publi shing for about a
decade. If anythin g, it is The ory that
is dated in so far as it reli e s o n a
view of hu manit y that goes back to
the early yea rs of the last cen tury
and stead fas tly ignor es the revolu-
tion that has taken pla ce in recent
years in the psychol ogical and
neurobiological sciences . Hadfield
doesn 't me ntion any of that.
Th e debate on Theory look s set
to continue . But with Derrida now
dead an d buri ed , perh aps it is time
to go back to discu ssin g what
authors actually say rather than
basing arg uments on imput ed mea n-
ings an d indifferenc e to mere fact. I
ex pec t that those who beli eve in
creati ve mi sreadin g will disagree.
ROBIN HEADL AM WE LLS
Schoo l of Arts, Roeham pton
University, Roeha mpton Lane,
London SW I5 .
----~,----
Deutschland
iiber alles
Sir, - To m Shippey calls the
"De utsc hlandlied" of Hoffm ann vo n
Fallers leben "the most dan gerou s of
letters @the-tIs .co.uk
in cultural cont ext ; (3) even by
Gat' s feebl e definition wa r is not
wage d o nly by states and it is
clearl y he lpful to look for it in
non- state societies and non-hum an
cultu res - Gat see ms to think I
national anthems" (in his review of
National Thought in Europe: A cul-
tural history by Joep Leerssen , Sep-
temb er 28). Whil e acknow ledg ing
that "De utschland uber alles"
" means 'Germany above all ' not
'Germany over all others" ', he pro-
noun ces it still "q uite sufficiently
agg ress ive" . Of cour se any patrioti c
song receivin g the blessings of the
Third Reich wo uld take on a crue l
edge; but, apart from a few words
about broth ers banding together for
prot ection and defence and "e dler
Tat" (no ble deed s), the "Deutsch-
landli ed" is remarkabl y peac eful.
Both the words and the hauntin g pas-
toral melody co ntras t sharply with
the sanguinary "Marse illaise", or
eve n the "Star-Spangled Bann er".
As for its territo rial aspirations, as
E. H. Gom brich once pointed out, its
claim to everything "from the Maas
to the Memel, from the Etsc h" (ie
the upper Etsch, or Alto-Adi ge - no
one claimed Veron a for Germany !)
"to the Belt " was ex tremely modest
co mpared to that in the fifth stanza
of "Rule Britannia" : "All thin e shall
be the subje ct main , I And eve ry
shore it circl es thine".
PAU L LEOPOLD
Va stergardsv. 46, 14138 Hudd inge,
Swede n.
----~,---
Ronald Reagan
Sir, - Whil e o ur ex pec tations of
professor s of histor y at Prin ceton
sho uld never be too high - espe -
cially tho se, such as Theo dore K.
Rabb (Letters, September 28), who
rely on the writings of Pa ul Krug-
man as their authority - it should be
point ed out that Ron ald Reagan
began his post-con vention presiden-
tial ca mpaign in 1980 near Philadel-
phia , Mi ssissippi , bec ause that is
the site of the Nes ho ba Co un ty
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
beli eve otherwise, thou gh my
rev iew and some of my own book s
are ex plicit and emphatic about it;
(4) Ga t's last point is typi cal of his
habit of inatt entive and negli gent
misread ing. I say unambi guou sly in
my rev iew that demo cracies do
fight each other.
But I also acc use Azar Ga t of
ignorin g the reall y interestin g
q uestion, which he continues to
ignore: why is it so easy to foi st
wa rs on states that em powe r cannon
fodd er (a nd their grievi ng wo men)
with votes?
FELl PE FERNA NDEZ -A RMES TO
Depart ment of History, Tuft s
University, Upper Camp us Road,
Me dford , Ma ssac husetts 02 155.
Fa ir, a huge, histori c, annual out-
door ga thering of politicians and
conn oisseur s of politi cal orato ry
from the So uth. Kru gman and
Professor Rabb notwith standing,
the pro ximity of the (198 0)
Nes hoba Co unty Fa ir to the (196 4)
murde r site of three civil right s
wor kers is of no mor e sign ificance
than the location of Labou r Party
con vention s in the same city where
five peopl e, including Sir Anth on y
Berr y MP , were murde red by the
IRA in 1984.
PHILl P TERZIAN
The Weekly Stan dard , 1150 17th
Stree t NW , Suite 505 , Washi ngton,
DC 20036 .
----'~,---
Leigh and Olivier
Sir , - Vivien Leigh and Laur ence
Oliv ier , according to Cli ve James
("Mo ney into light" , September
28) , "starred togeth er in preci sely
one film , That Hamilton Woman" .
Ja mes ove rloo ks Fire
Eng land and Twenty-One Days,
Over
both made in 1937 - altho ugh the
seco nd of these (no t released until
1940 ) is, ad mitte dly, eminently
ove rloo ka ble!
PETER ROWLAND
18 Corbe tt Road, Wanstea d,
London E l l.
----~,---
'Back to Nature'
Sir, - Readers can judge for them-
selves whether I mi srepr esent ed
Rob ert N. Wat sou' s Back to Nature
in my mod erat e, partly favour able
rev iew (August 10). But on the
factu al point Professor Watson now
ra ises (Le tte rs, Septemb er 2 I), they
sho uld be clear that more is at stake
than misspellin g. He admits he
"once referr ed to Th om as Wright
as Thomas Bri ght ". Ac tually he
did so twice (pp I 13 and 42 I);
which sugges ts co nfusion of two
ver y different people: Thomas
Wr ight, Roman Ca tholic co ntrove r-
sia list and author of The Passions
of the Mind (1601 ), an d Tim oth y
Bright , author of A Treatise of
Melancholy (15 86). As I put it,
Tho mas Wri ght becom es Sir
Timothy Bri ght. The whims ica lly
co nferre d title, also repea ted, is
pur e inventi on. To misspell once
may be rega rded as an isolated
case of hum an er ror: to repeat the
misspellin g and add a false title
looks like carelessness.
ALASTA IR FOWLER
Department of English Litera ture,
Univer sity of Edi nburgh,
Edinburg h.
----~,--­
'God Is Not Great'
Sir, - I do not know why the gov -
ern ment continues to fund degrees
in theology and reli gio us studies,
thou gh I am glad it does. But one
reason might be so that peopl e ca n
learn that the qu estion s James
Ma ckay (Lette rs, September 28)
think s Robert A. Davis and myself
sho uld be as king are in fact the
wro ng ones. Th ey can learn that
"God" is not the name of an entity
(or entities), whet her outside or
inside the uni verse, and that bibli-
ca l pro phecy is not abo ut see ing
futur e eve nts . Unfortunately one
can not learn these thin gs from
readi ng either Hitchens or
Dawkin s, but one can learn them
from taki ng a degree in theolo gy.
GERA RD LO UGHLl N
Department of Theo logy and
Religion, Dur ham University,
Abbey House , Durham.
----~.---
Waiting for
Godeau
Sir, - The theor y ad van ced for the
deri vation of the title Waiting for
Godot outlined by J. C. in N B
(September 2 I) is fascinating.
Ho wever, to add another layer, in
Col in Duck worth ' s French edition
of Godot, Beck ett said, in co nve r-
sation with the editor, that he had
met so me boys at the Velodrome
d'H iver in Pari s who told him "on
atte nd Go dea u" .
Godea u was Roger God eau , the
famou s track cycl ist who died in
2000 . This story is rep ort ed in Tim
Hiltons superb cycling mem oir
One More Kilometre and We 're In
the Showers (2004) .
MAR C WILLIAMS
1- 4-1- 5 Ushita-Higa shi,
Higashi-ku , Hiroshima.
 RUTGERS UNIVERSITY STUDIES
IN CLASSICAL HUMANITIES
William If. Fortenbaugh, Series Editor
PRESENTING AUTHORITATIVE AND SIGNIFICANT RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS OF THE CLASSICS

Volume 14 Volume 10 Volume 5

Heraclides of Pontus
Text, Translation, and Discussion
WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh,
Elizabeth Pender, and
Eckart Schiitrumpf, editors
Heraclides of Pontus studied with
Aristotle in Plato's Academy, and
became a respected member of that
school, served as head of the Acad-
emy and was almost elected head on
the death of Speusippus.Hisinterests
were diverse: the movements of the
planets and the basic matter of the
universe. He adopted a materialistic I'wWJJJlIJi(;;I1IlW'
theory of soul, which he considered
immortal and subject to reincarnation.
ISBN: 978·1·4128·0721·0 Hardback November 2007
392 pages $79.95/£52.95/$C98.95
Volume 13
Aristo of Ceos
Text , Translation, and Discussion
William W. Fortenbaugh and Stephen A. White, editors
AristoofIulison Cooswasactivein the
last quarterof the third centuryBCE.
Almostcertainly hewasLyco'ssucces-
sor as head of the Peripatetic School.
In antiquity, Aristowas confusedwith
the like-named Stoic philosopher ~~
Dicaearchus of Messana Theophrastus
Text, Translation, and Discussion His Psychological, Doxographical, and Scientific
WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh and Eckart Schiitrumpf, Writings
ed it or s WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh and Dimitri Gutas, editors
Dicaearchus of Messanawasa peripa- ISBN: 978·0·88738·404·2 Hardback 1991 350 pages
teticphilosopherandpersonalstudent $54.95/£36.50/$C67.95
of Aristotle. This volume includes a
facing translation of the Greek and Volume 4
Latintextsmakingthematerialacces- Cicero's Knowledge of the Peripatos
sible to readers who lack the ancient WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh and Peter Steinmetz,
languages, and the accompanying ed it or s
essays introduce important issues ISBN:978· 0·88738·271·0 Hardback 1989 324 pages
beyond the scope of the text.
$54.95/£36.50/$C67.95
ISBN: 978·0·7658·0093·0
Volume 3
Hardback 2001 389 pages
$69.95/£45.95/$C85.95 Theophrastean Studies
On Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics,
Volume 9
Religion and Rhetoric
Demetrius of Phalerum WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh, editor
Text. Translation, and Discussion ISBN: 978·0·88738·171·3 Hardback 1988 384 pages
WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh and Eckart Schiitrumpf, $54.95/£36.50/$C67.95
editors
Volume 2
"...both the nature and the value of Demetrius' ten-year Theophrastus of Eresus
reign have been the subject of debate ....Demetrius of
Aristo Phalerum: Text, Translation and Discussion is a laudable,
On His Life and Work
WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh, editor
and in many ways exemplary, effort to set the record
of Ceos straight...it establishes a solid and enduring basis for all ISBN: 978·0·88738·009·9 Hardback 1984 350 pages
$54.95/£36.50/$C67.95
f uture work on Demetrius," -Times Literary Supplement

~[ 'I f
ISBN: 978·0·7658·0017·6 Hardback 2000 464 pages Volume 1
from Chios, so that several works
were claimed for both philosophers. $69.95/£45.95/$C85.95 On Stoic and Peripatetic Ethics
This editionincludes a translation on
facingpages. · Volume 8
The Work of Arius Didymus
WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh, editor
ISBN: 978·0·7658·0972·8 Paperback 2002 358 pages
ISBN: 978·0·7658·0283·5 ........l·.... rl...... ~ .. ~i
Theophrastus
Hardback 2006 360 pages _A__~_:t~'.: __~'. __ '_~_ ~ ~ $29.95/£19.95/$C36.95
$69.95/£45.95/$C85.95 R e a p p r a is in g the Sources
Johannes M. van Ophuijsen and
Volume 12 Marlein van Raalte, editors ofRelated Interest - - - - - - - . . . ,
Lyco of Troas and Hiemonymus of Rhodes Contributors illuminate the intriguing, though little-studied,
Text , Translation, and Discussion life of Theophrastus exploring his intellectual position on a The Greeks
William W F rtenb ugh d Ste h n A White edito variety of disciplines including logic, physics, biology, ethics, H. D. F. Kitto
• 0 a an pe. , rs politics, rhetoric, and mUSiC. ISBN:978-0-202-30910-1 Paperback August 2007268pages
This volume continues work already begun on the School of
Aristotle. It focuses on two Peripateticphilosophers who lived ISBN: 978·1·56000·328·1 Hardback 1998 377 pages $24.95/£16.50/$C30.95
in the third century BCE, when Stoicism and Epicureanism $59.95/£39.50/$C73.95 Aristotle and His Philosophy
flourished. Lycoof Troaswasthe thirdhead of the Peripatos after Volume 7 Abraham Edel
Aristotle. Hieronymus of Rhodes was a member of the school • ISBN: 978·1·56000·836·1 Paperback 1995 487 pages
and an antagonist of Lyco. Excellence in teaching was Lyco's The Passionate Intellect $29.95/£19.95/$C36.95
distinguishing attribute, but he also attracted benefactors and had Essays on the Transformation of Classical Traditions Therapeia
the reputation of being a bon vivant. Hieronymus is best known Lewis Ayres, editor
for his work on ethics,but he also wroteon literature, history, and Throughhis long strugglewith the fragmentsof Posidonius, ran Plato's Conception of Philosophy
rhetoric. Kiddhasdone morethan anyotherscholarof ancientphilosophy Robert E. Cushman
ISBN:978· 0·7658·0253·8 Hardback 2004 470 pages to dispelthe mythof "Pan Posidonianism,' This volumeis botha ISBN: 978·0·7658·0727·4 Paperback 2001 322 pages
$69.95/£45.95/$C85.95 festschriftofferedto Kidd and an importantcollectionof essays $29.95/£19.95/$C36.95
on the transformation of classical traditions. Platonism and Positivism In Psychology
Volume 11
ISBN: 978·1·56000·210·9 Hardback 1995 337 pages Mortimer Adler
Eudemus of Rhodes $49.95/£32.95/$C61.95 ISBN: 978·1·56000·772·2 Paperback 1995 273
Istvan Bodnar and pages $24.95/£16.50/$C30.95
WiIliam W. Fortenbaugh, editors Volume 6
This volume is composed entirely of articles that discuss Eude- Peripatetic Rhetoric after Aristotle
Studies in Land and Credit in Ancient
mus from a varietyof viewpoints.Sixteen scholarsrepresenting William W. Fortenbaugh and David C. Mirhady, Athens: The Horos Inscriptions
seven nations have contributed essays. editors Moses I. Finley
ISBN: 978·0·7658·0134·0 Hardback 2002 383 pages ISBN: 978·1·56000·150·8 Hardback 1994 415 pages ISBN: 978·88738·066·2 Hardback 1985376 pages
$49.95/£32.95/$C61.95 ...J
$69.95/£45.95/$C85.95 $49.95/£32.95/$C61.95

• t ransac tiIon
Publisher 01 Record in International Social Science
Rutgers-TheStale University 01 New Jersey
THE UK AND EUROPE
Transaction UK
Stocked & distributed by:Eurospan I group
Tel: +44(0)1767 604972 Fax: +44 {O)1767 601640
CANADA
UBC Press c/oUNI Presses
34Armstrong Avenue
Georgetown , ON L7G 4R9 Canada
35Berrue Circle Plscataway NJ08854·8042 Emall: eurospan@turpln·dlstrlbutlon.com Tel : 905-873-9781
Calltoll Iree(in U.S.)1·888-999·6778 or lax 732·748-9801 Visit ouronline bookstore: Fax: 905-873-6170
www.transactionpub.com www.eurospangroup.com/bookstore E-mail: orders@gtwcanada.com
8 CLAS S rcs
Continued from page 5
Speciali sts in Greek langu age and lingui stic s
include C laude Brixhe and Vit Bub enik , John
Chadw ick and James Clackson, along with
the editor, Christidis - and the se are ju st some
of the Bs and Cs . lllu striou s nam es from adja-
cent field s abound. A vo lume that can dra w
on the mature judgement of J. P. Mallory
(archa eolo gy and Indo-European studies) ,
Jean- Chri stoph e Saladin (histor y of hum an-
ism ), John Ray (Egy ptology ), and Nicho las
de Lange (He brew studies) , on the ex pertise
of Yves Duhoux and Emili a and Oli vier
Ma sson on earl y writin g sys tems, and on a
ran ge of historic al scholarship from Ro salind
Th oma s to Vincenzo Rotolo and Antonis Lia-
kososuch a volume is aiming high. Eq ually, it
invites a high standa rd of judgement in return .
Wh atever the pedi gree of its contributors,
the volume is something less than a whol e.
For a start, contributions differ in level s
of challen ge . Almost all could be called
"sound", thou gh some are a bit reticent about
awk ward complication s: so Clackson on the
"genesis of Gree k" allud es to ce lebrated
isoglo sses (shared lingui stic featur es), like
the prefi x *e- to indic ate a past ten se, a form
shared by Gree k and (e.g. ) Arm eni an, but
suppress es the qu estion whether such agree-
ment s reflect a (genetic ) sub-gro uping within
Indo- European, or rath er an (en vironment al)
are al con vergenc e, eve n thou gh his 1994
bo ok on Gree k and Arm enian focu sed on pre-
ci sely this qu estion. Oth ers - like Ge orges
Drett as on the Greco-Se mitic Septuag int -
make few conc ession s. Some sequences are
strikingly uneven. Among the va rious treat-
me nts of the dialect s, there are admirable
sum maries of Dori c and Aeoli c by Julian
Mend ez Dosun a, a skimpy account in passing
of the ancients' own diale ct classification s by
Maria Karali (failing eve n to not e that the
ancient s pri vilege literar y dialect s), and a
sharp crit iqu e of methodology by C laude
Brixhe, whose " modern appro ach" (largely
sociolinguistic) threaten s to subve rt all the
adj acent discu ssion s. Such contrasts could be
miti gated , eve n turn ed to ad vantage , by edito-
rial inter vention . It is fair to say that, overall ,
the editor's many named contribution s to the
vo lume are impressive, but that (in part
because of his untim ely death in 2004) edito-
rial input of oth er kind s is hit- and-mi ss.
Th e book has not been sys te matically
upd ated. Bibliographies, mo st ob viou sly
(with lists pro vided separately for eac h
articl e), are unpredictable. Som e are up-to-
the-minute (Anne Th omp son ' s, on person al
names, goes up to 2005 ); some seriously out
of date (Paras kev i Kotzi a' s, on child talk,
onl y up to 1990 ). Som e are tok en, oth ers (lik e
Pierr e- Yves Lamb ert ' s, on "Greek and the
Ce ltic lan guages") rep resent contributions to
cutting-edg e research. Lists of editions and
Eng lis h tran slation s of a nc ie nt te xts are
chaotic , and the choices sometimes bizarr e.
Man y item s are cited in mini-li sting s throu gh-
NEW AUTHORS
PUBLISH YOUR BOOK
ALL SUBJECTS INVITED
FICTION,BIOGRAPHY, HISTORICAL, POETRY, FANTASY & SCI-Ft,
RELIGIOUS, SPIRITUAUSELF-HELP, ACADEMIC& REFERENCE
WRITE OR SEND YOUR MANUSCRIPT TO:
:~ ,!!pj~!!2~~Y~!~
7 \J TWICKENHAM TW1 4EG, ENGLAND
www.athenapress .com
a-mail : info@athenapress.com
out the book ; a full list, ostensibly, com es We hear too of the monumental gra mmatica l spea kers over the last 200 yea rs. We ge t
near the end . But one so metimes contradicts studies publ ished in Bucharest in 1768 by reporting, but no prop er placin g, of the bale-
the other - most egreg iously when lyric po ets the monk Neo fytos Kafsok alyviti s - who ful traj ectory of the Gree k lan gua ge in later
like Sappho are eve ntually cited from Ca mp- "devoted the whole of his life to explaining antiq uity . And , abo ve all, we ge t ancie nt
bell ' s new(i sh) Loeb , but ear lier on from its thin gs that required no explanation" (E leni Gree k literatur e - the ma in rea son for takin g
lon g-di scredit ed predecessor, Edmo nds . Karantzol a). And of the reaction to such an interest in the ancient lan gu age in the first
Larger editor ial deci sion s about cont ent s obsessive scholarship by the grea t Kor ais in place - treated as a significa nt lingui stic
and arrange ment of materi al are qu estion able 1805: "a greater service to the natio n tod ay phenom enon, with onl y tok en referen ce to
too. The volume is strong on fact-based would be performed by tho se who burn gram- what makes it so. Th e sec tions on "language
lingui stic s, light er on discur sive analys is. mars than tho se who write them " (Mi ltos and literature" (beg inning with an abstract
A mbi valence about "history" gives us Pechlivanos). Of the hop es within the new neo- stru cturalist invent ory of categories by
chunks of back ground, especially for early nineteenth-centu ry Greek nation that "one Mich ali s Setato s) are the lea st satisfying in
period s ("th e dark ages: the archae olog ical da y Greece would wake up to find itself a the book. Th eir authors have, ma ybe , an
ev ide nce "), but confusing organi zati on. modern Western state, and Gree ks of all imp ossibl e brief. Should they ges ture toward s
Th ere are ISO pages of app endi ces, on mis- social classes wo uld communicate with each the "exemplary literar y merit " of the Hom eric
cell aneou s topic s from "punctuation" to other in Anci ent Gree k" (Elli Skopetea) - as epics (Lambros Polka s), eve n though a pro-
"music" ; some of these could plau sibl y have if on the premi ss that Anci ent Greek , as the ducti ve discu ssion of the topic may see m
been in the main text, and vice versa. One ultimate inspir ation of modern, educated, beyond their remit, their word-count and their
appendix, at lea st, a mor e rigorous editor Western Europe , was itself both Western and inclination? Should they quietl y change the
wo uld have abbrev iated and rewritt en (I refer mo dern . subje ct, as Theodoros Papangheli s do es with
to Francoise Bader ' s imagin ati ve twent y- A subtext of these and oth er - Greek - con- langua ge and literature in "the Helleni stic
three-pa ge acco unt of "the langu age of the tributor s is the right and prop er triumph of centuries" (adroitly adju stin g the focu s to
go ds in Hom er" , wherein we learn abo ut the dem otic ov er katharevousa Greek (albe it a the socio-cultura l impli cati on s of " large
"alphabetical secret codings" of a poet "well- dem otic now modified by katharevousa libraries" and "colonialist minorities")?
verse d in historic al phonetic s" ). elements itself). Right and prop er ind eed , The issue is at its sharpest with inn ov ati ve
Ap art from isolated rushes of inn ovati ve becau se the demotic refle cts current speec h, poetic ex plor ation which challen ges the
over view, like Bri xhes on dialect study , and and (pace Derridean par ado xes) spo ken norm s of ordin ary lan gua ge altog eth er. Th e
some we lcome judiciousness on topic s where norm s mu st always be the prim ary point of creati ve complexiti es of poetic "heightening"
fant asy oft en rules (M allory and Clackson referenc e for langu age, so that any standa rd have been most full y illuminated by twen-
on Indo- Europ ean prehi stor y), the main that altoge ther reject s developing spee ch tieth- centu ry theori sts and critics as different
achi evem ent s of the volume lie in authorita- patt ern s is the loser. Thi s is mo st straight- as Heideg ger and Leavis, Shklovs ky and
tive treatments of seve ral distin ct areas: for wardl y so with the relation ship between Riffaterr e. Poetic lan gua ge defamili ari zes,
scripts and langu ages of the Gree k world in langu age and literature (espec ially poetr y): a enacts, mobili zes unsuspected conn otation s,
the second and fir st mill enni a BC (D uhoux symbiotic relationship , whereby literatu re and does so by negoti ation between sophisti-
and oth ers); phon ologic al and oth er technical dr aws on the strength of living speec h, and cated experiment and the imm edi acy of ava il-
development s of Greek fro m the classic al livin g speec h is itself info rmed by continuity able speech patt ern s. The radi cal poeti c-
period (Ma likouti-Drac hma n) to the koine with literary traditi on. Henc e , in Gerard lan guage ex plora tions of Pind ar, Heraclitu s,
(G . Horr ock s, Bub enik , G. C. Papana stas- Manl ey Hopkins' s classic phr ase, the lan- Aesch ylu s, repr esent , in thi s sense, the most
siou); interactio ns bet ween Greek and oth er guage of literature is, most appropriate ly, special achievement of ancie nt Gree k.
ancient lan gu ages, from lll yrian and Phr y- "the current lan gua ge height ened". In these But none of thi s is discu ssed here - with
gian (Chri stos Tzitzilis ) to Ar abic (Dimitri s term s, one can see why anci ent Attici sm was the on e, partial , exception of the editor him-
Go utas) to tran slation practic es (notable con- bound to be debilitatin g (for all the charm s of self. In an opening review of "histories of the
tributions here by Sebastian Brock, among Luci an and the Gree k romance) - as also, in Gree k lan guage" , Christidis argues robu stly
oth er s); and, not least, post-ant iqu e attitud es the sho rt term , was the institution aliz ed koine for the prim acy of the spoke n and even
to ancient Gree k itself. (too remote from the traditions of the grea t asse rts the mor ality (his word) of an
Thi s last group of essays, scru pulous ly con- dialect literature of the past) which rev ivalis t infor med under standing of "the lan guage
textu aliz ed, is rich in choice anecdo tes and Att ic sought to displ ace. question ". Th en , in a seco nd, and substa ntial,
tales of contestation (here, inevitabl y, the N o ne of wh ich is for eground ed or even int rodu ct or y piece , on th e nature of lan guage ,
mod ern " language question " bulk s large). We (with one exception) discussed by Chris- he offers reflecti on s on metaph or and "the
hear of Maximu s Planudes 's bemu sed schol- tidi s' s team of lingui sts - and we know why. limit s of langu age" , wh ile his later acco unt
arly awa reness, in fourt eenth-c entury Con- "Right and prop er" , "strength", "debilitat- of "prophetic discourse" amplifies the arg u-
sta ntinople, that Greek pronunciation mu st ing": this is the lan guage of values, and the ment by acclaiming poetr y itself as "lan-
have chan ged dra stic ally, because a plethora scientific lingui sts of thi s vo lume eschew , guage stretched to its very limit". But
of unrelated ancient phra ses (from "by and eva de values. Acc ordingly, we get copi- Christidis's intim ation s are not shared by
default" to "he will say it" to " I had been ou s referenc e to, but little critical engage- his coll abor ator s. We have here a lack of co-
thro wn") were now homophones, indi stin- ment with, the "language question " that has ordination on a grand sca le - both in detail
guisha ble to the ear (Eva ngelos Petrounias). und erstandably preoccupied so man y Gree k- (the separa te discussion s of langu age ' s "lim-
its" use the sa me Valer y quote, and in slightly
different wordings) and at a deeper level too .
Christidis's claims for poeti c lan gu age are
Praying with a Friend gratuitously margin alized by ass ociation, not
ju st with "prophecy" , but with " magic" . A
That gec ko pantin g on the whitewashed wa ll, properl y structured debat e wo uld sure ly have
only witness in the littl e ch apel produced a bett er-focu sed outcome .
where I pay my coin and light a beeswax candl e - Unde r what T. S. Eliot called "conditions
deference applied una sked for. Gi ven. that see m unpropitious" , the promotion of a
lan guage, ancient or mod ern , call s for
Wh atever gods have lived at Kalamitsi, informed, critical appra isa l of its uses and
I know , as man y locals do, the spring embodime nts. In thi s cau se, we need not ju st
now hidd en by a thorn y cloud of brambl es.
It fed my ga rde n onc e. I drank from it
to ackn owled ge lingui stic achieve me nt, but
to learn to arg ue for it; and the mor e spec ia l
the achieve ment, the mor e urgent the task .
the clearest wa ter I have eve r known, Far from polit ely eva ding such issues, we
medium of shade and oth er voices . sho uld be educating ourse lves , and others, to
eng age with them at least as rigorously as the
learn ed co ntributors to thi s rewardin g vol-
DAVID MASO N um e engage with alph abet s, isoglosses and
ob sessive monk s.
TLS O CTOB ER 5 2007

Our page tastes of man
T
he Latin epi grammati st and social
satirist Marti al was born in Bilbili s,
Spain , c40 AD and died there, mor e
embittered than mellow, in around 103. Most
of his adult life was spent in Rom e, where all
but one of his fift een book s of epigra ms we re
written and "published" , the majorit y durin g
the reign (8 1-96 AD) of the last Flavian
emperor, Domiti an. His concise, point ed,
often obsce ne epigra ms are quint essenti ally
urban writing. Their abrasive edge , disconti-
nuiti es, paradoxes and ju xtapo sitions figure
the bodil y interactions of a pre-in dustrial
"society of spec tacle" of a milli on people.
Mu ch of what the epigra ms portray and
attac k - soc ial and moral hypocri sy, insiders
and outsiders, undeserved wea lth, bad
patron s and clients, legacy-hu nters, greedy
prostitut es, offensive sex ual practic es - was
inevitabl y seen by Renaissance imit ators as
iconic of their ow n later, different times. But
the epigrams also spea k distincti vel y of Mar-
tial' s Rome : mythological " snuff ' or torture
plays in the aren a, starring condemned crimi-
nals; imperial legislati on aga inst adult ery and
cas tra tio n; slave favourite s a nd slave -a buse;
Flavian monum ent alit y; the abso lute powe r
of the emperor, cen sor for life. Although a
conservati ve social hierarchy is ass umed
and supported throu ghout the fift een books,
Marti al is a literary subve rsive , who see ks to
invert the traditi onal hiera rchy of poetic
form s by und erscorin g epigram's personal
and social relevance - "hominem pagin a
nostra sap it" ("o ur page tastes of ma n") .
Marti al is also a literary perform er, a
player , the inherito r of a literary tradition and
practi ce which had developed compl ex form s
of speec h and writing in response to chan g-
ing politi cal conditions. His contemp orar y,
Quintilian, notin g the danger s of speak ing
openly und er a tyrann y, advocates what he
term s " em p ha sis" , layer ed wri ting or spe ak-
ing, in which the meanin g lies hidden and has
to be rooted out. The main instrum ent s of
Marti al' s "emphatic" writing were ju xtapo si-
tion and literar y allu sion. The preface and
first two epigra ms of Book One, for exa mple,
place Marti al in the co mpany of the cou nter-
cultura l poets Persius, Catullus and Ovid,
only one of whom is named ; the openi ng
sequences of Books Six and Nine ju xtapose,
respecti vely, Domiti an ' s law aga inst adultery
with allusion to his dead niece (rumo ured to
have been imp regnat ed by him), and his law
aga inst castration with praise of his ow n
favour ite cast ratus.
Ancie nt com mentators such as the younger
Pliny praised the epigra mmatist's "wit,
sarcas m and charm" (sal, fe l, condor), but
Pliny' s eulogy clim axes in doubt concernin g
Marti al' s prospecti ve fame. In fact, few
ancient writers have had a greater imp act on
the Euro pean tradition. Ju venal, the Late
Antiqu e, the Carolingian revival in the
Middl e Ages, the Italian Renaissance,
Renaissanc e and post-R enaissanc e Fra nce,
the Spani sh Sig lo de Oro, seve ntee nth-
century Ge rma ny, English poetr y from the
Elizabethans to Pop e - displ ay subs tantial
form al and mat erial debt s. The Romantic
movem ent and purit anical scholars hip made
Marti al' s reput ation go into declin e in the
CLAS S rcs 9
~h L OtYerE
ea
arrmng
A. 1. BOYL E
Will i am F i tzgera l d
MAR TIA L
form as one suited to postm odern sensibili-
ties. He explores analogies with the snaps hot
and the non- organi c form of the newspaper in
a bravura attempt to und erstand the urban
nature of the discontinuities inherent in a
--
The wor ld of the ep igram book of epigrams. A final chapter addresses
258pp. University of ChicagoPress. $35; intertextual relations with Catullus, Ovid and
distributed in the UK by Wiley. £20. the seve nteen th-century parodist Johannes
9780226252537
Burmeister.
The res ult is a book which reflects its sense
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but of Martial' s discontinuities in its ow n "inter-
the later twentieth century saw a stro ng preti ve uncert aint y" and its refu sal to con-
renewal of literary interest in Martial from struc t a social or politi cal ideo logy perm eat-
Ernes to Cardenal in Nicar agua and J. V. ing the ep igrams . There is no engage ment
Cunningham in the United States to Peter with the soc ia l vision outlined by Sulli van
Porter and others, in Britain , Spain, Ge rmany nor - more surprisingly, given Fitzge rald's
and Italy. The revival prob abl y began with focu s on modes of writing and readin g - any
Ezra Pound, but aca deme was slow to catch significa nt analysis of the politic s of the
on, preferring to margin alize Ma rtial until J. coll ections. In a chapter on the se miotics of
P. Sul livans persuasive studies, espec ially j uxtapos ition he avoids the telling polit ical
Ma rtial : The unexpec ted class ic (1991 ), j uxtapos itions of Books Six and Nine, and
re-eval uated the epigra ms and transform ed makes no referenc e (there or elsew here) to
the field . "emphasis" . Simil arly the discu ssion of the
Willi am Fitzgerald's Martial: The world of initial poems of Boo k On e omits potentiall y
the epigram is the latest study of Martial to "po litical", espe cially Ovidian, allusions -
appea r in the wa ke of Sulli van ' s ac hieve me nt, not co m pe nsa ted for hy the limited account
which is here unackno wledged. It develops of Marti al' s indebt edn ess to O vid in the final
recent concern with patron s, addressees and chapter. An oppor tunity is missed , too, in the
author into an investigation of "the soc iety of brief rem arks on Book Nine and the post- OF FAR M ING & CLAS S ICS
the book" , the virtual society constituted not Domiti anic book s. Unlike Statiu s, Plin y, or ,, /.10'1";"
onl y by the author, nam ed addressees and Tacitu s, Marti al put out his writings both
"overreaders" but by all impli ed consumers befor e and after the imperial revolution of
(including wo men) of Marti al' s epigram matic 96 A D. The sequence Book Nine, Book
produ ction, now commodified for the Rom an Eleve n and (the re-edit ed) Book Ten, pub-
non- elite. In the process Fitzgerald focu sses lished und er Domitian, Nerva and Trajan Marcus Aurelius in Love
on the diver se readin g strateg ies sugges ted by respectively (Fitzgera ld see ms uncl ear about Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto
a multipli city of readers and cont exts of pro- the chro nology) , uniqu ely illumines the prob- Edited, Translated, and with anIntroduction
duction and by the epigram matic book itself , lem atic conditions for writing and readin g and CommentarybyAmy Richlin
es pec ially by the complex sem iotics emanat- du ring this period. How, for exa mple, was "These newtranslationsof letters between the
EmperorMarcus Aurelius and his mentorFronto,
ing from the ju xtapo sitio n of epigram with the reissued Book Ten to be read after the ded-
brilliantly edited byAmy Richlin, throwa
epigra m. Fitzge rald is sometimes brilli ant in icatee of Book Eleve n had been exec uted by tantalizing lighton the intimaterelations
his analysis of the lingui stic operati on of the praetori an guard? Hard thinki ng abo ut the between men in the late Antonine period in
ind ividu al ep igrams (he exam ines Liber politic s of Mar tial's epigra ms wo uld have Rome, hovering as theydo between ardent
Spectaculorum and Epigrams Book One in enlarged their "world" and the significa nce expression of affection and playful amorousness."
detail ) and in present ing the epigram matic of this imp ortant study. -Louis Crompton, author of
Homwe~HryandCwmzation
Cloth£22.50
----~---­
The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy
PlayingSpace andChorus
Graham Ley
"Anoriginaland effective study of an
importantsubject. Graham Ley explains what
needs to be explainedand makes clear where
his interpretations break new ground."
-Pat Easterling, University of Cambridge
Cloth£25.50
----~---­
Of Farming and Classics
A Memoir
David Grene
Foreword by Robert Pippin
"Anilluminating read for everyclassicalscholar
engagedwiththe current quest for the subject's
roots, and the excavation of the way that it has
evolved overthe past centuryand a half."
-Edith Hall, TimesLilerarySupplemenl
Cloth£19.00
----~----
"Archaeological sit e, Corinth" (1988) by Nicholas Egon; from N icholas Egon by
Fani-Maria Tsigakou (236pp. Benaki Museum. €40 . 978 960 8347 601) Trade enquiriesto:UPM. 0117 9020275
Distributed byJohn Wil ey, 01243 779777
The University of Chicago Press
www.press .uchicago.edu
TLS OCT O BER 5 2 0 07
10
F
ifty yea rs ag o, a classici st asked to
defin e the Gree ks' literary influ ence o n
later cultures wo uld have instanced
Hom eric epic, traged y, co medy, the histori-
ans , pastor al poetr y, and perhaps ro ma nce .
Onl y a very unu sual scholar wo uld have
thou ght to mention rhetor ic. Yet thi s prag -
matic art, or iginally developed to improve
face-t o-f ace co mmunication in law and
politi cs, bec ame a tool of astonishing imp ort-
ance for organizing thou ght and expression.
Sys tematized in the Hell eni stic peri od , and
formin g a basic ele ment in Graeco-Roman
ed uca tion, rhetori c prov ided a meth od for
organizing a literary com positi on through an
ordere d sequence (inventio , dispositio, elocu -
tio, memoria, and pronuntiatio or act io); it
gave a helpful sche me for planning a speec h
or writte n work (exordium, narratio, divisio,
confirmatio, confuta tio, peroratio); and it
classified seve ra l hundred lingui stic devices,
to which spec ific fun ction s were attributed. It
was essentia lly a prescripti ve art, teachin g
how to persuade, but the ca tegories it devel-
oped also served descriptive purp oses. E. H.
Go mbrich describ ed classical wr itings on
rhetoric as pro vidin g "perhaps the mo st care-
ful ana lysis of any express ive medium ever
undert aken ", and oth er arts soon reco gni zed
its value by plund erin g rhetoric. Painting,
sculpture, architec ture, music, all ado pted
its terminology and its or ientation, that of
an indi vidual craft sman sha ping a work
designed to move the spec tator's feelin gs and
perc epti on s, retainin g their rhetori cal inh erit-
ance unt il the eightee nth century. Rheto ric
an d its sister discipline, poetics, provid ed
man y of the basic co nce pts that domi nated
thinki ng abo ut literatur e and the other arts for
centuries to co me : mim esis (re prese nting the
visible world), imitatio (imit atin g ex ta nt
wor ks as a stage to developing the ar tist's
ow n vo ice), unit y, variety, decorum (adj ust-
ing expression to suit both the subje ct matter
and the intend ed audience), catharsis. Amo ng
the skilled exponents of rhetori c in their ow n
field we can count Alb erti , Shakespeare,
Kepler, Galil eo, J. S. Bach , Pou ssin and
James Joyce.
Andrew Laird' s co llec tion of twent y prev i-
ous ly publi shed ess ays on cla ssical literar y
criti cism co vers a thou sand yea rs, fro m
Hom er and his comment ato rs to Servius and
St Au gu stin e. Th ey range in tim e from the
fam ou s 1857 essay by Jacob Bern ays, "Aris-
totle o n the Effec t of Traged y" , here given in
a newl y revised translati on by Jenn ifer
Barnes (with a trenchant introduction by Jon-
atha n Barn es), to rece nt wor k by Denni s
Fee ney and the late Don Fow ler. Several are
mod ern classics, and it was a grea t pleas ure
to revisit essays by A . M. Dale, on Aristotle's
conc ept of diano ia (show ing his debt to rheto-
ric ), and Don ald Ru ssell , the gra nd master in
thi s field , whose lucid outline of the link s
between "Rhetoric and Criticism" is a mod el
of its kind. Discu ssin g the A rs Poetica, that
mo st elus ive text ("Problem s posed, solved
or dissolved by four centu ries of scho larship
have re sulted in a neurotic co nfusio n unex-
ce lled eve n in classical studies"), Ru ssell di s-
tils a lifetim e' s wisd om to cl arify the diffi cul-
ties Horace faced in "turning poetics into
poetr y" , while his Eng lish vers ions co nfirm
him as one of the grea t translator s of mod ern
times. Two other scho lars pur sue the fruitful
recent interest in how classical authors con-
trol the process of reading. Bruc e Gibso n
CLASSICS & LITERARY CRITICISM
A living art
BRIA N V IC KE R S
And r e w La ir d , e d ito r
ANC IENT LI T ER AR Y CR I T IC IS M
49 1pp . Oxford Univers ity Press. £95 (US $295) .
978 0 19 925865 9
G er t U d i n g , e di tor
HI S T O RI S CH E S WOR T E RB U CH D ER
R H E TORI K
Volume Sev en: Pos- Rhct
884 pp. TUbinge n: Niemeyer. € 145.
978 3 484 68 107 1
atte ntive ly reco nstruc ts Ovid' s se lf-presenta-
tion and se lf-exculpa tion, while T . J. Luce
elucida tes another ambiva len t text, Tac itus '
Dialogue on Orators, finely obse rving the
"needless co nfusion" produced by the
mod ern "assumption that in orde r for each
interlocut or to be consistently charac terized,
the arg uments give n to him mu st be co nsist-
ent also". The ancients accept ed that spea kers
"aim to present the stro nges t case they ca n
for a particul ar point of view", not caring
abo ut consistency.
Athenian red-figure vase by Douris (early fifth ce nt u ry BC, detail), from th e
book under r eview.
This collection, which includes extensive
"Suggestions for Further Readi ng" , will be of
use to both beginn ers and adva nced stude nts.
But it has been shaped by some rather unfortu-
nate decision s. Laird has decided to focu s on
major authors , and to includ e essays elucidat-
ing "particular prim ary texts" rather than the
"te nets and trend s of anci ent critic ism and
poetics" . Several of these essays show the
importanc e of rhetori c in formul atin g criti cal
conc epts and analytical techniques, and Laird
conc ede s that "most of our so urces for anc ient
criticism in Latin are mainl y or exclusively
co nce rned with ora tory "; but the se lected
essays deal only with poetr y. He also observes
that "the import ant role of orato ry throu ghout
antiquity is not rep resented in most curre nt
curr icula" , and althoug h he found it "tempt-
ing" to "use this book to redirect or modify
the inclinations of teachers and stude nts", the
aim here, he says , is to "meet ex isting needs
TLS O C T OB E R 5 20 07
and interests" . Thi s cautious, pragm atic deci-
sion means that major authors who had a "mas-
sive intlu ence" on literar y creation and inter-
pre tation for I,500 yea rs - C icero, the Sene-
cas , Quintilian, Pliny the Younge r - are sim -
ply ignor ed. Laird has also tried to reach the
philosophy mark et, with essays on Plato (the
Anti christ of poetry and rhetori c), the Stoics,
and the Epicurea ns, worthy studies but of
marginal interest to literar y scho lars. Despite
this collection ' s many virtues , I cannot help
see ing it as an opportunity lost.
No such criticism could be addresse d to
the magisteri al Historisches Wiirterbuch der
Rhetorik, which has yie lded seve n massive
vo lumes at regul ar inter vals since 1992. The
editor, Ger t Uding, like his co lla bora tors ,
comes from the Unive rsi ty of T ubinge n's
Rhetoric Semin ar, found ed by Wa iter Jen s in
1967. Rhetoric had been taught there since
1481 , when the found er granted " ainern der
in Oratori en Iysset , dryssig guldin" - half the
sa lary of the doct or s and lawyer s (J oac him
Knape, 500 Jah re Tiibinger Rhetorik, 1997).
Later appo intments included leadin g Ger man
hum ani sts, such as Jakob Loch er (w ho
resign ed because a colleag ue had coined a
neologism , a privilege that Locher reser ved
to poets and ora tors) , Heinrich Bebel ,
Philipp Melanchth on (nicknamed "praecep-
tor Germani ae" ), Joachi m Ca merarius and
Martin Crus ius. Th e distingui shed scholarly
publis her Max Niemeye r, also from Tubin-
ge n, has produced an eminently legibl e
doubl e-c olumn page.
Mor e than 400 scho lars, mos tly from
German-speakin g countries, have taken part
in thi s proj ect , go od editing ensuring a
high degree of con sistency. Th e lon ger
articl es are divided into chronological
peri od s (cl ass ica l, medi eval , Renaissance,
mode rn), each with its own bibliogr aph y.
Volume Seven (Pos- Rhet) co nta ins seve ral
large articles , coll aboration s between spec ial-
ists in each peri od. That o n "R hetorik"
(the work of two dozen scholars) ex tends
acro ss 3 17 columns ; tho se on "Redner,
Re dner idea l" and " Rede" cover 200 and 192
co lum ns respecti vely (w here the austere page
design becom es rather tirin g). Unusually, at
least for tho se who den y the Ge rma n se nse of
hum our, there is a spo of ar ticle o n "R heto-
graph" (that is, " a speech-w riting instru-
ment ") illu str ated wi th a fifth- century vase
paintin g (a red-figure cup by Douri s) of a
schoo l sce ne show ing a seated youth with
what look s for all the wor ld like a lapt op.
The serious business of thi s lexicon is co n-
cerne d with the histor y of concepts ("Beg riff-
sges chichte"), of institutions, proc esses, and
eve n obj ects (a rostra as shown on a Rom an
denarius by Palicanu s, c48 BC ), not with
authors and their wor ks . There is no entry for
Ramu s, but a wide-ra ng ing entry on Rami sm .
Articl es on long-extin ct topi cs, such as the
"Progymnasmata" or graded writing exe r-
cises in Helleni stic and Re naissa nce schools
(we ll treated by Manfr ed Kraus), rub sho ul-
ders w ith e ntries on "Postrnoderne", "Radior-
hetorik ", "Quodlibet" (a mu sical form ) and
"Revolutionsrhetorik" ,
In add ition to the centra l ar ticles on
rhetori c (Pro lepsis, Pronuntiatio an
exce lle nt article by Frank Rebm ann) there
are substa ntial essays on theological topi cs
(Psa lm, Proph etenr ede, Predi gt), on commu-
nication (Presse , Propagand a, Publi c rela-
tion s), and man y other issues invol vin g a
spea ker and an audience . This lexicon adopts
an appro priately eclec tic approach, foll owin g
rhetori cal doctrin e as it has been reshaped
and renewed ove r the ce nturies. Its coverage
ran ges from Byzantium to Am erica, from
Ce ntra l Europe to Scan dinavia and Russia.
Local manifestati on s are regi stered , such as
the Protes tatio de Iustitia fro m fift eenth-
century Flore nce, a speec h in praise of ju stic e
and the civ ic orde r required of Signori a
memb ers on takin g offic e. There are descrip-
tion s of rhetor ical institutions, such as the
fifteenth- and sixtee nth-ce ntury Dutch
"Rederij kers", who produced a hybrid for m
of dram a, the "s innes piel" , and the "Predi-
ge rgese llschaften" or preacher s' soc ieties
(compara ble to the secular academies of
the Re naissa nce) which flouri shed in
Ge rmany and Sw itze rlan d in the sixteen th
and seve ntee nth ce nturies .
Aft er seve ral month s' selec tive use, the
overall level of the articles see ms very high.
Some articles suffer fro m dense pseud o-
soc iolog ica l j argon , oth ers are admi rabl y
clear (such as H. Sta uffe r on "P sycha gogie"),
Some address spec ifica lly Germ an concepts,
such as "Publizistik" (only partl y translatabl e
by "j ournalism" ), or "Produktio nsas thetik".
Eng lish users will note a few omissions . The
article on "Purismus" do es not know of the
Society for Pur e Eng lish, and while there is a
brief discussion of English Oratory, app ar-
en tly there have been no Eng lish Orator s.
Trans lations of terminology are sou nd, but
" battle" is not the right word for "Que re lle "
(as in the Qu arr el of the Anci ents an d Mod-
ems) . Tri vial errors apart , this is a wo nde rful
digest of kno wled ge, with some thing notable
on eve ry page. It deser ves to be pro min entl y
displa yed on the referen ce shelves of all good
libraries. Sadly, a check on COP AC, the
uni on catalog ue of the leadin g twent y-seven
institutional libraries in the United Kingd om
and Ireland , shows that only eight have sub-
scribed, not including the Briti sh Lib rar y.
With two vo lumes outstanding , there is still
time to acquire the best-ever referenc e boo k
on thi s ancient yet livin g art.

" T h is will not be an easy chapter for
me to do." The chapter is about V. S.
Naipaul's old friend and early
mentor Anth ony Powell , whose magnum
opu s, A Dance to the Music of Time, when
Naip aul came to read it with care, "appalled"
him. Ge nero us, "people-collecting" Ton y had
made a hash of it. Wh y did the chapter have to
be written if it threatened to be so hard to
write? The question is not easy to answ er, and
it has gone unanswered in the deferential
review s which I have read of A Writer 's
People: Ways of looking and fee ling . The
openin g chapter, which precedes that one,
may also have been hard to write. Those of
this writer's peopl e who are writers are found
to have faded, staled, failed. Th eir works have
disapp eared from the scene. Their "little Amer-
ican success" soon wilts. Thi s writer's peopl e
can look at mom ents like a cannibal feast.
Th e five ch apters of the bo ok are link ed by
an idea of vision. There is an Eng lish way of
lookin g, in which Pow ell is implicated, and
there is an Indi an way of looking, and of not
see ing. But there' s a goo d deal of the miscel-
laneou s in thi s coll ecti on of pieces, and the
fir st two chapters, where the failu re of writers
supplies a mor e important link , stand
somew hat apart from the later three, two
of which are abo ut Indi a, and in which
Naip aul' s abiliti es as a no veli st, com edi an
and critic, and his brilli ant simplicity of
ex press ion are most in ev ide nce . One of these
chapt ers is a piece of literary criti ci sm where
an episode of Madame Bovary, in which
Emma's future medi cal-m an husband is
call ed out to splint a suffe ring farm er, is
wo nde rfully retold - Flaubert could hardl y
have don e it bett er - and compared with
Flaubert's Carthag inia n Gothic ex trav a-
ga nza, Salammbo, mu gged up from book s,
Na ipaul sugges ts, and in some respect s infe-
rior to on e of its sources, the C lassica l histo-
rian Pol ybiu s. Th e case is made, and was
worth makin g. Naipa ul also writes interest-
ingly about Roman war and Rom an atrocity,
and about Julius Caesa r's De Bello Galileo .
Th e seco nd half of A Writer 's People is
divid ed, like Gaul , into three part s, and thi s
materi al is flank ed by the two chapt ers on
Indi a, the Naip aul famil y' s homeland , and on
wha t has becom e of it since he first we nt
there and wrote tartl y about it in An Area of
Darkn ess (1964 ), whic h was succee ded by
the mor e comp endious and mor e affirmati ve
India: A milli on mutinies now (199 1).
Stren gth s and annoy ing wea knesses are dis-
co vered in Nirad C. Cha udhuri' s writings .
Gandhi ' s achieve ment is reco gni zed , but Gan-
dhianism is see n as a spent forc e - dated , at
all eve nts . His renowned ecce ntricities were
owe d in large meas ure to his moth er, a
simple wo man from the co untry who lived
for her rituals, which could last for month s on
e nd a nd " c ame with a se ries of fa st s and half-
fasts". Fro m thi s ensued his devoti on to diet.
He was a man who liked eating but who
pled ged him self to ascetici sm and simp licity.
On e of Ga ndhi's multitude of discipl es
was "a fooli sh man " , Vinoba Bha ve, whose
brain was softened by emulation and se lf-
mortification , and who had to be dra gged from
the spinning wheel lest he made him self ill.
He had li ved for so long as a parasite, and away
from the world, that he had become a kind of
half-man, and he thought that Gandhi had been
like that too. Vinoba had no means of know ing
that Gandhi was a man of appetite, and his
MEMOIRS
At the feast
KARL MILL ER
V. S . Na i pa u l
A WR ITER ' S P EOPLE
Ways of look ing and feelin g
193pp. Picador. £16.99.
978 033 0 48524 I
sexual abstinence hadn ' t co me eas ily. One idle
day in the ashram, some time before Gandhi's
death, Vinoba had the idea (or it had been put
to him: he had his admirers) that he should take
over from the grea t man. There was the clothes
- he could do that. There was the spinning-
wheel - he could more than do that; he had
practised under the master' s eye ; and it would
help pass the time. There was the ashram rou-
tine, with even a little (but not too much)
latrine-cleaning - that was in his blood. Up to
there it was easy.
Bhave knew, thou gh , that Gandhi was a
national figur e, as we ll as the master of an
ashram, so he threw him self into land reform
and we nt abo ut the villages with a foll owin g
in ord er to preach it. But nothing was don e
when the carava n moved on.
This half-man and Ga ndhi's moth er ' s half-
fasts - such teases are the stuff of a superb
felin e com ed y, from a man with an inclin a-
tion to say thin gs by halves in thi s way .
Ea rlier, in South Afric a, G andhi had founded
a scho ol, Tolstoy Farm , wh ere he "played
Mr Squ eers and eve ryo ne had to do ga rde n-
ing and where, as it turn ed out , the children
had to do mo st of the hard wor k, fellin g tim-
ber and diggin g and car ryin g. The children
didn 't like it". Wh en he we nt back to India,
"what happ ened to the farm and the school?" .
The com ed y of Ga ndhi's life, as rend ered
here, is unlik ely to accelerate the decl ine
which has been attribut ed to the M ahatm a' s
authority. Indian readers, amon g others, have
long been accustomed to the story of his fad s.
Aft er the Seco nd World War it became
less arduous for the Indi an community of
the Ca ribbea n to visit the country whose civi-
lizati on they'd born e with them across the
sea . Na ipaul's moth er paid a vis it to her
famil y' s ances tral village , where she didn't
feel like venturing on her relati on s ' food , but
accepted tea. Naipaul, him self devoted to diet
and to purit y, describ es how her relations
off ered suga r. She did not resist. " But the
grey grains of suga r came on so mebo dy 's
palm and were slid from the palm into the
tea. And that per son, courteou s to the end,
began to stir the suga r with her fin ger. " Mr s
Na ipaul may have felt herself ex pose d to a
less civilized way of ea ting and drinking. Th e
story is reminiscent of a sce ne fro m Brit ai n' s
Age of Reason, when, to Thomas Ca rlyles
subse quen t disgu st, Boswell visited Sam ue l
Johnson "to sip mudd y coff ee with a cy nica l
old man, and a sour-tempered blind old
wo ma n (feelin g the cup s, whether they are
full , with her fin ger)".
It is the earlie r chapters of A Writer 's
People which raise the question of what it is
to write aga inst the wor k of cont emporaries
(a nd, in passing, aga inst that of Henr y James
and E. M. Fors ter) . Part of the answe r may lie
in the compan y Naipaul kept when he left
TLS O CTOB ER 5 2007
V. S. Naipaul, 1994
Trinidad for the metropolit an West. Litera-
ture, Eng lish literature cert ainly, is spiteful,
and so is literary company. Writers (and their
peopl e) are often jealou s. He was sho cked by
the di splays of malice he witnesse d onc e he'd
es tablished him self as a man of lett ers in
Eng land.
He ex plains that his yo uthful feelin g for
poetr y was less acute than his feelin g for
prose. Poem s were apt to overdo it. He was
like the narrator in hi s novel Half a Life who
obj ected as a stude nt to the bomb ast of sensi-
bilit y which he cam e across in Eng lish
Roma ntic verse . The yo ung man wa nted to
say: "This is ju st a pack of lies. No one feels
like that" . But Na ipa ul was very excited by
the arrival of a fir st book of poem s by Derek
Walc ott from neighb ourin g St Luci a. Here,
in so man y wo rds, was his ow n paradi salland-
sca pe and seascape. But then, he claims,
Walc ott ' s po etr y we nt off (the po et wo uld
one day refer to Sir Vidi a as V. S. Nightfall
and it isn 't hard to imagin e why) . The wor k
of another Wes t Indian writer, the noveli st
Sa muel Selvon, also we nt off, and a book of
his dr ew fro m Naipaul the wor d "wretched"
when he inter viewed him for the BBC' s
Caribbea n Service . Edga r Mitt elh olzer did
not so mu ch go off as go up in se lf-inflicted
flames, Na ipaul conveys . He has ea rlier
not ed that the no veli st had been plea sed to
discover that his London publi sher, Fred
Warburg, was alm ost as dark as him self. The
fate of these Co mmo nwealth writers, as they
used to be kno wn , is enough to recall the
Rom antic po et Wordsworth ' s awa reness of
the despond ency and distress of the poets
who were his cont emporaries.
Now it is A nthony Powell ' s turn. He was a
friend of lon g standing who, Na ipaul records ,
bade him a ceremoniou s goodbye some while
before his death but we nt on see ing other
friend s. He was fift y-tw o, Na ipaul twent y-
five, whe n they met. The day came when
Na ipa ul was invited by an editor to discuss
his friend' s wor k. " I didn 't think anyone
wo uld believe that after all the yea rs of friend-
11
ship I had not read Powell in any serio us and
conn ected way , had onl y ju st don e so, and
didn't no w think of him as a writer. It was a
piece of Ibsen-like horr or." This last allu sion
relates to his sense that "every lbsen grea t
man has near-mu rder in the background".
A vicar ious unkindness, at Powell ' s
ex pense , enters the stew. One of the points
where Naip aul' s seve rity eng ages with the
ill-will of others conc ern s "the minor poet
Philip Lark in" , as he think s him. Powell took
to Larkin and his poe ms ; perh aps he was
go ing to add him to his coll ectio n of fri end s.
" I was glad that he didn't because soon we
we re to read, after Larkin ' s death , the most
aw ful abuse of Tony, in L arkins diary or in a
Larkin lett er." I had thought that Larkin , like
his friend Kingsley Ami s, was a fri end of
Powell ' s, but it see ms that you never know
with writers. Naip aul attra cts a par-for-th e-
cour se abusive referen ce in Ami s' s lett ers,
and Ami s once told Powell that Te rence
Kilm artin of the Observe r, a tran slator of
Prou st, was "a very fooli sh man" - a Vinoba
Bhave, as it were. This was Ami s' s " little
j oke" , Naipaul writes . He himself knew
better. But then so, of co urse, did A mis.
Oth er di sparagem ent s of Powe ll, by other
peopl e, are cit ed . His literar y editor at the
Telegraph, David Holloway, sq uinted, app ar-
ently, but managed to look Naip aul in the
eye before asking him what he thou ght about
his friend ' s writing. " Before I said any thing
he said, with something like rage, his bad eye
wor king hard , ' I would pay him to stop writ-
ing' . Ju st like that ; and yet wee k by wee k he
ran Ton y ' s lead review at the top of the
page." Mean whil e Powell ' s editor at Punch ,
the cartoo nist Bern ard Hollo wood , had been
heard to say that he could do the literary
pages him self. Those editors! It is later
reported that Da vid Holl oway "had retired or
died ; that dull care er was over".
Na ipaul was shoc ked whe n Aub eron
Wa ug h, Eve lyn's son and one of the spec ial-
ists in mali ce who do so we ll in Eng lish jour-
nali sm, de livere d a routine excoriation of
Powell , his father ' s fri end. But it can' t have
surprised him . " Bron' s review preyed on
To ny 's mind. " But it ma y have been that
there was no rea son for the attack , that "B ron
had sim ply wishe d to be crue l, and Ton y was
an easy target" . Eng land exempts its Bro ns
from any requirem ent of acc urac y or fairn ess,
and allows them to say, as thi s one did , that
his publi c schoolfellows thou ght that a black
boy at the schoo l was some sort of health
hazard . Na ipaul's recoil from the Car ibbea n
island of his yo uth, with its easy malice, its
far from paradi sal race rel ation s, took him to
a Western wor ld with defici en cies of its ow n
and a mali ce of its own, to a wounded expe ri-
ence of the West, as some have perc ei ved
it, and to the triu mphant exe rcise of a rare
talent.
None of thi s is ca lculated to mak e any one
but aspiring spec ialists of thi s kind long to
j oin the London literar y wor ld . "Somebody
told Sonia Orwe ll one da y that in To ny 's big
book peopl e were dri ven by the will. She
made a face and see med about to snort. And
yet Tony and his wife Violet adore d Ge orge
Or well .. .." Sonia's half- snort is the sad
thin g here ; that and the non seq uitur which
foll ows it. Powell is so metimes said to have
been hurt , or it is said that he wo uld have
been hurt had he known what was being sa id
abo ut him behind his back. I can testif y that
12
many good things were said abou t him
behind his back. He is cast down at one po int
because con temporaries "had done so mu ch
bette r - Wa ugh, Gre ene , Orwell, Co nno lly
(thoug h perha ps Con no lly hadn 't done so
we ll), Betjeman, Amis ". Had they? All of
them ? So much better? Powell's pre- war
comedies, seldom me ntio ned here, stand up
we ll in relation to thi s list of notables, from
which the names of Henr y Gree n, Ivy
Co mpton -B urne tt, Eliza beth Bowen and
Elizabe th Tay lor are noticeabl y abse nt.
Powell' s gen eration did we ll, and so did he,
even if we feel that the later instalm ent s of
his big book are a falling-off .
It is possibl e to sy mpathize with tho se
who have deferred to A Writer 's Peop le and
steered clear of its probl em s, which are at
times an enigma. Ques tions of co nsci ous
intent arise. At Na ipaul' s Oxford co llege ,
"they were for the most part provin cial and
mean and common ; and it was like that at
the BB C as we ll". He may perh aps have
heard Angu s Wil son talk ing, as he liked to
do, of "that common wor d 'common"'. It' s a
wor d that can blow up in the fist of the aggres-
sor. Is Na ipa ul using it in that knowled ge, as
a mi schi ef or pro vocation ?
Elsewhere in the book he com plai ns that
Indi an writers of the present day have left
their native co untry and have go ne on writing
abo ut fam ily life there, writing autobiographi-
cally an d for the most part poorl y, it wo uld
appea r. He mu st know that anothe r writer
will spring to mind here - the Na ipa ul who
left his native co untry and wro te autobio-
gra phica lly about its famil y life, thou gh he is
right to stress the range and versatility of
what he has writte n. India has no literar y criti-
ci sm, he insists, "no auton om ou s intell ectu al
life", and the co untry's ex patriate writers
have had a part to play in the situation he
describ es: "no nation al literatur e has eve r
been crea ted like thi s, at such a remove,
whe re the book s are publi shed by peopl e out-
side, ju dged by peopl e outside, and to a large
ex ten t bou ght by peopl e outside" . Some of
th e ne w Indi an wr iter s, moreover, "h ave even
been to writing schoo ls". Fore ign rea ders of
the new Ind ian writers are en titled to think
that thi s exaggerates a real difficulty .
Na ipaul says at one point that Latin
A me rica n literature ex ists, and is makin g a
con tribution. The state ment summons up the
quit e well-k now n if possibl y apocr yph al
story that he once asked the noveli st M ario
Varga s Llosa where he came fro m and what
he did , and then came out wi th wha t may
have been intended as a jo ke: " I didn't know
there were any writers in Peru". Since then,
he has published a numb er of remarks which
can onl y have served to fix that story in the
folk memory of those who atte nd and will
continue to atte nd to his life and wor k .
• FOUR COURTS PRESS
Age of atrocity: violence & political
conflict in early modern Ireland
DAVID ED WARD S, PADRAI G LE NIHAN
C LO DAG H TAIT EDITORS
Examines on e of the bloodiest epochs in Ir ish histo ry
including the 1641 rebellion and th e C onfederate Wars.
ISBN 978-1 -8518 2-962 -03 20 pp £45 Published: 5 October
7 Malpas Street , Dublin 8, Ireland
Tel. (Dublin ) 453 4668 www.fourcourtspress.ie •
MEMOIRS & ESSAYS
Idols for the idle
"T o Paris there are no bound s", the
narrator of Les Miserabl es assur es
us, but every book must have its
bindin g - even "the book which the rea der
now hold s in his hand s" . Hu gos is trul y an
"impossible" no vel , if in no other sense than
the simply physical : a modern pa per back
edition doe s we ll to survive a single readi ng.
There may be a tou ch of the Turne r Prize
entrant abo ut an artw ork that self-des tructs
eve n as it is ex perienced, but we ' re never in
any danger of see ing Hugo as our con tem-
porary. His vast novel tests to the limit the
idea that a classic wor k of literatur e is time-
less: so much abo ut it seems so obvio us ly
antiquated . It is "imposs ible" in the way a
person might be: wi lful, per verse, exasp-
era ting , self-impor tant, self-indulgen t, bor-
ing, at tim es, in its ob session s. And yet few
novels have eve r been as engro ssing - or as
me mora ble.
It helps, perh aps, to be as yo ung and eage r
for di version as Ma rio Vargas Llosa was
when he first read Les Misera bles in the
early 1950 s. He has harked back frequ entl y
to his disco ver y, durin g inter minable Satur-
da ys and Sunday s co nfined to qu arters in
Lima' s Leonci o Prado Mil itary Academ y as
a teenage cadet , of the classic fic tion of the
nineteenth cen tury . Esca pism it may have
been , but (he insists in his memoir A Fish
in the Water , 1993) it was an escape not
from but into realit y: "it was to live rea l life,
ex citing and magnifi cent life, so superior
to that other one of routine, dirt y trick s,
and the tedium of bein g a bo ard ing
student" . Du ma s and Hugo were amo ng his
favourites; France , he recalls, " my fond est
dream , a co untry that was assoc iated in my
fantasies and desires with everything that ...
I wo uld have liked life to offer: beaut y,
ad venture, boldness, ge neros ity, elega nce ,
arde nt pa ssion s, undi sgui sed se ntime nt,
ex travagant ges ture s".
So important was this imaginative realm
that , he confi des in A Fish in the Water, for
much of his adulthood he maintained a per-
sonal "taboo" on rereading Les Miserables,
afraid it might fall short of his reco llections.
Having finally conqu ered that fear, he found
to his relief and exc iteme nt that it was "also a
mas terpiece for an adult of today" . That
"also" is significa nt: there is no sugges tion
that the adolesce nt thrill-seeker had been
wrong ; rather, Hugo' s novel had somehow
changed during his time away . Books do,
Vargas Llosa believes. Writin g of Carnus's
L 'Etra nger in 1988 - the piece is co llected
in Touchstones: Essays on literature, art and
politics (reviewe d in the Tf 5 , Augu st 24 & 3 1,
2007) - he rem arks that "Like living bein gs,
novels grow , and often age and die . Those that
survive change skin and being, like snakes, or
caterpillars that turn into butt erfli es. These
novels say different thin gs to new genera tions,
& very often things that the author never thought
of ex press ing". The Temptation of the Imposs-
ible record s not ju st Vargas Llosa' s own
exc itement on rereadin g the children's classic
as the adult mas terp iece , but his sense of what
Les Miserables might mea n to us today.
The result is not quite what we may have
been ex pecting . In recen t decades we have
TLS O CT OB E R 5 2007
MI CHA EL K ERRI G A N
Ma r i o V ar g a s Llo s a
T H E T E MPTA T ION OF THE
IMPO S SI BL E
Victor Hugo and "Les Miserables"
Translated by John King
208pp. Princeton University Press. £14.95
(US$24.95).
978069 1 131115
learn ed to associ ate Latin Am eri ca with big,
am bitious novel s on a nineteenth- century
sca le, teemi ng wi th charac ters and see thing
w ith intell ectu al ene rgy. Vargas Llosa has
certainly produ ced his sha re . Hi s Peru,
mor eover, has, in import ant res pec ts, been
obv iously akin to Hu gos France: a rap idly
urb ani zin g society plag ued by revoluti on ary
violence and state repression. A sometime
preside ntial ca ndida te, Vargas Llos a has
shown an und erstanding both of the wor kings
of politi cal life and of its imp act in the
most intim ate reaches of the pri vate sphere .
It feels od d, then, to find him describing so
giga ntic, so tumultuous a work as Hu gos in
such measured, sel f-co nsc ious ly ca utious
critica l term s. Yet , as a co nse rva tive critic' s
ex plora tion of what a wor k of literatur e sets
o ut to do , and what it can and can 't deli ver,
thi s essay is more far-reachin g than it
may see m.
Hugo , Varga s Llosa remind s us, intend ed
Les Miserabl es as a "religious tract , not an
adve nture nove l"; its ex traordinary ambiti on
is a stateme nt in itself. This "dizzying swirl",
says Vargas Llosa, "seems to cont ain the
infinite ex te nt and the microsc opic detail of
an entire wor ld" . AE (Ge orge Ru ssell ) noto ri-
o usly told Joyce that he did not ha ve eno ugh
chaos in him to make a wor ld : no one co uld
eve r have levell ed that charge at Victor
Hugo. Les Miserables is a work whic h keep s
rushin g madly off in all directions, its digres-
sive ness as outrageous as its bulk. Anec-
dotes, adjec tives, digression s, di scourses are
heaped up in astonishing abund anc e and
appa rent haph azardn ess in a text which,
Vargas Llo sa point s out, transform ed itself
in the twent y yea rs between its first and fin al
dr afts, grow ing hugely both in sca le and in
seriousness of purp ose.
Ideally, it see ms , it wo uld have conta ined
eve rything : " History discards nearl y all these
odds and end s" , we are told at the conclusion
of the cha pter "The Year 1817" , which
spe nds seve ral pages sim ply riffling through
the newspaper-clippings file for that yea r.
These odd eve nts are ge nerally dismi ssed as
trifl es, the narra tor co ntinues, but "there are
no trifl es in the hum an story, no trifli ng
leaves o n the tree". Les Miserables, it is
clearl y impli ed, is the novel to corr ect that
enor mo us ove rsight. So many leaves did it
end up documenting that it proliferated into
what Vargas Llos a des cribes as a "dense
for est" .
But if there is mu ch that seems anarchic
abo ut its grow th, it has an ove rarching orde r,
and its world is presided ove r by its own
crea tor-figure. No sparrow will fall witho ut
the knowled ge of the nove l' s narra tor. His
chief characte ristics, Vargas Llosa notes,
are "omniscience, omnipotence , ex ubera nce,
visibility, and ego mania" . He is not ju st all-
knowin g but all-t ellin g, forever giving us the
benefit of what Vargas Llosa calls his "torren-
tial wisdom" , but we're not suppose d to
regard him as in any way "unreliable" . If he
present s himself as a "divine stenog rapher",
no mor e than a scribe , faithfully recordi ng a
pre-existi ng realit y, for the most part we ' re
happy to regard him that way too. Finally pub-
lished in 1862 , Les Miserables is, for Vargas
Llosa, the last (a nd in its way the culminat-
ing) novel of the "classical" type ; the first
trul y " modern" one , Madame Bovary, had
alread y appeared six years before. The cru-
cial differenc e is the status of the narr ator - in
Hugos novel, O lympian, author ity unqu es-
tion ed; in Flauberts, comprom ised and sus-
pect from the start. If, in Vargas Llosa' s
term s, Hu gos novel is " deicidal ", supplan t-
ing God, it is found ed in faith - the reader' s
and the author 's . Flauber t's fic tions belo ng to
a mor e sce ptica l age .
In fact , as Varga s Llosa show s, Hu gos
"divine stenographer" is a slippe ry custome r,
but eve n his ev asions are designed to gain our
trust. His moment s of mock reticenc e, his
occasional confession s of ign oran ce over thi s
or that detail , serve only to und erscore our
sense of his scrupulousness. At the sa me
tim e, his author ity is enha nced by the wor k-
ings of a "cornplicit fate" : history itself is
submissive to his will. He ca n rewrite the
story of the Battl e of Waterloo so it becom es
nothing more (or less) than a ga me of cha nce ,
while fortuitou s meetin gs are very much the
nor m . No mere whims , writes Vargas Llo sa,
these amount to "an orde r of co incidence that
regul ates the life of the fiction , organ izing . . .
the teemi ng lab yrint h of peopl e an d actions,
bri ngin g together and dista ncing the ch arac-
ter s, causing them to be friend s and enem ies,
and crea ting irrit atin g, unu sual, tend er , or
ang uished mom ent s". The "dialectic of free-
do m and fate" which ope rates within the
nove l is as perpl exin g to its readers as to its
cha rac te rs. T hree ke y cr ises , Va rgas Ll osa
argues , are the "volcanic craters" whose
ex plos ive power energ izes the action as a
who le. A carefull y con trived series of co in-
cide nces brin gs the main cha rac ters togeth er
for the ambu sh at the Gor bea u Teneme nt, the
barri cade at La Chanvrerie, and Valjean's
journey throu gh the sewers.
These episodes are splendidly theatri cal ;
so mu ch thou ght has gone into thei r settings
and into the depl oym ent of their actors. An d
they reall y do see m like actors - not j ust here
but thro ughout the novel - playin g the parts
that have been ordained for them . His early
co nvers ion to virtue apa rt, Va ljean never
shows the slightest sign of evo lving as an indi-
vid ual. But then how could he, pulled thi s
way and that as he is by an arbitrary fate?
Instead, Vargas Llosa point s out, like an
actor he goes und er a series of different di s-
guise s and ident ities, and is known by a
series of different names. In ge nera l, the
nove l's charac ters don 't talk , as peo ple do ,
but give speec hes, to them sel ves and to each
other.
Quit e how far thi s theatri calit y inform s
the novel, sugges ts Vargas Llo sa, is ev ide nt
in the comparative pallidness of M ariu s - the
nove l's only con vincingly ambiguous,
hu man charac ter. But then all the dri ves of
actual eve ryday life are subj ected in Les

Miserabl es to the work ings of destin y and
cha nce. The erotic dim ension is altoge ther
abse nt: the main actors are strikingly sexless.
Eve n the young lovers, Cose tte and Ma rius,
kiss only once, we' re told , in the en tire
course of an inten se but utterly ethereal court-
ship. The economic motive is largely missi ng
too: there' s certainly very little sense of
anyone doing any work - odd, on the face of
it, in a nove l apparently dealin g with the
plig ht of the poor. Reactionary critics like
Lam artin e pounce d on th is fact: these people
weren ' t "miserables" , they carpe d - ju st idle.
Radicals, too, Vargas Llosa report s, we re to
feel let down by a soc ial critiqu e which, on
closer examination, turn ed out to be as airy as
it was eloquent.
--------------------------~,--------------------------
etween 1920 , when she was thirt y,
B and her dea th in 1976, Aga tha
Christie publi shed seve nty-o ne full-
length murder mys teries . She also brought
out five co llec tions of stories , two volumes
of poetr y, a number of success ful West End
plays and a couple of autobiogra phies; five
non-c rim e novels by her appea red under the
nam e of Mary Westmacott. In some yea rs
there were several publica tions; bet ween
1939 and 1946 there were nineteen. By 1950 ,
she had so ld a total of 50 milli on books and
she is still the bestsellin g author in the wor ld.
It seems reasonable to wo nder where it all
came from.
Laura Thompson has been given full access
to the unpubli shed letters, papers and note-
book s kept at Greenway, the house in Devon
that Christie purchased in 1938 and later
turned into a family tru st to avo id tax. There
Thompso n discovered a lifetim e' s worth of
old exerc ise books, scra ps of paper, receipt s,
banker ' s orders, souvenir menu s and famil y
albums. She also discovered that Christie,
who never dated a letter, falsified the details
of her life in her memoi rs and lied about her
age on her marr iage cer tificate. But in any
case Thompson's biographic al method is not
orga niza tion but ev oc atio n; rather than order
the material into a chronolog ical narrative,
she wan ts us to know what her Agatha feels
and offers novelistic insights into her state of
mind. "Her life, on the surface, was as grey
and drear y as a prison exe rcise yard, her mind
a prey to a daily success ion of tor ment s" is
how she describes Christie 's reactio n to her
divorce from her husband Archie sometime
in 1927, an important even t in Christie 's life,
the facts of which rem ain uncertai n.
Facts are furth er confused by Thom pso n's
way of moving between eve nts in the life and
quot ation s from the fiction. Christie's love of
her childhoo d home, Ashfield , is illustrated at
length by her charac ters ' mourning for a vari-
ety of com fortable houses; her painful expe ri-
ence o f lo ve is show n to be re-e nac ted aga in
and aga in by her heroines; and her difficult
relationship with her daughter Rosa lind,
briefly dea lt with, bears fruit in the many un-
attracti ve, even murderous, children in her
books. More expe rimentally, Thomp son
wonders if the cool, attrac tive Katherine Grey
of The Blue Train might have "hankered
after" Arch ie Christie, and conclu des that "her
instincti ve sense of self would have come to
her rescue". From time to time there is an
imaginative reconstruction of an episode, with
dialogue, or a dramatization of a key mome nt
with a lavishly deployed present tense.
ESSAYS & BIOGRAPHY
What, then, when the smo ke has cleared,
is the novel' s insurrection all about? Left-
leaning scho lars have been far too qui ck to
impo rt what they know (or think they do)
from the historica l record, says Vargas Llosa.
On the actual causes or motivatio n of the
insurrection of 1832 our loqu acious narrat or
is once more mute. The uprising, as see n in
the novel, is nothi ng more than a ges ture , an
expression of genera lize d hope. This appea rs
to be enough for Hu gos narrator, who talk s
exci tedly of the violence that is to usher in
an age of peace. It has not been enough for
many modern readers, left with the vague sug-
ges tion that the same inescapable destin y
which till now has ordered the opp ress ion of
the masses is so mehow go ing to brin g about
Anti-novelist?
LI NDSA Y D U G UID
L au r a T ho m pso n
AGATHA CHR 1STIE
An English mystery
533pp. Headline Review. £20.
97807553 1487 4
After a while, one recognizes the voice.
Perhaps as a result of reading so many of the
books and letters, the biographer has adopted
her subjec t's rhapsod ic manner and cos ily
sec ure judgement s. Places are " magical",
people "fiercely independent", a dog is
"desperately highl y strung" . Christie's youth
in Tor quay was "the life that any norm al
health y girl would long to live" . Max
Ma llowa n, who became her second husband ,
"divined the vulnerability within" . Thompso n
borro ws Christie 's emphatic italics ("Agatha
enjoye d Poirot but she needed Miss Marpl e")
and her use of run s of rhetorica l questions:
"Why had Agath a allowe d her looks to go,
after all? Did she not rea lize that a man
wa nted beauty in his wife?" .
In ma ny ways , this old-fashioned emo-
tional idiom , though it does not offer much in
the way of insight into the woma n beneath ,
see ms to suit the story of Aga tha Christies
life, both in outline and det ail. As describ ed
by Tho mpson, it very much resembles an
Aga tha Christie novel. There was an idyllic
childhoo d; Aga tha was a girl who could sing
beautifully and whose fair hair was so long
she co uld sit on it. A roma ntic marri age
in 1914 , to a Firs t World War pilot, was fol-
lowed by an unhapp y period as a golf widow
in Su nningda le; her hu sband ' s lover was
pretty Nancy Nee le, who worked as a sec re-
tary in a firm with the resonant name of Impe-
rial Co ntine ntal Gas Association . The second
marri age, to a man fifteen ye ars younger than
her, led to archae ological expe ditions to
Nimrud in Iraq , in the 1940s, where she
cleaned the new ly dug up ivories with face
cream. Her acquaintance see ms to have
includ ed a numb er of charming spen dthrifts,
wa r widows, grave professors and beautiful
but leth al wome n. And all the while the
book s grew steadily more success ful.
The most intriguin g part of the life is, of
course, the mysterious episode in 1926 , when,
having been told by Archie that he wanted a
divorce, Christie drove off alone from their
TLS OCTOBER 5 2007
their liberation. But then, perh aps the muddl e
is the message: the great gift that fiction
brin gs is the hankering - however inarti cu-
late - for a better life.
It sounds lame - and Vargas Llosa
acknow ledges that we will be waiting a long
time if we expec t works of fic tion to bring us
to utopi a. But then how far have we actually
been adva nced in the real wor ld by the revo lu-
tionary fantasies of the Left ? The ir promises
have proven as untru e as any fiction, and a
grea t dea l more dam aging in their conse-
quences . At least we have literature to give us
hope: Les M iserabl es, says Varga s Llo sa, "by
its very sca le, competes with realit y on an
equal plane, offering a ' total' fiction in place
of life". That, he concludes, is "why fictions
Agatha Christie , c 1960
Sunningda le home, abandoned the car, then
took a train to Harrogate where she registered
herself at the Hydro Hotel as Mrs Nee le (the
name of her husband ' s mistress , which she
later gave to one of her intelligent police
inspector s). She spe nt twelve days in Harro-
gate, shopping, lunchin g in tea room s, having
beauty treatm ents and eve n singing with the
hotel' s dance band, while all the time follow-
ing the story of the polic e hunt for the missing
Mr s Christie in the Dail y M ail and the
Da ily Ske tch. It was a stra ngely unim agina-
tive retreat, on which Thom pson uses her
dramatic-recreation technique, inventi ng
dialogue and trains of thou ght. It is the
incidental detail, however, that has the odd
fiction al quality. Christie left her car, with
her fur coat and driving licence, on the edge
of a quarry; it was found early the next morn-
ing by "a gy psy boy". Ponds were dragged
and the surrounding countrys ide sea rched
by police and voluntee rs, bec ause bun gling
Superintendent Kenward of the Surrey
Constabulary was convinced that Archie had
murdered his wife; sightings we re report ed all
over the countr y ("Hatless Woman Me t on the
Downs"). Thompso n makes much ofthe over-
exci ted press cove rage, the amnesia story the
famil y stuck to, and the good effect the public-
ity had on sales.
She is also inform ative about the later years,
cove ring Christie's long-running troubl es with
the US and British tax authoriti es and the deal
with MGM that led to clumsy Hollywood ver-
sions of the books, the disappointi ng Poirots
of Albert Finney, Peter Ustinov and David
13
we re born, so that, throu gh living this vica ri-
ous, transient, precarious, but also passionate
and fascin ating life that fiction transport s us
to, we ca n incor pora te the imposs ible into the
possibl e" . Ringing term s, it might aga in be
objec ted, for what amo unts to a cou nsel of
des pa ir (or even a call for fiction to be admin-
istered as an opiate for the people). But this
is to miss the point. The wo rk - even one as
sprawl ing, as uncont ain able as Les Misera -
bl es - has its ow n organi zin g princ iples, its
ow n integrity: it co uld never offer a yardstick
for a wor ld beyond itself.
What it can do, in Vargas Llosa' s view , is
stir the imagination of the individual - no
small thing, when it is from the individual that
all true and lasting change must come .
Suchet, and the very popul ar film of Witlless
for the Prosecuti on, which starred, improb-
ably, Tyro ne Powe r and Mar lene Dietrich. She
is firm about the creak ing attempts to grapple
with the Sw inging Sixties in the embarrassi ng
Third Girl, and she quotes Christie's US
publi sher' s privately expressed reaction to
Poste rn of Fa te in 1973: " It' s pretty ghastly
isn 't it? Much worse than the last two" . Else-
where, Thompson's ju dgements on the books
are simply partisan - "really quite beautiful . ..
perfectly distilled medit ations on hum an
nature" , with "an almos t mythic quality" . She
defend s Christie against charges of snobbery
and racism, arguing that the novels only
reflected the views of their day, thou gh she
prefers to consider a passing remark made in a
letter - "Like all Dagoes, he couldn 't swim" -
rather than address the casual anti-Sem itism
and xenophobia found throughout the early
novels. Raymond Chandler, Michae l Dibdin
and Ruth Rendell are quoted as critics of
Christie's plottin g and characterization; T. S.
Eliot, A. L. Rowse and Michel Houellebecq
are marshalled for the defence. But Thompso n
does not engage with the novels themselves.
In the abstrac t, these novels ca n see m
intriguin g; their same ness tempts one to
decons truc t them as examples o f a so rt of
anti-novel, in which certa in elements - the
village , the country hou se, the poisoned
choco lates, the gen tlema n's gun collect ion -
are not meant to be considere d as represent-
ing real life but are self-consc iously manipu-
lated for the reader ' s pleasure. The ma ny
references the books cont ain to crime ficti on
and to cont emp orary rea l-life crim es, such as
the Crippe n murders and the Tho mpso n-
Bywa ter case, appea r to support this, and
Christie's manifest lack of serio usness
(which goes with an almos t com plete lack of
hum our ) see ms to sugges t that she was play-
ing a sophisticated metafictiona l ga me. It is
also possi ble to say, as Thompso n does, that
the books fulfill ed a need for represent ations
o f ce rtainty or ju stice in the troubl ed twenti-
eth ce ntury . But rea ding them brin gs one up
hard aga inst the realities of leaden exc hanges
and flat, repetiti ous descri ption:
When dinner was over they we nt to Mr
Satterthwai tes house. Mr Satterthwaite's
house was on the Chelsea Embankment. It was
a large house, and it co ntained many beautiful
works of art. There were pictures, sculptures,
Chinese porcelain, prehistoric pottery, ivories,
miniatures and much ge nuine Chippendale and
Hepplewhite furniture. It had an atmosphere
about it of mellow ness and understanding .
On e ca n hardl y bear to read on.
14
When the blow gets home
Rudyard Kipling's songs of the submarine
1 especia lly want the Service to make some
songs of its own . . . . If I were you, I'd go
straight ahead with the Song of the Submarine
and not both er about who ever else was doing
the same thing. I'd have tried it long ago,
myself, if I could have got it good enough. But
it' s rather a big fish - for me. You ' re nearer to
it and yo u might strike out somet hing th at
would go home. Anyhow, try.
hese encourag ing word s were writ-
T ten by Rud yard Kip ling in 19 I7, to
a submar ine officer nam ed John
Gra ha m Bow er , in one of six letter s
Kiplin g wrote to Bower between 1917 and
192 2. (They were give n in 2002 by Bower' s
grandda ug hter to the Royal Navy Submarine
Mu seum at Gosport, whose archivist, Ge orge
Malcolm son , drew them to my atte ntion.)
Th e lett ers, which will be publi shed in full in
the Kipling Journal, bear witness to
Kiplin g' s littl e-known interest in the Navy's
newest, riskiest, and mo st cont enti ou s
wea po n; they also ra ise the qu estion of what
it means to write some thing which will, in
Kiplin g' s charge d phra se, "go hom e".
Ar guabl y, with regard to the "Song of
the Submarin e", he had already do ne it. 1 am
thinking not of his fin e ballade, ''' The
Trad e "', which present s the Royal Navy
Submarin e Service to the world as it would
like to present itself; it is accura te and ingen-
iou s, but after all no mor e than prop agand a.
("Th e Trade" was cont empo rary naval slang
for the Submarine Ser vice; Kiplin g spec u-
lates that "the crui ser s invent ed it because
they pretend that submarine offic er s look like
unwashed cha uffe urs".) The poem I mean is
not a "big fish" ; in fact it is one of the short-
es t co m p lete poems Kipli ng ever w ro te . It is
also the most fearful. At the tim e of his letter
to Bower it was still untitl ed , but in collect ed
editions it has the title which Kiplin g thou ght
(erro neously) was Navy slang for a sub-
ma rine : "Tin Fish".
Kiplin g prob ably first met Bowe r at Har-
wich, the base of the 8th Subm arine Flotilla, in
Sept emb er 1915. Kiplings visit to Harwich
(which includ ed a dive in a submarine) was
spo nsored by the Admi ralty; he was ga ther ing
material for newspap er articles about the
Navy. Bower was twenty-nin e years old ; he
had joined the Navy in 1902 , the yea r after the
first Royal Navy submar ine was commi s-
sioned, and entered the Subma rine Ser vice in
190 8 as a Lieutenant. He had literar y leanings,
and, accor ding to a brief mem oir of him by
one of his children, "it was due to [Kiplin g' s]
enco urage men t that my father embarked on a
writing caree r, under the pseud onym of
' Klaxon', which was to last for many yea rs" .
"Klaxon's" stories and poem s began to be pub-
lished in Blackwood 's Magazine in 1916. He
never fini shed his "So ng of the Subm arine" ,
but he did includ e a section called "S ubma-
rines" in his poem "A Battl e Prayer":
When the word is passed along - "Stern and
beam and bow" -
"Action stations fore and aft - all torpedoes
now !"
DA NI EL KARLlN
When the hissing tubes are still, as if with
bated breath
They waited for the word to loose the silver
bolts of death,
When the Watch beneath the Sea shall
crown the grea t Desire,
And hear the coughing rush of air that greets
the word to fire .
Kiplin g wo uld have liked "the cou ghin g rush
of air" , which has the imprint of something
really heard and felt. And he was touchingly
in earnes t abo ut hi s desire for "the Service
to ma ke some songs of its ow n" . It was
vex ing to him that he, the middl e-a ged non-
co mbata nt, could do it so much bett er.
A sma ll slip of the pen sugges ts that
Kiplin g' s encourageme nt of Bower cost him
so me effort. In the sente nce "If I were you,
I'd go straight ahead with the Song of the Sub-
marin e and not both er about who eve r else
was doin g the sa me thin g" , the word "a bout"
is inserted above the line. Kiplin g ori gin all y
Crew ofa British submarine at the surrender of German V-boats at
Harwich,November 1918
wrote "not both er whoev er else", which is
bad gr amm ar but may well reflect hi s state of
mind . For Bower was not the only offi cer
who yea rne d for Kiplin gs countenanc e . Th e
officers of the 8th Flotilla, takin g their title
from the nam e of their depot ship, HM S
Maidstone, produced The Maidstone Maga-
zine (or iginally The Maidstone Muckrag), a
compendium of facetiou s anecdotes, j okes,
parodi es and mildl y irreverent comm ent s on
naval administrator s, edited by the chaplain.
Kiplin g knew thi s publication, indeed he
co ntributed to it, but he had no intenti on of
becomin g a literary agon y aunt to the who le
flotill a. Accordingly, at the end of the letter
in which he encourages Bower to "go straight
ahea d" , he added a goo d-humo ured but firm
postscript: "Please thank the Editor (I note he
is the Padre) for his kind little note . 1 don 't
wa nt to be strafed by large maritim e poet s
TLS OCT O BE R 5 2007
whose verses I haven't done thin gs to. Henc e
my ord er !"
The "order" presum abl y made it clear that
Kiplin g wo uld make no invidious distinc-
tion s among the " large maritime poets" who
soug ht his aid ; he wo uld refu se them all.
Though Bower was the pri vileged ex ception
to thi s rule, he had his ow n doubts and scru-
ples. He thou ght he was "cribbing" from his
master , as indeed he was; and Kiplin g had to
find a way of reassuring him . "As to what
you call 'cribbing', that is only a preliminary
to findin g yo ur own feet - same as humming
the tun e of a song while you are ge tting read y
to do a j ob of yo ur ow n." "A job of yo ur
ow n" ... "some songs of its own" : Kiplin g
conn ect s Bo wer ' s aspiration to or iginality
and authenticity with his hop es fo r "the
Service" , but , leaving aside the qu estion of
talent , there is the more vexe d qu estion of
moti ve . Wh at are such " songs" for ? Are they
a form of prop aganda ? Th e phrase Kipling
uses, "something that wo uld go hom e" , sug -
ges ts the forc e of a blow (and the word
"strike" is not far aw ay : "you might strike out
so mething that wo uld go hom e" ). It see ms
apt to a "Song ofthe Submarine" ; but Kipling
already kne w that.
The ships destroy us above
And ensnare us beneath .
We arise, we lie do wn , and we mo ve
In the belly of death.
The ships have a thousand eyes
To mark where we come . .
And the mirth of a seaport dies
When our blow gets home.
This is the untitl ed poem , later call ed "Tin
Fish", that Kiplin g had publi shed in the Daily
Telegraph in Nov ember 1915 , at the head
of one of the articl es based on his visit to
Har wich and his con ver sation s with Bo wer
and oth er submariners. Bow er sure ly knew it;
ho w belated he mu st have felt ! Kip ling had
taken his vo ice, and agg randized it like a
Greek actor spea king throu gh the imp er son al
ma sk of the Authorized Version . (Jon ahs
ord eal "in the bell y of the fish" is only the
mo st ob viou s allusion; " mirth", for ex ample,
takes yo u to Isaiah : "all jo y is da rkened, the
mirth of the land is gone . In the cit y is left
desolation , and the ga te is smitten with
destruction" .) Yet the Biblical echo es
resound within such a sma ll, compressed
space. Th e word "death" is the pivot on
which the poem turn s, as the hunt ed sub-
marin e becom es the hunt er and inflicts in the
seco nd stanza wh at it endure d in the first.
The poem allows ju st one full rhym e, of
"eyes" and "dies" (subm arine war fare, in thi s
period, pitt ed the sing le eye of the peri scop e
aga inst the "thousand eyes" of watchers on
the surface), but it ge ts full value from the
assonance, in the last line, of "blow" and
"home" . Th e dreadful suspense before the
torp edo "gets hom e" is signalle d by the ellip-
sis at the end of the sixth line . As for the men
on board the ship that is struck, they will not
ge t ho me.
We can't kno w whether Bo wer felt that
Kipl ing had shot his fox. But he continued to
ex press anxiety about hi s ind ebt edn ess. In
Sep te mber 19 I 8, he sent Kip ling a cop y of a
poem call ed "Regulus" which he had written
after readin g Kipling' s story of tha t nam e,
recent ly publi shed in A Diversity of Crea-
tures ; and Kiplin g hastened once more to tell
him he didn 't mind: " If that' s the sort of
poem you get from re-r eadin g one of my
book s, go on & re-r ead the whole blessed set !
Its a joll y good poem and I'm hon oured to
kno w its source of inspir ation ". But Bower
had sent Kipling mor e than a po em ; he had
give n him adv ance news of hi s OSO. In
doin g so he had the pri vilege of keepin g
so mething back , becau se he was officially
prohibited from revealin g the operation for
which he had been decorated . Kiplin g
notic ed, of cour se; and he could not resist cap-
pin g the story . "Congratulations about ' the
bit of ribbon ' '' , he wrote :
T hese are qu eer days - whe n a man is fo rbid-
den to tell what he gets his marks for. I've just
met a pal of mine with an "unexplained"
D.S.O. or rather a "camouflaged" one. It was
given him officia lly for one serv ice rendered:
and unofficially for quite another which he
wasn' t supposed to have any co ncern in!
(Bowe r was awa rded the OSO while in com-
mand of E42, a subma rine minelayer. Min e-
layin g was horribly dan gerou s. Kiplin g had
inveighed aga inst the practic e in 19 I5, whe n
onl y the Ge rma ns we re doin g it; in 19 I6 the
Ro yal Na vy joined in.)
In Jul y 1919 , Kiplin g gave ge nerous prai se
to Bower' s coll ection of his wartime ve rses,
0" Patrol : " It look s to me, spea king as an out-
sider, that you ' ve got the pul se and the dri ve
(a nd the deadl y sodde n monotony) of the
whole sea -affair und er your hand , in a way
that eve n the land sman oug ht to realiz e,
throu ghout " . Bower published no more
ver se ; the next letter s in the Submarin e
Mu seum archive conc ern fa vour s he and
Kip ling did each oth er after the war. In Febru-
ary 1920 , for ex ample, Bower, who had been
promoted to Commander and was on the staff
of the 3rd Flotilla at Port smouth , hosted a
Kipling famil y visit to a captured U-boa t.
Rather nau ghtil y he then sent Kiplin g a souve -
nir of the trip , in the form of a pie ce
of equipme nt from the U-boat's w ireless

sys tem, for which Kipl ing thank ed him: " I'm
go ing to devise some sort of shrine for the
Thing - as the heart of the Hun ' s devildom &
put it somew he re where I can curse it dail y" .
Bower, in turn , had aske d Kipling to sugges t
a motto for o ne of the new " M" class boats,
whose whopp ing twelve-inch gun, far heav-
ier than the armament of mos t con venti on al
typ es of subma rine, inspired Kiplings
respon se : "Her name, if m y Lor ds of the
Ad miralt y had the ima gin ation of a co m mo n
tick should be, of cour se, 'Gunhitda'".
T he last lett er in the Subma rine M use um
archive, da ted Jul y 1, I 922, ends the ser ies on
a less pl ayful note. Bo wer ' s car eer was stag -
nating; he must have felt threaten ed by the
notoriou s "Geddes Axe", the poli cy (na me d
after Sir Eric Ge ddes , First Lord of the Ad mi-
ralty) which for the fir st tim e introduced co m-
pul sor y redundancy int o the Ser vice. Ind eed
the who le Ro yal Navy was cont ractin g: 1922
was the year in which Brit ain conce de d par-
ity of sea power to the United States. Bower
ex pressed his feelings to Kiplin g, who could
onl y urge hi m to take the lon g view:
I know, at second hand, that awful hopeless-
ness that very reas ona bly, is possessing the
Services. But, if you cast a back ward eye over
history you will note that the English always
alterna te between givi ng officers sma ll
bonu ses to clear out and offering ' em large
bonu ses to co me back. It never varies. I' ve had
most of the Juniors weepi ng on my neck - or
words to that effect.
(Bower escaped the Ge ddes Axe, but he was
never pro moted beyond the ra nk of Com-
mander ; he hun g on unt il 1931, whe n he
placed himse lf vo luntarily on the reti red list.
We ha ve no rec ord of any furt her co ntac t
with Kipling.) In one sense the last letter
retu rn s to the conce rns of the first - ag ain
Kiplin g stresses that wha t he knows of the
Serv ice is "at second hand" - but in a differ-
ent key. To und er stand why, we need to go
back to the peri od whe n Kipling and Bower
first me t, and to the full co ntext of Kipl ing' s
encounter with the "tin fis h".
Kipl ing re turne d to Batern a ns, his hom e
near Bu rwash in Su ssex, from his visit to the
subma rine base at Har wich , o n Se ptembe r
25, 1915. He began work on the news pa pe r
articles he had been co mm iss ioned to write .
Th en , on Oct ober 2, he received the news that
his only so n, John , had been wo unde d at the
Battl e of Loos and was miss ing. Alth ou gh
Kiplin g we nt through the moti on s of enquir-
ing abo ut John ' s possibl e fate as a pri son er of
wa r, he had few illu sion s that his so n mi ght
be alive . To Co lone l Lionel Dun ster ville, the
ori gin al of "S talky", he wro te on N ove mber
12: "T he wi fe is stand ing it wo nde rfully tho'
she of course cl ings to the bare hope of his
bein g a priso ner. I' ve see n wha t she lls ca n do
and I don 't" . H. A. Gwynn e , the Ed itor of the
Mo rni ng Post and a c lose fri end, we nt down
to Bateman' s. " W hen I arr ive d, he said
' W hat did yo u com e down for ?' I said ' to see
what I can do.' ' Yo u ca n do nothing ' he said
but 1 saw a qui ver in his lip s which showed
ho w the thi ng had go ne hom e ." " You mi ght
strike out some thing that wo uld go hom e."
" And the mirth of a sea por t dies f Wh en our
blow ge ts hom e". Kipl ing uses the phr ase in
its other, beni gn sense several tim es in his
articles. " And in du e tim e that boat go t
ho me": that is said, for exa mp le, of a Briti sh
subma rine, which was hunted in sha llow
water and ye t escaped. Destro yers are sto utly
COMMENTARY
Rud yard Kipling, 1928
built: " they ca n cru mple them sel ves up from
stern to brid ge . .. and still ge t hom e". John
Kipling wo uld not get hom e.
Yet Kipl in g kept writing . In the same lett er
to Dun ster vill e, he menti on ed , in a few flat
senten ces, the work he had don e ove r the pre-
vio us wee ks : " I' ve been, as I think I tol d yo u,
am on g the ships an d my lucub rations are
coming out in the D[ aily] T[ elegr aph] . It was
a gay tim e . I we nt down in a subma rine ". It
may see m ex traord ina ry to us, thou gh it
wo uld not have see me d in the least ex traordi-
nary at the time, that Ki pling did not exc use
him selffrom his task of chee ring up the read-
ers of the " DT" . Six articles we re dul y pub-
lish ed , beginning on Novem ber 20, und er the
titl e "T he Fringes of the Flee t". Wh en co m-
plete, the series was issued as a bookl et by
Mac mill an in 1915 and, along with two other
series , "Tales of ' T he Trade'" an d "Destroy-
ers at Jutl an d" , appeared in vo lume form in
1916 und er the tit le Sea Warfare .
Th e articles that mak e up "T he Fringes of
the Fleet " therefore contain the first writing
of any kind - jo urna lis m, fiction , poetry -
that Kipling did in the im me diate after math
of the loss of his so n; and Sea Warfare was
the fir st book he published after that eve nt.
Of the twelve articles that make up the book ,
fi ve are devot ed to submarines ("Tin Fish"
head s one of them ), and submar ines pop up
(so to spe ak) in several others. Th e lett er s to
Bower confirm that Kipling ' s inter est in "the
Trade", and in at least one of its " unwashed
ch auffeu rs" co ntinued throughout the wa r
and bey ond . But her e a distinction need s to
be made between two kind s of interest that
Kipling showed in subma rines and subma rin-
ers. It is a distinction between the submar ine
as an int egr al part of the Royal Navy, a new-
ye t-old devic e for ca rry ing out an old-ye t-
new mission, and the subma rine as an
emblem of dread , of the ruthl ess co nduct of
war, and, in "Tin Fish", of abso lute loss. "Tin
Fish" is at odds with the im age of submar ine
wa rfare which Kiplin g deri ved from men like
Bo wer , and wo uld perh ap s have been beyond
Bower's im aginative gras p . Yet it is not quit e
an ano ma ly in the pages of Sea Warf are.
Th e Ad mi ralt y had turn ed to Kipling to
counter the publi c per ception that the Nav y
was inacti ve at hom e and ineffecti ve abroa d.
Th e failure to force a passage through the
TLS O C TOB E R 5 2007
Dard anell es had occurre d onl y a few mo nths
previou sly; in hom e waters there was no
gra nd engage me nt with the Ger man High Sea
Flee t (w hich was bottl ed up in Wilh elm-
shave n) , but instead a stea dy trickl e of losses
to merch ant shipping by min e and torp edo. In
"T he Fringes of the Fleet", Kipling set out to
make a vi rtue of necessit y. T he Navy's mun-
dane heroi sm - maint aining a block ade,
swee ping for mines , she pherding mer ch ant
vessels - was nothing new , but was inti-
mately co nnec ted with its histor y. T he
Se rv ice was picking up where it had left off,
a century ea rlier, in the blo ckade of Na po -
leonic Fra nce; Kipl in g asks his reader s to
mar vel not at so mething exceptio na l, but at
some thing only to be ex pec ted . Th at some -
thin g, Kiplin g states in the first article ,
" wor ks in the un con sciou s blood of tho se
who serve [the Navy]" , which had "simply
returned to the practi ce an d resurr ect ed the
spirit of o ld days". In this scheme, "T he sub-
mari ne tak es the place of the pri vateer" .
Th e appea l to history is doubl y sign ifican t
whe n it co mes to wr iting about submar ines,
since the subma rine was not o nly a new kind
of vessel, but had had to make its way aga inst
the hostility of the naval es tablishme nt itself.
A subma rine, after all, em bod ies the prin ci-
ple of unfair play; in 1901, Admiral Sir
Arthur Wil son snorted that the submarine
was a "dam ned un- Engl ish" wea po n, and that
crews of submar ines ca pture d in wa rtime
sho uld be " treated as pi rat es and han ged " .
Ye t Kiplings third article begin s by re-
emphasizing that the submar ine belongs in
the Navy :
Like the destroyer, the submarine has crea ted
its own type of office r and man - with lan-
guage and traditions apart fro m the rest of the
Service, and yet at heart unchangingly of the
Service . Their business is to run monstrous
risks from earth, air, and water, in what, to be
of any use, must be the coldest of cold blood.
T he primar y mea ning of the ph rase " in co ld
blood " in this con tex t is coo lness, ho lding
o ne's ne rve; it tran slat es the Fre nch sang
fro id. T he phrase occ urs aga in, in the fourth
ar ticle, the one head ed by "Tin Fish", where
o ne of the office rs he meets tell s Kipling that
" submarine wo rk is col d-blooded bu sin ess" .
Kipling demurs:
"T hen there' s no trut h in the yarn that you can
feel when the torpedo' s going to get home?" I
asked.
"Not a word. You sometimes see it get
home, or miss, as the case may be."
T he phrase "co ld-blooded bu siness" refer s
here to wha t the submarine does, the destru c-
tion it infli cts, rathe r than the coo lness
required to endure the "monstro us risks" it
run s of bein g, itself, destro yed. Thi s change
from passive to acti ve turn s the phrase a little
toward s the meaning of ca llo usness, of lack
of emotiona l engage me nt. And thi s turn is
reinforced , I think, by the twice-r ep eated
ph rase used to describe the torp ed o' s success-
ful strike, the phr ase "get hom e" .
Th e image of subma rine war fare that
Kipling present s in his articles foll ows the
pa ttern of "Tin Fish" : it is di vided between
the cold-bloo ded endura nce of bein g hunt ed ,
and the eq ually co ld-blooded bu siness of
destruction. But the ar ticles insist on some-
thin g to which the poem is indifferent , the
" Englishness" of subma rine wa rfare and its
right to be va lued alo ngs ide the other
br anc hes of the Navy. In the articles , Kiplin g
15
makes a clear and determined atte mp t to
differ enti ate between subma rine war fare as
practi sed by the Briti sh an d by the Ge rma ns,
allud ing to the Ge rma n targetin g of unarm ed
merch ant ships, the sinking of the Lusitania
and oth er atroc ities. But , for all his effor ts,
the spirit of "Tin Fish" bro od s ove r his
descriptions, so that the co ld-bloodedness
which he as ks us to admire in our submarines
co mes close to the ca llo usness he asks us to
co ndemn in their s.
Towards the end of the fourth art icle of
"T he Fringes of the Flee t" , he reports a
co nversation, amongs t a gro up of offic ers,
abou t a rece nt enc ounter between a Briti sh
submar ine and a Ge rma n Zep pe lin. Th e fight
bet ween these two newf angled wea pons is
co mica lly inconclusive, and one of the offic -
ers rem ark s: "Oh, if Frit z only fo ught clean,
thi s wouldn' t be half a bad show. But Fritz
can' t fight clean". Th e stereo ty pes that
Kiplin g deploys her e, with complete delib er-
ateness, are intend ed both to entertain and
reassur e his read ers that the men who wage
war in "our" submar ines ha ve not beco me
alie n to their race. But so straightforward a
piec e of pro pagand a is imm edi ately foll owed
by thi s, in which the submar iners' con ver sa-
tion takes a different turn:
And then they talked of that hour of the night
when submarines come to the top like mer-
maids to get and give informatio n; of boats
whose business it is to fire as much and to
splash about as aggressively as possible; and of
other boats who avoid any sort of display -
dumb boats watching and reliev ing watch, with
their periscope j ust showi ng like a crocodi le's
eye, at the back of islands and the mouths of
chan nels where something may some day
move out in process ion to its doom.
Reader s who know The Second Jungle Book
will recall , in the im age of the pe risco pe as a
croco dile 's eye, the grea t cunning cro co dile,
the Mu gger of Mu gger-Ghaut , in "T he Under -
taker s" , that sar do nic tale of how Nemesis
finall y ove rta kes a co ld-blooded assassin.
And here Mu gger and Nemesis and assassin
are on e , fu sed in th e do o m th at awaits th e
Ge rma n High Sea Fleet. But if a Royal Navy
submar ine can lurk like a croco d ile, wha t
pri ce wa r as a goo d show and a clean figh t?
T he truth is that Kipli ng' s im aginati on has
left prop aganda behind, and is atte ntive ,
as it is in "Tin Fish", to its visio n of hum an
death and fate.
For inf ormation on Cdr Bower 's nava l
caree r, the author is grateful to Cdr Alastair
Wilson, RN (Retd}, Chairman of the Counc il
of the Kipling Socie ty. Extracts from
Rudyard Kipling 's letters to Cdr Bower are
primed with the perm ission of A P Watt Lid
on behalf of the National Trust for Places of
Historic Interest or Na tural Beauty.
Dr Shulamit Almog (University of Haifa)
How DigitalTechnologies are Changingthe
Practice of Law
232pp £69.95 Hardcover
978-0-7734-5214-5 Pub. June 2007
" ... As th e digital condition bears down on us like a storm, "it
requires special measures suitable for dealing with it" ..."
Dr Richard K Sherwin, New York Law School
The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
Tel: 01570 423356
Email: cs@m ellen.demon.co .uk
www.m ellenpress.com
16
am a great goer-back to places where I
l used to live , in order to stand gawping
at some unyielding facade dripping with
bathos. My ideal j ob wo uld be cond ucting
pay ing customers round various locations of
my pas t. I even like visiting the sites of othe r
people's lives. I am the eager one on guided
tour s who asks , " But did he sit in this actua l
ch air, not j ust one like it?" . I had needed no
enco uragement to accom pany the poet David
Harsent on his ret urn to his first hom e in a
flat above the Post Offi ce in Princes Risbor -
oug h, but he dece ntly threw in the possibility
of a visit to my ow n childhood home, not a
mile away .
We are both sixty-five , at abo ut the same
po int in o ur caree rs, but our ear ly lives co uld
not be mor e different. Davids fath er was a
brickl ayer wor king for the co uncil, min e a
famous actor, eve n a film star in those days.
When David told hi s aunt he 'd been on a trip
down memory lane with me recently, she told
him she still had Hugh Williams' s autog raph,
gleane d at the ope ning of the British Legion
Fete. He must have stro lled down the hill
fro m leaf y Wh iteleaf and cut the ribbo n. Both
o ur fathers we re away for the war ye ars, leav-
ing us with a harem of females to manipul ate.
Whit eleaf in the late 1940 s was the great
peri od for my parent s. Thanks to A lexan der
Kord a, the fil ms kep t co ming and my father
was almos t as goo d as new. I rem emb er
see ing him bein g massaged by so meo ne,
because he 'd been "blown up" , and imagined
hi m flying thro ugh the air. David' s fath er, by
comparison, had to cool his head under a co ld
tap to ease the pain from the shra pnel lodged
there. Whil e I had a hill behin d the hou se to
play on, David had a co ke-pile in the back
yard of the Pos t Office . Besid es a nann y, a
IN NEXT WEEK'S
Ferdinand Mount
The thinginess of
history
Paul VV. Schroeder
A tour of Early
Modern Europe
Lois Potter
Shake speare
revealed, again
Tim Kendall
Geoffrey Hill' s
injury time
COMMENTARY
FREELANCE
H UGO WILLI AMS
nur se, a cook , a daily and two ga rdeners, my
father had a valet , kno wn simp ly as "Clark" .
He also had a tenni s co urt, a kitchen gar de n
an d an aven ue of trees leadin g up to a white
cross cut in the hill side, non e of which he
eve r went near. A usterity and rationing were
to be a brief interlud e, afte r which we wo uld
all return to 1930 s Brit ain and live hap pily
ever after. To match the mood, my brother
ca me lau ghi ng into the wo rld. In 194 7, the
arc hetypa l year of the per iod, the yea r of
the big freeze, we eve n had our own Fa the r
Christmas , seen by me ru nning across the
snowy lawn on Christmas mornin g. "W here,
da rling , where?" said my moth er. "1ca n' t see
any thing." He escape d into the bushes, leav-
ing beh ind his sleig h and a note say ing he 'd
forgotten to bri ng thi s dressing gow n for my
teddy bear. I coul d keep the sleigh.
I have known Da vid for ma ny years, but
never till now noticed how mu ch further he
had to come for the privilege of being satiri-
ca lly co mming led with me as Ian Ham ilton
aco lyte " Hugo Harsfried" in Cl ive James' s
poem abo ut the New Review period of Lon-
do n: "Hugo Harsfried , mi nim alist poe t ! / Hi s
flaxen hair as lon g as care co uld grow it".
David was wor king at a bookshop in Ayles-
bur y at the tim e, whe re the manager warned
him, "1 don 't thi nk yo u sho uld let your hair
ge t too Tom my Stee le-ish" . He had come to
poetr y via Border Ballads such as "The Two
Cor bies" , which he fo und between stories in
the Bumper Bookfor Boys, brou ght hom e for
TLS November 27 1998
Agatha Christie
The mystery of Agatha Christie's disappear-
ance in 1926, men tioned on page 13, is the
subject of Agath a and the Eleve n Mi ssing
Days by Jared Cade, reviewed by E. S.
Turner in the TLS of November 27, 1998. It
can be read in f ull at www.the-tls.co.uk
here were two folli es Agath a Christie
T lived to regret. The lesser of these
was the act of ge nerosi ty which led
her in 1952 to ass ign to her schoo lboy
grandso n the reve nues from The Mousetrap
("the only play I've ever wri tte n that ' s eve r
made any mon ey"). The oth er was the act
of spite, horn of jealou sy, which inspired
her famo us di sapp earanc e in 1926.
It is sma ll wo nde r she excluded that ep i-
sode from her autobiography . The cover-up
expla nations at th e tim e - am nes ia , concu s-
sion - had invited disbeli ef. Her best hope
was that posterity wo uld meekl y accept that
she had been und er a seve re strai n.
Jared Ca de , who describes Mr s Christie
as the author of "some of the mo st mor ally
compelling fiction of o ur tim e", researched
the eleven-day myster y for six yea rs. It
wo uld have been distress ing if he had not
turn ed up something new.
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
him by his granny from Risbo ro ugh Libr ary.
He we nt on to like the same poets I did,
Fitzgerald, Be lloc , Flec ker, the strange ly
exo tic orthod oxy of the time. "Men are
unwise and curiously plan ned", I say , quoti ng
fro m "H assan", an d we both sing out, "We
make the Go lden Journ ey to Samarka nd" .
Dav id had been sending poems to Hamil-
ton at the Review and the TLS for years
before he got noticed , whereas I was sitting
idly at the London Magazine, ow ned by my
girlfriend's stepfa ther , A lan Ross, pass ing
the tim e sending back other peopl e ' s wo rk. I
rem emb er Ian comi ng to the office , perh aps
lookin g for reviewin g wor k, or adve rtising
for the Review. David rememb ers end less
rej ection slips from hi m, until the day he had
a po em acce pted for the TLS. " He as ked me
to go for a drink , but when I wen t to Printing
Ho use Square, Charis Ryder came down-
stai rs and said lan had had to go to the denti st
- a very lan emerge ncy as I later reali zed ."
Wh en they met the followin g week in the
Dirty Dog, it emerge d that Ian had been
wa tching his pro gress. He go t him an Eric
Gregor y awa rd an d helped sec ure him the
Chelten ha m prize for 1966 .
I as k David why he has never writte n any
autobiogra phica l poems and he is no more
able to co me up with a reason than I, who
have writte n nothin g but. W hen I as k him the
pri mary emo tion he feel s, looking back , he
answers witho ut hesitati on, "Anger" . Will
he ge t a poe m out of this trip? " No, yo u ca n
have it."
We dr ive throu gh Risborou gh in our
The esca pade which got out of hand began
when Christie drove unexpectedl y fro m
hom e and aban doned her car near a pool of
sinister reput e at Albury, Surrey. Hundreds
join ed the search, marshalled by po lice and
motorin g organi zations. Waters were
dragged and drained . Colonel Archib ald
Christie was suspected of murd erin g his
wife. Th en she was fou nd in a Harrogate
hotel pretendin g to be Mr s Te resa Nee le,
from South Afri ca. Nee le was the name of
her husband ' s young woman friend.
On the eve of va nishing, Christie had
wr itte n to her broth er-in-law, the play-
wr ight-ge nera l, Campbe ll Christie, say ing
she was off to York shir e . If th is was a bid
to limit the misc hief, it failed . The novel-
ist ' s profession al rivals rumbl ed her from
the start. Doroth y Saye rs said that a vo lun-
tary disappearance could be so cleverl y
stage d as to be exceedingly puzzling -
"especially if, as here, we are co nce rned
with a ski lful writer of detecti ve stor ies,
whose mi nd has been trained in the study of
ways and means to perplex". Edg ar Wall ace
sa id "The disapp earance see ms to be a typi-
ca l case of ' mental repri sal' on some bo dy
who has hurt her". Super inte nde nt Go ddard
of the Berksh ire poli ce opined, "W hen she
has wor ked out her littl e pro blem, she will
retu rn" .
On her fir st night at Harro gate, Mrs
res pec tive dr eams, pas t a co rne r chippy sur-
viving fro m the I940s . "A sma ll piece of
plaice and fourp ence wo rth of chips" , David
mutters. "Look, there' s the Ca tho lic churc h
with the statue of the Virgin outside , holding
up her hand s to say ' House full '. " I remem-
ber the church because that was where we
turned off for Wh iteleaf. Th e village, whe n
we find it, is a Chinese Whi sper of itself,
unchan ged, yet barely resemblin g itself. I
find a blu e-and- whit e enamel plaq ue of the
village 's name, ove rg row n with ivy, as ifpre-
pare d for a Hollywood flashb ack. A gen tee l
hou sin g estate has ove rw helmed our kitchen
gar de n, but its wro ught-iro n ga tes surv ive ,
locked and rusty, a picturesq ue frame
throu gh whic h I see myself helpi ng the gai -
tered Mr Purbec k put sa lt on slugs. Thi s is
where a Hollywoo d producer ' s Ame rica n car
once stoo d, an obj ect of fasc ination to all, in
whic h I was allowed to sit an d wor k the siren .
The ho use itself is less splendid than I
reme mber it, but still covered with the co nto-
neaster whose berri es onc e fail ed to kill me. I
wonder were we always hungry in those
rationing days, when the arriva l of a single
banana for every child in the kin gd om was
headlin e news. My granny and I used to take
an appl e to eat while eavesdro pping co nversa -
tion s from behin d the bus shelter, whic h still
backs on to the ga rde n. On ce I cut myse lf on
her penknife and threw it into the lon g grass,
where it prob abl y rem ain s, as it does in a
poem . Th e ho use seems dead , nobo dy is
hom e, but I can ju st mak e out the side door
with its frosted glass panels, which I smashed
my fist throu gh whe n loc ked out of the ho use
by the cook' s yo ung son. I rememb er the
con stell ation of littl e cuts wh ich obliging ly
opene d up for me as I ran upstairs in tears.
Teresa Nee le ap parently Charles tone d to
th e stra ins of " Yes, we have no banana s" ,
scarcely the act of a distrau ght am nes iac .
She rea d the news papers da ily. Whe n
esc orted hom e by her husband, she seemed
not und uly stressed and was photographed
sm iling. However, the pre tence that the
marr iage was intact was soo n dispe rsed in
the divor ce court. Mrs Christie wa nted to
cha nge her writing name, but her publisher,
Co lli ns, objec ted. Co lonel Christie was to
see his nam e on every book stall for the rest
of his life .
In her 1984 biogr aph y of Ag atha Christie,
Ja net Mor gan says the noveli st had the
power of hypnotizin g herse lf at will. " It was
perfectly possibl e fo r her to have lost her
identity and yet to have go ne abo ut the busi-
ness of catching train s, sho pping and the
like" . Ca de, however, discovered that her
sister-in-law adm itted putt ing her up in
Che lsea, before she took the train to Harro-
ga te, and was pri vy all along to the plot. He
has also dug up a curio us diversion ar y inter-
view Christie gave the Daily Mail in 192 8,
when a co urt case in which the police had
been hu mbu gged led to com pa risons with
her ow n adve nture . ...
Th e book rea lly en ds half- way throu gh,
with the retrea t from Harr ogate, but Jared
Ca de has go ne to grea t pain s to trace echoes
of the affa ir in the noveli st' s later detecti ve
stories and her ro ma ntic works as M ary
Westmacott. Shamefaced she might be, but
Aga tha Christie did not believe in was ting
goo d materia l.

The gradual falling-apart ofComplicite's winning formula
Beauty minus one-twelfth
MU R IEL ZAGHA
COMP L ICITE SEASON
Barb ican Centre
Disappea ring Number, Co mplic-
A ire' s new devised prod uction at
the Bar bica n theatre, is accompa-
nied by a season of fil ms (incl ud-
ing document ary footage) of some of the
company 's prev ious shows: Anything for a
Quiet Life (1989) , The Three Lives of Lucie
Cabro! (1994 ), The Noise of Time (2000) and
Mnemonic (2002) . These prov ide an illu mi-
nating histori cal con tex t for the new piece,
whi le inviting a timely retrospective loo k at
the company 's twent y-four- year body of
wor k. One of the origin al found ers of
Co mplicite, its artistic directo r Simon Mc Bur-
ney, has es tablished him self as the principa l
dr ivin g forc e beh ind the company 's poe tic,
transfor mative and highly phys ica l approach
to theatre, fu sing narra tive, images, mu sic
and movement into an ever-deve lop ing for m
of Gesamtk unstwerk.
A ll of Co mplicite's project s neverth eless
begin, McBurn ey has stated, with a text,
whe ther it be Shakespeare's Measure for
Measure, Shostakov ich's fin al String Qu ar-
tet , No 15 in E Flat (for The Noise of Time),
or John Berger ' s stor ies of French peasant
life Pig Earth (for Lucie Cabro !). In the case
of A Disappearing Number, the text in ques-
tion is an en igma tic mathema tica l for mul a
according to which I +2+3+4+5 and so on to
infinity equals minus one -twe lfth. Thi s for-
mula was sen t in 19 13 to the Cam bridge
mathematician G. H. Hard y by Srinivasa
Ramanuj an, an acco unta nt's clerk in Mad ras,
along with other unco nve ntional theorems
abo ut prim e nu mb ers whic h the twen ty-six-
year-o ld self-taught prodigy appea red to have
intuited. Hard y invited this "second New ton"
to Cambridge, and Ramanuj an ca me, brav ing
the strictures of Brah min law (which forbade
travel across the seas). The two men co llabo-
rated fruitfull y for seve ral years - Rama-
nuj an' s work on modul ar for ms, on ly
recently eluc ida ted, has becom e key to ma k-
ing sense of string theory, curren tly bein g pro -
posed by physici sts to explain the universe.
A Disappearing Number opens up lines of
inqui ry into the beaut y of maths and our
noti on s of inf init y and immort ali ty. To flesh
these out, the histori cal strand of Ramanu-
jan's Ca mbridge sojo urn is interwoven wi th
another narrati ve, the cont emporary and fic-
tion al relati on ship bet ween a maths lectu rer
Ruth (Saskia Reeves) and her America n
hu sband A I. Both stor ies are told in fragmen-
tary, ka leidosc opic form, as non- chronologi-
ca l " stage pictur es" whose meanin g emerges
gra dually. The splintered narr ative induces in
the spec tator a state of mind wh ich wavers
throu ghout between dr eamli ke ravishment
and confused anxie ty.
Vari ous eleme nts unit e the person al story
Saskia Re eves (r igh t) as Ruth in A Disapp earing Num ber
with the story of ideas: Ruth is a scho lar of pli cites most acco mplished producti on s to
Ramanuja n's theorem s; they both mee t wi th date: its effec ts are achieve d wi th razo r-sharp
ea rly dea ths brou ght abo ut by geog raphical precision and pleasin g flu idit y. A nd yet their
displacement (he dies of a liver infection con - very abunda nce and profi ciency ob scu re
tracted after several yea rs in Eng land and she rather than illuminate the story of what
suffe rs a brain ane uris m wh ile o n a re se arc h Har dy, in his 1940 boo k ;\ Mathematician 's
trip to M ad ras); Ruth ' s American husband , Apo logy, char mingly called "the one ro man-
who has Indi an roots, follows in her foot- tic incid ent of his life". Ramanuj an in parti-
steps, "going forw ard into the past" on a pil- cul ar rem ains an elusive, shadowy figur e.
gr image to Indi a that takes him to the rive r An d ro mance, mathematica l or oth erwise, is
bank s where Ram anuj an died . Th e "dis- hardl y mad e tangibl e in either narrati ve.
appear ing nu mb er" of the title also refers to Com plicite's "devising" pro cess has its
Ruth 's telephon e numb er, which hold s sy m- roo ts in Mc Burn ey' s theatri cal training at the
bolic meanin g for her as a mathem atician an d Jac ques Lecoq schoo l of mime in Pari s: the
which A l endeavours (in an enterta ining aim is alw ays to produce a dr amatic "lan-
ser ies of con versation s wi th an en thusias tic guage " intelli gibl e to all. The Noise of Time,
ca ll-ce ntre operator in Ba nga lore) to have for exa mple, success fully me lded theatrical
tran sferr ed to his ow n name after her death, and mu sical perfor ma nce into a sha red lan-
as an act of rem embrance. guage the better to evo ke Shostakov ich's
There is mu ch pleasure to be had fro m inn er worl d . In preparation , the mu sicians of
what has becom e Co mplicite's trad emark the Emerso n String Quartet trained with the
syn thes is of moveme nt, text and design, here actors, tryin g to find com mon gro und wi thout
de ftly underscor ed by Nitin Saw hney 's th eir in stru ments, learni ng " to wa lk, to m ove
mu sic. In Mich ael Levin e ' s simple, fun c- slow ly, how to pick up a cha ir".
tion al set, the "disappearing numb er" is sug - All of the co mpany's intri cate, layered
ges tive ly brou ght to life as charac ters ex it shows dem and some degree of sens uous
beneath a revo lving scree n (w hich doubl es engage men t on the part of the audie nce - that
up as the lectur e-h all bo ard on which Ruth willed sensitivity to eve nts that McBurn ey
wr ites her equations) and melt in and out of describes as "tuning yo urse lf into " hearing,
video projecti on s (by Sven Ortel). A Tube seei ng and feelin g what's go ing on onstage.
train is rep resented by a rad iator, pushed on One of the best exam ples of this was the ope n-
to a rail way line of bo oks . Later, the who le ing of Mnemonic, where the dir ect or himself
stage is bathed in the wintry darkn ess of introduc ed the them e of memory an d talk ed
1910 s Eng land, ove r which white numb er s the audience through a visualization exe rcise
appear to fall as snow . that led gra dually to the idea of a uni versally
In the tech nical sense, thi s is one of Co m- shared ances try. McBurney then ass umed the
TLS OCTOBER 5 2 007
17
identit y of one of the spec tators who had ju st
taken part in the exe rcise and who, it turn ed
out, was one of the show's cent ral chara cters.
The first sce ne of A Disappearing Number
atte mpts so mething sim ilar. A ph ysici st spe -
cializi ng in string theory (Pa ul Bhattac harjee)
co nducts a gro up experime nt in pri vate men-
tal arithmetic which ends in a un iver sall y
share d res ult. He then decl ares that altho ugh
he is, in fact , an actor, the maths we see on
Ruth ' s bo ard " is rea l. It' s the onl y rea l thin g
here". This is an enticing prop osit ion , as is
Ruth ' s enthusias m about the eterna l beaut y
of numbers. And yet the prod uction does not
de live r - to non-m athematicians, at any rate-
any particular reve lation about the nume rica l
wor ld. Ruth 's assertion that "there is an infin-
ity of infinities" , for exa mple, remains baf-
flin g. This may be due, in part, to Complic-
it es grea ter reli ance, here, on techni cal
wiza rdry than on the suggestive, met aph ori-
ca l use of obj ects. A Disappearing Number
has nothing to rival the exp los ive plank-
throwin g sed uction sce ne in Lucie Cabro! or
the use of a brok en cha ir to evoke the bod y of
the 5,000- year- old ice man in Mnemonic.
A Disappearing Number is also being
mo unted in tribute to Katrin Ca rtlidge - a
leadin g actor in Mnemonic and Mc Burn ey' s
close friend - who died in 2002. In view of
thi s, it is all the more surpr isi ng to find that
althoug h the show packs the usual visual and
kine tic pun ch , it remains emo tiona lly unin-
vo lving. Complicite's way of "making
theatre" has always been a team spor t; the co l-
laborati ve story telling theoreti call y ens ures
that eac h memb er of the cast is in possession
of, respo nsible for, the who le per formance.
But in practice, the high principl e of "devis-
ing" overrules specific co ntributions . Part of
the difficult y is that we have to come to asso -
ciate the Co mplicite brand with a particular
kind of intern ationall y so phisticated ense m-
ble theatre. One fru str atin g result of thi s is to
see an actress of Sas kia Reeves 's ca libre
recede almos t imm ediatel y afte r making her
ap pea rance and becom e abs orbed, a mere
co mpo nent, in the product io n' s stage pic-
tures. Nor are the exce llen t David Hann en (as
Hardy) and Shane Sham bhu (as Ramanuj an)
able to connect dramati cally in the middle of
Mc B urney' s teemin g stage pattern s.
The overall im pression is that, after its
early clown-i nflected work (such as the
expressio nist ic office -based co me dy A ny-
thing for a Quiet Life) and a remark abl y
inventi ve middle peri od (o ut of which ca me
The Noise of Time, Lucie Cabro l and the still
dazz ling Mnemonic), Co mplicite is now
entering its late , Ma nne rist period. A sce ne
from the present show , in whic h two Indi an
flight atte nda nts seg ue from a safe ty demon-
stration into traditi onal danci ng - disappear-
ing into a number, as it were - exe mp lifies
the problem . There must be ju xtapositi on s
and fluidity at all costs, nothing remainin g
itself for lon g before turning, or bein g forced
to turn , into something else.
18
Couples in the dark
T
he danc e world has been in a state of
excitement since January, when Chris-
topher Wh eel don , one of the mo st
succe ssful of contemporary choreographers,
announced that he would be setting up his
own company. Thi s was immediately called
"the first tran satlantic ballet company", owing
to its plann ed residencies at Sad ler ' s Well s in
London and City Center in New York. Now ,
after much speculation, and a brief app ear-
ance at the Intern ational Dance Festival in
Colorado last month , the company has mad e
its first app earance at Sad ler' s Well s.
It is worth clearing away some und er-
growth. Though the programmes and press
releases are all head ed "Morphoses/T he
Whe eldon Company" , the group that has
appeared so far is not yet a company. No per-
man ent danc er s will be employe d until 2009 ;
for the moment there is a pick-up company of
stars, mo stly from the New York City Ballet ,
with Alina Coj ocaru and Joh ann Kobborg
from the Ro yal Ballet add ed in as local inter-
est. Secondly, while Wheeldon has planned a
compan y that commission s new work s from
a wide rang e of choreographers, for now
mor e than half the two programmes at
Sad ler ' s Well s con sisted of Wh eeldon piece s.
Wh eeldon began his care er with the Royal
Ball et , first at the school, then for two years as
a junior memb er of the company; with it, he
appear s to have imbibed the aesthetic of Mac-
millan , as we ll as Ashton ' s stro ng Cecchetti-
influ enced upper-body pla stiqu e. He then
joined the New York City Ballet , where he has
remained ever since, dancing as a soloist until
2000, becoming choreographer-in-residenc e
in 200 I; from Balanchin e, he has acquired a
pench ant for abstraction and mu sical
respon se . In his best work s, these two streams
of influence make for comp elling complexity ,
a sort of austere lushness. Morph oses, which
-------------------
- ~. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
or such a well-executed performance,
F Moon walking in Chinatown creates a
poor first impre ssion . Th e audience is
crammed on to a steamy landing out side the
administrative off ices of the Soho Th eatre,
waiting for a 6.15pm curtain (ch allen ge
enough for mo st offic e work ers), wond ering
why they hav e been usher ed past the half-
empty bar downstairs. Eventually, the door s
open on to a tiny studio, where four older
Chinese are playing mah-jong ; fin ally, we are
given colour-coded tiles and led outside. Luck-
ily, the mood, and the tempo, soon pick up.
A fine exampl e of prom enade theatre in the
open air, Moonwalking in Chinatown ju ggl es
audiences, mobi le crew and a cast of rotatin g
actors. A s wc make our w ay sheepishly do wn
Dean Street and into Chinatown, the traffic is
halted authoritatively by our lantern-b earing
leader, a teena ger (Johnny On g) playing the
(silent) role of wannabe gang ster with one
denim leg rolled up ben eath his white silk
tuni c and a green sweatband angl ed acro ss his
spiky, gelled hair. Moonwalking in Chinatown
is about peopl e growing up between two cul-
tures, or rather, three: Chinese, English and
Briti sh-born Chin ese . A young boy (Linus
Leung) searches for his lost pet rabbit , the
same rabbit who fea tures in the myth of the
Mo on festival ; a ner vou s latecomer (Simon
ARTS
JUDITH FLAND ERS
Christopher Whe eldon
MORPHO SES /THE WH E ELDO N
C O M P ANY
Sadl e, ' s We lls
Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall in
Christopher Wheeldon'sAfter the Rain
led off the first night , is such a piece. Choreo-
graphed to Gyorg Ligeti' s String Quartet No I
(admirably played by the Trelawn Quartet) , it
is made for two coupl es (Wendy Wh elan and
Craig Hall, Sterlin g Hyltin and Gonzalo
Garcia), and opens with the four danc ers lying
on the stage, foldin g and turning, together and
apart, like amoeba under a micro scope. Gradu-
ally they resolv e into two coupl es, the remark-
Raise the
coloured
lanterns
NORA MAHO NY
Justin Young
MOO NWALKI NG I N C H IN A T O WN
Soho Theatre
Edw ards) make s his ex cuses to audience mem-
bers with a story about his Chinese girlfriend
that later work s its way back into the show;
and an unempl oyed waiter (Jason Ch an) gets
to sing in the West End.
None of the broader theme s is une xplored
territory, and much of the actin g is more
enthu sia stic than fine-tuned, but in the cont ext
of a busy Soho stree t, that' s probably for the
best. Bright supermarket windows and tuxe-
doed restaur ateur s plying for cu stom betw een
the red arches mak e for a lively backdrop, but
the best sce nes are tho se in which effects are
employed as if in a traditional the atre . As an
TLS O C TOB ER 5 200 7
able Whelan and Hall performing the spikier,
modernistic choreography, Hyltin and Garcia
the folk-inspired duet s that remind us of how
clo sely Ligeti follo wed Bartok.
Wheeldon ' s strength is his musicality: he
find s the sources and inflections in Ligeti as
natur ally as Bal anchine did in Hind emith . But
such familiarity can sometimes slide into glib-
ness. Less success ful than Morphoses, but per-
formed in both programmes, was Aft er the
Rain, which takes sections from Arvo Part ' s
Tabula Rasa and Spie gel im Spiegel and
pushes them together for no particul ar mu sical
rea son . Nor is any stylistic or emotional con-
nection ex plored in the choreog raph y: the first
section is for three couples, in enjoyably
aggress ive mode ; the seco nd half (Whelan
and Hall once mor e) bears more of a resem-
blanc e to a soft-focus holiday advertisement,
as Whelan, in soft shoes, long hair flying,
wrap s herself around her partner in a haze of
pinki sh light. Whil e the first section, like
Morpho ses, ex plores compl ex movement in a
simple style, the second, like Wh eeld on' s
Fool 's Paradise (a new work to a saccharine
score by Job y Talbot) is about metaphor
rath er than danc e.
Both programmes lose colour and impetu s.
The two gue st choreographers, William For-
sythe and City Ballet dancer Edw aard Liang ,
provide pas de deux. Watching Wh eeldon' s
own work for extend ed periods, one begin s to
see that little of it, too, is for massed group s, or
for solo danc ers; pretty well ever ything is for
coupl es. And like Wheeld on , Liang and For-
sythe rely on terre ii terre steps. The single
scheduled Balanchine work , Allegro Brillante,
is a welcome diversion, reminding the audi-
ence that danc e can also encompass jumps and
turns - these see m exciting innovations after
all the bourrees and glissades of the next gener-
ation. The lightin g for all but the Ba lanchin e is
similar, as are the co stumes: monochrome,
light/dark juxtapo sition s, a per vasive glo om
spotlit to provide the drama that the choreogra-
phy should be generating .
elderly lad y explains the legend of Chan g'e
and how she cam e to be on the moon, flower
petal s drop from an overh ead window, and
previously unnoticed lantern s light up on cue.
Mo st importantly, the walk about blur s the
line between Chinatown touri st and China-
town regul ar , with activ e volunteers support-
ing the show, and man y contributing on an ad
hoc basis. On e performance saw an elderly
Chinese man hold back the cro wd s to make
wa y for wh at wa s osten sibl y a Moon Festival
parad e . Later, a woman looked on, appalled,
as an actor fell to the ground and was stripped
of her valuables , on ly cottoning on to the
natur e of the "crime" when she spotte d the
heads et- wearing crew at the back of the
crowd.
The creators of thi s o ne-ho ur show have
don e a commendable job of invol vin g all
sectors of the community. Th eir web site
boa sts conn ections to international ex-pat
Chin ese radio , and a "moonblog" keeping
fan s up to date, with audio clips of inter-
views . Som e of the ca st even announce their
availability on Facebook for a chat after the
show. Thi s is exactl y the sor t of endeav our
that smaller companies sho uld be takin g on : a
different , entert aining approach to walkabout
thea tre , which, though not without its hitch es,
proved both imagin ati ve and enj oya ble.
Kitchen
lives
SAMEER RAHIM
Car s on McCullers
THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDI NG
Y oung Vi e
et in the Am eric an South, The Memb er
S
of the Weddi ng begin s with a famil y
gath ering to celebrate the engageme nt
of Jarvi s - a so ldier on leave from the Second
World War - to his swee theart, Janice. Sit -
ting in the arbour of his famil y' s back yard ,
Jar vis rem inisces: " I remember all the end-
less summer afternoons of my childhood ....
It does carr y me back " . Frankie, his tw elve-
ye ar-old sister, agr ees: " It carri es me back
too ". The ir father, Mr Add am s, lau gh s. He
assumes Franki e is experiencing things she
will look back on fondly : drinking lemonade
with a dash of liq uor ; leaping from tree stump
to tree stump. But she is a troubled gir l.
Th e play, adapted by Carson Mc Cullers
from her own novel, soon settles do wn. Every-
on e leav es ex cept Frankie and her sev en-
ye ar-old cou sin , John Henr y. Th ey ent er the
kitch en where Berenice, the black cook, is
working. Berenic e has been on stage from the
start, low-lit and barel y noticeable. But she
and the two children dom inate the rest of the
action . When some local girl s ex clude
Frankie (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) from their
club , she blames her bo yish appearanc e and
bad sme ll. She hate s an yon e saying "we" to
her - "all peopl e belong to we ex ce pt me" ,
she complains. John Hen ry (Th eo Steven son)
is a sweet mi sfit who wear s gla sses and
clutches a doll half his size . And Berenic e,
superbly played by the Am erican actr ess
Portia (bereft of a surname), has had a life-
tim e of ex cl us io n: she married the first of her
four husbands at thirte en; she truly loved the
second, Ludi e, but he died after fiv e year s.
She marri ed the next one becau se he had a
cru shed thumb like Ludie; the next because
he wore Ludi es old jacket.
Frankie is ob sessed with her broth er' s wed -
ding. "1 have known women to love veritable
satans", says Berenice, but " I never heard of
anybody falling in love with a wedding" .
When Franki e trie s on an orange dress, Beren -
ice teases her for her dirty elb ow s; when
Berenic e put s in her gla ss eye , she is tea sed
by Frankie because it is blue . On ly John
Henr y remains sensibly cheerfu l: after
Frankie accuses him of being "s o ugly and so
lon esom e" , he rep lies, "W hy, I'm not a bit
lon e som e". A subplo t invol vin g Ber enices
delinquent broth er on ly briefl y interrupts
their joking and confessing in the kitchen .
The se cen tral sce nes, though probabl y too
long, are the mo st eng ross ing in the play. The
actors use the small space we ll; Port ia mov es
with grace and Steven son , an accomplished
chi ld actor, beha ves naturally . But Spencer-
Longhurst ' s stomping and hand-wringing
become hard to watch. Thi s ma y be delib er-
ate . As tragedy strikes, Frankie' s tantrums
app ear mor e indulgent; and by the end it is
Berenic e ' s suffering which is brought mov-
ingly into the spotlight.

The members of the gang
MIHAL Y S Z EG EDY - M A s zA K
S and or M a r a i
T H E R EBELS
Translated by Gco rge Szirtcs
278pp. Picador. £ 12.99.
978 0330 454544
eading in lran slation a novel that you
R know is a strange ex perience, es pe-
ciall y if your lan gu age (a nd culture)
are that of the ori gin al text. Th e value of
the translation depend s largely on what the
reader ex pects from it. Faithfulness to the
ori gin al I find a vag ue and therefore probl em-
atic ideal, so I as k for a we ll-wr itten text in
the target lan guage. Although I am not a
nativ e spea ker of Eng lish, my impression is
that this translation by George Szirtes of
Sandor M ar a i' » no vel A zpndli/i5k re ad s
ex tre me ly we ll.
Of cour se, all translation s raise qu estion s.
Som e of the decision s here may have been
made by the translator , others by the pub-
lisher. Th e ori ginal title see ms to carr y mor e
spec ific implications than the Englis h The
Rebels. Th e sixth volume of the sta nda rd
nin eteenth-centu ry dictionar y of the Hun gar-
ian lan gua ge (co mpiled by Gerge ly Cz uczo r
and Jano s Foga ras i and published in 1874 )
makes it clear that the fir st meaning of
the verb "zend ul" refers to mu sic, and Ge za
Barczis short etymo log ica l handbook , fir st
publi shed in 1940 , confirms thi s ex planation.
Both menti on a second, figurati ve meanin g,
but both insist on the primary significance of
the first. Th e adj ect ive " ze nd ulo" (e nding in
"k" in the plur al) is still widely used to refer
to a mu sical sound, loud but pleasin g.
Th e Englis h title emphasizes the activity of
the bo ys, memb ers of the gang who are the
heroes of the novel. Th e Hun gari an title is
more iro nic , in harm on y with the end of
C hapter Two, where the boys learn that
"there we re man y gangs ju st like their s" ;
in other words , what they had sha ped as a
pri vate wor ld was not pri vate at all. The word
in the title is never repeated in the Hun garian
no vel, in sharp contras t to the Eng lis h
version. In the original text it is syno ny ms
that play a dominant role; in the translat ed
text it is repetitions. As a result , the Hun gar-
ian has more shades of meanin g, it is mor e
pl ayful and even enig ma tic, w he reas th e tran s-
lati on is mor e ex plicit and less nuanc ed .
Th e relati on ship between an ori ginal wor k
and its tran slation resembl es a dialo gu e, and
there are bound to be insta nces where the
Eng lish ve rsi on has connotation s not in the
ori gin al ; elsew here, cert ain aspects of the
world of the Hun garian novel are lost. At
the end of Cha pter Two, for ex ample, it is
stated about a character that "he rolled his
Neg ro eyes abse nt-mindedly" . At least that
wo uld be the liter al rend ering. In 1930,
" Negro" was a pur ely descriptive adjecti ve in
Hun garian, free from pej ora tive conn ota-
Sander Marai mourns the Habsburg Empire
"The Hostile Forces" (the Gorgons, the giant Typheus, Lasciviousness, Lust and Excess),
part of th e frieze created by Gustav KIimt for th e 1902 Beethoven exhibition
in Vienna, which became the object of public controversy and hostile press criticism. It
is reproduced from Gustav Klimt: The Beethoven Frie ze and the controversy over the
freedom ofart by Stephan Koja (208pp. Prestel. £35 . 978 3 7913 3757 9)
tion s. Szirtes mu st have been aware of thi s
when giving a literal tran slati on of a similar
sentence in the op enin g ch apter : " His
great black eyes shone and turn ed with a
confu sed light deep beneath his bro w, the
w hites as lar ge as a Negro 's" . In th e next
chapter , ho wever , "swiveling his Kentucky
min strel eyes" has spec ific elements foreign
to the wor ld of a novel set in the cit y of Kassa
in 1918 .
Such so lutions are perfectly satisfac tory
as the result s of a creativ e readin g . The
diffi cult y con sists in finding the limits of
freedom . At o ne point, the ga ng com es under
the ambi guou s influ enc e of an actor newl y
arrived in the cit y. His stage nam e is Amade
Volpay. Th e young bo ys' sex ual inexperi-
ence is ex ploited by thi s man. In an impro-
vise d theatrical perform anc e, he transforms
Tibor Prockauer into a yo ung woma n and
ends a ritu ali stic danc e with the boy by
kissin g him . Volp ay is port rayed as a
so mew ha t demonic figure, for esh ad owing
the character of the totalitarian dict ator in
Marai' s later novel s. "There was something
of Nero in Arn ade. Ne ro him self had been an
actor" , says the narr ator - in what is perh aps
an allu sion to a novel by Dezso Koszt olan yi,
a writer Marai admired . In that work, pub-
lished in Hun gari an in 1922 and in Eng lish in
192 7, with an introducti on by Thomas Mann,
the Roma n emperor is portrayed as the arche-
type of the dict ator as actor.
In the Eng lis h text of The Rebels, Volp ay
is said to be Jewish . Thi s is an addition that
might be so mew hat probl em ati c. Marai was
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07
ex treme ly sensitive to the fate of Jews in his
hom eland . He had a Jewi sh wife and, in
1944 , during the German Occupation , he
conde mned his fell ow Hun garians for failin g
to do their utm ost to save those who were
being se nt to co nce ntra tion camps. Writing
in his dia ry, after the end of the Second
World War, he criticized tho se Jews who
joined the Communist mo vement. The wor d
"Jew" does not occur anyw here in the
Hun garian ori ginal. If there is a character
who could be Jewish , it is the paw nbro ker,
Havas, whose last name was one often
adopted by Hun garian Jews, and who in the
fourth and clo sing chapter tell s the boys
about his visit to a rabbi in Lemb erg.
Another difficulty for the translator is the
historic al allusions in The Rebels. Som e of
these would have needed explanation, so
omitting them is full y ju stifi ed , since mo st
peopl e are reluctant to read novels with
footnotes. To mention on e exa mple, "k uruc"
denotes those Hun garians who opp osed the
Habsburgs in the sixtee nth and seve ntee nth
centuries: the substitute of "rebel" for thi s
very particular word may be a bit mi sleading,
for some readers might think of a possibl e
link with the memb ers of the ga ng. Such
det ails are of no grea t significa nce, but other
textu al comp on ent s could have been pre-
serve d becau se the y contribute to the mes-
sage of the novel.
"There is a nice ex press ion: to swee p
so mething under the carp et", says on e of the
chara cters. Trans lating pro verb s is notori-
ou sly difficult. Th e Englis h ex press ion has a
19
literal eq uivalent in Hun gari an but Mar ai
uses a so mew hat different saying . His sen-
tenc e starts with the wor ds : "As the Germ ans
say ..." . M arai was born in Kassa, a cit y
which tod ay is in Slovaki a. He was a firm
opponent of the Nazi regim e from the
mom ent Hitler came to power, a fact which is
especially important becau se he was born
into a Ge rman bour geo is fami ly (his ori ginal
name bein g Gro sschmi ed ). He lived and
publi shed in the Weimar Republic of the
1920 s and never ceased to mourn the demi se
of the Germ an- spe akin g bourgeoi sie of the
region onc e kno wn as Upper Hun gary. Th e
Germ an pro verb is ju st one of the ma ny small
referenc es to the culture of that minority.
Among the Reb el s are seve ra l characters
who repr esent this community: Co lonel
Prockauer , his son Lajo s, who "had returned
a few months previou sly as an ensign, havin g
lost on e arm at the front " , and Tihor, the
boy who becom es "fed up with the ga me"
played by the ga ng .
Th en there is the probl em of the different
versions of the Hun gari an text of The Rebels.
In the seco nd edition, published in 1945 , the
definite article in the title was dropped and
ther e we re minor changes in the text. Th e
final version app eared in To ro nto in 1988
as the openin g section of a six-part sequence
of novel s about the German bour geoi sie in
Kassa, which appea red und er the title The
Work of the Garre ns. Marai con sidered thi s
wor k to be his masterpi ece, as is clear from
the introduction he wro te for it, a year
before he committed suicide in San Diego,
California. This tran slation, however , is
based on the bo ok publi shed in 1930. There
may we ll be good reason for thi s; the
publi sher may have wished to present the text
as a separate no vel. Still, it wo uld have been
good to have a sentence in the " Note about
the author" tellin g the reader that the version
of The Rebels regard ed by its author as defini-
tive for ms part of a roman-fleuv e.
To the que stion as to how much of the
historical cont ext of the action is lost on a
for eign reader no general answe r is po ssibl e.
At the start of the no vel , a middl e-class boy
visits a cobbl er, the father of the onl y lower-
class memb er ofthe ga ng, a man who rem em-
bers his ex perience at the Fro nt. His name ,
Za karka, is Slav ic. He tell s the bo y that as
a memb er of the Au stro-Hungarian army he
had to exe cute some soldiers. Wh en the boy
asks him about the identity of the soldiers, he
gives the foll owin g answe r: "Czech offic ers.
Traitors from the moth erland' s point of
view". A well-infor med reader would
kno w that during the First Wor ld War, some
Czechs decid ed to sympathize with the
Sla vs fighting on the oth er side , which in the
ca se of the Eas tern front meant the Ru ssian
arm y .
The Rebels is not onl y a no vel about the
anarchistic life of adole scent s grow ing up
without their fathers who are aw ay fighting
far from their hom eland, but also about the
20
end of a multi-ethnic Central European state,
although it deal s with this them e less explic-
itly than the later novel Emb ers doe s. It is
also the subject of works by Mar ai ' s contem-
porari es, including The Man Without
Qualiti es by Robert Mu sil and Joseph Roth ' s
Radetzky March. Th e ye ar 1918 was the last
yea r of the First World War. A fe w month s
after the boy s' May picnic, describ ed here,
Czech troop s fightin g for an independent
Czechos lovakia occupi ed Kassa. The second
part of Mar ais sequence of novels is about
this occupation.
Who are the rebels? They are boys, neither
children nor adult s, living in the shadow of
the war. Their main activiti es are playing
gam es, actin g, gambling, gratuitous lying
and stea ling mon ey to buy useless trink ets.
" It was a second childhood, guilti er than the
first but less restrained, more excit ing , more
sweet .... It was n' t like their father s' lives,
lives that did not appeal to them in the least."
The y def y the laws of the adults.
Their gam es are over when the community
of boys, all from different sec tions of society,
pro ves to be an illu sion , and their se mi-auton-
omou s world is destroyed by Erno Zak arka ,
the cobbler' s son, who cheats at card s and
betr ays the others to the actor and the
pawnbroker, two adults who exploit the
youngsters' innoc ence . Zakarka' s betra yal
has an elem ent of cl ass struggle. The ideol-
ogy he advocates was to serve as a pretext
for the Hungarian Commune, which started
with a coup d 'etat on March 21, 1919 and
lasted 131 days. Irrespecti ve of the political
implications that may be read into this novel
by tho se who are famili ar with Mar ais later
attack s on Communism, scenes such as the
boys' graduation party, the colonel's return
from the Front and the traitor' s suicide -
thre e event s that are almo st simultaneous -
bring the action to a clo se and pro vide a grace-
full y rendered ending.
The Rebels is a better novel than Emb ers
(1942) , which became a bestseller in Italy in
1998, attra cted much attention in its second
German translation at the 1999 Fra nkfurt
Book Fair, and was successfully stage d in
London in a dramatic version by Christopher
Hampton. There is a link bet ween the two
narrati ve s. "The candl e had burned right
down ": the sentence, which follo ws the
traitor' s self-j ustifying spee ch here, antici-
pate s the title and und erl ying metaphor of
the later novel. Both Embers and The Rebels
are about the end of the Habsbur g Empire. It
see ms possibl e that their impact has some-
thin g to do with the curr ent nostalgia for a
Central Europea n state which may have been
preferabl e to the politic al arra ngeme nts
repl acin g it.
It is wor th remem bering, however, that
alth ough Marai spent seve ral decad es in the
United Stat es, non e of his hook s was pub-
lished in English during his lifetime. The
Rebels is the fourth of his works to have been
tran slated into English since 1996. Many of
his book s are avail able in other languages,
so more could follo w. One of his autobio-
graphical wor ks, publi shed in 1934, is widely
regard ed as giving a uniqu e picture of the life-
style and values of the middl e class in Central
Europe, and a selection from his diari es or
one of his late novels could be a moving
testimony to an author forced to live in exile
becau se of his stro ng opposition to totalitar-
ian regimes.
FICTION
Under the Zauberberg
awel Huelle' s novel Castorp proc eeds
P from a comment in The Magic
Mount ain , where we learn that befor e
his fateful j ourn ey to the sanatorium at
Davos, Thomas Mann ' s hero , Hans Cas torp,
ha s previously spent four semes ters at
Danzig Polytechnic. Huelle shows us
Castorp's deci sion to study shipbuilding in
Danzi g (a location viewe d as odd and
irregular by his guardi an), his sea voy age to
reach the unkno wn cit y, his attempts to settle
and study there, and the odd romantic entan-
glement he wanders into.
Twenty years ago, such a literary under-
taking might have resulted in a series of
reducti ve equivalences to the origin al, a
sterile ironic hom mage to seriousness of a
tenor and scale which from some viewpoints
see med to have slipped beyond reach. If it
lived at all, such a work would have had to do
so in the shadow of the Zauberberg. Castorp
is a ch amb er piece compared with the narra-
tive it dares to precede, but it is richl y inven-
tive, genuinely strange and at some points
extreme ly funn y - and therefor e able to lead
its own imaginati ve life as well as to pre-
figur e and tra vesty some featur es of Mann' s
great original.
Onc e in Danzig, Hans Cas torp does not do
what he plans: as in The Magic Mountain,
his stay turn s out to be rather longer than he
anticipates. The Ge rma n student life of
drinking, drinking songs and the occa sional
strangely laborious orgy does not suit him.
He is baffled and sexually alarmed by Fra u
Wybe, an officer 's widow, in whose hou se
on the remote edge of the cit y he lodge s, as
well as by her insolent Kashubi an maid-
serva nt. He is dogged by banal fru stration s
and meanin gless misund erstandin gs involv-
ing a tram conductor, while his attempt to go
-----------------~,-----------------
Crazy in Colombia
novel of interiority that is also a
A politic al novel, Deli rium has a mad
woman at the hub of its impressive
gy rations. Laura Restrepo is awa re of the
narrati ve risks, and has the epigraph to pro ve
it: "Wise Henr y James had always warned
writers against the use of a mad person as
centr al to a narrati ve, on the gro und that as he
was not morall y respon sibl e, there was no
tale to tell" (Gore Vid al).
In fact , her novel is a sustained refut ation
of this view . As it progresses, many active
narr atives com e togeth er , m an y tal es are spun
or silenced round its prot agoni st, and her lack
of accountabilit y is promoted from a probl em
in liter ary technique to one of ethics . Thi s
is in turn indicati ve of larger conc ern s.
Delirium is set in 1980 s Colombia, at the
height of the country' s corruption, a time
when Pablo Escobar was a power in the land .
In this cont ext, an impo veri shed professor
of literature , Aguilar, comes back from a
wee kend away with his children to find that
his second wife, Agustin a, has lost her mind .
We learn that she has always been unstable,
with "attacks of melancholia in which [she]
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07
S EA N O 'BRI EN
P aw el Hu elle
C A ST O R P
Translated by Ant onia L1oyd -Jone s
233pp. Serpent's Tail. Paperback, £8.99.
978 I 85242 945 4
for a walk near an arm y camp results in a
degree of boredom and unease sufficient to
deliv er him a vision of almo st supernatural
futilit y which stands clo ser to Kafka than to
Tho mas Mann.
The reader dra wn to this book throu gh
having read The Magic Mountain is likely
to experience some thing of Castorp ' s disorien-
tation , lookin g for resemblances but findin g
instead distort ed reflections which often work
to comic effect. Sometim es these involve
other stories by Mann , such as "Tristan" and
Death in Venice, tales of the interior talk-
ing-up of slender erotic and artistic pretexts.
The result, in Huelles hands, is to render
absurd Cas torp's bourg eoi s earn estne ss and
his con viction that the world, when it comes
to its senses, will seek his approval. In his
determin ed consumption of luxuries at a level
appropriate to his station, in the inten se but
quickl y abandon ed passion for cyclin g,
which leads to an unwanted rendezvou s
with a gro up of intol erabl y cheery Wander-
viigeln, and in his see king out of recogni zabl y
Germa nic bathin g resorts, he ends up colo niz-
ing a place which he had originally cho sen
for its exotic, Eas tern char acter. Having found
a home from home , he devotes enormous
and unproductive efforts to pretendin g to be
him self.
At the same time, Cas torp is the invisibl e
third point of a romantic triangle invol ving
MARTIN SCHIFINO
L au r a R e str epo
D EL IRI UM
Translated by Na tasha W imm er
320pp. Harvill Seeke r. £ 16.99.
978 I 84655 118 5
withdraws into a silence charged with secrets
... and freneti c period s in which she pur sues
so me ob sessive , ex cessive acti vity", whi ch
so unds like a texthook description of manic
depr ession. But this is different. She is found
in a hotel room, beside herself and with no
recoll ection of how she got there. Her dis-
traught husband must find out what happ ened
in "forty-eight hour s of life era sed from
every clock in ex istence" .
Restrepo arranges all the uncertainty in a
traditional crim e-n ovel struc ture, in which
the uncoverin g of famil y secrets is substi-
tuted for the resolution of a crim e. But there
are crim es as well, and Aguilar' s is not
the onl y questionin g voice. The novel has
three other narrators: Agustina her self ;
two visitors - a Russian officer and a Poli sh
wo man, on whose conv ersation he tries
to eaves drop. He steals the mysteri ous
woman's cop y of Fontanes Effi Briest and
absorb s its Baltic atmosphere like a drug ,
never suspecting the altogeth er grimmer
eve nts which are actua lly takin g place almost
within view .
Afflicted by acci die, he visits an ex iled
Austrian psychi atri st, a discipl e of Charcot, to
whom he reveals a dream which read s in part
as a comic foretellin g of the famou s apocal yp-
tic vision Hans is later to experience among
the Alpin e snows of The Magic Mount ain.
The equiva lents of Manns Naptha and
Settembrini also crop up, as two insepar ably
quarrel some but argum ent ati vely under-
resourc ed patron s of a medic al bathh ouse. To
an English reader , they may seem strangely
remini scent of Basil Radfo rd and Naunton
Wayne in The Lady Van ishes and elsew here.
What in Mann ' s epic seems loaded with
portent becomes anarchic and carni valesque,
and , for the read er, a com edy of not-quite
recognition. In Antonia Lloyd-Jon es' s
limpid tran slation , the tone is gleeful but
never arch.
Pawel Huelles light touch disgui ses the
intric acy of Cas torp's temporary deran ge-
ment. At the sa me time, the novel deli ver s a
love letter to the author's nati ve cit y, with its
min glin g of peoples, its snow and fog and
sea-roa ds and fleeting summer. In the final
pages, with bold insouciance, Huelle revisits
Manu' s clo sing vision of the First World
War , repl acin g it with a glimpse of "a virtual
Castorp" on the eve of Tannenb erg, the
"eternal, naive idealist", astride his splendid
blue Wand erer bic ycle, "with the sa me
clouds from the Baltic always gliding
overhead".
Mid as, a dru g deal er and form er lover of
hers; and Nico las, Agustin a' s Ger ma n grand-
father , who se own bout s of madne ss dro ve
him to commit suicide as an old man. Thi s
kind of multil ayered mod erni sm is another of
the risks Restrepo overc omes with aplomb.
She is a ma ster of the trick whereby effects
occur before causes to create suspe nse . And
while the narrators con stantl y flout chronol-
ogy, eve ry episode exe rts a cumulative pres-
sure on the whol e, and the novel mo ves con-
fidentl y forw ard.
In due course, we learn that there is a
histor y of ment al illn ess in Agustin a' s
famil y, and that their well- appointed home is
in fact a plac e of prejudice and fake harmon y.
They hani sh a hom osexu al child to Me xico ,
but happil y tolerat e anoth er' s ass ociation
with the dru gs rack et. Mida s, the outri ght
criminal , ends up idealizing then forsakin g
a cra zy girl. Through each of its voices,
Delirium introduces a top sy-turvy view of
realit y, which, as Jose Sar amago has noted , is
an express ion of all that is "terrifyingly fasci-
nating " about Co lombia. Thi s vision makes
Laura Restrepo , like Eve lio Rosero or
Ferna ndo Vallejo , one of the mo st interestin g
Colombian writers at work today, and her
voice comes across loud and clear in Natasha
Wim mers cri sp Am eric an tran slation.

Christopher Ru sh
WILL
480pp. Beautif ul Books. £14.99.
978 I 905636 14 3
A man' s last will and testament , as
Shakespeare's lawyer observes here,
has nothing in co mmon with a play: it has no
emo tion, no ambiguity . On the co ntrary,
respond s his cli ent : there is plent y of senti-
ment and "a littl e drama" tucked aw ay
between the neutr al lines. From a few legal
pages in the Publi c Record Office Christo-
pher Rush fashion s a richl y poe tic novel in
which a bedri dden Sha kespea re dict ates his
will. Over the course of a day, he offe rs co n-
versation, confess ion and literary criticism.
Death , says Shakespeare, is what he does
best. From a childhood fascin ation with that
travell er fro m the undi sco vered country,
Lazaru s, and the me taphor ica l death of his
teen age rel ation ship with Ann e Hath awa y,
we mo ve to gra phic acc ounts of tortured
mart yrs and London pla gue . Shakes pea re
notes that the prim ary qu alifi cati on for a
uni ver sity wit is "the ability to die yo ung" ,
and he transfers uni ver sity terminology to
thanato logy (Tho mas Watson "went down in
' 92" ). Death de termines his own literary
experimentation: Haml et' s interest is not
the typi cal centre of revenge traged y,
"putting one person to death but an interest in
death itself'. Behind thi s interest run family
deaths, parti cul arl y death s of the yo ung: his
littl e sister, his son, his younge r broth er.
Thi s fic tion al autobiography does more
than eleg ize, however. It co nveys period
atmos phere with deftn ess, as in the anaphor i-
cally struc tured chapter on Lond on as the
age of outwa rdness, the age of plot s, the age
of compromi se, the age of Mary, Eliza beth
and Drak e (not yet, we not e, the age of
Sh akespeare). Will is full of plausibl e fict ion s
about Sha kespeare's rivalry with Marl owe,
his relation ship s wi th Gree ne, So utham pton,
Emilia Bassano ("the black pla gue" ), the
Field printing hou se, his dau ght ers and sons-
in-l aw, and hi s lo ve affa ir with avid.
It is lingui stically witty and imagin ative, as
any attempt to ventriloquize Shakespeare
mu st be (A nthony Burgess is the only other
noveli st to pass this test). The sentiments of
Webster, Marlowe, Middl eton , Mont aigne,
Word sworth and Pop e appea r, with plent y of
creatively adapted lines: Ann e Hathaway is
"that long disea se, [my] wife". If ma rriage is
an affl iction, writing is an illness ("ha ppy men
don 't write plays. Happ y me n play bowls").
We glimpse Shakespeare' s sense of failur e as
husband, father, tradesm an, scholar and mar-
tyr. The narrative is upliftin g, now here more
than in the epilog ue, ghostwr itten by Shake-
speare from the afterworld, in which he analy-
ses his dramatu rgical interest in hum anit y.
LAUR I E M AG UI RE
Sophie Gee
THE SCAN DA L OF T H E SEASO N
29 1pp. Chatto and Windus. £ 12.99.
978 070 1 18116 I
t is the Lond on Season of 1711, and
I Alexand er Pope, up fro m the co untry as
the guest of the fashion able painter
Charles Jer vas, is amu sing him self among the
Hooray Henry s and IT girls of Ma yfair and
St Jarnes' s. The author of some Pas tora ls in
FICTION IN BRIEF
the style of Virgil , and with his first volume,
An Essay on Criticism, about to appea r, Pope
is ready for a new subje ct. His old friend s, the
Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha, lead him to
the frin ges of an aristocra tic circle of wilfu l
pleasure, risk and intrigue. As he strugg les
with his confused sensations of sex ual attrac -
tion and friend ship toward s the sisters, he
discovers a new directi on for his poetr y, and
the absorbing importanc e of his own risky
ambition as social observe r and satirist.
The Scanda l of the Season , So phie Gee's
witty and well-paced novel, tells the story of
the seduction of the beautiful and headstron g
Ara bella Fermor by the hand some and eligible
Lord Rob ert Petre, wh ich was the occasion of
Pope' s mock epic The Rape of the Lock. Gee
poises her tale kno wi ngly between the raw
materi als that precipit ate the poem , and our
ass umed famili arit y with its afterlife. She
shapes the novel' s twists and turn s of plot ,
with nod and win k, as a showc ase for and as
critical comm entary on Pope ' s best lines.
Epigraphs from The Rape of the Lock adorn
the chapters, and we witness Pope tryin g out
occas ional verses, for exa mp le, duri ng a dawn
boat ride with M arth a. Gee handl es this with
a light hand , and details from the poem -
Belind a' s pettic oat, the game of ombre - find
a natural place in the narrative. So too do lines
from Pope' s Epistles to the Blounr sisters,
incorpo rated almos t verbatim into conve rsa-
tion , giving them a remark abl y mode rn air.
There is nothin g crea kingly histori cal abo ut
this clever story of politi cs, literary chatter,
moral vacuity and bleak marri ages. Its
flirt atiou s play of surfaces and its stro ngly
visualized settings sugges t it is ready to be
turn ed into a scree nplay . For all its fluenc y
and stylish pac kag ing , however, it has serious-
ness and depth ; most noticeable when Lord
Robert Petr es flirtati on with Jacobit e po litics
gives place to the more damaging co nse -
quences of his sex ual ga mes .
KAT H RYN SUTHER LAN D
Jcan-Francois Parot
T HE C HATEL ET A PP REN TICE
Translated by Michae l Glencross
43pp. Gallic Books, 134 Lots Road, London
SWIO ORJ. Paperback, £ 11.99.
978 I 906040 00 0
T he apprentice of the title is Nico las Le
Floc h, a yo ung Breton notary who arrives
in Paris in 1761 with an introduction from his
godfather, the Marqui s Loui s de Ranr euil , to
M de Sartin e, the Lieutenant Ge neral of the
Police. Le Floch is naive but ambitious and
quickl y learn s the ways of the wor ld. The
world in questio n is that of pre-Revol utiona ry
Franc e where skuldugge ry amon g the rich and
powerful is matched by the violence of the
crimin al undercl ass in a much divided soc iety.
Le Floc h' s mission is to find a missing
(perh aps murd ered ) and possibly corru pt
polic eman, Guillaume Lardin , and to foil a
plot to brin g discredit on the King, Loui s XV.
The charm of The Chdtelet Apprentice lies
not in the plot nor in the building up of
suspe nse; the culprit is fairly obvio us from the
start, the mystery of Le Floch's parent age is
not hard to divine, and the dead, on the whole,
go unlamented. Rather it is the descriptions
of Parisian life in a period of intellectu al and
cultural ferm ent that hold the attention, and
the depictions of Nicolas and an array of
TLS OCT O BE R 5 20 07
minor chara cters that delight. Nico las enjoys
strolling throu gh the streets of Paris, and the
descripti on s of Ange -Jacques Gabriel's Place
Loui s XV, now the Place de la Co ncorde, and
of Les Halle s and Les Invalides, are evocative.
Nicolas 's love of Paris is matched by his
love of his native cuisine. He endea rs him self
to his guardian's hou sekeeper by learnin g
how to make Breton specialities such as
lobster in cide r, and wins ove r the Lardin s'
coo k by his interest in dishes she prepares:
capo n and oys ter soup, and pot ato stew
browned in bacon fat with garlic, laurel and
thyme and with half a bottle of bur gund y
added. Mea ls, from a simple fric assee of pig's
trotters in a local inn to a mag nificen t banqu et
at the ho me of his ment or, Aimee de Noble-
co urt, are described in mouth waterin g detail.
Despite the distraction s of Parisian architec-
ture and cui sine, and num erou s false leads
or atte mpts by his enemies to "brouiller les
pistes" , Nicolas manages to solve the various
murders and avert the attempt to discredit
the King throu gh his mistress, Mad ame de
Pompado ur. In the process he find s his niche
in Parisian society . As he disapp ears "into the
co ld February night " in search of the fatted
ca lf, there is a stro ng sense that he will
return in his new role, co urtesy of a grateful
mo narc h, as Commissioner of Police at the
C ha teler.
KA RE N LAT IM E R
Peter Robinson
F RIEND O F THE DEVI L
423pp. Hodder and Stoughton. £14.99.
978 0 340 83689 7
I n this absor bing mystery, "friend of the
devil" is the name given to the female
accompli ce of a vicious serial killer, someo ne
who might be but is not necessaril y a mur-
derer herself, as in the case of Myra Hindl ey
and lan Brady or of the Ca nadians Karla
Hom olk a and Paul Bern ardo. But the phrase
is also co mmonly asso ciated with the lyrics of
a song by the Gratefu l Dead, and so we realize
that we are in the land of Peter Robi nson , that
is to say, in the York shire Dales in the present
da y, traili ng about with DCI Alan Bank s an d
DI Anni e Ca bbot, in an atmosp here defin ed
by mu sic - classical, rock and j azz tunes that
are identifi ed with fanatical precision .
The usual doubl e plot co ncerns two
app arentl y unrelated murd ers, in the Eastern
and Western divisio ns of the polic e service
in which Ca bbot and Bank s are currently
operatin g. Both are disco vered on a Sunday
mo rning , Moth er' s Day, in Ma rch 200 7.
(Robinso n does a fine job of evo king different
styles of Su nday morning that are not un-
related to different styles of Saturday night
and to the close pro ximity of Moth er' s Day
and St Patrick' s Day this yea r.) One victim is
a parapl egic, the other a college stude nt. Both
are women, as are several key poli ce person-
nel, professional consultants, and suspects.
Robinso n has always been not ably success -
ful with women charact ers, creatin g distinc-
tive mental lives for eve n the least and most
transient of them , as he continues to do here .
Th e major figures have matur ed with the
series, which is not to say they have solved
their ow n complex probl em s. In this, the
seve ntee nth title, Bank s hopes he is getting
used to middl e-aged singleness , while Ca bbot
co urts serious troubl e by bin ge drinking.
21
First-time readers will find Friend of the
Devil an entirely satisfac tory free-standin g
detective story , com prehe nsible on its ow n
term s. Devotees will be in bliss, for it will
remind them of many adventures of the past,
settle some old sco res in surprising ways, and
hold out the promi se of more twists and turn s
to come.
H. J. J ACKSO N
David Lale
LAST ST OP SAU N A CRUZ
3 14pp. Alma Books. £ 12.99.
978 I 84688 032 2
I n 1912 , Fabian Lloyd cha nged his name
to Arthur Crava n, mo ved to France, and
lau nched his career. Alth ough he ca lled him-
self a poet-b oxer (he won a title without throw-
ing a punch), he was best known for makin g
a sca ndalous public spectacle of himself. Paris
enco urage d his natur al talent for outrageous
behaviour, which a frenzi ed intellectual
clim ate and a relationship (throu gh marr iage)
to the late - but still intri guin gly disreput able
- Oscar Wild e eleva ted to the status of
culture ; by 1913, he was fam ou s. When the
war began a yea r later, Crava n deserted , effec-
tively ending his caree r, which was based on
visibility. He disappeared in Mexico in 191 8,
a probable suicide .
Th e unn amed narrator of Last Stop Salina
Cru; tries to make Crava n's story his ow n,
abandoning his pregn ant girlfriend to follo w
the poet' s steps across France and Spain and
then to New York and Mex ico. David Lale
makes some j okes about "gimmick" travel
book s, but no one would mistake thi s for
travel writing. Driv en by depression that
may be inherited (his suicida l father once
attempt ed to asphyx iate them both ) the narra-
tor craw ls his unh app y way along Crava n's
trail , noting gloomily that nothin g is what it
was in 1913, but otherw ise unint erested in the
places he visits. Like mos t depr essed peopl e,
he sees thin gs in the worst possible terms:
everyo ne he meets strikes him as m ise rable or,
worse, fakin g happin ess. Th ere is an attempt
to ex tend this tone to Cravan's story, which is
told in de tail. The narr ator has unkind thin gs
to say about the many artists Cravan knew, for
example, and his judgem ent s can be odd: he
calls Kees va n Don gen "the mos t imp ortant"
Fauve painter and he repea tedly co mpares
Crava n with Rimbaud - but whereas
Rimbaud in the end shunned notori ety,
Crava n simply failed to maint ain it. Mostly,
however, the sections dealin g with Crav an
have a tone of good-natured intellectual curios-
ity. It can be hard to believe the narrator has
given up on life ; the result is a recurri ng loss
of focu s and momentum.
In fact, Cravan occupi es so much narrative
and emo tio nal space that the rest o f the no vel
is redu ced to something like a short story
(Lale eve n goes so far as to end it with a touch-
ing but ultim ately incon sequ enti al twist). It
may be to counter this imb alanc e that the
author regularl y introdu ces tertiary characters
who are mor e colourful than they deser ve,
con siderin g how little imp ort ance they have.
All are striking; none is influ ential. Thi s
means the story can feel forced: the narra tor's
path is decided from the beginnin g; it will run
parallel to Crava n's , and nothin g that happens
along the way will change it.
TA D ZIO MARTI N KO E LB
22
nnie Freud's debut co llection is a
A jumble of the commonpl ace and the
ex treme ly stra nge, full of so metimes
inexplic able detail s and peopl ed with a suc-
cession of co oll y obse rve d neu rotic s. If the
settings of these poe ms are cont emp or ary and
famili ar - the Bayswater Road , a Co ffee
Republic cafe - what takes place in them is
often surprising and bizarre. At a New Age
retrea t, the parti cip ant s "reapprais]e] the
hyp err ealit y" of a bowl of artificial fruit , then
wonder, " Will we ge t hun g up on a confi gura-
tion of tur ret s?". In another poe m, the hostess
of a part y wor ries whether her soiree will be a
failur e, likenin g herself to " someone co nduct-
ing an ex periment in Normalizing Emo tiona l
Contagion Through Socia l Containment" .
The Best Man That Ever Was is studded
with similarly striking turn s of phra se, one-
liners rem inisce nt of James Ta te in their dead-
pan hum our , ex ubera nt langu age play and
sheer we irdness . Freud employs such flight s
of fanc y to best effect when she sets them
within a coherent cont ext. " Sausages and
Flowe rs" , for instanc e, is a tou r de forc e of
a break-up poem , with a clear emo tional
impul se behind its lingui sti c pyrot echnics. " I
am as sentient", its ve nge ful spea ker
decl ares, "as yo ur sick-note is transparent",
vow ing to "dismantle yo ur druidical
theori es".
--------------------------~.--------------------------
Sign in a butcher ' s window sets the
A poet wonde ring what " meat thieves"
might be like. A poem abo ut lark s
imagines how they might "flutter and hop I
maimed into door ways" and fini sh in "stink-
ing piles". No blith e spirits here: Susan
Wick s' s new co llection begin s bleakl y, sar-
donic ally. But her wo rld pro ves in the en d
more Bruegh el than Bo sch. She look s with
fascination at its und erside:
So metimes yo u almos t hear it - the spurt and
hiss
of co lour o n rain-streaked concrete
und er the platform ' s grey lip
or a disused sig nal-bo x - the same blind word
endlessly repeate d. rec all s her 1995 prose memoir Driving My
Her ow n favourite words (traffic, tarmac, Father) : natu re strays mythic ally into her
sky, glass , skin, windows , ice, stars, dream ) headli ght s. "The Sky Hor ses" , for example,
revea l the poet' s hom e territory as esse ntially foll ows in the hoofprints of Edw in Muir, Te d
Have you
missed an issue?
To order past co pies please call 0207 740 02 17, emai l tls@ocsmedia.net or write to:
TLS Back Issues, I-Il Galleywa ll Road, London, SE l 6 3PB, enclos ing a cheque made
payable to OCS Worldwide. Credit/debit card payments are also accepted. Back issues cos t
£3.50 per co py within the UK and £5. 00 overseas (please note that not all iss ues are available).
Please state the date of each issue required.
An index of all past issues is available at www.ocsmedia.net/tls
POETRY
Girl in a girl band
JA N E Y EH
An n i e Fre u d
T HE B E ST M A N TH AT EV ER W A S
80pp. Picador. Paperback, £8.99.
978 0330446860
Pitched at a less veheme nt register,
" Which Eve r Way You Twiddl e the Knob s"
is rooted in the mund ane wor ld of a flat ' s
interior, yet it kee ps shape -shifting into
realm s of strange ness . In thi s eleg iac lyric -
give n an additional twist by bein g cas t in the
seco nd-person "you", as if the poet is address -
ing herself - Freud co njures a sense of rueful
longin g via the refrain "Some thin gs won' t
lie down or eve n stay". The inevit ability of
chan ge, and of tim e' s prog ress ion, is embod-
ied by images rangin g from the concrete
("One casem ent leads I into another") to the
surre al (a tape reco rder somehow "disguised
as a radio", on which "your story's com-
pletely erased").
"The Sm all Book of Tropi cal Mi racl es", a
pro se poem , likewise locates its mysteries
Winter pieces
JOH N GR E E NI NG
Su s an Wi ck s
DE- ICED
64pp. Bloodaxe. Paperback, £7.95.
978 I 85224755 3
urban . Th ese poems are like incide nts o n a
journ ey, o ften o bserved from a car (o ne
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07
in a hom ely sce ne . Freud, a profession al
embroide rer, is sew ing flo wers on a piece of
clothing, using illu stration s from the epo ny -
mou s book as her mod el: "Iacewings flit
amo ng the co ral tru mp et s und er the lidless
gaze of the axo lotl" . A s she works, she
watches B-movies and snooke r on T V. In a
few brief paragraph s, Freud draws subtle par-
allels bet ween the disparate arts of embro i-
der y, film , spo rt and poetr y. The combinati on
of technical skill and ima ginative flair
dem anded by eac h discipline is implicitly mir-
rored in the poem ' s own makin g, dec ora ted
as it is with exo tic images like that of a
"se venteenth ce ntury sorbetier, crushing
loqu ats in suga r".
Equally unp redict abl e touch es enlive n
Freud's love poe ms, thou gh it mig ht be more
acc ura te to ca ll them sort-of love poems - she
shuns the merely celebratory or ardent , focu s-
ing instead on the detail s aro und the edges of
an aff air: dri vin g "in the Mini-Moke along
the Lun golago" on a Europea n roa d trip , or
standing outside the Ce ntre Point building
thinking of her lover. Her wry depi ction s of
companionship hardl y evo ke ecs tatic com-
Hugh es and Eavan Bola nd, but these vision-
ary creatur es enter an utterl y unpastoral
scene ("Th e road's hot breath I surro unds us,
truck- wh eels come clo se enough to touch"),
and they brin g with them an unexpect ed
breath of the ero tic: "the young I riders, hair
swi ng ing, nud ge the warm flank s I and mo ve
on , clicking their soft ton gues". Wicks keep s
a monitoring ironi c eye on her ow n tend ency
to alleg orize (as when she com pares a cit y
crane to God, rem arkin g " How trite is
that?" ), but thi s is all part of her co mpulsion
to transfigur e.
In the centra l qu asi-sonn et sequence,
"MacDowell Wint er" , Susa n Wick s mak es
over her ow n sty le: mor e coll oqui al , mor e
ex treme , with darin g line-breaks and hint s of
rhym e. She has oft en used art as a wind-
scree n between her feelin gs and the elemen-
tal forc e of what happen s (the last poems in
thi s co llect ion are based on paintin gs by
Grah am Mi ckleworth ), and unsurpri singly
the celeb rated Am eric an artists ' col ony
offer s plenty of material. All thi s, however , is
Is
The probl em of ten ses when someo ne has died ,
eve n on the annive rsary of their death ,
is like the co rrect translati on of John ,
which is "kept on wee ping" , not merely "wept" .
SARAH W ARDL E
muni on ; in one cosy dom estic vignette, she
and her partn er are "like two reptiles dressed
as ordin ary modern folk", who "grind down
the nutm eg of speculative thou ght " (ie, they
are havin g a chat) .
Whil e Freud's take on relation ship s is at
tim es ori gin al, the wea ke r poem s here are
beset with an un varyin gly flat affe ct that
dr ain s them of life. Wr itte n in the third per-
son, these tales of other peopl e' s unh appy
couplings grow repetiti ve, their pro tagonists
a hac kneye d gallery of "lonely girls" who
"bang another Frenchman" to stave off
anomi e, or middl e-aged men see king so lace
from mistresses and pro stitutes. Freud 's
inventi veness sometimes fail s to fulfil its
promise, as with her quirkily titled po rtrait s
of oddb all characters: "The Inventor of the
Indi vidu al Fruit Pie" , "A Void s Offi cer
Achi eves the Tree Pose" and " I Was the
Man ager of the Nipple Erectors " never
live up to their outre co nce pts, di spensin g
only rather banal visions of mod ern life and
its discont ents. Fre ud is mor e co mpelling
when she lays asi de j adedn ess for a kind of
geeky enthusias m; to imagin e the ex istence
of a " Pop-Up Book of Great Wom en in
Histor y" , or a charac ter who is "the kid- sister
of a girl in a girl-ba nd called Bartleb y" ,
requires an auda cious playfuln ess that is its
ow n rew ard.
grist to another mill. De-iced is the boo k' s
title, and co ldness her e takes on man y mean-
ings - that notorious Eng lish fro ideur faced
with wa rm-hea rted Am eri ca; a vag ue chill in
person al relation ship s (" At first it see ms a
deni al of love" ); but also the crea tive ice-
block , which the poet hop es the co lony wi ll
"de-ice" .
"M acDowell Wint er" is a striking ex peri-
ment , ambitious and various, but Wicks
remains at her best whe n atte ntive to the curi-
ous mech anical detail s of mo dern life, ju xta-
posin g them with its magic al tran sform ation
sce nes. " De-iced" , the title poem precedin g
the A merican sequence, is set on a tedi ously
snow bo und plane. Sudde nly "we ' re beck-
oned for ward by a man with two lit wa nds I
and machin es rea r ove r us, stretching their
meta l neck s I as if to bite or kiss .. .. It
sq uirts us with a cloud I of white that turn s
our glass opaqu e" . And so the plane lift s off.
Thi s tript ych co mbines man y of Susa n
Wicks ' s strengths and several of her leitm o-
tif s - glass, sky, travel, the erotic, an amuse d
toleran ce of fate, esca pe from the ro utine of
"nuts, iced water, pret zel s, I nuts ag ain" to a
visio nary regi on: "Our wings are silve r now,
flaps sliding and retractin g I in a twinkl e of
snow dust to the sky's command " .

he dead ca me knocking late one night
T in the spring of 1848 . John and Ma rga -
ret Fox had only recentl y moved to the
tin y settleme nt of Hydesville, New York, to
take up residence in an old farmhouse and
ra ise their daughters in bucoli c innocence.
The locals told strange stor ies about their
new home, but the Foxes ignored the whis-
pers and did their best to settle in. The night it
began, Joh n and Margaret were wo ken by the
screams of their children . As they strugg led
into co nsciousness, they becam e aware of the
source of the girls ' cries : a rapping noise, a
franti c knocking at floorboards, walls and
ceili ng as though so me di sembodi ed force
was tryin g to ga in admittance . The children
gave a name to whatever it was that was mak-
ing the ruckus - they ca lled it "M r Spl itfoot"
- and the famil y invented a mean s of comm u-
nication (one knock for no, two for yes)
through whic h they built up a picture of this
incorp oreal interl oper. In life, he had been an
itinera nt peddler until he had been murd ered
for a handful of change by the house' s
prev ious ow ners . Now his rem ains lay rottin g
in the cella r below. Tw o of the girls, Kate
and Magg ie, developed a spec ial rapport with
Mr Sp litfoot and before long seeme d able to
converse not only with him but also with
other spirits, exhibiting weird powers, impo s-
sible knowledge, predictin g the futur e. Thei r
fame sprea d, and P. T. Barnum em ploye d
them at his Am erican Mu seum on Bro adway
where they became headline attrac tions,
besieged by a publi c eage r for news from
the afterlife. The Fox case was the birth of
spiritualism.
Spiritualism was stitched into the culture
of the nineteenth ce ntury , and in her impr es-
sive ly thorou gh new study Ghost Hunters,
Deborah Blum shows us a snaps hot of the
--------------------------~,--------------------------
n one of the classic photograph s by
I Wa lker Evans, included in his and James
A gees Let Us Now Praise Famo us Men
of 1941 , a bedraggled man sta nds amid the
burgeon ing furro w s o f an A labama co tto n
field . At first glance he see ms the caricatur e
of a scarec row, all rags and tatters thro wn on
the stick of a frame . But he faces the lens
with a look of stubborn prid e und er his
chewed scrap of a hat. He appears ju st the
sort of figur e for whom Willi am Faulkner
rese rved his cherished term "indomitable" .
From his left shoulder a long loose bag, into
which the cotto n boil s will be thru st as he
plu cks them, furl s do wn across his chest and
trails on the gro und behind him . Though
much has changed since Eva ns and Agee
made their three-week soj ourn in the
Depression- era South , and the share-cro pper
ha s been supplanted by highl y spec ialized
machin es, cotton rem ain s the riskiest as well
as the crue lles t o f c rops.
In High COttOIl, Gerard Helferich desc ribes
a single year in the life of his friend and neigh-
bour Zack Killibrew , a cotto n-grower in the
Mi ssissippi Delta. Seaso n by seaso n, from
seed-time and plantin g to final harvest,
Helferi ch recou nts this determined farmer ' s
strugg le to brin g in a bumper crop aga inst all
odds. It is, rather surprisingly, high dram a. At
each stage in cotton's growi ng cycle, fresh
obstacles loo m. There is not only temp era-
mental - and vastly expe nsive - equipme nt to
cont end with but a feckless workforce,
swa rms of insect predators, from thrip s to
SOCIAL HISTORY
Things that go bump
JO N BA RNE S
D ebo r ah Blum
GH OST H U N T E R S
384pp. Century. £ 17.99.
978 I 844 135967
US: Penguin . £ 15. 978 0 143038955
heady madness of the age . Psychi cs like the
Fox sisters, D. D. Home and Madame Blavat-
sky were ce lebrities. Alfr ed Russel Wa llace
(next to Dar win, the fou ndin g father of evo lu-
tionary theory) was an arden t stude nt of the
subjec t, which he considere d "a new branch
of anthro pology" . Eliza beth Barrett Brown-
ing, Arthu r Co nan Doyle and Mark Twain
we re true believers; James Fenimore Co ope r,
Marie Curie and Willi am James all atten ded
sea nces .
In 1882, three Ca mbridge men - Henr y
Sidgw ick, Freder ic Myer s and Edmund
Gurney - found ed the Briti sh Society for Psy-
chica l Research, devoted to investigatin g this
surge in paranor ma l activity. But they we re
soon disappointed to di sco ver that the major-
ity of their work consis ted me rely of debunk-
ing ersa tz medium s - so mething which often
pro ved emba rrass ingly easy, as fakes used
conj uring trick s to beguil e audiences eage r to
be bamboozled. Rich ard Hodgson, a cynical
Australian who pur sued his qu arries with pit-
bull tenacity, was the Soc iety 's most acco m-
plished debunker and in 1884, he expose d the
most celebrated medium of the day - Helen a
Pet rovna Blavatsky, the found er of Theoso -
Delta
shaman
E R IC ORMSBY
G e r ard H elf eri ch
H IGH COTT ON
Four seasons in the Mississippi Delta
308pp. Counterpo int. £ 14.99 (US $25).
978 I 582433530
stinkbugs to cut worm s as well as the dreaded
boil weev il and above all the caprices of the
wea ther - what Agee in his acco unt mem ora-
bly termed "the slippery chances of the sky " .
To bring his cro p in, Killibrew must be not
o nly an ex pe rt m ech ani c, a pr acti cal ento m ol -
ogist versed in the latest pesticid es and an
astute businessm an, but also a sort of Delta
sha man, quick to rea d the auguries of cloud s
and the subtlest hint s of the wind .
In telli ng Zac k's story , Helf erich gives a
vivid biograph y of co tton. A memb er of the
genus Gossy pium and a relative of the mal-
low, this ancient plant , for all the wo ndrous
softness and dur abilit y of its fibres, has been
the inadvertent catalyst of terribl e hum an suf-
ferin g, throu ghout the A merican South and
parti cul arly in the Delta. Helferich shows
how the culti vation of cott on was inextrica -
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
phy, in whose temple shattered cro cke ry was
said to mend itself , and objec ts supposedly
materialize from thin air. Hodgson found the
"temple" to be an ingeni ous box of tricks,
rigged with hidd en entra nces and gimmic ked
compartme nts, and within hour s of his depar-
ture, it burnt to the ground - almost certainly
on Blavatsky' s orders .
Wearyin g of the parade of fraud s and pho-
neys, Hodgson despaired of findin g any rea l
manifestation of the superna tura l. It took a
twent y-six-year-old shopkeeper's wife to
change his mind, the most uncann y medium
of all - Leonora Piper. At sittings, Mr s Piper
fell into trances in which she would spea k in
the gruff, deep voice of her " spirit guide" , a
Fre nchma n who ident ified himself as "Dr
Phinuit" , The knowledge Piper displayed
in her trance state was astonishing. At their
first meeting, she amaze d even Hodgson by
putting him in touch with a long-dead cousin
who revealed details of their friendship which
no one exce pt him could possibly have
known.
The Austra lian did eve rything he could to
disco ver how Piper' s tricks we re done, but
Piper passed all his tests and Hod gson was
forced to admit that the medium really was in
contac t with the spiri ts ofthe departed . "They
have survived the change we call death ", he
wro te, "and have directl y com muni cated
with us, whom we ca ll living, throu gh Mr s
Piper's organi sm." Then , in 1888, came a
hamm er blow agai nst the credibil ity of the
spiritualist movem ent. Maggie Fox - one of
the sisters who had inspired its first bloom
ble from black slave ry, and how hopelessly,
long after Ema ncipation and the Civil Wa r,
black s rem ained the captives of that despotic
agra rian eco nomy, able neith er to esca pe nor
to prosper.
But the mise ries and contradictions of the
Delta also gave rise to a distinctive culture.
Helf erich cites Fa ulkne r and Eudo ra Welt y in
ev idence but chiefly - and rightl y - pays
tribut e to blues music. In songs born out of
field holl ers, eve n the ma levo lent boil
weev il go t its due, as in the lines Helferich
quot es: "The first time I saw the boil weev il, /
He was sitting on a square. / Nex t time I saw
the boil weev il/ He had his who le damn
famil y there. / Jus lookin for a home". The
singer here obviously identifi es with the boil
weev il; both are "just lookin g for a hom e" in
a place where no home ca n be.
Some of these historical and cultu ral asides
have a rath er perfunctory feel. Helferich is at
his hest when he grapples with cotto n itself
in its various permut ations, from the blue
ca psules of genetica lly modifi ed seed which
Zac k plants to the hank s of thread emerg ing
from the spinning mills; he is fascinat ed by
the spec ialized machin ery which cotto n-
grow ing now requires, describing irrigators,
modul e build ers, cotton gins and tractors
with almost lyrical preci sion. Even so, the
book wo uld have benefit ed from at least a
few illustration s, along with diagram s of
these unfamili ar co ntraptions.
Weather , pests, hum an frailt y and failin g
planters, pickers and boil buggies bedevil
23
four decades ear lier - had fall en on hard
times. Desperat e for money, she sold a con-
fession to the New York World cl aiming that
the whole thin g was a sham; that the only
rema rkable thin g about the sisters was that
they both possessed "a rare abil ity to loudl y
pop their toe joint s". The subsequent raps and
knocks had "first fooled their paren ts, then
their neighb our s, then the res t of the world" .
Her sister Kate join ed her on stage for a
public demonstration of thei r mend acit y and
the Soc iety 's dream of a pro vabl e afterlife
seeme d sudde nly very far away.
Blu m argues persuasive ly that this urgent
need to believe in a spirit world spra ng from
the crisis precipit ated by Darwini sm. Con-
fro nted for the fir st time by the possibility of
a godless univer se prop elled by the uncarin g
forc es of physics, peopl e turn ed to anything
which appea red to co nfirm the existence of
the hum an soul. Henr y Sidgwick wrote that
he longed for a "friendly uni verse" . That
unscru pul ous hucksters should take adva n-
tage of such a longing was simple eco nomic
inevitability. Yet the story is not quit e done .
In 1893, Maggie Fox lay dyin g, crippl ed by
rheumatism, weakened by fever. After her
death , a neighb our who attended her passing
told friends that something inexplicable had
happ ened as the old clairvoyant suffered -
there we re rappin gs on the floorbo ards,
walls and ce iling, and Maggie mutt ered
co nstan tly, as tho ugh in conve rsation with
some invisible interlocutor. More curious
still is what happened ten yea rs after her
death , back whe re it all began in Hydesville,
New York. Schoolchildren playin g in what
had been the Fox famil y home uncovered
some thing terribl e behin d the crumbling
wall of the ce llar - the com plete skeleto n
of a man , long dead.
Zack Killibrew from the fir st seed to the final
bale. But it' s the federal gove rnment, once
generous with farm subsidies, that may und o
him and his fellows in the end. There was a
time w he n the notio n that the g overnme nt
migh t pay farmers to grow cotton and other
crops was simp ly unthinkable. In one of his
early stories, not menti oned by Helferi ch,
Faulkner portrayed this tragicomi c incom pre-
hension. In "The Tall Me n" , Mississippi farm-
ers Budd y and Lee and Stuart give up grow -
ing cotton bec ause they ca n' t und erstand the
new, and obligatory , gove rnment subsidies
and refuse to sig n up for them. Left with
twent y-two unsellable bales, they turn to rais-
ing "whiteface cattle". But year after year gov-
ernmen t farm agents co me out to measure the
baffled brother s' field s, "even if they neve r
had no not-cotton to be paid for" . Despit e his
heavy investment in fields and seed and equip-
ment , Zack Killibr ew isn't really so different
from those stubborn forehears. As Helferich
shows with und erstated eloquence and a lyri-
cal feel both for his legend ary crop and the
processes by which it is eve ntually brought to
mill, it is neith er profit alone nor mere Missis-
sippi cusse dness which drives farmers like
Killibr ew to risk eve rything on the sprouting
of a seed. He' s a high- stakes gambler but one
with an age-old fidelit y to the soil. Agee said
that cotton possessed "a cert ain royalty" ,
despit e the misery it occas ioned. That roya l
aura is still as visible in Zack Killibrew as in
the anon ymous sharec roppe r Walker Eva ns
once captured with his lens.
24
Lock them up!
R
eaders of a certain age will doubtless
recall the Victorian museums of mad-
ness that once haunted the countryside
on both sides of the Atlantic, vast, straggling
buildin gs that provided mute testimony to an
earlier generation's enthusiasm for segregative
responses to mental illness. The peculiar moral
architecture that our ancestors constructed to
contain the dissolute, the degenerate, and the
deranged was unmistakable once seen, and
eve n now some remarkable examples survive .
Travelling on America's East Coast, for exam-
ple, the highway affords views of the distinctive
outline of the State Hospital at Augusta, Maine,
and the still larger and more striking buildings
that made up Danvers State Hospital in Massa-
chusetts, on the northern fringe of the Boston
suburbs.
Some older folk out there may invo luntar -
ily have had an eve n more intim ate acquaint-
ance with es tablishme nts of this sort, once to
be found all across Europe and North Am er-
ica. Perhap s they have visited a clo se rel ati ve
locked up in one, or they may eve n have
had per sonal experience of life on a ment al
hospit al ward. For them, the striking and
sinister images that impress them selves on
ca sual passers-b y will have a deep er reso -
nance, the visua l reminder s augmented by
memori es of more intim ate cont act with the
realiti es of confin em ent in a barrack s-
asy lum, not least the peculiar and unforget-
table sme lls that distin gui shed these places
and clun g to the physical fabri c like a foul
miasm a: of wa rds impregnated with decades
of stale urin e and faecal matter , of the slop
served up as food .
Small wo nder that, as Car la Yanni con-
fesses at the outse t of her book , she once
shied away from the asy lum's arc hitec tural
hi story, "overwhelmed by its grimness"; or
that her parent s were doubtful about her
o bsessio n w ith this ungl amorou s and depre ss-
ing subject matt er. Fortunately, though,
Yanni ove rca me her initi al disposition to
lea ve these buil dings to mould er in peace.
She focu ses, as her title indi cates, on the
United States, and devotes most of her atten-
tion to the nineteenth and early twenti eth
centu ries, the peri od that marked the real
Grea t Co nfineme nt of the insane. Drawin g
on her background as an art histori an, she has
produ ced a fascin atin g and visually rich sur-
vey of this stra nge territory. She has read
widely and wisely in the history of psychia-
try, and, thou gh she makes a factu al erro r
here and there, for the most part she is very
success ful at linkin g together arc hitecture
and mental medi cine.
Knowledge ofhoth worlds is vital, hecau se
the birth s of the asy lum and of psychi atry
were intricately and intim ately linked.
M ad-do ctors (as their critics persisted in call-
ing them ), or alienists (as they und erstand-
ably preferred to ca ll them selves), insisted
that the physical structures that contained
their patient s we re a ce ntra l part of the effort
to treat ment al illn ess, and that no one knew
better than they did how to design these insti-
tut ion s. Led by Tho mas Story Kirkb ride,
super intendent of the private Pe nnsy lvania
Hospit al for the Insane, they linked their
claims to exper tise and therapeutic prowess
PSYCHOLOGY & MEDICINE
A NDR EW SCU L L
Ca r l a Y anni
T HE A R C HITE C T UR E OF M A D N E S S
Insane asylums in the U nited States
256pp. Mi nnea polis: Univers ity of Minn esota Press .
$82.5 0.
978 ()8 t 66 4939 6
directl y to the details of hospit al design . And
it was from their positions at the head of
these institutions that the alienists derived
their patient s, their incom es and their cultura l
authority.
There were a tiny handful of colonial prece-
dents for lockin g up the mad. The English
had their famous establishme nts - Robert
Hook e' s ornate new Bethlem, or Bedl am ,
which dated fro m 1676 , and its much plain er
metropolitan rival from the seco nd half of the
eightee nth century, St Luke' s Lunatic Hospi-
tal. Usually, though , these precedent s had
littl e influence on the Am erican col oni sts.
Their fir st place of confineme nt for the
insane was in the basement of Benjamin Fran-
klins Penn sylvani a Hospital , most of whose
acco mmodation was devoted to the physi-
call y ill. To be sure, the Virginia burgesses,
at the urgin g of their co lonial gove rnor,
Fra ncis Fauquier, built their ow n Bedlam or
madhouse, but for the most pa rt, it was not
until the nineteenth century that Am eric ans
embarked on a serious programm e of bui ld-
ing specially des igned asy lums , and when
they did so, as in the mother country from
which they had now violently separa ted them-
selves , Bethl em served as a bad exa mple, not
a model.
nother English instituti on , the
A fam ous Quaker establishme nt ca lled
the York Retreat, had served as the
inspi ration for a first genera tion of refor med
asy lums in the nineteenth- century United
States . Yanni usefull y traces its influenc e,
and the subtle modifi cation s that were made
to the original building when Am ericans
adapted the plans to the New World. The
Retreat adopted an esse ntially dom estic ,
small-sca le architecture, one that directed
much attention to the effects of spatia l
arra ngeme nts and aesthetics on patient s' sen-
sibilities, and to the use of the built environ-
ment to modify human beh aviour. It is hard
to recall , in the light of the mammoth asy -
lum s that becam e ge nera l in the seco nd half
of the ninetee nth centu ry, and the ass ociated
collap se of all sense of therapeutic optim ism,
that the asy lum was at the outset a utopi an
institut ion , one which, its found ers we re con-
vinced, could serve as a forcin g house for
change, allowin g the reinve ntion of the dis-
turb ed and delu sional as par agons of self-
cont rolled , conventional beh aviour. Such
expec tations were, of cour se, them selves
de lusions.
Using floor plans, eleva tions, pictures of
hospit al wa rds and interiors, Yanni recon-
struc ts the distorti ons and then the demise
of these early visions of curati ve asy lums .
Her book is full of powerful images.
Ninetee nth-ce ntury asy lums very frequentl y
TLS O C T OB E R 5 20 07
produced postcard s, some of their exteriors ,
others of their grounds and of wa rds. And
there ex ist a handful of ecce ntrics who have
mad e a hobb y of collec ting these artefacts,
preserving images that would otherw ise have
vanished alongside the buildings and the
in-p atient s they mem ori alize. Drawin g on
these pictures, and wide-ranging and meticu-
lou s work in the archives, as we ll as some of
her own photograph y, Yanni has con struct ed
a rem arkabl e volume.
Fro m the space for thirty inm ates that
ch aracterized the York Retreat, later asy lums
tran sform ed them sel ves into es tablishments
with their own gas works, reservoir s,
chapels , farms, gravey ards and roo ms for,
first hundred s and then thousand s of unfortu-
nates. Visually and verbally, Yanni dissects
the hegemon y and then the decay of what
was once the sta ndard design of the Am er-
ican ment al hospit al, the so-ca lled Kirkbride
or linear plan. One typicall y crea tive idea
is her dec ision to red raw the outlines of a
series of hospit als built on these principl es,
fro m the co lonial asy lum at Willi amsbur g,
Virgini a (177 0), to the State Hospit al
designed by the master architec t H. H. Rich-
ardso n at Buffalo, New York (187 0). Drawn
to scale, this series of plans vividly drives
hom e the massive expans ion of the size of
ment al hospit als that occ urred in the course
of a century .
Sub sequ entl y, Yanni looks at the displ ace-
ment of the linear form by the "cottage plan",
an architec tura l shift to a series of buildings
(ofte n each containin g 200 or 300 patien ts)
gathered round a central administrative core .
Ta king the place of the prev ious pla n of a
sing le long buildi ng in the shape of a sha llow
" V", the co ngrega te sys tem, as it was also
ca lled, was an innovati on that allowe d the
construc tion of still larger asy lums . Here
were extrao rdinary compl exes of buildings
superficially resembling sizea ble town s,
so me designed to hold as many as ten or
twel ve thou sand inhabit ant s. "C om munity
care" this was not , for those co nfined in these
wa rds co ntinued to be rigoro us ly ex cl ude d
fro m the larger soc iety.
In her conclu ding chapter, Ya nni look s to
the fate of these establishme nts in a modern
world that has lost faith in institutional care.
The stigma that attac hes to asy lums has often
limit ed their attractions to redevelopers. Mak-
ing matters wo rse, ce rtain structural feature s
of the buil dings have often made it excee d-
ingly diffi cult to adapt them to other pur-
poses. Many cont ained large numb er s of
single ce lls, often div ided up by thick , load-
bearin g wa lls, making modifications expen-
sive or imp ossibl e. Large numbers of state
hospit als have therefore been torn down , in
whole or in part. Ot hers stan d deserted ,
slow ly deca ying, the unmou rned residu e of
hygone e nrhus ias rns. In l ltica , f or in stance,
the stunning Greek Revival New York State
Ho spit al sits empty with trees grow ing from
the sedime nt on its roof.
In a nice bit of historical iron y, the old
asy lum at Colonial Willi am sbur g has been
reconstruct ed , and now form s part of the
dramati zation of eightee nth-ce ntury life at
that touri st attrac tion. Meantim e, as Yanni
plainti vely ack now ledges, "the final arch-
itectural setting for a welfare -dependen t
schizop hrenic or manic-de press ive, after
instituti onali zation, was not a buildin g, it
was the street" .
Making
the cut
DR UI N BU R C H
A t u l Gawa n de
BE T T ER
A surgeo n's notes on performance
273 pp. Profile. £ 12.99.
978 186 1978974
US: Metropolitan Books. $24. 978 0 8050 82 11 I
efore he was thirt y, Atu l Ga wand e
B studied at Stanford, Har vard and (as a
Rhod es Scho lar, naturally) at Oxford.
His acade mic career was interru pted by a
spell adv ising President Cl inton on health
care. After he qualified as a doc tor, a friend
asked him to contribute essays on his life as a
surgeo n to an online magazin e, Slate. Follow -
ing that, he was invited on to the staff of the
New Yorker, appo inted as a consulta nt
surgeo n to one of Am eric a ' s top hospit als,
and given an academic post at Harvard . He
then wrote a best-sellin g book based on his
articles and was awa rded a M acA rthur "gen-
ius" awar d for hi s research efforts . "Atul
Gawande", say his publi shers, "is one of the
wor ld's most distin guished doctors." If you
can still stomac h him after this ro ll-ca ll of
ove r-achieve men t, both of his books -
Complicat ions (2002 ) and now Better - are
actually rather goo d. They are also, as
Gawandes spec tac ular biograph y might
sugges t, excee dingly Am eric an .
Each book contains self-standing essays fol-
lowing a similar pattern, with Gawa nde inter-
lacing personal stories into a discussion of
some wider issue. He describes making a mess
of cutting open some one's throat, for exa mple,
in an essay about medic al mistakes. He tells of
botching his early efforts to insert plastic tubes
into people' s chests as part of a piece on learn-
ing cur ves. Complications centred on prob-
lems of inexperience and error in a profession
where both can kill. (British doctor s, Gawande
notes with passing astonishment, are pre-
vented from practising their techniques and
procedur es on pigs. Instead they learn on their
fellow countrymen.) The essays in his second
book, Better, also cohere success fully around
its title. Some doctors save more lives than
others, some hospitals kill more patients than
they should. Why do some well-ed ucated,
intelligent and motivated medics do more
good than others? What can be done to help ?
What can be offered by way of "suggestions
for becomin g a positive deviant" ?
G aw andes anec do tes make hi s essays
more readable, offering up evocative narra-
tives for tho se with a taste for gore , or fasci-
nated by stories fro m the wa rd and the operat-
ing theatre. In Comp lications , the anecdo tes
sometimes see med manipul ati ve and flat,
pieces of hum an interest shove d mech ani-
call y into the text. In Better they work
well, consis tently prom oting the feelin g that
Gawande is writing about a community of
indi viduals, a spraw ling intern ational co llege
of doct ors and patient s and nurses. A side
effect of this success is to dampen any sense
that Gawande is writing about his ow n exce l-

lenc e . Instead th e tales g ive a feeling of bein g
im me rse d in a world full of peopl e strugg ling
to improve. Thi s is infectio us, as we ll as
compa nionable. It also help s lighten the fact
th at Better is fundam entally abo ut man age-
ment. Gawandes point is that go od man age-
ment is needed in medi cin e as much as in
bu siness, th at it is as vi tal for doctor s as fo r
their pati ent s. Gawande listens, for example,
to a spe cia list in c ystic fib rosis, a man dedi-
ca ted to maki ng the best po ssibl e use of th e
alrea dy av aila ble ther apeuti c mea sures :
He believed that excellence came from seeing,
on a da ily basis, the difference betwee n being
99.5 per cent successful and being 99.95 per
cent successful. Many things hum an beings do
are like that, of course: catching fly balls,
manu facturing microc hips, deliverin g over-
night package s. Medicine' s distinction is that
lives are lost in those slim margins.
A thou ghtful refl ection on imp rovin g mar-
gins is the sort of thin g you might expect to
hear preach ed by Toyota or Mc Kinsey. We
im agine med icine - a nd, in pa rtic ular , surgery
- to be starker, more cl ear- cut. It isn't , as
Ga wand e makes cl ear. Dru g s and opera tio ns
reall y do wor k in terms of perc ent ages. Each
is a ga mble, a risk. Gawande's compari son
with busin ess is accura te, although hi s di stinc-
tion bet ween the two is a rare bit of eg otism .
Th e effecti ve deli ver y of medi cal care is not
the only thin g that save s lives. Som e ove r-
night pack ages are vital, as are some micro-
c hips . Povert y, social status and social free-
dom, oppor tunities for ph ysical exe rcise, our
...................................................................................................... -----------------------------------------------------------~
Heavyweight thinking,
featherweight prices.
Subscribe today and save over 40% on the usual
retail price. You will also receive a welcome gift
of two steel TLS bookmarks.
MEDICINE
Atul Gawande, 2002
safe ty on road s and in our hom es: a va st ra nge
of factors affect w hether we live or die.
Almost all the increase in hum an life ex pec t-
ancy before the Second World War had
nothing to do with medi cal care wha tsoeve r -
and all the ben efit s de veloped ever since are
efface d in people w ho smo ke. G aw andes
error of co ntex t, suggesting that medi cin e
is somehow spec ial, is an inadvert ent and
isolat ed pi ece of thou ght lessness.
M ore important , and more con sistent , is
hi s beli ef in o ur improvability, and the co nse-
qu ent need to study th ose w ho do particularl y
we ll:
Don Berwick [the subject of one essay]
believes that the subtleties of high-perform-
Choose your level of savings off the usual retail prices
Quarterly(savemore withDirect Debit"') D UK £27 D Europe £34 D ROW£40
IDelivery direct to your
door every week
IFree access to our online
subscriber archive
Subscribe now by calling
+44 (0)1858 438 781
(quoting code SOI2) or visit
www.subscription.co.uk/tls/SOI2
Readers in the US should call
1-800 370 9040 or visit
www.tls-subscription.com
(quoting code 207US)
The leading paper ill the
world/or literary culture
TLS O C TOB E R 5 2 0 07
25
fecti on is the exc ite me nt" '. G awand e do esn 't
dwell on the miseri es of wor king in a profes-
sion incr easin gly monitored , regul ated and
judged . He conce ntra tes on dem on stratin g the
fact that it sav es more lives. Perform ance sta-
tistics, of cou rse, are flawed : "T hey are mis-
used ; they are unfair. Still, the simple fact s
rem ain: there is a bell cu rve in all hum an activ-
ities, and the difference s yo u measur e usuall y
matt er" . Is measurin g perform anc e, with all
of its aw ful faili ngs, not a gre at deal bett er
than failin g to measur e at all? " Count some -
thin g" , is on e of G awande 's co ncl ud ing
piec es of adv ice , co uched in terms of his evan-
ge listic loathing for medi ocrity. Here hi s fir st
book serves him we ll: havin g wr itte n abo ut
the diffi culti es of ge tting bett er onese lf, he
has so me right to talk abo ut how to improve
oth er peopl e. I was unabl e to re ad him
ance medical practice can be ide ntified and witho ut rem emb ering wa tc hing other doctors
learned . But the lessons are hidd en because no stupid ly mangle and kill peo ple. Ev en more
one knows who the high performers really are. to his credit, I was unabl e to fend off the
Only if we know the results fro m all can we memories of doi ng it my self.
identify the positive deviants and learn from T here are occ asional journa listic shor t
them. If we are genuinely cur ious about c uts, from sim plifications to melodra ma, but
how the best achieve their results, Berwick they fail to spo il the overall pl easure or the
believes, then the ideas will spread. sens e of intell ectual hon esty. Complicatio ns
In other wo rds, coll egiate affability should and now Better have bec om e best- sell er s,
give way to competiti veness, to obsessive with pro ven app eal to tho se w ho spend th eir
measurin g, and to heavily e nfor ce d protocol s. lives in ho spit als, as we ll as those w ho stand
In Comp lications, Gawande inquires about to lo se them ther e. Gawande' s very Am er-
bor ed om from a surgeon who , abando ning the ican wor ship of meth odical excelle nce is se ri-
nor mal varie ty of hi s profession , do es nothing ou s, and he writes abo ut it with a light tou ch.
but rep etiti ve herni a repairs, all day and eve ry Reading him is re warding enough to almost
day. He repli es " in a Spock-like vo ice : ' Per- make yo u for gi ve him hi s succe ss.
,
,,,
12months-save32%
24months-save41%
D UK£92
D UK£161
D Europe£112
D Europe£196
D ROW£132
D ROW£231 Ai
Title MrD MrsD MissD MsD Other D ...
Fkstreme Surname .
Address ....
................................................................................................................................... Postcode/ZIP ....
Telephone
Easy ways to pay (please tick your preferred payment option)
Mobile .
I Dlencloseachequefor
2 D Pleasecherqe
made payabletoThe Times Literarv Sepplement ltd
to my: Visa D Mastercard D Switch/MaestroD
Card No. lL-L_L--'-----'-----'-----'_-'-----'------'---L_L--'-----'-----'-----'-----'
validfrom I T JI T J EXPirydate I T JI T J Card issue no. I T J (ifapplicable)
Iardholders siqnature Date .
Please complete thefollowinginstruction toyour Bank orBuilding Sodetytopily byDirect Debit (UK only).
3 D-nn« Debit payonly £23eachquarter(UK only)
c
Please payThe Times LiterarySupplementLtd Direct Debitsfrom theaccount detailedonthisinstruction, subjecttothesafeguard s assured
bythe Direct DebitGuarantee. Iunderstand thatthisinstruction may remainwithinThe Times Literary Supplement ttd, andifso, details
willbepilssec!electronicallytomyBankorBuilding So<iety. Banks andBuildingSocieties maynotaccept Direct Debitinstructionsfor 5orne
kinds ofaccounts.
Originator's identification ncrnter I 5 I 9 I 9 I 1 I 2 11 I
Name ofaccount holder(s)....
To: The Manager Bank/BuildingSociety .
Address ....
...................................................................................................................................Postcode ....
Branchsortcode IL-L_ L--'-----'-----'-----' Account No. IL -L_ L--'-----'-----'-----' _ -'----'
(ardholders siqnature Date .
This guarantee is offered byallBanks andBuilding SocietiesthattakepartintheDirect uebttscheme. Theefficiency andserurityofthe
schemeismonitored andprotected byyour own Banker BuildingSociety. Iftheamountsto bepaid ortilepayment dateschangeThe Times
Literary Supplement will notify you 10workingdays ini!dvanceofyouraccount being debited orasotherwiseagreed. ltanerror ismade by
The Times Literary Supplement oryour Bank orBuildingSo<iety,youareguaranteed a full andimmediate refund from your branch ofthe
amount paid. You cancancel a Direct Debit at arw timebywritinq toyour Bank orBuilding Society. Pleasealsosenda copy ofyour lettertous,
t Bysupplying youre-mail addressyou arehappy toreceive offers viae-mail from or inassociationwith The TimesLiterarySupplement
(TLS). The TLS ispassionate aboutsecuring greatpromotions andoffersforyou. The TLS directly (orviaitsagents)maymail orphone you
about newpromotions,products andservkes. Tickifyoudon'twanttoreceive thesefrom us [ 1orcarefullyselected companies[ ]
(HeldunderUK law.Seeourprivacypolicy atwww.nidp.com) Ref5012
Please return this coupon to: The TLS , Tower House, Sovereign Park,
I\larket Harhorough, LE16 9EF , UK.
26
Pirates
Susan Ronald
T H E PIR ATE Q UE EN
Elizabeth I, her pirate adventurers
and the dawn of empire
47Ipp. Sutton. £25.
978 0509 4841 8
D eftly interweaving cont emporary
accounts with colourful detail s, Susan
Ron ald guid es us masterfull y through an Eliz-
abeth an world inhabited by "colourful rap-
sca llions" and " indomitable sea dogs" , who
roam the seas seeking plunder, glor y and new
land s. Whil e these adve nturers might be moti-
vated prim aril y by greed, Eliza beth was in
desperate need of cash to finance the defenc e
of her beleaguered realm . The ultimat e
"success" of her pirates was to und ermin e
the golden found ation s of Philip II' s Spain
and to blaze a trail tow ard s a Briti sh empire.
Every good story need s a da shin g hero ,
and the " ingenious" Sir Francis Drake domi-
nates this narrati ve. Drake him self worried
that "You will say that this man who stea ls
by day and prays by night in public is
a devil" , but he has nothin g to fear from
Ron ald , who similarly ca nnot hid e her affec-
tion for the "vintage" brilli ance of Qu een
Elizabeth.
Ron ald tells her story we ll, but it is a time-
worn tale. It was told first by Elizabetha n
pamphletee rs and Spani ard s who felt less
inadequate in the face of an invincibl e foe. It
was told aga in by the Victori an s, see king
precedents for their own imperi al ambitions.
We have romanticized pirat es: Tudor word-
lists defin e "pirate" simply as "robber by
sea". When the Spani sh admiral Santa Cruz
branded Elizabeth I the "pirate queen" , it
wasn 't meant as a compliment. Pirates
still ex ist: since 2002 , the Internati onal
Maritime Bureau has recorded 258 pirate
attacks in the treacherou s Malacca Str ait
(which Drak e sailed close to in 1579).
Ron ald does not quit e manage to shrug off
the "heroic pirat e" myth to produc e a clear-
eye d account.
In a year in which we comm emorate the
abolition of the slave trade and sixty yea rs of
Indian independ enc e, we cann ot ignor e the
fact that Sir John Hawkin s and his backer s
sought profit from hum an cargoes, while
Drake and Raleigh claim ed territory for their
Qu een that was already inhabit ed . There is a
new story that is emerging in curr ent scholar-
ship, which rem ains to be told to a wider audi-
ence, as multifaceted as any pirate' s plun-
dered diamond s. It is the painful , but hope-
full y more truthful, story of how these
early encounters between Euro peans and
non- European s in the sixteen th century
shaped the challenging world we live in
tod ay.
MIRANDA KA U FMA N N
IN BRIEF
"A Contest Between Oppression & Reason, Or the Best way ofSettIeing Debates", Nov ember 7,1795, by William O'Keefe ;
reproduced from George Ill: A life ill caricature by Kenneth Baker (224pp. Thames and Hudson. £24.95. 978 0 500 25140 9).
Biography
Bill Bryson
SH AKESPE AR E
200pp. HarperPress. £14.99.
978 0007 19789 7
I n the early 1900 s a schoolmas ter from
Ga teshead, J. Th omas Loon ey, spe nt two
years searching for a publisher willing to
publi sh his book und er his ow n name. Lik e
Sherwo od E. Sillima n and Geor ge M. Battey,
Looney was an "a nti-Stratfordian'' deter-
mined to prove th at Shakes peare w as, in fact ,
none other than the Earl of Oxford . Shake-
spea re scholars have always been "a little
eccentric, if not active ly waywa rd", argues
Bill Bryson in this brief biograph y. In fact ,
his book is less a biograph y than a delightful
account of Shakespeare ' s elusiveness - and
the extraordinary lengths peopl e have go ne to
to rem edy it. Bryson ' s ow n excursion into the
chill y, morgue-like depth s of the Folger
Libr ary gives him a new appreciation of the
efforts of Charles and Hulda Wallace, who
trawled throu gh hundreds of thousand s of
legal docum ent s in the Public Record Offi ce
in ord er to shed light on Shakespeare' s life
beyond the pla ys. Lik e Delia Bacon, who
spent ten solitary month s in St Alb ans pur su-
ing her theory that Shak espear e ' s pl ays we re
really written by her nam esake Fra ncis
Bacon , Charles eve ntually retreat ed into
insanit y.
Shakespeare is part of HarperPr ess' s
" Eminent Authors" series, which pair s ca non-
ical figur es with distin guished mod ern writ-
ers, and the pairin g of Bryson with Shake-
spea re is a happ y one. Here is a Shakes pea re
unspun whose story is ch iefly rem arkabl e for
its resistanc e to the tellin g. The chapt er on
" Shakespeare ' s Lost Year s" (15 85-1592)
repl aces idle speculation with a characteristi-
call y Brysonian acc ount of urban ecce ntric-
TLS O CTOB ER 5 20 07
ity. Roamin g the unfamiliar territory of Ren- Thi s point is worthy of co mment. As the
aissa nce London , Bryson describ es Continen- First Wo rld War has grow n more distant, a
tal visitors ' suspicion of cloud y English ale, cult of the wa r vetera n has emerged, espe-
the fondn ess of aristocrats for meringues, and ciall y as "talking heads" in television docu-
the fact that the heads of traitor s imp aled at mentaries. I once sugges ted, as an alternative,
South wark must eac h have served as a using interviews film ed in the 1960 s with
"grisly bird-feeder" . Th e theatres shared their war veterans, which I knew cont ained some
premi ses on the outskirts of London not onl y very interestin g materi al. Thi s idea was dis-
with broth els and pri son s, but also with
the stinking trad es of gluemakers and
missed out of hand, as the sight of a sprightly
seve nty-yea r-old apparently had less televis-
soa pma kers. In Bryson' s hand s, the Eliza- ual imp act that that of a centen arian . So it is
beth an playhou se emerges as a muck y, not surpris ing that there is a market for Harry
thrillin g, dangerou s backdrop for wha t reall y Patch ' s life story . It run s from his birth in
matters about Shakespeare: the plays 1898 to his newfound fame, via his brief stint
themselves. of active serv ice, which includ ed fightin g at
KA THA RI N E C RA I K Passchend aele. Van Emde n has done a skilful
job, and soc ial as well as milit ary histori ans
will find the book of interest. In interviews,
Harry Patch, with Richard Van Emden some vetera ns includ e opinions that they
THE LAST FIGHTI NG TO MM Y were unlik ely to have held durin g the war.
The life of Harry Patch, the only surviving The fact that Mr Patch comm ent s that he
veteran of the trenches cannot rem emb er soldiers in the trenches dis-
238pp. Bloomsbury. £16.99 . cu ssing Sir Dou glas Haig (contrary to
9780 7475911 5 3 receive d wisdom , Haig was not a cont rover-
sial figure among the rank and file) sugges ts
U ntil very recentl y there was a sizea ble that he is a reliable witness . There is little in
numb er of surv ivors of the Briti sh Army this boo k that cann ot be fou nd in countl ess
of the First World War. A total of 5,704,4 16 other wa r memo irs, but it stands as an apt trib-
men served in the Army bet ween Augu st ute to the last of a kind .
1914 and Nove mber 1918 , and the majorit y G ARY S HEFFIE LD
saw service on the Western Front at lea st
once. Twent y-seven yea rs ago, there we re
still 27,000 men drawin g disabilit y pen sion s
Politics
as a direct result of the First Worl d War. A Benazir Bhutto
dec ade ago about 350 Briti sh Western Front DA UGHTER OF TH E EA ST
veterans surv ived. To day , there is ju st one An autobiography
surv iving Briti sh infantryman with Western 442pp. Simon and Schuster.
Fro nt experience : 108-year-old Harry Patch. Paperback, £12.99.
Mr Patch owes his fame, as his amanuensis 978 1 8473 7075 4
Richard Van Emden comm ent s, to his ability
to tell his story in a way "that translate[ s]
eas ily to television scree ns. As the pool of T his updated work, like the original 1988
edition, appea rs at a moment of politi cal
veterans became eve r sma ller, so the atten- transition in Paki stan . Its author seems once
tion grew". again likely to pla y a cent ral role in the

unfoldi ng politi cal dr ama. Daughter of the
East attes ts to Ben azir Bhuttos courage,
determin ati on and sense of destin y. Eq ua lly,
ther e is no hint of criti cal self-re flec tio n
whe n disc uss ing the pe riod of her leadership
of Pa kista n. In thi s respect the work bear s
sim ilar ities with General Per vez M usharraf's
In the Line of Fire (rev iewed in the TLS of
Decembe r 22 , 2006). As in Mu sh arr af' s auto-
biograph y ther e are controversial reve lations .
T hese feature bo th General Mi rza As la m Beg
and Mu sh arraf him self and alleged offers of
military offe nsives agai nst Jam mu and Kash-
mir whe n Ms Bhutto was Prime Minister.
Whil e Mu sh arraf has re ma ined silent, Beg
has denied Bhutt os ve rsion of eve nts .
T he clo sing pages of Daughter of the
East form Be naz ir Bhutt os curre nt political
testam ent. She argues that dem ocr acy is the
so lutio n to the growing forces of Islamic
ex tre mism in Paki stan. T he M usharraf
regi me has he lpe d to crea te the circum-
stances for these to flo uri sh by both "cohabit-
ing" with them and de nyi ng politi cal space
for ma ins trea m po litica l organiza tions like
the Paki stan Peopl e' s Party. The author thu s
present s her self as fight in g the ba ttle not only
for democracy in Pa kista n but mor e wi de ly
aga inst the forces of Islami c rad ica lism and
terro rism . She bold ly maint ains that, " If my
govern me nt had not been destabilised in Paki-
stan in 1996, the Talib an could not have
allowed Osam a bin Laden to set up base in
Afgh ani stan , ope nly rec ru it and train yo ung
men from all ove r the Mu slim wo rld and
decl are war on Ame rica in 1998".
Whil e thi s claim ca n be qu estioned,
Bhutt os courage in cont empl atin g a return to
the political fray in Pa kistan ca nno t be ga in-
sa id. She not only rec all s the intrigues against
her govern men ts, but assassination attem pts
in 1992 and 93 . It is a tim ely reminder of the
streng th required for her re-entry int o the
Byzantin e wor ld of Paki stan politics.
IANTALBOT
Literary Criticism
Louis Menand
DIS COV ERI NG M ODERNI SM
T. S. Eliot and his context
231pp. Oxford Unive rsity Press.
Paperback, £9 .99.
978 0 195 15992 9
N either the thesis nor the ma teria l of
Lo uis Menand' s Discovering Modern-
ism was en tire ly new whe n it fi rst appeared
twenty years ag o, and both titl e an d subtitle
remain unhelpfully ge nera l. Neverthe less,
thi s is a very we lcome second appearance for
a sma ll classic of Eliot criti ci sm .
Lik e the Pragm ati st phil osopher s of his
Pu litzer -w inning The Metaphysical Club
(200 1), Men and is very goo d at havin g ideas
abou t ideas. Here, he propo ses that the yo ung
Eliot who eme rge d from the Harvard philo-
so phy dep artm en t in the ea rly twenti eth ce n-
tur y was essentially pragm atic in hi s
approach to liter ary crit ici sm. Tak ing charge
of a nascent avan t-garde , he reform ulated
nin eteenth- century sentime nts in sce ptica l
modern pro se.
Eliot the stra tegic ironi st was propo sed by
Hu gh Ken ner' s The Invisible Poet in 1959,
and there has been plent y of scholarship
since to establish his covert resem blance to a
Victor ian sage. Men and' s ac hieve me nt is to
IN BRIEF
sy nthes ize thi s wor k int o a lucid scho lar ly
narr ati ve, which begin s with the rev ol utio n-
ary qu estion of " litera ry hon esty" raised by
the Imagists an d ends with the institutional
acce ptance of Eliot's " poetry as poetr y" . The
ten-p age ex plica tion of the aes the tic scepti-
ci sm of Eliot's doctor al thesis is masterful.
Discu ssio ns of the poetry, however, are
strictly subordi nate to thi s insigh t. Som e
ea rly pieces are we ll character ized as "a kind
of abbrev iated In Memoriam", but it is too
neat to say that The Waste Land ha s no "co n-
tinuous" stylis tic fea tu res, whe n the ve rsific a-
tion is so distinctive th rou ghout.
Discovering Modernism' s mos t ori gin al
single thesis is perhaps the cha pter on "L itera-
tu re an d Profession alism" , whic h perfor ms a
brill iant histori cist reframing of Co nrad's
Heart of Darkness, the on ly work outside
Eliot's to be treated at any length. Men and ' s
dapp er prose is epigra mma tic wi tho ut eve r
falli ng into crude parado x. An apparent iro ny
such as the " pro fessional" Mo dernis t is, he
notes, "easily ch eapen ed if too much store is
set by it". A new afterw ord dea ls with Eliot
the reac tiona ry social thinker. Despit e his
avowed lack of sy mpa thy, Menand is judi-
ciou s: on the question of anti-Sem itism he
gra nts the poetry its auto no my, and find s
Eliot's "intellectualised politics" unm ali g-
nant.
Unfor tunately, the publi sh er s have for got-
ten that the insert ion of twent y-fi ve pages
before the footn otes requi red an upd ated
index.
J E RE M Y NOEL-To D
Literature
Edith Wharton
T HE DEM A NDI N G DEAD
More stories of terro r and the supernatural
Edited by Peter Haining
217pp . Peter Owen. Paperback, £ 10.95.
978 0 7206 1272 1
E dith Wh arton was a fearful chi ld, plag ued
by night ter ror s and affli cted by the
belief that a giga ntic wo lf lay slave ring
ben eath her bed. At the age of eight, she co m-
plained of "some ind efin abl e me nace forever
doggin g my steps ". Small wonde r that, when
she grew up , she sho uld pro duce, alongs ide
her celeb rated novels, a conside ra ble numb er
of ghos t stor ies .
The Demanding Dead is the second vo l-
ume of Wh arton ' s tales from Peter Owen,
who see m to have a special int erest in a ce r-
tain spe cies of fin-de-siecle fant asy, havin g
repri nted negl ected cur ios by Bram Sto ker,
Wilkie Co llins and H. Rid er Haggard. More
subtle than those stable mates, Wh art on ' s sto-
ries re ly on shadows and insinuation instead
of ex plicit terro r ; but altho ug h all are effec -
tive and unn er ving, they lack , perh ap s, that
twi st of na stin ess which makes for the very
best ex amples of the genre .
In "Kerfo l", a dil apid ated Fre nch man sion ,
oppressed by the "s hee r weig ht of man y asso-
ciated lives and deaths" , is haunted by a
legion of spe ctra l dogs; in "T he Moving Fin -
ge r", the port rait of a beloved wife continues
to age after her dea th to the shoc k of the narra-
tor who "had never bef ore known how com -
pletel y the dead may surv ive "; and in "M r
Jon es", the presence of a path ol ogicall y faith-
fu l o ld retain er lingers in an ances tra l hom e
where the decea sed are " piled up lik e dead
TL S OCTO BER 5 2007
leaves, layer s and layer s of them , to preser ve
so me thing forever budding und ern eath ". T he
mos t di squ ietin g piece here is " All Sou ls" ,
the accoun t of a wo ma n dri ven from her
hou se by the annua l appearance of an elder ly
woma n on All Souls' Eve, the last nigh t of
Oc tobe r when the dea d are said to wa lk
among the livin g. It was the final story that
W har to n eve r wro te , completed a few mo nths
be fore her death in 1937, and has abo ut it a
pec ulia r qu alit y of tran slu cen ce, a sense of
permeability between thi s worl d and the next ,
as thou gh its author had so me presenti ment
of how so on she wo uld her self be pa ssin g
beyond the veil.
J O N BA R N ES
Memoirs
Katrin Himmler
T H E HIM MLER B ROTHE RS
A Ger man family history
333 pp. Macmill an. £14.99 .
978 0 230 52907 6
n their 200 4 book Schweigen die Tater,
I reden die Enkel (If the Perp etrator s Won't
Spea k, the Gra ndchildre n Will), C laud ia
Brunner and Uwe vo n Seltmann take their
Nazi great-uncle and gra ndfa ther res pec -
tively to task. In The Himmler Brothers,
Katri n Him ml er goes a step furth er. Her book
focu ses not ju st on her grea t-uncle , SS leader
Heinrich Himml er , but also on his two
bro thers , Ge bhar d (the eldes t) and Erns t (the
younges t), and unra vels wha t, one sus pe cts ,
is a very typic al post- war Ge rma n famil y
legend .
Katrin Him mler grew up in the belief that
her gra ndfa ther Erns t and great-uncle Geb-
hard were innoc ent of any sig nifica nt invol ve-
ment in Nazism: Heinri ch becam e the famil y
sca peg oat. A trip to the Fede ral Arch ives in
1987, where Katr in - at her fath er' s instiga-
tion - hoped to find out mor e ab out gra nd-
fath er Erns t, trigger ed a lon g investi gati on
into the conduc t of all thr ee Himmler broth-
ers during the Th ird Re ich. Cha nce fin din gs,
suc h as a ches t of phot ograph s and other
doc umen ts coll ected by her gra ndmo ther,
and arc hive research led her to the so beri ng
co ncl usion that Erns t and Ge bhar d, who
ben efit ed aga in and again fro m nepoti sm
thanks to their influ ent ial broth er Heinri ch ,
we re ac tive high up in a ra nge of Naz i organi-
zations.
Un like Heinri ch , neith er Erns t nor Ge b-
hard was direc tly guilty of atroc ities . Never-
theless, like seve ra l of their fri end s, associ-
ates and neighbours, they were cogs in the
nationa list-rac ist whee l which made Hein-
rich 's crimes possibl e. A ll three brothers
sha red a similar back ground of nation ali sm
an d anti-rep ublica nism, and the sa me fascin a-
tion for the milit ar y and the paramilitary. In
thi s, they we re largely sup ported by their
headmaster fath er. Katrin Himmler estab-
lishes that Heinrich, in his beliefs, was not
the exception in the famil y. Th e tendenc y in
famil y myth ol ogy to make a di stincti on
bet ween Heinrich ' s guilt and the " harmless-
ness". or eve n innoc enc e, of his immediate
famil y was a stra tegy of exc ulpa tion. For
ho w many other Ge rma n families di d accept-
in g the crim ina lity of one of their members
co me wi th the ben efit of abso lving all others?
Katrin Hi mml er, in her ep ilogue, refers to
wha t the Isra eli psycho log ist Dan Bar-On has
27
ca lled the " wall of silence" we ighing " heav-
ily on the families of the vic tims and their
opp ressors" . Bo th Ka trin 's hu sband , the so n
of a Jew who survived the Warsaw ghe tto,
and she herself grew up with this silence. In
The Himmler Brothers she breaks the silence
in a precise and studied way , ca refully mar-
sha lling the fact s and letting them speak for
them selves.
BI LL N IVEN
Art History
Dore Ashton and Joan Banach, editors
THE W RITI N GS OF R O BE RT
MO THERWELL
387 pp. Berke ley: University
of California Press. $29 .95.
978 0 520 25048 2
A s passion ate and ges tura l as his wor k
often was, thi s co llectio n shows Robert
Mother well to have been cau tiou s and ce re-
bral in his writing, with littl e of the
machi smo and love of decl amation which
often affl icted his cont emporari es. On Mo th-
erwe ll 's readin g, mo de rn art, and in par ti-
cular the wor k of the " New York Sc hoo l" (a
ter m he see ms to have co ined, or at least pop-
ularized, an d which at any rate he preferred
to "Abstract Expressionis m" and "action
painting" ), was "a me taphor for reality",
poi sed so mew here between philoso phy an d
poetry. Qu estion s of pr esenc e, embodime nt,
repr esentation and the res t were all very we ll,
but it was the emo tions a pictu re co uld co m-
muni cate wh ich fin all y ma ttered. M oth er well
qu otes Alfred North Whiteh ead, whose ideas
still domi nated Har vard' s phil osoph y de par t-
ment whe n Moth erwell di d his doctora te in
the late 1930 s: " the fun ct ion of abstrac tion is
emphasis ".
Th er e ' s a pleas ing co unterpo int in these
pages bet ween engagemen t an d det achm ent.
More than o nce Mo the rwe ll obse rves that
any artis t worth his or her sa lt has "c ritica l"
instincts about art , and that tho se instin cts
will and should fin d ex press ion in the art ist' s
work. The pr im acy of working art ists ove r
int ellectu als is often implicit. But it is rare
indeed to find a working art ist - and by any
token a fairl y illu striou s one - who can ver-
ball y ex press a critica l outloo k with the
cl arity of ph rase and nu anced thinki ng
Moth er well shows her e.
Th at is not to say that the book doesn 't go
on a bit. M oth er well is wor th readin g, an d at
len gth , both o n ge neral issu es and on the
wor k of indi vid ua l artis ts (he writes abo ut art-
ists he knew well with affection and respect,
but shrewdly and without gushing; he also
writes about artists whose wor k he adm ires
as if they were his pe rson al frien ds). But suc h
an ex ha ustive se lection does tend to mean he
rep eats him self. Putting the writing in
rough ly chronologica l orde r ma y we ll show
his development over the cou rse of his
ca ree r, an d cert ainl y does illu strate an evo lv-
ing res ponse to cha ngi ng times (eve n if m uch
of the late stuff is mem oir and anec do tage) -
but it does mak e it hard er for the reader to
say , for ex amp le, "No Statement s on Mod ern-
ism tod ay, please" . Still, as heft y as it is, the
book deser ves to sit o n a spec ia l she lf in your
study or studi o, alo ngs ide , may be , Dela-
croi x' s j ournals, Ma tisses No tes of a Painter
and Richt er' s The Daily Practice ofPainting .
K EI TH MILLE R
28
Nature's man
he Netherlandish painters of the fif-
T teenth and sixteenth centuries, despite
their remarkable creativity, have
tended to be overshadowe d by their Italian con-
temporaries. By way of exp lanation one might
point to the critical influence of Jaco b Burck-
hardt and Bernard Berenson; to memories of
Rome; Northern European s' centuries-long
infatuati on with Italy, eventually instituti onal-
ized in the Grand Tour; and those traditions of
taste that encourage admiration for a Van
Eyck, but love for a Botticelli. That the result
is an injustice, however, is made clear by Pat-
inir and the Invention of Landscape. When,
before, has one of the most important muse-
ums in the world mount ed a promin ent show
devoted to a Western artist not even men-
tioned in such standard surveys of the history
of art as those by Ernst Gom brich and (more
recently) Hugh Honour and John Fleming?
Yet that is preci sely what the Prado has
done for Joachi m Patinir, and with goo d
reaso n. Ant werp in the ea rly l 500 s, like
nearby Bruges during the prev ious ce ntury ,
was one of the most brilli ant centres of artis-
tic produ ction and informed patron age in
Europe. Thei r sty les and emphases may have
differed from their Italian co unterp art s, but
the works of these Neth erlandish painters
were marked out by an openness to innova-
tion, and a mas tery of space, meticulous
detail and human charac ter second to none.
Patinir was clearly a maj or and influ ential
prese nce among these gifted artists.
Born in the early l480s, he had settled in
A ntwerp by 1515, when we first hear of him
admitted as a master into the pa inters' guild
of St Luk e. Onl y one of his surviving paint-
ings, sketchier than the mature wor ks, is
thought to date from before 1515, yet he was
to die ju st nine years later. A few pictures
may have been lost, but give n the attention to
det ail charac ter istic of hi s art, it is no t too
surp rising that on ly twenty-nin e survivi ng
wor ks are now thought to have co me either
fro m his ow n hand or under supervision from
hi s workshop. Of these, twent y-one have
been gathered at the Prado, formin g the larg-
es t eve r displ ay of his oeuvre.
What is it that entitles Patinir to such a trib-
ute? " Firsts" are notoriously difficult to sus-
tain, but those who have studied him at
length see m to agree that, notwith standin g
the usual ca utions about definiti ons, one can
rega rd him as Europe 's fir st "landscape
arti st". Durer used the ter m to describ e him ,
and although people had spoken of land-
scapes ear lier, this was the first painter who
devoted his entire career to the genre . Indeed ,
whe never Patinir wa nted a figure of any size
in one of hi s panel s, he had it painted by
others - most notably by his friend Quentin
Ma ssys. A nd there is ev idence that he, in
turn , provided landscapes for M assys.
It is true that Patinir always tell s a story ,
but - as more than one of the dozen or so
scholars involved in the catalogue point s out
- what he presents is a land scape with a saint
rather than a saint with a land scape. No body
questions whether Claude was a land scape
painter ju st beca use sma ll figur es in a huge
vista represent Jacob at the Well , or Tobias
and the A ngel. Patinir deserves no less a con -
ART HISTORY
T HE O D O RE K. R AB B
PATIN I R AN D T HE I N V E NTI O N
OF L A ND S C A P E
M useo del Prad o, Mad rid, un til Octob er 7
A le ja n d r o V e r g a r a, e di t or
PAT IN I R AN D T HE I NV E NTIO N
OF L A ND S C A P E
404pp. Museo del Prado . €40.
978 84 96209 9 1 6
" Charon Crossing the River Styx", c 1515-24
sideration. He dwarfs St Jerom e, see n from
high above, with gigantic rock s, country spec ulation is used to unravel referenc es. inir lays before us. Co mbining pagan and
sce nes, villages and town s, seas capes and Patinir certainly knew Bosch, and his Ch ristian mytholo gy, he shows Charo n
views that stretch to the far horizon. One ca n- Cerberus and Devils Tor turing St Anth on y taking a soul across a vast river. T iny demons
not imagine either his patron s or subsequent de monstrate his mastery of im ages of evil. populate a fie ry he ll, and diminutive ange ls
viewe rs bei ng drawn to his work by any thing But eve n these crucia l signp osts to a story stand in an earthly paradise. All seem inconse-
other than the sweep of hi s vision and the fas- fade to insignific anc e within enormous land- quenti al beside the gra nde ur of peaceful for-
cinating details that suffuse his panels. scapes . Lot' s famil y, for instance, almos t van- es ts, water and sky . Like Claude or Ruysdael
For there is no question that he was an art- ishes amid the grey rock s and the flaming col- a century later , Patinir makes his people
ist of the very highest abilities. Within a few our s of Sodom and Gom orrah. The majesty almo st incid ent al to the wor ld aro und them. It
square inches Patinir crea tes an entire port of these sce nes rend ers almos t triflin g the was Burckhardt who argued that the Ren ais-
city, with bu stling shipya rds and dock s. A attempt to explica te the minu scule referent s. sance "discovered" nature. What this exhibi-
few deft strokes sugges t eve ry single stalk in Alth ough the catalog ue focu ses on Patinir, tion proves is that Patinir , perh aps earlier
a whea tfield. Mult ihued river s, mount ain s, the exhibition present s twenty-seven other than any other artist, embodied that process.
rock s and skies evo ke atmos phere as well as works with compl ex land scapes that put him In paintin g after painting, he demo nstrated
natur e. We see the many indi vidu al leaves, in contex t or revea l his influence . No ne, how- how scintillating natur e could be, in its ow n
some windblow n, some still, of a tree ju st eve r, com es clo se to the imm ensity that Pat- right, as a subject for art.
three inches high . Landscapes pass throu gh
different shades of blue as they move
towards the far-off hori zon that termi nates
eve ry sce ne; there, a bright slash of white pro-
THE ARTHUR MILLER CENTRE
Lecture Theatre1 Universityof EastAnglia Norwich
mises etern ity below the echoing blu e of the
sky. Mea nw hile, people, bird s and anima ls All events begin at 7pm.
come to life with ju st a few lick s of paint.
With all of life as his subjec t, Patinir Season Tickets
always has multipl e stories to tell. After the £35 (Students and
Michael ONDAATdE
Concessions £30)
pioneer studen t of hi s work, Robert Koch, October 1
established the basic oeuv re in 1968, Robert Individual Tlckets
£5 (no co ncessionary
Falkenburg, in a sugges tive mon ograph , rate)
arg ued that Pa tinirs pictures reflec ted the l"roof of el igibilily for
concessions will be
Nawal EL SAADAWI
them e of life' s journ ey, with its pitfalls and
prom ises. Roads, paths and travellers are
requ ired
October 16
Available in
indeed alm ost omniprese nt. Patinir' s favo ur- advance from the
ite subje ct is the Res t on the Flight to Egyp t.
He also paint s Charo n, and St Christop her;
Box Office, sited
in Union House ,
UEA
Doris LESSING
eve n St Jerom e, in a cave but hardl y a desert , Ope n 1Dam · Spm October 24
wee kdays term l ime,
is not too far from people passing by. An d 12noo n- 3pm
vacatio ns
Patinir ca nnot resist a tiny reference, in the
background , to the story of Jerome helpin g a
Telephon e:
01603 508050
P DdAMES
merchant' s ca ravan (incl uding camels), a tale (Credil and debrt card
October 31
paymentsaresubjecl
taken from the Golden Legend, then rece ntly lo a booking fee)
published in Flemish in Ant werp.
Details like these requi re Ga lilea n eyes if
By Post:
Box Office, Union Claire TOMALlN
House , UEA,
they are to be see n from behind the Prado' s
ropes. Th is is a case where the catalogue,
Norwich NR4 7T J
(Cheques payable 10:
and Michael FRAYN
beautifully illustrated , ca n reveal more than SUS (EA) Ltd.
Please enclose a
November 14
the wo rks them selves. The hook is also a sta mped addressed
envelope)
mine of inform ation, scientific and inter-
pretive , that goes well beyond Koch ' s pio- Roy HATTERSLEY
neerin g study. Inevitably, though, it suffers November 21
from the occas ional inconsistency of a wor k
by so many hands, and it is also much taken -
as is most of the literatu re on Netherlan dish Stephen POLlAKOFF
art - with symbo lic meanin gs. The troubl e is
that these are often so ambiguous that,
November 28
although one may be able to sugges t what Pat-
inir intended, it is not clear who else would
UEA Michael HOLROYD
have und erstood him. Is an owl a benign or a
malign sym bol? A salamander? A goa t? We
ca nnot tell for sure, though much learned -
NORWICH
December 5
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
 AWARDS &
FELLOWSHIPS

The TLSregrets that it printed an aid advertisement in issues24th August and 28th September

Princeton University

Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies

http://dav.princeton.edul

Cultures and Institutions in Motion

During the academic years 2008/0 9 and 2009/ 10 the Shelb y Cull om Davis Center for Historical Studies will focus on the problem of cultu res and institu tions in moti on. How have ideas,
institution s, structures, and artif acts moved across social and geogr aphi cal space? How have they intersected with their new environments? How have they been adapted, resituated ,
hybridized, and tran sformed in processes of moti on? The field of inquiry includes tran snation al history but is not limited to it. Problems could include the diffu sion of religious and cultural
practices, the migration of technologie s and object s, the circulation of ideas , traditi ons , and aesthetic forms , the transfer of policies and legal practi ces, the dynami cs of traveling social
movements , historie s of rec eption, appropriation, and encounter, and the creation of transloc al networks and intermediaries. As in the past, we hope to address this problem from a wide
variety of periods and places, from prehi story to the pre sent and from all parts of the world. Scholars from all discipline s with an intere st in the topic as an historical phen omenon are invited
to apply.

The Center will offer a limited number of research fellowships for one or two semesters, running from September to January and from Febru ary to June , designed both for senior scholars
and for highl y recommended younger scholars who have finished their dissertations by the application deadlines . Fello ws are expected to live in Princeton in order to take an active part in
the intelle ctual interchange with other members of the Seminar. Fund s are limited, and candidates are, therefo re , strongly urged to apply to other grant-giving institutions as well as the
Center, if they wish to come for a full year.

Written inquiries should be addressed to the Manager, Shelb y Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studie s, Department of Histo ry, 136 Dickins on Hall, Princ eton University, Prince ton , NJ
08544-10 17, U.S.A. The deadline for applications and letters of recommendation for fellowship s for 200 8/2009 is December I, 2007. Schol ars who would like to offer a paper to one of the
weekly Seminars are asked to send a brief description of their proposal and current curriculum vitae to the Director.

Appli cations can be made online at http://dav.princeton.edu/prograrnleI4/fell owship_informatLhtmI.Princeton University is an equ al opportunity emplo yer and complies with applicable
EEO and affirma tive action reg ulations. Fur general infurma tiun abuut applying tu Princeton and huw tu self-identify, see http ://web.princetun .edulsites/duf/Applic antslnfu.htm . Plea se note
that we will not accept faxed appli cations.

Daniel T. Rodgers
Director 2008-12

THE LONDON HELLENIC SOCIETY

~ Washmgton University in St.lDuis
The 2006John D. Criticos Annual Prize
ARTS & SCIENCES Sponsored by the Criticos-Foteinelli Foundation

Modeling Interdi sciplinary Inquiry: £10,000 or equivalent in US$

Th e London Hellen ic Society invites submi ssions f or the 2006 John D. Criticos Prize
A Postdoctoral Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences established in 1996 by one of its f ounders.

The Soci ety is pleased to announce that the 2005 Criticos Prize was awarded to Robert
Washingto n University announces the eight year of Modeling Int erdisciplinary Inquiry, an Andrew W. Mellon Parker for Polytheism and Society at A thens (Oxford UP).
Foundat io n Postdoctoral Fellowship Program de signe d to encourage interd isciplinary scho larship and teaching
Th e 2006 Criticos Prize will be awarded to a writer, artist or researcher for an original
acros s the humanities and social sciences. We invite applications from recen t Ph.D.s for the posit ion s as Fellow. work on Helle nic culture (Ancient, Helle nistic, Byzantine or Mo dem) publi shed in 2006 .
In September 2008, the selected Fellows will join our con tinuing Fellow in order to par ticipate in the Areas of particular interest to the sponsors are Art , Archaeology, Art History, History
and Literatur e, particularly fi ction (in pros e or poetry) insp ired by and related to Hel-
Un iversitv's ongoing interdisciplinary programs an d semi nars. The Fellows will receive a two year appointment lenic culture . In addition to individ ual applicants , the Priz e is also open to submissions
with a stipend beginn ing at $43, 150 per year. Postdoc toral Fellows have an opportnn ity to plan and pursue by publishers established in the Ij.K; USA and Greece.
their own continuing research in association with a senior faculty member at Washington University, and , over
Works are ju dged by a compe tent panel of experts in each field appointed by the Society.
the course of thei r two-year appoint ment, to teach three underg raduate course s in their ho me discipline and to The winn er of the 2006 Prize will be announced before Jun e 1st, 2007.
collabo rate in an interdisciplinar y theory and met hod s work shop.
S ubmissions for the 2006 prize sh ould be made no later than January 31st, 200 7 to:
The London Hellen ic Socie ty, 'Criticos Prize ', 11 Storm ont R oad, London N6 4N S.
There is no app licatio n form , but furth er info rma tion on Model ing Interdisciplinar y Inquiry is available on the A ll enqu iries sh ould be sent to th is addr ess
or [ axe d to +44·20·84427000 or +30·210· 7298494
web at http: //www.ar1sci.wnstl.edn /-szwicker/Mellon _Postdocto raLProgram.htm l. Applicants shoul d submit a
cover lett er, a description of the ir research pro gram (no more tha n three single-spaced pages), a brief proposal
for the seminar in the ory and methods, a curriculum vitae, an d three letters of recommendation . All ma teria ls
mus t be submitt ed in paper copy.
LECTURES &
Submit materials by December 1,2007, to
MEETINGS
Steven Zwicker (szwicker@artsci.wustl.edu) Department of English
Washington University, Campus Box 1122 One Brookings Drive, St. Louis MO 63130 fi j INSTIT UT E OF
Washington University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer.
Employment eligibility verification requested upon hire.
U E!!!~'<2~gEt.n:
PRE SENTS
The 2n d Chan dari a Lecture
S T E VE N PIN K E R I1ar vard University
wil l give a Lectu re en title d
Ga m es People Play: Indirect Sp ee ch
as a 'Villdow into So ci al Relationships
BOOKS & PRINTS ACCOMM ODAnON POETRY on Mo nday 15 Octob er 2007, 6.00 p.m .
jeffrey Hall, Institute of Educ atio n, WC 1
.A CATAWGUE OF MAINLY FIRST .PRIVATE PATRO:'IJ/SPONSOR sought by Chair: Pro fessor Tim Cran e Di rector of th e In stitute of Phil o so ph y
EDITIO:'IJS Varied subject s including internationally known English poet, author of over
Antiquarian, lllustrated, Science Fiction & 20 books and winner of many awards, now To be follo we d by a reception
Literary Periodicals available from I D EDRICH, . Modern house , central London, 2 bdnn , embarking on two major new works. All welcom e . Ad mi s sion fr ee witho u t tt ck cr
17 Selsdon Road, London, GB. Ell 2QE garden; £1l50 pcm, for six months. Email stephdra@btintemet.com orplease respond to box www.phtlosophv.sas.ac.uk
idedrich@idedrich.co.uk mustein@gmail.com number 11919
 AWARDS &
FELLOWSHIPS

BEINECKE
Rare 800k & Manuscript Library
2008-2009
VISITING FELLOWSHIPS YALE UNIVERSIT Y
The Beincckc Rare Rook & Manusc ript Librar y offers short-term fellowship s to support visitin g The following nam ed fellowships are among those to be aw arded:
scholars pursuing post-doc toral or equivalent research in its collecti ons. The Beinecke Lihrary Frederi ck v... Bein ecke Fellow ship ill We stern Ame ricana
is Yale University' s principal repository for literary papers, and for early manuscript s and rare Hcrmann Broch Fello wship in modern Ger man literature
hooks in the fields of literature, theology, history , and the natural sciences. For more informati on H.D. Fell owship in English o r American literature
about the Bcincckc Librar y and its co llections. plea se visit our wcbsitc: www.library.yale.edu/ Jona than Edwar ds Fellowship in the Jonath an Edwar ds Papers or related areas of Amer ican religious history
beinecke/, Eli zabethan Club f ellowship in the literature or hist ory of the English or European Re naissance
Bdith and Richard t-rench Fellowsh ip
The fellowships, which pay fo r tra vel to and from New Haven and a living allowanc e of $4,000 D onald C. Gallup Fellowship in American literature
per month , are designed to pro vide access to the librar y for scholars who live outside the greater A. Bartlett G iamatti l-ellow ship
New Haven area. Stud ent s enrolled in degree programs arc ineligibl e. Arc hibald Hanna. Jr. Fello wship in American history
John D. and Rose H. Jackson Fel low ship
Fellowship s. normally grant ed for onc month, must be taken up between September and May . Jackson Brothers Fellow ship
Recipi ent s are expected to be in re sidence duri ng the period of their awar d and are encour aged H.P. Kraus Fell owship in early hoo ks & manuscripts
to parti cipate in the activities of Yale Universi ty. Czc slaw Milo sz Fellow ship
Laura K. and Val crian Lada-M ocarski Fello wship
An applicat ion form ca n be downlo aded from the Bcincckc Library' s wcb sitc . In addi tion to the Jumcs M. Osborn Fellowship in Englis h litera ture an d history
appli cation form, applicant s are asked to submit a curr iculum vitae and a hrief research propo sal Frcdcrick A. and Marion S. Pottle Fello wship in 18th-ce ntury British stud ies
(not to excee d three pages). The proposal should em phasi ze the re latio nship or the Bcineckc Ree se fe llowship in Amer ican bibliograph y and the history of the boo k in the Americas
collect ions to the project. Applic ants should also arrang e to ha ve two confident ial lett ers of Bctsy Bcincckc Shir lcy Fello wship in A merica n childre n's literature
recom mendation sent to the Director. These letters must specifically address the merits of the Thornton Wilder Fello wship in Wilder studies
Bcineckc resea rch proj ect. Marjoric G. Wynne Fellows hip in British literature

Award s will be announced in March 2008 for the period

Appli cation materi als must be recei ved by December 15,2007.
September 2008 - May 200 9.
App lication materials shou ld he sent to:
http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/ Director , Beine cke Library , Yale Univers ity,
e-mail: beineeke.fellowships @yale.edu phone: (203)432-2956 1'.0. Box 208240, New Haven , er 06520- 8240, USA

EVENTS BUSINESS
SERVICES
, UN IVERSITY OF LONDON THE ROYAL ~oya l Sor.lol:y o f T.ite r. l u r e .Bespoke Bookca ses and other fitted furnitur e
3~); SCHO O L OF ADVA:-.ICED STU DY SOC IETY tailor-made to your taste and interior. See
www.caligaricabinets.co.uk
"'1 INSTITUTE of ENGLISH STUDIES
Conferences, Autumn 2007:
18 -19 October 2007: TIle Cu Il u r e of the P u b lis h e r 's Serie s
Behaving badly HOLIDAYS
26 O ctobe r 20 0 7 : Book Hist o ry Re se ar ch Ne twork Stu dy D ay Monday 15 October at 6.30pm • Rome - historical centre - one bedroom apart-
ment available for short term rental . Images on
17 November 2007 :]ane Austen and Endings http://www.paulahowarth .net
Royal Society/Royal Society of Lite rat ure joi nt even t
8 December 2 0 07 : T e aching the History o f the Book to
Un d e rg r ad ua t e s Chaired by Professo r Uta FrIt h FRS To b ook
The HiIda Hulme Memorial Lecture. John Banville, James Blair, Terrie Moffitt, and Fay W eldon explore your TLS Classified
4 October 2 007, 6 .00pm: "T h o m a s Hardy: Poet a n d Novelist" , by the crimina l conundrum in this discussion w hich w ill address such
Cl ai r e To ma lin (at the Brun e i G all e ry Lecture The atre , SO AS) advertisement
quest ions as w hat does it mean to be crim inally Insane.
John Coffin Memorial Poetry Readings, Autumn 2007: with FREE
Admission free - no ticket or advance booking required.
12 October 2007 , 6 .00pm: Les Murray (at University o f London online insertion,
Se n at e Ho u se)
IS Novembe r 20 07, 5 .00pm: Simo n Armit age ( at Oxfor d Broo ke s The Royal Society please contact
Uni ve rsit y Poetry Ce ntre) 6-9 Carlton House Terrace Lucy Sma rt:
For enquiries, conference registration and venue London SW1 Y 5AG
information: Tel: 0207451 2683 02077824975
http:/ /ies.sas.ac.uk/events;Tel: +44 (0)20 7862 8675 Email: events@royalsoc.ac.uk
E-mail: jon.millington@sas.ac .uk
Registered Charity No 207043

MISCELLANEOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS
Join The Mar/owe Society!
The Saif Ghobash - Banipal Prize
Christopher Marlowe 1564 - ?1593
Poet, playwright , and spy - a mysterious, controversial figure in Elizabethan
for Arabic Literary Translation
literature, politics, and religion, and the founder of English drama . £2,000 ANNUAL AWARD TO TRANSLATOR
Did he die in Deptford in 1593? Come andjoio the debate. W ith the judging of entries for the 2007 prize now under
Learn with us about this versatile genius, and help us find out more about his life. w ay we w elco me entries fo r the 2 0 0 8 prize fro m publi shers
01 the London Book Fair.
JOIN NOW and you will recei ve our Newsletters , and have
access to our Research Journals and Mar lowe Library. Closing dol e. 3 1 Jonuory 2008
Annual subscription £15 (concessions £10) Overseas £20
For full rules a nd condifi on s see www. ba nipa ltrust.o rg .uk

The Marlowe Society and www.socie tyo fou tho rs.net o r wr ite to Banip al Trust for
Arab Literoture, PO Box 22300, London W 13 8ZQ .
website www.marlow6soci ety.org
 31

Jon Barness first novel, The So mna mbulist, is now Professor of Eng lish at the University introdu ction to the Eve ry man edition of G ary Sh effie ld is Professor of Wa r Studies at
was pub lished earlier th is yea r. of Sheffie ld . Hi s book P roust' s En glish was V . S . Na ipaul's A House for M r Biswas, the University of Birmingham . He is the co-
pub lished in 2005 and the th ird volume of pub lished in 1995. editor of Douglas Haig: War diaries and
A. J. Bo yle is Professor of C lass ics at the The Poems of Bro wning, of whi ch he is letters 1914- 1918, 2005.
University of Sou thern California. He is the co- ed itor , came out last yea r. He is curr en tly K eith M ille r is a freelanc e writer living in
autho r or editor of twen ty-one books on wor king on a book about the figur e of the London. Hi s book about St Peter ' s Basilic a M ichael Silk is Professor of Class ica l and
Rom an literature and the editor of the singe r in English poetry. wa s pu blished earlier this year. Co mparative Literature, and from 1991 to
classic al liter ary jo urn al, Ramu s. His next 2006 was Professor of Gr eek Lan gu age and
book, Octa via: Attributed to Seneca , will be M ira nda K aufmann is a doc toral stude nt at Bill Niven is Professor of Co ntempo rary Literature at Kin g' s College Lond on. Work
pub lished next yea r. Christ Church, Oxford. Germ an Studies at Nottin gh am Trent in progress includes Sta nda rd Languages
Unive rsity. Hi s bo ok Th e Bu chen wald Child: an d Language Standards : Greek, past
Druin Burch is a hospital phy sician and a M ichae l K erri gan ' s Th e History of Death truth, fi ction and pro paganda was pub lished an d prese nt, co-edited with Alexandra
teacher at the Unive rs ity of Oxford . will be pub lished in Nove mber. His other last year. Ge orgako poulou.
book s include Cha rles Dar win 's Voyage of
K atharine C raik is a Senior Lecturer in the Beagle: The jo urna ls that revea led J erem y Noe l-T od is a postgrad uate stude nt Kathryn Suthe rland is Profess or of English
Early Mod ern Litera ture at Oxford Brookes Nat ure 's gra nd plan , 2005 , and Lewis and at the Unive rsity of Ca mbridge and a form er at St Ann e' s College, Oxford . Her book l an e
University. Her book Read ing Sensations in Cla rk: Blazin g a trail throu gh the A meri can assistan t editor of A rete. Au sten 's Textu al Lives: From Aeschylus to
Ea rly Mod ern England was pub lished earlier Wes t, 2004 . Bollywood was pub lished in 2005 .
thi s ye ar. Sean O 'Brien ' s latest co llecti on of poems
Tadzio Martin Ko elh ' s first nov el Fate 's Th e Drown ed Book app ear ed last mont h. Mi ha ly Szegedy -Maszak is Professor of Com-
J am es Davidson is Reader in Ancien t Lieutenant was a finalist for the Pirate ' s Andrew Mar vell : Poem s selec ted by Sean parative Literature, Eiitviis Lorand University,
Histor y at the Univers ity of War wick and All ey Faulkner Soc iety' s William Faulkner/ 0 'Brien will be publ ished next yea r. Budapest, and Professor of Ce ntral Euras ian
author of Courtes ans and Fish cakes: Th e Will iam Wi sdom Award in 200 3 and the Studi es, Indiana University, Bloomington.
co nsuming passions of Classical Athen s, Santa Fe W riters' Proj ect Award in 2004. E r ic Ormsb y is the auth or of Facsimil es of
wh ich was pub lished in 1997. He is cur rently Tim e: Essays on poetry and tran slat ion, l an T albot has pub lished extensive ly on Paki-
working on Th e Greeks and Gree k Love and K aren L atimer is Dep uty Sc ienc e Libra rian 200 I. His Tim e 's Cove nant: Se lec ted poems, stan. His most recent work is The Dead ly
a tra nslation of so me Attic spee ches . at the Sci ence Library, the Queen ' s was pu bli shed last ye ar. Emb race: Religion, politics and violence in
Unive rsity, Belfast. India and Paki stan 1947- 2002, pu blished
Lindsay Du guid is the Fiction editor of the T heo do re K. Rabb is Professor of Hi stor y at ear lier this year.
TLS . L au ri e Magui r e is a Tutor ial Fellow in Princ eton Unive rsity . Hi s mo st recent book ,
Eng lish at M agd alen Co llege, Oxford . Her Th e Last Days of the Renai ssance: And the Bri an Vicke rs was eo-founder and first
Judith Fl anders ' s mos t recen t book, Shakespeare 's Na mes will be published this ma rch to modernity, was reissued in President of the Intern ational Soc iety for
Consum ing Passion s: Leisur e and pleasu re month. paperb ack earlier this year. the History of Rhetoric , which has j ust cele-
in Victori an Britain , was published earlier brated its thirtieth anniversary . His book s
this ye ar. No ra M ahon y has a BA in Italian and Sameer R ahim works at the Daily include Toward s Gree k Tragedy, 1973, In
Fre nch from Trin ity Co llege Dub lin . She Teleg raph . Def ence of Rheto ric (rev ised edition, 1997)
John G reening ' s Th e Hom e Key was wor ks in publi shing and is a freelanc e writer and English Renaissance Literary Cri ticism ,
pub lished in 200 3. He is currently work ing and research er. M a rtin Sch ifi no is a freelance j ourn alist 1999.
on a new co llection , Iceland Spar. living in London. Hi s translation of Thi s
David Mason ' s verse novel , Ludl ow, was Breathing World by Jose Lu is de Juan was J an e Yeh ' s first collectionof poem s,
H . J. J ac kso n' s mo st recent boo k is publ ished ea rlie r this year. pub lished this year. Marabou, was pub lished in 2005 . She is a
Rom anti c R eaders, 2005. She ha s served as lecturer in Creative Wr iting at Kingston
editor or co -ed itor of six volumes of the K arl M iller founded the London Review of An d r ew Sc ull has writte n ex te nsive ly on the Unive rsity, London.
Bo llin gen Edition of the Collec ted Works of Boo ks and edited it for its fir st ten yea rs. Hi s histor y of psychiatry from the eightee nth
S. T. Co leridge . recent books include The Elec tric Shepherd: through to the twent ieth cen tur y. His bo ok M uriel Za gh a ' s French translations include
A likeness of l am es Hogg, 200 3, and a mem- Madh ouse: A tragic tale of megaloma nia Na thanie l Hawthorne 's Tales, pub lished in
Daniel K a rlin has tau ght at Univers ity a ir, Da rk Ho rses: A n experience of litera ry an d modern medicine appeare d in a new 1996. She is writing a book about the cultura l
College London and Boston Unive rs ity, and journalism , pu blished in 1998. He wro te the paperb ack edition last month. origin s of the "Eternal Frenchwoma n" .

TLS C ROSSWORD 713 M

A
0 L
Y
L F
L
L A
R
N 0
0
E R
A
S
V 0
A CROSS DOWN Z A C H A R I A H G R E T A
I Writers stall first essay in ship (7) I Sort of boo k frying produced using E I R A N E R P
P L A N E T B A R DO L P H
5 Racine with pupil in code d form, and crayo n (6)
P P N A N
uncoded (2, 5) 2 "Mary .. . said unto him - ; which is
A F L 0 A T A Y R S H I R E
9 Thieving character carries the mark of to say, Ma ster" iSt John's Gospel) (7) A T F I E N
Cain (9) 3 Lancaster destination reconnoitred by U 0 B W H E E L S P R E A 0
to Auden libretto showe d his progress (5) Yeats (9) E 0 S U U

11 Life' s was celebrated by Gissing and 4 Dreadful siren alarms miser (5, 6) R E H 0 B 0 T H A L I S o N
L E 0 I L C T S
Knight (5) 5 Fine art includin g musical gift (3)
I A M B S V A I S H N A V A
12 Spin on recording of letters from Lewis 6 Sailors holding a Cava lier poet (5)
N E 0 A Z R E N
(9) 7 Age of James (7)
••• A M E L I A S E 0 L E Y
14 In which a poet gets some guidance 8 Princely refugee from Happy Valley
from St Bernard (6, 8) (8) SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 109
17 The Corp se in the Van, perhaps (V. S. 13 Collection of castles on corner? What a
Pritchett) (4, 3, 7) farce .. . (7,4) The winner of Crosswo rd 709 is
2 1 We ird arty quean in play takes on two 15 Place in Paris recalled by Proust (9) Tony Emu, lslip,
wives (9) 16 Publications said to be French, I find,
23 Instrum entalist in Mozart flute reco rd- in very long periods (8)
ing (5) 18 Be in yearly account like Ms Lee in her
24 Pope' s game analysed by Sarah Battle (5) tomb by the sea (7) Th e sender of the first correc t
25 Whence came Giraudoux'x earliest 19 Reviewed as neat (no rocks) (7) solution ope ned on Novembe r 2
charac ters? (9) 20 St John Ervine made a play for his first will rece ive a cas h prize of £40.
26 Isle is a strange birthplace of Pope wife (6) Entries shou ld be addresse d to
John Paol II (7) 22 Employers (in ballet, might be Russe) TLS Crossword 7 13,
T imes House, 1 Penn ington Stree t,
27 Bell heroine shows stro ng suppo rt - a (5)
25 Child (and children) associate it with Lond on E98 1BS.
followi ng of patriotic America n women (7)
princess (3)

T LS O CT OB ER 5 20 0 7
32
I t ha s taken the Germ an s to mak e us aware
of the Briti sh obsessio n with war. We
would not have g uessed that the Victorian s
"w ent to wa r 226 time s"; nor did we kno w
that , of all the battlefields of Flande rs and
Northern France, " none are so lovin gl y main-
tain ed and so frequently visited as tho se of
the Briti sh". Volume 14, No I of the twic e-
ye arly Journal f or the Study of British Cul-
tures, publi shed in Tubingen , takes the theme
" Britain at W ar". It tell s us that the commem-
or ation of wa rs in Briti sh churches is "bewil-
derin g to German eyes", and reminds us that
Ton y Blair waged "fi ve wa rs in ten ye ars of
office" (Iraq, Sierr a Leone, Ko so vo, Af ghan-
istan , Iraq again). Man y people will see the
Germ an editors' point. Th ey do not say so, but
the reacti on of a section of the English public
(and medi a) to every football match betw een
England and Germany seems to be less about
a sense of past victory than of present defeat.
Inste ad of invoking 1966 and all that ,
H. Gu stav Klau s and Christian Sc hmitt-Kilb
clinch their case thi s way : "Just ho w pre sent
war is in Briti sh int ellectual deb ate can be
ga uge d by browsin g through the Times Liter-
ary Supplement. On e hesitat es to spea k of an
Disinherited: The exiles who created Spanish England by Ed mund Blunden.
culture (Au gu st 3) cou nt as a piece abo ut " the
ob session , but not a wee k passes without a
subje ct of war"? Sin ce the reviewer mentions Roy Ca mpbe ll, found in Griffith & Partn er s
bo ok on the subje ct of wa r bein g revi ewed ".
Using the past twent y issu es of the TLS
the " socialists, re publicans" and oth er s wh o of Gr eat Ormond Str eet, opp osite the Child-
we re "c hecke d hy Fra nco 's ' c rusade ' durin g ren' s Hospital. T he floor spa ce in Griffith's is
as a representati ve sa m ple , we c hec ke d and
the C iv il War" , it must do . The lead article nine feet by seve n - im agin e it cra m med with
we re initi all y surprised to find that Klau s and
in the TLS of May 18 was a review of Cul- book cases - making it London' s smalles t
Schmitt-Kilb are largel y correct. T hey will
tural Responses to the Persian Wars; in the bookshop. Tw o peopl e ma y squee ze in at a
doubtless be sighing into their sch napps ove r
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ----,
Don't mention it
the cover picture of Ad olf Hitl er (Se ptembe r May 25 issue, there was a piec e on several
21 ), which appea red lon g afte r the Journal books abo ut the Am erican West, including
we nt to press. " No non- sp eciali st Ge rman one on the Siou x wa rr ior Crazy Horse, " the
we ekly or monthly comes to mind that would decisiv e tactician in Custers def eat". It' s not
cover the subje ct so continuall y." War, insep- an obsession; ju st us doin g our dut y.
arable from Britain' s rise as "Great", is ju st
as clo sel y link ed to its decline .
Far be it from us to sugges t oth er reason s P
era mbulatory Christmas Books, Part Ill.
In this series , we recommend an admira-
ble but overlooked wo rk by a not abl e writer.
why German weekli es do not d well on the
subje ct, but as to the TLS' s rol e, we are
Each purchase com es from on e of London' s
bound to point out that " the subject of wa r",
seco nd-ha nd bo ok shops, and co sts a fiver or
less. Last week, we featured Mont Oriol by
in its w ides t application, is tant amount to the
subje ct of history. Does a review of The
Guy de Maup assant; before that The Face of
The latest treasure is Sons ofthe Mistral by
A t the risk of ant agonizing our Ge rma n
co lleagues , we offer thi s Sec ond World
War pos ter published in No rth Africa in
1942 , urging Fre nch wome n to j oin up to the
Co rps Fe rninin des T ran smi ssion s, the new
wo me n 's au xiliary d ivi sion , " fo r a fr ee
Fra nce" . It comes from Amours, guerres et
sexua lite, 1914-1 945 by Francois Rouquet
and others (Ga llima rd, 23 euros) . A mo ng the
tim e, pro vidin g they are of medium size. six copiously illu strated sectio ns are "Se pa ra-
Sons of the Mistral, published by Fabe r in tion " , " Violences sex ue lles " and " La Gu err e
1941 , is a Select ed Poem s, but all Ca mpbe ll's es t fini e" . Th er e are pictures of men and
poetical work is unju stly negl ect ed , on wo me n in all kind s of flirt atiou s en actm ent ,
acco unt of his political ac tions and opinions. from sold iers kissin g to collabora trices suf-
During the Spani sh C ivil W ar , he fou ght for ferin g brut al humiliation .
Franco, and views espouse d in cert ain poem s
and his autobiography (19 34 ) are ch ar act er-
ized as " Fascist" . He was noneth eless a tech-
nically dextrous poet, with a verba l mom en-
T he Spoken Wo rd, the exce lle nt series of
rec ordings issued on C D by the Briti sh
Lib rary, continues with Graham Greene. It
tum rare today, and a likin g for waspish con sists of rea din gs by Green e from his own
satire . The MacSp aunday poets were favour- work, and ex tra cts from inter views, man y
ite target s. We we re di sappointed not to find from the BB C archi ves, made since the
in Sons of the Mistral the lin es abo ut oth er 1960s. Gree ne's pe culia rly ripe voice , with its
cont emporari es: " You prai se the firm minor imp edim ent on cert ain diphthongs, is
restraint with which they write - / I'm with instantly recogni zabl e. He recites some of his
you ther e, of cour se: / Th ey use the sna ffle ea rly poetry from Babbling April (1925 ),
and the curb all right , / But where's the which he later suppresse d - "'O ld age is like a
bloo dy hor se?" But the se lec tion co ntains wreck upon the bay, / Th e sails are down , they
good work. A portrait of a Zulu girl nur sin g do not feel the wind' .... Oh dear, I don 't
he r child wo uld surprise some reader s. Fro m care for it much" - and, in the ea rliest rec ord-
he r breast, the child imbibes "The curbed ing (1953), read s " A Sma ll Affair " , a twent y-
ferocity of beat en trib es" ; mean whil e, minute ex tract from a novel-in-progress
Her body looms above him like a hill which two yea rs later was publi shed as The
Within whose shade a village lies at rest, Quiet American. In the bri efest of the fourt een
Or the first cloud so terrible and still tra ck s, recorded in 1975, Ron ald Har wood
That bears the comi ng harvest in its breast. present s Gr een e with a questionnaire which
Less sy mpa the tic is " A Song for the Peopl e" , he first responded to at schoo l, aged seve n,
surely written to taunt MacSpaunday: asking if any of his answe rs would be the
I sing the people; shall the Muse deny same now. "I think two are the same . ' Who is
T he weak, the blind , the humble and the lam e the grea tes t livin g sta tes man?' Don 't kn ow
Who have no purpose save to multiply, any . ' What is your favourit e pastim e?' Play-
Who have no will save all to be the same. ing red indi an s." Graham Creene is ava ilable
Thi s neat, port abl e cop y of Sons of the Mis- from the Briti sh Libr ary, at £9.9 5.
tral ca me in a plain du st jacket and cost £5. J .C .
© Th e Times Lite rar y Su pp lement Limit ed. lO1l7.Published and licensed for distribution in electronic and all other deriva-
tive forms by The Times Literary Supplement Limited. Times House, I Pcnnington Street, London E'olH IBS. England. Tele- 40>
phone: 020-771'2 5000 Pax: 020-77lU 4966 E-mail: lcttcrsepthc-rls.co.uk without whose express permission no pan may be
reproduced. Printed hy Kt. N. Ltd. Kitting Rood. Prescor. Merseyside, L34 9HN. England. E l lROPEAN P RICES : Belgium
£3.50. France £3.50. Germany £4.20, Greece £4.20, Italy £4.00, Nethe rlands £4.20, Pon ugul £3.50. Spain £3.50. CA~A DlAS
PRI C K.,: Toronto $5.50, Outside $5.75. RO W: Denmark DKR30. Iceland IKR625, Ind ia INR400. Israel r-:IS34. Kuwait
KW$ I.25, Malta MTLl. 10, New Zealand r-:Z$7,Norway NKR32. Singapore SG$6, UAE AE$15. Subscription rates including
postage arc: UK £115, Europe £140. USA $169, Canada $225. ROW £165. TLSs u h~ ri pt ion rat es ( 12 months/52 issues):
UK £ 115, Europe £140. USA $169. Canada (Air freight) $225. Rest of World (Airmail) £165. Please send cheque or credit card
details to: TLS Subscriptions. Tower House. Sovereign Park. Market Harbo rough. LE87 4JJ. UK. Telephone 01!l5H43!l7!l1
For US and Canada please send to: TLS SUbscriptions. P.D. Box 3000 Denvi1le NJ 07!l34. USA Telephone I-H(X) 370 9040
(new subscriptions only ) and 1-8()() 783 4903 (general cnquirics). The T LS (lSS N 0307661, USPS 021-626) is published
weekly and distributed in the USA by OCS America Inc, 49-27 31st Street, Long Island City. NY 11101-3113. Period icals post-
age paid at Long Island City NY and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: please send address corrections to TLS. PO
Box 3(XKl. Dcnvillc, NJ 07H34, USA
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07