THE OWL Issue 4, March 2004

REINCARNATION REDISCOVERED: EMPEDOCLES IN STRASBOURG 3

Lauren Curtis uses a papier mâché crown to reassess the greatest Pre-Socratic Greek Philosopher.

SHOT THROUGH THE HEART OF OAK 5

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created some of the finest films ever made, yet they are
virtually unknown. Jo Adams attempts to restore their previously widespread popularity.

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF 9

Is there a cure for cancer? Felicity Walker-Buckton reviews the latest advances in cancer research.

TWEENAGE KICKS 12
Anita Isalska examines the uneasy tension between anti-paedophile hysteria and the sexualisation of
childern in popular culture.

A VERY SMALL LEAP, A GIANT STEP 14

Quantum teleportation has the potential to radically change the way we percieve the world. Edward
Davie explores the science behind the concept and discusses the practical applications in information
technology and cryptography.

EXTANT EXTINCTS 18
Ross Barnett explains the process behind the molecular ressurection of extinct species.

VISIONS OF INFINITY 20
Is Bob Dylan really a great artist? Jonny Thakkar offers a persuasive interpretation of Visions of
Johanna in the aged star’s defence.

CARBON BASED MACHINES OR LYRICALLY WOVEN TAPESTRIES? 24

Is free will fashionable again? Ilana Levene approaches the concept from a scientific point of view via
the Nature/Nurture debate.

OWL EXCLUSIVE! 26
A previously undiscovered manuscript thought to have been an early source for Charles Dickens’
Great Expectations.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI 27

The Owl Crossword No.3, by Snufkin
LIFE IN THE CLOUDS: A MULTI-STORY NOVEL 28
Thomas Jeffreys reviews David Mitchell’s new novel, finding it beautifully written and elegantly
structured. The Booker-nominated author reviewed this review and found it “bristling with
intelligence”.
 EDITORIAL
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but The Owl has changed slightly. Don’t be alarmed. We are still
dedicated to hunting down the mice of ignorance, but have decided that we can be more silent
with a new front cover. We have also expanded our hunting territory to the internet: The Owl is
now fully online, and can be found at www.theowljournal.com. All the previous editions are avail-
able for downloading, and there is also a subscription page (subscription is free) for those of you
who don’t receive a personal copy already. Eventually it will also be possible to comment on any
articles online using a kind of message board thing, a bit like the BBC comment facility. I feel that
this is a very important thing, as one of the functions of The Owl is to promote debate, and it is
curiously difficult to debate when it is necessary to wait three months for any sort of reply. I may
also be publishing articles solely on the website throughout term, so it might be worth checking
every now and then. In fact, make it your home page.
For those new readers who don’t know what The Owl is, here is a brief summary. The Owl was
set up last year in response to the lack of intelligent writing in Oxford. We aim to provide a forum
for interdisciplinary debate and discussion within the University. Our ideal reader is intelligent, and
interested, but uninformed. The Owl is written by its readers (those of you doing English should be
familiar with this concept), and so I urge you to consider writing something for the next edition.
Articles can be on pretty much anything, from the Zimbabwean film industry to the latest ad-
vances in neuroscience. Or, indeed, from a reading of a Bob Dylan song to a discussion of tech-
niques used when studying ancient DNA. As you are presumably at Oxford it could also be rea-
sonably presumed that you have something to say, and this is the place. Not only that, but the best
article published every term wins a £20 Blackwell’s voucher. And that’s cutting me own throat.
This term’s Blackwell’s prize-winner involves a paper funeral wreath, Greek verse metrical rules,
and reincarnation. With these rather eclectic ingredients, Lauren Curtis serves up a dish fit for
the finest Pre-Socratic philosopher in the Western tradition (see opposite). Other local beauties
include Jo Adams’ panegyric symphony to Powell and Pressburger (p. 5), and Jonny Thakkar’s
rather masterful exposition of Bob Dylan’s classic song Visions of Johanna (p. 20). And to mix the
metaphor thoroughly, add one dash of pre-teen hormones (pg. 12) and encode the whole with a
quantum teleporter (pg. 14).
After the excitement of that paragraph I’m sure you need a rest, so I’ll end here by thanking the
outgoing Editor, Jonny Thakkar, and Managing Editor, Emma Hill-French. Thank you.
I hope you enjoy this edition, and do consider writing. I look forward to hearing from you,
Francis Nevard, Editor
www.theowljournal.com

CREDITS
Editor: Francis Nevard Managing Editor: Luke O’Sullivan
Sub Editors: Atli Stannard Deputy Managing Editor: Katherine Latta
Jennifer Hoogewerf-McComb Special thanks to: Jonny Thakkar, Emma Hill-
Desktop Publishing: Francis Nevard French, Samuel Sampson, Gustav Mahler, Ludvig
Webmaster: Rory Geoghegan van Beethoven and 5065 cafédirect
All articles copyright © The Owl Journal 2004
 REINCARNATION REDISCOVERED: EMPEDOCLES IN STRASBOURG
Lauren Curtis finds a unified philosophy in the fragments of a papier mâché crown

“Come, listen to my tale. For learning increases the mind.”

Empedocles, fragment B17

O n 21st November 1904, the German archaeol-

ogist Otto Rubenstein made a purchase which,
although he did not realize it at the time, was
to add immeasurably to our knowledge of ancient phi-
losophy. In an antique shop in Akhmim, Upper Egypt,
first full copy of the work of any Greek philosopher
before Socrates. No wonder the European press, as well
as all the usual scholarly journals, got excited when the
fragments were displayed to the public in April 1994.

he bought for the sum of £1 an unusual looking object: a Empedocles is a philosopher whose elegant ideas
kind of papier mâché garland or crown - perhaps part of have attracted readers since his death around 435 BC.
a funeral offering - made from papyrus and covered in He saw the natural world as being made up of four eter-
copper leaf. What caught Rubenstein’s scholarly eye were nal ‘roots’ - earth, air, fire and water - from which eve-
traces of Greek writing on parts of the papyrus. The rything is created and everything returns. From this it
wreath was pulled apart in order to remove the copper seemed to him to follow that “there is no birth for any
leaf, and the resulting 52 fragments - as yet unexamined mortal at all, and no destructive death, but there is only
and in a very bad state of repair - somehow found their mixing and interchanging of mixed things.” Consider-
way to the Imperial Library in Strasbourg, where they re- ing that Empedocles’ only scientific tools were his ob-
mained, gathering dust in a drawer, for the next 85 years. servation of the world around him and the fruits of a
fairly recent Greek philosophical tradition (formal logic
In 1990 Alain Martin was finally given had been invented by Parmenides a couple
the task of editing the collection. What “There is no birth or of generations previously), the fact that
he discovered on a first inspection was death, but only mixing his reasoning led him to such a seemingly
amazing. The Greek text, although ex- and interchanging of ‘modern’ conclusion is quite incredible.
tremely fragmentary, was clearly a copy mixed things”
of the work of Empedocles, one of the Like a modern scientist, Empedocles re-
most important philosophers in the age before Socrates. alized that the elements could not move or
mingle without an external physical force to drive them,
There is nothing unusual about having a record of so he suggested the involvement of the opposing forces
Empedocles’ words. Ancient commentators quote him on of Love (Philotēs) and Strife (Neikos). The elements
occasion in literary treatises, copies of which we still have. were driven by these forces in a cycle of change which
The problem with taking their quotations at face value is he called the ‘Cosmic Cycle’. At first, the “divine impe-
that they cite a few lines of the philosopher only when it tus” of Love takes centre stage and unifies the elements
is relevant to their own argument, so that what Empedo- into compounds. But this is only a transient situation, for
cles really meant can only be understood in a very incom- as soon as perfect unification is reached the balance then
plete and hazy way. However, Martin soon realized that swings the other way, and Strife takes over, beginning to di-
the new text in Strasbourg was something very different. vide the compounds back into their constituent elements.

Instead of an anthology or a selection of quota-
tions embedded in another work, for the first time we
had the remains of a continuous copy of some or all
of Empedocles’ own work, a long epic poem known
as the Physics. Once the fragments were painstakingly
reassembled, Martin, and his new colleague Oliver Pri-
mavesi, had 29 lines of Empedocles’ uncontaminated
writing which had never been read before. This was
not just a first in the study of Empedocles: it was the
Despite all this detail one crucial point remained un-
clear, since any previous mentions of it are corrupt. Did
Empedocles see his Cycle as an eternal process, or a one-
off event to explain the way in which the present world
has come into being? The answer can be discovered in
an extremely subtle way from the new papyrus in Stras-
bourg. In the image of the papyrus below, the under-
lined writing labelled ‘1’ reads: “when Strife ….. to the
depths and Love ….. in the middle of the whirlpool.”
3
 The missing words are those which, as can be seen in
the image, run off the end of the papyrus and are lost.
For our sentence to make sense, they are likely to be
some form of the verbs ‘to come’
and ‘to be’ respectively. What form,
though? Just as he would in Eng-
lish, in Greek the writer would use
a different form of the verb if he
wanted to denote a single past ac-
tion (English ‘came’) or an ongoing
repeated action (English ‘comes’).
In Greek, the difference is con-
veyed by the fact that the first of
these forms has two short syllables
(hiketo= came), while the second
has two long ones (hikētai= comes).
The puzzle can now be solved.
In the strict epic verse system
which Empedocles used to write
his poetry, two short syllables sim-
ply would not fit at the end of these
Empedocles’ words on the fragment of papyrus theories are not simply compat-
two lines. The syllables must be long,
and so Empedocles must have written ‘when(ever) Strife
COMES to the depths and Love IS in the middle of
the whirlpool.” Such a tiny grammatical detail ultimately
means that we now have fresh evidence that Empedo-
cles saw the cycle of change in the universe as eternal.
should have been part of a holy funeral offering, and
that the writing which it contains strengthens the link
between Empedocles’ physics and his religious thought.
The circled letters at Number
2 on the image provide the clue,
which again lies in a single verb
ending. Most of the rest of the line
is missing, but the ending of a verb
remains: the ‘ometh’ termination
means that whatever action is de-
scribed in the sentence, it is done by
‘us’. Martin and Primavesi restore
the whole line as, “We were coming
together to the middle places, so
as to be only one.” Empedocles is
talking about Physics and cosmolo-
gy, but says that ‘we’ human beings
are part of it. Suddenly we begin
to understand his train of thought.
His scientific and religious
ible; they are interlinked in a more complex way than
we had previously imagined. After all, perhaps rein-
carnation is only the human equivalent of nature’s
Cosmic Cycle. The elements re-form into different
compounds eternally - why should not humans too?

Another puzzle can be solved in a Who would have suspected that an

similar way: the seeming gulf between “Perhaps reincarnation Egyptian papier mâché funeral wreath
Empedocles’ Physics and the rest of his is only the human could add so much to our knowledge of
writing, which deals with religion and eth- equivalent of nature’s one of one of the most original and influ-
ics. “I have already been a boy and a girl Cosmic Cycle?” ential of the Greek philosophers? Empe-
and a bush and a bird and a silent fish docles said, “I am an immortal god… and
in the sea”, runs his doctrine of reincarnation. Schol- I travel honoured by all, as is right, wreathed with…
ars have torn their hair out over this for centuries: was flowering garlands.” Now, after sitting in a drawer in
he a priest, a poet or a scientist? The truth is that he Strasbourg for almost a century, his words hold more
was all three. How fitting that the Strasbourg papyrus truth than ever.

THE WINNING ARTICLE

The best article submitted to The Owl each term wins a £20 Blackwell’s voucher. For a chance to
win please send us replies, letters, or ideas for prospective articles by visiting The Owl’s website:
www.theowljournal.com. Contributions are welcome from all members of the university: JCRs,
MCRs and SCRs, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch, whoever you are.

4
 SHOT THROUGH THE HEART OF OAK
Jo Adams reappraises the work of two legendary, yet largely disregarded, British film-makers, and
ponders war, Englishness and the fantastical
R
ecently listening to Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’
symphony, and struck by the beauty and aw-
ful majesty of that piece, I wondered: Why is
this not the most famous and popular symphony of all
time? Knowing little about music I am not qualified to
answer that question, but I recall having a similar re-
action after seeing Michael Powell and Emeric Press-
burger’s film A Matter of Life and Death (1946) for the
first time. This tale of an English airman’s ‘hallucina-
tions’ and the triumph of love over death, I thought,
should surely rank with Brief Encounter and Casablanca
as one of the greatest cinematic romances ever made.
Working predominantly during the 1940s, Michael
Powell and Emeric Pressburger produced a body of
work that is arguably the finest, and without doubt the
most unfairly neglected, in British cinema. Yet while
their contemporaries David Lean and Carol Reed are
still well-known, these giants have slipped into rela-
tive obscurity. Loved and respected by enthusiasts,
the general public remains largely una-
ware of the dazzling and innovative art- “Arguably the finest and bookish, he had worked as a screenwrit-
works created by this extraordinary pair. body of work in
British cinema ”
This certainly has nothing to do with the
difficulty of the films. Part of the reason
for the great success of British cinema in the 1940s was
its successful marriage of artistic concerns with popular
appeal. Laurence Olivier’s Henry V (1944) mixes culture
(Shakespeare), genre tropes taken from the Hollywood
western, and the patriotic fervour of a country at war,
to produce a ‘high-art’ film with widespread appeal.
The films of Powell and Pressburger are no exception
to this rule. Perhaps the difficulty lies in their categorisa-
tion. The films remain unique in their blend of realism
and fantasy and their use of daring cinematic trickery
and special effects. Contemporary critics certainly found
this a problem; realism was the order of the day. An-
other problem is that the films are unashamedly mod-
ern, constantly drawing attention to their own form: not
in the intellectual manner of Jean-Luc Godard, or Ber-
tolt Brecht, but in a light-hearted and humorous way.
These were clearly film-makers delighted by the capabili-
ties of their medium, and unafraid to break the conven-
tions of realism if they thought they could do better.
Audiences generally like to feel that the world on the
screen is hermetic, and to believe that the story unfold-
ing is ‘real’, just as people like a painting to look like the
thing it represents. They also prefer dream, or fantasy, to
be clearly distinguished from reality. At the end of The
Wizard of Oz (1939) we need to know that ‘it was all a
dream.’ David Lynch disturbs us because he resolutely
refuses to draw this distinction. Powell and Pressburger,
break both these conventions. Perhaps audiences have
still to find a way of viewing the films, and recognising
that these distinctions are completely false.
We Shall Fight Them on the Screens...
Michael Powell was a quintessential Englishman; tall,
suave and occasionally tyrannical, who cut his teeth di-
recting ‘quota quickies’ in the 1930s. Emeric Pressburger
was a Hungarian Jew, an outsider from both communities
and doubly so as an immigrant in Germany, France and
finally the United Kingdom. Short, reserved
er in Germany and France before chance,
or fate, brought him to Powell in 1938.
They decided to use the credit “Written,
produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric
Pressburger”, from their fourth film onwards, but Pow-
ell was always primarily the director and Pressburger the
writer. Of course, the distinction is rather academic, as
they always worked closely together. The contrast be-
tween the two men, in both character and experience,
certainly contributed to the unique attitudes of the films.
For example, the films often celebrate the stoicism of the
English character, but this is combined with an irony that
surely comes from the wry view of a detached observer.
As one would expect, the first years of the partner-
ship were spent making propaganda films to aid the war
effort. The British propaganda films of the early 1940s
are remarkable, not only as propaganda, but for their ar-
tistic quality. The narrative experiments of Noel Coward
and David Lean’s In Which We Serve (1942), the docu-fic-
tion of Humphrey Jennings’ Fires Were Started (1943), the
social realism Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat’s Mil-
5
 lions Like Us (1943) and the gothic strangeness of Roy
Boulting’s Thunder Rock (1943) are all examples of great
cinema, regardless of their propaganda purposes. A
combination of widespread talent and the fact that, per-
haps for the only time in its history, Britain was undoubt-
edly fighting on the right side, seemed to galvanise the
British film industry into producing its greatest works.
The early films of Powell and Pressburger are nota-
ble for a number of features: the stylistic daring of the
black-out sequences in Contraband, with scenes played
out in almost total darkness; the episodic and tabular
screenplays for 49th Parallel (1941) and One of Our Aircraft
is Missing (1942); the manipulation of audi-
ence sympathies in The Spy In Black (1939) “The great
and 49th Parallel that draw us into siding with achievement of the
the enemy. The subjects are also unusual. film is to show us a ery. Notable examples include the transition
While most propaganda asserted the neces- person in full”
sity of fighting, and encouraged everyone
to contribute to the war effort, 49th Parallel is designed
specifically to convince the Americans to join the war.
Similarly, the pairs’ first masterpiece, The Life and Death
of Colonel Blimp, was made to convince people that Eng-
lish notions of ‘fair-play’ and honourable conduct were
no longer appropriate while fighting Nazi Germany, and
that Britain must be prepared to ‘fight dirty’.
‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’
(1943)
The action of the film is framed by an army exercise
in 1944, in which the Home Guard has to defend Lon-
don from the regulars, whose attack will begin “at mid-
night”. An enterprising officer decides that the element
of surprise is crucial, enters London, and captures the
head of the Home Guard, General Clive Candy, at 6pm.
Candy is outraged at this disregard for proper conduct,
and his life from an energetic young officer 40 years ear-
lier, to the bloated and obsolete general of 1944 forms
the main narrative of the film. At every point the ideas
of honour and fair-play are interrogated. The elaborate
ritual of a German military duel is mocked, and the ques-
tion of how to gain information from prisoners is raised.
The rise of Clive Candy is counter-pointed by his two
great loves. The first is his friendship with a German of-
ficer, the closest and most enduring of his life. The char-
acter of the good German, beautifully played by Anton
Walbrook, was controversial enough at the time to receive
severe criticism. The second is his obsessive love for the
6
woman who married his friend. He marries a second
woman on the basis of her resemblance to this woman,
and hires a third as his driver for the same reason (all three
woman are played by Deborah Kerr). This element of
the story, clearly foreshadowing Vertigo (1958), is strange
and slightly worrying, adding to the near tragic pathos
of the character. The great achievement of the film, for
which Roger Livesey must take much of the credit, is
to show us a person in full. Like Raging Bull (1980), the
film presents us with a character we may have little sym-
pathy for, or may even violently dislike, but for whom,
by the end of the film, we are prepared to shed a tear.
Blimp is also the first of Powell and Press-
burger’s films to be shot in colour, and the
first to display their distinctive visual trick-
from present to past when the old Candy dis-
appears into one end of a swimming pool,
and the young Candy emerges at the other end, forty years
earlier, and the passage of time marked by the addition of
hunting trophies to the walls of Candy’s den. The effects
are not only concise and witty, but show the prioritis-
ing of the poetic effect of cinema over the conventional
realistic strategies used by contemporary film-makers.
The film did not please everyone, however. Churchill
considered it to be an attack on the British Army, and
attempted to have it banned. There cannot be many di-
rectors who have been accused of subversion in a film
they considered to be overt proaganda. It is a testament
to their honesty as artists that they chose the difficult
truth over the easy lie (or half-truth) every time, and so
found themselves condemned by the very people they
were trying to help.
‘A Canterbury Tale’ (1944) and ‘I Know
Where I’m Going’ (1945)
Following this the pair left aside the question of how
the war should be fought, to explore the issue of what the
war sought to defend. They returned to black and white
with two gently comic pastoral films, both emphasising
the importance of history and the values Britain should
not lose sight of during the conflict. A Canterbury Tale
brings together three disparate individuals: a slightly cyn-
ical soldier, a young GI and a land girl, all stuck in a village
on their way to Canterbury. A mystery plot seems to be
established, but the culprit is almost immediately obvious
and only the ‘glue-man’s’ motives are unclear. These, when
revealed, prove to be the key to the film’s message. These
generic distortions make the film difficult to categorise. pair made A Matter of Life and Death, a film exploring
the collision of different worlds and the all-conquering
The central plot concentrates on the journeys made power of love. In the last days of the war, an English
by the modern pilgrims, and the blessings they receive pilot, Peter Carter (David Niven) makes contact with
on reaching Canterbury. The film opens with Chau- a young American radio operator named June (Kim
cer’s General Prologue and a reconstruction of the Hunter), before being forced to bail out without a para-
mediaeval pilgrims on their journey through Kent. In chute. Miraculously he survives, and meets June almost
a brilliant associative edit, anticipating Kubrick’s fa- as soon as he arrives on land. Unsurprisingly, the pair fall
mous transition in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), a shot in love. It is revealed, however, that Peter only survived
of a hawk cuts to a spitfire and we are transported to because his heavenly conductor, a flamboyant French
1943. This opening seems at first to be an irrelevance, aristocrat played by Marius Goring, missed
included merely to justify the title of the “They found themselves him in the heavy English fog. Peter is sum-
film, but it is crucial to reading what will condemned by the very moned to heaven but refuses to go, argu-
unfold. All of the characters have a story
people they were trying ing that falling in love with June meant
to tell, and all have a blessing they hope that his circumstances have changed since
to help”
to receive (though they may not know it). the moment he was supposed to die. A
heavenly trial is convened in orde to determine his fate.
The representation of an England haunted by its past,
and its literature, is also important. Typical of the film is a The story clearly allows for all kinds of trickery and
scene in which the young American, previously bemused special effects. Each time the conductor speaks to Pe-
by the eccentricities of English life, finds that he “speaks ter, for example, time is frozen. In one scene this in-
the same language” as the old village wheelwright, and cludes a table-tennis game, halted mid-rally. But the real
they form a strong bond by discussing wood. Typically stroke of genius is the distinction between heaven and
English is the absence of religion. Despite the pres- earth, made by the use of colour and black and white.
ence of Canterbury and its cathedral, the town’s power Reversing what would be expected, it is earth that is
seems historical and mythological rather than divine. photographed in glowing colours, while heaven is shown
in pearly black and white. This is, in one sense, the op-
History and mythology feature heavily in I Know Where posite of The Wizard of Oz, in which the fantasy world
I’m Going. Our heroine (Wendy Hiller), who has always is in colour. But on a deeper level, colour is used in
known where she was going, travels to Scotland to marry both films to signify the world in which the protagonist
a millionaire businessman on a Hebridean island. Un- wants to live. True love has made the world of Peter
able to cross to the island because of the weather, she is Carter more appealing that any fantasy. The conceit also
thrown together with a man who turns out to be the real gives rise to the most obvious instance of the playful,
laird of the isle (Roger Livesey again). Like modern self-awareness mentioned above.
a Forster heroine, the sophisticated urbanite “There is no nation The conductor, arriving on earth from
is gradually thawed by her surroundings and on earth without a heaven, looks around and sighs “Ah! One
the values of the country dwellers: “they reason to hate the is so starved for Technicolor up there.”
aren’t poor, they just don’t have any money”. English”
The film is suffused in myth and legend and The heavenly trial is not just a conflict be-
the plot finally turns on an ancient curse. This summary tween heaven and earth, but also between America and
may sound trite and sentimental, but the film is tougher England. Arguing heaven’s case is a rabidly anti-English
than that. The central relationship is unconventional and victim of the War of Independence who shared June’s
the film is really concerned with depicting the life of a home town of Boston. Points are scored on both sides,
small isolated community at a time when attention was there is trouble picking a jury because there is no nation
fixed on London and the big cities. And while it may be on earth who has not got some reason to hate the Eng-
conservative to suggest that something has been lost in lish, but the decision turns on June’s love for Peter. The
the rush of urbanisation, it is not necessarily untrue. idea that love could transcend national boundaries, and
literally move heaven and earth, was an important one
‘A Matter of Life and Death’ (1946) after the traumatic events of the war, but it is the form
Marking the transition between war and peace, the of the film which has ensured its place in the canon. The
7
 breathtakingly beautiful photography and awe inspiring define, and it may have been this which worried the crit-
sets, including the iconic ‘staircase to heaven’, have still ics. The film’s relatively frank depiction of female sexu-
not been bettered, and assure that the film ranks along- ality meant it was frequently censored. But despite all
side the greatest cinematic fantasies. this it was popular with audiences and won three Oscars
(for cinematography, art direction and set decoration).
Black Narcissus (1947)
The film that followed is perhaps the strangest in a The Red Shoes (1948)
remarkably idiosyncratic oeuvre. Set in the Himalayas, Powell and Pressburger’s films are supreme examples
Black Narcissus tells the story of a group of nuns at- of the collaborative process in art. As well as their part-
tempting to found a convent in the buildings of a former nership, the films involved the creativity of a number of
harem. Like A Canterbury Tale, it asserts the power of frequently recurring actors (such as Livesey, Walbrook,
geography and location on individuals and, like Forster’s Kerr) and technicians (cameraman Jack Cardiff, designer
Passage to India, the East is shown to have an awaken- Alfred Junge). This collaborative method reached its
ing effect on dormant English apotheosis in the pairs’ great-
sexuality. Confronted by the est and most popular film, The
otherness of the East the nuns Red Shoes. In this tale of a tal-
must confront the otherness ented but doomed dancer, the
which lies inside them. Beset pair were determined to avoid
by problems caused by the cli- the common cheat by which
mate, the suspicious locals and an artist’s talent is alluded to
the disreputable English land but never shown: they cre-
agent (David Farrar), the group ated the best ballet they could.
begins to fall apart, and the su- To this end they recruited
perior (Deborah Kerr) must not only one of the country’s
deal with the demons of her best young ballerinas (Moira
own past while attempting to Shearer in the central role of
hold the community together. Victoria Page), but also one of
The final farewell? David Niven and Kim Hunter on the the most respected choreog-
One of the most remark- staircase to heaven in A Matter of Life and Death.
raphers (Robert Helpmann) and
able aspects of the film is that it was shot entirely at most famous male dancers (Leonid Massine, a veteran
Pinewood studios. The gorgeous landscapes are all the of Serge Diaghilev’s groundbreaking Ballets Russes).
work of designers and cameraman, and create a world
which is heightened and overwrought, matching the The resulting fifteen minutes of uninterrupted bal-
nuns’ reaction to their situation and chiming perfectly let, aside from its merits as dance, is a tour-de-force
with the pairs interest in cinematic illusion. Bernardo of cinematic effects and expression. Based on a Hans
Bertolucci even complained that the real Himalayas Christian Anderson fairy tale, the story tells of a young
“didn’t quite live up to” the vision in Black Narcissus girl imprisoned in her enchanted shoes which eventually
dance her to her death (naturally this is mirrored in the
Again, as with The Canterbury Tale, the film is curiously narrative of the film as a whole). The ballet is danced
lacking in religion, despite its subject matter. Unlike Fred on a seemingly limitless set, which is only recognisably a
Zinnemann’s The Nun’s Story, God seems stage at the beginning and the end, thus es-
largely absent from Black Narcissus, just as “Vicky is torn between chewing realist concerns. At one point the
He seems to have no place in the heaven of art and life, and the heroine dances with a scrap of newspaper
A Matter of Life and Death. Again I would conflict eventuallly twirling in the breeze, an effect which in-
argue that this is a peculiarly English atti- flamed the imagination of the young Mar-
destroys her”
tude. The Church of England is, after all, tin Scorsese. Perhaps most impressive is
predominantly a social organisation. the way in which the sequence also contrives to show
us the interior stage of Victoria Page as she dances.
Like so many of their films, Black Narcissus contains a
mystery at its centre which the viewer is not quite able to The film hinges on the conflict between art and life,
8
personified by Lermontov (Walbrook) the impresario
who runs the company, and Julian Craster (Goring) the
young composer with whom Vicky is in love. Lermon-
tov is autocratic and devoted to art, maintaining that it
is impossible to dance well and be in love. At one point
he is told “You can’t change human nature.” “No,” he
replies, “You can do better than that. You can ignore it.”
Vicky is torn between these two men, between art and
life, and the conflict eventually destroys her.
While it may seem strange that the
makers of A Matter of Life and Death “You can’t change human
could endorse Lermontov’s cynicism, nature, but you can do
the film challenges us to prove him
better than that. You can
wrong. Vicky is unable to find a solution.
ignore it.”
It is part of the film’s greatness that it
poses a problem to which it can offer no
solution. As one of the few genuinely tragic offerings in
the cinematic canon it is surprising that it is so popular,
received wisdom being that audiences want a happy end-
ing. Pressburger suggested that its popularity was due
to the fact that people found in it “something disturb-
ing, something mysterious, almost religious, something
which they feel must be true, without having been told
what.” Could any artist hope to achieve more than that?
All Good Things...
Changes in the British film industry meant that Powell
and Pressburger never again reached the artistic heights
of the films discussed. Without the freedom to carry out
their daring experiments their films were inevitably less
original, though by no means uninteresting. They contin-
ued to work together until the late 1950s, but gradually
grew apart. Pressburger worked less and less while Pow-
ell, still unafraid of controversy, effectively ended his ca-
reer in 1960 by making Peeping Tom. A serial killer horror
film more disturbing and extreme than
Psycho (also 1960), it disgusted public
and critics alike, and Powell struggled to
work again.
Forgotten for many years, it was not
until the 1980s that the work of this extraordinary duo
was reassessed and accorded the respect it so clearly de-
served. The rehabilitation of their reputation was prin-
cipally due to the efforts of Martin Scorsese, a fan since
childhood. It is, perhaps, typical of this country’s atti-
tude to art that it took an American to remind us that
these works rank among the finest artistic achievements
of the twentieth century.

PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF

Will we ever cure cancer? Felicity Walker-Buckton considers the latest advances in palliative and
preventative treatment

I
n Britain, the lifetime risk of developing cancer diotherapy and tissue removal, dependent on the type
is one in three, and the probability of getting the and size of cancer and the extent of spread within the
disease rises as we get older. In an ageing popu- body. These treatments are non-specific in their action,
lation, the disease which claims the lives of over 155 preventing replication of both normal and cancerous
000 people each year places an immense burden of body cells alike. Consequently they have multiple seri-
treatment and palliative care on the NHS. Scientific re- ous side effects including nausea, anorexia and loss of
search into the molecular aspects of cancer is prolific bone density. New treatments are needed which have
in comparison to other diseases; the charity Cancer Re- higher specificity in eliminating cancerous cells, which
search UK alone funds scientific research to the tune of in turn would dramatically increase the quality of life
more than £191 million annually. Such for patients undergoing treatment.
“Current treatment should
scientific endeavour has advanced our
be described in terms of Cancer Research UK is currently run-
knowledge of cancer as a disease, yet
this knowledge base has so far failed to life prolongation, rather ning its ‘all clear’ campaign to empha-
be fully exploited in order to develop than cures” sise that more people than ever are be-
novel therapeutic treatments that are ing ‘cured’ of cancer. But a brief look
both specific and deliver a good long term prognosis. at the survival statistics reveals that it may be more
appropriate to describe current treatment in terms
Currently, most patients suffering from cancer are of life prolongation, rather than cures. The five year
treated using a combination of chemotherapy, ra- relative survival rate for all cancers combined (exclud-

9
 ing a few very rare cancers) is approximately 31 per McFarlane-Burnet, the pioneer of modern day immu-
cent for men and approximately 43 per cent for wom- nology, made the insightful observation that if natural
en (statistics taken from England & Wales patients di- immunity to cancer did exist within the body, it would by
agnosed between 1986 and 1990). Very little research necessity be invisible. However, there is some evidence
has been carried out into survival rates past this point; that the immune system has the potential to suppress
it is likely that they will paint an even bleaker picture. cancer. The surgeon William Coley noted in 1891 that if
cancer patients were infected with high doses of bacteria
Pick up any well respected scientific journal and you they often resolved their cancers spontaneously, indicating
are likely to find a reference to new research, which, that the immune system was being prompted into action.
if properly exploited, could result in the
development of a new ‘cure all wonder- “If natural immunity So why does this immune response not
drug’ for cancer. In Oxford, especially, to cancer exists within prevail in all cancer? It may be that the lo-
we have some of the greatest minds and the body, it must by cation of the cancer, surrounded by nor-
best funded departments devoted to re- necessity be invisible” mal cells, may be preventing recognition by
search into cancer, but most of these the immune system. Alternatively, the im-
laboratory teams are more at home with pipettes than mune system may simply not recognise the threat. Cancer
patients. As each journal is supplanted by the next, and cells are essentially deviant forms of normal cells and the
each funding application is accepted, we seem no fur- immune system, specialised for recognising ‘non-self ’ in
ther along the road to any realisation of this research the form of viral and bacterial infections, may not be
into an effective, treatment for cancer, and it some- able to distinguish these tumour cells from normal cells.
times appears that this abstract molecular dissection Clinical efforts may also paradoxically be suppressing the
has little, if any relevance for medical treatment. It has immune systems efforts to clear the cancer: chemothera-
been argued that the money being poured into scien- py has the side effect of producing immunosuppression.
tific research by academia and drug companies alike is
misspent, and greater benefit to patients would result Utilising the natural immune response would provide
from increased funding of palliative care for sufferers. the benefits of specificity and increase the likelihood
that the cancer would be fully eliminated. Once the im-
In reply, many, myself included, would argue that mune system is alerted to the presence of non-self in
understanding the normal functioning of the human the body, it is far more efficacious in the clearance of
immune system is central to the development of treat- these invaders than modern chemotherapeutic and ra-
ments for cancer. Indeed, this approach seems extreme- diological treatments can be. Hence a means of boost-
ly promising. It is becoming accepted that treatments ing this natural immune response to cancer is required.
aimed at activating and supplementing the body’s own
immune system may be more successful in The answer may lie in the classical work
the treatment of cancer than the current “The answer may lie of Pasteur, who produced a post-infection
regimen of inhibiting cell replication. As in the classical work vaccine to cure Rabies. An anti-tumour vac-
time proceeds it will become evident that re- of Pasteur” cine would hopefully lead to activation of
search labelled as abstract or irrelevant now the immune system against the cancerous
will prove vital in the effort to produce a cure for cancer. cells which would then be killed and cleared. A number
of anti-cancer vaccines are in development, including
However, such research does not provide a ‘quick-fix’, injecting DNA bacterial plasmids and even tumour pep-
with the move from the laboratory to the clinic often tides and cells themselves. Elucidation of the role of a
taking decades of rigorous development and testing. natural immune system cell in activation and presentation
Research that has contributed to our understanding of of cancer cell markers to the immune system has led to
the immune system is only now coming to fruition with preliminary success in the treatment of cancer in humans.
the development of early anti-cancer therapies. Greater
strides in producing a cure for cancer will be made once we DNA plasmid vaccines utilise bacterial motifs called
have a thorough grasp of how the immune system is ac- CpG islands to hyperactivate the immune response in or-
tivated and regulated, and how this goes wrong in cancer. der to promote recognition of hidden cancer cells. While
the use of DNA plasmid vaccines, administered with the
10
use of a ‘biolistic’ gene gun, has led to successful immu- that immune responses are kept within control, and that
nity against viral infections such as measles, most cancer normal cells are not targeted as non-self. This highly ac-
cells have only very weak markers of their deviation from tive equilibrium was discovered through the study of au-
normal cells and so are not recognised, even by a highly toimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, in which
activated immune system, and such treatments carry a risk the immune system attacks normal cells in the joints of
that normal cells will be targeted. This emphasises the the body. A class of cells called regulatory T cells (Treg)
complexity of the immune system, and despite years of prevent the activation of autoreactive cells which dam-
study there is still much to learn and understand. Until we age normal cells, but also decline in activity during infec-
have a full grasp of what is involved it is impossible, and tion to ensure that vital immune responses are not com-
even dangerous, to try to interfere for medical benefit. promised. This equilibrium between inflammation and
autoimmunity can be exploited for therapeutic potential.
What is required is the subversion of
normal responses to try and induce can- “We do not fully An attractive treatment would be to de-
cer immunity. A class of cells vital to understand the delicate crease the activity of Treg cells so that they
the immune system called antigen pre- equilibrium of the do not suppress recognition of the slight
senting cells (APC) act to present mark- immune system” deviations of cancer cell markers and in
ers on the cell surface of normal and this vein, treatments given to patients to
infected cells to the immune system, so that it knows downregulate the activity of Treg resulted in increased
which cells to target for destruction and which cells rejection of tumour cells. However, as a result these pa-
are healthy. One cell of this type, the Dendritic cell tients developed the autoimmune syndrome inflamma-
(DC) is especially efficient at this, and manipulation tory bowel disease. While this condition is perhaps infi-
of its activity can result in the immune response re- nitely preferable to cancer, it underlines that we do not
sponding to a normal cell as non-self and vice versa. as yet fully understand the delicate equilibrium of the
immune system, and caution in developing treatments
In an exciting development, scientists loaded these is required while our understanding remains so limited.
DC with tumour cell markers, and injected the DC into
mice. These cells presented their load to the cells of the The treatments described here are promising, but our
immune system along with signals indicating that these limited appreciation of the factors involved in the normal
markers were of non-self generating activation of the regulation of the immune system and how it responds to
immune system. In human cancer patients this treatment cancer are holding us back from a cure. Augmenting
resulted in the regression of established tumour masses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer will re-
in around 12% of cases, and patients suffered none of the sult in treatments for cancer that have fewer side effects,
side effects associated with conventional cancer therapy. are more successful, and provide a cure in its definitive
The low success rate is not a reflection on the treatment sense. In order to move forward we have to understand
itself, but of how little we understand about how these DC every aspect of the immune system and to achieve this
operate in the body and with what additional signals they we require more laboratories, more biochemical dissec-
define the differences between self and non-self cells. tion and more academic argument. The key to a cure for
cancer lies in our own bodies: we just need the expertise
The immune system has checkpoints in place to ensure to find it.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The Owl is reliant on contributions, so if you want to help us sustain it, please send us replies, letters,
or ideas for prospective articles by visiting The Owl’s website: www.theowljournal.com. Contribu-
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voucher will be awarded to the best article in the next edition, so please don’t hesitate to get in touch,
whoever you are.

11
 TWEENAGE KICKS
Anita Isalska considers the uneasy combination of childhood and sexuality in society

T he phrase ‘child sexuality’ is often dismissed

as an oxymoronic, and potentially sinis-
ter, expression. If we accept its existence we
are opening a Pandora’s Box of repercussions for
both modern social dynamics and the justice system.
When Sigmund Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory at-
tributed oral, anal and phallic stages of sexual gratifi-
cation to pre-pubescent children, the world gasped.
anti-paedophile reflex, but have muddied the waters by
accepting the natural sexuality of the adolescent. Pro-
moting the belief that “kids grow up faster these days”
has proved dangerous. Channel 4 argued for the lowering
of the age of consent from sixteen to fourteen with its
controversial 2003 documentary Age of Consent, a move
roundly condemned by charities such as Family and Youth
Concern as “an attempt to whip up some publicity”.

Although Freud remains aninfluential force in the his- Further afield, a Swedish gay awareness campaign,
tory of thought, his ideas make most of organised by Stockholm Pride, was met
us at least mildly uncomfortable, leav- with mixed reactions when it presented
ing them to be considered as a point images of children labelled as homosex-
of departure for theories that cohere ual. One such advertisement pictured a
with what is socially acceptable. The child in a swimming costume with the
average person does not wish to believe tagline “Birgitta, six years old, lesbian”.
in the anal sexual pleasures of an in- Anders Selin, chairman of Stockholm
fant any more than they do in Freud’s Pride, defended the campaign as an at-
rather reductive view of women as tempt to fuel the ‘nature versus nurture’
the ‘Dark Continent’ complete with debate about how and why homosexu-
sexual pervisions unpenetrable to man. ality occurs, all the while expressing the
view that “[being homosexual] should
Although we can perhaps dismiss be as respectable as being heterosexual.”
Freud’s ideas with an uneasy laugh, two Many people considered the adverts
opposing attitudes toward child sexu- to be penetratingly thought provok-
ality remain. And in modern society ing: fighting homophobic discrimina-
the two also appear inextricably inter- Free to flirt or Fuller’s floozy?
Publicity photo for Daisy, 13, member tion by juxtaposing the incontestably
twined. The first such perspective seems of S Club Juniors innocent child with a label, “gay”, that
rife to the point of epidemic. It is the ut- bigots would see as derogatory. Oth-
ter rejection of the concept, and the consequent urge ers saw the attribution of sexuality to children as some-
to shield children from exposure to sexual language, thing that could fuel paedophilia, and further corrode
imagery and activity. Paedophilia is seen as an unthink- the boundary separating childhood from adolescence.
ably perverse persuasion, and fear of sexual predators
led to a campaign, spear-headed by the News of the World, Society rightly condemns and punishes sexual activ-
to remove the anonymity of known child molesters by ity with children, but there is a curious undercurrent
allowing parents to check if a registered in fashion and culture encouraging chil-
“The average person
paedophile lives in their vicinity. In more dren to adopt sexuality at a very early age.
serious cases this fear led to vigilante be- does not wish to believe Planet 3 Publishing spotted a gap in the
haviour. Feeling failed by the justice system, in the anal sexual market when it released the magazine Mad
people took matters into their own hands pleasures of an infant” About Boys, catering for the ‘tween’ gen-
by targeting child abusers in their com- eration of girls who find themselves in the
munity- resulting in several cases of mistaken identity. awkward phase between comic books and teen glossies.

Yet in spite of this instinct to shield vulnerable youths, Judging by the public reaction to the magazine, it
and postpone any ‘premature’ sexual awareness, there are was generally considered not to bridge the gap between
moves to erode the laws protecting children and young these two phases, but rather to throw the child into the
adolescents. These views are not incompatible with the chasm of hormone-addled, sex-obsessed, adolescence.

12
The magazine sold, implying that the target-market graphs of young boys, but not censured for the explicit
tweens felt their maturity to have been rightly recog- short stories he had written on the subject. It was argued
nised, but the publication was regarded with unease by that to deny Mr Sharpe access to the textual world would
most adults. Similar controversy was sparked across the clash with his right to freedom of expression. Further-
pond by Abercrombie & Fitch’s launch of thong-style more, it was claimed Mr Sharpe’s writings did not ac-
underwear marketed for 7-14 year olds. Despite prot- tively promote sexual acts with children - they merely
estations from Hampton Carney, the Ohio company described them, which is not a criminal offence in itself.
spokesman, that the designs were not sexual but merely
“cute and fun and sweet”, the revealing underwear (em- It was in Canada, too, that Toronto artist Eli Lang-
blazoned with slogans such as “eye candy” and “wink er’s drawings of men and boys engaged in sexual acts
wink”) caused outrage among parents. “Drawings of men and boys were successfully defended in court
on the grounds of their artistic merit.
One major question clearly follows engaged in sexual acts were These examples might point to the dis-
this conflict: Can the law recognise when deemed legal on the grounds turbing conclusion that, for art’s sake,
an individual has moved from being an of artistic merit” the sexualisation of children is largely
innocent child worthy of protection to a deemed acceptable. This leads to a mire
sexual being? Catherine Hardwicke’s recent film Thirteen of problems for child pornography laws, insofar as the
portrayed predatory young adolescent girls discovering line between ‘art’ and ‘pornography’ is hazily indistinct.
the power of their own sexuality, and even using it as a
weapon to manipulate others. Whether we attribute the Fine art is not the only arena in which our culture
sexual savvy and (albeit naïve) seduc- permits children to act in a sexually
tion techniques of the girls to media provocative way. Simon Fuller of Pop
influence or natural tendencies, the Idol fame received criticism for mas-
film nevertheless raises interesting terminding the S Club Juniors, minia-
questions about how twenty-first cen- ture pop-stars cloned from the saccha-
tury society protects its youth. Where- rine-sweet, but scantily-clad, S Club
as Stockholm Pride was berated for 7. It was suggested that the skimpy
attributing sexuality to underage chil- garments and love-fuelled lyrics of
dren, Thirteen has been highly praised the S Club Juniors were encouraging
by critics, both in England and abroad, children to mature before their time.
for its more explicit rendering of a Fuller vindicated his actions, and dis-
similar subject. The Guardian called it missed the possibility that the Juniors’
“intelligent” with “tremendous per- image was too sexy, by claiming that
formances”, and CNN lauded it as child molesters “should all be shot”.
“brilliant” and “touching”. But de- In this way, Fuller epitomises the con-
spite the fact that the film document- fusion present in today’s society about
ed the downward spiral of thirteen- what should be seen as permissible,
year-olds, it was rated as suitable only and what taboo, for children.
Controversial Stockholm Pride publicity
for viewers aged eighteen and above. poster. Caption reads “Birgitta. 6 years old.
Lesbian. Not all princesses choose a prince. That pre-teens wish to accelerate
Likewise, a ground-breaking case in Who made the choice for her?” into the adult sphere by adopting the
Canada suggests a further breakdown accoutrements of sexually aware ado-
of laws preventing children from being associated with lescents is clear from the very existence of the market S
sex. Mr Justice Duncan Shaw ruled that the possession Club Juniors is aimed at. However, our wary repugnance
of a lengthy tome containing written scenes of fellatio of allowing children to tread there too soon is enough
on young children, and sadistic sexual acts on twelve- to prompt hysteria and outrage. The very fact that we
year old boys, did not contravene the child pornography have an underlying awareness of ‘innocent’ children’s
law passed in June 1993. Robin Sharpe, author and own- enthusiasm to enter the sexual sphere seems to make
er of the 243 page document, was found guilty of child us respond to attempts to promote or encourage it with
pornography for possesing hundreds of obscene photo- revulsion and violence.

13
 A VERY SMALL LEAP, A GIANT STEP
Quantum teleportation has been much discussed, but little understood. Edward Davie presents the
physics behind the concept, and considers the potentially world-changing consequences

T eleportation has fascinated humankind ever

since the first discoveries about the quantum
world. Back in the late 1960’s Captain Kirk of
the TV series Star Trek achieved teleportation of his
crew by means of a ‘teleporter’. However, Gene Rod-
To understand the process involved in teleporting
photons it is necessary to grasp the significant differences
between the laws of classical and quantum physics. Isaac
Newton shaped classical physics as a science that deals with
the macroscopic (‘real’) world. Quantum physics, on the
denberry, the creator of the series, was not the origina- other hand, is a much newer science dealing with the mi-
tor of the idea by any means. Anne McCaffrey’s Pern croscopic world, and involves single atoms and photons.
series used dragons as vessels of rapid transportation,
the Dune series made use of teleportation by “folding Classically it is understood that objects have properties
space”, and even Marvel Comic’s X-Men that may be measured, and the results of
invented characters such as Nightcrawler “ In the microscopic these measurements are largely unaffected
and Voght with teleporting abilities. While world it seems that by the act of measurement itself. Think of
all this seems very far-fetched, interest in nothing is real until it recording one’s height, for example. But in
the practicalities of eliminating the bar- is measured” the microscopic world it seems that nothing
riers of space and time remains. And, is real until it is measured. Take the polariza-
within the last decade, basic teleportation, on the tion of a photon of light as an example. Before a meas-
quantum level at least, has actually been achieved. urement of the polarization is taken the photon does not
have a specific polarization, but a range of polarizations
Depending on which science fiction you are reading, including all possible states, each with a particular prob-
teleportation procedures vary, as do the consequences: ability of being measured. Once the measurement is
from permitting people to travel instantaneously (and made, however, a single state of polarization is recorded.
in doing so violating Einstein’s speed limit) to travelling Upon measurement all the other possible states of po-
through time. In most cases, teleporting involves a device larization vanish and the original indefinite state is lost
that scans the original object and extracts all the relevant forever. In effect, the act of measuring a particle actually
information necessary for describing it. This information destroys some of the information about its pristine state,
is then transmitted, and is received by another station making it impossible to copy and reproduce the particle.
which then forms an exact replica of the original. But leav-
ing the fantasy behind, what exactly is teleportation? Es- An alternative way to look at the apparent impossi-
sentially it is the utter deconstruction of a physical entity bility of teleportation is by considering the Heisenberg
and its reconstruction in a remote location. Analogously, Uncertainty Principle. This principle rules that precise
quantum teleportation is the disembodied transport of measurements of both position and momentum can-
an unknown quantum state from one place to another. not be taken simultaneously. Once a measurement of
one property is taken it will alter the sec-
Although the dream of teleporting peo- “Einstein described ond, and so a perfect scan of the object
ple and large objects is reserved to the con- entanglement as that to be teleported cannot be made with any
fines of fiction, the implications of quantum ‘spooky action at a certainty. This principle also applies to
teleportation are some of the most pro- distance’” other pairs of quantities, hence render-
found to affect modern science. Professor ing it impossible to measure the exact
H. Jeff Kimble, leader of the Caltech Research Group, quantum state of the object. Without this knowledge
who conceived one of the key experiments demonstrat- it is impossible to make an exact copy of the original.
ing quantum teleportation, claims that it will lead to the
development of quantum computers and quantum tele- However, there is a fundamental feature exclusive
communications systems that will overcome limitations to the quantum world, known as ‘entanglement’, that
in classical physics. Dr. Samuel Braunstein, Professor may be used to circumvent the limitations set by He-
Kimble’s partner, adds that it may lead to “the closest we isenberg, without violating the principle. This curious
could come to foolproof security in communications.” feature was once described by the co-inventor of quan-
tum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger, as “the essential

14
feature” of quantum physics, and by Einstein as that
“spooky action at a distance.” Physicist Charles Ben-
nett, from IBM’s laboratories at Yorktown Heights in
New York, used entanglement when he first present-
ed the theory behind quantum teleportation in 1993.
Anton Zeilinger likens an entangled pair of photons
is to a special pair of dice that have a unique feature.
Whenever the dice are rolled separately they act like any
other, randomly, with an equal chance of producing each
number. However, when the two are rolled
together they always produce a double. As “It appears that one
soon as one is rolled, the other will always photon is magically
get the same result. In quantum physics influenced by the other” may have to modify photon B in one of
the particles are analogous to the dice, and
properties, such as polarization, to the faces of a die.
Now consider two entangled photons with random
but identical polarization. Alice and Bob each have one
half of the pair of entangled photons. When Alice
measures her photon its original indefinite state van-
ishes, yielding a result of either ‘horizontal’ or ‘vertical’
polarization, each with a 50% possibility of occurring.
It is now known that Bob’s photon will, upon meas-
urement, have the same polarization as Alice’s, despite
previously having the same probability of getting one
or the other. It is as though Bob’s
photon has been magically influ-
enced by Alice’s. Most remarkably,
the distance between Alice and
Bob is irrelevant to the result. The
entangled state specifies only that
a measurement will find the two
polarizations are equal. Entangle-
ment is often known as EPR, and
the particles EPR pairs, after Ein-
stein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan
Rosen, who first analyzed the ef-
fects of entanglement in 1935. As a
basis for his theoretical prediction
of quantum teleportation, Bennett
uses EPR in a rather ingenious way.
Bennett’s work is based around The experimental setup for the Univeristy of Inns- tum-scale particle, regardless of
the idea that an external photon, bruck experiment.
namely photon M, is teleported from Alice to Bob.
Alice may not simply measure the polarization of
photon M and send the result to Bob, since the meas-
urement result that Alice wants to send would not
be identical to the photon’s original state. Therefore
the process is done using a pair of entangled pho-
tons A and B, with Alice taking A and Bob taking B.
Photon M is measured jointly with photon A by
Alice, without their individual polarization being de-
termined. They may be found to be “perpendicular”
for example. This type of measurement is known as
a Bell-state measurement. This measurement affects
photon B such that it now correlates with a combina-
tion of Alice’s measurement result, and the state that
photon M originally had. In fact, Bob now has pho-
ton M’s state or a modified version of the state of M.
But the teleportation is not complete
yet, since Bob still does not know the re-
lationship between photons A and M. Bob
three different possible ways or, in the
‘lucky’ case where B is identical to M already, leave it
alone. These four ways correspond to the four different
quantum relationships possible between A and M. Alice
must therefore communicate the results of the Bell-state
measurement to Bob in order to get a perfect match. This
communication must be done by classical means. Once
the message has been received by Bob, he can then proc-
ess his photon. This element of the teleportation means
that information on the form of a quantum state can-
not travel faster than the speed of light and so does not
contradict Einstein’s laws of relativity. It may be said that
photon B instantaneously receives
all the information from photon A,
but Bob must wait to receive the
classical information from Alice be-
fore he can read that information.
One group of researchers at
the University of Innsbruck in
Austria published an account of
the first experiment, based on
Bennett’s theory, to verify quan-
tum teleportation, in the Decem-
ber 11 issue of Nature. In this
quantum teleportation process, a
quantum-scale particle such as a
photon is taken and its properties
are transferred to another quan-
the location of the second particle.
At Alice, the sending station of the quantum tel-
eporter, a photon ‘M’ is created. Photon M is encoded
with a specific polarization, say 45º, simply by being sent
through a polarizing filter. While photon M travels to-
wards a beam-splitter a pair of entangled photons, A and
B, are created, each in an undetermined, but ultimately
15
 identical, polarization state. Photon B travels to Bob. state measurement on one of the two EPR beams jointly
Meanwhile, photon A travels towards the same beam- with a beam from a third party ‘Victor’. The resulting
splitter as photon M so that A and M arrive at the same electrical current was then sent to Bob, and using this
time. Since all these photons are created by pulses of information Bob then modified the second EPR beam
UV light, it is possible to ensure that this happens with and constructed his output beam. Victor, the verifier, re-
extreme accuracy. The two photons are then combined ceives the output from Bob and measures the overlap
with the beam-splitter, and either continue their journey between the input and output signals, as given by the fi-
to detector 1 or change course and travel to detector 2. delity, with for orthogonal states and for perfect telepor-
tation. This experiment achieved a fidelity of 0.58±.002.
If detector 1 and 2 are both triggered, as occurs in a Thus the case for teleportation is without doubt genuine,
quarter of all cases, the two photons have
gone to different detectors. Upon the si- “The case for But is this really teleportation? The
multaneous detection of 1 and 2, with pho- teleportation is without beam itself is not teleported, but only the
tons A and M now entangled, photon B in- doubt genuine” properties that define its state. This state-
stantaneously becomes a replica of photon ment leads to a valid argument that this is
M, taking the same polarization state of 45º. This corre- not in fact true teleportation. In defence of this article’s
sponds to the ‘lucky’ case mentioned above and is verified title, it could be asked what we mean when we talk of
by a second beam splitter at Bob which detects photons of an object, and how can we verify its identity? The only
polarization 45º and 135º and teleportation is achieved [5]. way to ensure that an object that we are used to see-
ing, say a car, is the same one from day to day, is by
In the experimental version of this setup the 45º po- observing that it has the same features and properties.
larization detector fired 80% of the times when detec- In the quantum world, particles of the same type and
tor 1 and 2 fired. This is 30% higher than would oc- in the same quantum state are indistinguishable, even
cur with random photons. It was also demonstrated in principle. So if it were possible to swap each of the
using a variety of polarizations, including linear as iron atoms in the car and replace them with ones of the
well as a nonlinear type called circular polarization. same atomic state, then the car would be identical to the
original. Physical identity cannot mean more than be-
But there are two problems with this experiment. The ing the same in all observable properties. Photons B and
first problem is whether the results really indicated tel- M cannot be distinguished and so are indeed identical.
eportation, a question involving the concept of fidelity.
The fidelity of a teleportation describes the match be- For the same reason, teleportation of photons may
tween the input and output states. For a genuine telepor- not be considered in the same vein as ‘faxing’ on a quan-
tation to be recognised more than 50% of the photons tum scale. In the process of faxing the copy produced
must show signs of being teleported, as fidelity greater is easily distinguishable from the original. In quantum
than 0.5 is not possible for coherent states without the teleportation the object is indistinguishable and so has
use of EPR. As the experiment yielded the same identity as the original. In the
low-fidelity results they could be explained “Physical identity process the original is also destroyed, so
away by classical optics, with the photons cannot mean more the photon truly has been transported.
not undergoing teleportation at all. Sec- than the sum of all
ondly, the experiment was limited by its observable properties” The natural step from this would be to
use of two-dimensional discrete variables. suggest a scaling up to the macro-world,
Quantum computing and communication demand the and the production of matter teleporters. Unfortunate-
use of infinite dimensional systems, and the Innsbruck ly there are two major drawbacks. Firstly, although the
experiments relied on the discrete nature of photons. production of EPR photons is now a relatively straight
forward procedure, to teleport an object of just a few
These problems were tackled by a team lead by Prof. grams would require something in the region of 1024
Kimble in 1998. The state variable in this experiment was bits of data. This is simply impossibly big. Secondly, the
not the polarization of a photon of light, but the quadra- object must be in a pure quantum state. Such states are
tures of an electric field. The EPR beam was “squeezed”, very fragile. Therefore the whole process must be iso-
meaning that one of its properties was noise-free, at the lated from the environment using a vacuum. This is due
expense of greater randomness elsewhere. The experi- to a process called decoherence. In this process the ob-
ment was essentially the same, with Alice making a Bell- ject’s quantum state degrades due to information leaks

16
produced by stray interactions with the environment. The field of cryptography is currently based around
For any large object such a vacuum would be hard to the extremely difficult mathematical problem of reducing
achieve, let alone for a human who requires oxygen to a large number to its factors, and as such will be affected
breath and radiates heat! Sadly it seems Star Trek style hugely by the development of such a technology. With a
teleportation is far out of reach; however, there are quantum computer it may be possible to solve these prob-
many practical applications of these astonishing find- lems instantly, and current methods will become redun-
ings, particularly in the world of information technology. dant. Luckily, quantum physics can define a new system
of data security that does not involve cryptography at all.
In theory, we know how a quantum computer could
be built using three basic components: entangled parti- In current methods data is protected by a password,
cles, quantum teleporters and gates that operate on a sin- which is encoded by a very hard sum involving factors.
gle qubit at a time, as described by Daniel Gottesman of The answer to the problem is known as a private key,
Microsoft and Isaac L Chuang of IBM. Yet and conventionally it is almost impossible
the realization of even a small-scale quan- to discover this key, unless given access to
“Essentially, quantum
tum computer is still years away. The main it. But as quantum computers will be ca-
computers are magical”
problem is in transferring quantum data pable of discovering any key, the new sys-
reliably between logic gates or processors. tem makes the keys public. It is essential,
Quantum teleportation could offer one possible solution. then, to create a private channel between the sender and
receiver, and this may be achieved using an EPR pair.
The effect of developing quantum computers would In this scheme, anyone attempting to eavesdrop will de-
have astonishing results for computer-modelling and stroy any information before they can decode it, as they
problem-solving. These computers would work in an en- must detect the particle first, and in doing so alter its
tirely different way to our present machines, using quan- quantum state. Imagine the channel to be like a carrier
tum, as opposed to classical, rules. A conventional com- pigeon flying across the sea. It flies direct, and the only
puter works with bits, which take definite values of 0 or way to find out the message it carries is by shooting it
1, but a quantum computer uses quantum bits, or qubits. out of the sky. The pigeon will then drop into the sea
These qubits can be in superpostions of 0 and 1, just as a and the message will be lost. The method is foolproof,
photon is in superposition of horizontal and vertical po- in theory, since the EPR channel is extremely fragile.
larization before it is measured, as described above. In- Data will become more secure than it has ever been.
deed, in sending a single photon, the quantum teleporter
is actually transmitting a single qubit of information, These applications summarise what quantum telepor-
with horizontal polarization representing 0 and vertical tation is about: a definition of new rules. From the ear-
representing 1. A quantum computer can therefore work liest vision of teleportation, through the tentative first
on a superposition of many different inputs at once. steps of Einstein, the theoretical blueprints laid out by
Bennett, right up to the possibility of building the first
This mean that the computer is able to quantum computer, quantum teleportation
run an algorithm simultaneously on infinite “We no longer hold the has fascinated and intrigued those who
inputs, using only as many qubits as a con- intuitions we gained as work on or around it. Now the most impor-
ventional computer would need bits to run children in the Classical tant barrier has been overcome; in chang-
the same algorithm once on a single input. world” ing the way we think about the quantum
It is as though the quantum computer can world. We no longer hold the intuitions
delve into an infinite number of dimensions and inspect that we gained as children in the classical world, but have
each possible outcome. When you require the correct opened our eyes to a very different set of rules where
answer, to be recalled by conventional means, it instanta- superposition is a fact and EPR an “essential feature.”
neously produces it with one hundred per cent accuracy. Now perhaps we can use this wisdom to help us reach a
Essentially, they are magical. Instead of checking all pos- deeper understanding of the quantum world and, after
sible answers, a quantum computer just seems to ‘know’ taking our first experimental steps, in which we merely
the right answer. Problems that can be dealt with in this observe quantum phenomena, we might create experi-
way include finding items in a database and factoring large ments in which we can control these phenomena. Once
numbers; a key feature in code solving, or cryptography this is realized, who knows what might be achieved?

17
 EXTANT EXCTINCTS
Ross Barnett explains why exctinction is no longer a secure way of avoiding the attentions of
modern genetics

T he idea of travelling back into prehistory, or

bringing prehistory to life, has been a recurrent
theme in literature, from Conan Doyle’s The Lost
World to Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. Since the discov-
ery of an antediluvian world, the dragons, monsters and
four coding system (as opposed to base two, “binary”,
used in computing). The four possible states (bases) are
“A”, “C”, “G” or “T” and the order in which the se-
quence of bases occur determines the information coded
by a genome. DNA is not a single but a double stranded
giant beasts of the distant past have exerted a powerful molecule, with one strand complementary to the other. If
hold on mankind’s imagination. Over time, ideas about an “A” occurs on one strand then it invariably is chemi-
extinct creatures have changed markedly and many at- cally bound to a “T” on the other strand, like interlocking
tempts have been made to place them in the context of teeth on a zip. The same principle applies to “C” and “G”
the world as it exists today. Exactly and this property is essential to the
twenty years, this became possible. ability of DNA to reproduce it-
self. Any single DNA strand has
In 1984, Russell Higuchi man- all the information necessary to
aged to extract fragments of DNA give its partner strand by follow-
from the preserved skin of a ing the A-T and C-G base pairing
Quagga (Equus quagga), an African rules. It is through this property
Equid that resembled a cross be- of DNA that living cells are able
tween a zebra and a donkey. His re- to divide. The double helix splits
sults showed that the Quagga was into two strands and enzymes
actually a subspecies of Burchell’s match up the complementary base
Zebra. By itself this finding was of pairs to produce two double heli-
limited interest to all but students ces from one, a process known as
of horse phylogenetics; worldwide The only Quagga to be photographed alive: a mare “semi-conservative replication”.
popular interest stemmed from the in London Zoo circa 1870
fact that the last true Quagga had PCR takes the process of
lived and died in an Amsterdam zoo during the 1880’s. semi-conservative replication out of the cell and
What Higuchi had achieved was the molecular resurrection into the test-tube. The first step is to design “prim-
of a subspecies that had been extinct for over 100 years. ers”- short stretches of single stranded DNA which
target particular areas of the genome for replication.
Since then, ancient DNA (aDNA) research has ma-
tured as a legitimate scientific field, and there are now Using a combination of enzymes, free bases and
many DNA sequences available for extinct species. Crea- a regulated cyclical change in temperature, the target
tures like the majestic Moa of New Zealand, the implau- DNA helix unzips, and copies of the area targeted by
sible Giant Ground Sloths of the American plains, the the primers are produced. The PCR technique is so sen-
mighty Steppe Mammoth, and that epitome of extinc- sitive that forty thermal cycles can produce many mil-
tion, the Dodo, have all been subjects of aDNA research. lions of copies from a single molecule of target DNA.
The loss, through extinction, of many of “the hugest,
and fiercest, and strangest forms” la- This incredible sensitivity allows PCR
mented by Alfred Russell Wallace (co- to amplify DNA from ancient and extinct
“Higuchi achieved the
author of the theory of natural selection molecular resurrection of organisms (using well preserved bones,
with Darwin) no longer impedes analysis skin, tissue and dung) even when very few
an animal that had been original DNA molecules are left. This sen-
of their relationship to extant organisms.
extinct for over 100 years” sitivity is necessary because DNA is fairly
The story is written in their genes. What
has enabled this remarkable achieve- unstable. Most of the DNA in a sample
ment is possibly the most powerful tool available in mo- of bone decays after a few decades, and practically none
lecular biology: the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). survives a hundred or a thousand years. Luckily, the field
of aDNA has several “tricks” to get around this problem.
To understand PCR it is necessary to have some back-
ground knowledge of DNA structure. DNA is a base One property of DNA that has been exploited by re-

18
searchers is that sub-zero temperatures dramatically slow
the rate of degradation. Consequently, a lot of work has
been done on organisms associated with the Arctic tun-
dra, such as Mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius), Woolly
Rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatus), Brown Bears (Ursus arctos)
and Bison (Bison bison). When these beasts expired they oc-
casionally ended up as part of the permafrost, a region of
permanently frozen ground found mainly in Canada, Alas-
ka and Siberia. The effect of spending ten thousand years
in a geological freezer means that some prehistoric per-
mafrost samples contain DNA of better quality than that
extracted from museum specimens less than a century old.
Another trick is to try and amplify mitochondrial,
rather than nuclear, DNA. Mitochondria are energy-pro-
ducing structures found in almost all multicellular or-
ganisms. They are thought to be the descendents of an
early bacterium, enslaved millions of years ago by one
of the cells that gave rise to all complex life. Mitochon-
dria are often present in concentrations of
up to a thousand per cell, and they have their “The very power of these magnificent creatures are found every-
own mini-genome. The high concentration of PCR is its
of mitochondrial DNA increases the likeli- biggest weakness” collected to be ground into fertiliser for export.
hood of it surviving for long periods of time.
Even with this biochemical sleight of hand, aDNA
is still a technically demanding field. The very power
of PCR is its biggest weakness. A sample containing
thirty original DNA templates only needs to encoun-
ter a fraction of a nanolitre of post-PCR solution, or
modern DNA, to be hopelessly contaminated. Peer-re-
viewed scientific journals have published putative dino-
saur DNA, amber-entombed beetle DNA and Permian
bacterial DNA. However, none of these have been in-
dependently replicated, raising questions about the valid-
ity of the results. The operating procedures necessary to
avoid contamination are expensive and time-consuming
but are the only way to ensure the results are genuine.
Assuming that correct results are produced, the next
stage is analysis. So far most aDNA studies have con-
centrated on elucidating the relationships between extinct
and extant taxa, as was seen in the case of the Quagga.
This involves aligning the DNA sequences produced for
the extinct and extant taxa and feeding them into a com-
puter program. The program uses statistical methods to
calculate the most parsimonious evolutionary scenario
to explain the differences found in the sequences. Of-
ten the easiest ways to visualise the result is as a “Phy-
logenetic tree” which shows, to a rough approximation,
the change in DNA over time as species branch off.
The Owl is now online! Visit www.theowljournal.com for past issues, free subscription and to contact
The Owl. Comments, suggestions, letters and articles are extremely welcome.
The aDNA approach has been greeted with interest
by traditional morphologists and taxonomists. Some-
times the results are completely in accordance with the
traditional view of species relationships. An example
is the recent study by a French group of the extinct
Woolly Rhino which showed it was most closely related
to the critically endangered Sumatran Rhino (Dicerorhi-
nus sumatrensis): a result predicted by morphological data.
In contrast, a study of extinct New Zealand Moa
challenged the traditional reading of the bones. Moa are
birds related to Ostriches, Emus and Kiwis, that used to
flourish in New Zealand. They monopolised the entire
spectrum of ecological niches available to herbivorous
animals, from shrubby alpine regions to broad, low grass-
lands. When the Polynesian ancestors of the Maori ar-
rived in New Zealand these giant birds were the most
obvious food source around. There is evidence over the
whole archipelago of massive consumption of Moa; they
were probably eaten into extinction. The bones
where in New Zealand, and for a time they were
Ever since the bones were identified as
belonging to an extinct “ostrich-like” bird, there has
been great debate about how many species of Moa
existed. The first estimates was thirty-nine, but over
time that number has dropped down to just eleven.
Earlier this year Dr. Michael Bunce and Professor Alan
Cooper published an article in Nature showing that bones
previously regarded as belonging to three separate species
of Moa, actually represent just one, sexually dimorphic,
species. Thousands of this type of Moa have been found,
but despite the amount of data a mistake was still made.
And many extinct species have been taxonomically de-
scribed on the basis of single bones, or subtle differences
in skeletal proportion. The story of the Moa cautions
against the over-interpreting of morphological characters.
With the success of this approach it is an exciting time
for aDNA - access to nuclear genes opens up the possi-
bility of asking complex questions about extinct species.
What happened to the many populations of animals in
North America, Europe and Asia as they neared extinc-
tion? What colour was a mammoth or a woolly rhino?
Will it be possible one day to reconstruct some of the be-
haviours of these creatures from genetic evidence? The
answers to these fascinating questions are surely written
in the nuclear genes.
19
 VISIONS OF INFINITY
Was Bob Dylan a great artist? Jonny Thakkar searches for transcendent purity in Visions of
Johanna

B ob Dylan – what’s all the fuss about? Why do

people get so excited about a crap singer with
a rhyming dictionary? And what is this Dylan
vs Keats rubbish? As a Dylan obsessive myself, I feel
obliged to offer an explanation (or an excuse, at least).
there a hint of Hamlet’s opening gambit? – ‘Who’s
there?’ asks Barnardo, fearful of again encounter-
ing the spectre of Hamlet’s father, a terrible vision.
Dylan’s second line takes the form of an answer to
the first. What tricks? The tricks of denial, perhaps
Perhaps the best way to do this is to demonstrate the false consciousness that represses the earthbound
the richness of what many consider his greatest song, nature of our existence. We must be on our guard, in
Visions Of Johanna, from the album Blonde On Blonde. case the night tempts us into denial of our finitude, he
Now Dylan is a songwriter, not a poet. But that doesn’t suggests. And Louise is to be on our side in this battle,
mean that his lyrics can’t withstand close reading. By urging us to defy the need to deny it. Louise wants more
reading his lyrics on the page we are not thereby au- than friendship, though. She holds a handful of rain,
tomatically neglecting the importance of, for exam- tempting you. This is plainly a fertility image: Louise is
ple, his singing (which often, believe it or not, rescues womanly, and knowingly so – she offers tangible rewards.
dodgy lyrics). Our question here, then, Repressing the urge to enjoy these offer-
is whether it is worth studying his lyrics. “We must be on our guard, ings is itself denial, of a different sort.
lest the night tempts us
I propose to read Visions Of Jo- into denying our finitude” Note also the clever rhymes of
hanna in its entirety, verse by verse. I the first three lines. ‘Deny it’ and
will offer my reading, not a definitive one. My aim is ‘Defy it’ are elided in a lazy, three-in-the-morn-
simple: to show that it is worth the bother. (No past ing drawl, to rhyme with ‘quiet’, which is corre-
experience of Dylan or literary criticism is required.) spondingly pulled apart to something like ‘Qui-et’.
Before we start, a brief introduction. On the most Lights flicker from the opposite loft
literal level, the action in the song takes place in bed. In this room the heat pipes just cough
The narrator (call him Dylan) is in bed with a girl called The country music station plays soft
Louise; by the end of the song he’s having sex with her; But there’s nothing really, nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
and all the while, he’s thinking of Johanna. My claims And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind
will be these: Louise represents the earthly, the prosaic,
the finite; and Johanna represents the pure, the poetic, The next two lines are scene-setting, their spare
the infinite. So the Louise vs Johanna opposition which description evoking a late-night eeriness. The still-
runs through the song has three dimensions: they are op- ness is interrupted by the lights, the pipes, and a
posed as women, as styles of writing, and as metaphysi- country music station playing soft. But there’s noth-
cal positions. All three will be explained in due course, ing really, nothing to turn off. This is a virtuoso
and all three are present from the very beginning. metaphor for a songwriter’s (Dylan’s?) worst night-
* mare. Failure isn’t being hated, it’s being a nothing.

Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks when you’re tryin’
to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to
deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy
it
The song opens with a rhetorical question. The feel
is worldly-wise, wry. What tricks? we wonder. The
creaking of floorboards springs to mind, or the cough-
ing of pipes. But there could be others. Dylan’s sig-
nal is that we must be on our guard throughout. Is
This fear of nothingness is explicitly tied to loving
Louise in the next line. The night plays tricks on the
songwriter, forcing on him intrusive visions, visions of
Johanna, where there’s nothing – nothing to turn off,
only Louise and her lover. If there’s nothing to turn
off, there’s nothing turned on either – and that includes
Dylan, who is so unimpressed by his entwinement with
Louise that his focus is (comically) on a loft that’s far
away and noises that are barely audible. Louise and her
lover are the country music, just as Johanna will be poetry.
One of Dylan’s favourite tricks is to play around with

20
the first-, second- and third-persons in his narrative
(think Tangled Up In Blue, if you know it). ‘You’, ‘we’,
‘him’ and ‘me’ are all the same person here, though Dy-
lan can exercise a lot of purchase on the story by varying
the perspective at different moments. The use of “her
lover”, which is in fact ‘me’, implies here a distancing of
the singer’s true self, conquered by visions of Johanna,
from his current situation, caught up with Louise, thereby
reinforcing the impression of an oddly distracted lover.
The first verse of the song contains all the themes
of the rest of the song. The opposition of Dylan’s true
and false selves. The opposition of Louise and Johanna
– on one level, the dime-a-dozen girl vs the non-existent
soul mate; and on another, the earthly vs the pure, the
ideal. This last opposition, when inflected by the singer’s
evident concern with songwriterly failure,
turns into a question of artistic mundanity “The ghost of poetic
vs pure creativity. If we see this aspect, we electricity haunts the
might see the singer’s being entwined with singer as he considers ghost of poetic electricity, the creative
Louise as him being engrossed in writing Louise’s face”
a mediocre song. These motifs haunt the
form and content of the remaining verses, to which we
now turn.
**
In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff
with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on
the “D” train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s insane
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my
place
The second verse begins, in its first four lines, with
a mysterious story about ladies playing blindman’s buff,
all-night girls whispering of escapades, and a troubled
nightwatchman trying to figure it all out. I can think
of two readings of this story. What does seem to be
present is a distinction between females having fun, and
males wondering what’s going on. Something’s hap-
pening here, but the nightwatchman doesn’t know what
it is. We could read Dylan himself as being the night
watchman, surveying the night, clicking a metaphori-
cal flashlight of focus onto the empty lot beneath his
loft. Indeed, the whole song could be read as a study of
the workings of ‘night’ – imagination, sex, temptation,
guilt – the theme being introduced in the opening line.
Or we could, I would suggest, read the first four lines
as being the mediocre song I mentioned in the last sec-
tion. On this account, the story becomes an attempt to
conceptualise the problem of the singer’s dissatisfaction
with Louise, and yet finding the Louise-ness of his own
writing a barrier to that process. It’s all right, it’s just
near. Art, as Hamlet says, should aim “to hold as ‘twere
the mirror up to nature”. But Louise-writing only seems
like the mirror. It’s too easy, too concise, too clear…that
Johanna’s not here. This deft enjambement (running a
phrase over a line-break for effect) serves to highlight
not only the central contrast between Louise and Jo-
hanna, but one of the expressions of that divide, the
form of the song itself. Clarity is equated with falsity,
with seeming to be like the mirror of art (Hamlet: “I know
not ‘seems’.”); transcendence forbids clar-
ity of form: Johanna must remain a vision.
Louise is prose, Johanna is poetry. The
spark if you will, haunts the singer as he
considers Louise’s face, as he is consumed
by visions of Johanna’s perfect beauty. This image is
the highlight of the song for me. Just as in Dylan’s later
song, Blind Willie McTell, in which a lament on the death
of the blues becomes itself a rebirth of the blues, in
deploring the lack of poetry in Louise’s face the singer
creates poetry, with a line of startling transcendence that
whose meaning is clear yet opaque: “The ghost of ‘lec-
tricity howls in the bones of her face.”
***
The third verse continues to transform Louise vs Jo-
hanna into a question of writing.
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
The first line of the verse jumps out at the listener
with a clear reference to William Blake’s Songs of Inno-
cence and Experience. In some ways, this is a problem,
because for those who don’t pick up the allusion the
line reinforces the impression that they just don’t ‘get’
Dylan. But given our present purpose, to see whether
Visions Of Johanna repays close reading, it couldn’t be
better. Not only is the allusion rich when examined,
but also its sheer presence is self-consciously writ-
erly and thereby underscores the theme of the verse.
There are two Blake poems titled ‘little boy lost’ in the
aforementioned collection: the former being The Little Boy
Lost and the latter A Little Boy Lost. Both are concerned
with the theme of God’s nature: if He transcends every-
thing, then He is little more than a “vapour”; because of
21
 this, he is impossible to love without anthropomorphiz-
ing; and yet to declare that is to set “reason up for judge
of our most holy mystery.” Innocence leads the boy
astray in following this vapour; Experience sees him, hav-
ing learnt from his mistake, questioning the vapour and
paying the price. We see the latter in Songs Of Experience:
‘Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.
‘And father, how can I love you,
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird
That picks up crumbs around the door.’
The priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair.
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.
And, standing on the altar high,
‘Lo, what a fiend is here!’ said he,
‘One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy mystery.’
The weeping child could not be heard;
The weeping parents wept in vain.
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,
And burned him in a holy place,
Where many had been burned before.
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion’s shore?’
For Blake, transcendence has become not something
to be wondered at, but a constraint on wonder. It has
become institutionalised. Dylan picks up this theme in
the fourth verse of Visions Of Johanna. Here, though,
his reference to himself as a ‘little boy lost’ shows him
wondering whether the Louise/Johanna question is
a Catch-22 situation: to declare, like the little boy in
the first two verses of Blake’s poem, that transcend-
ence is impossible to conceive, is to call forth a public
hanging from those who have institutionalised tran-
scendence; and yet is transcendence not possible after
all? What exactly is the trick the night is playing here?
We witness another attempt by the writer to tell the
story he wants to tell:
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
22
He’s sure got a lotta gall to be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall while I’m in the hall
Oh, how can I explain?
It’s so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the
dawn
This is the story of a doomed relationship, told from
Louise’s point of view. If we take “her name” to be
Johanna, then my reading gets a foothold. The singer
is criticized by Louise for his pretensions, the way he
brags of his misery and takes himself so seriously. He
says he must leave her, offering a farewell kiss. And then
the eloquence descends into the land of the rhyming
dictionary, over-written internal rhymes pile up, poetry
becomes prose – and Louise has not yet been bidden
farewell. As with the previous verse, we are given an-
other example of the writer’s ability to transcend prose
only when lamenting his lack of poetic ability. How can
I explain? he asks. Explanation is prose; showing is po-
etry. With his degenerate rhyming, the singer shows that
Louise is still there, and in the act of showing he gives us
a brief and distracting vision of Johanna.
****
Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a
while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, “Jeeze
I can’t find my knees”
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the
mule
But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so
cruel
This is the most obscure verse in the song, with its
rampant surrealism and dense allusions. Recall our dis-
cussion of A Little Boy Lost. Blake criticizes the insti-
tutionalisation of transcendence, the institutionalisation
of infinity. The boy’s attempt to question infinity, to
bring it back down to earth, is a hanging offence. It
helps to read this verse in the light of Blake’s poem.
Museums, like the Church for Blake, represent insti-
tutionalised infinity, an infinity which must now go up
on trial in the spirit of the first line’s scepticism: let’s be
sure there are no tricks here. We have the voices of or-
thodoxy echoing around the box of the museum, banali-
ties distorted by the writer’s surreal ear. (Like those art
guides who can tell you matter-of-factly that ‘This figure
represents everlasting beauty’, before moving on to the
next transcendent masterpiece of the 30 minute tour.)
And then the subversion. A bit of cultural history:
Mona Lisa, a beauty without knees, encased and trapped
in the palace of the Louvre, was the subject of a de-
bunking act of Dada-ism by the great conceptual artist
Marcel Duchamp, who, in his L.H.O.O.Q. (1919), gave
her a moustache and goatee beard. (For Duchamp, in-
finity really must go up on trial - indeed, the title of his
work, when read aloud in French, means ‘she has a hot
arse’.) Modern art has been the subject of vicious attack
from the Establishment of infinity, and this verse mocks
that Establishment with its surreal (nothing too concise
or too clear) take on the haute-bourgeosie with their
wallflowers and “jelly-faced women”, their “jewels and
binoculars”. But if those he mocks are cruel to Mona,
to Johanna, by confining her, his attack too is revealed as
cruel and petty in comparison with Johanna, unworthy
of her.
*****
The peddler now speaks to the countess who’s pretend-
ing to care for him
Sayin’, “Name me someone that’s not a parasite and I’ll
go out and say a prayer for him”
But like Louise always says
“Ya can’t look at much, can ya man?”
As she, herself, prepares for him
The final verse, whether literally or metaphorically,
sees the singer getting into bed with Louise. He is the
peddler (of songs and ideas), she is the countess (why,
I don’t know). She is appearance, and so her care for
him can only be a pretence; his hope turns to disgust,
idealism to cynicism, as he tells her cruelly that the only
person worth praying for is the one who doesn’t ex-
ist. She retorts that he should get real (what the hell
is he looking at the opposite loft for?), and demon-
strates her own earthly concerns, preparing for his entry.
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev’rything’s been returned which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
Where is Johanna, the Madonna who would res-
cue him from earthly degradation? A cascade of
seven rhymes is the writer’s last, desperate attempt to
wash away prose; we feel him straining with every sin-
ew of writerly (and, indeed, bodily) muscle, trying his
damnedest not to give up or in. But the empty cage
of song which he has constructed for her has remained
unfilled, and now corrodes like the church in R.S. Tho-
mas’s The Empty Church (written later than Dylan’s song):
They laid this stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there.
Ah, he had burned himself
before in the human flame
and escaped, leaving the reason
torn. He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart? Is it in hope one
of them will ignite yet and throw
on its illuminated walls the shadow
of someone greater than I can understand?
As with Thomas, Dylan continues with the song be-
cause of the hope that its cage will capture her shadow.
The ghost of her dramatic presence howls in the bones
of that night, of the song itself. The singer himself is
now “the fiddler”, revealed as a petty swindler – the tricks
of the night have been of his own making. His path is
clear. He must pay Louise back for her night-long care,
her putting up with his visions. The recompense must
be formal: his duty is to complete the song, to consum-
mate the relationship. The fish truck – must I point
out the sexual image? – loads; his conscience explodes.
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are now all that remain
The final couplet resolves the matter. Harmoni-
cas play skeleton keys – they go through the mo-
tions (nothing really, nothing to turn off; and yet
somehow still enough to evoke the ghost of ‘lectric-
ity) – as he accepts the rain, Louise’s fertile embrace.
And all that is left of Johanna are visions of Johanna.
A grain of hope though: Infinity is manifest in the
search for infinity. Dylan’s song does achieve poetic
transcendence, if only in its search for that transcend-
ence. There is a tragic beauty in the forlorn human
quest itself. And that is hope enough. We don’t need
to deny that we’re stranded to defy it. To quote Blake
once more (from Auguries Of Innocence), our aim must be
To see a World in a grain of sand,
And Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
Visions Of Johanna, one of the greatest works of art
produced in the twentieth century, stands as a monu-
ment to that task.
23
 CARBON BASED MACHINES OR LYRICALLY WOVEN TAPESTRIES?
Is this scientist getting carried away? Ilana Levene examines the latest developments in the Nature
vs Nurture debate

N othing in the realm of science excites contro-

versy-seeking journalists as much as the ‘Nature
or Nurture’ debate. ‘Are we mindless drones
enslaved by our selfish genes?’ they cry. ‘Is violence/intel-
ligence/sexual preference (delete as applicable) set down
However, science does not yet afford us the level
of understanding needed to work from the bottom up.
The connection of specific genes to physiological traits
has been reasonably successful, but only the most ba-
sic pathways affecting behaviour have been discovered.
at birth?’ Such articles, usually provoked by scientists Many behavioural scientists therefore treat the insides of
sensationally and foolishly claiming that they animals as ‘black boxes’ that they can’t pos-
have found the ‘Gene For …’, do nothing to “Are we mindless sibly understand until some breakthrough
further the understanding of this fascinating drones enslaved by in the remote future, and which are there-
and wonderfully nuanced question. Hope- our selfish genes?” fore irrelevant. Why, then, are the terms
fully I, a lowly undergraduate, can do better. ‘gene for aggression’, ‘gene for intelligence’
and ‘gene for homosexuality’ used by such scientists?
Firstly we must define what we are discussing. The
debate is centred on how far the genes we inherit cause The explanation is that the term ‘gene for’ is not
our behavioural and physiological traits, and how far being used in the same way as it is in ‘gene for red hair’.
these things are affected by the environment we expe- Behavioural scientists can measure the variation be-
rience. One of the biggest misunderstandings of this tween particular behaviours in different individuals, and
debate, caused both by the ignorance of journalists can also measure the difference in their genetic make-
and the foolishness of some publicity-orientated sci- up (the combination of all the thousands of differ-
entists, is that the argument over ‘nature or nurture’ is ent forms of genes they have in their cells). When the
equated with the notion of ‘free-will or determination’. two sets of variations correlate, even to a small extent,
But the relative importance of genes and environment it can be inferred that some of the behavioural varia-
would still be debateable even if we discovered that we tion may be caused by the genes. This is not necessar-
are completely determined. The discussion would focus ily one particular gene, or even the same genes in each
on whether this determination is environmental or in- individual, but the correlation implies that a certain ge-
herited. Do violin lessons at the age of three produce netic makeup is somehow linked to particular behaviour.
child prodigies every time, or is it gene 462 that speci-
fies violin virtuosity? Exploring the balance between The strength of this link is technically quantified
nature and nurture cannot solve the question of wheth- as ‘heritability’. Various studies have tried to determine
er we have ‘control’ over our actions. But by studying the heritability of hundreds of behavioural traits. Such
the way the two factors affect us we can perhaps be- experiments, which usually use twin or adoption studies
gin to approach free-will from a scientific viewpoint. to try and separate genes from environment, have found
levels of at least 40% heritability for most behavioural
As scientists are notoriously obtuse, traits, including scholastic achievement.
“Many behavioural
let’s look first at what they really mean by a
‘gene for …’. A gene is a specific section of scientists treat the But heritability is a very slippery term,
the reams of DNA that are present in each insides of animals as and one that most non-scientists – and
of our cells. The four molecular ‘letters’ beyond comprehension” many scientists – misunderstand easily.
form a unique pattern in each gene, spell- For example, if scholastic achievement
ing out how to make a specific type of protein that then is 40% heritable, this does not mean that each student
has a particular role in the cell, whether in the generation gets 40% of their achievement from their genes and
of energy from food, the transport of material, the con- the rest from their environment. Heritability quantifies
traction of muscles or the firing of nerves. In a boringly statistical variation, not individual differences. This also
literal sense, a gene can only be ‘for’ programming a pro- gives some counterintuitive results. For example, finger
tein present in the cell. If we could follow this protein number in humans has low heritability. Almost eve-
within the cell, and find a precise line of causation that ryone has 10 fingers, and the majority of people that
ends up with a specific behaviour, perhaps we would be don’t have lost them due to accidents. Thus almost all
justified in saying that the gene specifies this behaviour. of the variation in finger number is environmentally de-
termined, and finger number has very low heritability.
24
 This highlights a serious problem in quantify-
ing genetic effects: traits such as finger number, which
are clearly genetically determined, but which are much
the same in all of us, give us no variation to study. A
further complication in assessing heritability is that it
changes depending on environment. If all students were
given an identical education much of their variation
in achievement is likely to be based on genetic effects.
So if the effect of environment were removed, traits
would become ‘more heritable’, because it
would be easier to distinguish the genetic “Genes
effects. And although these kinds of stud- certain
ies show us that genes can have specific certain circumstances”
effects on many traits, quantifying their
contribution in a meaningful way proves problematic.
Some scientists, then, are sure that our genes pro-
vide the recipe that makes us who we are, and that
changes in the recipe can affect all the behavioural traits
that we feel make us most human. But this doesn’t put
us in a position to say that our behaviour is completely
determined by our genes. As we have seen, genes con-
tain the pattern to make proteins, which do specific
things within the cell. The two complications are that
genes can be switched on and off within each cell at
different points, and that proteins only carry out their
function if the environment provides them with every-
thing they need. So genes only have certain effects in
certain circumstances, which is astoundingly different
to stating that people with certain genes are condemned
to carry out domestic abuse, or suffer heart failure.
We can now see that the way genes act depends to a
large extent on the environment. Our environment can
constrain our genes. Birth trauma in a baby may cause
mental retardation even though it has the most fantastic
set of ‘intelligence genes’. A person in the developing
world who carries the ‘obesity gene’ may still starve. As a
very simple example, if two people eat the same amount
of pizza, the variation in the amount of weight they put
on will depend on the effects of their genes.
“Scientists imply
However, it is the combination of the avail-
ability of pizza, and the presence of certain that every action
genes, that affects their weight. And, in the decision has a concrete
realm of behaviour, we each speak a certain physical cause”
language because we absorbed language
when we were very young, although the ability to use
language at all is regulated by genes unique to humans.
In the process of development, where many of our
traits are first constructed, we also see an essential role
for environmental influences. Our senses often need en-
vironmental input at an early stage to direct development.
For example, a baby whose eyes are covered at birth may
become permanently blind, even though her eyes are
perfectly normal. Some genes are specifically designed to
rely on environment to guide development. The brain is
designed to be moulded by the environment because this
gives us the flexibility to adapt to, and learn from, the
environments we grow up in. Furthermore, our genes
act to create a certain environment for development.
This is obvious in even the most ba-
only have sic aspects of our bodies. For example,
affects in we all have a layer of warmer air around
us, produced as a by-product of breath-
ing and other processes. This ‘gene-made’
environment then insulates us. Is this insulation due
to nature, or to the environment? This can also be rel-
evant from a behavioural perspective: if genes affect
how we sense rhythm they might determine whether
we have a flair for music. As budding musicians, we
might then seek out musical environments, musical
education, and the company of other musical peo-
ple. Is it nature or nurture that allows us to play jazz?
Our discussion has led us to where most of us
started out: common sense. Science does not tell us
that we have little ticking time bombs inside us that
will make us thin, fat, nice, clever, violent, or funny.
What it attempts to unravel is the incredible capac-
ity of all animals to use environment in the most ad-
vantageous way, and to seek out certain environ-
ments, which then affect our behaviour and genes.
Can we therefore address the issue of free will sci-
entifically? As humans we seem to experience an ‘I’ that
controls what we do, but is different from our bodies.
In studying how our genes influence us, scientists may
seem to imply that every action and decision has a con-
crete physical cause: from the world around us, or the
genes within us. However, science writer Matt Ridley
uses the complex, circular interplay of genes and envi-
ronment to turn the idea of free-will on its
head. He claims that our search for linear
and causes of actions is at odds with how the
world works. Trying to find a first cause of
any trait in the real world is as impossible as
trying to find the start of a circle. As free
will is defined by the idea of linear causes – free will be-
ing the opposite of linear causation – it is not within the
same framework as this search. Thus, if actions are not
linearly determined, we may call the alternative free will.
As Ridley says, “[free will] is the sum and product of
circular influences…, immanent in a circular relationship
between genes.”
25
Continued from Page 28
Mitchell, as his publishers note, is keen to blur the
distinction between art and life. That each life in the
book becomes a text in the next life indicates what New
Historicist Louis Montrose described as the “textu-
ality of history and the historicity of texts”. A text is
an historical event and history is a text to be read. To
this end, Adam Ewing, the first narrator, refers to his
“much edited misadventure”. It is not just the text of
the life but the life itself that is “much edited”. Mitch-
ell is also clearly fascinated by the processes of produc-
ing a text. The voyager, Ewer, writes a diary, referring
frequently to his quill and ink, which is later edited and
published by his son. Each entry begins with imita-
tion 19th Century Script. The composer writes letters
to a friend, the journalist is part of a short work of
fiction, the publisher writes his memoirs with an eye to
the cinema, Sonmi-451 dictates to an archivist using fu-
TRANSCRIPT OF A RECENTLY DISCOVERED MANUSCRIPT, THOUGHT TO HAVE BEEN AN EARLY
INFLUENCE ON CHARLES DICKENS
S
o I was called Pap and came to be called
Pap. My father, who I know with some cer-
tainty not to have been called Pap, died,
leaving me to forage for myself in this bar-
barous, heathenish wilderness that is 19th cen-
tury England.
I was put into the care of a simple man. Joe.
He was a simple, stupid man so we became the
best of friends. Joe was a carpenter. He enjoyed
the simple, homespun pleasures to be found in
wood and in other building materials. Like glue.
And he spent his gentle, pathos-ridden days glu-
ing things together to make bigger things. Oh!
How I aspired to the simple life, to the good-na-
tured days of the manual slave, innocently stu-
pid, stupidly innocent. Oh! I too was once a sim-
ple lad, with no high-minded ambitions, with no
great expectations. But! Oh! But! The passing of
time. The rise of the Moon, the set of mistress
Sun. ‘Tis ordained, methinks.
One ominous morning, I was helping Joe stick
something to something else, when there was a
foreboding knock on the door of our tent. It was
Mr. Pemberly-Smythe, a well-to-do social climber
with a portentous message.
“ A message, say ye?,” said Joe, innocently,
“we ‘ant ‘ad no messages round these ‘ere parts
fer… well, I can’t be rememberin’ when fer it were
last be happenin’”.
But Mr. Permberly-Smythe removed his top-
hat, an established symbol of his being a well-
to-do social climber with a portentous message,
and reassured us of his status as such.
“Well, god’s groats. I don’t be remembrin’ the
likes o’ this.” said Joe, simply, “Well give it ‘ere
then.”
“Ah, but no, Mr Joe. My fateful message is not
for you. It is for Pap”
“For this little gobshite?” bellowed Joe, good-
naturedly, “He don’t deserve no fuckin’ message.
Give the d––mned thing ‘ere, you jumped up little
social-climbing shit bag.”
Joe wouldn’t let me read it, so I melted him with
the glue-gun. It seemed fate had again played her
26
turistic technology, and the tribesman narrates to a gag-
gle of youngsters by a fire. It is these different meth-
ods that make explicit the theory of New Historicism.
Mitchell is obviously highly aware of modern literary
theory – much of his writing demonstrates the De-
constructionist tendency to break down boundaries of
narrative, of time, of language, and of truth. Near the
start of the novel, Ewer observes “as many truths as
men”. With its multiple voices, multiple narratives, mul-
tiple truths, it is perhaps the impossibility of any defini-
tion of truth that is at the heart of the novel. Nietzsche
described truth as “a mobile army of metaphors”.
Perhaps a refined definition, for Mitchell at least, would
be truth as a map of swirling, shifting, subjectivity: a
cloud atlas.
Cloud Atlas is published by Sceptre, priced £16.99
fickle hand – a four, an eight of spades, and… a
black queen. I tried to read the message, ornately
inscribed with ink on fair-hewn parchment:
Pap,
Want you. Here. Now.
Ella
From the massive house next door
What simplicity of expression! Had I only been
literate in any way, I might have basked in the ef-
fervescent glory of her hand. Alas, ‘twas folly. Joe
had never learned reading, and as his protégé of
sorts, it had never occurred to me that written
communication might be of any use.
Nonetheless, I turned up on schedule. There,
amongst all the pathos-ridden paraphernalia
of one who never got over getting stood up, sat
Miss Hovercraft. Oh! Dear reader, if I had words
to tell! If you had ears to hear! The tragedy, the
irony. ‘Twas much.
“Ella! Come in now, Ella. Your friend has come
to play!” she cooed enticingly, almost as if beck-
oning after some unseen third person, “Oh! I
wish I’d got married. Oh!”
“I’m Pap,” I said, simply and innocently. “I’ve
come to play with Ella.”
“Play with her heart, you mean! You just want
to get your rocks off, you sadistic bastard!”
Oh! The faded glory of that once-fair, now
crumbling massive house. If I hadn’t been so
good-naturedly innocent, I might have recog-
nised in it some faint, figurative similarity with
the once-fair, now fading Miss Hovercraft. ‘Twas
hard. Miss Hovercraft was restricted to a wheel-
chair, principally due to her remarkable obesity.
It transpired that she had been eating wedding
cake, without pausing to breathe, for almost a
hundred years. What pathos dwells in the world
of men! Her sagging bosom, her broken arm-
bone, her tired thigh. I shivered. Then I went
home. It was a bit shit really.
 SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
The Owl Crossword No. 3, by Snufkin

Owing to the ravages of time, one letter from each Across answer has been corrupted before entry into the grid;
the wordplay in Across clues refers to the corrupt version. (In one case the corruption has had no effect.) Taken in
clue order, the original and corrupt versions of these letters each spell out a two-word phrase. Down answers are all
entered normally.

For a chance to win £10, email snufkin@moomins.demon.co.uk with the two phrases.

ACROSS DOWN
1 Amateur taking part in Bacharach airs (8) 1 Chief editor was bent (6)
5 Useless goon adrift in North Dakota (2,4) 2 Finally doubled stupid people’s tax (6)
9 Conservative ideology followed by colleague hope 3 Love roast, resulting in indigestion (9)
lessly (8) 4 Result of untimely sex with current lover, perhaps
10 Terrible crises cause Parliamentary break-up (6) concealed? (12)
12 Tease foolish Took again (5) 6 Initially, new electrical equipment doesn’t satisfy
13 Notable decline, perhaps (9) requirements (5)
14 Rosencrantz’ companion badly needing trust (12) 7 “Love nothing French,” Edward directed (8)
18 Distracted nervous British men, didn’t she? (6-6) 8 Ignore rebate (8)
21 Finding singles in South America - it’s a problem of 11 Get up in a flash? (4,3,5)
inspiration (9) 15 Weapon worn outside clothing brings curse (5-4)
23 Man embraced by Proserpina (5) 16 A habit of Miss Prism’s admirer? (8)
24 Punished unruly pet with bat (4-2) 17 Size up meatiest stew (8)
25 Great honour is initially taken by multiple knot-tier 19 Inwardly cross if you harden with age (6)
(8) 20 Dry American assassin (6)
26 Show printing unit’s blunder to head of Editing (6) 22 Stray excited lustful man (5)
27 Without words, I dressed showily, having been
ordered out to lunch (8)

27
 LIFE IN THE CLOUDS: A MULTI-STORY NOVEL
Thomas Jeffreys reviews David Mitchell’s latest novel
“A reviewer is one who reads quickly, arrogantly, but never wisely”
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

I n the publisher’s spiel in the inside cover of David

Mitchel’s new novel, Cloud Atlas, it is announced
that the book “erases the boundaries of language,
genre, and time”: a bold claim indeed, even from an en-
thusiastic publicist. Yet Mitchell’s aims have always been
However, the narrative structures that Mitchell choos-
es to employ create their own difficulties. Each section
must be distinctive enough to stand alone from the oth-
ers. This leads to the creation of different voices and
different registers of speech. Yet perhaps the striving
to erase, or, more accurately, deconstruct, the bounda- for individuality pushes the author too far. The cen-
ries that seem to govern both life and literature. His tral two sections of the book become a little wearing:
first two novels, the critically-acclaimed Ghostwritten and whilst the flat clinical style of the genetically enhanced
the booker-shortlisted number9dream, demonstrated a slave is indeed appropriate, it leaves one longing for
seemingly unquenchable desire to baffle the the elegant, stylistic flourishes that one most
expectations of his readers. Narratives were “His language relishes about Mitchell’s writing. In con-
abruptly stopped, eras, locations and gen- threatens to spill trast to this, but similarly dry, is the over-
res were transcended. His language threat- out of his novels wrought dialect of a young Pacific tribesman.
ened to spill out of his novels into life itself. into life itself”
Further problems arise in the need to create
Cloud Atlas continues these trends and provides an originality in content as well as style. The corporate dysto-
extension of them. The structure of the book is its pia, the journalist pursuing the truth, the primitive futur-
most immediately striking feature. Split into six sepa- istic tribesman – all contain cliché to a greater or lesser ex-
rate but connected narratives, the novel has a chiastic tent. Mitchell is perhaps aware of this – the publisher in the
symmetry to it – it begins and ends with the diary of a fourth section mocks the cinematic ambitions of the third
Nineteenth Century voyager across the Pacific Ocean, section – but irony cannot always conceal shortcomings.
continues with the letters of a brilliant but penniless
composer in 1930s Belgium, then a journalist battling Overall, though, Mitchell gets away with it. The weak-
to expose the truth, through an aging publisher, to a er sections still have a great power within the novel as
genetically modified slave, Sonmi-451, in a dystopian a whole – they are simply less enjoyable to read. His
corporate future, and finally, a young tribal member, style is naturally beautiful enough to enrich the stories
witnessing the dusk of civilization. Despite the dispa- and linger long after one has finished the book. At his
rate nature of these elements, Mitchell strings them to- best, there is a sense of exuberance to his writing: at
gether admirably. Each tale becomes a text that features one stage, Ewing declares, “My bruises, cuts, muscles
in the next tale until they are framed both by their new & extremities groaned like a court of malcontent liti-
context and by the narrative structure of Cloud Atlas. gants.” Later, the nostalgic publisher laments, “A memo-
ry from a university Halloween Ball cracked on the hard
Furthermore, the seperate elements of the novel are rim of my heart and the yolk dribbled out.” Mitchell’s
linked through similarities in theme and plot. Journeys amusement at his own writing is clear when the pub-
dominate the first half of each tale: On lisher, Timothy Cavendish, ridicules the
boats, on trains, in the mind, Mitchell takes “His style is naturally language of literary pretension, joking,
the reader on the same journey as his char- beautiful enough to “Admire me for I am a metaphor”. This
acters. As one of these points out, “there linger long after one has self-consciousness is made explicit when
ain’t no journey what don’t change you finished the book” Robert Frobisher, the composer, describes
some”. Following these journeys, a desire his work in progress as “a sextet of over-
for escape arises in the minds of the characters. Just as lapping soloists” - an apt and deliberate metaphor for
the journey led to entrapment for Mitchell’s characters, Cloud Atlas itself. Indeed the composition and the novel
so the reader becomes enmeshed in narrative structures, even share the same name. The astounding arrogance of
unable or perhaps unwilling to be fully disentangled. the composer represents a characteristic that all artists
must have in order for their work to have any purpose.
Continued on Page 26
28