TLS 2007 10 05
TLS 2007 10 05
TLS 2007 10 05
464 pages, Hardback Ed ito r Peter Stothard (e di tor@ the- tls.co. uk)
978-0-19-928568-6, £85 .00/$155.00 Assista nt to th e Editor Maureen Alien ([email protected]) 020 7782 4962
Deputy Editor Alan J enkins ([email protected])
CLAS S rcs
Maren Meinhar d t Science , Psych ology, M edi cine ([email protected] .uk)
Redm ond O'Hanl on Natural History ([email protected])
Robert P otts Production, Australas ia (australasia @the-tls.co.uk)
J ohn Ryle. Africa, Aothropology ([email protected])
Rup ert Sho rtt Religioo , Latio America, Spain (rupert.shorttOthe-tls.cc.uk)
M art in Smi th Pictures ([email protected])
FROM OXFORD Pet er Stothard
Ga len Strawson
Politics, Classics ([email protected])
Philosophy ([email protected])
Adrian Ta hourdin France, Italy, Letters to the Editor ([email protected])
Homer in the Twentieth Century Anna Vaux. Biography, Social Studies, Learned Journals, Travel ([email protected])
Between World Literature and the Eliza het h Winter Germaoy, Russia, Jewish Studie s ([email protected])
Western Canon
Managing Director J ames Macl\tla nus (caro line.jo hns ton @new sint.co. uk)
EDITED BY BARBARA GRAZIOSI
AND EMILY GREE NWOOD Displ ay Adve rtising Linsey Kenh ard ([email protected]) 020 7782 4974
Classified Advertising Lu cy Smart ([email protected]) 020 7782 4975
Explores the crucial place of Homer in the shifting
Head of M ar ketin g Jo Coga n (jo.coganOthe-tls.co.uk]
cultural landscape of the twentieth century.
CLASSICAL PRESENCES
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The Nation and its Ruins tions of his own , in Eng lish -
Antiquity, Archaeology, and National and, dur ing the First World
Imagination in Greece War, in the murky wor ld of
YANNIS HAMILAKIS the Submar ine Ser vice,
oody Alien ' s Mighty
The first investigation of the production and u se
in Greece of the material, as oppo sed to the simply
W Aphrodite tran splanted
the go ddess 10 late- twentieth-
mak ing a dive, encourag ing
a young lieutenant' s poetic
efforts, and writing ar ticles
literary, classic al past.
centur y New York City . Joan and poems that saluted the
CLASSICAL PRESENCES Breto n Co nnelly, in her new "cold-blooded" courage of
374 pages, numerous halftones, Hardback
978-0-19-9230 38-9, £60.00/$110 .00 book , Portrait of a Priestess, the subma riners bUI also
has gone one better : Ancienl evoked their "Trade" of
Greek women, far from liv- Joan Bret on Co n ne Ily destruction and "absolute
Lucretius ing largely invisible, mar gin- loss" . Daniel Karlin, in a
alized lives, we re "wise- wor ld are not we lcome at this preview of some unpublished
EDITED BY MO NICA R. G ALE
cra ckin g, independenl, opin- cheerleaders' part y." Kipl ing letters, lells thi s
An up-to-date collection of influen tial scholarly arti- ionaled, sty lishly dressed" - " Big book, big lroub le" , rem ark ab le story in Com-
cles, including three translated into English for the
first time. rather like midd le-cl ass, w as th e view of the poet- men tary.
educated, mod ern wes tern scholar Callimachus in the " No ne of this is calculated
OXFORD READINGSIN CLASSICALSTUDIES
feminists, in fac t. For our da ys of the Alexandrian to make anyone but aspiring
4 52 pages
Paperback, 978-0'19'926035-5 , £32.50/$4 7.95 reviewer James Davidson , not library: Mic hael Silk , review- specialists long to join the
Hardback, 9 78-0-19-926034-8 , £85.00/$150 .00 only was the high visibility of ing a very big book, a co llec- Londo n literary wor ld", says
wome n - pri e ste sse s and tion of ess ays on the history Karl Mi ller abo ut V. S.
pro stitutes - in Greek ritual of Ancienl Greek , is trou bled Na ipaul' s memories of "his
the exception, rath er than the 10 find thal the language ' s peop le" ; in fact it "can look
OXFORD ru le; th ere is an " unp leasant
side" 10 the post- 1970s,
" m ost spec ia l ach ie vem ent"
- the rad ical poetic ex plora-
at mom ent s like a cann ibal' s
feast" , But, to lea ven the
UNIVERSITY PRESS
"forward-thinking" wave in tion s of Pindar, Heracl itu s, malice, there is com edy and
femini st studies of antiquity. Aesch ylus - are bar ely dis- Na ipaul' s "brilliant simplicity
Available from all good bookshops, or from OUPdirect "A lot of wo men in the cu ssed . Rud yard Kipling of spee ch" : bon appetit,
lel: 01536 741727 I Email: [email protected] modern and in the ancient made some rad ical ex plora- AJ
www.oup.com/ukfor special offers, sample chapters, and news
TL S OCT O BER 5 20 07
CLAS SICS 3
Worshipping women
An upbeat vision of the place of priestesses in Ancient Greece shows its own cultural
bias: the assumption that sex and the sacred do not mix
ncient Greek women lived lives l AM E S D A VIDSO N names know n, but they also had a publi c ro le ephors , that she is forc ed to flee for fear of
TL S OCTO BER 5 20 07
CLAS S ICS 5
has been addu ced to con firm that there were for a man who drank from thi s cup in a men' s
indeed some rather direct link s between pros-
titut es, court esans and the sac red in the Gree k
wo rld. A lthough one might we ll spend a littl e
useful time wo ndering if such ev ide nce is
roo m, a flut e-girl in the offin g, a co urtesan on
his lap, the ima ge of a wo man at an altar
might not have see med so unto ward a sub-
ject, whe n he noted what kind of god dess the
Speech, speech
"firm" or whether the ma le sources who tell wo man was wors hipping - and whe n may be
us straightforwardly that sac red pros titution he thou ght wha t kind of wo man might devote inguistics, most lingui sts believe, MI CHA E L S I L K
ex isted were , qu a male, simply slande ring the
Oth er as usual, it should at least be talked
about in a book subtitled Women and ritua l in
ancient Greece. Sac red pro stitution is not yet
a myth , nor even a "myth" , in the ordin ary
herself to such a go ddess , and wha t kind of
favour she might be hopin g for.
The probl em with Porta it of a Priestess is
that by using the priestess as a raft to rescu e
Gree k women in general from "oriental seclu-
L is a science and mu st therefore
be value-free . In rece nt years,
Deborah Camero n has cha llenge d
this ass umption ex plicitly, as oth ers have by
implic ati on: one thi nks of William Labov' s
A. -F . C h r i s t i d i s , e d i t or
A HI S TOR Y OF ANC IE NT GR E EK
From the beginnings to late antiquity
und erstanding of that ter m, ho wever mu ch sion" and restore them to the genealog ies of fa mous defence, in Language in the Inner 1,660pp. Cambridge University Press.
£ 140 (US $250).
mod ern scholars wish it we re. the West, Co nnelly plays down the ano ma- City, of the spec ial streng ths of Black A mer-
978052 1 83307 3
lou sness of the priestess and therefor e does ican spee ch pattern s. So me vers ions of some
not need to deal with it. And yet - if we can langu ages can ind eed be show n to have
suspe nd the difficult questions of whether the spec ial streng ths , and oth ers the oppos ite, hab its of the co mpose r, but the tradition, an d
male publ ic sphere is necessaril y the onl y throu gh conside ration of what is done in presum ed ori gins, of the ge nre : epic poetr y
guara ntee of dignity, respon sibility and signif- them and with them. afte r Hom er, for exa mple, is compose d in a
icance, whether it is bett er to be menti on ed in In these ter ms, anc ien t Greek ca n cl aim to sub-Ho meric dialect mix, irrespective of the
public speec hes than to be ignored by them, be very special altoge ther. The claim is some- provenance of the co mpose r.
and whe ther separation necessaril y impli es tim es associated with the idea that ancient This complicated pattern is subve rted, in
oppressi on - it is no t too hard to see how Greek " survives" (as modern Gree k), makin g prose most obvious ly, by Athe ns 's politi cal
the priestess fits into the ge nera l pattern of Greek the oldes t langu age in Europe . That and cultural hegem on y in the fifth century and
gen de red space. line of thou ght is unhelpful. If, as see ms Mace do nian unifi cation in the fourth . Athe-
O n the positi ve side, priestesses are pre- likely, all langu ages, past and present , deri ve nian prose writers write almos t exclusive ly in
em inently associ ated with, and ind eed show n fro m com mon sources (may be 2 milli on Attic , and it is a modifi ed form of Attic - the
with, keys to the temple interior s, guardians years ago), all langu ages are eq ually old . "common" dialect , or koine - which the
of what is inside, and therefore with the invio- Continuity of labels is beside the point. It Mace do nians then institutionalize across the
lability of the residence of the cit y-godd ess is largely an accide nt of politi cal history Greek-spea king world. Th e koine remain s the
as if of the cit y itself. On the negative side , a whether we give earlier and later versions of Greek standa rd, spoke n and writte n, until and
wo man with no publi c personality may pro- a langu age the same name. We do not call beyond the end of cla ssical antiquity, with the
vide a safe r repr esent ati ve of the co mmunity any descend ant version of Latin (no t even Greek Bibl e its lasting monument. And this
on a transcen dental level , a more secure signi- Itali an ) "Latin" . Conversely, we give the koine is the dir ect ancestor of mo dern Gree k,
fie r of a degree of separation of Church from sa me name to both ancient and modern despite striking com plications en ro ute. The
State. Putting the keys to the templ e in the descend ant vers ions of Greek, alth ough chief of these is the challenge to the vernac u-
hands of a powerful politi cian with enemies ancient and modern Gree k are about as alike lar by success ive versions of archaizing
A sa crific e to th e goddess Athena (detail), and interests and we ll-know n op inions about or unlik e as classical Latin is like or unlik e Greek, from the rev iva l of classical Attic in
on an Attic black-figure a m ph or a; from war and peace co uld have ca used all kind s of Itali an. Until the movem ent for nation alliber- the first centuries AD to the katharevousa , or
th e book under r eview confli cts. A wo man might better be see n to ation from Ottoma n rule in the ear ly nine- "purified" form of the modern langu age,
repr esent a more purel y sacre d interest, a teenth century, native Gree k spea kers them- which was made the offici al idiom of Gree k
Thi s excl usion of an en tire class of ancien t blank er page, an emptier vesse l, as far as the selves ge nera lly ca lled the ancient lan guage natio nhood in the nineteenth century. This
wome n from the categ ory of "women" natu- men were concerned , to fill a more purely reli- "Hellenic" and their own "R omaic". was only fin ally displaced by dem otic ("po pu-
rally leaves some startling gaps in Co nnelly 's gious role. If a man voiced the words of No : anc ient Gree k is special, becau se it is lar") Gree k in 19 76 , two yea rs afte r the co l-
acco unt. On e of her mo st interesting chap ters Apo llo at Delphi , one might we ll wo nde r the medium of the first momentous culture, lapse of the Co lonels' reg ime , since whe n the
concerns pries tesses playing the role of their who was spea king; when an unedu cated and particul arly literature, of the Western modern "language question" - katharevousa
goddesses and being de picted in those roles . woma n uttered prophecies in hexameters, it wor ld. It is certainl y also true that "the Gree k or dem otic? - is ostensibly laid to rest.
Imm ediately one think s of the hetaira (co urte- see me d that on e was hear ing th e vo ice of langu age" , from antiquity to no w, has a long These pro positi ons and developm ent s,
san) Phry ne, describ ed as zakoros (tem ple- god . Indeed , the male proph et s of Apo llo at and distin ctive histor y. Recor ds begin with among others, are variously ex po unded,
atte nda nt) and prop hetis (represen tative) of Didym a ca me to be hated by the citi zens of the Mycenaea n Lin ear B tablet s in the thir- illuminated and ev aded by the eighty co ntrib-
Aphrodite, know n to have taken on the ritu al Mil etu s for some betr ayal of sac red tru st, and teenth century B C. The Greek recorded there utor s to the remar ka ble co llec tio n of 143
role of the goddess "coming o ut of the water" were slaughtered by Alexand er with the Mil e- is mor e or less a sing le dialect versio n, alon g- essays in A History of Ancient Greek: From
in a festival on Aegin a - sight of which pro - sians ' app arent approval. Wh en the prophets side, no doubt, other vers ions, unr ecorded the beginnings to late ant iquity - with about
vided the model , it was said, for Praxiteles' were replaced, it was a wo man who took on (their com mon, proto- Hell eni c ancestor - an half of the authors specialists in lingui stics,
famou s Aph rodit e "Coming out of the their role. Therea fter the oracle pro spered. independe nt branch of the Indo-European lan- and abo ut the sa me prop orti on nati ve Greek -
Water" , the "first fem ale nud e" . A statue of Yet thinking abo ut how the priestess might guage famil y - had prob abl y begu n to differ- spea kers. Edited by the late A.-F. C hristidis,
the co urtes an (as her self) was placed beside emerge as a city's sac red rep resent ati ve not entiate itself into separate dialects as early as the book is a revised and ex panded Engl ish
that of Aphrodite in Thes piae in the Templ e in spite of, but bec ause of, the ge neral excl u- the third mill en nium ). W hen records resume vers ion of a collec tion whic h appea red in
of Eros , the city 's most important cult, a cult sion of wo men from public life, does nothing in the eighth ce ntury, the age of the first Greek in 200 1. Th e title is misleadin g.
that ma ny think Phryne found ed. Unacco unta- to miti gate the priestess 's significa nce , and alpha betic inscription s an d the Hom eri c " History" impli es a cohere nt narrati ve,
bly, Co nnelly omit s to menti on any of this we sho uld be grateful to Co nnelly for ga ther- epics, large-scale dialect differenti ation is which this is not (tho ugh man y of the articles
ve ry relev ant material. ing togeth er so man y texts and (espec ially) app arent. Fro m this point until the Macedo - are historic ally incl ined) . Then aga in, "begin-
Similar ly, the book opens with a famou s images, as well as offer ing so me interesting nian unific ation of Gree ce by Philip and Alex- nin gs to late antiq uity" is misleadin g too,
image from the inside of a drinking-cu p, of a theori es abo ut thi s striking ph enom enon. Her and er in the late fourth century, there is no because the ran ge is grea ter, and in both
w oma n c arry ing a sac rific ial bask et pourin g a final oh ser vati on s ahout th e ne w w orld of single Greek lan gua ge, hut a spec tru m of chro no log ica l direction s: the spa n ex te nds
libation at a flamin g altar. Co nnelly uses her Christianity - "the end of the line" - und er- loca l, thou gh mutu all y intelli gibl e, dialects : from the di stant realm s of lingui stic prehi s-
as a laun ch pad for discu ssion of "problems of line how mu ch effo rt wa s needed to ma ke it Dori c and Nor th-Wes t Gree k, Aeolic, Atti c- tor y to "the fortunes of ancient Greek" in
significa tion" and the need to be "open to see m strange to see a wo man standing next to Ioni c, Arcado-Cypri ot. mod ern tim es.
signifiers that have previou sly gone unr ecog- an altar in the role of chief medi ator between In addition, we encounter a rem ark able " Big book , big troubl e" , op ined the poet-
nized" . She neglects to mention that the the community of beli ever s and their god. series of literar y dialects. Fro m Hom eric epic scholar Ca llimac hus in the days of the Alexan-
incen se-burner behind the wo ma n is a pretty Gree k wo men may have led lives that would in the late eig hth ce ntury to the Hipp ocr atic dri an library; and one can safely predi ct , too ,
stro ng sig nifier for one parti cul ar cult, that of be more recogni zable to the wo men of Saudi med ica l corpu s of the fifth /fo urth , most litera- that a volume so big (and so pricey) will be
Aphrodite, which may help to ex plain the Ara bia and Iran , but there is no equivalent ture is not in any particular local dialect, but co nsulted mor e than read, and con sult ed by
sce ne on the other side of the cup, which like- of the ancient priestess to be found among in a ge nera lized version (the Hippocratic writ- library users, but few others , in the yea rs
wise passes wi tho ut menti on : me n offering the ranks of the mull ahs and imams. If ings are in a genera lized Ioni c) or else in a dis- ahead . But if its size (a nd its organiz ation )
bags of mon ey to courtesa ns an d "flute- there were, who can doubt that for both the tinctive hybrid (epic comes in arc haizing makes it awk ward to use, it is certainly not
girls". Th e cultura l bia s here is the assump- wome n and the men, it wo uld make a very Ioni c, with Aeoli c elements). And the dialect to be ignored. It has a distin gui shed cas t.
tio n that sex and the sac red do not mi x. But con siderabl e differenc e? used acknow ledges not the local speec h Continued on page 8
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
6
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
"once referr ed to Th om as Wright
Tocqueville as Thomas Bri ght ". Ac tually he
Sir, - I was astonis hed by the ref-
erences to A lexis de Tocq uev ille
Democracy at war did so twice (pp I 13 and 42 I);
which sugges ts co nfusion of two
in Sam anth a Ellis's review of Joh n ver y different people: Thomas
Patri ck D iggin s' s new book about Sir, - I am tempted to qu ote Azar beli eve otherwise, thou gh my Wr ight, Roman Ca tholic co ntrove r-
Euge ne O' Neill (In Brief , Sept- Ga t back at him and say that his rev iew and some of my own book s sia list and author of The Passions
ember 28). I ca n' t make out whether reply (Lette rs, September 28) to are ex plicit and emphatic about it; of the Mind (1601 ), an d Tim oth y
it is your reviewer, or Mr Diggin s, my review is so breatht akin gly (4) Ga t's last point is typi cal of his Bright , author of A Treatise of
or O' Neill him self who thinks that muddl ed an d ignor ant as to verge habit of inatt entive and negli gent Melancholy (15 86). As I put it,
Democracy in America is "a study on the amusing. But I wouldn' t misread ing. I say unambi guou sly in Tho mas Wri ght becom es Sir
in the traged y of fru strati on" , or be so rude. Here are answe rs to my rev iew that demo cracies do Timothy Bri ght. The whims ica lly
find s in Toc quev ille "grim fatal- his four points, which he reckon s fight each other. co nferre d title, also repea ted, is
ism" , but if wor ds mean anything vag uely at "a few". (1) He has mis- But I also acc use Azar Ga t of pur e inventi on. To misspell once
the distorti on is preposterou s. read my rev iew . I do not think and ignorin g the reall y interestin g may be rega rded as an isolated
Tocqueville wro te his book to per- have never claim ed that "only q uestion, which he continues to case of hum an er ror: to repeat the
suade his cont empo raries that dem o- culture determin es" anything . But I ignore: why is it so easy to foi st misspellin g and add a false title
cracy was acceptable and that the dissent , for reasons ex plained in my letters @the-tIs .co.uk wa rs on states that em powe r cannon looks like carelessness.
United States had a splendid futur e; review, from Gat's redu ctioni sm , fodd er (a nd their grievi ng wo men)
and he ex plicitly denied bein g a ex treme materialism, and determin- in cultural cont ext ; (3) even by with votes? ALASTA IR FOWLER
fatali st. On the last page of his book ism; (2) my po int abo ut chim- Gat' s feebl e definition wa r is not Department of English Litera ture,
he writes , "... Provid enc e has not pan zees and bonob os is that they wage d o nly by states and it is FELl PE FERNA NDEZ -A RMES TO Univer sity of Edi nburgh,
crea ted the hum an race entirely free have such different cultures that clearl y he lpful to look for it in Depart ment of History, Tuft s Edinburg h.
or entirely ens lave d. It is true that it their co ntras ting practic es in organ- non- state societies and non-hum an University, Upper Camp us Road,
cultu res - Gat see ms to think I ----~,--
has dr awn a circle of fate ro und izin g violence are understood bes t Me dford , Ma ssac husetts 02 155.
each and every man which he ca n-
----------~,----------
'God Is Not Great'
not esca pe; but , within its vas t lim-
its, man is powerful and free ; and so reducti ve app roach to ethica l and national anthems" (in his review of Fa ir, a huge, histori c, annual out- Sir, - I do not know why the gov -
it is wi th nation s". I really can' t see political question s". He says I wa nt National Thought in Europe: A cul- door ga thering of politicians and ern ment continues to fund degrees
the point of mi srepr esentin g him . to "prove that Sh akespeare stands tural history by Joep Leerssen , Sep- conn oisseur s of politi cal orato ry in theology and reli gio us studies,
above the co ntinge nt". The ce ntral temb er 28). Whil e acknow ledg ing from the So uth. Kru gman and thou gh I am glad it does. But one
HUGH BROGAN arg umen t of my boo k was that that "De utschland uber alles" Professor Rabb notwith standing, reason might be so that peopl e ca n
Department of History, Univer sity of Shakespeare was a produ ct of his " means 'Germany above all ' not the pro ximity of the (198 0) learn that the qu estion s James
Essex , Wivenhoe Park , Colc hester. age and its po litics, not of our age 'Germany over all others" ', he pro- Nes hoba Co unty Fa ir to the (196 4) Ma ckay (Lette rs, September 28)
and its polit ics, as man y Th eori sts noun ces it still "q uite sufficiently murde r site of three civil right s think s Robert A. Davis and myself
----~,--- see m to believe. He says I cite "vir- agg ress ive" . Of cour se any patrioti c wor kers is of no mor e sign ificance sho uld be as king are in fact the
tuall y no work written after 1985". I song receivin g the blessings of the than the location of Labou r Party wro ng ones. Th ey can learn that
What authors say referr ed to over a hundred book s Third Reich wo uld take on a crue l con vention s in the same city where "God" is not the name of an entity
Sir , - In his review of my book and articles publi shed afte r 1985. edge; but, apart from a few words five peopl e, including Sir Anth on y (or entities), whet her outside or
Shakespeare's Humanism (June He says that my app roac h is about broth ers banding together for Berr y MP , were murde red by the inside the uni verse, and that bibli-
15), Andrew Hadfi eld too k the "fa miliar and dated". The neo- prot ection and defence and "e dler IRA in 1984. ca l pro phecy is not abo ut see ing
opportunity to have a go at Bri an Dar wini sts I cited in my acco unt of Tat" (no ble deed s), the "Deutsch- futur e eve nts . Unfortunately one
Vicke rs. Wh at he objec ted to was n' t the mod ern challe nge to Theore tica l landli ed" is remarkabl y peac eful. PHILl P TERZIAN can not learn these thin gs from
anythin g that Vickers had actua lly anti-essentialis m can hardl y be Both the words and the hauntin g pas- The Weekly Stan dard , 1150 17th readi ng either Hitchens or
said in Appropriating Shakespeare, describ ed as dated when they have toral melody co ntras t sharply with Stree t NW , Suite 505 , Washi ngton, Dawkin s, but one can learn them
but rather the sor t of opinions that only been publi shing for about a the sanguinary "Marse illaise", or DC 20036 . from taki ng a degree in theolo gy.
Hadfi eld ima gin es anyone who decade. If anythin g, it is The ory that eve n the "Star-Spangled Bann er".
----'~,---
tak es a criti cal view of T heory mu st is dated in so far as it reli e s o n a As for its territo rial aspirations, as GERA RD LO UGHLl N
hold. Vick ers protested at the way view of hu manit y that goes back to
the early yea rs of the last cen tury
E. H. Gom brich once pointed out, its
claim to everything "from the Maas
Leigh and Olivier Department of Theo logy and
Religion, Dur ham University,
he 'd been mi srepr esent ed (Le tters,
Jun e 22). and stead fas tly ignor es the revolu- to the Memel, from the Etsc h" (ie Sir , - Vivien Leigh and Laur ence Abbey House , Durham.
Hadfi eld reads Shakespeare's tion that has taken pla ce in recent the upper Etsch, or Alto-Adi ge - no Oliv ier , according to Cli ve James
("Mo ney into light" , September ----~.---
Humanism in the sa me crea tive years in the psychol ogical and one claimed Veron a for Germany !)
neurobiological sciences . Hadfield "to the Belt " was ex tremely modest 28) , "starred togeth er in preci sely
way. In the first sen tence of his
review he says I claim that Twelfth doesn 't me ntion any of that. co mpared to that in the fifth stanza one film , That Hamilton Woman" .
Waiting for
Nig ht was a dec adent play . I made
no such cl aim. Wh at I did say was
Th e debate on Theory look s set
to continue . But with Derrida now
of "Rule Britannia" : "All thin e shall
be the subje ct main , I And eve ry
Ja mes ove rloo ks Fire
Eng land and Twenty-One Days,
Over
Godeau
that Purit an pamphleteer s wo uld dead an d buri ed , perh aps it is time shore it circl es thine". both made in 1937 - altho ugh the Sir, - The theor y ad van ced for the
have regard ed it as a dec adent play, to go back to discu ssin g what seco nd of these (no t released until deri vation of the title Waiting for
which is quit e another matter. He authors actually say rather than PAU L LEOPOLD 1940 ) is, ad mitte dly, eminently Godot outlined by J. C. in N B
says I fail to distingui sh bet ween basing arg uments on imput ed mea n- Va stergardsv. 46, 14138 Hudd inge, ove rloo ka ble! (September 2 I) is fascinating.
sex and ge nde r. I devoted a subs tan- ings an d indifferenc e to mere fact. I Swede n. Ho wever, to add another layer, in
tial part of my first chapter to a ex pec t that those who beli eve in PETER ROWLAND Col in Duck worth ' s French edition
----~,---
discu ssion of sex and ge nde r, the creati ve mi sreadin g will disagree. 18 Corbe tt Road, Wanstea d, of Godot, Beck ett said, in co nve r-
bi ologi cal an d e nv iro nme nta l fac-
ROBIN HEADL AM WE LLS
Ronald Reagan London E l l. sation with the editor, that he had
met so me boys at the Velodrome
tors that may influ ence ge nder ident-
Sir, - Whil e o ur ex pec tations of ----~,---
ity, and the probl ems that arise Schoo l of Arts, Roeham pton d'H iver in Pari s who told him "on
whe n sex and ge nde r are see ming ly
in conflict. He says I "refuse to read
University, Roeha mpton Lane,
London SW I5 .
professor s of histor y at Prin ceton
sho uld never be too high - espe -
'Back to Nature' atte nd Go dea u" .
Godea u was Roger God eau , the
The Merchant of Venice as a play cially tho se, such as Theo dore K. Sir, - Readers can judge for them- famou s track cycl ist who died in
----~,----
about race". Wh at I actually wrote Rabb (Letters, September 28), who selves whether I mi srepr esent ed 2000 . This story is rep ort ed in Tim
was : "the co nfl ict between Jews and rely on the writings of Pa ul Krug- Rob ert N. Wat sou' s Back to Nature Hiltons superb cycling mem oir
Christians is undeni abl y at the
Deutschland man as their authority - it should be in my mod erat e, partly favour able One More Kilometre and We 're In
centr e of The Merchant of Venice".
He says I suggest that "Shylock is
iiber alles point ed out that Ron ald Reagan
began his post-con vention presiden-
rev iew (August 10). But on the
factu al point Professor Watson now
the Showers (2004) .
sim ply wro ng" . I argued the oppo- Sir, - To m Shippey calls the tial ca mpaign in 1980 near Philadel- ra ises (Le tte rs, Septemb er 2 I), they MAR C WILLIAMS
site, nam ely that the pla y "goes "De utsc hlandlied" of Hoffm ann vo n phia , Mi ssissippi , bec ause that is sho uld be clear that more is at stake 1- 4-1- 5 Ushita-Higa shi,
out of its way to challenge such a Fallers leben "the most dan gerou s of the site of the Nes ho ba Co un ty than misspellin g. He admits he Higashi-ku , Hiroshima.
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
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8 CLAS S rcs
Continued from page 5 out the book ; a full list, ostensibly, com es We hear too of the monumental gra mmatica l spea kers over the last 200 yea rs. We ge t
Speciali sts in Greek langu age and lingui stic s near the end . But one so metimes contradicts studies publ ished in Bucharest in 1768 by reporting, but no prop er placin g, of the bale-
include C laude Brixhe and Vit Bub enik , John the other - most egreg iously when lyric po ets the monk Neo fytos Kafsok alyviti s - who ful traj ectory of the Gree k lan gua ge in later
Chadw ick and James Clackson, along with like Sappho are eve ntually cited from Ca mp- "devoted the whole of his life to explaining antiq uity . And , abo ve all, we ge t ancie nt
the editor, Christidis - and the se are ju st some bell ' s new(i sh) Loeb , but ear lier on from its thin gs that required no explanation" (E leni Gree k literatur e - the ma in rea son for takin g
of the Bs and Cs . lllu striou s nam es from adja- lon g-di scredit ed predecessor, Edmo nds . Karantzol a). And of the reaction to such an interest in the ancient lan gu age in the first
cent field s abound. A vo lume that can dra w Larger editor ial deci sion s about cont ent s obsessive scholarship by the grea t Kor ais in place - treated as a significa nt lingui stic
on the mature judgement of J. P. Mallory and arrange ment of materi al are qu estion able 1805: "a greater service to the natio n tod ay phenom enon, with onl y tok en referen ce to
(archa eolo gy and Indo-European studies) , too. The volume is strong on fact-based would be performed by tho se who burn gram- what makes it so. Th e sec tions on "language
Jean- Chri stoph e Saladin (histor y of hum an- lingui stic s, light er on discur sive analys is. mars than tho se who write them " (Mi ltos and literature" (beg inning with an abstract
ism ), John Ray (Egy ptology ), and Nicho las A mbi valence about "history" gives us Pechlivanos). Of the hop es within the new neo- stru cturalist invent ory of categories by
de Lange (He brew studies) , on the ex pertise chunks of back ground, especially for early nineteenth-centu ry Greek nation that "one Mich ali s Setato s) are the lea st satisfying in
of Yves Duhoux and Emili a and Oli vier period s ("th e dark ages: the archae olog ical da y Greece would wake up to find itself a the book. Th eir authors have, ma ybe , an
Ma sson on earl y writin g sys tems, and on a ev ide nce "), but confusing organi zati on. modern Western state, and Gree ks of all imp ossibl e brief. Should they ges ture toward s
ran ge of historic al scholarship from Ro salind Th ere are ISO pages of app endi ces, on mis- social classes wo uld communicate with each the "exemplary literar y merit " of the Hom eric
Th oma s to Vincenzo Rotolo and Antonis Lia- cell aneou s topic s from "punctuation" to other in Anci ent Gree k" (Elli Skopetea) - as epics (Lambros Polka s), eve n though a pro-
kososuch a volume is aiming high. Eq ually, it "music" ; some of these could plau sibl y have if on the premi ss that Anci ent Greek , as the ducti ve discu ssion of the topic may see m
invites a high standa rd of judgement in return . been in the main text, and vice versa. One ultimate inspir ation of modern, educated, beyond their remit, their word-count and their
Wh atever the pedi gree of its contributors, appendix, at lea st, a mor e rigorous editor Western Europe , was itself both Western and inclination? Should they quietl y change the
the volume is something less than a whol e. wo uld have abbrev iated and rewritt en (I refer mo dern . subje ct, as Theodoros Papangheli s do es with
For a start, contributions differ in level s to Francoise Bader ' s imagin ati ve twent y- A subtext of these and oth er - Greek - con- langua ge and literature in "the Helleni stic
of challen ge . Almost all could be called three-pa ge acco unt of "the langu age of the tributor s is the right and prop er triumph of centuries" (adroitly adju stin g the focu s to
"sound", thou gh some are a bit reticent about go ds in Hom er" , wherein we learn abo ut the dem otic ov er katharevousa Greek (albe it a the socio-cultura l impli cati on s of " large
awk ward complication s: so Clackson on the "alphabetical secret codings" of a poet "well- dem otic now modified by katharevousa libraries" and "colonialist minorities")?
"genesis of Gree k" allud es to ce lebrated verse d in historic al phonetic s" ). elements itself). Right and prop er ind eed , The issue is at its sharpest with inn ov ati ve
isoglo sses (shared lingui stic featur es), like Ap art from isolated rushes of inn ovati ve becau se the demotic refle cts current speec h, poetic ex plor ation which challen ges the
the prefi x *e- to indic ate a past ten se, a form over view, like Bri xhes on dialect study , and and (pace Derridean par ado xes) spo ken norm s of ordin ary lan gua ge altog eth er. Th e
shared by Gree k and (e.g. ) Arm eni an, but some we lcome judiciousness on topic s where norm s mu st always be the prim ary point of creati ve complexiti es of poetic "heightening"
suppress es the qu estion whether such agree- fant asy oft en rules (M allory and Clackson referenc e for langu age, so that any standa rd have been most full y illuminated by twen-
ment s reflect a (genetic ) sub-gro uping within on Indo- Europ ean prehi stor y), the main that altoge ther reject s developing spee ch tieth- centu ry theori sts and critics as different
Indo- European, or rath er an (en vironment al) achi evem ent s of the volume lie in authorita- patt ern s is the loser. Thi s is mo st straight- as Heideg ger and Leavis, Shklovs ky and
are al con vergenc e, eve n thou gh his 1994 tive treatments of seve ral distin ct areas: for wardl y so with the relation ship between Riffaterr e. Poetic lan gua ge defamili ari zes,
bo ok on Gree k and Arm enian focu sed on pre- scripts and langu ages of the Gree k world in langu age and literature (espec ially poetr y): a enacts, mobili zes unsuspected conn otation s,
ci sely this qu estion. Oth ers - like Ge orges the second and fir st mill enni a BC (D uhoux symbiotic relationship , whereby literatu re and does so by negoti ation between sophisti-
Drett as on the Greco-Se mitic Septuag int - and oth ers); phon ologic al and oth er technical dr aws on the strength of living speec h, and cated experiment and the imm edi acy of ava il-
make few conc ession s. Some sequences are development s of Greek fro m the classic al livin g speec h is itself info rmed by continuity able speech patt ern s. The radi cal poeti c-
strikingly uneven. Among the va rious treat- period (Ma likouti-Drac hma n) to the koine with literary traditi on. Henc e , in Gerard lan guage ex plora tions of Pind ar, Heraclitu s,
me nts of the dialect s, there are admirable (G . Horr ock s, Bub enik , G. C. Papana stas- Manl ey Hopkins' s classic phr ase, the lan- Aesch ylu s, repr esent , in thi s sense, the most
sum maries of Dori c and Aeoli c by Julian siou); interactio ns bet ween Greek and oth er guage of literature is, most appropriate ly, special achievement of ancie nt Gree k.
Mend ez Dosun a, a skimpy account in passing ancient lan gu ages, from lll yrian and Phr y- "the current lan gua ge height ened". In these But none of thi s is discu ssed here - with
of the ancients' own diale ct classification s by gian (Chri stos Tzitzilis ) to Ar abic (Dimitri s term s, one can see why anci ent Attici sm was the on e, partial , exception of the editor him-
Maria Karali (failing eve n to not e that the Go utas) to tran slation practic es (notable con- bound to be debilitatin g (for all the charm s of self. In an opening review of "histories of the
ancient s pri vilege literar y dialect s), and a tributions here by Sebastian Brock, among Luci an and the Gree k romance) - as also, in Gree k lan guage" , Christidis argues robu stly
sharp crit iqu e of methodology by C laude oth er s); and, not least, post-ant iqu e attitud es the sho rt term , was the institution aliz ed koine for the prim acy of the spoke n and even
Brixhe, whose " modern appro ach" (largely to ancient Gree k itself. (too remote from the traditions of the grea t asse rts the mor ality (his word) of an
sociolinguistic) threaten s to subve rt all the Thi s last group of essays, scru pulous ly con- dialect literature of the past) which rev ivalis t infor med under standing of "the lan guage
adj acent discu ssion s. Such contrasts could be textu aliz ed, is rich in choice anecdo tes and Att ic sought to displ ace. question ". Th en , in a seco nd, and substa ntial,
miti gated , eve n turn ed to ad vantage , by edito- tales of contestation (here, inevitabl y, the N o ne of wh ich is for eground ed or even int rodu ct or y piece , on th e nature of lan guage ,
rial inter vention . It is fair to say that, overall , mod ern " language question " bulk s large). We (with one exception) discussed by Chris- he offers reflecti on s on metaph or and "the
the editor's many named contribution s to the hear of Maximu s Planudes 's bemu sed schol- tidi s' s team of lingui sts - and we know why. limit s of langu age" , wh ile his later acco unt
vo lume are impressive, but that (in part arly awa reness, in fourt eenth-c entury Con- "Right and prop er" , "strength", "debilitat- of "prophetic discourse" amplifies the arg u-
because of his untim ely death in 2004) edito- sta ntinople, that Greek pronunciation mu st ing": this is the lan guage of values, and the ment by acclaiming poetr y itself as "lan-
rial input of oth er kind s is hit- and-mi ss. have chan ged dra stic ally, because a plethora scientific lingui sts of thi s vo lume eschew , guage stretched to its very limit". But
Th e book has not been sys te matically of unrelated ancient phra ses (from "by and eva de values. Acc ordingly, we get copi- Christidis's intim ation s are not shared by
upd ated. Bibliographies, mo st ob viou sly default" to "he will say it" to " I had been ou s referenc e to, but little critical engage- his coll abor ator s. We have here a lack of co-
(with lists pro vided separately for eac h thro wn") were now homophones, indi stin- ment with, the "language question " that has ordination on a grand sca le - both in detail
articl e), are unpredictable. Som e are up-to- guisha ble to the ear (Eva ngelos Petrounias). und erstandably preoccupied so man y Gree k- (the separa te discussion s of langu age ' s "lim-
the-minute (Anne Th omp son ' s, on person al its" use the sa me Valer y quote, and in slightly
names, goes up to 2005 ); some seriously out different wordings) and at a deeper level too .
of date (Paras kev i Kotzi a' s, on child talk, Christidis's claims for poeti c lan gu age are
onl y up to 1990 ). Som e are tok en, oth ers (lik e
Praying with a Friend gratuitously margin alized by ass ociation, not
Pierr e- Yves Lamb ert ' s, on "Greek and the ju st with "prophecy" , but with " magic" . A
Ce ltic lan guages") rep resent contributions to That gec ko pantin g on the whitewashed wa ll, properl y structured debat e wo uld sure ly have
cutting-edg e research. Lists of editions and only witness in the littl e ch apel produced a bett er-focu sed outcome .
Eng lis h tran slation s of a nc ie nt te xts are where I pay my coin and light a beeswax candl e - Unde r what T. S. Eliot called "conditions
chaotic , and the choices sometimes bizarr e. deference applied una sked for. Gi ven. that see m unpropitious" , the promotion of a
Man y item s are cited in mini-li sting s throu gh- lan guage, ancient or mod ern , call s for
Wh atever gods have lived at Kalamitsi, informed, critical appra isa l of its uses and
I know , as man y locals do, the spring embodime nts. In thi s cau se, we need not ju st
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to ackn owled ge lingui stic achieve me nt, but
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DAVID MASO N um e engage with alph abet s, isoglosses and
a-mail : [email protected] ob sessive monk s.
Will i am F i tzgera l d
MAR TIA L
form as one suited to postm odern sensibili-
ties. He explores analogies with the snaps hot
and the non- organi c form of the newspaper in
a bravura attempt to und erstand the urban
nature of the discontinuities inherent in a
--
but one of his fift een book s of epigra ms we re The wor ld of the ep igram book of epigrams. A final chapter addresses
written and "published" , the majorit y durin g 258pp. University of ChicagoPress. $35; intertextual relations with Catullus, Ovid and
the reign (8 1-96 AD) of the last Flavian distributed in the UK by Wiley. £20. the seve nteen th-century parodist Johannes
9780226252537
emperor, Domiti an. His concise, point ed, Burmeister.
often obsce ne epigra ms are quint essenti ally The res ult is a book which reflects its sense
urban writing. Their abrasive edge , disconti- nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but of Martial' s discontinuities in its ow n "inter-
nuiti es, paradoxes and ju xtapo sitions figure the later twentieth century saw a stro ng preti ve uncert aint y" and its refu sal to con-
the bodil y interactions of a pre-in dustrial renewal of literary interest in Martial from struc t a social or politi cal ideo logy perm eat-
"society of spec tacle" of a milli on people. Ernes to Cardenal in Nicar agua and J. V. ing the ep igrams . There is no engage ment
Mu ch of what the epigra ms portray and Cunningham in the United States to Peter with the soc ia l vision outlined by Sulli van
attac k - soc ial and moral hypocri sy, insiders Porter and others, in Britain , Spain, Ge rmany nor - more surprisingly, given Fitzge rald's
and outsiders, undeserved wea lth, bad and Italy. The revival prob abl y began with focu s on modes of writing and readin g - any
patron s and clients, legacy-hu nters, greedy Ezra Pound, but aca deme was slow to catch significa nt analysis of the politic s of the
prostitut es, offensive sex ual practic es - was on, preferring to margin alize Ma rtial until J. coll ections. In a chapter on the se miotics of
inevitabl y seen by Renaissance imit ators as P. Sul livans persuasive studies, espec ially j uxtapos ition he avoids the telling polit ical
iconic of their ow n later, different times. But Ma rtial : The unexpec ted class ic (1991 ), j uxtapos itions of Books Six and Nine, and
the epigrams also spea k distincti vel y of Mar- re-eval uated the epigra ms and transform ed makes no referenc e (there or elsew here) to
tial' s Rome : mythological " snuff ' or torture the field . "emphasis" . Simil arly the discu ssion of the
plays in the aren a, starring condemned crimi- Willi am Fitzgerald's Martial: The world of initial poems of Boo k On e omits potentiall y
nals; imperial legislati on aga inst adult ery and the epigram is the latest study of Martial to "po litical", espe cially Ovidian, allusions -
cas tra tio n; slave favourite s a nd slave -a buse; appea r in the wa ke of Sulli van ' s ac hieve me nt, not co m pe nsa ted for hy the limited account
Flavian monum ent alit y; the abso lute powe r which is here unackno wledged. It develops of Marti al' s indebt edn ess to O vid in the final
of the emperor, cen sor for life. Although a recent concern with patron s, addressees and chapter. An oppor tunity is missed , too, in the
conservati ve social hierarchy is ass umed author into an investigation of "the soc iety of brief rem arks on Book Nine and the post- OF FAR M ING & CLAS S ICS
and supported throu ghout the fift een books, the book" , the virtual society constituted not Domiti anic book s. Unlike Statiu s, Plin y, or ,, /.10'1";"
Marti al is a literary subve rsive , who see ks to onl y by the author, nam ed addressees and Tacitu s, Marti al put out his writings both
invert the traditi onal hiera rchy of poetic "overreaders" but by all impli ed consumers befor e and after the imperial revolution of
form s by und erscorin g epigram's personal (including wo men) of Marti al' s epigram matic 96 A D. The sequence Book Nine, Book
and social relevance - "hominem pagin a produ ction, now commodified for the Rom an Eleve n and (the re-edit ed) Book Ten, pub-
nostra sap it" ("o ur page tastes of ma n") . non- elite. In the process Fitzgerald focu sses lished und er Domitian, Nerva and Trajan Marcus Aurelius in Love
Marti al is also a literary perform er, a on the diver se readin g strateg ies sugges ted by respectively (Fitzgera ld see ms uncl ear about Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Cornelius Fronto
player , the inherito r of a literary tradition and a multipli city of readers and cont exts of pro- the chro nology) , uniqu ely illumines the prob- Edited, Translated, and with anIntroduction
practi ce which had developed compl ex form s duction and by the epigram matic book itself , lem atic conditions for writing and readin g and CommentarybyAmy Richlin
of speec h and writing in response to chan g- es pec ially by the complex sem iotics emanat- du ring this period. How, for exa mple, was "These newtranslationsof letters between the
EmperorMarcus Aurelius and his mentorFronto,
ing politi cal conditions. His contemp orar y, ing from the ju xtapo sitio n of epigram with the reissued Book Ten to be read after the ded-
brilliantly edited byAmy Richlin, throwa
Quintilian, notin g the danger s of speak ing epigra m. Fitzge rald is sometimes brilli ant in icatee of Book Eleve n had been exec uted by tantalizing lighton the intimaterelations
openly und er a tyrann y, advocates what he his analysis of the lingui stic operati on of the praetori an guard? Hard thinki ng abo ut the between men in the late Antonine period in
term s " em p ha sis" , layer ed wri ting or spe ak- ind ividu al ep igrams (he exam ines Liber politic s of Mar tial's epigra ms wo uld have Rome, hovering as theydo between ardent
ing, in which the meanin g lies hidden and has Spectaculorum and Epigrams Book One in enlarged their "world" and the significa nce expression of affection and playful amorousness."
to be rooted out. The main instrum ent s of detail ) and in present ing the epigram matic of this imp ortant study. -Louis Crompton, author of
Marti al' s "emphatic" writing were ju xtapo si- Homwe~HryandCwmzation
F
ifty yea rs ag o, a classici st asked to co lum ns respecti vely (w here the austere page
defin e the Gree ks' literary influ ence o n
later cultures wo uld have instanced
Hom eric epic, traged y, co medy, the histori-
A living art design becom es rather tirin g). Unusually, at
least for tho se who den y the Ge rma n se nse of
hum our, there is a spo of ar ticle o n "R heto-
ans , pastor al poetr y, and perhaps ro ma nce . graph" (that is, " a speech-w riting instru-
Onl y a very unu sual scholar wo uld have BRIA N V IC KE R S and interests" . Thi s cautious, pragm atic deci- ment ") illu str ated wi th a fifth- century vase
thou ght to mention rhetor ic. Yet thi s prag - sion means that major authors who had a "mas- paintin g (a red-figure cup by Douri s) of a
matic art, or iginally developed to improve And r e w La ir d , e d ito r sive intlu ence" on literar y creation and inter- schoo l sce ne show ing a seated youth with
face-t o-f ace co mmunication in law and pre tation for I,500 yea rs - C icero, the Sene- what look s for all the wor ld like a lapt op.
politi cs, bec ame a tool of astonishing imp ort- ANC IENT LI T ER AR Y CR I T IC IS M cas , Quintilian, Pliny the Younge r - are sim - The serious business of thi s lexicon is co n-
ance for organizing thou ght and expression. 49 1pp . Oxford Univers ity Press. £95 (US $295) . ply ignor ed. Laird has also tried to reach the cerne d with the histor y of concepts ("Beg riff-
Sys tematized in the Hell eni stic peri od , and 978 0 19 925865 9 philosophy mark et, with essays on Plato (the sges chichte"), of institutions, proc esses, and
formin g a basic ele ment in Graeco-Roman G er t U d i n g , e di tor Anti christ of poetry and rhetori c), the Stoics, eve n obj ects (a rostra as shown on a Rom an
ed uca tion, rhetori c prov ided a meth od for and the Epicurea ns, worthy studies but of denarius by Palicanu s, c48 BC ), not with
organizing a literary com positi on through an HI S T O RI S CH E S WOR T E RB U CH D ER marginal interest to literar y scho lars. Despite authors and their wor ks . There is no entry for
ordere d sequence (inventio , dispositio, elocu - R H E TORI K this collection ' s many virtues , I cannot help Ramu s, but a wide-ra ng ing entry on Rami sm .
tio, memoria, and pronuntiatio or act io); it Volume Sev en: Pos- Rhct see ing it as an opportunity lost. Articl es on long-extin ct topi cs, such as the
884 pp. TUbinge n: Niemeyer. € 145. "Progymnasmata" or graded writing exe r-
gave a helpful sche me for planning a speec h No such criticism could be addresse d to
978 3 484 68 107 1
or writte n work (exordium, narratio, divisio, the magisteri al Historisches Wiirterbuch der cises in Helleni stic and Re naissa nce schools
confirmatio, confuta tio, peroratio); and it Rhetorik, which has yie lded seve n massive (we ll treated by Manfr ed Kraus), rub sho ul-
classified seve ra l hundred lingui stic devices, atte ntive ly reco nstruc ts Ovid' s se lf-presenta- vo lumes at regul ar inter vals since 1992. The ders w ith e ntries on "Postrnoderne", "Radior-
to which spec ific fun ction s were attributed. It tion and se lf-exculpa tion, while T . J. Luce editor, Ger t Uding, like his co lla bora tors , hetorik ", "Quodlibet" (a mu sical form ) and
was essentia lly a prescripti ve art, teachin g elucida tes another ambiva len t text, Tac itus ' comes from the Unive rsi ty of T ubinge n's "Revolutionsrhetorik" ,
how to persuade, but the ca tegories it devel- Dialogue on Orators, finely obse rving the Rhetoric Semin ar, found ed by Wa iter Jen s in In add ition to the centra l ar ticles on
oped also served descriptive purp oses. E. H. "needless co nfusion" produced by the 1967. Rhetoric had been taught there since rhetori c (Pro lepsis, Pronuntiatio an
Go mbrich describ ed classical wr itings on mod ern "assumption that in orde r for each 1481 , when the found er granted " ainern der exce lle nt article by Frank Rebm ann) there
rhetoric as pro vidin g "perhaps the mo st care- interlocut or to be consistently charac terized, in Oratori en Iysset , dryssig guldin" - half the are substa ntial essays on theological topi cs
ful ana lysis of any express ive medium ever the arg uments give n to him mu st be co nsist- sa lary of the doct or s and lawyer s (J oac him (Psa lm, Proph etenr ede, Predi gt), on commu-
undert aken ", and oth er arts soon reco gni zed ent also". The ancients accept ed that spea kers Knape, 500 Jah re Tiibinger Rhetorik, 1997). nication (Presse , Propagand a, Publi c rela-
its value by plund erin g rhetoric. Painting, "aim to present the stro nges t case they ca n Later appo intments included leadin g Ger man tion s), and man y other issues invol vin g a
sculpture, architec ture, music, all ado pted for a particul ar point of view", not caring hum ani sts, such as Jakob Loch er (w ho spea ker and an audience . This lexicon adopts
its terminology and its or ientation, that of abo ut consistency. resign ed because a colleag ue had coined a an appro priately eclec tic approach, foll owin g
an indi vidual craft sman sha ping a work rhetori cal doctrin e as it has been reshaped
designed to move the spec tator's feelin gs and and renewed ove r the ce nturies. Its coverage
perc epti on s, retainin g their rhetori cal inh erit- ran ges from Byzantium to Am erica, from
ance unt il the eightee nth century. Rheto ric Ce ntra l Europe to Scan dinavia and Russia.
an d its sister discipline, poetics, provid ed Local manifestati on s are regi stered , such as
man y of the basic co nce pts that domi nated the Protes tatio de Iustitia fro m fift eenth-
thinki ng abo ut literatur e and the other arts for century Flore nce, a speec h in praise of ju stic e
centuries to co me : mim esis (re prese nting the and the civ ic orde r required of Signori a
visible world), imitatio (imit atin g ex ta nt memb ers on takin g offic e. There are descrip-
wor ks as a stage to developing the ar tist's tion s of rhetor ical institutions, such as the
ow n vo ice), unit y, variety, decorum (adj ust- fifteenth- and sixtee nth-ce ntury Dutch
ing expression to suit both the subje ct matter "Rederij kers", who produced a hybrid for m
and the intend ed audience), catharsis. Amo ng of dram a, the "s innes piel" , and the "Predi-
the skilled exponents of rhetori c in their ow n ge rgese llschaften" or preacher s' soc ieties
field we can count Alb erti , Shakespeare, (compara ble to the secular academies of
Kepler, Galil eo, J. S. Bach , Pou ssin and the Re naissa nce) which flouri shed in
James Joyce. Ge rmany and Sw itze rlan d in the sixteen th
Andrew Laird' s co llec tion of twent y prev i- and seve ntee nth ce nturies .
ous ly publi shed ess ays on cla ssical literar y Aft er seve ral month s' selec tive use, the
criti cism co vers a thou sand yea rs, fro m overall level of the articles see ms very high.
Hom er and his comment ato rs to Servius and Some articles suffer fro m dense pseud o-
St Au gu stin e. Th ey range in tim e from the soc iolog ica l j argon , oth ers are admi rabl y
fam ou s 1857 essay by Jacob Bern ays, "Aris- Athenian red-figure vase by Douris (early fifth ce nt u ry BC, detail), from th e clear (such as H. Sta uffe r on "P sycha gogie"),
totle o n the Effec t of Traged y" , here given in book under r eview. Some address spec ifica lly Germ an concepts,
a newl y revised translati on by Jenn ifer such as "Publizistik" (only partl y translatabl e
Barnes (with a trenchant introduction by Jon- This collection, which includes extensive neologism , a privilege that Locher reser ved by "j ournalism" ), or "Produktio nsas thetik".
atha n Barn es), to rece nt wor k by Denni s "Suggestions for Further Readi ng" , will be of to poets and ora tors) , Heinrich Bebel , Eng lish users will note a few omissions . The
Fee ney and the late Don Fow ler. Several are use to both beginn ers and adva nced stude nts. Philipp Melanchth on (nicknamed "praecep- article on "Purismus" do es not know of the
mod ern classics, and it was a grea t pleas ure But it has been shaped by some rather unfortu- tor Germani ae" ), Joachi m Ca merarius and Society for Pur e Eng lish, and while there is a
to revisit essays by A . M. Dale, on Aristotle's nate decision s. Laird has decided to focu s on Martin Crus ius. Th e distingui shed scholarly brief discussion of English Oratory, app ar-
conc ept of diano ia (show ing his debt to rheto- major authors , and to includ e essays elucidat- publis her Max Niemeye r, also from Tubin- en tly there have been no Eng lish Orator s.
ric ), and Don ald Ru ssell , the gra nd master in ing "particular prim ary texts" rather than the ge n, has produced an eminently legibl e Trans lations of terminology are sou nd, but
thi s field , whose lucid outline of the link s "te nets and trend s of anci ent critic ism and doubl e-c olumn page. " battle" is not the right word for "Que re lle "
between "Rhetoric and Criticism" is a mod el poetics" . Several of these essays show the Mor e than 400 scho lars, mos tly from (as in the Qu arr el of the Anci ents an d Mod-
of its kind. Discu ssin g the A rs Poetica, that importanc e of rhetori c in formul atin g criti cal German-speakin g countries, have taken part ems) . Tri vial errors apart , this is a wo nde rful
mo st elus ive text ("Problem s posed, solved conc epts and analytical techniques, and Laird in thi s proj ect , go od editing ensuring a digest of kno wled ge, with some thing notable
or dissolved by four centu ries of scho larship conc ede s that "most of our so urces for anc ient high degree of con sistency. Th e lon ger on eve ry page. It deser ves to be pro min entl y
have re sulted in a neurotic co nfusio n unex- criticism in Latin are mainl y or exclusively articl es are divided into chronological displa yed on the referen ce shelves of all good
ce lled eve n in classical studies"), Ru ssell di s- co nce rned with ora tory "; but the se lected peri od s (cl ass ica l, medi eval , Renaissance, libraries. Sadly, a check on COP AC, the
tils a lifetim e' s wisd om to cl arify the diffi cul- essays deal only with poetr y. He also observes mode rn), each with its own bibliogr aph y. uni on catalog ue of the leadin g twent y-seven
ties Horace faced in "turning poetics into that "the import ant role of orato ry throu ghout Volume Seven (Pos- Rhet) co nta ins seve ral institutional libraries in the United Kingd om
poetr y" , while his Eng lish vers ions co nfirm antiquity is not rep resented in most curre nt large articles , coll aboration s between spec ial- and Ireland , shows that only eight have sub-
him as one of the grea t translator s of mod ern curr icula" , and althoug h he found it "tempt- ists in each peri od. That o n "R hetorik" scribed, not including the Briti sh Lib rar y.
times. Two other scho lars pur sue the fruitful ing" to "use this book to redirect or modify (the work of two dozen scholars) ex tends With two vo lumes outstanding , there is still
recent interest in how classical authors con- the inclinations of teachers and stude nts", the acro ss 3 17 columns ; tho se on "Redner, time to acquire the best-ever referenc e boo k
trol the process of reading. Bruc e Gibso n aim here, he says , is to "meet ex isting needs Re dner idea l" and " Rede" cover 200 and 192 on thi s ancient yet livin g art.
TLS O C T OB E R 5 20 07
MEMOIRS 11
" T h is will not be an easy chapter for ship I had not read Powell in any serio us and
me to do." The chapter is about V. S.
Naipaul's old friend and early
mentor Anth ony Powell , whose magnum
opu s, A Dance to the Music of Time, when
At the feast conn ected way , had onl y ju st don e so, and
didn't no w think of him as a writer. It was a
piece of Ibsen-like horr or." This last allu sion
relates to his sense that "every lbsen grea t
Naip aul came to read it with care, "appalled" KARL MILL ER man has near-mu rder in the background".
him. Ge nero us, "people-collecting" Ton y had A vicar ious unkindness, at Powell ' s
made a hash of it. Wh y did the chapter have to V. S . Na i pa u l ex pense , enters the stew. One of the points
be written if it threatened to be so hard to where Naip aul' s seve rity eng ages with the
write? The question is not easy to answ er, and A WR ITER ' S P EOPLE ill-will of others conc ern s "the minor poet
it has gone unanswered in the deferential Ways of look ing and feelin g Philip Lark in" , as he think s him. Powell took
review s which I have read of A Writer 's 193pp. Picador. £16.99. to Larkin and his poe ms ; perh aps he was
People: Ways of looking and fee ling . The 978 033 0 48524 I go ing to add him to his coll ectio n of fri end s.
openin g chapter, which precedes that one, " I was glad that he didn't because soon we
may also have been hard to write. Those of sexual abstinence hadn ' t co me eas ily. One idle we re to read, after Larkin ' s death , the most
this writer's peopl e who are writers are found day in the ashram, some time before Gandhi's aw ful abuse of Tony, in L arkins diary or in a
to have faded, staled, failed. Th eir works have death, Vinoba had the idea (or it had been put Larkin lett er." I had thought that Larkin , like
disapp eared from the scene. Their "little Amer- to him: he had his admirers) that he should take his friend Kingsley Ami s, was a fri end of
ican success" soon wilts. Thi s writer's peopl e over from the grea t man. There was the clothes Powell ' s, but it see ms that you never know
can look at mom ents like a cannibal feast. - he could do that. There was the spinning- with writers. Naip aul attra cts a par-for-th e-
Th e five ch apters of the bo ok are link ed by wheel - he could more than do that; he had cour se abusive referen ce in Ami s' s lett ers,
an idea of vision. There is an Eng lish way of practised under the master' s eye ; and it would and Ami s once told Powell that Te rence
lookin g, in which Pow ell is implicated, and help pass the time. There was the ashram rou- Kilm artin of the Observe r, a tran slator of
there is an Indi an way of looking, and of not tine, with even a little (but not too much) Prou st, was "a very fooli sh man" - a Vinoba
see ing. But there' s a goo d deal of the miscel- latrine-cleaning - that was in his blood. Up to Bhave, as it were. This was Ami s' s " little
laneou s in thi s coll ecti on of pieces, and the there it was easy. j oke" , Naipaul writes . He himself knew
fir st two chapters, where the failu re of writers Bhave knew, thou gh , that Gandhi was a better. But then so, of co urse, did A mis.
supplies a mor e important link , stand national figur e, as we ll as the master of an Oth er di sparagem ent s of Powe ll, by other
somew hat apart from the later three, two ashram, so he threw him self into land reform peopl e, are cit ed . His literar y editor at the
of which are abo ut Indi a, and in which and we nt abo ut the villages with a foll owin g V. S. Naipaul, 1994 Telegraph, David Holloway, sq uinted, app ar-
Naip aul' s abiliti es as a no veli st, com edi an in ord er to preach it. But nothing was don e ently, but managed to look Naip aul in the
and critic, and his brilli ant simplicity of when the carava n moved on. Trinidad for the metropolit an West. Litera- eye before asking him what he thou ght about
ex press ion are most in ev ide nce . One of these This half-man and Ga ndhi's moth er ' s half- ture, Eng lish literature cert ainly, is spiteful, his friend ' s writing. " Before I said any thing
chapt ers is a piece of literary criti ci sm where fasts - such teases are the stuff of a superb and so is literary company. Writers (and their he said, with something like rage, his bad eye
an episode of Madame Bovary, in which felin e com ed y, from a man with an inclin a- peopl e) are often jealou s. He was sho cked by wor king hard , ' I would pay him to stop writ-
Emma's future medi cal-m an husband is tion to say thin gs by halves in thi s way . the di splays of malice he witnesse d onc e he'd ing' . Ju st like that ; and yet wee k by wee k he
call ed out to splint a suffe ring farm er, is Ea rlier, in South Afric a, G andhi had founded es tablished him self as a man of lett ers in ran Ton y ' s lead review at the top of the
wo nde rfully retold - Flaubert could hardl y a scho ol, Tolstoy Farm , wh ere he "played Eng land. page." Mean whil e Powell ' s editor at Punch ,
have don e it bett er - and compared with Mr Squ eers and eve ryo ne had to do ga rde n- He ex plains that his yo uthful feelin g for the cartoo nist Bern ard Hollo wood , had been
Flaubert's Carthag inia n Gothic ex trav a- ing and where, as it turn ed out , the children poetr y was less acute than his feelin g for heard to say that he could do the literary
ga nza, Salammbo, mu gged up from book s, had to do mo st of the hard wor k, fellin g tim- prose. Poem s were apt to overdo it. He was pages him self. Those editors! It is later
Na ipaul sugges ts, and in some respect s infe- ber and diggin g and car ryin g. The children like the narrator in hi s novel Half a Life who reported that Da vid Holl oway "had retired or
rior to on e of its sources, the C lassica l histo- didn 't like it". Wh en he we nt back to India, obj ected as a stude nt to the bomb ast of sensi- died ; that dull care er was over".
rian Pol ybiu s. Th e case is made, and was "what happ ened to the farm and the school?" . bilit y which he cam e across in Eng lish Na ipaul was shoc ked whe n Aub eron
worth makin g. Naipa ul also writes interest- The com ed y of Ga ndhi's life, as rend ered Roma ntic verse . The yo ung man wa nted to Wa ug h, Eve lyn's son and one of the spec ial-
ingly about Roman war and Rom an atrocity, here, is unlik ely to accelerate the decl ine say: "This is ju st a pack of lies. No one feels ists in mali ce who do so we ll in Eng lish jour-
and about Julius Caesa r's De Bello Galileo . which has been attribut ed to the M ahatm a' s like that" . But Na ipa ul was very excited by nali sm, de livere d a routine excoriation of
Th e seco nd half of A Writer 's People is authority. Indian readers, amon g others, have the arrival of a fir st book of poem s by Derek Powell , his father ' s fri end. But it can' t have
divid ed, like Gaul , into three part s, and thi s long been accustomed to the story of his fad s. Walc ott from neighb ourin g St Luci a. Here, surprised him . " Bron' s review preyed on
materi al is flank ed by the two chapt ers on Aft er the Seco nd World War it became in so man y wo rds, was his ow n paradi salland- To ny 's mind. " But it ma y have been that
Indi a, the Naip aul famil y' s homeland , and on less arduous for the Indi an community of sca pe and seascape. But then, he claims, there was no rea son for the attack , that "B ron
wha t has becom e of it since he first we nt the Ca ribbea n to visit the country whose civi- Walc ott ' s po etr y we nt off (the po et wo uld had sim ply wishe d to be crue l, and Ton y was
there and wrote tartl y about it in An Area of lizati on they'd born e with them across the one day refer to Sir Vidi a as V. S. Nightfall an easy target" . Eng land exempts its Bro ns
Darkn ess (1964 ), whic h was succee ded by sea . Na ipaul's moth er paid a vis it to her and it isn 't hard to imagin e why) . The wor k from any requirem ent of acc urac y or fairn ess,
the mor e comp endious and mor e affirmati ve famil y' s ances tral village , where she didn't of another Wes t Indian writer, the noveli st and allows them to say, as thi s one did , that
India: A milli on mutinies now (199 1). feel like venturing on her relati on s ' food , but Sa muel Selvon, also we nt off, and a book of his publi c schoolfellows thou ght that a black
Stren gth s and annoy ing wea knesses are dis- accepted tea. Naipaul, him self devoted to diet his dr ew fro m Naipaul the wor d "wretched" boy at the schoo l was some sort of health
co vered in Nirad C. Cha udhuri' s writings . and to purit y, describ es how her relations when he inter viewed him for the BBC' s hazard . Na ipaul's recoil from the Car ibbea n
Gandhi ' s achieve ment is reco gni zed , but Gan- off ered suga r. She did not resist. " But the Caribbea n Service . Edga r Mitt elh olzer did island of his yo uth, with its easy malice, its
dhianism is see n as a spent forc e - dated , at grey grains of suga r came on so mebo dy 's not so mu ch go off as go up in se lf-inflicted far from paradi sal race rel ation s, took him to
all eve nts . His renowned ecce ntricities were palm and were slid from the palm into the flames, Na ipaul conveys . He has ea rlier a Western wor ld with defici en cies of its ow n
owe d in large meas ure to his moth er, a tea. And that per son, courteou s to the end, not ed that the no veli st had been plea sed to and a mali ce of its own, to a wounded expe ri-
simple wo man from the co untry who lived began to stir the suga r with her fin ger. " Mr s discover that his London publi sher, Fred ence of the West, as some have perc ei ved
for her rituals, which could last for month s on Na ipaul may have felt herself ex pose d to a Warburg, was alm ost as dark as him self. The it, and to the triu mphant exe rcise of a rare
e nd a nd " c ame with a se ries of fa st s and half- less civilized way of ea ting and drinking. Th e fate of these Co mmo nwealth writers, as they talent.
fasts". Fro m thi s ensued his devoti on to diet. story is reminiscent of a sce ne fro m Brit ai n' s used to be kno wn , is enough to recall the None of thi s is ca lculated to mak e any one
He was a man who liked eating but who Age of Reason, when, to Thomas Ca rlyles Rom antic po et Wordsworth ' s awa reness of but aspiring spec ialists of thi s kind long to
pled ged him self to ascetici sm and simp licity. subse quen t disgu st, Boswell visited Sam ue l the despond ency and distress of the poets j oin the London literar y wor ld . "Somebody
On e of Ga ndhi's multitude of discipl es Johnson "to sip mudd y coff ee with a cy nica l who were his cont emporaries. told Sonia Orwe ll one da y that in To ny 's big
was "a fooli sh man " , Vinoba Bha ve, whose old man, and a sour-tempered blind old Now it is A nthony Powell ' s turn. He was a book peopl e were dri ven by the will. She
brain was softened by emulation and se lf- wo ma n (feelin g the cup s, whether they are friend of lon g standing who, Na ipaul records , made a face and see med about to snort. And
mortification , and who had to be dra gged from full , with her fin ger)". bade him a ceremoniou s goodbye some while yet Tony and his wife Violet adore d Ge orge
the spinning wheel lest he made him self ill. It is the earlie r chapters of A Writer 's before his death but we nt on see ing other Or well .. .." Sonia's half- snort is the sad
He had li ved for so long as a parasite, and away People which raise the question of what it is friend s. He was fift y-tw o, Na ipaul twent y- thin g here ; that and the non seq uitur which
from the world, that he had become a kind of to write aga inst the wor k of cont emporaries five, whe n they met. The day came when foll ows it. Powell is so metimes said to have
half-man, and he thought that Gandhi had been (a nd, in passing, aga inst that of Henr y James Na ipa ul was invited by an editor to discuss been hurt , or it is said that he wo uld have
like that too. Vinoba had no means of know ing and E. M. Fors ter) . Part of the answe r may lie his friend' s wor k. " I didn 't think anyone been hurt had he known what was being sa id
that Gandhi was a man of appetite, and his in the compan y Naipaul kept when he left wo uld believe that after all the yea rs of friend- abo ut him behind his back. I can testif y that
TLS O CT OB E R 5 2007
ESSAYS & BIOGRAPHY 13
Miserabl es to the work ings of destin y and What, then, when the smo ke has cleared, their liberation. But then, perh aps the muddl e we re born, so that, throu gh living this vica ri-
cha nce. The erotic dim ension is altoge ther is the novel' s insurrection all about? Left- is the message: the great gift that fiction ous, transient, precarious, but also passionate
abse nt: the main actors are strikingly sexless. leaning scho lars have been far too qui ck to brin gs is the hankering - however inarti cu- and fascin ating life that fiction transport s us
Eve n the young lovers, Cose tte and Ma rius, impo rt what they know (or think they do) late - for a better life. to, we ca n incor pora te the imposs ible into the
kiss only once, we' re told , in the en tire from the historica l record, says Vargas Llosa. It sounds lame - and Vargas Llosa possibl e" . Ringing term s, it might aga in be
course of an inten se but utterly ethereal court- On the actual causes or motivatio n of the acknow ledges that we will be waiting a long objec ted, for what amo unts to a cou nsel of
ship. The economic motive is largely missi ng insurrection of 1832 our loqu acious narrat or time if we expec t works of fic tion to bring us des pa ir (or even a call for fiction to be admin-
too: there' s certainly very little sense of is once more mute. The uprising, as see n in to utopi a. But then how far have we actually istered as an opiate for the people). But this
anyone doing any work - odd, on the face of the novel, is nothi ng more than a ges ture , an been adva nced in the real wor ld by the revo lu- is to miss the point. The wo rk - even one as
it, in a nove l apparently dealin g with the expression of genera lize d hope. This appea rs tionary fantasies of the Left ? The ir promises sprawl ing, as uncont ain able as Les Misera -
plig ht of the poor. Reactionary critics like to be enough for Hu gos narrator, who talk s have proven as untru e as any fiction, and a bl es - has its ow n organi zin g princ iples, its
Lam artin e pounce d on th is fact: these people exci tedly of the violence that is to usher in grea t dea l more dam aging in their conse- ow n integrity: it co uld never offer a yardstick
weren ' t "miserables" , they carpe d - ju st idle. an age of peace. It has not been enough for quences . At least we have literature to give us for a wor ld beyond itself.
Radicals, too, Vargas Llosa report s, we re to many modern readers, left with the vague sug- hope: Les M iserabl es, says Varga s Llo sa, "by What it can do, in Vargas Llosa' s view , is
feel let down by a soc ial critiqu e which, on ges tion that the same inescapable destin y its very sca le, competes with realit y on an stir the imagination of the individual - no
closer examination, turn ed out to be as airy as which till now has ordered the opp ress ion of equal plane, offering a ' total' fiction in place small thing, when it is from the individual that
it was eloquent. the masses is so mehow go ing to brin g about of life". That, he concludes, is "why fictions all true and lasting change must come .
--------------------------~,--------------------------
etween 1920 , when she was thirt y, Suchet, and the very popul ar film of Witlless
When the blow gets home ma sk of the Authorized Version . (Jon ahs
ord eal "in the bell y of the fish" is only the
mo st ob viou s allusion; " mirth", for ex ample,
takes yo u to Isaiah : "all jo y is da rkened, the
mirth of the land is gone . In the cit y is left
Rudyard Kipling's songs of the submarine desolation , and the ga te is smitten with
destruction" .) Yet the Biblical echo es
1 especia lly want the Service to make some DA NI EL KARLlN whose verses I haven't done thin gs to. Henc e resound within such a sma ll, compressed
songs of its own . . . . If I were you, I'd go my ord er !" space. Th e word "death" is the pivot on
straight ahead with the Song of the Submarine When the hissing tubes are still, as if with The "order" presum abl y made it clear that which the poem turn s, as the hunt ed sub-
and not both er about who ever else was doing bated breath Kiplin g wo uld make no invidious distinc- marin e becom es the hunt er and inflicts in the
the same thing. I'd have tried it long ago, They waited for the word to loose the silver tion s among the " large maritime poets" who seco nd stanza wh at it endure d in the first.
myself, if I could have got it good enough. But bolts of death, soug ht his aid ; he wo uld refu se them all. The poem allows ju st one full rhym e, of
it' s rather a big fish - for me. You ' re nearer to When the Watch beneath the Sea shall Though Bower was the pri vileged ex ception "eyes" and "dies" (subm arine war fare, in thi s
it and yo u might strike out somet hing th at crown the grea t Desire, to thi s rule, he had his ow n doubts and scru- period, pitt ed the sing le eye of the peri scop e
would go home. Anyhow, try. And hear the coughing rush of air that greets ples. He thou ght he was "cribbing" from his aga inst the "thousand eyes" of watchers on
hese encourag ing word s were writ- the word to fire . master , as indeed he was; and Kiplin g had to the surface), but it ge ts full value from the
sys tem, for which Kipl ing thank ed him: " I'm Dard anell es had occurre d onl y a few mo nths makes a clear and determined atte mp t to
go ing to devise some sort of shrine for the previou sly; in hom e waters there was no differ enti ate between subma rine war fare as
Thing - as the heart of the Hun ' s devildom & gra nd engage me nt with the Ger man High Sea practi sed by the Briti sh an d by the Ge rma ns,
put it somew he re where I can curse it dail y" . Flee t (w hich was bottl ed up in Wilh elm- allud ing to the Ge rma n targetin g of unarm ed
Bower, in turn , had aske d Kipling to sugges t shave n) , but instead a stea dy trickl e of losses merch ant ships, the sinking of the Lusitania
a motto for o ne of the new " M" class boats, to merch ant shipping by min e and torp edo. In and oth er atroc ities. But , for all his effor ts,
whose whopp ing twelve-inch gun, far heav- "T he Fringes of the Fleet", Kipling set out to the spirit of "Tin Fish" bro od s ove r his
ier than the armament of mos t con venti on al make a vi rtue of necessit y. T he Navy's mun- descriptions, so that the co ld-bloodedness
typ es of subma rine, inspired Kiplings dane heroi sm - maint aining a block ade, which he as ks us to admire in our submarines
respon se : "Her name, if m y Lor ds of the swee ping for mines , she pherding mer ch ant co mes close to the ca llo usness he asks us to
Ad miralt y had the ima gin ation of a co m mo n vessels - was nothing new , but was inti- co ndemn in their s.
tick should be, of cour se, 'Gunhitda'". mately co nnec ted with its histor y. T he Towards the end of the fourth art icle of
T he last lett er in the Subma rine M use um Se rv ice was picking up where it had left off, "T he Fringes of the Flee t" , he reports a
archive, da ted Jul y 1, I 922, ends the ser ies on a century ea rlier, in the blo ckade of Na po - co nversation, amongs t a gro up of offic ers,
a less pl ayful note. Bo wer ' s car eer was stag - leonic Fra nce; Kipl in g asks his reader s to abou t a rece nt enc ounter between a Briti sh
nating; he must have felt threaten ed by the mar vel not at so mething exceptio na l, but at submar ine and a Ge rma n Zep pe lin. Th e fight
notoriou s "Geddes Axe", the poli cy (na me d some thing only to be ex pec ted . Th at some - bet ween these two newf angled wea pons is
after Sir Eric Ge ddes , First Lord of the Ad mi- thin g, Kiplin g states in the first article , co mica lly inconclusive, and one of the offic -
ralty) which for the fir st tim e introduced co m- " wor ks in the un con sciou s blood of tho se ers rem ark s: "Oh, if Frit z only fo ught clean,
pul sor y redundancy int o the Ser vice. Ind eed who serve [the Navy]" , which had "simply thi s wouldn' t be half a bad show. But Fritz
the who le Ro yal Navy was cont ractin g: 1922 returned to the practi ce an d resurr ect ed the can' t fight clean". Th e stereo ty pes that
was the year in which Brit ain conce de d par- spirit of o ld days". In this scheme, "T he sub- Kiplin g deploys her e, with complete delib er-
ity of sea power to the United States. Bower mari ne tak es the place of the pri vateer" . ateness, are intend ed both to entertain and
ex pressed his feelings to Kiplin g, who could Rud yard Kipling, 1928 Th e appea l to history is doubl y sign ifican t reassur e his read ers that the men who wage
onl y urge hi m to take the lon g view: whe n it co mes to wr iting about submar ines, war in "our" submar ines ha ve not beco me
I know, at second hand, that awful hopeless- built: " they ca n cru mple them sel ves up from since the subma rine was not o nly a new kind alie n to their race. But so straightforward a
ness that very reas ona bly, is possessing the stern to brid ge . .. and still ge t hom e". John of vessel, but had had to make its way aga inst piec e of pro pagand a is imm edi ately foll owed
Services. But, if you cast a back ward eye over Kipling wo uld not get hom e. the hostility of the naval es tablishme nt itself. by thi s, in which the submar iners' con ver sa-
history you will note that the English always Yet Kipl in g kept writing . In the same lett er A subma rine, after all, em bod ies the prin ci- tion takes a different turn:
alterna te between givi ng officers sma ll to Dun ster vill e, he menti on ed , in a few flat ple of unfair play; in 1901, Admiral Sir And then they talked of that hour of the night
bonu ses to clear out and offering ' em large senten ces, the work he had don e ove r the pre- Arthur Wil son snorted that the submarine when submarines come to the top like mer-
bonu ses to co me back. It never varies. I' ve had vio us wee ks : " I' ve been, as I think I tol d yo u, was a "dam ned un- Engl ish" wea po n, and that maids to get and give informatio n; of boats
most of the Juniors weepi ng on my neck - or am on g the ships an d my lucub rations are crews of submar ines ca pture d in wa rtime whose business it is to fire as much and to
words to that effect. coming out in the D[ aily] T[ elegr aph] . It was sho uld be " treated as pi rat es and han ged " . splash about as aggressively as possible; and of
(Bower escaped the Ge ddes Axe, but he was a gay tim e . I we nt down in a subma rine ". It Ye t Kiplings third article begin s by re- other boats who avoid any sort of display -
never pro moted beyond the ra nk of Com- may see m ex traord ina ry to us, thou gh it emphasizing that the submar ine belongs in dumb boats watching and reliev ing watch, with
mander ; he hun g on unt il 1931, whe n he wo uld not have see me d in the least ex traordi- the Navy : their periscope j ust showi ng like a crocodi le's
placed himse lf vo luntarily on the reti red list. nary at the time, that Ki pling did not exc use Like the destroyer, the submarine has crea ted eye, at the back of islands and the mouths of
We ha ve no rec ord of any furt her co ntac t him selffrom his task of chee ring up the read- its own type of office r and man - with lan- chan nels where something may some day
with Kipling.) In one sense the last letter ers of the " DT" . Six articles we re dul y pub- guage and traditions apart fro m the rest of the move out in process ion to its doom.
retu rn s to the conce rns of the first - ag ain lish ed , beginning on Novem ber 20, und er the Service, and yet at heart unchangingly of the Reader s who know The Second Jungle Book
Kiplin g stresses that wha t he knows of the titl e "T he Fringes of the Flee t". Wh en co m- Service . Their business is to run monstrous will recall , in the im age of the pe risco pe as a
Serv ice is "at second hand" - but in a differ- plete, the series was issued as a bookl et by risks from earth, air, and water, in what, to be croco dile 's eye, the grea t cunning cro co dile,
ent key. To und er stand why, we need to go Mac mill an in 1915 and, along with two other of any use, must be the coldest of cold blood. the Mu gger of Mu gger-Ghaut , in "T he Under -
back to the peri od whe n Kipling and Bower series , "Tales of ' T he Trade'" an d "Destroy- T he primar y mea ning of the ph rase " in co ld taker s" , that sar do nic tale of how Nemesis
first me t, and to the full co ntext of Kipl ing' s ers at Jutl an d" , appeared in vo lume form in blood " in this con tex t is coo lness, ho lding finall y ove rta kes a co ld-blooded assassin.
encounter with the "tin fis h". 1916 und er the tit le Sea Warfare . o ne's ne rve; it tran slat es the Fre nch sang And here Mu gger and Nemesis and assassin
Kipl ing re turne d to Batern a ns, his hom e Th e articles that mak e up "T he Fringes of fro id. T he phrase occ urs aga in, in the fourth are on e , fu sed in th e do o m th at awaits th e
near Bu rwash in Su ssex, from his visit to the the Fleet " therefore contain the first writing ar ticle, the one head ed by "Tin Fish", where Ge rma n High Sea Fleet. But if a Royal Navy
subma rine base at Har wich , o n Se ptembe r of any kind - jo urna lis m, fiction , poetry - o ne of the office rs he meets tell s Kipling that submar ine can lurk like a croco d ile, wha t
25, 1915. He began work on the news pa pe r that Kipling did in the im me diate after math " submarine wo rk is col d-blooded bu sin ess" . pri ce wa r as a goo d show and a clean figh t?
articles he had been co mm iss ioned to write . of the loss of his so n; and Sea Warfare was Kipling demurs: T he truth is that Kipli ng' s im aginati on has
Th en , on Oct ober 2, he received the news that the fir st book he published after that eve nt. "T hen there' s no trut h in the yarn that you can left prop aganda behind, and is atte ntive ,
his only so n, John , had been wo unde d at the Of the twelve articles that make up the book , feel when the torpedo' s going to get home?" I as it is in "Tin Fish", to its visio n of hum an
Battl e of Loos and was miss ing. Alth ou gh fi ve are devot ed to submarines ("Tin Fish" asked. death and fate.
Kiplin g we nt through the moti on s of enquir- head s one of them ), and submar ines pop up "Not a word. You sometimes see it get
ing abo ut John ' s possibl e fate as a pri son er of (so to spe ak) in several others. Th e lett er s to home, or miss, as the case may be." For inf ormation on Cdr Bower 's nava l
wa r, he had few illu sion s that his so n mi ght Bower confirm that Kipling ' s inter est in "the T he phrase "co ld-blooded bu siness" refer s caree r, the author is grateful to Cdr Alastair
be alive . To Co lone l Lionel Dun ster ville, the Trade", and in at least one of its " unwashed here to wha t the submarine does, the destru c- Wilson, RN (Retd}, Chairman of the Counc il
ori gin al of "S talky", he wro te on N ove mber ch auffeu rs" co ntinued throughout the wa r tion it infli cts, rathe r than the coo lness of the Kipling Socie ty. Extracts from
12: "T he wi fe is stand ing it wo nde rfully tho' and bey ond . But her e a distinction need s to required to endure the "monstro us risks" it Rudyard Kipling 's letters to Cdr Bower are
she of course cl ings to the bare hope of his be made between two kind s of interest that run s of bein g, itself, destro yed. Thi s change primed with the perm ission of A P Watt Lid
bein g a priso ner. I' ve see n wha t she lls ca n do Kipling showed in subma rines and subma rin- from passive to acti ve turn s the phrase a little on behalf of the National Trust for Places of
and I don 't" . H. A. Gwynn e , the Ed itor of the ers. It is a distinction between the submar ine toward s the meaning of ca llo usness, of lack Historic Interest or Na tural Beauty.
Mo rni ng Post and a c lose fri end, we nt down as an int egr al part of the Royal Navy, a new- of emotiona l engage me nt. And thi s turn is
to Bateman' s. " W hen I arr ive d, he said ye t-old devic e for ca rry ing out an old-ye t- reinforced , I think, by the twice-r ep eated Dr Shulamit Almog (University of Haifa)
' W hat did yo u com e down for ?' I said ' to see new mission, and the subma rine as an ph rase used to describe the torp ed o' s success-
what I can do.' ' Yo u ca n do nothing ' he said ful strike, the phr ase "get hom e" . How DigitalTechnologies are Changingthe
emblem of dread , of the ruthl ess co nduct of
Practice of Law
but 1 saw a qui ver in his lip s which showed war, and, in "Tin Fish", of abso lute loss. "Tin Th e image of subma rine war fare that
ho w the thi ng had go ne hom e ." " You mi ght Fish" is at odds with the im age of submar ine Kipling present s in his articles foll ows the 232pp £69.95 Hardcover
strike out some thing that wo uld go hom e." wa rfare which Kiplin g deri ved from men like pa ttern of "Tin Fish" : it is di vided between 978-0-7734-5214-5 Pub. June 2007
" And the mirth of a sea por t dies f Wh en our Bo wer , and wo uld perh ap s have been beyond the cold-bloo ded endura nce of bein g hunt ed , " ... As th e digital condition bears down on us like a storm, "it
requires special measures suitable for dealing with it" ..."
blow ge ts hom e". Kipl ing uses the phr ase in Bower's im aginative gras p . Yet it is not quit e and the eq ually co ld-blooded bu siness of Dr Richard K Sherwin, New York Law School
its other, beni gn sense several tim es in his an ano ma ly in the pages of Sea Warf are. destruction. But the ar ticles insist on some-
The Edwin Mellen Press Ltd
articles. " And in du e tim e that boat go t Th e Ad mi ralt y had turn ed to Kipling to thin g to which the poem is indifferent , the Tel: 01570 423356
ho me": that is said, for exa mp le, of a Briti sh counter the publi c per ception that the Nav y " Englishness" of subma rine wa rfare and its Email: cs@m ellen.demon.co .uk
www.m ellenpress.com
subma rine, which was hunted in sha llow was inacti ve at hom e and ineffecti ve abroa d. right to be va lued alo ngs ide the other
water and ye t escaped. Destro yers are sto utly Th e failure to force a passage through the br anc hes of the Navy. In the articles , Kiplin g
am a great goer-back to places where I res pec tive dr eams, pas t a co rne r chippy sur-
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
17
S
ance at the Intern ational Dance Festival in nection ex plored in the choreog raph y: the first
Colorado last month , the company has mad e section is for three couples, in enjoyably of the Weddi ng begin s with a famil y
its first app earance at Sad ler' s Well s. aggress ive mode ; the seco nd half (Whelan gath ering to celebrate the engageme nt
It is worth clearing away some und er- and Hall once mor e) bears more of a resem- of Jarvi s - a so ldier on leave from the Second
growth. Though the programmes and press blanc e to a soft-focus holiday advertisement, World War - to his swee theart, Janice. Sit -
releases are all head ed "Morphoses/T he as Whelan, in soft shoes, long hair flying, ting in the arbour of his famil y' s back yard ,
Whe eldon Company" , the group that has wrap s herself around her partner in a haze of Jar vis rem inisces: " I remember all the end-
appeared so far is not yet a company. No per- pinki sh light. Whil e the first section, like less summer afternoons of my childhood ....
man ent danc er s will be employe d until 2009 ; Morpho ses, ex plores compl ex movement in a It does carr y me back " . Frankie, his tw elve-
for the moment there is a pick-up company of simple style, the second, like Wh eeld on' s ye ar-old sister, agr ees: " It carri es me back
stars, mo stly from the New York City Ballet , Fool 's Paradise (a new work to a saccharine too ". The ir father, Mr Add am s, lau gh s. He
with Alina Coj ocaru and Joh ann Kobborg score by Job y Talbot) is about metaphor assumes Franki e is experiencing things she
from the Ro yal Ballet add ed in as local inter- rath er than danc e. will look back on fondly : drinking lemonade
est. Secondly, while Wheeldon has planned a Both programmes lose colour and impetu s. with a dash of liq uor ; leaping from tree stump
compan y that commission s new work s from The two gue st choreographers, William For- to tree stump. But she is a troubled gir l.
a wide rang e of choreographers, for now sythe and City Ballet dancer Edw aard Liang , Th e play, adapted by Carson Mc Cullers
mor e than half the two programmes at provide pas de deux. Watching Wh eeldon' s from her own novel, soon settles do wn. Every-
Sad ler ' s Well s con sisted of Wh eeldon piece s. own work for extend ed periods, one begin s to on e leav es ex cept Frankie and her sev en-
Wh eeldon began his care er with the Royal see that little of it, too, is for massed group s, or ye ar-old cou sin , John Henr y. Th ey ent er the
Ball et , first at the school, then for two years as for solo danc ers; pretty well ever ything is for kitch en where Berenice, the black cook, is
a junior memb er of the company; with it, he Wendy Whelan and Craig Hall in coupl es. And like Wheeld on , Liang and For- working. Berenic e has been on stage from the
appear s to have imbibed the aesthetic of Mac- Christopher Wheeldon'sAfter the Rain sythe rely on terre ii terre steps. The single start, low-lit and barel y noticeable. But she
millan , as we ll as Ashton ' s stro ng Cecchetti- scheduled Balanchine work , Allegro Brillante, and the two children dom inate the rest of the
influ enced upper-body pla stiqu e. He then led off the first night , is such a piece. Choreo- is a welcome diversion, reminding the audi- action . When some local girl s ex clude
joined the New York City Ballet , where he has graphed to Gyorg Ligeti' s String Quartet No I ence that danc e can also encompass jumps and Frankie (Flora Spencer-Longhurst) from their
remained ever since, dancing as a soloist until (admirably played by the Trelawn Quartet) , it turns - these see m exciting innovations after club , she blames her bo yish appearanc e and
2000, becoming choreographer-in-residenc e is made for two coupl es (Wendy Wh elan and all the bourrees and glissades of the next gener- bad sme ll. She hate s an yon e saying "we" to
in 200 I; from Balanchin e, he has acquired a Craig Hall, Sterlin g Hyltin and Gonzalo ation. The lightin g for all but the Ba lanchin e is her - "all peopl e belong to we ex ce pt me" ,
pench ant for abstraction and mu sical Garcia), and opens with the four danc ers lying similar, as are the co stumes: monochrome, she complains. John Hen ry (Th eo Steven son)
respon se . In his best work s, these two streams on the stage, foldin g and turning, together and light/dark juxtapo sition s, a per vasive glo om is a sweet mi sfit who wear s gla sses and
of influence make for comp elling complexity , apart, like amoeba under a micro scope. Gradu- spotlit to provide the drama that the choreogra- clutches a doll half his size . And Berenic e,
a sort of austere lushness. Morph oses, which ally they resolv e into two coupl es, the remark- phy should be generating . superbly played by the Am erican actr ess
Portia (bereft of a surname), has had a life-
-------------------
- ~. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
tim e of ex cl us io n: she married the first of her
or such a well-executed performance, elderly lad y explains the legend of Chan g'e four husbands at thirte en; she truly loved the
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07
20 FICTION
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07
FICTION IN BRIEF 21
Christopher Ru sh the style of Virgil , and with his first volume, minor chara cters that delight. Nico las enjoys First-time readers will find Friend of the
WILL An Essay on Criticism, about to appea r, Pope strolling throu gh the streets of Paris, and the Devil an entirely satisfac tory free-standin g
480pp. Beautif ul Books. £14.99. is ready for a new subje ct. His old friend s, the descripti on s of Ange -Jacques Gabriel's Place detective story , com prehe nsible on its ow n
978 I 905636 14 3 Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha, lead him to Loui s XV, now the Place de la Co ncorde, and term s. Devotees will be in bliss, for it will
the frin ges of an aristocra tic circle of wilfu l of Les Halle s and Les Invalides, are evocative. remind them of many adventures of the past,
TLS OCT O BE R 5 20 07
22 POETRY
nnie Freud's debut co llection is a muni on ; in one cosy dom estic vignette, she
--------------------------~.--------------------------
Sign in a butcher ' s window sets the grist to another mill. De-iced is the boo k' s
missed an issue?
To order past co pies please call 0207 740 02 17, emai l [email protected] or write to:
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the celeb rated Am eric an artists ' col ony
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snow dust to the sky's command " .
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Is
The probl em of ten ses when someo ne has died ,
eve n on the annive rsary of their death ,
is like the co rrect translati on of John ,
which is "kept on wee ping" , not merely "wept" .
SARAH W ARDL E
TLS O C TOB ER 5 2 0 07
SOCIAL HISTORY 23
he dead ca me knocking late one night four decades ear lier - had fall en on hard
--------------------------~,--------------------------
n one of the classic photograph s by ble from black slave ry, and how hopelessly, Zack Killibrew from the fir st seed to the final
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
24 PSYCHOLOGY & MEDICINE
Ca r l a Y anni
preserving images that would otherw ise have
vanished alongside the buildings and the
in-p atient s they mem ori alize. Drawin g on
these pictures, and wide-ranging and meticu-
the cut
on both sides of the Atlantic, vast, straggling lou s work in the archives, as we ll as some of DR UI N BU R C H
buildin gs that provided mute testimony to an T HE A R C HITE C T UR E OF M A D N E S S her own photograph y, Yanni has con struct ed
earlier generation's enthusiasm for segregative Insane asylums in the U nited States a rem arkabl e volume.
256pp. Mi nnea polis: Univers ity of Minn esota Press .
A t u l Gawa n de
responses to mental illness. The peculiar moral Fro m the space for thirty inm ates that
architecture that our ancestors constructed to $82.5 0. ch aracterized the York Retreat, later asy lums BE T T ER
978 ()8 t 66 4939 6 A surgeo n's notes on performance
contain the dissolute, the degenerate, and the tran sform ed them sel ves into es tablishments
deranged was unmistakable once seen, and with their own gas works, reservoir s, 273 pp. Profile. £ 12.99.
eve n now some remarkable examples survive . directl y to the details of hospit al design . And chapels , farms, gravey ards and roo ms for, 978 186 1978974
US: Metropolitan Books. $24. 978 0 8050 82 11 I
Travelling on America's East Coast, for exam- it was from their positions at the head of first hundred s and then thousand s of unfortu-
ple, the highway affords views of the distinctive these institutions that the alienists derived nates. Visually and verbally, Yanni dissects
outline of the State Hospital at Augusta, Maine, their patient s, their incom es and their cultura l the hegemon y and then the decay of what efore he was thirt y, Atu l Ga wand e
and the still larger and more striking buildings
that made up Danvers State Hospital in Massa-
chusetts, on the northern fringe of the Boston
authority.
There were a tiny handful of colonial prece-
dents for lockin g up the mad. The English
was once the sta ndard design of the Am er-
ican ment al hospit al, the so-ca lled Kirkbride
or linear plan. One typicall y crea tive idea
B studied at Stanford, Har vard and (as a
Rhod es Scho lar, naturally) at Oxford.
His acade mic career was interru pted by a
suburbs. had their famous establishme nts - Robert is her dec ision to red raw the outlines of a spell adv ising President Cl inton on health
Some older folk out there may invo luntar - Hook e' s ornate new Bethlem, or Bedl am , series of hospit als built on these principl es, care. After he qualified as a doc tor, a friend
ily have had an eve n more intim ate acquaint- which dated fro m 1676 , and its much plain er fro m the co lonial asy lum at Willi amsbur g, asked him to contribute essays on his life as a
ance with es tablishme nts of this sort, once to metropolitan rival from the seco nd half of the Virgini a (177 0), to the State Hospit al surgeo n to an online magazin e, Slate. Follow -
be found all across Europe and North Am er- eightee nth century, St Luke' s Lunatic Hospi- designed by the master architec t H. H. Rich- ing that, he was invited on to the staff of the
ica. Perhap s they have visited a clo se rel ati ve tal. Usually, though , these precedent s had ardso n at Buffalo, New York (187 0). Drawn New Yorker, appo inted as a consulta nt
locked up in one, or they may eve n have littl e influence on the Am erican col oni sts. to scale, this series of plans vividly drives surgeo n to one of Am eric a ' s top hospit als,
had per sonal experience of life on a ment al Their fir st place of confineme nt for the hom e the massive expans ion of the size of and given an academic post at Harvard . He
hospit al ward. For them, the striking and insane was in the basement of Benjamin Fran- ment al hospit als that occ urred in the course then wrote a best-sellin g book based on his
sinister images that impress them selves on klins Penn sylvani a Hospital , most of whose of a century . articles and was awa rded a M acA rthur "gen-
ca sual passers-b y will have a deep er reso - acco mmodation was devoted to the physi- Sub sequ entl y, Yanni looks at the displ ace- ius" awar d for hi s research efforts . "Atul
nance, the visua l reminder s augmented by call y ill. To be sure, the Virginia burgesses, ment of the linear form by the "cottage plan", Gawande", say his publi shers, "is one of the
memori es of more intim ate cont act with the at the urgin g of their co lonial gove rnor, an architec tura l shift to a series of buildings wor ld's most distin guished doctors." If you
realiti es of confin em ent in a barrack s- Fra ncis Fauquier, built their ow n Bedlam or (ofte n each containin g 200 or 300 patien ts) can still stomac h him after this ro ll-ca ll of
asy lum, not least the peculiar and unforget- madhouse, but for the most pa rt, it was not gathered round a central administrative core . ove r-achieve men t, both of his books -
table sme lls that distin gui shed these places until the nineteenth century that Am eric ans Ta king the place of the prev ious pla n of a Complicat ions (2002 ) and now Better - are
and clun g to the physical fabri c like a foul embarked on a serious programm e of bui ld- sing le long buildi ng in the shape of a sha llow actually rather goo d. They are also, as
miasm a: of wa rds impregnated with decades ing specially des igned asy lums , and when " V", the co ngrega te sys tem, as it was also Gawandes spec tac ular biograph y might
of stale urin e and faecal matter , of the slop they did so, as in the mother country from ca lled, was an innovati on that allowe d the sugges t, excee dingly Am eric an .
served up as food . which they had now violently separa ted them- construc tion of still larger asy lums . Here Each book contains self-standing essays fol-
Small wo nder that, as Car la Yanni con- selves , Bethl em served as a bad exa mple, not were extrao rdinary compl exes of buildings lowing a similar pattern, with Gawa nde inter-
fesses at the outse t of her book , she once a model. superficially resembling sizea ble town s, lacing personal stories into a discussion of
shied away from the asy lum's arc hitec tural so me designed to hold as many as ten or some wider issue. He describes making a mess
hi story, "overwhelmed by its grimness"; or nother English instituti on , the twel ve thou sand inhabit ant s. "C om munity of cutting open some one's throat, for exa mple,
that her parent s were doubtful about her
o bsessio n w ith this ungl amorou s and depre ss-
ing subject matt er. Fortunately, though,
A fam ous Quaker establishme nt ca lled
the York Retreat, had served as the
inspi ration for a first genera tion of refor med
care" this was not , for those co nfined in these
wa rds co ntinued to be rigoro us ly ex cl ude d
fro m the larger soc iety.
in an essay about medic al mistakes. He tells of
botching his early efforts to insert plastic tubes
into people' s chests as part of a piece on learn-
Yanni ove rca me her initi al disposition to asy lums in the nineteenth- century United In her conclu ding chapter, Ya nni look s to ing cur ves. Complications centred on prob-
lea ve these buil dings to mould er in peace. States . Yanni usefull y traces its influenc e, the fate of these establishme nts in a modern lems of inexperience and error in a profession
She focu ses, as her title indi cates, on the and the subtle modifi cation s that were made world that has lost faith in institutional care. where both can kill. (British doctor s, Gawande
United States, and devotes most of her atten- to the original building when Am ericans The stigma that attac hes to asy lums has often notes with passing astonishment, are pre-
tion to the nineteenth and early twenti eth adapted the plans to the New World. The limit ed their attractions to redevelopers. Mak- vented from practising their techniques and
centu ries, the peri od that marked the real Retreat adopted an esse ntially dom estic , ing matters wo rse, ce rtain structural feature s procedur es on pigs. Instead they learn on their
Grea t Co nfineme nt of the insane. Drawin g small-sca le architecture, one that directed of the buil dings have often made it excee d- fellow countrymen.) The essays in his second
on her background as an art histori an, she has much attention to the effects of spatia l ingly diffi cult to adapt them to other pur- book, Better, also cohere success fully around
produ ced a fascin atin g and visually rich sur- arra ngeme nts and aesthetics on patient s' sen- poses. Many cont ained large numb er s of its title. Some doctors save more lives than
vey of this stra nge territory. She has read sibilities, and to the use of the built environ- single ce lls, often div ided up by thick , load- others, some hospitals kill more patients than
widely and wisely in the history of psychia- ment to modify human beh aviour. It is hard bearin g wa lls, making modifications expen- they should. Why do some well-ed ucated,
try, and, thou gh she makes a factu al erro r to recall , in the light of the mammoth asy - sive or imp ossibl e. Large numbers of state intelligent and motivated medics do more
here and there, for the most part she is very lum s that becam e ge nera l in the seco nd half hospit als have therefore been torn down , in good than others? What can be done to help ?
success ful at linkin g together arc hitecture of the ninetee nth centu ry, and the ass ociated whole or in part. Ot hers stan d deserted , What can be offered by way of "suggestions
and mental medi cine. collap se of all sense of therapeutic optim ism, slow ly deca ying, the unmou rned residu e of for becomin g a positive deviant" ?
Knowledge ofhoth worlds is vital, hecau se that the asy lum was at the outset a utopi an hygone e nrhus ias rns. In l ltica , f or in stance, G aw andes anec do tes make hi s essays
the birth s of the asy lum and of psychi atry institut ion , one which, its found ers we re con- the stunning Greek Revival New York State more readable, offering up evocative narra-
were intricately and intim ately linked. vinced, could serve as a forcin g house for Ho spit al sits empty with trees grow ing from tives for tho se with a taste for gore , or fasci-
M ad-do ctors (as their critics persisted in call- change, allowin g the reinve ntion of the dis- the sedime nt on its roof. nated by stories fro m the wa rd and the operat-
ing them ), or alienists (as they und erstand- turb ed and delu sional as par agons of self- In a nice bit of historical iron y, the old ing theatre. In Comp lications , the anecdo tes
ably preferred to ca ll them selves), insisted cont rolled , conventional beh aviour. Such asy lum at Colonial Willi am sbur g has been sometimes see med manipul ati ve and flat,
that the physical structures that contained expec tations were, of cour se, them selves reconstruct ed , and now form s part of the pieces of hum an interest shove d mech ani-
their patient s we re a ce ntra l part of the effort de lusions. dramati zation of eightee nth-ce ntury life at call y into the text. In Better they work
to treat ment al illn ess, and that no one knew Using floor plans, eleva tions, pictures of that touri st attrac tion. Meantim e, as Yanni well, consis tently prom oting the feelin g that
better than they did how to design these insti- hospit al wa rds and interiors, Yanni recon- plainti vely ack now ledges, "the final arch- Gawande is writing about a community of
tut ion s. Led by Tho mas Story Kirkb ride, struc ts the distorti ons and then the demise itectural setting for a welfare -dependen t indi viduals, a spraw ling intern ational co llege
super intendent of the private Pe nnsy lvania of these early visions of curati ve asy lums . schizop hrenic or manic-de press ive, after of doct ors and patient s and nurses. A side
Hospit al for the Insane, they linked their Her book is full of powerful images. instituti onali zation, was not a buildin g, it effect of this success is to dampen any sense
claims to exper tise and therapeutic prowess Ninetee nth-ce ntury asy lums very frequentl y was the street" . that Gawande is writing about his ow n exce l-
TLS O C T OB E R 5 20 07
MEDICINE 25
lenc e . Instead th e tales g ive a feeling of bein g fecti on is the exc ite me nt" '. G awand e do esn 't
im me rse d in a world full of peopl e strugg ling dwell on the miseri es of wor king in a profes-
to improve. Thi s is infectio us, as we ll as sion incr easin gly monitored , regul ated and
compa nionable. It also help s lighten the fact judged . He conce ntra tes on dem on stratin g the
th at Better is fundam entally abo ut man age- fact that it sav es more lives. Perform ance sta-
ment. Gawandes point is that go od man age- tistics, of cou rse, are flawed : "T hey are mis-
ment is needed in medi cin e as much as in used ; they are unfair. Still, the simple fact s
bu siness, th at it is as vi tal for doctor s as fo r rem ain: there is a bell cu rve in all hum an activ-
their pati ent s. Gawande listens, for example, ities, and the difference s yo u measur e usuall y
to a spe cia list in c ystic fib rosis, a man dedi- matt er" . Is measurin g perform anc e, with all
ca ted to maki ng the best po ssibl e use of th e of its aw ful faili ngs, not a gre at deal bett er
alrea dy av aila ble ther apeuti c mea sures : than failin g to measur e at all? " Count some -
He believed that excellence came from seeing, thin g" , is on e of G awande 's co ncl ud ing
on a da ily basis, the difference betwee n being piec es of adv ice , co uched in terms of his evan-
99.5 per cent successful and being 99.95 per ge listic loathing for medi ocrity. Here hi s fir st
cent successful. Many things hum an beings do book serves him we ll: havin g wr itte n abo ut
are like that, of course: catching fly balls, the diffi culti es of ge tting bett er onese lf, he
manu facturing microc hips, deliverin g over- Atul Gawande, 2002 has so me right to talk abo ut how to improve
night package s. Medicine' s distinction is that oth er peopl e. I was unabl e to re ad him
lives are lost in those slim margins. safe ty on road s and in our hom es: a va st ra nge ance medical practice can be ide ntified and witho ut rem emb ering wa tc hing other doctors
A thou ghtful refl ection on imp rovin g mar- of factors affect w hether we live or die. learned . But the lessons are hidd en because no stupid ly mangle and kill peo ple. Ev en more
gins is the sort of thin g you might expect to Almost all the increase in hum an life ex pec t- one knows who the high performers really are. to his credit, I was unabl e to fend off the
hear preach ed by Toyota or Mc Kinsey. We ancy before the Second World War had Only if we know the results fro m all can we memories of doi ng it my self.
im agine med icine - a nd, in pa rtic ular , surgery nothing to do with medi cal care wha tsoeve r - identify the positive deviants and learn from T here are occ asional journa listic shor t
- to be starker, more cl ear- cut. It isn't , as and all the ben efit s de veloped ever since are them. If we are genuinely cur ious about c uts, from sim plifications to melodra ma, but
Ga wand e makes cl ear. Dru g s and opera tio ns efface d in people w ho smo ke. G aw andes how the best achieve their results, Berwick they fail to spo il the overall pl easure or the
reall y do wor k in terms of perc ent ages. Each error of co ntex t, suggesting that medi cin e believes, then the ideas will spread. sens e of intell ectual hon esty. Complicatio ns
is a ga mble, a risk. Gawande's compari son is somehow spec ial, is an inadvert ent and In other wo rds, coll egiate affability should and now Better have bec om e best- sell er s,
with busin ess is accura te, although hi s di stinc- isolat ed pi ece of thou ght lessness. give way to competiti veness, to obsessive with pro ven app eal to tho se w ho spend th eir
tion bet ween the two is a rare bit of eg otism . M ore important , and more con sistent , is measurin g, and to heavily e nfor ce d protocol s. lives in ho spit als, as we ll as those w ho stand
Th e effecti ve deli ver y of medi cal care is not hi s beli ef in o ur improvability, and the co nse- In Comp lications, Gawande inquires about to lo se them ther e. Gawande' s very Am er-
the only thin g that save s lives. Som e ove r- qu ent need to study th ose w ho do particularl y bor ed om from a surgeon who , abando ning the ican wor ship of meth odical excelle nce is se ri-
night pack ages are vital, as are some micro- we ll: nor mal varie ty of hi s profession , do es nothing ou s, and he writes abo ut it with a light tou ch.
c hips . Povert y, social status and social free- Don Berwick [the subject of one essay] but rep etiti ve herni a repairs, all day and eve ry Reading him is re warding enough to almost
dom, oppor tunities for ph ysical exe rcise, our believes that the subtleties of high-perform- day. He repli es " in a Spock-like vo ice : ' Per- make yo u for gi ve him hi s succe ss.
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TLS O C TOB E R 5 2 0 07
26 IN BRIEF
Pirates
Susan Ronald
T H E PIR ATE Q UE EN
Elizabeth I, her pirate adventurers
and the dawn of empire
47Ipp. Sutton. £25.
978 0509 4841 8
TLS O CTOB ER 5 20 07
IN BRIEF 27
unfoldi ng politi cal dr ama. Daughter of the sy nthes ize thi s wor k int o a lucid scho lar ly leaves, layer s and layer s of them , to preser ve ca lled the " wall of silence" we ighing " heav-
East attes ts to Ben azir Bhuttos courage, narr ati ve, which begin s with the rev ol utio n- so me thing forever budding und ern eath ". T he ily on the families of the vic tims and their
determin ati on and sense of destin y. Eq ua lly, ary qu estion of " litera ry hon esty" raised by mos t di squ ietin g piece here is " All Sou ls" , opp ressors" . Bo th Ka trin 's hu sband , the so n
ther e is no hint of criti cal self-re flec tio n the Imagists an d ends with the institutional the accoun t of a wo ma n dri ven from her of a Jew who survived the Warsaw ghe tto,
whe n disc uss ing the pe riod of her leadership acce ptance of Eliot's " poetry as poetr y" . The hou se by the annua l appearance of an elder ly and she herself grew up with this silence. In
of Pa kista n. In thi s respect the work bear s ten-p age ex plica tion of the aes the tic scepti- woma n on All Souls' Eve, the last nigh t of The Himmler Brothers she breaks the silence
sim ilar ities with General Per vez M usharraf's ci sm of Eliot's doctor al thesis is masterful. Oc tobe r when the dea d are said to wa lk in a precise and studied way , ca refully mar-
In the Line of Fire (rev iewed in the TLS of Discu ssio ns of the poetry, however, are among the livin g. It was the final story that sha lling the fact s and letting them speak for
Decembe r 22 , 2006). As in Mu sh arr af' s auto- strictly subordi nate to thi s insigh t. Som e W har to n eve r wro te , completed a few mo nths them selves.
biograph y ther e are controversial reve lations . ea rly pieces are we ll character ized as "a kind be fore her death in 1937, and has abo ut it a BI LL N IVEN
T hese feature bo th General Mi rza As la m Beg of abbrev iated In Memoriam", but it is too pec ulia r qu alit y of tran slu cen ce, a sense of
and Mu sh arraf him self and alleged offers of neat to say that The Waste Land ha s no "co n- permeability between thi s worl d and the next , Art History
military offe nsives agai nst Jam mu and Kash- tinuous" stylis tic fea tu res, whe n the ve rsific a- as thou gh its author had so me presenti ment
mir whe n Ms Bhutto was Prime Minister. tion is so distinctive th rou ghout. of how so on she wo uld her self be pa ssin g Dore Ashton and Joan Banach, editors
Whil e Mu sh arraf has re ma ined silent, Beg Discovering Modernism' s mos t ori gin al beyond the veil. THE W RITI N GS OF R O BE RT
has denied Bhutt os ve rsion of eve nts . single thesis is perhaps the cha pter on "L itera- J O N BA R N ES MO THERWELL
T he clo sing pages of Daughter of the tu re an d Profession alism" , whic h perfor ms a 387 pp. Berke ley: University
East form Be naz ir Bhutt os curre nt political brill iant histori cist reframing of Co nrad's of California Press. $29 .95.
testam ent. She argues that dem ocr acy is the Heart of Darkness, the on ly work outside
Memoirs 978 0 520 25048 2
so lutio n to the growing forces of Islamic Eliot's to be treated at any length. Men and ' s Katrin Himmler
ex tre mism in Paki stan. T he M usharraf
regi me has he lpe d to crea te the circum-
stances for these to flo uri sh by both "cohabit-
dapp er prose is epigra mma tic wi tho ut eve r
falli ng into crude parado x. An apparent iro ny
such as the " pro fessional" Mo dernis t is, he
T H E HIM MLER B ROTHE RS
A Ger man family history
333 pp. Macmill an. £14.99 .
A s passion ate and ges tura l as his wor k
often was, thi s co llectio n shows Robert
Mother well to have been cau tiou s and ce re-
ing" with them and de nyi ng politi cal space notes, "easily ch eapen ed if too much store is 978 0 230 52907 6 bral in his writing, with littl e of the
for ma ins trea m po litica l organiza tions like set by it". A new afterw ord dea ls with Eliot machi smo and love of decl amation which
n their 200 4 book Schweigen die Tater,
the Paki stan Peopl e' s Party. The author thu s
present s her self as fight in g the ba ttle not only
for democracy in Pa kista n but mor e wi de ly
the reac tiona ry social thinker. Despit e his
avowed lack of sy mpa thy, Menand is judi-
ciou s: on the question of anti-Sem itism he
I reden die Enkel (If the Perp etrator s Won't
Spea k, the Gra ndchildre n Will), C laud ia
often affl icted his cont emporari es. On Mo th-
erwe ll 's readin g, mo de rn art, and in par ti-
cular the wor k of the " New York Sc hoo l" (a
aga inst the forces of Islami c rad ica lism and gra nts the poetry its auto no my, and find s Brunner and Uwe vo n Seltmann take their ter m he see ms to have co ined, or at least pop-
terro rism . She bold ly maint ains that, " If my Eliot's "intellectualised politics" unm ali g- Nazi great-uncle and gra ndfa ther res pec - ularized, an d which at any rate he preferred
govern me nt had not been destabilised in Paki- nant. tively to task. In The Himmler Brothers, to "Abstract Expressionis m" and "action
stan in 1996, the Talib an could not have Unfor tunately, the publi sh er s have for got- Katri n Him ml er goes a step furth er. Her book painting" ), was "a me taphor for reality",
allowed Osam a bin Laden to set up base in ten that the insert ion of twent y-fi ve pages focu ses not ju st on her grea t-uncle , SS leader poi sed so mew here between philoso phy an d
Afgh ani stan , ope nly rec ru it and train yo ung before the footn otes requi red an upd ated Heinrich Himml er , but also on his two poetry. Qu estion s of pr esenc e, embodime nt,
men from all ove r the Mu slim wo rld and index. bro thers , Ge bhar d (the eldes t) and Erns t (the repr esentation and the res t were all very we ll,
decl are war on Ame rica in 1998". J E RE M Y NOEL-To D younges t), and unra vels wha t, one sus pe cts , but it was the emo tions a pictu re co uld co m-
Whil e thi s claim ca n be qu estioned, is a very typic al post- war Ge rma n famil y muni cate wh ich fin all y ma ttered. M oth er well
Bhutt os courage in cont empl atin g a return to Literature legend . qu otes Alfred North Whiteh ead, whose ideas
the political fray in Pa kistan ca nno t be ga in- Katrin Him mler grew up in the belief that still domi nated Har vard' s phil osoph y de par t-
sa id. She not only rec all s the intrigues against Edith Wharton her gra ndfa ther Erns t and great-uncle Geb- ment whe n Moth erwell di d his doctora te in
her govern men ts, but assassination attem pts T HE DEM A NDI N G DEAD hard were innoc ent of any sig nifica nt invol ve- the late 1930 s: " the fun ct ion of abstrac tion is
in 1992 and 93 . It is a tim ely reminder of the More stories of terro r and the supernatural ment in Nazism: Heinri ch becam e the famil y emphasis ".
streng th required for her re-entry int o the Edited by Peter Haining sca peg oat. A trip to the Fede ral Arch ives in Th er e ' s a pleas ing co unterpo int in these
Byzantin e wor ld of Paki stan politics. 217pp . Peter Owen. Paperback, £ 10.95. 1987, where Katr in - at her fath er' s instiga- pages bet ween engagemen t an d det achm ent.
IANTALBOT 978 0 7206 1272 1 tion - hoped to find out mor e ab out gra nd- More than o nce Mo the rwe ll obse rves that
fath er Erns t, trigger ed a lon g investi gati on any artis t worth his or her sa lt has "c ritica l"
Literary Criticism
Louis Menand
E dith Wh arton was a fearful chi ld, plag ued
by night ter ror s and affli cted by the
belief that a giga ntic wo lf lay slave ring
into the conduc t of all thr ee Himmler broth-
ers during the Th ird Re ich. Cha nce fin din gs,
suc h as a ches t of phot ograph s and other
instincts about art , and that tho se instin cts
will and should fin d ex press ion in the art ist' s
work. The pr im acy of working art ists ove r
DIS COV ERI NG M ODERNI SM ben eath her bed. At the age of eight, she co m- doc umen ts coll ected by her gra ndmo ther, int ellectu als is often implicit. But it is rare
T. S. Eliot and his context plained of "some ind efin abl e me nace forever and arc hive research led her to the so beri ng indeed to find a working art ist - and by any
231pp. Oxford Unive rsity Press. doggin g my steps ". Small wonde r that, when co ncl usion that Erns t and Ge bhar d, who token a fairl y illu striou s one - who can ver-
Paperback, £9 .99. she grew up , she sho uld pro duce, alongs ide ben efit ed aga in and again fro m nepoti sm ball y ex press a critica l outloo k with the
978 0 195 15992 9 her celeb rated novels, a conside ra ble numb er thanks to their influ ent ial broth er Heinri ch , cl arity of ph rase and nu anced thinki ng
of ghos t stor ies . we re ac tive high up in a ra nge of Naz i organi- Moth er well shows her e.
The Demanding Dead is the second vo l-
N either the thesis nor the ma teria l of
Lo uis Menand' s Discovering Modern-
ism was en tire ly new whe n it fi rst appeared
ume of Wh arton ' s tales from Peter Owen,
who see m to have a special int erest in a ce r-
zations.
Un like Heinri ch , neith er Erns t nor Ge b-
hard was direc tly guilty of atroc ities . Never-
Th at is not to say that the book doesn 't go
on a bit. M oth er well is wor th readin g, an d at
len gth , both o n ge neral issu es and on the
twenty years ag o, and both titl e an d subtitle tain spe cies of fin-de-siecle fant asy, havin g theless, like seve ra l of their fri end s, associ- wor k of indi vid ua l artis ts (he writes abo ut art-
remain unhelpfully ge nera l. Neverthe less, repri nted negl ected cur ios by Bram Sto ker, ates and neighbours, they were cogs in the ists he knew well with affection and respect,
thi s is a very we lcome second appearance for Wilkie Co llins and H. Rid er Haggard. More nationa list-rac ist whee l which made Hein- but shrewdly and without gushing; he also
a sma ll classic of Eliot criti ci sm . subtle than those stable mates, Wh art on ' s sto- rich 's crimes possibl e. A ll three brothers writes about artists whose wor k he adm ires
Lik e the Pragm ati st phil osopher s of his ries re ly on shadows and insinuation instead sha red a similar back ground of nation ali sm as if they were his pe rson al frien ds). But suc h
Pu litzer -w inning The Metaphysical Club of ex plicit terro r ; but altho ug h all are effec - an d anti-rep ublica nism, and the sa me fascin a- an ex ha ustive se lection does tend to mean he
(200 1), Men and is very goo d at havin g ideas tive and unn er ving, they lack , perh ap s, that tion for the milit ar y and the paramilitary. In rep eats him self. Putting the writing in
abou t ideas. Here, he propo ses that the yo ung twi st of na stin ess which makes for the very thi s, they we re largely sup ported by their rough ly chronologica l orde r ma y we ll show
Eliot who eme rge d from the Harvard philo- best ex amples of the genre . headmaster fath er. Katrin Himmler estab- his development over the cou rse of his
so phy dep artm en t in the ea rly twenti eth ce n- In "Kerfo l", a dil apid ated Fre nch man sion , lishes that Heinrich, in his beliefs, was not ca ree r, an d cert ainl y does illu strate an evo lv-
tur y was essentially pragm atic in hi s oppressed by the "s hee r weig ht of man y asso- the exception in the famil y. Th e tendenc y in ing res ponse to cha ngi ng times (eve n if m uch
approach to liter ary crit ici sm. Tak ing charge ciated lives and deaths" , is haunted by a famil y myth ol ogy to make a di stincti on of the late stuff is mem oir and anec do tage) -
of a nascent avan t-garde , he reform ulated legion of spe ctra l dogs; in "T he Moving Fin - bet ween Heinrich ' s guilt and the " harmless- but it does mak e it hard er for the reader to
nin eteenth- century sentime nts in sce ptica l ge r", the port rait of a beloved wife continues ness". or eve n innoc enc e, of his immediate say , for ex amp le, "No Statement s on Mod ern-
modern pro se. to age after her dea th to the shoc k of the narra- famil y was a stra tegy of exc ulpa tion. For ism tod ay, please" . Still, as heft y as it is, the
Eliot the stra tegic ironi st was propo sed by tor who "had never bef ore known how com - ho w many other Ge rma n families di d accept- book deser ves to sit o n a spec ia l she lf in your
Hu gh Ken ner' s The Invisible Poet in 1959, pletel y the dead may surv ive "; and in "M r in g the crim ina lity of one of their members study or studi o, alo ngs ide , may be , Dela-
and there has been plent y of scholarship Jon es", the presence of a path ol ogicall y faith- co me wi th the ben efit of abso lving all others? croi x' s j ournals, Ma tisses No tes of a Painter
since to establish his covert resem blance to a fu l o ld retain er lingers in an ances tra l hom e Katrin Hi mml er, in her ep ilogue, refers to and Richt er' s The Daily Practice ofPainting .
Victor ian sage. Men and' s ac hieve me nt is to where the decea sed are " piled up lik e dead wha t the Isra eli psycho log ist Dan Bar-On has K EI TH MILLE R
Nature's man
he Netherlandish painters of the fif- T HE O D O RE K. R AB B
det ail charac ter istic of hi s art, it is no t too arg ued that Pa tinirs pictures reflec ted the l"roof of el igibilily for
concessions will be
Nawal EL SAADAWI
surp rising that on ly twenty-nin e survivi ng them e of life' s journ ey, with its pitfalls and
wor ks are now thought to have co me either prom ises. Roads, paths and travellers are
requ ired
October 16
Available in
fro m his ow n hand or under supervision from indeed alm ost omniprese nt. Patinir' s favo ur- advance from the
hi s workshop. Of these, twent y-one have
been gathered at the Prado, formin g the larg-
ite subje ct is the Res t on the Flight to Egyp t.
He also paint s Charo n, and St Christop her;
Box Office, sited
in Union House ,
UEA
Doris LESSING
es t eve r displ ay of his oeuvre. eve n St Jerom e, in a cave but hardl y a desert , Ope n 1Dam · Spm October 24
wee kdays term l ime,
What is it that entitles Patinir to such a trib- is not too far from people passing by. An d 12noo n- 3pm
vacatio ns
ute? " Firsts" are notoriously difficult to sus- Patinir ca nnot resist a tiny reference, in the
tain, but those who have studied him at background , to the story of Jerome helpin g a
Telephon e:
01603 508050
P DdAMES
length see m to agree that, notwith standin g merchant' s ca ravan (incl uding camels), a tale (Credil and debrt card
October 31
paymentsaresubjecl
the usual ca utions about definiti ons, one can taken from the Golden Legend, then rece ntly lo a booking fee)
rega rd him as Europe 's fir st "landscape published in Flemish in Ant werp.
arti st". Durer used the ter m to describ e him , Details like these requi re Ga lilea n eyes if
By Post:
Box Office, Union Claire TOMALlN
House , UEA,
and although people had spoken of land-
scapes ear lier, this was the first painter who
they are to be see n from behind the Prado' s
ropes. Th is is a case where the catalogue,
Norwich NR4 7T J
(Cheques payable 10:
and Michael FRAYN
devoted his entire career to the genre . Indeed , beautifully illustrated , ca n reveal more than SUS (EA) Ltd.
Please enclose a
November 14
whe never Patinir wa nted a figure of any size the wo rks them selves. The hook is also a sta mped addressed
envelope)
in one of hi s panel s, he had it painted by mine of inform ation, scientific and inter-
others - most notably by his friend Quentin pretive , that goes well beyond Koch ' s pio- Roy HATTERSLEY
Ma ssys. A nd there is ev idence that he, in neerin g study. Inevitably, though, it suffers November 21
turn , provided landscapes for M assys. from the occas ional inconsistency of a wor k
It is true that Patinir always tell s a story , by so many hands, and it is also much taken -
but - as more than one of the dozen or so as is most of the literatu re on Netherlan dish Stephen POLlAKOFF
scholars involved in the catalogue point s out art - with symbo lic meanin gs. The troubl e is
- what he presents is a land scape with a saint that these are often so ambiguous that,
November 28
rather than a saint with a land scape. No body although one may be able to sugges t what Pat-
questions whether Claude was a land scape inir intended, it is not clear who else would
UEA Michael HOLROYD
painter ju st beca use sma ll figur es in a huge
vista represent Jacob at the Well , or Tobias
and the A ngel. Patinir deserves no less a con -
have und erstood him. Is an owl a benign or a
malign sym bol? A salamander? A goa t? We
ca nnot tell for sure, though much learned -
NORWICH
December 5
TLS OCTO BE R 5 2 0 07
AWARDS &
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The TLSregrets that it printed an aid advertisement in issues24th August and 28th September
Princeton University
The Center will offer a limited number of research fellowships for one or two semesters, running from September to January and from Febru ary to June , designed both for senior scholars
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The Soci ety is pleased to announce that the 2005 Criticos Prize was awarded to Robert
Washingto n University announces the eight year of Modeling Int erdisciplinary Inquiry, an Andrew W. Mellon Parker for Polytheism and Society at A thens (Oxford UP).
Foundat io n Postdoctoral Fellowship Program de signe d to encourage interd isciplinary scho larship and teaching
Th e 2006 Criticos Prize will be awarded to a writer, artist or researcher for an original
acros s the humanities and social sciences. We invite applications from recen t Ph.D.s for the posit ion s as Fellow. work on Helle nic culture (Ancient, Helle nistic, Byzantine or Mo dem) publi shed in 2006 .
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Works are ju dged by a compe tent panel of experts in each field appointed by the Society.
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There is no app licatio n form , but furth er info rma tion on Model ing Interdisciplinar y Inquiry is available on the A ll enqu iries sh ould be sent to th is addr ess
or [ axe d to +44·20·84427000 or +30·210· 7298494
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cover lett er, a description of the ir research pro gram (no more tha n three single-spaced pages), a brief proposal
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Jon Barness first novel, The So mna mbulist, is now Professor of Eng lish at the University introdu ction to the Eve ry man edition of G ary Sh effie ld is Professor of Wa r Studies at
was pub lished earlier th is yea r. of Sheffie ld . Hi s book P roust' s En glish was V . S . Na ipaul's A House for M r Biswas, the University of Birmingham . He is the co-
pub lished in 2005 and the th ird volume of pub lished in 1995. editor of Douglas Haig: War diaries and
A. J. Bo yle is Professor of C lass ics at the The Poems of Bro wning, of whi ch he is letters 1914- 1918, 2005.
University of Sou thern California. He is the co- ed itor , came out last yea r. He is curr en tly K eith M ille r is a freelanc e writer living in
autho r or editor of twen ty-one books on wor king on a book about the figur e of the London. Hi s book about St Peter ' s Basilic a M ichael Silk is Professor of Class ica l and
Rom an literature and the editor of the singe r in English poetry. wa s pu blished earlier this year. Co mparative Literature, and from 1991 to
classic al liter ary jo urn al, Ramu s. His next 2006 was Professor of Gr eek Lan gu age and
book, Octa via: Attributed to Seneca , will be M ira nda K aufmann is a doc toral stude nt at Bill Niven is Professor of Co ntempo rary Literature at Kin g' s College Lond on. Work
pub lished next yea r. Christ Church, Oxford. Germ an Studies at Nottin gh am Trent in progress includes Sta nda rd Languages
Unive rsity. Hi s bo ok Th e Bu chen wald Child: an d Language Standards : Greek, past
Druin Burch is a hospital phy sician and a M ichae l K erri gan ' s Th e History of Death truth, fi ction and pro paganda was pub lished an d prese nt, co-edited with Alexandra
teacher at the Unive rs ity of Oxford . will be pub lished in Nove mber. His other last year. Ge orgako poulou.
book s include Cha rles Dar win 's Voyage of
K atharine C raik is a Senior Lecturer in the Beagle: The jo urna ls that revea led J erem y Noe l-T od is a postgrad uate stude nt Kathryn Suthe rland is Profess or of English
Early Mod ern Litera ture at Oxford Brookes Nat ure 's gra nd plan , 2005 , and Lewis and at the Unive rsity of Ca mbridge and a form er at St Ann e' s College, Oxford . Her book l an e
University. Her book Read ing Sensations in Cla rk: Blazin g a trail throu gh the A meri can assistan t editor of A rete. Au sten 's Textu al Lives: From Aeschylus to
Ea rly Mod ern England was pub lished earlier Wes t, 2004 . Bollywood was pub lished in 2005 .
thi s ye ar. Sean O 'Brien ' s latest co llecti on of poems
Tadzio Martin Ko elh ' s first nov el Fate 's Th e Drown ed Book app ear ed last mont h. Mi ha ly Szegedy -Maszak is Professor of Com-
J am es Davidson is Reader in Ancien t Lieutenant was a finalist for the Pirate ' s Andrew Mar vell : Poem s selec ted by Sean parative Literature, Eiitviis Lorand University,
Histor y at the Univers ity of War wick and All ey Faulkner Soc iety' s William Faulkner/ 0 'Brien will be publ ished next yea r. Budapest, and Professor of Ce ntral Euras ian
author of Courtes ans and Fish cakes: Th e Will iam Wi sdom Award in 200 3 and the Studi es, Indiana University, Bloomington.
co nsuming passions of Classical Athen s, Santa Fe W riters' Proj ect Award in 2004. E r ic Ormsb y is the auth or of Facsimil es of
wh ich was pub lished in 1997. He is cur rently Tim e: Essays on poetry and tran slat ion, l an T albot has pub lished extensive ly on Paki-
working on Th e Greeks and Gree k Love and K aren L atimer is Dep uty Sc ienc e Libra rian 200 I. His Tim e 's Cove nant: Se lec ted poems, stan. His most recent work is The Dead ly
a tra nslation of so me Attic spee ches . at the Sci ence Library, the Queen ' s was pu bli shed last ye ar. Emb race: Religion, politics and violence in
Unive rsity, Belfast. India and Paki stan 1947- 2002, pu blished
Lindsay Du guid is the Fiction editor of the T heo do re K. Rabb is Professor of Hi stor y at ear lier this year.
TLS . L au ri e Magui r e is a Tutor ial Fellow in Princ eton Unive rsity . Hi s mo st recent book ,
Eng lish at M agd alen Co llege, Oxford . Her Th e Last Days of the Renai ssance: And the Bri an Vicke rs was eo-founder and first
Judith Fl anders ' s mos t recen t book, Shakespeare 's Na mes will be published this ma rch to modernity, was reissued in President of the Intern ational Soc iety for
Consum ing Passion s: Leisur e and pleasu re month. paperb ack earlier this year. the History of Rhetoric , which has j ust cele-
in Victori an Britain , was published earlier brated its thirtieth anniversary . His book s
this ye ar. No ra M ahon y has a BA in Italian and Sameer R ahim works at the Daily include Toward s Gree k Tragedy, 1973, In
Fre nch from Trin ity Co llege Dub lin . She Teleg raph . Def ence of Rheto ric (rev ised edition, 1997)
John G reening ' s Th e Hom e Key was wor ks in publi shing and is a freelanc e writer and English Renaissance Literary Cri ticism ,
pub lished in 200 3. He is currently work ing and research er. M a rtin Sch ifi no is a freelance j ourn alist 1999.
on a new co llection , Iceland Spar. living in London. Hi s translation of Thi s
David Mason ' s verse novel , Ludl ow, was Breathing World by Jose Lu is de Juan was J an e Yeh ' s first collectionof poem s,
H . J. J ac kso n' s mo st recent boo k is publ ished ea rlie r this year. pub lished this year. Marabou, was pub lished in 2005 . She is a
Rom anti c R eaders, 2005. She ha s served as lecturer in Creative Wr iting at Kingston
editor or co -ed itor of six volumes of the K arl M iller founded the London Review of An d r ew Sc ull has writte n ex te nsive ly on the Unive rsity, London.
Bo llin gen Edition of the Collec ted Works of Boo ks and edited it for its fir st ten yea rs. Hi s histor y of psychiatry from the eightee nth
S. T. Co leridge . recent books include The Elec tric Shepherd: through to the twent ieth cen tur y. His bo ok M uriel Za gh a ' s French translations include
A likeness of l am es Hogg, 200 3, and a mem- Madh ouse: A tragic tale of megaloma nia Na thanie l Hawthorne 's Tales, pub lished in
Daniel K a rlin has tau ght at Univers ity a ir, Da rk Ho rses: A n experience of litera ry an d modern medicine appeare d in a new 1996. She is writing a book about the cultura l
College London and Boston Unive rs ity, and journalism , pu blished in 1998. He wro te the paperb ack edition last month. origin s of the "Eternal Frenchwoma n" .
11 Life' s was celebrated by Gissing and 4 Dreadful siren alarms miser (5, 6) R E H 0 B 0 T H A L I S o N
L E 0 I L C T S
Knight (5) 5 Fine art includin g musical gift (3)
I A M B S V A I S H N A V A
12 Spin on recording of letters from Lewis 6 Sailors holding a Cava lier poet (5)
N E 0 A Z R E N
(9) 7 Age of James (7)
••• A M E L I A S E 0 L E Y
14 In which a poet gets some guidance 8 Princely refugee from Happy Valley
from St Bernard (6, 8) (8) SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD 109
17 The Corp se in the Van, perhaps (V. S. 13 Collection of castles on corner? What a
Pritchett) (4, 3, 7) farce .. . (7,4) The winner of Crosswo rd 709 is
2 1 We ird arty quean in play takes on two 15 Place in Paris recalled by Proust (9) Tony Emu, lslip,
wives (9) 16 Publications said to be French, I find,
23 Instrum entalist in Mozart flute reco rd- in very long periods (8)
ing (5) 18 Be in yearly account like Ms Lee in her
24 Pope' s game analysed by Sarah Battle (5) tomb by the sea (7) Th e sender of the first correc t
25 Whence came Giraudoux'x earliest 19 Reviewed as neat (no rocks) (7) solution ope ned on Novembe r 2
charac ters? (9) 20 St John Ervine made a play for his first will rece ive a cas h prize of £40.
26 Isle is a strange birthplace of Pope wife (6) Entries shou ld be addresse d to
John Paol II (7) 22 Employers (in ballet, might be Russe) TLS Crossword 7 13,
T imes House, 1 Penn ington Stree t,
27 Bell heroine shows stro ng suppo rt - a (5)
25 Child (and children) associate it with Lond on E98 1BS.
followi ng of patriotic America n women (7)
princess (3)
T LS O CT OB ER 5 20 0 7
32
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