(Juxtaposition of poësy in the novel.)
with notes on works by Walter Scott, Anthony Burgess & JRR Tolkien.
Like
hell and yr great marf!
Come again?
You heard!
Come again?
You heard!
Seriously, lad, many a noveliste has garnered great guns quoting poetry and but few have worsted their yarn with odd lines of well-cut verse. Why at
its most canonical, old fruit, poetry offers yr novelist a well-sprung heel of common philosophy to turn on. Like classical scholars with Greek, Latin, Sanskrit or Arabic sources, novelizers with pomes at their tongue-tips invoke yer olde Sages &
Soothsayers, yer Mytholgists & Mysterons. Yer oral trad, to which poetry is farzands of years closer than prose, innit, contains a kulcha's total eclipse. Moreover, poetry's inspiration, word-play, tones and rhythms can slip cockeyed into any scene-upon-scene of piddling narrative. I could go on...
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| Ice Cream Churchill |
Y'Black Heart o'Midlothian
Good old Sir Walter Scott, polished rhymester if ever, frequently interpolated lines of verse - and not just bunged in chapter headers. In The Heart Of Midlothian, par example, both the narrator, Mr. Pattieson, and many characters marf off in pome or shanty. These rhymes would be familiar to contemporary readers from pulpit spoke, recanted round homely hearth or blathered on public stage.
How
does the master tab his lines in? An example from the intro of that
book: Hardie, a barrister, describes - in riddle - the dolorous
prison of the title's name then segues into Dean Swift. BTW, the
barrister is speaking to Mr.
Pattieson (a school teacher), as
one Edinburgh bloke to another,
“...you must have passed, occasionally at least, though probably
not as faithfully as I am doomed to do, through a narrow intricate
passage, leading out of the north west corner of the Parliament
Square, and passing by a high and antique building, with turrets and
iron gates--
Making good the saying odd,
Making good the saying odd,
'Near the church and far from God--'...”
In a footsie, old
Scottie attributes
this 'proverb' to Swiftie; but might I suggest in 1818, when The
Heart Of Midlothian
was first run off, the “far from God” line was much older, and
firmly in the pub. dom.. Furthermore, is he not quoting from the
published text, but a manuscript draft of the Dean's 1736 A
Character,
Panegyric, And Description Of The Legion Club?
Thus the satirical
pome on the Irish parliament is hung like a pall of hypocrisy from
the prison's baleful walls. The building in question, the Tolbooth,
was in fact an early den of the by-then defunct Scottish Parliament
(asset-stripped by Westminster in Act of Union, 1707). Though where
exactly Hardie and his colleague Halkit are riddling of, is still not
clear to the dullard
Pattieson
(progenitor of Dr. Watson),
“...Mr.
Halkit broke in upon his learned counsel, to contribute his moiety to
the riddle—"Having at the door the sign of the Red man"—
"And
being on the whole," resumed the counsellor interrupting his
friend in his turn, "a sort of place where misfortune is happily
confounded with guilt, where all who are in wish to get out"—
"And
where none who have the good luck to be out, wish to get in,"
added his companion.
"I
conceive you, gentlemen," replied I; "you mean the
prison..."
The
riddle appearing to be solved, Mr. Pattieson (“replied I”) would
be at liberty to continue with his introduction to the story proper;
but beholden to the barristers (his hosts), must needs let them take
their whole fun of the vernacular,
"...The
prison," added the young lawyer—"You have hit it—the
very reverend Tolbooth itself; and let me tell you, you are obliged
to us for describing it with so much modesty and brevity; for with
whatever amplifications we might have chosen to decorate the subject,
you lay entirely at our mercy, since the Fathers Conscript of our
city have decreed that the venerable edifice itself shall not remain
in existence to confirm or to confute us...."
The
building, a prison and place of public execution from 1640 on, was
demolished in 1817 - the year before Scott's Heart of Midlothian was
published. This pushes the narrator into his double-dip of
comprehension,
"...Then
the Tolbooth of Edinburgh is called the Heart of Mid-Lothian?"
said I.
"So
termed and reputed, I assure you."
"I
think," said I, with the bashful diffidence with which a man
lets slip a pun in presence of his superiors, "the metropolitan
county may, in that case, be said to have a sad heart."
"Right
as my glove, Mr. Pattieson," added Mr. Hardie; "and a close
heart, and a hard heart—Keep it up, Jack."
"And
a wicked heart, and a poor heart," answered Halkit, doing his
best.
"And
yet it may be called in some sort
a strong heart, and a high heart," rejoined the advocate. "You
see I can put you both out of heart."
"I
have played all my hearts," said the younger gentleman.
These
outpourings, to make plain my drift, are the direct result of
juxtaposing Swift. The couplet sets up the wordplay that follows.
Without which, the joke is a scurrilous bore. Scott, as Swift's
editor, had seen drafts of the poem which he was later
to include in vol. 12 of his annotated (1824) ed. of the Dean's
Complete Works. Moreover, when the poem was first published,
posthumously in 1750, a note by the then editor and biographer, John
Hawkesworth, already suggested it had been altered or bowdlerised
(pres. by Swift himself). Here it is,
Making
good my grandame's jest,
"Near the church"*—you know the rest.
"Near the church"*—you know the rest.
...
*The nearer the
church–the farther from God – Hawkes.
Quite
a tone-down from the familiar lines, which are also excused
(Wikipedia deserves the credit) as an old French proverb! And
familiar enough to Swift's grandame (his grandma), who was born as
Shakespeare was still running his tab down at the Swan Inn, the jibe
must have been less sacrilegious in her day. By Swift's time – and
wasn't the Dean a minister in the proddy Church of Ireland? - it was
more a case of speaking your heart while minding your muckle. In this
context, barrister Hardie, quoting the uncensored couplet both lifts
and lowers the tone of his riddle and introduces, as if into a
subconscious strain, two frequent recurrences in the novel: much
shenanigans in Scottish politics and many ridicules of ye olde
Covenanters. But fie! It seems inconceivable that Peter Pattieson, a
schoolmaster of a parish not far from the city, should be unfamiliar
with the nickname Heart of Midlothian; the joke is too tempting for
Scott to miss and so the narrator, a foil in his dullness, must
endure the merry barristers' exchange of hearts.
 |
| Ice Cream Thatcher |
Not Enderby Land
The opportunity to do great things with verse, to strut ye cardboards in Shakespeare's chaps, has not deterred sundry auteurs from shedding much blood on the tea room floor. Anthony Burgess' Enderby, a crossword-puzzle poet, manages to become the hero of three-plus-one blockbuster vols. Playing surreal word-games, his verses reach dizzying heights of depth. Unfortunately, whenever quoted, the pomes themselves don't provide the mirth. They are neither easy to read at a steady pace, nor intrinsically drole, as in the genuine prod. of biggo ego and scanty talentti. Which is a great waste, because Enderby's manic indyisms lead to some hilarious scenes and touching stand-offs. Few readers, except perhaps pseuds of equal self-regard, could find much joy, soft touch or even tragedy about the pomes, which need to be psychoanalysed. Fortunately, and to the reader's delight, Burgess obliges us with much boffy head-shrinking.
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| Ice Cream Elvis |
Bio the way...the
author of A Clockwork Orange was a cunning linguist and no
end-of-pier turn. But it ever piqued him that his orchestral music,
poetry and the more laboured of his novels were not glittering
successes. All the same, as fame and fortune buoyed his bravura, he
was frequently invited on radio and TV to vent gasses at the literary
world, baiting his demons (pseuds such as John Lennon!) and spouting
provocative right-wing shite. Unnecessarily, in reality, when the
books themselves contain all that is needed to understand his
cacking. I can't help thinking, Burgess always had one green eye
trained on Robert Graves' laurels for storybooks AND pomes.
“Inside Mr.
Enderby”, the first of the original trilogy, kicks off one drunken
New Year's Eve. Joyce Grenfell, ethëreal
school ma'am to a class of future offspring, reveals the sleeping
poet, who is both-ends a-snoring in his bier. One assumes the snotty
varmits are the cocksters and bullocks of his dreams. Anyroad, they
poke their fun and then fly off back to the never-never. In the next
chapter, as if inspired by the aforementioned pantomime, Enderby
attempts to write a Nativity version of the Minotaur myth. For
inspiration, this jig-saws nicely into a post-New Year pub visit and
the twisted Oedipal shanty below.
The
chapter I'll quote at length is a dissolute charabanc, starting out
with the poet's visit to the Freemason's Arms for his afternoon neck.
He abides in a seaside town far enough along the South Coast to see
the winking lights of France. It being the season of good chill, a
chef and fellow alc, gives him a dead hare wrapped in newspaper,
drowns three large brown bitters, and leaves. As Enderby drinks, more
slowly than his working friend, a group of rowdy lesbians in the pub
get him thinking of his stepmother. A stanza of poetry leaps into his
head, built around the rhymes “meadow”, “widow” &
“shadow”. He jots the verse down on in the empty stop-press of
the bloodied newspaper. Thereafter comes an altercation with one of
the inebriated women, and his muse is soon TDA'd. He quits the pub
only to forget all about the poem outside in the bracing seaside air.
Before entering his flat, he even dumps the bloody wrapping paper
into a waste
bin attached to a street lamp. He is inside, skinning the hare and
cutting it up with a few vegetables to make a stew, before he recalls
his flight of poetic fancy,
...He
slapped the viscera on to a saucer, cut up the carcass, and then
turned on the kitchen tap. Hangman's hands, he thought, looking at
them. Soaked in blood up to the elbows. He tried out a murderer's
leer, holding the sacrificial knife, imagining a mirror above the
kitchen sink.
The
water flowing from the faucet cast a faint shadow, a still shadow, on
the splashboard. The line came, a refrain: The running tap casts a
static shadow. That was it, he recognized, his excitement
mounting again. The widow, the meadow. A whole stanza blurted itself
out:
"Act!
Act!" The ducks give voice.
"Enjoy
the widow in the meadow.
Drain
the sacrament of choice.
The
running tap casts a static shadow."
To
hell with the meaning. Where the hell were those other birds? What
were they? The cuckoo? The sea-gull? What was the name of that
cross-eyed lesbian bitch in the Freemason's? Knife in hand, steeped
in blood to the elbows, he dashed out of his flat, out of the house,
to the rubbish-basket clamped to the lamppost. Others had been there
while he had been gutting and skinning and quartering. A Black Magic
box, a Senior Service packet, banana-peel. He threw it all out madly
into the gutter. He found the defiled paper which had wrapped the
beast. Frantically he searched page after crumpled page. THIS MAN MAY
KILL, POLICE WARN. NOW THIS BOY IS LOVED. Most people Stop Acid
Stomach with Kennies. Compulsive reading. He read: "The
pain-causing acid is neutralized and you get that wonderful sensation
that tells you the pain is beginning to go. The antacid ingredients
reach your stomach gradually and gently - drip by drip. . ."
"What's
this? What's going on?" asked an official voice.
"Eh?"
It was the law, inevitably. "I'm looking for these blasted
birds," said Enderby, rummaging again. "Ah, thank God. Here
they are. Prudence, pigeons. Rooks, caution. It's as good as written.
Here." He thrust the extended sheets into the policeman's arms.
"Not
so fast," said the policeman. He was a young man, apple-ruddy
from the rural hinterland, very tall. "What's this knife for,
where did all that blood come from?"
"I've
been murdering my stepmother," said Enderby, absorbed in
composition. Prudence, prudence, the pigeons call. He ran into
the house. The woman from upstairs was just coming down. She saw a
knife and blood and screamed. Enderby entered his flat, ran into the
bathroom, kicked on the heater, sat on the low seat. Automatically he
stood up again to lower his trousers. Then, all bloody, he began to
write. Somebody knocked - imperious, imperative - at his front door.
He locked the bathroom door and got on with his writing. The knocks
soon ceased. After half an hour he had the whole poem on paper.
"Prudence!
Prudence!" the pigeons call.
"Scorpions
lurk in the gilded meadow.
An
eye is embossed on the island wall.
The
running tap casts a static shadow."
"Caution!
Caution!" the rooks proclaim.
"The
dear departed, the weeping widow
Will
meet in you in the core of flame.
The
running tap casts a static shadow."
The
injunction of the last stanza seemed clear enough, privy enough. Was
it really possible, he wondered, for him to follow it, making this
year different from all others?
"Act!
Act!" The ducks give voice.
"Enjoy
the widow in the meadow.
Drain
the sacrament of choice. . ."
In
the kitchen, he could now hear, the water was still flooding away. He
had forgotten to turn it off. Casting a static shadow all the time.
He got up from his seat, automatically pulling the chain. Who was
this blasted widow that the poem referred to?
That
Enderby needs to be sitting in the bog house in order to compose, the
result of his work would be three nicely steaming bars of mellifluous
cack were it not for the context only we, the readers of the novel,
can guess at. Note that he composes with deliberate disregard to
meaning, and only when he is done writing does he question who the
widow is: a scorpion, weeping in the meadow whom he is urged by ducks
to enjoy. As the drunken mood wears off, Enderby forgets that the
poem got started in the pub, when the carousing of ageing lesbians
reminded him of his loathed stepmother.
The
poem itself would be as clear as a cowpat were it not encased in the
chapter of this novel. In turn, the dynamism the poem adds to the
narrative raises its lines from obscure to absurd. We peer into the
boozed-up mind of the poet and snort as the crazy images are composed
into strict verse , his cold bum juxtapoised on lavatory seat. In
Enderby, Burgess mocks all poetry and poets; still we read him, read
on and the scatological life and mind of the poet bring tears to our
laughter.
 |
| Ice Cream Marilyn |
Bilbo Baggins Style?
For many years I thought Tolkien ladled out great poems with his works, great spag bols of the stuff, unafraid of the hiccups they'd cause his readers' digestions. I saw the effects of his lyrical ballads at best as patchy; sometimes a half simulacrum of Celtic versus Tutonic folklore; too often just overlong, unlilting humbugs. I'd read and loved The Hobbit as a nipper, but not attempted The Lord of the Rings till close on a decade later; that is, during the mid-Seventies, in the first great wave of his notoriety. I failed to finish even the first vol. The poetry I thought akin to deciphering the runes on his maps. My brother Chris was deft at this, could write secret messages in the stuff. Good for him. Those were the days of idiot poseurs writing theses on the schizophrenics of Yessongs and King Crimson. Since then, fantasy writing has become a Leviathan and it's actually a bit of a relief to go back to Tolkien, behold the innocence of the original and admit it's not so badly composed after all. The Hobbit, that is.
While
Middle Earth was still fresh and new enough in his imagination to
remain light and cheerful, Tolkien used poetry to no bloating effect.
Take the little song the dwarves sing as they scurry round Bilbo
Baggin's house,
Thereupon the twelve dwarves -
not Thorin, he was too important, and stayed talking to Gandalf -
jumped to their feet and made tall piles of all the things. Off they
went, not waiting for trays, balancing columns of plates, each with a
bottle on the top, with one hand, while the hobbit ran after them
almost squeaking with fright: "please be careful!" and
"please, don't trouble! I can manage." But the dwarves only
started to sing:
And of course they did none of
these dreadful things, and everything was cleaned and put away safe
as quick as lightning, while the hobbit was turning round and round
in the middle of the kitchen trying to see what they were doing. Then
they went back, and found Thorin with his feet on the fender smoking
a pipe. He was blowing the most enormous smoke-rings, and wherever he
told one to go, it went-up the chimney, or behind the clock on the
mantelpiece, or under the table, or round and round the ceiling; but
wherever it went it was not quick enough to escape Gandalf. Pop! he
sent a smaller smoke-ring from his short claypipe straight through
each one of Thorin's. Then Gandalf's smoke-ring would go green and
come back to hover over the wizard's head. He had quite a cloud of
them about him already, and in the dim light it made him look strange
and sorcerous. Bilbo stood still and watched - he loved smoke-rings -
and then be blushed to think how proud he had been yesterday morning
of the smoke-rings he had sent up the wind over The Hill.
Since
I read this long before 'studying' any poetry at school, to my
untutored mind the verses were akin to “up the aëry
mountain...” ie not at all off-putting or even sorely challenging.
Now I look at the poem in context and I can see how and why it works
so well. Singing a working song, the dwarves revel in what they do,
and show us too, much better than narrator's description. We feel
Bilbo's horror, and we delight in their teasing him.
So
I looked back without anger at the first vol of LOTR to see how the
poems rode in context and actually they weren't so bad at all. I
qualify praise, though, because I think there is the same gap between
Tolkien's writing... and my reading of it. In the decade - and more –
between the publication of The
Hobbit and the final publication of LOTR I am sure the man was
struggling above all to recall and reproduce the sparkling innocence
of the original tome. I think truly The
Hobbit was a children's story; the Rings, however, is for
grown-up children, for adults striving to unplug their ipods and
return to a simpler, less critical viewpoint. Poetry, often verses
composed by Baggins himself, provides a kind of folklore for the
later hobbits to draw on as their pursue their quest crossing the
big, bad Middle Earth. I'd dish out some examples, but everybody has
their own. Yawn. Goodnight.
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| Sock it to 'em! |
