2016 seemed a year of changes and upheavals bringing dread and dismay to many of us and death to others. The times have been too interesting for my taste.
New Years should start with hope though. So for its first cry and suck at the breast and the burial of its placenta, here's a poem for young 2017.
From The Cure at Troy
Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured.
The innocent in gaols Beat on their bars together. A hunger-striker’s father Stands in the graveyard dumb. The police widow in veils Faints at the funeral home.
History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there’s fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term.
As the old year of 2016 is now dying, here are some of my favourite pieces of writing about death.
This came to mind because of the very recent death of Richard Adams. The death scene which ends Watership Down – well, there must be a German word which describes knowing something is sentimental, yet still being moved by it. Disneyschmerz perhaps? The nature-loving agnostic imagines an afterlife with as false a comfort as angels escorting the departed to heaven yet a rabbit soul eternally scampering through the beech woods has great charm. By now the reader has come to like and respect Hazel and enjoy the rabbit's eye view of the English countryside, in whose pockets between roads, housing and farms the rabbits make their lives.
One chilly, blustery morning in March, I cannot tell exactly how many springs later, Hazel was dozing and waking in his burrow. He had spent a good deal of time there lately, for he felt the cold and could not seem to smell or run so well as in days gone by. He had been dreaming in a confused way — something about rain and elder bloom ~ when he woke to realize that there was a rabbit lying quietly beside him — no doubt some young buck who had come to ask his advice. The sentry in the run outside should not really have let him in without asking first. Never mind, thought Hazel. He raised his head and said, "Do you want to talk to me?"
"Yes, that's what I've come for," replied the other. "You know me, don't you?"
"Yes, of course," said Hazel, hoping he would be able to remember his name in a moment. Then he saw that in the darkness of the burrow the stranger's ears were shining with a faint silver light. "Yes, my lord," he said, "Yes, I know you."
"You've been feeling tired," said the stranger, "but I can do something about that. I've come to ask whether you'd care to join my Owsla. We shall be glad to have you and you'll enjoy it. If you're ready, we might go along now."
They went out past the young sentry, who paid the visitor no attention. The sun was shining and in spite of the cold there were a few bucks and does at silflay, keeping out of the wind as they nibbled the shoots of spring grass. It seemed to Hazel that he would not be needing his body any more, so he left it lying on the edge of the ditch, but stopped for a moment to watch his rabbits and to try to get used to the extraordinary feeling that strength and speed were flowing inexhaustibly out of him into their sleek young bodies and healthy senses.
"You needn't worry about them," said his companion. "They'll be all right — and thousands like them. If you'll come along, I'll show you what I mean."
He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom.
Shakespeare was much obsessed with deaths – 74 of them in his plays. Someone did a play which featured them all.
These death scenes though are mostly violent sword stabbings, with the occasional strangulation and poisoning so I'll quote the death of Falstaff reported in Henry V.
ACT II SCENE III London. Before a tavern. Enter PISTOL, Hostess, NYM, BARDOLPH, and BOY
HOSTESS Prithee, honey-sweet husband, let me bring thee to Staines. PISTOL No; for my manly heart doth yearn. BARDOLPH Be blithe: Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins: BOY Bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff he is dead, And we must yearn therefore. BARDOLPH Would I were with him, wheresome'er he is, either in heaven or in hell! HOSTESS Nay, sure, he's not in hell: he's in Arthur's bosom, if ever man went to Arthur's bosom. A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play withflowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 'How now, sir John!' quoth I 'what, man! be o' good cheer.' So a' cried out 'God, God, God!' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone.
The Hostess would have been accustomed to tend the dying at a time when the women of the household did the nursing.
The Death of the Mrs Proudie from The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
Trollope wrote 6 volumes about Cathedral politics in Barsetshire. One day in his club he overheard two men complaining that he was reintroducing the same old characters, including Mrs Proudie and how tired they were of it. So he told the men that he would kill her off that day.
Mrs Proudie of much reforming Evangelical energy has dominated her husband the bishop to carry out her will to the point of utterly humiliating him so they are now bitterly estranged.
Mrs. Proudie's own maid, Mrs. Draper by name, came to him and said that she had knocked twice at Mrs. Proudie's door and would knock again. Two minutes after that she returned, running into the room with her arms extended, and exclaiming, "Oh, heavens, sir; mistress is dead!" Mr. Thumble, hardly knowing what he was about, followed the woman into the bedroom, and there he found himself standing awestruck before the corpse of her who had so lately been the presiding spirit of the palace.
The body was still resting on its legs, leaning against the end of the side of the bed, while one of the arms was close clasped round the bed-post. The mouth was rigidly closed, but the eyes were open as though staring at him. Nevertheless there could be no doubt from the first glance that the woman was dead. .. ….
The bishop when he had heard the tidings of his wife's death walked back to his seat over the fire, ….. But there was no sound; not a word, nor a moan, nor a sob. It was as though he also were dead, but that a slight irregular movement of his fingers on the top of his bald head, told her [Mrs Draper] that his mind and body were still active. ..
She had in some ways, and at certain periods of his life, been very good to him. …..She had never been idle. She had never been fond of pleasure. She had neglected no acknowledged duty. He did not doubt that she was now on her way to heaven. He took his hands down from his head, and clasping them together, said a little prayer. It may be doubted whether he quite knew for what he was praying. The idea of praying for her soul, now that she was dead, would have scandalized him. He certainly was not praying for his own soul. I think he was praying that God might save him from being glad that his wife was dead.
(As a strict Protestant, Bishop Proudie would not pray for a soul whose destiny is decided at death.)
A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir
After a long agony of being treated for cancer, Simone de Beauvoir's mother finally dies. Her sister, Poupette, is at the death bed. De Beauvoir was an atheist, her mother a devout Catholic.
Maman had almost lost consciousness. Suddenly she cried, “I can't breathe!” her mouth opened, her eyes stared wide, huge in that wasted, ravaged face: with a spasm she entered into coma..
Poupette rang me up: I did not answer. The operator went on ringing for half an hour before I woke. Meanwhile Poupette went back to Maman; already she was no longer there – her heart was beating and she breathed, sitting there with glassy eyes that saw nothing. And then it was over. “The doctors said she would go out like a candle: it wasn't like that, it wasn't like that at all,” said my sister, sobbing.
But, Madame,” replied the nurse, “I assure you it was a very easy death.”
“Maman” though religious did not ask for a priest – de Beauvoir concludes:-
“She knew what she ought to have said to God - “Heal me. But Thy will be done: I acquiesce in death.” She did not acquiesce. In this moment of truth she did not choose to utter insincere words…
Maman loved loved life as I love it and in the face of death she had the same feeling of rebellion that I have. During her last days I received many letters with remarks on my most recent book: “If you had not lost your faith death would not terrify you so,” wrote the devout, with rancorous commiseration. Well-intentioned readers urged, “Disappearing is not of the least importance: your works will remain.” And inwardly I told them all that they were wrong. Religion could do no more for my mother than the hope of posthumous success could for me. Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consolation for death.
A devout Christian, C S Lewis did take consolation in his wife's immortality though the whole of A Grief Observed is about the despair and misery at the loss of faith he undergoes after her painful death (cancer again). He longs for her undeath but at the end thinks she has been transfigured into something resembling pure intelligence, away from her torturing body:-
How wicked it would be, if we could, to call the dead back! She said not to me but to the chaplain, “I am at peace with God.” She smiled, but not at me. Poi si torno all' eterna fontana.
The last words in Italian being Dante's view of his beloved Beatrice in a blissful afterlife.
Lewis's view of death is harsher in Till We Have Faces, a surprisingly feminist work. Orual the heroine is about to enter into single combat with an enemy which will decide the fate of their city. Her father, the king and a cruel brute, has been lying helpless with a stroke. She is in the royal Bedchamber, searching out armour.
And it was when we were most busied that the Fox's voice from behind said, “It's finished.” We turned and looked. The thing on the bed which had been half-alive for so long was dead; had died (if he understood it) seeing a girl ransacking his armoury.
“Peace be upon him,” said Bardia. “We'll be done here very shortly. Then the women can come to wash the body.” And we turned again at once to settle the matter of the hauberks.
And so the thing I had thought of for so many years at last slipped by in a huddle of business which was, at that moment, of more consequence. An hour later, when I looked back, it astonished me. Yet I have often noticed since how much less stir nearly everyone's death makes than you expect. Men better loved and more worthy loving than my father go down making only a small eddy.
How the world shrugs off our death is brutally stated by A E Housman's in Is My Team Ploughing:-
So to all, a long and healthy life, and then a quick and easy death, causing the least amount of nuisance and hassle.
Written for the seventeenth century rolling over to the eighteenth. It has the New Year resolution flavour about it at the end:-
All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. 'Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new.
The Three Ages of Man by Titian in the National Gallery of Scotland
A poem which fits the weather as well as the time of year and one of my favourites by Thomas Hardy, who wrote beautifully about time passing and opportunities missed:-
They sing their dearest songs— He, she, all of them—yea, Treble and tenor and bass, And one to play; With the candles mooning each face. . . . Ah, no; the years O! How the sick leaves reel down in throngs! ... And brightest things that are theirs. . . . Ah, no; the years, the years; Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.
Time, time, time See what's become of me While I looked around for my possibilities I was so hard to please But look around Leaves are brown And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.. Look around, leaves are brown, There's a patch of snow on the ground
(Simon & Garfunkel – they were young things when that came out)
Who knows where the time goes? Sandy Denny, who died far too young.
As we get older we do not get any younger. Seasons return, and today I am fifty-five, And this time last year I was fifty-four, And this time next year I shall be sixty-two. And I cannot say I should like (to speak for myself) To see my time over again— if you can call it time: Fidgeting uneasily under a draughty stair, Or counting sleepless nights in the crowded Tube.
From The Hobbit – one of the riddles
This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.
His Memories of the Blitz is new to me. As the editor of his poems, Dione Venables says of his poetry in general, “It has its moments.” The Blitz has not figured much in poetry though it is prevalent in films and novels. I can recall some lines of Louis MacNeice's:-
As sometimes in the blackout and the raids One joke composed an island in the night.
World War I, a war fought by most able-bodied men, not just professional soldiers, produced many poets. But as for the civilian experience of the World War II, many writers – like C S Lewis (Home Guard) and T S Eliot (fire watcher) took part without turning their experience into verse.
Memories of the Blitz
Not for pursuit of knowledge Only the chances of war, Led me to study the music, Of the male and female snore
That night in the public shelter With seats no pillow could soften, Where I fled, driven out of my bed, By bombs too near and too often.
And oh, the drone of the planes, And the answering boom of the gun, And the cups of tea in the dawn, When the flames out-did the sun.
That was a long time ago, Three years ago, or nearly, And more has perished than gas-masks, I could not tell you clearly,
What there can be to regret, In a time of casual slaughter, When the windows were empty of glass, And pavements running with water.
But the guns have changed their tune, And the sandbags are three years older, Snow has kissed the flesh, From the bones of the German soldier.
The blimp has a patch on its nose, The railings have gone to the smelter, Only the ghost and the cat, Sleep in the Anderson shelter.
For the song that the sirens sang, Is sunk to a twice-told story, And the house where the chartered accountant, Perished in headland glory,
Is only a clump of willow-herb, Where I share my sorrow With the deserted bath-tub And the bigamous sparrow.
That has some very good lines, especially:-
In a time of casual slaughter, When the windows were empty of glass, And pavements running with water.
With the abstract “casual slaughter” against the particularities of the blown out windows and the broken water mains.
Also these relics of an urban war with a high civilian death count:-
The blimp has a patch on its nose, The railings have gone to the smelter, Only the ghost and the cat, Sleep in the Anderson shelter.
Which is evocative, like those grey concrete pillboxes you still find on the coast, sunk into sand. Three years ago “a long time ago” for Orwell who of course did not have much time left himself.
The other day a boy of eleven told me the that his class had been to see an Anderson shelter in someone's garden. It was very damp and mossy, he said.
There is growing unrest within Jeremy Corbyn's campaign team over his approach to dealing with issues of concern to the Jewish community, the JC can reveal.
One well-placed source within his team said that the unwillingness to deal "head-on" with these issues had come from Mr Corbyn himself.
The reluctance, according to the source, was because the frontrunner in the Labour leadership campaign was "partly casual about Jewish concerns, partly [because he knows] hostility to 'Zionist neocons' plays well to his constituency".
Media interest in Mr Corbyn's association with Holocaust deniers, antisemites and other extreme figures has grown in the past three weeks since the JC posed a series of questions for him to answer.
Another senior Corbyn campaign member indicated this week that the issues raised by this newspaper were not being taken seriously by Mr Corbyn and his team and said some within the team have grown concerned at the Islington North MP's reluctance to speak in more depth publicly about the Jewish community's concerns.
"This comes from Corbyn himself," the source said.
(After Eliot's Macavity the Mystery Cat)
Our Jeremy's an activist, he is the brand new hope, As he pushes Labour to the edge of a slippery slope, He is the Blairites' nemesis, the Moderates' despair But when you try and pin him down, Our Jeremy's not there.
Our Jeremy, Our Jeremy, opposer of austerity, His rivals are so timid, and he's full of temerity, But when his friends say, Stone the Gays, he doesn't really care He suddenly goes deaf and dumb, no Jeremy's not there, Islamist mates say “Holohoax”, and he's not au contraire, They're anti Israel, that's enough, and Jeremy's not there.
Our Jeremy's not besuited, no he's not poshly dressed, His shirt lies open for us to see the collar of his vest, He is the man of Islington, and when he's holding forth, His is the stripped pine wisdom that pours from London North, His world view's very simple, all wars are Nato's fault, And as for intervention – no, he will call a halt.
Our Jeremy, our Jeremy, there's no one quite like Jeremy, His followers worship him, yea, amen and verily, You can see him on a podium, cursing Tony Blair, But getting a straight answer – our Jeremy's not there.
He doesn't live it large at all, politicking is his life, He doesn't go out giggng, or dining with his wife, His idea of an evening off or joyous holiday, Is standing at a rally, to damn the USA, His mother marched down Cable Street, so he boasts with pride, But he won't detect a Fascist if a Fascist's on his side, At shirts of black and swastikas, his rants will fill the air, But put them in a keffiyeh, and Jeremy's not there.
Our Jeremy, Our Jeremy, aghastness from posterity, That eager young politicos were dazzled by sincerity, His beard is prophetic white, his frame ascetic spare, But query his alliances, Our Jeremy's not there. And they say that all the Andies, Lizzes and Yvettes, Will be cordoned in a hollow square and stripped of red rosettes, And the old team of door knockers will be promptly chucked And social democracy is well and truly fucked.
Robert Conquest has died aged ninety-eight. He was one of the first to document and broadcast the realities of Stalin's rule.
it was The Great Terror that really established his reputation as an historian. By the time it was published the Cold War was into its third decade and there were seemingly few illusions about Soviet Russia. All the same, Conquest opened many eyes to the full scale of that horror and everything he wrote was to be vindicated as the Soviet archives were finally opened. In fact, the figures of Stalin’s victims which Conquest had given, and for which he had once been derided, have been steadily revised upwards by younger Russian historians to at least 25 million. Most of their deaths were not ordered by the dictator in person, but plenty were. Conquest described how one day in 1937 Stalin and Molotov personally approved 3,167 death sentences, and then went to watch a film.
Conquest was of the Cold War generation. He was friends with Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, who called him “a kind of advertisement for life”. They bonded over dirty poetry (examples here and here).
Update (h/t Facebook threads):-
Conquest's aphorisms (Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics):
Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.
Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the Church of England and Amnesty International as examples. Of the Third, he noted that a bureaucracy sometimes actually is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies - e.g. the postwar British secret service.
Article by Conquest (from 1961 and relevant to today)
"The round robin on behalf of some supposedly Leftist cause is a well-established little nuisance which we should all have got used to by this time. [It is now a well-established tradition.] The letter sent by Mr. Kenneth Tynan and others to the Times on Cuba has, I find, been felt as more than customarily irritating by a number of writers and others to whom I have spoken about it – all of them people thoroughly devoted to social and racial equality, internal and international, none of them Fascists, parachutists, or employees of American, Spanish or Portuguese secret agencies – in fact, not even Conservatives. So, as a special exception, in spite of the arguments against paying any attention to such stuff, I feel impelled, just, to give some expression to a distaste which is not only my own.
Most of the signatories seem to be critics or dramatists. It is difficult to think of any reason (or rather any reputable reason) why they should feel their names particularly impressive appended to a letter on a political issue about which, one might have thought, they were not outstandingly well-qualified to speak.". [Times have not changed.]
Anyway read for an enjoyably haughty put-down of the Choir of Massed Signatories.
(Also, it's not really a round robin, if the signatories appear in a vertical line.)
The famous story of Conquest's idea for a new title to The Great Terror, "I told you so, you fucking fools" turns out to be an embellishment/downright lie by Kingsley Amis.
I am disappointed that other distinguished resident historian at Harry's Place in the comments used secondary instead of primary sources in repeating this canard.
This is the day of the Harrowing of Hell, when Jesus Christ descends and releases the poor souls trapped in Satan's realm of torture. The idea of throwing the doors open to let out the imprisoned is always an inspiring one, be it a jail or a zoo. Also, Christ changes from a victim to a warrior. Scotland's great poet William Dunbar celebrated this:-
Done is a Battle
BY WILLIAM DUNBAR
Done is a battle on the dragon black, Our champion Christ confoundit has his force; The yetis of hell are broken with a crack, The sign triumphal raisit is of the cross, The devillis trymmillis with hiddous voce, The saulis are borrowit and to the bliss can go, Christ with his bloud our ransonis dois indoce: Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.
Dungan is the deidly dragon Lucifer, The cruewall serpent with the mortal stang; The auld kene tiger, with his teith on char, Whilk in a wait has lyen for us so lang, Thinking to grip us in his clawis strang; The merciful Lord wald nocht that it were so, He made him for to failye of that fang. Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.
He for our saik that sufferit to be slane, And lyk a lamb in sacrifice was dicht, Is lyk a lion risen up agane, And as a gyane raxit him on hicht; Sprungen is Aurora radious and bricht, On loft is gone the glorious Apollo, The blissful day departit fro the nicht: Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.
The grit victour again is rissen on hicht, That for our querrell to the deth was woundit; The sun that wox all pale now shynis bricht, And, derkness clearit, our faith is now refoundit; The knell of mercy fra the heaven is soundit, The Christin are deliverit of their wo, The Jowis and their errour are confoundit: Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.
The fo is chasit, the battle is done ceis, The presone broken, the jevellouris fleit and flemit; The weir is gon, confermit is the peis, The fetteris lowsit and the dungeon temit, The ransoun made, the prisoneris redeemit; The field is won, owrecomen is the fo, Dispuilit of the treasure that he yemit: Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro.
This king lay at Camelot nigh on Christmas with many lovely lords, of leaders the best, reckoning of the Round Table all the rich brethren, with right ripe revel and reckless mirth. There tourneyed tykes by times full many, jousted full jollily these gentle knights, then carried to court, their carols to make. For there the feast was alike full fifteen days, with all the meat and mirth men could devise: such clamour and glee glorious to hear, dear din in the daylight, dancing of nights; all was happiness high in halls and chambers with lords and ladies, as liked them all best. With all that’s well in the world were they together, the knights best known under the Christ Himself, and the loveliest ladies that ever life honoured, and he the comeliest king that the court rules. For all were fair folk and in their first age still,
the happiest under heaven, king noblest in his will; that it were hard to reckon so hardy a host on hill.
Sir Gawaine is a wintry poem set at two Christmases. Gawaine on his search for the Green Knight:-
Sometimes with dragons he wars, and wolves also, sometimes with wild woodsmen haunting the crags, with bulls and bears both, and boar other times, and giants that chased after him on the high fells. had he not been doughty, enduring, and Duty served, doubtless he had been dropped and left for dead, for war worried him not so much but winter was worse, when the cold clear water from the clouds shed, and froze ere it fall might to the fallow earth. Near slain by the sleet he slept in his steel more nights than enough in the naked rocks, where clattering from the crest the cold burn runs, and hung high over his head in hard icicles. Thus in peril and pain, and plights full hard covers the country this knight till Christmas Eve
...
The hazel and the hawthorn were tangled and twined, with rough ragged moss ravelled everywhere, with many birds un-blithe upon bare twigs, that piteously they piped for pinch of the cold....
Now nears the New Year and the night passes, the day drives away dark, as the Deity bids. But wild weather awoke in the world outside, clouds cast cold keenly down to the earth, with wind enough from the north, to flail the flesh. The snow sleeted down sharp, and nipped the wild; the whistling wind wailed from the heights and drove each dale full of drifts full great.
There's the cold without, and the warmth and feasting within. And there's magic and miracles. An ideal Christmas poem.
Yesterday Jeremy Iron's read Eliot's Four Quartets on Radio 4. There are parts that I don't understand at all, but then others leap into life. After the floods the beginning of The Dry Salvages sounds like a prophecy fulfilled:-
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god - sullen, untamed and intractable Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier; Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce; The only a problem confronting the builder of bridges The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable Keeping his seasons, and rages, destroyer, reminder Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting