TLS 2007 08 17
TLS 2007 08 17
TLS 2007 08 17
Second Edition
EDITED BY JOH N JO W ETT, WILLIAM MO NTGO MERY,
GARY TAYLOR AND STA NLEY WELLS
'The most interesting edition of Shakespeare
since the First Folio : John Carey, Sunday Times
ILS
Telephone: 020 7782 5000 Fax : 02077824966 letters @the-tls.co.uk
Shakespeare's LateWork Cor res ponde nce and deli veri es Times House, I Pennin gton Street, Lond on E98 IBS
RAPHAEL LYNE Subscrip tio ns [email protected] 01858 438781; US/Canada [email protected]
Oxford ShakespeareTopics 1-800 370 9040 Su bsc r iber archive [email protected]
Offers clear but ambitious readings of the late Back issu es 020 77400217 [email protected]
pla ys, considering Shakespeare's achievement
alongside and in int eraction with that of his
Bate, one of the ed itors of
contemporaries.
The RSC Shakespeare,
February 2007, 184 pages, Hardback and Paperback
exp lained to TLS read er s
978-0-19-926595-4, £12.99 / $19.95
978-0-19-926594-7, £25.00 / $49.95
"In an important sense
Shakespeare d id not live
why he had based this new
edit ion on the Firsl Fo lio of
1623. T here have been many
in his life, if by life we mean edi tion s of per for mance lex ts
circumstantia l e xiste nce. " before this, as Peter Holl and,
Early Modern Catholicism Barbara Ev erett, in the latest w ho now reviews Ba te' s,
An Anthology of Primary Sources of a di stinguished series of reminds us; The RSC Shake-
EDITED BY ROBERT S. MIOLA essays on Sh akespeare in thi s speare , whi le it makes so me
Through an exploration of Catholic contributions to paper, shows wh y biography, rad ical an d orig inal cho ices,
the early modem period, the culture of attac hed of necessity 10 the presentin g a Shakespeare
Early Modem England - including su ch social, the superficial, can F rancois-J ose ph Talma who is, prec ise ly, sexy and
figures as Shakespeare, Donne, Spenser , tell us so little abo ut the "pro - a n d Mile Duchenois in a n eve n " raunchy" , do es not
Milt on, and jonson - is redefined. vincial nobody" who was eig htee nt h -ce nt ury Hamlet engage d irec tly with " the
June 2007, 536 page s, Hardback and Paperback also on e of the gre atest of mu ltip le disco verie s tha t the
978-0-19-925986-1, £25.00 / $45.00 "those whose work is not we ll be the story of his direc tor s, ac tors and design -
978-0-19-925985-4, £70.00 / $150.00 superficial"; and why, even mind, bUI the life he did ers" of the " mag nificent"
in the age of television and live wa s that of a hig hly Ro ya l Sh ake speare Company
ce lebr ity, we should be con- success ful playwright and have ma de abo ut the plays
tent 10 look for Shake- aclor-manager; his grea t since its inception. T he TLS
Give'tme again
The 'raunchy ' RSC Shakespeare finds fresh ways of presenting the plays, and makes
some radical decisions - but owes little to the RSC' s own productions
n 1887, Henry Irving began colla bora t- P ET ER HOLLA ND tions but are often disapp ointingly predicta- tion of a marketable logo, of product recogni-
TL S AUGUST 17 200 7
4
TLS A UG US T 17200 7
LITERATURE & DRAMA 5
The RSC Shakespea re, "Kate" might be limp- be there. It is good to be made aware of a
ing because Petruccio "kicks her". I am sure Shakes peare as raunchy as this, so much enjoy -
there mu st have been Petruc cios who have ing the ways in which English can make hun-
kicked their Katherin es at this point, though I dreds of words have double mea nings, but the
cannot remember any, but , because the co m- potency of language may be in the eye of the
mentary is sile nt, the question mark after the beholder and not in the control of the spea ker:
marginal direction has to do a grea t deal of when William Page in his Latin lesson in The
wor k to invite the reader to consider other Merry Wives of Windsor says "0 , voca tive 0",
poss ible even ts: perhaps she does not limp at he may - or, more likely, may not - know that
all (few Katherines do), perh aps she has "0 " is "suggestive of the vagina" .
tripped, perhaps she has turn ed her The fir st edition of Romeo and Juliet I rea d
ankle. But neith er a Kath erine who is sile nt in school had cut some of the rudest lines,
when kicked, nor a Petru ccio confide nt though the preface 's identifi cation of which
enough and brut al enough to kick her at th is lines had been cut sent us all rushing off to a
stage of their relationship, see ms so likely Co mplete Works to find out what was bein g
that the stage direction is wa rranted. kept from us; we could ma ke little sense of
At the play ' s end, after Katherine ' s long Mercuti o on the medlar tree, eve n with the
speec h, by far her longest in the whole help of a dictionary. As teacher s desper ately
play - for she is a strikingly quiet shrew - searc h for ways to prove Shakespeare's relev-
Petr uccios "Come on , and kiss me, Kate" ance to teenagers of the iGeneration who
attrac ts the direction " They kiss", without so have no interest in anything not about them-
much as a question mark to throw doubt on selves, The RSC Shakespeare may perform
the action. But how do we know they kiss? a useful public serv ice, even if it may also
M any RSC prod uctions have show n a Kather- provoke protests from Americ an parent s, so
ine co mpletely unabl e to kiss the man who overanxious and overprotective abo ut sex .
has wage red on her obedience; others have If this sexy Shakespeare broadens our sense
shown a wo man delighted to kiss the ma n she Amanda Harris a s Titania and Ch r istoph er Benjamin a s Bottom in the Royal Sh ak e- of the author, Bate and Rasm ussen have had to
loves. A perfor mance-aware edition, es pe- sp eare Com pa ny production orA Midsummer Night 's Dream, Barbican , London, 1996 do some nifty footwork around the texts
cially an edit ion aware of the RSC's ow n his- which are not in F I in ways that narrow our
tory, could have opened readers' minds to the I don't want to be breakin g a butt erfly but mind - rightly when it goes to town on Mercu- vision of Shakespeare's range. Since The RSC
co nflicting, mutually exclusive possibilities the probl em s with this single commentary tin ' s language (though is "0" in "0 Romeo, Shakespeare could hardly do without Pericles
at this point. note don't end there. The coronet, the co m- that she were, 0, that she were / An open arse" and The Two Noble Kinsmen, two plays not in
Someti mes it is the co mme ntary that me ntary assures us, " must be of material that really yet "another vaginal pun"?), but a little F I , they are tacked on at the end in doubl e-
has strange effec ts on the mea ning of stage ca n be broken in half', but this is to read crass ly when it states unequi vocally the pres- column s, as are the long poems and the
directions. When King Lea r first en ters , the Lear's instruction to "part" it too literally, to ence of a sexual mea ning that may or may not Contin ued on page 7
1608 quarto has him preceded by "one bear- ass ume that the spee ch and a stage -eve nt are
ing a coronet" and, thou gh F I does not aligned. The exhilara ting theatri cal point
includ e this "one", the editors break their may be prec isely that the coronet ca nnot be
own rules and for some reas on import Q I' s divided , that, try as they might , neith er Lear
anonymous serva nt. Shakespeare is precise nor his sons -in-law can split the metal ring,
abo ut coro nets, with Case a fir st naming the that the circle, such a potent sign of who le-
objec t offered to Juliu s Caesar "a crow n" and ness, will not brea k - espec ially in a play fas-
then redefinin g it: "yet ' twas not a crow n cinated by the way 'T he whee l is come full
neith er , ' twas one of these coronets" . Since circle", as the dying Edmund puts it. A trick
Lear will, after di sinheriting Cor del ia, later coro net is not necessaril y requ ired; an
instruc t Cornwall and Albany, "This equally potent theatr ical possibility is eas ily
coronet part between you", it seems quite ava ilable without resorting to spec ial effec ts.
likely (though not definit e) that the coronet is Seiz ing on th is example may be unfair
Cor de lia's. It doesn't of course have to have when so much of the com mentary is newly
been brou ght in sepa rately; Lea r could, for conce ived, alive to the possibilities of early
instance, snatch it off Cordelia's head at this modern English and of Sha kespeare 's trans-
point. The com mentary glosses "bearing a cor- for mations of it. Thi s is the first full- scale
one t" both as "carrying a sma ll crow n" and co mme ntary to be able to use the riches of
"wearing a wrea th or garla nd about the head" . electronic databases such as the Lexicon of
The latter explanation makes no sense to me Early Modern English and it has taken full
whatsoever . Of co urse "bearing" can mean adva ntage of them. It is also strikingly awa re
"wearing" , but exa mples of the word "coro- of Shakespeare' s sexual language, trusting
net" meaning in that period a "garland" are the super b scholarly research of Gordon Wi l-
vulnerable and, though the OED quotes A liams. There is no room here for the vag ue-
Midsummer Night 's Dream as the first exam - ness of a commentary note poin ting to an
ple for this sense, the line "With coro net of unexplained sexua l meanin g. Here, eve ry
fresh and fragrant flowers" need not precisely spa de is call ed a pen is. And here too Bate and
mea n that a coro net is a garland but rather Se necha l go so much furt her than prev ious
that the wor d is being used as a kind of meta- editors that some times eve n my pleas ure in
ph or : T ita nia has crowne d Rottom (or " coro- bawdin ess ca nnot keep up with them .
neted" him). And why on eart h wo uld some - Willia ms accep ts, though the OED does not,
one wearing a garland precede the King of that the wor d "come" could mean "orgasm"
Britain ? And what would an early modern at that period , but it does not foll ow that it
audience - or any other audience, for that mat- does so quit e as frequently as here. Full of
ter - und erstand such an odd ceremo nial entry sex ua l meanin gs though Cleopatra 's idiolec t
to mean? That such an entry might be neatly may be, I am not rea lly sure that " Husband, I
prolepti c of Cordelia's descrip tion of the mad co me" has "connotations of orgasm" or that
Lear, "Crowned with rank fumit er and furrow her see ing An tony "rouse hi mself ' has "con-
weeds" (which he mayor may not be wea ring notations of penil e erect ion" . And Orsinos
when he enters a few scenes later, but wh ich description of the music' s "dying fall" has
the edi tors are confident he does still have suc h a faint ec ho of "the sense of orgasm and
on), is not in itself ju stific ation for such a detu mescence" as to be completely inaudible
bizarrely dressed leader of the procession. to me. Some times this commentary has a dirty
TL S AUGUST 17 2 0 0 7
6
----~,---
widow with a sma ll child and a give lectures at Prin ceton , Co lum- Jul y 27). College Street
se rvant, de pict ed their ac tiv ities as bia, John s Hopkins and Massachu- Some o f us would reg ard thi s as
one of his virtues. How was he sup- Sir, - Readers of the TLS may
Hamlet
if he we re in an Am erican home: setts Institut e of Technology. In
cleanin g house, naps, was hing the 1963, she recei ved an hon orary posed to identify and puni sh those remem ber that, two years ago , a Sir, - Pace David Martin (August
baby, the First Steps, etc. And eve n degree, Doctor of Hum ane Letters, respon sibl e? Toda y we witness gro up of eminent figur es from 10), Haml et' s phrase "this quint es-
the infam ous (but actually rather from Lewis and Clark Co llege in daily the effects of "avenging" a literatu re, the arts and aca demia, sence of dust" occu rs in dialogue
rare) depicti ons of crue lty or torture Portl and, Oregon . She was also crime by killing and maimin g hun- with their own French connect ions, with Rosencrantz and Guilden-
in Ori ent alist paintin g have an invited to place her manuscript s in dred s of thousand s of people who came togeth er with me to voice stern, not in what he wrong ly calls
eve n older Western iconographical the Library of Congress. Magazines manifestly bore no conn ection with our conc ern about the dilapid ation "soliloquy" : soliloquy is not one
traditi on: that of the depi ction of such as The Objectiv ist News letter the eve nt. It is scarce ly an edifying of the house at 8 Royal Co llege charac ter spea king alone on stage,
Chr istian martyrdom. and The Object ivist we re estab- pro spect. Street, where Rimb aud and Ver- it is literall y talkin g to oneself.
lished to pro mote theoretical lai ne lived and wor ked, and to see
GE RA LD M. ACKE RMAN aspe cts of Obj ecti vism . Objec tiv- NIKO LA I TOLSTOY how we could secure the literary her- TH OMAS TALL ON
333 N. Co llege Way , Claremo nt. ism has been recogniz ed as a phil o- Co urt Close , So uthmoor , itage of this 1828 listed building 35 Birchingto n Clo se , Bexle yheath,
CA 9 1711. sophica l movement by distin- nr Abingdo n, Oxon . (N B, Janu ary 6, 2006 ). We were K ent.
TL S AUGUST 17 2 00 7
LITERATURE & BIOGRAPHY 7
Continued from page 5 Currall was a local farmer ' s wife, who call ed
Sonnet s. But yet again , as in so many other
editions, Shake speare ' s sections of Sir
Thomas More, the "Hand D" scenes, are
Po and others him "P o" (for " Poet" ) and bore him two sons.
In Da y-Lewi s' s other affairs - for instance,
those with Rosamond Lehmann and Eliza-
printed in not-so-splendid isolation from the
rest of the play, so that, unlike the experience
of reading the whole play in the second edition
"M Y dispo sition has alwa ys been to
conform" , wrote C. Day-Lewis in
NEIL POW ELL
beth Jane Howard - ther e was usuall y an ele-
ment of literary solace ; Mar y, as her quot ed
letter s show, was devoted but nai ve, ill at
of the Oxford Complete Works, the reader his autobio graph y, The Buried Pet er Stanford ease with the Lond on cultural world in which
here cannot tell at all what the play into which Day (1960) . It ' s an odd dispo sition for a her husband increa singly moved. Nat asha
these addition s were inserted was like. Bate writer who in his earl y life had so much to C. D A Y- LE W IS Spend er shrewdly noted that Day-L ew is and
and Rasmu ssen distrust the argument that rebel again st: a repressive, possessive Anglo- A Life Lehmann "could give the impr ession that
Shakespeare wrote scenes in Ed ward III or, as Irish clergym an for a father ; an energetically 384pp. Continuum. £25. they were playing out some inten se litera ry
MacDon ald P. Jackson has been strongly argu- 978 08264 8603 5 drama": that level of their emotional rhetoric
dim, pri ssy stepmother (he called her the
ing, a scene in Arden of Faversham , and both "step-dragon"); a dull hom e uprooted from eventu ally prov ed unsustainable. In the end,
are excluded (that both are availabl e on the London to rural Nottingha mshire at the very to Sean somew here between home and regis- the affair which ended his first marri age
edition's website www .rscshake speare .co.uk mom ent whe n he could have done with the try office. In fact , the marriage was alread y and led to his second was with the actre ss Jill
is not really a compensation) . While collabora- capit al' s stimulus. At Sherborne Scho ol, he rockier than it seemed: he and Mar y had sepa- Balcon , who was literat e and intelli gent but
tive plays like Henry VI, Part I or Henry VIII won the English Verse Award, but was other- rate room s (his single bed and desk "felt like a mostly kept her drama for the stage .
are in the volume compl ete, these other possi- wise unrem arkabl e, not quit e making the reminder of his boarding school"), and he was In retro spect , Day-Lewis' s poeti c high
ble collaborations are dropp ed, reducing our First XV or XI, and failing to form tho se sub- looking elsewhere for sexual and intellectu al point is the dec ade or so of intim ate , depoliti-
sense of Shakespeare ' s invol vement in the versive ly intellectual friend ship s which tradi- stimulus. ciz ed work which lead s up to his Collected
work of others, his conn ection to the multi- tionally help aspirin g poets to survive their Poems of 1954. In 1951, he becam e onl y the
author ship practice s of much early modem schooldays. The se had to wait until Oxford second living writer, after Eliot, to be
drama. Gone , too, is the poem "A Lover ' s where , reading Classics at Wadham , he mad e includ ed in Th e Penguin Poets - a con spicu-
Compl aint" , in the light of Brian Vickers' s up a hou se- sharin g trinit y with Charles ous honour, even if right s availability played
convincing arguments again st attributing it to Fenby and Rex Warn er ; he vowed to do its part - and to that volume he contributed a
Shakespeare. badly , and left with a Third. Me anwhile, he dril y self-ass ess ing preface: he was struck
To continue the "who' s in, who ' s out" list: remained loyal to his first love, Mary King , both by his own "lack of developm ent" and
the epilogue to the Queen for Shro vetide daughter of hi s Sherborne hou sema ster: they by the way in which he remained "still much
1599, first printed in the Riverside edition and were married in 1928. He also met W. H. open to the influ enc e of other poet s" . He
which Juliet Dusinb erre has linked to As You Auden. make s a virtue of conformity, rath er than orig-
Like It, is in, with Bate oversteppin g the mark For seve ral years, starting with their joint inalit y. If John Ma sefield , who became seri-
in describing the attribution as "absolutely editorship of Oxford Poetry, 1927, Da y- ously ill in 1949, had died then , Day-Lewi s
secure". There is no external evidence at all Lewi s and Auden regarded each other as com- would have been an excellent choice for Poet
for the attribution, and the parallel of a form of petitiv e equal s. In an uncollected verse letter Laureat e; but when he did actually succee d
genitive with an occurrence in Anton y and of 1929, Auden generou sly declared that "we Ma sefi eld , in 1967, he had little time left.
Cleopatra is a weak basis for the case since, as are one / In choice of calling and ambition" , Ne vertheless , it' s for his ge ntle later lyric s -
Jonathan Hope has recently demon strated, this before going on to wond er "if there 's room "Walking Awa y" or "O n Not Sayin g Every-
form was common ; especially when "circu- for you and me" among the "tons of new thing" - that he will be rem emb ered and
lar" , one of the few uncommon word s in the pro se and poetry" appea ring dail y. He could anthologized, rather than for the hulking nar-
poem , is not used by Shakesp eare elsewh ere afford to be generous, for his was imm easura- rati ve of 'T he Nabara" , which once seemed
but is used by a number of other dramati sts bly the greater talent ; on the other hand , his his likeliest monument.
and poets. If Shake speare did write an epi- friend was three yea rs and two slim pub- Peter Stanford' s useful book assembl es a
logue for Court performance, this chang es our lished collections ahead of him, which C. Day-Lewis (1962) by FeIiks Toploski vast amount of background det ail , but is in
perception of his involvement in the world of seemed to bring them into plau sibl e parit y. other respect s calamitous. Although he
the Court. James Shapiro, one of the poem' s Bewitch ed as he was by "the tow-haired Th e faultline of the conformi st rebel run s quot es copiously from the poem s, uncomfort-
advocates, emphas ized this in his Shakespeare poet" whom he weirdly addr essed in The through every aspect of Day-Lewis' s life and ably set in italics, he seldo m mak es critical or
microbio graph y, 1599, but I wish I were confi- Magnetic Mountain - " Look west, Wy stan , work. When he left teaching to becom e a analytic al use of them; his discu ssion s of liter-
dent enough of my ear to say, with Shapiro, lone flyer, birdm an , my bull y boy!" - Day- full-time writer in 1935, he realiz ed that his ary histor y - Georgianism and Mod erni sm ,
that the epilogue 's style and diction are Lewis wasn 't Aud en ' s poodl e. Had he sustaining income would come from detec- for instance - are rudimentary. There are no
"unmistakably Shakespeare an". There are attend ed more carefull y to his brilli ant friend, tive novel s by "Nicholas Blake" : the first (of page referenc es for any quotation s nor publi-
stronger rea sons to includ e a numb er of short his own early poem s might have shed some twent y) had ju st appeared , and the pseudo- cation details for books in the bibli ography;
epigrams exclud ed by Bate and Rasmu ssen: blo wsy rhetoric and clunking archa isms : nym signa ls his intention that "Day-Lewis" footn otes attached to other authors' name s
the serious epitaph on Elias Jame s, the two their voice is an odd , often flat-footed should be percei ved as a poet rather than an supply only their dates; letter s are quot ed
comic ones on John Combe, and the lines amalgam of Hopkins, Georgianism and the all-round writer such as Hardy , whom he without authenticating details (was "the
inscribed on Shakespeare' s own grave, all of emerging Thirti es style. admired . Stanford barely glanc es at the detec- younger poet Anth on y Thw aite" reall y onl y
which are firmly ascribed to Shake speare in When he arriv ed to teach at Cheltenham tive fiction, which he calls "an escape" , sixtee n when Day-L ewi s wrot e to him ?); the
seventeenth-century manuscript s. Tho se Co llege in 1930, he found that his reputation although the chronological pro ximit y of the index is haphazard and repetit iou s. The
ascripti ons do not prov e the poem s are by had preceded him . His immediate superior disastrou s verse dram a Noah and the Waters author' s pro se need s a buck etful of comm as
Shakespeare, but the evidence is stronger than was alarmed by the sexual frankn ess of Transi- to the hug el y success ful Blake novel The poured ove r it, as we ll as editorial attention to
it is for the Shro vetide epilogu e, however tional Poem ("They' re love poem s addresse d Beast Must Die sugge sts that for a while Day- such matt ers as agreem ent (" neither .. . or" ,
much one likes its delicat e style. to my wife", Day-Lewis had to explain), Lewi s' s alter ego had an artistic as well as a "the couple was . . . perfect hosts"); superflu-
In the end, it is not these marginal cases that while another colleague, Fra nk Hallid ay, later financial advant age over him; later came the ous or rever sed apostrophes; absence or pre s-
will matter in decidin g how good, how impor- describ ed him as "a young marri ed man who incid ental pleasure of bumping off fictional ence of hyphen s; and full stops after initial s
tant, or how useful The RSC Shakespeare will ... was said to write poetr y"; Peter Stanford, ve rsio ns of real-life form er lo vers. Th e di vi- ("W . H. Auden" has, hut "r Day-Lewis"
prove to be. I look forw ard to using it at my author of C. Day-Lewis: A Life, hear s "doubt" sion wa s there in his politic al life, too , as he hasn't). There are some phra ses which would
desk and perhap s in my classroom over many in that remark, rather than its intended wry- admitted to him self while addr essing a left- make a nineteenth-centu ry solicitor blu sh -
years, enjo ying Jonathan Bate' s perceptive ness. Nor did left-wing politic s go down well wing meetin g at the Queen' s Hall in 1938: he "they need onl y to look by dint of contrast at
comments, trusting Eric Rasmu ssen' s textual in Cheltenham: after he'd addressed a Friend s suddenly "seemed to detach myself from the ... " , "came in useful in regard of ..." - and
scholarship - and always questioning what of the Soviet Union meetin g, the chai rman of man who was eloqu entl y holding forth " , and other s where an ob viou sly wrong word has
the edition and the texts them selve s can tell us the school governor s asked him if he knew when he sat down he knew " It won 't do . It survived editor and proofreader : "Larchfield
about how performance generates meanings, "what would have happened to you if you 'd ju st won 't do". Soon afterwards, the Day- School [Acad em y]" , "writing alternative
not some idealized single way of playing, but don e that sort of thing in the Regim ent". Yet Lewi ses moved to a most unrevolutionary [altern ate] paragraph s", "Wor kers' Educa-
the kind s of unending, astute, exhilarating, in other respects he looked like a conformist: thatch ed cott age at Mu sbur y, deep in Hard y tion Authority [Association]"; even Che lten-
demanding, creati ve, rigorou s, exhausting he bought a prett y cotta ge within cycling dis- country on the Devon-Dorset bord er. ham College becom es "Cheltenham School "
investigation s of potenti alit y that have always tance of the school; he had a loyal wife and, It was there, somew hat improbably, in the index. The author 's shortcomings are
been the hallm ark of the Royal Shakespeare from 1930, a son - whose name, in an Irish that the conflict betwe en decent husband an occa sion for sorrow , the publi sher ' s for
Company itself at its magnific ent best. moment of defi ance, he 'd altered from John and serial adulterer began in earnes t: Billie anger.
TLS A UG US T 17 2007
8 BIOGRAPHY
TL S A U G U S T 17 200 7
MEMOIRS 9
trade was all of a piece with his fulmin ations Gowon ' s regim e was only one of seve ral
over adultery, fornic ation , drunkenn ess and
all the other practic es he saw as eating aw ay
at the moral fibre of the nation. By extension,
The stressful bane milit ary dict ator ship s in relation to which
Soy inka had to negoti ate a prin cipl ed
position. There was Mohammadu Buh ari
the sa me is show n as applying to the other (1983- 85), depict ed as almost equally vio-
Eva nge licals. At one point Hague refer s to n his return to Nige ria in late 1959, A NDR EW VA N D ER VLl ES lent and corrupt, the co mpromised and dupli c-
them as bein g the "Fathers of the Victorians".
Yet whe n he comes to weighing up the fac-
tors that gave rise to the abo litionism of the
O after five years in England, and with
money from the Rockefe ller Founda-
tion, Wole Soyinka journeyed extensive ly
Wal e Sa yinka
itous Ibrahim Babangid a (1985- 93), with
who m Soy inka had several enco unters, and
the crimin al psychopath Sani Ab ach a, whose
l78 0s he is cauti ous, presumably bec ause he throu gh Wes t Afri ca, study ing form s of myth Y OU M U S T SET F ORTH A T D AW N years in power (late 1993 to mid-1 998)
does not wa nt to give the impression that he and ritual, their plac e in dail y life, and their A memoir Soyink a describ es with eviscerating cl arity of
is makin g greater claim s than are warra nted creati ve potential for repr esentin g the 528pp. Methuen . Paperback, £ 19.99. purpo se. He admits that the demands of "a
by the evide nce. It was , he tells us, "a fortu- region' s cultural identities in a time of polit- 978 04 13 77628 0 publi c cause" often impose decision s "that
US: Random House. $ 16.95. 978 0 375 755 14 9
nate chance" that Wilb erforc e' s con version ical change. His travels allowe d him , in his appea r, on the surface, to contradi ct one' s
occurr ed "at the very mom ent when the battle ow n words, to follow Og un (or Ugun), his democratic convictions and indeed , lifelong
over the ex istence of the slave trade was "demiurge of wa r and creati vity" , a deit y ature. Thi s new mem oir adds to his autobio- pursuit" ; pragmati sm occas ionally won out
read y to be fought". According to Brown ' s whose many faces includ e that of god of gra phica l sequence Ake (childhood), lsara aga inst his virulent opp osition to milit ary
acco unt it was not "a fortun ate chance" at all. the road - a place of death , but also of com- (the life of his father), and lb adan (his own rule, and he found him self able to work with
On the contrary : but for the religious conver- muni on , adve nture and po ssib ility. Soyink a early manh ood, to 1965), an account of the one milit ary regim e (Murtala Muh amm eds,
sion of Wilb erforce and his assoc iates there reflects on this time in his new me moir, You playwright-p oet less as crea tive artist than as 1975 to early 1976), while not bein g able
would have been no battle. Disappro ving of Must Set Forth At Dawn (the title taken from public intellectu al, relu ctant politician and to bring him self to deal with the "fascistic
the slave trad e was one thin g; active ly ca m- a poem written about these expeditions): "Per- popul ist agitator. and was trel 'democracy' of Alh aji Shehu
paignin g for its abo lition was so mething dif- haps 1 ass ume d the fun ction of the wa nderer Soyinka's descripti ons of his involvement Shagari's National Party of Nige ria"
ferent, while the passin g and implementin g whose occupation was to bear witness to the in the life of his nati on over the past half (1979- 83). Always, inevitably, he writes, he
of laws providi ng for its termin ation we re road' s many phases that mirrored not merely cen tury sugges t a thrilling ride along an has had to co ntend with "the Nigerian
something else aga in. People could have human fate but, more directl y and effec- uncommonly rock y road . Nigeria, uneasy killer factor" , nam ely "the stress ful bane of
go ne on disappro vin g of the slave trade for tively, an imm edi ate entity in form ation" . with itself from the start, has lurched from the mere act of critica l thought within a
eve r. What changed the situation was the The entity was, of course, Nige ria, which crisis to cri sis, throu gh ci vil wa r, corruption soc iety where power and cont rol rema in the
aw akening of the Eva nge lica l conscience . ga ined its independ enc e within a ye ar of and no fewer than nine milit ary coups d 'etat, playthin gs of imbeciles, psychop ath s and
Not for Brown, therefore, vague stateme nts predator s" .
about "the opportunities of indi vidual s to General Olu segun Oba sanjos role as a
change hi story" bein g " shaped by the great strongman of Niger ian politi cs receives
social and intellectual forces of their times". insightful analysis. It was to Ob asanjo, the
By hi s acco unt, it was the Eva nge lica ls who offic er co mma nding federal forc es in the
shaped histor y, not "forces" . The battle ove r country ' s Western Region at the time of the
the slave trade was fou ght bec ause "the Biafran secess ion, that Soyinka was com-
Saints" we nt marchin g in. missioned to deli ver a message which
Where Bro wn gets into troubl e is in defin- co mpromised his patri otism in the eyes of the
ing the nature and practi cal uses of moral capi- milit ary state. The Gene ral painted him self
tal. Would its acc umulation make soldiers the "conqueror of Biafra" after the victory of
more loyal , indu ce armies to fight better? the federal forces in 1970, but Soy inka dis-
Would it rend er other countries more tract- misses Obasanjos war memoirs as a tissue of
able? Or was it simply something that could fabri cation s, sugges ting he is "most pron e ...
be drawn on when the need arose, as Britain to the extreme latitud es of crea tive licence" ,
did when it used abolitionism as an exc use for to rewr iting histor y to suit him self , and to
occu pying parts of Africa? Brown does not eleva ting his ow n role in it. The men share a
tell us. Hague, on the other hand, is very good hometo wn , Abeokut a, and Soyink a has had
at show ing us Wilberforce 's views on the mat- frequent occas io n to observe this "man of
ter , which could not have been more simple fluctuati ng destini es" , someo ne he cas ts as
and straightforw ard. Co untries that sinned a mock-h ero, all too frequentl y the benefici-
would be punished, as was eviden t in Brit- ary of fate. Sec ond-in-comm and to Murt ala
ain's loss of its Ameri can colonies, the storms Muh amm ed , Ob asanjo becam e head of state
that had lately wasted its fleets, the diseases "by default " when Muh amm ed was assass i-
currently decim atin g its armies, the manifest nated , and later ove rsaw the transition to
incomp etenc e of its generals and all the other Shagari' s disastrou s civ ilian rule. Imp risoned
misfortun es that had lately befallen it. The und er Ab ach a, Ob asanj o emerged from
purp ose of moral refor mation was to lighten prison in 1998 - "now an accredited civilian"
Britain of its "load of guilt and infamy" . - and swe pt to power in heavily criti cized
M any polit ician s write books, but few pro- Wol e Soyinka, Ibadan, Nigeria, 1969 elections in 1999, and again, "under eve n
duce significa nt wor ks of scholars hip. Like more discredit ed circumstances " , in 200 3.
Win ston Churchill and Roy Jenkin s before Soy inka 's retu rn, and which he wo uld watch We glimpse Soyink a' s early sense of polit- Several month s ago , Oba sanjo saw power
him, Willi am Hague has a gift for writing "turn both carrion and scave nger as it killed ica l com mitm ent as a student in Leed s and descend to his hand-picked successor, Uma ru
histor y of a kind that is both well researched and consume d its kind" , ove r the next fort y London in the late 1950 s, enduring petty Yar' Adu a, in an equa lly contentious poll -
and appea ling to the general reader. When his yea rs. In the decay of his country' s road s, he racism, but ag itated, too, by the outra ge of which Soy inka him self argued should be sus-
WilIinm Pitt the Younger was chose n Histor y reads the State ' s retr eat fr om humani sm , a apartheid in South Africa, and by politi cal pend ed . The long enta ngleme nt has clearly
Book of the Yea r in 2004, many marvelled "fall from grace" littered with acci dent vic- sca nda ls and corruption at home, as Britain continued beyond the pages of the memoi r.
that anyo ne so active ly involved in politi cs tim s and other roadkill. Th roughout this time, prepared to grant Nigeria its independ ence in Soyink a owes no allegiances, and so
could summo n up the time and energy to pur- Soyinka has been among his country's pre- 1960. He describ es the "firestorm" in West- spea ks truth to power , show ing none of the
sue what amounted to a seco nd career. Th at eminent intellectu als and most challenging ern Nigeria followin g the elections of 1965, reticence about criticizing Afric an leader s
he has managed to complete his William polemi cists. The contours of hi s prodi gious his involvement in a radio broadcast farce, which mars the crede ntials of some intellectu-
Wilherf orce two ye ars after becoming car eer are well kno wn , and includ e powerful , variously interpr eted as a prank or an als (he refers, for exa mple, to the "stale
shadow Fore ign Secr etar y is an eve n grea ter evocative, densely textured plays (including attempted coup (fo llowe d by his trial and tobacco as h-end of the Hitlerit e Rob ert
wonder. Christopher Brown ' s Moral Capital The Lion and the Jewel, Kongi's Harvest, acquitta l), and the chaos and destructi on Mugabe" ), The account of his oppos ition to
is rem arkabl e in another way , namely in man- Death and the King's Horseman), two novels attenda nt on the Biafran secession - in which Abacha, from exile in the United States and
aging to say so mething genuinely new about (The Interpreters, Season ofAnomy), antho lo- he tried to medi ate, and for which Ge nera l throu gh frequ ent lobb ying meetin gs and
a subjec t that has been di scu ssed and written gies of poetry, and collec tions of essays and Yakubu Gowon ' s regime impri soned him for publi c addresses across the globe, attests
about for two centuri es; and that , too, is no lectur es. In 1986 he becam e the fir st Africa n two yea rs and four months, much of wh ich particul arly strongly to Soy inka 's commit-
small achieve me nt. writer to be awa rded the Nobe l Prize for Liter- Soy inka spent in solitary confin ement. ment to rem ainin g independ ent , in no one' s
TL S AUGUST 17 200 7
10 BIOGRAPHY
pay, de termined, shrill, the fly in the oint- offence at having to slow down at all - Whas form the solidified mass of humanit y, and turn enjoy his exciteme nt. There are lighth earted
ment of so many gove rnments - in Africa and the matter with you? You no get eyes? You no it, at its most violent, towards paci fism or, moment s, too, as when Soyinka narr ates his
elsew here - which erre d, tragicall y, by refu s- see who I dey ca rry for inside ca r?" . Eve ntu- from its most pacific conditio n, make it heave, invol vement in high- spirit ed - and highl y
ing to sideline the regime or condemn it forc e- ally, inside Lagos, they encounter pandem o- a mountai n in conv ulsion. serious - esca pades, like stealing what he
fully enoug h (fasc inating appendices repro- nium , and Soyink a reflec ts on the natur e of Self-dramati zing, eve n perhap s a little self- takes to be a cas t of the famou s bron ze head
duce letters pert ainin g to this period in parti- mobili zed ma sses: agg randizing, there is here, nonetheless, writ- of Ife, a long-lost, looted cultu ral treasure,
cular, including corres pondence bet ween A teem ing crow d of humanit y is an awe- ing of the highest calibr e: where Soyinka the from the hom e of a Braz ilia n architect in
Abacha and M andela). insp iring phenom enon . As an objec tive spec ta- dram atist reflect s on the power of words to Bahia, only to discover its altoge ther less
Soyinka gives a gripping acco unt of his cle, that is all it is, a spec tacle, but when you move, and moves his reader s with an acco unt lofty pro venance: it was a cas t purchased
dangerou s re-entry into Nigeria, from Beni n, are within it, when you are one of the bits and of a death-d efying journey. from a British Mu seum gift shop .
after a trip to Europe, durin g the chaos follow- pieces that make up the tumult, you become There are also, however, passages which Readers eage r for reflec tion by Soyinka on
ing the annulme nt of the M ay 1993 elections one with it, you share in the force that it repre- an unch arit able read er might consider inade- the author's private or crea tive life will be dis-
- a peri od wh ich left the President- Elect , sents and you endure a loss of identity, exce pt quately self-consc ious ove rwr iting - as in appointed. He mak es brief mention of so me
Abi ola, incarcerated , presaged the end of as a compressed lump within the crowd. I con- this recoll ection of his response to bein g famil y memb ers, and pro vides anecdo tes
Babangid a' s rule, and sparked the rise of fess that I have never expe rienced being fully invited to dine with Nelso n Mandela, at a about a few produ ctions of his plays. Thi s is
Abach a. Initi ally, no taxi dri ver will take melted into the pack, so I can only approxi- dinn er hosted by Danielle Mitt errand in not that kind of memoir , however. It is,
Soyink a to Lagos, although all those asse m- mate. When I am caught in one, I can not wait Paris, in 1990: rather, a testimony to Soyink a ' s long involve-
bled at the bord er recogni ze him instantl y to find a way out of the swar ming pro miscuity. Pity that individual - never mind Bertold ment at the centre of Niger ian public life, an
and regard him as a leader in the pro- The safest crow ds are those that are made up of Brecht ! - who has no one to call a hero. There answe r to his critics (among them tho se
dem ocracy movement. Even tually one agrees a majority of individuals who know why they was no way that I co uld miss an intimate younger, Marxist writers and intellectu als
and, despit e concern s that some drug-cra zed have coa lesced into one, why they have chosen dinn er with Nelson Mandela, a first direct who attac ked his art as insuffic ientl y engaged
vigilante manning a barri cade will not recog- to j ettison their individual identities to form a enco unter since he was released from priso n! throu ghout the 1970s), and a stateme nt of
nize "Prof" befor e shooting him, they com- new substantive , a mass. One can talk to such Have passpo rt, will trave l. Visa was waiting. affiliation and com mitment. " I am back" , he
plete the j ourn ey, Soyink a' s driver becomin g a crow d. One can reason with it; one can even Off I flew two nights later, with nothing co ncludes at the end of the narrati ve, remem -
ever bolder at each road block as his passen- modify its purpose and direction. Above all, beyond the proverbial toothbrush. berin g his return fro m exile in 1998, " where 1
ger's stature sec ures safe passage: " He took however, one can re-create such a crow d, trans- But we forgive Soyink a such lapses, and should never have left" .
--------------------------~.--------------------------
ew "great men" of history have taken footn ote in the text. As a result he misses
magine, if you ca n bear it, Berti e Wooster dodgy, eve n - that "Iraq" warra nts no
TL S AUGUST 17 2 0 0 7
12
TLS A U G US T 17 2007
COMMENTA RY 13
ing inn ju st out side London run by Maurice Underhill has his being ; and yet the ghost The centr e of the poet ' s life was the life of hi s motiv es now are less promising : the hun ger
Allingham , a man hard not to like (the narra- also throw s back in a sinister form the power mind . for document ation , for histor ical validity,
tive is first-p erson) but with self-indulgences , of intellect and even the necromancy that Stud y of the socia l and externa l alone get s knott ed with needs more uncon sciou sly
drink and sex especially, that make life a mis- might be attributed to an imaginati ve writer. won 't tell us anything worth kno win g about subje ctive. Our s is an age of tele vision and of
ery for his wife, mistress, daughter , father As Ami s proj ects Allingham , and Allin gham that creati ve mind : inde ed , it may mislead us celebrity, and it requires Shak espear e ' s face.
and friend s. His vices are treat ed humorously confronts Underhill, there is the sense of a dangero usly. [ wa nt to illu strate this by Onl y two authenticated images of the poet
but not quite lightl y. They are refl ect ed, as fine descending spiral from the bright surface another divergenc e, turning not to Shak e- have survived. One is the engraving by
in a distorting mirror, in two unsoci ab le of genr e fiction do wnward s and inward s spea rian biograph y nor to the plays and Martin Droeshout which preface s the
presenc es who play a large part in the story : tow ard s moral cu lpabil ity. The who le real poem s them selves, but to the images of the First Folio. The other is the bust by Gerard
out side the inn , a violently destruc tive act ion of the book directl y con tradict s that poet which are the most vivid way ofperceiv- John son in Shakespeare' s pari sh church at
emanation from Nature, the Gree n Man "peace of mind " offered by the bad gho st to ing him ex ternally. Conso nantly with the cu lt Stratford-upon -Avon . An ex traordinarily
himself , and inside it, the sinister gho st of a Allin gham , who refu ses it. of biogr aph y, there is now a strong interest large numb er of viewe rs, at different period s,
late- seventeenth-century cleric , Or Thomas How ever trivial, a misreading of this in the appe aranc e of the poet, one given have cond emn ed both engraving and bust as
Underhill, a rapi st of young girls and a kind can sugges t a failure with the noveli st' s evidence in the recent National Portrait horrib ly disappointing ; the onl y exception
ma ster of disturb ing shadow plays. Alling- seriousness of purpose, a miscalcul ation Ga llery exhibition, In Search ofShakespeare. to them is the histor ian A. L. Ro wse, who
ham com es to term s with his own natur e, and conc ernin g what the writer and his text are Thi s was followed by lively debat es in this lauds the engraving in the highe st term s as a
exorc izes the gho st, this last with the unwill - actu ally doing here. Ami ss ghosts do what paper and elsew here, all involving authentic- nobl e portrait of geniu s. John Do ver Wil son
ing help of the unbeli eving local rector, a we in fact rely on work s of art to do , in a ity. None paused to bring to daylight the saw in the bust the pictur e of a local
trend y, snobbish and gay young man . The beleaguered period: the y open up the lim its underl ying princ iples involv ed in the search. pork-butcher. Anthony Burgess said of the
spirit of Underhill struggles aga inst of the social. engrav ing,
exorcism, the climax of his attempted bribe s Mod ern biogr aphy has reached a point of o turn back for a mom ent to bio - The face is the face of a commercial traveller
of Allingham being, 'T 11 teach you peace of
mind". Startlingly, but und oubt ed ly, Leader
ascribes these word s not to Underhill but to
the scornful young prie st.
A mistake invol ving six word s hard ly
spontaneo us combustion . It is rich er than
ever befor e in its cho sen resourc es, and yet
sometimes unab le to tell us the simple thing s
we need to know about writers: unab le, one
might say , to confront the ghosts in a culture.
T graphy : a cultur e gets the kind of
Lives it wa nts and need s. The first
and still greatest of literary Lives in
English, Bo swell' s Life of John son, is
much more and other than its histor ical
grow ing bald in the service of an ungrateful
firm. If it ever appeared, the back-hair suitably
crop ped, with a decent sub-fuse suit below it,
in the saloon bar of a Stratford pub, it would
hardly be noticed.
counts against the plea sures of 900 page s. The staple of biography is still the social and docum ent ation. It is Boswell' s Life , begun in Th is last seems to me a bri lliant observation,
But the slip is interesting. Genre fiction may, hi storical cont ext it gives the work. Certainly its writer' s perc eption that the mom ent was and [ shall return to it.
as [ have sugges ted, ha ve attracted Ami s it is still valuable and necessary to kno w one at which the life of a grea t man was Book s and exhibitions like the interestin g
bec ause his mind was not merel y social. He about Shakespeare' s hierarch ical world , called for ; and carried out in the light of the In Search of Shakespeare are searching
elsewhere described Allingham as being about the small pro vinci al town he grew up judgment that Samu el John son, a clo se bec ause they think we haven 't found him .
more like him self than mo st of his charact er s. in, about the theatres that fostered his profes- friend , loved and studied, if only very par- Over the centuries of disillusion , in di sgu st
[fthis is so, the amiable and even redoubtab le sion and the royal Co urts he served. But tially kno wn , was the subje ct called for. at both the engraving and the bust , some
innk eeper is the Ami sian social self, a norma- Shakespe are was onl y himself (and not some Boswell ' s achi evem ent was a complex of dif- half-doz en candid ates for glor y have been
tive presenc e. He lack s the darkn ess in which oth er Elizabethan) in the work that he did. ferent principles, all acting togeth er. Our put for ward, led by the "C handos " and the
•
Gabriel Egan.
Alternative Shakespeares 3
Lough borough University, UK
Usa Hopkins, Edited by Diana E. Henderson
Sheffield Hallam University, UK September 2007: 198x129: 328pp
John Joughin. University of Hb: 978-0-415-42332-8: £65.00
Pb: 978-0-415-42333-5: £18.99
Cent ral Lancashire, UK
introducing th e most innovative of th e
Print 155N: 1745-0918; Online 155N: 1745-0926 new directions emerging in Sha kespea rean
scholarship, th is volume identifies and
Shakespeare is a major peer-reviewed journal, pub lishing articles draw n
explores the new, th e chang ing and the
from t he best of current international scholarship on th e most recent
radically 'other' possibilities for
developm ents in Shakespearea n criticism. Its principal a im is to bridge
Shakespeare stu dies at this time.
th e gap between the disciplines of Sha kespeare in Performa nce Studies
and Shakespeare in English Literature and Language. The journ al builds
on t he existing a im of th e British Shakespeare Association, to exploit th e
Presentist Shakespeares
synergies betwee n academ ics and performers of Shakespeare. Hugh Grady and Terence Hawkes
November 2006: 216x138: 208pp
Hb: 978-0-415-38528-2: £60.00
Pb: 978-0-415-38529-9: £18.99
Featuring an outstand ing list of
contributors, th is collection of readings
adopts a new approach to Shakespeare by
focusing on the principles of ' presentism'
- a critical movement that takes accoun t
of th e continua l dialogue betw een past
and present.
TLS A UG US T 17 200 7
14 COMMENTARY
"Grafton'' portrait s. With out atte mpting art- anachronistic and thin k in term s, as an Most hum an bein gs are form ed by what has "diffident" , which catch es some of this; when
historic al scholarship, one simple thin g ca n amused Bur gess doe s, of a type only happened to them befor e their twent y-fifth he mo ves on to a life of Marlowe , something
be said about all these contenders that mark s slow ly recognized as emerging throu gh the birthd ay (in Shak espeare ' s ca se, 1589); later goes odd ly wrong with the ima ge of Shake-
them out as inauth enti c. Diff erent as they are, nineteenth century: an often educa ted and success make s a difference onl y to the very spea re, who is there seen as sly and slippery
they are all - in their way s - too glamorous, sensitive lower-middle class of clerk s and superficial. For both social and per sonal by comp ari son . The hint of iron y in the
too attra cti ve, too sexy and too discernibl y shopmen , loaded with a great sense both of rea sons, the engrav ing and the bust are cont emporary "gentle" has turned viciou s
upp er-cl ass. Just as we are creatin g a field of aspiration and failure, and brin gin g extrao rdi- authentic in their very medi ocrity. They are in defenc e of the lesser, if superb, poet
massive biographies about Important Peopl e, nary new possibi lities into the literary arts. portraits of a nobody, a condition both Marlo we. But the failur e of sympathy here on
ce lebrities , "dominant forces", so we are This is not to say that Shakespeare was accepted by Shakespea re, as an unavoidabl e the part of Hon an reflects the realit y of the
sear ching fo r a face that is right for a Shake- "like" Keats or Lamb (though both were deri vation of his birth, and also assumed by prob lem . Shakespeare is the despair of biogra -
speare in Love, an image that reflects what a among the best writ ers and crit ics of their him as a disgui se, a mask , a vantag e-po int of pher s, as well as their resourc e. We don 't
viewe r wa nts it to be. I would not myself time) - onl y that the Eliza bethan poet had humiliation. merely happ en not to kno w any important
wa nt to echo Ro wse ' s ardour for the Dro e- inborn in him so me of the cultural burd en s This impression is cert ain ly hypothet ical. fact s about the dram atist: we fai l to know
shout engrav ing, but it strikes me (on that forc ed Rom antic writers for ward. He But it is supported by the onl y leading social them necessari ly. The life of the creati ve
grounds qu ite different from his) as an carried through the first half of his life a fact about the writer that has come down to Shak espeare is the life of an unkno wn man , a
entirely trustwor thy picture of the poet, how- father, John Shakespeare, who ascended into us. The almost Hom ericall y or stereotypi- writer not secretive but able to transform an
ever badly exec uted. It is the image of a wea lth and local sta nding, then seemingly cally recurrent detail we know of him - it is uncho sen pub lic silence into a creati vity.
writer, not of a television star: the high , tired fai led at the point of success . Eve n if both used , for instanc e, under the Droeshout
forehead , the bagged short-sighted eyes, the fath er and son were capable busin essmen , the engraving - is the word "gentle" . Its mean - e want a por tra it of Shake-
expression watchfully tol erant and melan -
chol y, withdraw n.
The lack of quality in both the images of
the engrav ing and the bust may well derive
partl y from the suggestion of class stereo-
poet star ted life as son and heir to a pro vin-
cial failed shopkeeper. Shakespeare had not
eve n attended the University, and had there-
fore, until he achi eved arms , no claim to be
called a gentlema n. He won what position he
ing s were prob ably various, and at least dual.
There is in the repetition a hint of the social
gestur e, an approbation not untouched by
irony. Shak espeare startled those around him
all his life by giving signs of what the age
W spea re, whether paint ed or
written, because he is in man y
ways our great est writer. His
very ret icence the more excites interest. And
undoubtedly few biographies fail to find
type s. As Burge ss' s descr iption in part icular had through his poem s, and his money would have called "better" birth. Educated by something docum entary that throw s light.
shows, they locat e Shake speare - perhap s throu gh work for the theatr e, an institution nati ve intelli gence , with mann ers derived Probabl y the most delightfu l and rew ardin g
accid entally but with a forc e of revelation - that was certa inly on the way up, but from a from instinct and ob servation, and a per sonal of recent biograph ical wor ks, Jam es
in a specific social world: that milieu which position clo se to vaga bond status. calm owed to ince ssant ach ievement, Shak e- Shapiros focu s on one year in the dramatist' s
in fact has produced man y of our greatest All this is, of cour se, well known . Yet it spea re embodied a kind of polit e and conserv- life, 1599 , illuminates what the move into the
artists. It extends from what we should now see ms rarely concluded that the man of ative socia l anarchy by bein g a gent leman , Globe may have brought Shakespeare in
call white-collar working people to the who m this is true was in so me real sense a "gentle" Shak espeare. That anti-Stratfordia ns terms of increased confid ence and security.
shabby impoverished gentr y. Soci al analys is nob od y, and looked and acted like one - have eve r since insisted that a low-born man Even Shapiro may slightly overestimate his
of the period was and is unsoph istic ated , but indeed that the one public eve nt of his early cou ld not have written the work is no sur- subje ct's externality, his sheer intere st in his
in Elizabetha n term s the poet was a yeoma n's professional life, the attack by Gree ne, was pri se: they merely inherit Elizab ethan snob- world : "he understood his age perfectl y . . .
son. This suggests little now. It is better to be induc ed by his appearance of vulnera bility. beries and stupidities, and are unabl e to grow eve n as he kept a lock on what he revealed
beyond them . about him self'. This emphasis on the willed,
Even as used by tho se many who plain ly the self-interested and self-controlled and
liked and admired him , ther e is latent in the self-concea ling, is a law of recent biographi-
term of rank - "gentle", or of the gentry - a ca l endeavour : Shak espeare' s life becomes
placin g by birth : by birth Shak espeare was Shakespeare ' s purp ose, his "ambition" . The
and rem ained wh at is still occ asionall y and biographer sets in the bright foreground what
obno xiou sly called "a little man" . But this he happen s to have found out. Both Stephen
social conditioning had its more personal or Greenblatt and Micha el Wood give an entranc-
inward acco mpa nime nts . Interestin gly, both ing picture oflate-sixteenth-century London -
engraving and bust communicate - as the theirs is a "Shakespeare of London", an
new por traits do not - an impression of bon y infinitely more kno wledgeable and upda ted
slightness (the engrav ing) or of crouched version of the sixty-year-old biograph y by
shortness (the pudgi er bu st). The assurance, Marchette Chu te.
even the sex iness of power are totall y lack- Much of the new scholarship in Sh ake-
ing: and yet both images have a kind of quiet , spea re biograph y is fictio n, and "Shake-
a concentration that is form idab le as well as spea re 's Lond on" is a case in poi nt. The
greatl y agreeable. Soci al defic ience s of birth poet' s work give s no sense that his mind
and possib ly eve n of bearin g, an unglamor- inhabited London, as does the writin g of John
ous face, an unimportant bod y, wo uld have Donn e, Samu el Johnson and Charles Lamb;
made him welc ome the di sgu ised life of an Ben Jon son and T. S. El iot are urban poets as
actor, as well as the vital express ion given to Shak espeare never was . Of cour se he uses
his work by the theatre . But success in the local detail s of his world as and when they
theatre, huge by mid-c areer , would not have come to hand; and he needed the capit al,
ex cise d a more personal "gentleness", a already becoming a grea t cit y, for its Court
respon sive reticence of bearin g that always and patron s and theatres, for its news, infor-
feels for the defeat ed , and that takes up a mation , human type s, goss ip, colle ague s and
place on the edge of groups and crowds. confr eres - in short, for the kind of social or
Again , among the very few perh aps apocry- superficial experience which a small pro vin -
phal stories of Shakespeare in public that cia l town could not offer. But it was the small
have c ome do wn to us, the po et is fi gured in tow n that he ret urn ed to. Hi s m ind and h i s
his wit-battles with Ben Jon son as the sma ll root ed loyalties were nouri shed in an ear th of
English ship, with the other as the great the rural past and future , not by an immedi-
Spani sh galleon ; or aga in, it is said that when acy of London stree ts.
invited to part ies, Shakespe are wou ld write In an important sense Shakespeare did not
that he had a head ache. live in his life, if by life we mean circumstan-
With affection and perh aps irony Shak e- tial exi stenc e. Neither a dream y aes thete nor
spe are's cont emporaries called him "gentle" . a dithering incompetent, the poet - a business-
They we re always astonished how civilized man' s even shrew der son - looked after his
the man was, consider ing he was a nobody; ow n (and his own were his plays and poem s
and how little ove rbea ring, considering hi s as well as his fami ly): he save d and invested
success. The author of what may be the well and wisely, and fought back when his
soundes t recent biograph y of Shakes peare, future in his profession was threat ened . But a
Park Honan, there uses of the wr iter the word man can devote his se nsible energies to
TLS A UG US T 17 200 7
COMMENTARY 15
matter s beyond sense . Thi s poi se gove rns the to the plays will also suppo rt a sense that less" and his own co ndition near "despair". ex treme ex pertise : the stor m and the cliff are
whole of his caree r, at once supremely rom an- Sh akespeare never brou ght him self to The Tempest is set deep in the same difficul- what they are and also a startling sudde n
tic and thoroughl y gro und-base d ("My mis- publi sh his ow n Sonnets, a prob ability the ties as eve ry thing the poet wrote, and most of glance into Shak espeare' s theatre as it was , in
tre ss, when she wa lks, tread s on the stro nge r give n that - as Em rys Jones has what he lived , considered biographi call y. rehearsal and performance, a lifeti me' s
gro und" ). Thi s is a balance that seems to suggested pri vately to me - the odd title Th ere is a grea t truth in the play, but it would achieve men t, loved and hated .
move into pro min enc e at that late mom ent Shakespea re 's Sonnets cann ot have be a serious mistake to read it literally: Drama is the mo st objective of all literar y
whe n, with great achieve ment behind him, emanated dir ectl y from the poet him self. which is sure ly why Shakespear e here and arts, bein g embodied, requiring actors for its
the poet allows him self an amu sed and obje c- Ce rtainly Sh akespeare mu st have had throu ghout his work so disposes tim es and full est express ion. It is a mark of Shake-
tive self-co nsc iousness, self-articulation. man y instin cts that mad e him Eliz abeth an, an places as to make imp ossibilities for the spea re's gifts that he produced superla tively
Coriolanus' tra gic hop e of "a world else - apprec iation of wea lth and sta nding bein g literali st. Pro speros island , for instanc e, is imp er son al dram a that ca n still offer up a
where" discover s how to become lm ogen' s among them. But such moti vation s could be neither Old World nor New World. This sudde n sense that we are see ing Sh akespeare .
more hopefull y comi c thou ght of what is subor dinated to larger ends , to ideas and self-limiting establishment of the "ro mantic" Biogr aphi es are enj oy able, inform ati ve and
"beyond beyond " . ideal s "beyond beyond ". If thi s is true, then is only one aspec t of the writer's uniqu e eve n perh aps necessary, but none gives quit e
Thi s is not an equilibrium easy for bio- the poet was - by some ironic law of life - credibility. It could be said that Shakespea re thi s perc epti on of a mind, lon g ago and still
graphy to ex po und . All kind s of historian provid en t. He is unlik ely not to have wished is our grea test wr iter simply becau se of living. In the same way, the two authentic por-
may be baulk ed by Shakespeare' s ve rse . One to found a line - to be a So me body . But this intensely person al poise between wor lds, trait s in all their medi ocrit y tell us per haps all
of his two or three best Son nests, 107 (" Not except throu gh his sister, the large famil y did at onc e rock -so lid and "thin air", "a pageant" , there is to know about Sha kespeare's life.
mine own fears ...") is regularly glossed by not survive; his broth ers died before him with- a "dream" . As with other great art ists, his Th e di stingui shed art critic John Richardson
scholars who beli eve it mu st be possibl e to out surv iving pro gen y; his ow n son died sense of the actual and of the imagined once reviewed a popul ar film about Picasso
locate unch an geabl y in tim e such lines as ear ly, in the mid-15 90 s, and his dau ght ers interfused , interbr ed and created. As a that he thou ght very bad, and ended:
"The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur'd"; bred no children as his descend ant s. His ow n dim en sion of thi s, we ca n perha ps say that if Film s abo ut great artists are a beni ghted ge nre
but they fail to perc eive that the poem is great Str atford hou se was finall y ruin ou s. his biograph y is to be found it has to be here, in that they usuall y sacrifice art to La-Boherne-
about tran sform ation s of and in tim e, und er Deep in the Sonnets is a knowled ge so certain in the plays and poem s, but never literally and ish sentimentality or a soa p-o pera story line.
the po wer of love . Passing mom ent s and of "Devo uring Time" as to see m at moments never provably. The trouble is that the work ings o f the creative
eve nts here become met aph or : " I' ll live in alm ost proph etic. However hard Shakespeare Rather than leave thi s ge neral obse rva tion process are too slow , too private and too pains-
thi s poor rhym e". The same is true of the worked, he could not change the fate of tho se vague and em pty as it stands , I will try to give taking to be entertai ning , let alone ci nema tic.
strug gle to forc e into a writ er ' s life the issues aro und him who bec ame (in Sonn et 125) "Pit- two brief exa mples. An yone who has kno wn Th e best biographi es of Shakespeare do
which most bio graph er s now see as domin ant iful thri vers, in their gaz ing spent" . The first the work lon g and with appreci ation may their best to free themselves of sentime ntal-
in his age, par ticul arl y the politi cs of the seve ntee n Sonnets had used the device, or ex perience a curi ou s effect, as of some thing ity, soa p opera and ea rls. But they don 't
church and of gen der. Was Shakes peare Ca th- met aph or, of persuasion to marr y and breed hardl y defin able see n out of the corn er of the really tell us much beyond what is there in
oli c? Was he a misogyni st? A whole life is dir ected at a young aristocrat , hut the eight- eye. It could he ca lled the dim en sion of hio- th e tw o portrait s, and mu ch m ore so in
defin ed in ter ms of opinion and of will. But eenth is wiser in abruptly offerin g a love graphy, of ex perience that has lost its ego ism . the pla ys and poem s themselves. As the
Shakespeare' s ex traordinary ori gin alit y was poem instead : "So lon g lives this .. .". The Wh at is still prob abl y Shakes peare 's most dead poet' s friend s and editors, John
to be a nobody who saw "beyond beyond " : switch here in conc eptual bases of arg ument fam ou s play is a case in point. Th ere is Hemin ge and Henr y Co nde ll, sa id in the
who sides tepped such lab yrinths in pur suit of is striking ; the poem s are learning newer and always something odd in the fact that one of Folio , "R eade him , therefore".
his ow n life . Th e plays and poem s at need truer metaphors. That in some literal sense the gru bbier Elizabethan dr am atic sys tems,
play fast and loo se with polemi c and dogma, the writer, a pro vin cial nob od y, actually had the reven ge-stor y and reven ge-pl ay, sho uld
introducing herb ali st priests and roya l rule- a love affair, or eve n a close friend ship with produce so grea t a wor k as Hamlet. The sub-
breakin g monk s and thro win g no vices ' ro bes an earl, it is sure ly foll y to imagin e: though it ject could fabricate the rem arkable, as it does
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
over nubil e stro ng-minded wom en: redu cin g is still a belief gra tefully avowed by some edi- in Kyd ' s Spanish Tragedy, witho ut promis- With a new commentary
the whole Reformation to the laws of the pri- tor s and bio graph ers, glad to have the mean s ing what Hamlet has: a vision, for all its
vate conscience , which demanded a whole of annotation and life story. Ce rtainly, Shake- courtly pow er and brilli ance, into ordinary
by David West
new rhetoric more than political affirmation. spea re needed all the ranks and ritu als of his hu man life. There may be a clue in the fact
Th e Wom an Question (as Vict ori ans called tim e - if for nothing else than to mak e meta- that Prin ce Haml et is a nob od y too, whose
SII ,\K ESl'rA~E ' S
it) he resolv ed by inventin g some of the most phors from. It is hard not to wo nder what cl aim s to inherit and succee d Shakespeare S ON N E T S
intelli gent and autono mo us wo me n in litera- Southampton or Herb ert wo uld have made of carefully ob scur es; he is a poet , a dram ati st UA'" 11l W I· ' I
ture . Sh akespeare clearl y needed desperately their fate 400 yea rs later , "lords and ow ners and dir ector, a word-sp inner, a man who has
to wor k in thi s way . A nd yet, that it was a of their faces" becom e footn otes to the work troubl e with famil y, mi stress and friend s. Th e
position that still aroused anx iety, may be of a gentle nobod y. writer has infu sed an ex traordinary man with
g uesse d . It is the ambiguous and in some an ordin ary fate: the fate of bein g thrown into
sense criminal Fa lstaff, magnifi cent as he is, f we foll ow tho se footnotes back to their a "time . .. out of joint", and "born to set it
who quotes Scripture to the effec t that " It is
no sin for a man to labour in his vocation" .
And the super lative late Sonnets 124 and 125
deb ate with great depth the who le politi cs of
state (power) and love and art, only ambi gu-
I so urce in a soc ial cont ext, and set
Shakespea re within it, it is hard not to
find him - as he is still some times found
- uniqu el y sec ret ive, possessive, locki ng
him self aw ay from his grea t publi c. But
right" . Hamlet is a traged y of fathers and sons
- to which Gertrude and aphelia add that of
mothers and dau ght ers; somewhere inside its
rigiditi es is the always und erstood pain of its
writer's ruin ed fath er and his dead son.
o usly and punningly ju stif yin g the mind that thi s is neith er a desirabl e nor a necessary Th e plays can offer glimpses eve n less
"all alon e stands hu gely politi c" . conclusion . For all his intelli gence, Shake- critica lly ex plicable than this, imp ossibl e to
It is these very dubi eties that make the poet spea re was capable of bein g mor e interested ju stify yet nouri shin g what a give n reader or
so diffi cult for the clariti es of bio graph y. If, in some thin gs than in oth ers, and the some memb er of an audience may take from the
in Sha piros ph rase, Shakespe are really did thin gs were often in his head, waiting for work. King Lear is a fiercely untheatrical 'In discussing each of Shakespeare's
"understand his age perf ectly " , then he under- daylight (Dr yden ' s superb image of the poet masterpi ece, set in a barb arou s early Brit ain . Sonnets with great clarity, range,
stood how much could be ignored or for got- was of one " moving the sleeping im ages of Its mo st wo nder ful effects are those brilli an- depth and freshness, David West's
ten, and ho w dangerou sly. One exa mple of thin gs toward s the light ": thi s may be reti- cies and compl exities of madn ess that make book is itself a modern classic.
thi s: it is sometimes suppose d that Shake- ce nce, but it is not secrecy). S hakes pea re is up the sto rm sce ne s and the scenes on Do ver This is one of our few indispensable
spea re's lack of care to do as Jon son did, in one ofthe grea tes t of those whose wor k is not cliff; and in them , the excluded and dri ven old works on Shakespeare and in itself
coll ectin g together hi s plays for publi cation, " superficial"; he fills his wor ld, like eve n the kin g begin s to kno w wh at it is to be a nobo dy.
an unfailing delight and tonic for
reveals his esse ntial cynici sm as one who lucid and soc ia l Amis, with ghos ts, spirits, Without any grain of self-co nsciousness in
the mind' Park Honan, author of
wro te for money and witho ut estee m for his strange and unsoci al bein gs whose locati on is the text, the many madn esses sudde nly come
art. But the oppos ite may be truer. Sonn ets in a "wor ld elsew here" . A man to who m the to includ e what Hen ry Jam ess dyin g writer, Shakespeare: A Life
110, 112 and 121 defin e situations in which word "escapist" wo uld have been lun atic if Dencomb e, calls sadly "the madn ess of art".
bein g " vile estee med", bein g impotentl y sub- applied, he lived between drear y Stratford Th ese ruin ed courti ers, so me of whom have £25 hb ISBN: 978-07156-3661-9
ject ed to hostil e mocker y by the un-under- and crue l Lond on , working to base that without doubt in their time "played the King",
&
standing - as in the ea rly attack by Gree ne - "wor ld elsew here" on the bo ards of his are also actor s rehearsing a play, held DUCKWORTH
could pro ve paral ysin g. Th e writer was per- theatre and the pages of his poem s. togeth er in a part-loyal, part-d esperate rela- Tel. 0207 490 7300
haps unwilling to pause and publi sh because It is an interestin g fact that Pro spero , who tion ship and kno wing ju st how far they are ~ www.ducknet.co.uk
of an ex treme nervous need to go on invent- was of cour se not born a nobod y, but merely from real sec urity . Th e miser y, the games, the
ing, to ge t it dow n on paper. Wh at applies became one, fin ally names his visions "base- songs , the outc ries, the ad-libbing, the
TLS A U G U S T 17 200 7
16 COMMENTARY
n less than a lifetim e, sun tanning, like thi s surreal piec e of window-dress ing wa s
IN NEXT WEEK'S
such, it wa s a rare event on Broadway . ...
But by far the largest group of wr iters
now wr iting in Am erica, as in England, are
committed to noth ing ex cept their own per-
documented Salem witch trial, he was able sonal experience . Thi s ex perience ma y be
TLS August 16 1957
pa ssionat ely to defend the right s of an indi- adolescent or neurotic - Truman Capote,
The Ame r ican Way vid ual's con scienc e again st the ons laughts Gore Vidal , Paul Bowles, Tennessee Wil-
of mass-n euro sis in a community. Though liam s, even Carson Mc Cull er s come to
The TLS of August 16, 1957, carried a forty- the scene was laid in sev entee nth-century mind - but we have no doubt that , at what-
fou r page symposium on "committed litera- M assachusett s, the parallel s bet ween the eve r remo ve , it is their own . As Tennessee
Summer doub le issue tur e " aro und the world. Below we print Puritan inqui sition and its mod ern counter- Williams writ es in the preface to Cat on a
extrac ts f rom an article by the lat e Harold part wer e not far to seek. Th ere it all was - Hot Tin Roof: "As a charact er in a play
Elizabeth Lowry Beaver on writers in the United States. For the autocratic pow er of the court, the arro - once said, ' we' re all of us sentenced to soli-
the f ull version go to www.the-tls.co uk gance of the examination, the vacill atin g tar y confinement inside our ow n skins.' Per-
Coetzee's alter ego witness es, the spread of guilt by ass o- sonal lyrici sm is the outc ry of pri son er to
f we look for commitment in the French ciation , and fin all y that same top syturvy- prison er from the cell in solitary wher e each
A subcontinentaljourney
P ET ER P ARK ER the people of Pakista n" , she decl ared as she
peeled off her fa lse eye lashes), but her very
I N DI A & PAK ISTAN 07 existence seeme d a cause for the optim ism
BBC2 and B BC4 the former cricke ter felt abo ut his country.
Sa ira Khan' s insistence that bec ause of
Islam' s respect for privacy, Pakis tan is "can
lmost every book about India begins live however they choose as long as they
I MIGRATIO
huge country . Tryi ng to do so on television people - from the hijras of Karachi and the
may see m an equally forlorn enterpr ise, but occ upa nts of a wo man's refuge to the Presi-
the BBC has taken the oppor tunity affor ded dent him self - and it was hard to disagree
by the sixtieth ann iversa ry of Indian Inde- with her co nclusion: "There isn 't rea lly one
CHECKPOS
pe ndence and the crea tion of Paki stan , which Paki stan , but ma ny Paki stans. And I haven 't
fa lls this wee k, to have a go . The " India & once in six wee ks enco untered the one we get
Pakis tan 07" seas on on BBC2 has been sup- to hear about on the news in Britain".
plemen ted by a numb er of exce llent docu men- Perhaps the most co mpre hensive ser ies of
OUTGOING
taries on BBC4, while an instru cti ve selec- the seaso n was Indian School, for which a
tion of older items show ing how the subco nti- film crew spe nt a yea r chart ing the prog ress
nent and its people have been viewe d and of Ind ia' s rising generation in two schools in
reported - often emharrass ingly - ca n he Pune. The Kalmad i Shamrao High Scho ol is
found online in the BBC Archive Tria l a traditional and highl y disci plined es tablish-
(www .bbc.co .uklarchi ve/trialfopen/home) . ment , whe reas the Rewachand Bhojwani
The histor y of India remains inextricably Academ y is run along less orthodox lines,
bou nd up with that of Britain , and this uneasy recallin g A. S. Neill's Sum merhill. Wh at
re lationship was brou ght viv idly back to life they have in commo n is two char ismatic
in The Lost World of the Raj by the skilful Sanjeev Bhaskar at the Wagah Border between India and Pakistan wome n head teacher s who care abo ut educa -
use of stuttering home movies and the faintly tion and society. Indian School was touchi ng
astonished but often mov ing rem inisce nces move eve ry day. Indeed , for all its ram- both directi onless and superfic ial. Things and funn y, but it also tackl ed bro ader issues.
of former me mbers of the Indi an Civ il Ser - shack le qualities, the state-ow ned sys tem is improved grea tly as the series wo re on, with In ten half-h our episodes it ma naged to
vice. We learned how juni or civil serva nts remarkably efficient, puttin g our own priva- Bhas kar finding the plac e in Delhi to which enco mpass sex, famil y life and the position
administered "huge areas the size of Sco tland tized networ k to shame . Durin g the monsoon his own famil y fled after Partiti on, then cross - of wo me n; the importance of both new tech-
and Wa les", but also how they rel axed in seas on the trac k is inspected twent y-fou r ing into Pakistan where coc kaded bord er nology and traditi onal culture; the complica -
Mu ssorie, "the most deca dent hill station of hour s a day , and a brid ge was hed away by the guards strutted like exo tic jun gle fowl in the tion s of religion , cas te and class; and eve n
them all" . In one of the hotels there a ha lf- rain is rep aired (by hand) within four days; matin g season, while porters in red , gree n or rural life. One wo uld hardl y know from most
bli nd wa iter was employe d to parade the cor- freight profits are used to subsidize ticket blue tabards ca rried goo ds to and fro. of the other progra mmes that although cities
ridors ringing a wa rning bell so that the rul- prices for the poor; and the Minister of Rail- Bhaskar' s tour of Ko lkata may have been may be booming in India so me 72 per cen t of
ing cas te could scuttle back to their ow n ways has banned plastic beakers and rei ntro- brief, but it was a goo d deal better than Cal- the popul ation still lives in villages.
roo ms before the servants brought them morn- duce d equally disposa ble but biod egrad able cutta Uncovered, in which an exc itable A nita It is perhaps inevitabl e that the anni ver sary
ing tea. Perh aps the most unusual footage clay cups, which are not only much nicer to Rani confesse d that although she had should be marked by a docum entary entitled
was that recentl y discovered by the he irs of drink cha i fro m but pro vide jo bs for 100,000 "always been fascinated by Calcutta and Ben- Partition: The day India burned. Rem arkable
the lecherou s Ma harajah of Raj pipla, who potters. Bea utifully filmed and edited , Mon- ga li culture" , she had never before both ered co lour film of the period was blend ed almost
see med to spe nd most of his time filmi ng soon Rail way was a model of its kind . to visit the place on her many trips to India. It seamless ly with dram atic recons truct ions of
cavorti ng British ladies, none of whom The most absor bing of a series showcasing showe d, not least when she referred to the riotin g and refugees, whi le a wide range of
looked cut out to be traditi onal memsahib s, six Masterpieces of the East exa mined the Maidan as "Maidan Park". Her aim was "to witnesses, from Mountbatten' s daughter to
though one in fact ended up as Maharan i. various meanings ascr ibed to Tip oos Tiger, get to the heart of a city that symbolizes an ancient Mu slim wres tler from Lahore, sup-
One of the lastin g legacies of the Brit ish in the famous musical instru ment in the form of many thin gs: coloni alism, Communism, crea - plied moving recollecti ons. The most horrify-
India is the railway sys tem, which by happy a tiger devourin g a Europe an, mad e in the tivity" , but history and politic s passed her by. ing testimon y was that provided by an elderly
coincidence was inaugur ated in Bomb ay on 1790s for the amu sement of a Muslim ruler In searc h of the "sp iritua lity" she thou ght Sikh who recalled with undiminished relish
A ugust 15, 1854 , so that Independence Day of Mysore . The tiger rema ins a potent sym bol ce ntral to Kol kata, Ran i did not visit how he had cut dow n Mu slims with his
has additional significa nce for the country 's in Ind ia, and Office Tigers was a di spiriting Kalighat, Belur Math or Dakshin eshwar, but swor d. Whether in the subcontinent or the
ra ilway workers whose lives were foll owed but often fun ny fly-on-th e-wall docum entary an astro loge r who used a laptop . One gave Balk ans or in Rwanda, interneci ne vio lence,
in Monsoon Railway . The first train should series foll owin g the fortun es of an Amer ica n- her cre dit for not once mentionin g Mo ther in which neighb our turns aga inst neighb our ,
have stea med out of the Imperial capital, ow ned co mpa ny that provi des wor ldw ide Teresa, but the film "uncovered" very little is often hard to exp lain, but this sombre
Ca lcutta, but the ship carry ing it from Eng - " professiona l suppo rt se rv ices" round the and wo uld hardly have passed muster as a prog ramme did its best. The commentary
land so mehow missed India altoget her and clock from Chennai. The rap id rise of report for Blue Peter. was occasionally portent ous - "As a British
sailed on to Au stralia, while its carr iages modern Indi a was also explored in India with Saira Khan 's Pakistani Adventure was alto- barri ster draws a line on a map , a once pea ce -
were lost when another ship sa nk in the Bay Sanjeev Bhaskar. Starti ng his j ourn ey round gether superior. Know n hith ert o as an abra- ful land impl odes" - but the narra tive was
of Bengal. After this inauspicious sta rt, the the country in Mumbai, the gen ial actor and sive contestant on the entre preneurial realit y clear and eve n-handed. Partiti on was of
ra ilways went on to become a vital part of comedian took par t in a soap opera watched TV show The Apprentice, Khan proved a sen- course the tragic price pa id for freedom, but
Indian life. There are some 7,000 stations, by some 200 million viewe rs, swa nned sible, sensitive and genuinely adven turo us The Lost World of the Raj includ ed an inter-
including Kharagpur Jun ction in Wes t Ben- around on the private yac ht of the milli onaire guide to a country that has been demonized view with two wome n who as twel ve-year-
ga l, which has the longest rail way platfo rm in who ow ns the Raym ond clothin g compa ny, since the star t of the "war on terro r". She olds had been imprisoned for taking part in
the world, stretching more than a kilo metre. and help ed ju dge a beauty competition. To be began in Karac hi, where a drag queen ca lled the 1942 Quit Indi a ca mpaign. Goo d as Parti-
Indian Railways are the biggest civil employ- fair, Bhaskar did also investigate recy cl ing Beg um Nawaz ish Ali hosts a highl y success - tion was, it made one regret that no one had
ers in the wor ld, providin g housi ng, health- initiati ves re minisce nt of Our Mutual Friend ful chat show . It was uncl ear whether Ali thou ght to ce lebrate Independence by making
ca re and other benefit s for their wor kers, and showe d - very briefl y - for cibl e slum really intended to follow Imran Khan into a rather more positive docum entary about
while keepin g II million passenger s on the clearance, but his firs t prog ramme seeme d politics ("O nly I have the power to liberate tho se who fought and cam pa igned for it.
If you hate, will you survive? for Danaid , who beautifully, erotica lly,
reac hes out for revivif yin g water. (The sculp-
ture wo uld later inform perh aps the grea tes t
of all Sca ndinav ian plays about arti sts,
he "morality debate" that swept Scandi- PA UL BI NDI N G Ibsens When We Dead A waken. ) Al so, by
--------------------------~--------------------------
ictorian stage melodrama has been an Thea tre, and stage d only three months after and Roch ester is "father to the neighbour-
:~
7 '\J '!!!!!!2~~Y~!~
ment s that wo uld appea l most to those payin g rejected, on the gro unds that all decent Eyre that includes renditions of a song ca lled
admission. The 1848 ve rsion, l ane Eyre. or, women had a man to prot ect them , Charlotte "I' ll Wear the Trouser s, Oh " , and another
TWICKENHAM TW1 4EG , ENGLAND
www. ath enapre ss.com
The Secrets of Thornfi eld Manor, was by Birch-Pfeiffer ' s adaptation had con centrated that includes the line " Hark! Sir Rowland
e-mai l: in fo@ athenap res s .com John Courtney , hou se author for the Surrey its interest in men ' s protection of wom en, him self - I kno w hi s proud step" .
TLS A U G US T 17 20 0 7
19
TLS A UG US T 17 200 7
20 FICTION
to Jacqu es Chirac. The perso nal and the ground - and marries her when she fall s
politic al are meant to inform and enrich each
oth er in a two-way metaphor.
The life of the narrator , Paul Blick , is un-
pregnant. His fath er-in-l aw find s him a job as
a j ourn alist on the sports magazine he ow ns,
while hi s wife, a produ ct of the pro-bu siness
In a deep dark wood
rem arkable, reflectin g what Duboi s evidently Gisca rd d' Estaing era, succee ds her father at LU CY DALL AS related in the feveri sh, pomp ous tones of
regards as a rotten time. The book opens with the head of the famil y firm . Pa ul becom es a adolesce nce, is also streaked throu gh with
the death of his elder broth er in 1958 , ju st as house-hu sband , lookin g after their two child- Pi e r r e P e j u guilt and bad memories; his father, a Resist-
French voters approve the constitution of the ren. In the 1980 s, his famil y life deteriora tes . ance fighter, was murdered when he was
Fifth Republic . The rest of his childhood is He sees less and less of hi s workaho lic wife C LARA 'S TA L E twelve, and the mystery has never been
spent in joyless comfort, overshadowed by a and school-age children. He takes up photo- Translated by Euan Cameron solved. He leaves Kehl stein with a set of
reactionary old grandmother who is meant to graphy and has an affair with a neighb our. 314pp. Harvill Seeker.£12.99. symbols that will haunt him throu ghout his
embody the strictures of Gaullist France. But the spirit of those individualistic times 978 184655007 2 life: "a forest path runnin g through spruce and
The gra ndmother does not survive the catches up with Paul. "During the eighties, fir trees that leads to a vast clearing flooded
swinging I960s, which happil y coincide with you had to be dead not to have ambiti on. he origin al title of Pierre Peju' s nove l, with light , and a small lake on which the fleet-
Paul' s sex ual aw akening. Then , in his home
town of To ulouse, he revels in the spirit of
1968. "What was at stake that May" , he
Money had the aggress ive, truly noxious
smell of toilet deodorant." He stumbles into
success with two book s of glossy photo-
T Le Rire de l 'ogre, suits this broodin g
medit ation on evil, memory and
surviva l much better than Clam's Tale.
ing reflection of cloud s shimmers". Paul goes
back to Pari s to be an art student, tears up the
pavin g stones in 196 8 for something to do,
writes, "was nothin g more or less than the graphs, makes piles of money and hates him- It opens with a dark littl e fable about war, and eve ntually sets out to be a sculptor, work-
simultaneo us departure of milli ons of men self for it: " I had und ergon e all the phases of children and an ogre, which ends with Death ing in stone and steel, creatin g images of
and wo men towards a new planet, another indoctrination into middl e-class citizenship." and the Devil makin g an appearance. After sadness , pain , crue lty , or solitude . Clara
world, where art, education, sex, music, and He makes a private politic al gesture by turn- this prologue, the novel prop er begins as Paul crosses his path from time to time, brin ging
polit ics would be free of the narrow-minded ing do wn the offer by President Mitt errand to travels to the Ty rol in 1963 to stay with his with her an eleme nt of anxious surprise ; she
norm s and codes forged in the rigors of the make him his official photographer. penfriend. Paul is a mood y young ma n, becomes a war photographer , taking pictur es
post-war period " . The j ourn ey is short-lived: The 1990s see Paul sink deeper into cyni- con stantl y makin g dar k, violent sketches of combatants and tryin g to reac h the skull
within the next few yea rs, President Georges cism. He is disgusted by the sca ndals of the rather than mi xing with the hearty, happ y beneath the skin. Th rou gh Clara, Paul meets
Pompid ou "returned the country to the fold late Mitt err and years - the graft, the HIV- young people of the village of Kehl stein. On Jeanne, a nurse, and, somew hat improbably,
and its citizenry to work" . Paul takes a job in contaminated blood supplies, the phon e taps, a trip to a nearb y lake, he wan ders into a dark they end up married with two children in the
a secondary school, a "little labor camp " , the sec ret famil y. The "monarchica l Republic for est and discovers a huge vase of red roses French countrysid e. He strugg les to accept
attach ed to a tree, a sight which fills him with the happin ess within his grasp and, in the
a sense of evil and for ebodin g. Ove r the final chapter, when he is a very old man , he
next few chapt ers, Paul recount s hi s time acknow ledges that his inabilit y to do so has
missed an issue?
To order past copies please call 020 7 740 02 17, email tls @ocsmedia.net or write to:
alarmin g. Interspersed with Paul' s adolesce nt
adventures are wa r stories from twenty
years befo re, involv ing two natives of
Kehlstein: Lafontaine, the town doct or, who
beyond their sym bolic meaning. The imagery
itself is simp le - the lake at Kehl stein is called
the Black Lake, Clara is pale with black hair
and wea rs only black , whereas Jeanne is rosy
turn s out to be Clara 's fath er, and Moritz, the and blond e. There tends to be a stor m, or
TLS Back Issues, 1-11 Galleywall Road, London , SE l6 3PB, enclos ing a cheque made
payabl e to oes World w ide . Credit/ debi t card pay me nts are also acce pted. B ack issues cos t so n of the sawm ill o wn er. These men have to at least rain, w hen any thing mom entou s is
£3.5 0 per copy w ithin the UK and £5. 00 overseas (please note that not all issues are available). com e to term s with the hor ror of the wa r as happening. It is difficult to balance a convin-
Please state the date of eac h iss ue required. they exper ienced it, in particul ar with one cing narrati ve with this sort of pictu re-book
A n index of all past issue s is avai lable at www. ocs rnedia. ner/tls episode involving the murder of a group of metaphor, and in the end the novel collapses
Jewish children. Morit z leads a boy and a under the stra in. Mich el Tourni er' s Le Roi des
girl to their death , much as the og re in the aulnes perform s the same trick magnific entl y,
prol ogue does; his breakdo wn many years and would see m to be a strong influence, but
later echoes the sa me episode and explains Tourni er can journ ey much furth er into the
the roses in the forest. realm of fable without eve r losin g his grip
These war chapters are told in flat third- on the story at hand. The account of Paul' s
person narration which brings the despa ir of later life does not match up to the power
Lafont aine and Moritz vividly to life; we and intensity conj ured up in the beginnin g of
wonder how they can live with the taint and Clara 's Tale; the ogres of history are far more
knowledge of such evil. Paul' s aw akening, terrifying than those in fables.
TL S A UG UST 17 200 7
FICTION 21
his life. On the first of these, a second-hand T HE G RA VED IGGE R 'S D A U GHT ER emotional land scape amid the factory town s D a vid Flu sf ed er
radio, he listen s to the defeat of his enemies 582pp. Fourth Estate. £ 18.99. and small cities, the wa terfa lls, glittering
the Nazis. When it seems the fight aga inst 978 000725845 1 lakes and wild deciduous for ests. More than T HE P A G A N H OU SE
Am erican xeno phobes and anti-Semites any them e, it is this dark setting that marks 4 10pp. Fourth Estate. £ 14.99.
cann ot be won, he uses the second extrav a- (later Ga llagher), she becom es a perk y inno- her abund ant output, makin g a continu ous 978 0 00 724962 6
gance, a Remin gton doubl e-barrelled cent , a young lady "of the utm ost propri ety in narr ati ve of the dozen s of novels, novellas
shotgun, to kill a visitor to the cem etery, her dress as in her mann er". Men - and and short stories . She grew up, at the tail end he Pagan House tells two stor ies : one
then his ow n wife, and finall y him self.
"Hide your wea kness, Rebecca" , he told his
daughter , and for the res t of her life she
wome n - ador e her. The luxuriou s life she
attains allows her son to pur sue a career as a
piani st, fulfilling a musical talent inherit ed
of the Depr ession , on a sma ll farm in Lock-
port , NY. Despit e quickl y, conclusively
launching herself into the rarefied world of
T that of Edgar Pagan, a twel ve-year-old
Briti sh boy visiting his estranged
father in upstate New York ; and the other of a
adheres to his advice: neith er of her two from the Ge rma n gra ndmother he will never aca dem ia, she has never strayed far from nineteenth-century religiou s cult with which
husband s find s out that she is Jewish. In her kno w. the Great Lakes: when she and her husband , George Pagan, one of Edgar's ances tors, was
mind they are always referred to by their And so the grea t meltin g pot prevails. To Raymond Smith, the Editor of the Ontario invol ved . In the present day, Edgar, who
last nam es, "T ignor" and "Gallagher", as if be a true Am eri can, Oat es impli es, is to be an Review, move d to Ca nada durin g the find s himse lf in the middl e of a famil y squab-
a recit ation of those imp ersonal , acceptably actor. She specializes in equivoca l moralit y: Vietnam wa r, they lived in Wind sor, ju st a ble ove r his grandmother's hou se, attem pts to
Ge ntile words - her nam e now - soo thes her. her vict ims are rarely innoc ent , and her few minut es across the bord er fro m Detroit. get to know his shiftless father and strugg les
Joyce Carol Oates, that prolifi c, intense descriptions of eve n the vilest villains pro- Th e strong winds off these lakes remind with his sex dri ve. In the past, 150 yea rs
ob server of Am eric an life, di scovered the voke empathy. In the recent novella Rape: the grave digge r's daughter of what she earlier, George Pagan falls under the spell of
truth about her ow n ances tors in middl e age, A love story , a righteou s polic em an would like to for get: "There we re these a messianic Christian leader who preach es a
after her grandmother's death in 1987: they murder s the perp etrator s of a ga ng rape. You wayward breezes, some times .. .. Whipping doctrin e of " Biblical Co mmunism" and insti-
were Germ an Jews who emigrated to Am er- Must Remember This details a passion ate wind of the kind she' d grow n up with, rush- tutes free love, poly gamy and publi c nudit y.
ica to esca pe per secution . The Gravedigger's love affair between a teen age girl and her ing at the old stone cott age from the vas tness The twent y-fir st-centu ry sce nes are full of
Daughter is not Oatess first exploration of uncl e. A seve rely battered child turn s on her of Lake Ont ario. A crue l suffocating wind". unexpect ed twists: a detour into the world of
Jewishness - which she not ably broached in younger sister in The Rise of Life on Earth. Th e charac ters buffeted by it appea r equally sadomaso chistic spanking; Edga r's reappear-
the novel The Tattooed Girl - but it is clearl y "Tragedy", Oates wrot e in Conversa tions auth enti c, brou ght to life in tight , seamless ance as a much-pi erced dropout kno wn as
intended to be a heartfelt hom age to the (2006 ), "always uph old s the human spirit prose - Oates only falters slig htly with the "Mental Eddie" ; and the uncon vincing fram-
strugg les of her grandmother and tho se who because it is an exploration of hum an natur e Dick ensian excess of Rebecca' s squalid, ing device revealed on almos t the last page.
came befor e. It tell s a story of shifting identi- in term s of its streng ths. One simply cannot graveyard-bound childhood . She certainly The tone and overall shape of the novel do
ties, of a wo man who buries herself in order kno w strengths unless suffering, misfortun e, succee ds in evo king the peril ous compl exity not easily withsta nd these diversion s, which
to survive. Rebecca Schwart is the scruffy, and violence are exp lored quit e frankl y by of complete cultural integration , the fault y sit uncomfort ably with the unshowy histori-
abused child of rev iled small-tow n outc asts. the writer." Rebecc a, the newly orp haned found ation of American life. As Hazel Jon es cal back story , though when David Flusfeder
Rebecc a Tignor, the subdued wife of an itiner- gravedigger's daught er, fall s in love with her would have it, "Nowhere is where we are does brin g the two eras togeth er, it is with a
ant bu sinessman , toil s in a factor y to save a first hu sband when he beat s up an unwant ed from , mister. But somew here is where we pleasin g neatn ess. Narrative voice is also
few doll ars for the futur e. As Hazel Jones suitor of hers. In Tignor she sees a strong are going". probl emati c. The novel is in the third per son ,
thou gh from Edga r's point of view, yet the
--------------------~,-------------------- author makes no effo rt to adapt the voice to
witness": "Will the witness please state his Edgar's age : the twelve-year-old spec ulates
Good for a laugh name". "Mickey Mou se." " Please tell the
court your occupation." "Animated rodent."
that his moth er is ruin g her "failures as a
wo man and a wife" , and makes an unlik ely
The piece tracks in deadpan court-transcript reference to "the wailing madwom an beatin g
othing of Wood y Alien's very public MARK KAMIN E on the locked attic door". In other ways ,
N
style the exchanges between animated rodent
private strugg les surfaces in Mere and high-po wered attorney . Simply namin g Flusfeder keenl y recreates the mind of a teen-
Anarchy , a light, thin collection of W o od y Ali en those prese nt at a party "at the home of age boy in sce nes of ma sturb ation , including
stories, some of which were first publi shed in Jeffrey Katzenberg" has a gleeful absurdity. one which takes plac e on an aircraft plummet-
the New Yorker. Instead, Alien sticks to the M E RE ANA RC HY Counse l: " You were present ?". Witn ess: ing toward s the sea.
tried and often trite formul as of the standard 160 pp. Ebury Press. £ 12.99. " Yes. Myself, To m Cruise, To m Hanks, Jack The loving rel ationship between Edg ar and
Am erican humour piece, includin g funny 978 0 09 192 02 1 0 his mother is we ll drawn , as is the less loving
Nicholso n. I believe Sea n Penn, Wile E.
names (Dr Diverticulin sky, April Fleshpot) Coyote, the Road Runn er" . In seve n pages, one between Edgar's yo unge r broth er and his
and wife jok es ("Her husband died recently, high- art cont ent into a slapstick wor ld. "Thus Mick ey' s testimony touch es on greed, sex , father. And Flu sfeder, an American based in
a massive heart attack, but I wa rned him - Ate Za rathustra" featur es selections from ambition and substance -abuse. You cou ldn 't Britain, is goo d on the small differenc es
don 't look directl y at her when she steps out the newly discovered Friedrich Nietzsche's ask for a better gloss on life in Hollywood . between the two countries : a recurring joke
of the shower"). Runyonesque dialogue (" I Diet Book. "Sing, You Sach er Tort es" relays Other success ful pieces includ e one on has his Am erican socce r coach taking it for
guess I shouldn' t have opened my big yap") a Bro adway produc er' s pitch to an investor home renovation in Manhatt an that gets into granted that the untalent ed Edga r is a " British
and lots of showbiz settings keep the read er for a musical set in Vienn a whose opening gear when its narrator notic es that Dante virtuoso of the sport" .
from anything approaching the personal. numb er "is Waiter Gropius, Mies van der "had left out any spec ial menti on of cont rac- Flusfeder says The Pagan House is about
The piece s riff on current events, oft en on Rohe, and AdolfI.oos singing ' Form Follows tors" in his vision of hell. Delay and di saster s "the pro ce ss of hecom ing" , and make s mu ch
stories from the New York Times. A news Func tion"'. The ju xtaposition of weighty follo w, driving the homeo wners to insanit y of the fact that his pro tago nist - whose nam e
item about a two-pound truffl e so ld at a names and silly situations is good for a laugh: and insolvency before thin gs return neatly to is in fact Edwa rd - has rechristened him self.
Lond on auction for $ 110,000 prefaces a in the invocati on of famous writers at the Dante' s Inf erno. All the stories employ a Ele cta, the girl he ha s a cru sh on, and her
detecti ve tale in the style of The Maltese opening of the dusty Hollywood sell-out winkingly eleva ted dict ion - the contrac tor is Native Am eric an famil y, have rein vent ed
Falcon , complete with a Sidney Greenstreet story "This Nib For Hire" , "Flanders see n "wolfing back his matutin al porti on of them sel ves as Italians and opened a pi zza
character and an ending that quot es Casa- Mealworm " sounds funni er follo win g hard sturgeo n" - and shopwo rn slang, good for bu siness, while Geor ge Pagan and his wife
blanca. In "Tandoori Ransom", the tale of on Dostoevsky, Fa ulkner and Fitzgerald. a smile here and there and for a breezy, tran sform their lives to foll ow the teachings
the failed kidn appin g of an actor 's stand-in, The funni est piece in Mere An archy relies famili ar-seeming read, as Ali en tackl es New of their pastor. But non e of thi s is explore d,
the j umping-off point is a Times exce rpt on some awareness of the eve nts surrounding Age gurus, pri vate-school snobbery, and and it is only when Edga r return s, ten yea rs
about the "legendary outl aw Vee rappa n" , the hirin g and firin g of Michael Ovitz by the tell- all memoirs. Everything see ms grist to later , in his "Mental Eddie" guise, that
but the j okes are tasteless rather than funn y. Wa It Disney Co mpany. "Surprise Rock s Wood y Allen' s comic mill - high art, phil oso- David Flusfeder addresses the ways in which
Alien ' s signature addition to the comic set Disney Tri al" is a short play in which a phy, eve n string theor y in the aptly titled some one's ch aracter can both cha nge and
piece is the injection of an intellectu al or Disney atto rney questions "an unexpect ed "Strung O ut". Onl y Alien himself is abse nt. stay the same over the course of a life.
TL S A U G U S T 17 200 7
22 ESSAYS
Read for freedom hum an bein gs, expos ing the irrationalit y and
ev il which, Vargas Llosa believes, lurk in all
of us.
The fullest literary essay in this volume ,
Prolific noveli st, playwri ght , critic C Li VE GRI F FI N man lays bare the trick s of his trade. He is par- "Literature and Life" , is an impassion ed plea
TL S A U G U S T 17 200 7
BIOGRAPHY & F I L M 23
TL S AUGUST 17 2 0 0 7
24 BIOGRAPHY & CULTURAL STUDIES
James knew, is the probl em of the novel ; it is a his father' s entreprene urial temp eram ent" ; of his research, and so spends much tim e pre- wo uldn' t show them " . As Stormy Weather
bigger probl em for mod ern bio graph y, but it is "Disney was becomin g a filmm aker and entre- senting the wo nde rful world of acco unting. was one of the few film s classical Holl ywood
not solved by flat claim s of biographic al deter- preneur on the Elias Disney model" , and so O ne suspects that his book will appea l made with an all-bl ack cast, it' s diffi cult to
mini sm . Barrier and Gabler eac h offers his on. Give n that Elias Disney worked at menial imm en sely to tho se who read biographi es of ima gin e what thi s way might have been.
own key to all Disney mythol ogies; predicta- labour for mo st of his life and see ms to have self-made milli onaires for business tip s: bio- Barri er and Ga bler have don e their
bly, both are vag uely Oedip al. For Gabler , been something of a serial failur e, it is hard to graphy as se lf-help. Gabler also has odd research ; Barri er illuminates anim ation;
Disney' s qu asi-Dic kensian childhood, with a see thi s as particularly persuasive. lap ses: it is surp rising to read that Igor while Gabler clarifi es studio histor y. Both
violent-tempered fath er who put his children Mor eover, Di sney was an entreprene ur by Stravin sky dislik ed Disney' s use of The Rit e have help ed wide n the cultura l port rait of the
to work, turned him into an adult who craved default ; he created businesses so he could of Spring in Fantasia because he had com- man who m the histori an T. Jack son Lear s
toys, utopia and, above all, control. Thi s reduc- indul ge hi s perfecti oni sm w ithout constra int. posed it as "a celebra tion of A merican Indian accura te ly summed up as the "central figur e
tive idea, tirelessly repeated, ex plains every - An animation ex pert, Barrier isn 't really inter- rituals" : Str avin sky' s subtitle is " Pictures in the corp orat e reclamation of the nation al
thin g from Snow White and the Seven Dwarf ' , ested in entrep rene ursh ip; the wor d see ms to fro m Pagan Ru ssia" . myth olo gy, the redefinition of the Am erican
which, we are infor med , mirror ed Disney' s substitute for psy cho log ica l insight. It is Simil arl y, in discu ssin g the probl em s Way of Life from a vag ue populism to an
psych o-developmental needs (fantasies of Gabler who is actua lly fascinated by the stu- ca used by the depiction s of Africa n Ameri- equally murk y noti on of free enterprise", but
findin g a surrogate famil y), to Disneyland , dio' s commer cial transacti on s - alth ough Dis- ca ns in Song of the Sou th, Ga bler writes that neith er has quit e don e ju stic e to thi s compli-
which Gabler incongruou sly likens to the ney him self found them a distracting irrit ant , Disney learn ed a lesson from the 1946 film cated man nor to his Go rdian legac y. It may
"C ity on a Hill of Purit an dreams". Barri er' s breezil y delegatin g them to his brother Roy Stormy Weath er, which, he asse rts, "had to we ll take a bio graph er who can match Di s-
invariable sol ution is that Disney was his as cons igliere. Lik e so man y author ized biog- be mad e in such a way that sce nes featuring ney' s own inventi veness and scope to offer a
father ' s son: "Disney had clearly inherited raph ers, Gabler see ms unable to exclude any blacks co uld be cut or southern ex hibitors definitive port rait of thi s acc ide nta l ge nius.
--------------------------~.--------------------------
n 1966 , Ehrhard Bahr stopped his VW the crisis that torm ent ed the later emigres .
TL S A U G U S T 17 200 7
PSYCHOLOGY & MEDICINE 25
J anin e Burk e
falcon-headed son of Isis and Osiri s), was
one of his favourite pieces.
His favourite above all in the coll ection
man in his
ing of sma ll antiquities other than to describ e
him self as an archaeologist of the mind . He
described his j ob as unco vering what had
been long buried. The photo graph of him
T HE G O D S OF FRE UD
Sigmund Freud's art co llec tion
455pp . Knopf Australia. Aus$49.95.
was a small bronz e statue of Ath ena , a
Rom an cop y of a Greek bronz e from the
fifth century. "She is perfect" , he told H. D.,
"only she has lost her spear." The Athena
humour
at his desk crowd ed with sma ll statuary, jars 978 17 405 1375 3 now occupies the centr al plac e on the desk in W. F . BYNUM
and carvings is almost as well kno wn as that his museum .
of his iconic couch. executed at so me danger to Engleman, him- Burke tell s well the fascin atin g stor y of No ga Arikha
Janin e Burke, an Au strali an writ er and spe- self a Jew, but these photo graph s survive to Freud's flight from Vienna in 1938, with
ci alist in art histor y, has written a book that give later generations an idea of what Freud ' s many of his famil y, plu s his doctor and his PA SSIO N S A ND T E M P E R S
needed to be written. She det ails the histo ry con sultin g room was like. doct or' s famil y, organized by Dr Ernes t A history of the humours
and significa nce of the 2,000 piece s Freud Burke' s important book could have done Jones in London and Prince ss Marie Bona- 400p p. HarperCollin s. US $27.95.
with less biogr aphic al stuffing. Freud ' s child- 9780 06 073 1168
assembl ed durin g dec ades of coll ectin g. part e in Pari s. She describ es in great detail
Man y of them are on view today at the Fre ud hood in Mora via, the famil y' s move to imp e- the excruciating negoti ation s with the Nazis,
Mu seum at 20 Maresfield Garden s in Hamp- rial Vienna (a city he alwa ys claim ed to who dem anded an assess me nt of taxable he sages have long told us that we
stead, where hi s Vienn ese consultin g room
and study have been reassembl ed almost as
they were when Freud fled Vienna in Jun e
hate), his court ship of Martha Berna ys, have
all been recorded in the man y fine bio gra-
phies of Freud. Mo st inter esting are the
assets before anyone could leave . Luckil y
for Freud , the man ass igned to evaluate his
coll ection for a declaration of "no impedi-
T got philo soph y, logic , science, dram a,
epic poetry and the ideal of beauty
from the Greek s. When democracy became a
1938. According to Burke, the co verin g of detail s of the coll ection . Freud began coll ect- ment " was Han s von Demel, curator of the positi ve word, they added that to the list.
the famou s couch is an Irani an Qashqai rug, ing at the same time that he was writing Kunsthistori sch es Mu seum and a personal They often for get the humours, but few
wove n in warm tones of madd er red and The Interpretation of Dreams, in the period friend. Demel gro ssly under valued the ancient Gree k concepts have had such
ochre into an intric ate geometric design follo wing his father ' s death in 1896, an event coll ection at 500 Reich smark s, far below the pervasive staying pow er in Western thought.
depicting a garden in paradi se. Freud bought that left him feelin g uprooted. As a child he tax limit for refug ees, thu s enabling Freud to Noga Arikha clearly agrees, and has written
it in 1891 at an exhibition at the imp erial had been an arde nt hero- wor shipp er of take it to London with him . a virtua l histor y of medicine via the humours
Au strian Trad e Mu seum. figur es ranging from Alexand er the Great to Further to cu shion the blow of forc ed exile, and their ramification s. Man y of the big
In his Vienn ese con sultin g room at Berg- names, from Hippocrates through Vesaliu s
gasse 19, sea ted behind his patients, listening and Harvey to Pasteur and beyond, are
to their free associati ons, his eyes were free represent ed in Passions and Temp ers without
to wander. " I must alwa ys have an object to Arikh a stray ing too far from her brief.
love" , he told Jung befo re their break in The hum our s them selves are famili ar even
1912 . Mo st of the object s Freud coll ect ed toda y: blood, yellow bile , black bile and
are not of grea t value in them sel ves except phlegm . They make their appeara nce in some
to histori ans of cla ssical art. What Burke of the Hippocratic writings, a coll ection elab-
reveals is Freud 's absolut e compulsion to orat ed by various hand s over a coupl e of
acquire ancient Greek , Rom an and Egy ptian centuri es from the late fifth century BC.
bits and pie ces; he particul arly trea sured rep- They entered main stream Western thought
resent ation s of the Sphin x. He had no use for via Galen (l 29- c2 10), who saw him self as
modern art, or even the Impr essioni sts. completing and ex tending Hippocratic medi-
His therapy was sho pping for his trea sures. cin e. The hum our s were the central consti-
No trip - es pecially to his belo ved Rome - tuent s of a pow erful explanatory sys tem of
was complete without the purchase of a small health , disease and much else besides. They
anci ent troph y. In New York in 1909, while were easily related to the intimate bodil y
making his onl y Am erican journey, he not change s in acute di sease, wherein pati ent s
onl y visited the Metropolitan Mu seum' s col- sweat, vomit, turn yellow, get flushed or
lection of Greci an vases but we nt shopping pal e, and cou gh up blood or phlegm. These
at Tiffany' s and bought a j ade bowl and a humours see med much more compl ex than
bronz e bust of Buddha. As the years we nt by, Sigmund Freud's desk, in the Freud Museum, London the bodil y fluid s that could be observed at the
he could hardl y rise from his desk for the bedsid e. They wer e theoretic al entities,
pre ss of objects and he rearrang ed them end- Napoleon. As an adult , as Burk e sees it, he Freud's Vienn ese curator, Paul a Fischl, who exactl y analogous to the four elem ent s of
lessly. Eve n whe n he left Vienn a for his need ed to surround him self with images of had memorized the ord er of the main works Greek natural philo soph y (air , earth , fire and
summer homes, he would take the bulk of his masculin e greatness to inspire and encourage on Freud 's desk in Vienn a, arranged them water) to which they possessed symmetry.
coll ection with him. him. Overall, Burk e says, the collection ju st as they had been - a welcome sight to For instanc e, blood, like air, was hot and
But what effect did the vas t assembl y of appea rs to embody the theori es he was devel- greet the ailing Freud when he walked into moi st; phlegm, like water, was cold and
tin y excav ated object s have on patient s as oping : an investig ation and celebration of the his Mare sfield Garden s home from their first moist. The actual blood shed in bloodl ettin g
they were led pa st, Freud explaining one or past, a mem ento of real and imagined jour- temporary home on Elsworth y Road. (There or after a wound was not the pure humour;
two on the way to the couch ? One explana- neys, and a catalogue of desires. Freud had given very short shrift to Salvador rather, bodie s we re mixture s, as were all the
tion came from the writer and poet Hild a Freud ' s choic e of statues and carvin gs also Dalf, who visited him , con siderin g him a materi al thing s that surround us. We live in a
Doolirrle, " H.O.", who was anal ysed hy e xpresses hi s ambi val ence to wards w ome n: fath er figur e. Freud coldl y told him that messy world.
Freud in Vienn a in 1933. "I had not expected goddesses to be wors hipped but kept passive; Surre alist paintin g showed only the con- These theor etic al con sideration s, espe-
to find a museum , a templ e" , she wrote later , in sum, his attitud e toward s his adored scious, while in the classical art he loved, he ciall y as appli ed to medicine, were frequently
sugges ting that Freud showe d the coll ection moth er Amalia and his wife Martha. In The could find the subconscious. Dalf took lost on later doctors, who identified the
as a way of inducing his patient s to rela x. On Interpr etation of Dreams he describ es one of Freud's words - perhap s corr ectl y - as the bedside humours as the rarefied substances
her first visit, she look ed so intently he gave his own dream s at the age of seven or eight in death-knell for Surr eali sm .) The house at of Hippocratic and Galenic writings. The
an instant interpretati on - that she preferred which his sleeping mother was carri ed into a Maresfield Garden s was , Freud felt , the humours were also con stituti ve of the two
"the dead shreds of antiquity to hi s livin g room and laid on a bed by peopl e with bird nice st he had ever had , and his last month s concepts of Arikh a' s main title: pa ssion s
presenc e" . When Freud was about to leave beaks. He awok e in tears and screa ming, were spent on a swing loung e in the garde n, and temp erament s. On e of the powerful
Vienna in 1938, a friend and coll eague reco gnizing the beaked figur es as gods with where he could see his belo ved possession s. stre ngths of Gr eek humoralism was its inte-
enli sted Edmund Enge lman, a phot ograph er, falcon s' head s that he had see n on an anci ent When he died , in September 1939, his ashes grated vision of bodil y funct ion s, ment al
to go to Bergga sse 19 and phot ograph the Egy ptian funer ary relief illu strated in the were placed in a red-fi gur ed Greek urn , from as well as physical , states of health as well
collection along with the con sultin g room famil y Bible. Later , a small Egyptian bronz e, around the fourth century BC, given to him as tho se of disease. Historic al reading s of
and Freud sea ted at his desk. The proj ect was "Is is Suckling the Infant Horu s" (Horu s the by Princ ess Marie Bon aparte. the relation ship between bod y and mind
TLS A U G US T 17 200 7
26 MEDICINE & RELIGION
TL S AUGUST 17 2 0 0 7
R ELI G I O N 27
them and the evi ls that Dawkin s deno unces. But our ow n ex istence, Mc Grath retorts,
" What is reall y perni ciou s" , Dawkin s says, shows that so mething very improbable can
" is the practi ce of teachin g children that faith happ en. Th e issue is not whether God is prob -
itself is a virtue . Fa ith is an ev il preci sely able, but whether he is actual.
because it req uires no ju stific ation and Thi s, in my own view , is a question to
broo ks no argume nt ... . Su icid e bo mber s do which no one has give n a con vincing answe r,
what they do bec ause they really beli eve and the appropri ate reaction is one of ag nosti-
what they were taught in their reli giou s cis m. But I do not ag ree with Dawkin s that
schools: that duty to God exceeds all other pri- all tho se who beli eve in God are unreason-
or ities, and that ma rty rdom in his service will able in so do ing. Tho se who claim to know
be reward ed in the gar de ns of Paradi se." that there is a Go d are mak ing a claim that is
Mc Grath obj ects to Dawki ns' s acco unt of not ju stifed ; but so too are those who claim to
faith . " It is not a Christian defini tion of faith , know there is no God. But a beli ef in God ,
but one that Da wkin s has invent ed to suit his fallin g short of certainty, is not open to the
ow n purposes." It is, ind eed , too much to say same obj ection . A beli ef may be reason able,
that faith requir es no ju stifi cati on : many reli - thou gh fal se, if held with the appropriate
gious peop le offer arg uments not ju st for degr ee of caution. As Stephen Jay Gou ld
belief in God but for their partiuclar creed . It po inted out, if Dar wini sm is incompatib le
is also excessive to say that faith bro ok s no "The Creation of th e Anima ls" (c 1550) by Ti ntoretto with religiou s belief, then half the world's sci-
arg ument, if that mean s that the faithfu l are entists are stupid.
unwillin g to offer respon ses to crit ici sm. cogenc y that would rationally ju stify the commitment invol ved in faith, rather than its The Dawkins Delusion r, sadly, shares
Noneth eless, I think that Dawk ins is co rrec t irrevoc able comm itment of faith . Again, no religi ous obje ct, that is rea lly obj ection able. some of the vices of The God Delusion, and
to den y that faith is a virtue, for the follo win g argument will make a true believer give up Not all fanat ici sm is reli giou s fanatic ism , as is not free fro m over-h asty argument and
reason . his faith , and thi s is some thing that he or she the histor y of Naz ism and Stalinism makes rhetorical padding. But it is hard to di ssent
Th e com mon chara cter istic of faith in mu st be resol ved on in ad vanc e of hearin g abundantly clear. from Ali ster McGrath ' s conclusion that
almost all reli giou s tradit ion s is its irrevoca- any argume nt. McGrath is at his mo st con vincin g when Rich ard Dawkins has no mand ate to spea k
bility. A faith that is held tentative ly is no Mc Grath will no doubt di sown such a he is on Da wk ins' s hom e patch . He deals for the scientific community, and that his
true faith . It mu st be held with the same view of faith. But onc e aga in, Dawkin s' s bri skly and effec tive ly with the principal recent cru sade has don e more harm to
degree of certa inty as kno wled ge. In some tra- account is clo ser to traditi on al Christianity argum ent offere d in The God Delusion science than it has to reli gion . Mo st peop le
ditions the irrevoc ability offaith is reinforced than McGrath' s. Th e idea that faith is an irrev- again st the ex istence of God. Dawkins points have a grea ter intell ectual and emotional
by the impo siti on of the death penalt y for ocable commitment, which goes far beyond out the antecede nt impro bability of the exi st- investment in religi on than in science , and if
apos tasy, which is the abandonment of faith. any ev ide nce that cou ld be offered in its sup- ence of beings as comp lex as hum an s. Belief they are once con vinc ed that they have to
Now the kind s of arg uments that be lievers port , is ex plicitly stated by Christian th inkers in God , he then argues, repre sent s beli ef in a choo se bet ween religion and science and
offer in support of their reli gion cannot be as different from each oth er as Aquinas, bein g whose ex istence mu st be eve n mor e cannot have both, it will be science that they
claimed to have anyth ing like the degree of Kierk egaard and New ma n. It is the degree of complex, and therefore mor e imp rob able. will renounce.
.....................................................................................................,-----------------------------------------------------------;,
Choose your level of savings off the usua l retail prices ,,,
OtherD ....
o Europel34
o Europelll2
o Europel196
o RaW140
D ROW£132
D ROW£231
~
Address....
Surname .
retail price. You will also receive a welcome gift Easy ways to pay (please tick your preferred payment option)
10 Iendcseacheque fOf madepayable toThe Times LiterarySupplement Ltd.
2 0 Pleasedlarge tomy:ViSil 0 Mastercard 0 Switch/Maestro 0
of two steel TLS bookmarks. Card No. L
I -.L...L--'----'_ L--'----'----l._ L-.L...L--'----'_ L--'---'
TlS
J '''.''-~. ''-''
door every week
IFree access to our on line
subscriber arc hive
(ardholder'ssiorature
Pleasecomplete thefol!ow ing instruction toyour BankorBuildingSociety topay byDirect Debit(UK only).
3 D '·'DirectDebit-payonlyfBe.lchquarter(UKonly)
Pleasepily The Times LiterarySupplement Ltd Direct Debitsfrom theercont detailed onthisinstruction, subject tothesafeg uardsassured
bytheDirect DebitGuarantee. Iunderstand thatthisinstructionmayremainwithinThe Times l iterarySupplement Ltd,andif so,details
Date .
~
willbepassedelectronically tomyBank orBuilding Society. BanksandBuildingSocietiesmaynotaccept Direct Debitinstructions forsome
very sad after kinds ofaccounts.
Dear Engin ... I wa;ion Remember what Subsc r ibe now by ca lling
our last conv:;:tathe ~ater wheel, +44 (0)1858 438 781 Originator'sidentificationnumber I5 I9 I 9 I 1 I 2 I 1I
you to~d mi, a k friend, think back.
and th:Lnk a~o' be moving slowly, (quoting code S012) or visit Nameotecceun t holdens)....
We may seem t 's ~we're moving ... www.subscription.co.uk/tls/SOI2 To: The Manager BankjBuildingSociety
but the po i.n . ,
Read ers in th e US sho uld ca ll Address....
James Baldwin's letters to J stanbul
1-800 370 9040 or visit ...................................................................................................................... ...........Postcode ....
James CampbeU
www.t1s-subscription.com
Brenc sortccde L
I -.L...L--'----'_ J........J Account No.IL-.L...L--'----'_ ' --'----'---J
(quoting code 207US)
This guaranteeisoffered byallBanksandBuilding Societies thattakepertintheDirect Debit scbeme.Iheeffideno andsecurityofthe
schemeis monitored andprotected byyour ownBank orBuilding Society.Iftheamounts tobepaidorthepaymentdates changeTheTimes
literarySupplementwill notifyyou10working days inadvance ofyouraccount beingdebitedorasotherwise agreed. lfanerror ismadeby
TheTimes LiterarySupplement oryour BankorBuildingSociety, you areguaranteedafullandimmediate refund from your branchofthe
amountpaid.You cancamela Direct Debit atanytimebywriting toyourBankerBuilding Society. PIMse alsosend acopy ofyour lettertous.
t By supplying youre-mad address youare happy toreceive offers viae-malt from orinassociationwithThe TimesLiterarySupplement
(TLS).TheTLS iscasserateabout securinggreat promotionsandoffersforyou. The TLS directly(orvia itsagents)maymailorphoneyou
about newpromotions,productsandservices.Tickifyou don't wanttoreceive thesefromus[ ] orcarefully selected rornpanies [ ]
(Heldunder UKlaw.Seeourprivacy policy atwww.nidp.com) RefS012
The leading pap er in the Please return th is coupon to: The TLS, Towe r House, Soverei gn Park,
worldfor literary culture Market Harhorough, LE16 9EF, UK.
TLS A U G US T 17 200 7
28 IN BRIEF
sexual subtexts are invariably denied and ing in preference to one that didn 't , the boo k when "ca noodling" with the Emperor on a graphy is not accurately describ ed as a sca n-
women ' s role as the object s of the desirin g makes it seem very much as thou gh Ove won couch , since all the Tan g mirror s that survive dalou s new categor y of literature ... . Rather
mal e gaze reaffirmed. But Prest is not merely the argum ent. But it was a fascinating argu- are made of polished metal, no bigger than sau- it is best understood as a passionat e tran s-
retelling the con ventional tale of so-ca lled ment , dra wing on logistics, ethic s (the cash cers, and you' d have to peer very clo sely to action between book s, writers and readers
"classical" drama. Rath er, she conci sely and value of a hum an life), prob abilit y (how see anythin g, let alone find inspiration. made possibl e by earlier discu ssions of the
con vincin gly demon strat es the inherent inter- many bomb s would be dropped , from what With the aim of makin g Chinese histor y stimulating effects of literatur e on the bod y".
es t of a largely neglect ed feature of sev - height, how inaccurately and so on) , as well mor e palatabl e to Western audiences, Clem- GUVER H ARRIS
entee nth-century French theatre that is signifi- as, impli citl y, questionin g the moderni st engi - ents might also con sider the question of
cant precisely because it is scarce. neer-architect ' s desire to take respon sibility names. Hund red s of officials, generals, sib-
RUSS ELL GO ULBOURNE for broad areas of hum an experience and wel- lings and relati ves appear befo re us here in a
Biography
fare. Most Londoners in the end opted for dizzying and forgettable mass. Professor Tim- Nigel Hamilton
Tub e stations, of cour se. oth y Barratt has written a forthcoming
Architecture K EITH MILLER account of one of Empress Wu' s more posi-
BIOGRAPHY
A brief history
Peter Jones tive contributions, her prob abl e promotion of 345pp. Harvard University Press. £ 14.95.
OVE AR UP woodblock printing, thu s taking this signifi- 978 0 67402 466 3
Masterbuilder of the twentieth century
Chinese History cant invention furth er back in Tan g histor y,
364pp. Yale University Press. £25.
978 0300 11 296 2
Jonathan Clements
WU
The Chinese Empress who schemed,
and he has done so by hardly mentioning a
Chinese name, instead using epith ets, which
are much eas ier to retain.
N igel Hamilton begin s his histor y of bio-
graphy by askin g why no such guide
already exists . He also notes that des pite bio-
The Bibliographical Society has received a generous bequest from the estate of the
distinguished bibliographer Katharine F. Pantzer Jr and has established awards in her
memory . Applications are now invited for the Pantzer Fellowship. which is to be awarded
for the first time in 2008.
Appli cants' research must be within t he field of the bibliographic al or book-h istoric al
study of the printed book in the hand-press period , that is, up to (.1830. Applicants
Coming up in
should be established scholars in the field but may be university-based or independent
researchers. There are no restrictions as to age or nationality of applicants.
The Fellowship. worth up to £4,000. is intended to assist with both immediate research
the TLS ...
needs, such as microfilms or travelling expenses, and longer-term support, for example 24th & 31st August-
prolonged visits to libraries and archives . Applicants may use a part of the Fellowship
money to pay for teaching cover.
Fiction/Autumn Export
Applications must be received by 1 December 2007. Please note that the Society will 7th September -
advertise its normal Major Grants scheme later in the year.
Cultural Studies/
Further details and an application form may be found on the Society's website -
www.bibsoc.org.uk • or from: Psychology
Or John Hinks
Secretary : Fellowships & Bursaries Subcommittee
14th September -
The Bibliographical Society Reference Books
Centre for Urban History
University of Leicester
Leicester LE1 7RH
Email: jh241 @le.ac.uk
TL S AUGUST 17 2 00 7
31
Henri Astier is a BBC journalist. Russell Go ulbourne is Profe ssor of Early Brenda Maddox ' s biography of Nora Joyce book, Jane Austen 's Textual Li ves: From
Mod ern French Literature at the University appeared in 1988. Her other book s include Aesch ylus to Bollyw ood , will be publi shed in
Paul Binding' s With Vine-leaves in His of Leed s. He is the author of Voltaire Comic Freud 's Wizard: The enigma of Ern est Jon es, paperb ack later this year.
Hair: Ibsen and the art ist was publi shed last Drama tist, publi shed last year, and has edited publi shed last year, Rosalind Franklin: The
ye ar. He is the co-author of The Bahel Guide various works in Les (Eu vres completes de Dark Lad y of DNA , 2002 , and Ma ggie: The Bharat Tando n teach es at St Ann e' s
to Scan dinav ian and Balt ic Fiction , 1999 . Voltair e. His tran slati on of The N un by First Lad y , 200 3. College, Oxford . His book Jan e Austen and
Diderot was publi shed as an Oxford World' s the Mo rality of Conversation was publ ished
Carol Birch ' s mo st rec ent novel is The Cla ssic in 2004 . Kei th Miller' s book about St Peter' s Basil- in 2003.
Namin g of Eliza Quinn , 2005 . Her other ica was pub lished earlier this year.
book s include Turn Again Hom e, 200 3, and Cl ive Griffin is a Fellow and T utor in Howard Tem perley is Emeritu s Professor of
Life in the Pala ce, 2000 . Spani sh at Trinity College , Oxford . He is the P aul Owen is Guardian Unlimited's po litics Am eric an Histor y at the University of East
author of The Crombe rge rs of Sev ille: A sub-editor. Angl ia. His books include Whit e Dreams,
W , F . Bynum is Emeritus Profe ssor of the history of a p rinting and merchant dyna sty, Black Africa : The antisla very expedition to
Histor y of Medicine at the Wellc ome Trus t 1988, and Journ eymen-Printers, Heresy and P et er Parker was an ass ociate editor of the the Niger , 199 1, After Slavery: Eman cipati on
Ce ntre for the Histor y of Medicine at the Inquisition in Six tee nth-Century Spa in, Oxfo rd Diction ary of Nationa l Biograph y , and its discontents , 2000 , and Britain and
University College London. His book s 2005 . 2004 , and has writt en Lives of J. R. Ackerl ey, Am erica since Independence, 2002.
includ e Sc ience and the Practice of Med icin e 1989 , and Chri stopher Isherwood, 2004 .
in the Nine teenth Century, 1994, and , as co- Oliver Harris is studying the Shak espeare in Heather T ho mpson lives in Berlin . She is
editor, M edicin e and the Five Senses, 1993, History MA at University College London . Neil Powell' s book s include Geor ge Crahhe: working on a nov el.
and The Oxford Dictionary of Sc ientific Quo- An English life, 1754 -1 832 and A Halfw ay
tation s, 2005 . Philip Hoare' s England 's Lost Eden : House, both 2004 , and Roy Fuller: Writ er Andrew van der Vlies lectur es in Post-
Adventures in a Victorian utopia appeared in and society , 1995. He edited the Sele cted coloni al Literatures and Theor y in the Univer-
L ucy Carlyle is a writer and a post graduate 2005 . His other book s incl ude Se rious Pleas- Po ems of Fu lke Gre ville, 1990 . sity of Sheffi eld' s School of Engli sh. His
stude nt at the University of Oxford, writin g a ures: The life of Stephen Tennant, 1990, Noel South African Textu al Cultures: White,
doctoral thesis on the writin gs of Elizabeth Cowar d: A bio graph y, 1995, and Spik e Sameer Rahim work s at the Dail y Tele- black, read all over, will be publi shed later
Bow en and Rosamond Lehmann . Island: The memo ry of a military hospital , graph. this year.
2001.
Sarah Church well is Senior Lecturer in Alfre d Rieber is Emer itus Professor of M ichael W h ite is an assistant editor
Am erican Literature at the University of Eas t Peter Ho lland is curr ent ly Presid ent of Histor y at the University of Penn sylvania and (po litic s) of the Guardian, who se political
An glia and the author of The Many Li ves of the Shak espeare Associat ion of Am erica and at the Central Europe an Univer sity in editor he was from 1990 to 2006.
Marilyn Monroe, 2004. Editor of Shakespear e Survey . He wrot e the Budapest. His book s include The Politics of
entr y on Wi lliam Shak espe are for the Oxford Autocra cy, 1966, and Mer chant s and Entr e- H ugo W illiams' s mo st recent co llection of
L ucy Dallas is the editor of the TLS web site Dictionary of Nati onal Biograph y and pren eur s in Imperial Russia , 1982 . poem s is Dear Room , pub lished last year. His
and In Brief pages. recently co -edit ed Shakespea re, M emory and Collec ted Poems appeared in 2002.
Performance, publ ished last year. P. D. Sm ith' s stud y of science and German
Barbara Everett , form erl y Professor of literature, Metaphor and Mat erialit y , was Frances Wood is the author of The Silk
Engli sh at Som erville College, Oxford , is the Mark Kamine is Assistan t Production publi shed in 2000 , and his biography of Ein- Roa d , 200 3, Did Marco Polo Go to China? ,
author of Young Haml et: Essays on Shake - Mana ger on The Sopranos. He line-produced stein appeared in 2003 . His most recent book 1995, and Hand Grenade Practice in Pekin g,
spear e 's tragedi es, 1989, and Poets in Their Interview, a mo vie starring Steve Buscemi is a cu ltural histor y of science and superweap- 2000 . She is curator of the Chinese co llec-
Tim e: Essays on Engli sh poetry from Donn e and Sienn a Miller. on s, Doom sday M en, publi shed ea rlier this tion s at the British Library.
to Lark in, 1986 . year. His web site is www .peterd sm ith.c om .
Anthony Kenny has been Ma ster of Balliol , Correctio n : The illustration accompanying
Judit h Flanders ' s most recent book , Con- President of the British Academy and Ka thryn Su therland is Professor of Textual Jan e Jakeman 's rev iew of the exhibition
suming Passions: Leisure and pl easur e in Chairman of the Board of the Briti sh Libr ary. Cr itici sm at the University of Oxford and Spirit and Life at the Ismaili Centre (Augu st
Victoria n Brit ain , was pub lished last ye ar. He is the author of a four- volum e histor y of a Fellow of St Annes Coll ege. Her edit ion 3) was taken from the Akh laq-i Nas iri of
She is the author of A Circle of Sisters, 2001, philo soph y from Thales to Derrida. Among of Jame s Edward Au sten -Leigh ' s Mem oir of Tu si (Lahore, cl595) , depicting the kitab-
and The Victorian Hou se: Do mesti c life from his recent book s are The Unknow n God, Jane Austen and Oth er Family Recoll ections khana not the Qanun fi 'l-tibb of lbn Sina of
childhirth to deathh ed , 2003. 2004, and What I Believe, publi shed last yea r. was publi shed in 2002 . Her most recent !O52.
ACROSS DOWN R 0 S A L Y N 0 E L 0 o G E
poem (8) R C 0 I Q T S C
(10)
E V A D E N A U M A C H I A
15 Frenc h rib allowed inside to meet 8 High flyer with ligh tweight surname
W S L C E R E P
writer (7) (3, 7) 0 L 0 I E S T H R E E
•• s R
17 Unyie lding French sculptor with 12 He wrote the kind of poetry he wanted
wor ker (7) ( 10) SOL UTION TO CROSSWORD 704
20 " Why do ye strive to bar wished death 14 Possibl y rid Antonio of admission to
from his so ju st - " (Phineas Fletcher, the mini stry ( 10) The winner of Crossword 704 is
Etisa) (10) 16 'T he so-called system of - which was Ceridwen Jones, Cambr idge.
21 Obscure time for Koestler (4) employed by Russell and Whiteh ead"
23 Poet in teni ble riot about 24 being sent (A. J. Aye r) (8)
back (8) 18 A lot of bull in one of 4 (8)
19 Out standin g art form (7) Th e se nder of the first corr ect
25 Insured a different name once given to
the Po? (8) solution ope ne d on Se pte mbe r 14
22 Those of the midden will madden said
26 Manners of speaking from identit y of Auden (6) will recei ve a cash prize of £40.
24 She was also ca lled Clare (4) E ntries sho uld be addressed to
mythical prin cess on manuscript (6)
27 Dean' s remark initially modified (10 ) TLS Cross wor d 708 ,
Time s House, I Pennin gton Street,
London E98 1BS .
© The T imes Literary Su pplement Limit ed , 2007. Published and licensed for distribu tion in electronic and all other
deri vative forms by The T imes Literary Supple ment Limited, Times House. I Pennington Street. London E'ol"IBS, England .
Telephone: 02()-77" 2 JOOO Fax: 020-771124966 E-mail: lcrtcrseathc -tls.co.uk without whose express permission no pan may
be reproduced. Printed by N.I.N. Ltd, Kitling Road. Prcscor. Merseyside, L34 9HN, England. EU RO PEAN PRI C ES '
Belgium €2.115. France €2.115. Germany €4.20, Greece €4.20, Italy €4.00. Netherlands €4.20. Portugal €3.1O. Spain
€2.65.C A:'\ADlAN P RICES: Toronto $5.20. Outside $5.45. Subscription rates including postage arc: UK £ 115. Europe
£ 140, USA $ 169, Canada $225, ROW £ 165. T LS su bsc riptio n r ates ( 12 months /52 issues): UK £1 15, Europe £ 140.
USA $169, Canada (Air freight) $225, Rest of World (Airmail) £ 165. Please send cheque or credit card details to: TLS
Subscriptions. Tower House, Sovereign Park. Market Harboro ugh. LEll7 4JJ, UK. Telephone 0 111511 43117111.For US and
Canada please send to: TLS Subscripti ons, P.O. Box :1000 Denville NJ 071134, USA. Telephone 1-11003709040 (ne w
subscriptions o nly) and 1-110071134903 (general enquirie s). The TLS (l SSN ()J0766 1. USPS 02 1-(26 ) is published weekly
and distributed in the USA by OCS America Ine, 49-27 3 1st Street. Long Island C ity. r-;YI IIO I-31 13. Period icals postage
paid at Long Island Cit y NY and additional mailing office s. POSTMASTE R: please send addres s corrections to TLS, PO
Box 3000. De nville, r-;J 07R34. USA
TLS AUGUST 17 20 0 7