Berton: Vimy

Vimy
Pierre Berton
(Anchor, 1986)
336 p.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge began in the early hours of 9 April, 1917. The ridge had been occupied by the Germans for more than two years, and was heavily fortified with barbed wire, a triple layer of trenches on the forward slope, and machine gun nests. Earlier assaults on the ridge by the British and the French had failed; this time the Canadian divisions were tasked with capturing it. Thirty thousand infantrymen, with another seventy thousand supporting troops, deployed along a four-mile front facing the ridge.

The Canadian troops had come to Vimy after the Battle of the Somme, a disastrous episode in which troops had been ordered into frontal assaults on the enemy position and had been mowed down by machine gun fire. At Vimy a new strategy was proposed: an initial heavy artillery barrage, and then the troops would advance by stages behind a “creeping barrage” of artillery slowly moving across No Man’s Land, blasting away the wire and providing cover for the advancing troops.

**

This wasn’t the only innovation put to use at Vimy. The First World War was a war in which new technologies and tactics dramatically changed the nature of warfare: tanks, machine guns, and airplanes replaced horses and cannons, shrapnel replaced lead shot, and chemical weapons made their first appearance.

At Vimy the soldiers introduced the idea of raiding the enemy trenches; in the months leading up to the battle, small groups (perhaps a few, but possibly up to several hundred) would cross No Man’s Land by night and surprise the enemy, capturing prisoners or supplies. They were also beginning to understand the tactical uses of machine guns; not only were they used for direct fire on the enemy, but indirect fire — firing, say, at an empty intersection behind the enemy trenches — was used to pin the enemy down and prevent movement of people and supplies.

Working, as I do, in a defence lab, I was fascinated to read about how my counterparts at the time began using sight and sound ranging to triangulate the positions and ranges to the enemy machine guns, which improved the artillery battery’s ability to target them.

A further innovation made by the Canadian divisions had to do with training: the assault was planned for months in advance, the troops practiced, and every soldier was made aware of his role in the assault. The terrain was mapped and studied, objectives were defined, and each man was expected to understand the plan. Apparently this was an unprecedented level of detail conveyed to the troops, and it permitted them to make in-theatre tactical decisions to advance the overall objectives.

**

It’s well known that when the Great War was first declared, enthusiasm was high and men signed up in droves, having no idea what they were getting into. The world had never seen a war like this before. But what surprised me was that in 1917, several years into the war, people were still signing up with the same naïve expectations! How was that possible?

Communication from the front was very limited. All correspondence from the soldiers was read and censored. (The army even provided handy postcards for the soldiers to use on which they could check boxes to specify which message they wanted to send: “Everything is great” or “Morale is high” — take your pick.) There was no video footage made public, and while the press did have some access, they tended to publish highly glossed accounts. We tend to think of trench warfare as a ghastly business that turned the world into mud and blood — a scene that would be hard to hide from the public — but in fact the trenches existed only along the front, and their positions changed little over months or even years. A few miles behind the lines life was going on more or less as normal. And so people simply didn’t know what was going on at the front.

Even more surprising than the naivete, however, is the attitude many soldiers displayed once they arrived and experienced the mud, lice, rats, and mortal danger themselves. Many expressed disappointment if they were injured and removed from the front. Letters survive in which these young men describe the experience in glowing terms. To take an example, here is an excerpt from a letter written by Gordon Tupper, the grandson of Canada’s sixth Prime Minister:

“If I am going to die, this is worth it a thousand times. I have ‘been over’ two or three times before but never with a company of my own. Think of it — 150 officers and men will follow you to hell if need be! … I have seen this game for two years and I still like it and feel my place is here … The war has done wonders to me and makes me realize a lot of things I would not have done otherwise…”

This kind of testimony can’t be accounted for simply by noting censorship of negative views. There is something about the psychology of warfare — the thrill of danger, maybe, or the sense of camaraderie that it engenders — that makes a strong appeal to some. I find this very interesting, and I wonder how I would respond in that situation. I am doubtful that I would respond as Gordon Tupper did.

**

On the day of the battle, 983 artillery pieces and 150 machine guns “softened up” the German trenches by hurling 250,000 shells and 7.5 million bullets in the space of 100 minutes, and then the advance began. Of the four Canadian divisions, three achieved their objectives in just a few hours; sweeping the Germans out of their trenches, occupying the crest of the ridge, and advancing down the opposite slope. The 4th Division ran into trouble with unforeseen machine gun fire and faced heavy casualties as they attempted to advance. It took another three days for the Canadians to fully capture the ridge, but they did do it.

Over 3000 Canadian soldiers were killed (one-tenth of those in the assaulting force) and another 7000 wounded, but it was a decisive victory and the Germans never regained the position. In the grand scheme of things, though, it was a minor affair. Apparently it is called “the Battle of Vimy Ridge” mainly by Canadians; to others it was but a component of the British-led Battle of Arras. In David Stevenson’s massive history of World War I, Vimy gets only a passing mention; Martin Gilbert gives it about a page. The victory seems to have surprised even British command, who hadn’t worked out a plan for what to do afterwards.

Nonetheless, in Canada the Battle of Vimy Ridge is honoured as one of our glorious military achievements. I’ve heard about it since I was a child, although I hadn’t known the details or appreciated its relevance within the larger war effort until reading this book. Since the 1930s there has been a massive memorial on the site to the fallen Canadian soldiers. Canada is not a powerhouse in the world, and we sometimes have to make a mountain of a molehill in order to have something worthy of civic honour. The notional honour paid Vimy is so taken for granted, in fact, that I was startled to find Pierre Berton, who ranks with our most popular Canadian historians, passing his own verdict on the battle, weighing the lives lost against the military achievement and the civic pride it engendered: Was it worth it? “The answer, of course, is no.”

Racine: Andromache

Andromache
Jean Racine
Translated from the French by Richard Wilbur
(Dramatists Play Service, 1982) [1667]
71 p.

Set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, Andromache concerns the troubled relations between conquerors and conquered.

On the Trojan side is Andromache, the wife of the slain hero Hector, now taken captive by the Greek king Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, who intends to marry her. This comes as unwelcome news to Pyrrhus’ previously-intended, Hermione, who is enraged at the prospect of losing the man she loves to a prisoner. Meanwhile, Pyrrhus’ friend Orestes is himself in love with Hermione. And Andromache, for her part, refuses to consent to marry Pyrrhus. Nobody is happy. It might be a typical set up for a romantic comedy, but for the sober wartime setting and the uncomfortably coercive captor/captive dynamics at play.

In fact, it’s nothing like a comedy in the playing; this is tragic elixir taken neat. People will die.

I’ve loved Richard Wilbur’s translations of French comedies of this period, but I wasn’t sure whether the rhyming-couplet model would work well in a tragedy. The rhymes have a tendency to support and augment comedy, but would they jar in this more serious material?

Let’s look at a couple of examples to find out. Here is a short excerpt from Act II in which Hermione is in conversation with her maidservant Cleone; they are discussing Orestes, who has approached Hermione as a suitor, and she is deliberating about whether to accept him or to remain faithful to Pyrrhus, who has rejected her in favour of Andromache:

CLEONE: Then, Madam, hear Orestes, who’s your friend.
What Pyrrhus started, you at least can end.
A breach is certain; therefore anticipate him.
Have you not told me that you’ve grown to hate him?

HERMIONE: Hate him, Cleone? In honor, how could I not?
After so many favors, all forgot,
He whom I’ve held so dear breaks every vow!
I’ve loved him too much not to hate him now.

That’s nicely phrased, but I would wager that the last line, especially, is going to get a laugh in the theatre, and the rhyme is part of the reason, giving the line the quality of a punchline. A laugh at this point is really not appropriate.

As a point of comparison, let’s look at how these same lines are rendered in George Dillon’s unrhymed translation of the play:

CLEONE: Why, then, my lady, listen to Orestes.
Pyrrhus began it; now, at least, finish it.
To do it well, act before he decides.
Have you not told me you hated him?

HERMIONE: Do I hate him,
Cleone! The honor of my name is at stake,
After the host of favors he has forgotten.
He whom I held so dear, who could still betray me!
Ah, I have loved too deeply, not to hate.

Overall, this feels comparatively clunky, but I do think Hermione’s last line would be less likely to evoke laughter here than in Wilbur’s version.

Another example: in Act IV Andromache gives a speech in which she confesses to her serving-maid, Cephisa, that she intends to marry Pyrrhus in order to secure a guardian for her son, and then to kill herself. This excerpt is a little long, but it’s a moment of high tragic pathos, and needs some room to breathe. It goes like this:

ANDROMACHE: I keep no secret from your loyal ear.
You’ve been a faithful friend in all my woes,
But I thought you knew me better. Did you suppose
That the dear husband who thought to live in me
Could be betrayed by his Andromache;
That I could cause the dead of Troy to weep
And could, to ease my lot, disturb their sleep?
Was it such love I vowed to Hector’s shade?
But, doomed to die, his son required my aid,
And I, by marrying Pyrrhus, shall secure
A sworn protector for him; of that I’m sure.
I know the king, Cephisa. Fierce, but sincere,
He’ll more than keep his bargain, never fear.
I count too on the Greeks: their hate and ire
Ensure to Hector’s child a second sire.
Since, then, I must be sacrificed, I’ll give
To Pyrrhus, for so long as I shall live,
My troth; and he, in pledging his, shall make
My son his own, by bonds that cannot break.
And then this hand shall, harming none but me,
Cut short my life, my infidelity;
I’ll save my virtue, and to husband, son,
Pyrrhus, myself, my duty shall be done.
There is the innocent stratagem I’ve planned:
There’s what I heard my husband’s shade command.
I shall rejoin him and our kinds of old.
Cephisa, close my eyes when I am cold.
(Act IV)

This is highly serious material, and needs to avoid any trace of jocularity or breeziness. I think Wilbur succeeds quite well. A high proportion of the lines are enjambed, which moderates the effect of the rhyming, and even when the rhymes to land with emphases, they don’t sound inappropriate to my ear. The last couplet is an excellent example.

*

I was reading the play at the same time as I was, for other reasons, re-reading the Aeneid, and it was nice for me to see the same story from two angles — although Virgil does not present the story in anything like this detail, and he has Andromache survive her involvement with Pyrrhus to eventually found a disappointing “Little Troy” with the priest Helenus. Variety is the spice of classical mythology, as of life.

Isocrates: Speeches I

Panegyricus
and
Philippus
Isocrates
Translated from the Greek by George Norlin
(Loeb Classical Library, 1928) [380 BC; 342 BC]
226 p.

Oratory is not an art that flourishes in our own time, and, perhaps in consequence, I find it difficult to judge good from mediocre on this terrain. Isocrates was an Athenian orator — a contemporary of Plato, more or less — who gained a sterling reputation in his time, and his later admirers have preserved for us about twenty speeches and a handful of letters. As part of an ongoing reading project in Greek literature and history, I thought I would pluck a few samples.

The Panegyricus is a speech given in Athens in order to try to convince the Athenians to ally with the Spartans in an attack on Persia. Isocrates believed that the sally of the Ten Thousand had demonstrated, among other things, that the Great King was vulnerable and not so great as he was reputed. An alliance, he thought, would have the benefit of uniting Greece against a common enemy, healing the wounds of the Peloponnesian War, and then, in their victory, conferring great glory upon the Hellenes.

The speech was, from a certain point of view, a success, for he tells us in a later speech To Philip that “even my detractors imitate and admire it”, but in a larger sense it was a failure, because the Athenians listened more to his manner than his matter, caring, he says, “less for what I said than for the ravings of the platform orators”. Nonetheless, let’s take a look inside.

Much of the speech is occupied with recalling the glorious achievements of the Greeks of earlier times, and especially of the Athenians. Isocrates wants to praise principally their cultural achievements and their military triumphs. Of the former, he sees Athens’ primary discovery and gift to the world to have been philosophy:

Philosophy, … which has educated us for public affairs and made us gentle towards each other, which has distinguished between the misfortunes that are due to ignorance and those which spring from necessity, and taught us to guard against the former and to bear the latter nobly — philosophy, I say, was given to the world by our city.

It’s not entirely clear to me just what he means by “philosophy” here; perhaps mostly the pre-Socratics, since Plato was just then beginning to write. He seems to have in mind moral counsel more than high metaphysics, but the point still stands: the Greeks applied reason to life in a particularly clear and fruitful way. Philosophy, he saw, had the capacity to transform life, and was a truly revolutionary gift to the world:

If all the athletes should acquire twice the strength which they now possess, the rest of the world would be no better off; but let a single man attain to wisdom, and all men will reap the benefit who are willing to share his insight.

Furthermore, this gift is so characteristically Greek, while being of universal value, that those who inherit it from them become, in a sense, themselves akin to the Greeks:

So far has our city distanced the rest of mankind in thought and in speech that her pupils have become the teachers of the rest of the world; and she has brought it about that the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and that the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood.

He might have been speaking of us.

But Greece was great not only because of the good things that she cultivated, but also because of the bad things that she repelled — specifically, the Persians. Isocrates looks back at those heroic days when Greece, and, not to put too fine a point on it, Athens repelled Xerxes and his vast armies against the odds. This excerpt is a bit long but captures, maybe, some of Isocrates’ rhetorical power:

What words can match the measure of such men, who so far surpassed the members of the expedition against Troy that, whereas the latter consumed ten years beleaguering a single city they, in a short space of time, completely defeated the forces that had been collected from all Asia, and not only saved their own countries but liberated the whole of Hellas as well?

For when all the allies were in a state of dejection, and the Peloponnesians were fortifying the Isthmus and selfishly seeking their own safety; when the other states had submitted to the barbarians and were fighting on the Persian side, save only those which were overlooked because of their insignificance; when twelve hundred ships of war were bearing down upon them, and an innumerable army was on the point of invading Attica; when no light of deliverance could be glimpsed in any quarter, but, on the contrary, the Athenians had been abandoned by their allies and cheated of their every hope; and when it lay in their power not only to escape from their present dangers but also to enjoy the signal honors which the King held out to them, since he conceived that if he could get the support of the Athenian fleet he could at once become master of the Peloponnesus also, then our ancestors scorned to accept his gifts; nor did they give way to anger against the Hellenes for having betrayed them and rush gladly to make terms with the barbarians; nay, by themselves they made ready to battle for freedom, while they forgave the rest for choosing bondage. For they considered that while it was natural for the weaker states to seek their security by every means, it was not possible for those states which asserted their right to stand at the head of Hellas to avoid the perils of war; on the contrary, they believed that just as it is preferable for men who are honorable to die nobly rather than to live in disgrace, so too it is better for cities which are illustrious to be blotted out from the sight of mankind rather than to be seen in a state of bondage.

Those are stirring thoughts, and high ideals for the Athenians to live up to. And having stoked those fires, Isocrates exhorts his fellow citizens to turn their eyes toward Persia again, a kingdom grown soft and easy, too large and too loose to really inspire the hearts of its people, and ripe for plucking. Indeed, what other venture could better suit the Greek temper?

For against whom, pray, ought men to wage war who crave no aggrandizement, but look to the claims of justice alone? Is it not against those who in the past have injured Hellas, and are now plotting against her, and have always been so disposed towards us? And against whom should we expect men to direct their envy who, while not wholly lacking in courage, yet curb this feeling with prudence? Is it not against those who have compassed powers that are too great for man, and yet are less deserving than those who are unfortunate among us? And against whom should those take the field who both desire to serve their gods and are at the same time intent on their own advantage? Is it not against those who are both their natural enemies and their hereditary foes, who have acquired the greatest possessions and are yet, of all men, the least able to defend them? Do not the Persians, then, fulfill all these conditions?

*

A second speech, To Philip, is on the same theme, but this time is a written address intended for Philip of Macedon, the leader of the greatest regional Greek power of the time. Isocrates argues that Philip is the only one with the power and the wealth to “champion the cause of concord among the Hellenes and of a campaign against the barbarian”. He argues that Philip has the diplomatic finesse to bring Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Argos together, and that, so united, they could together take down Persia rather easily.

Isocrates’ dream was not realized, not in his lifetime, at least. But be careful what you wish for, because Philip had, I expect, rather different ideas about what unifying Greece should look like. Rather than persuasion he thought it better to use force.

I wonder if Isocrates’ speech might have had some effect, later, on Philip’s ambitious son? The kingdom of Persia was indeed a tempting prize, and Isocrates was proved right in his assessment of the Great King’s inability to withstand attack. I simply don’t know if Alexander knew of Isocrates.

*

Two interesting speeches, then, but, as I said earlier, I find it hard to judge if they are five-star speeches or just three-star speeches. I’m not even sure what to be looking at: the logical or rhetorical structure? the rhetorical embellishments? the beauty of the language? These latter features, if they are present, are inevitably obscured by the process of translation. Some introductory notes to my volume speak of Isocrates’ “remarkable power of grasping a complex subject, of articulating it distinctly, of treating it, not merely with effect but luminously, at once in its widest bearings and in its most intricate details.”  That goes to structure and logic. But he was also praised for his style — “the first Greek who worked out the idea of a prose rhythm” — and was. on such grounds. reputed to be a great influence on Cicero’s Latin. Perhaps it is so.

I believe I’ll linger a little longer with Isocrates, perhaps reading another speech or two before I move on.

*

[On hearing vs reading a speech]
“When a discourse is robbed of the prestige of the speaker, the tones of his voice, the variations which are made in the delivery, and, besides, of the advantages of timeliness and keen interest in the subject matter; when it has not a single accessory to support its contentions and enforce its plea, but is deserted and stripped of all the aids which I have mentioned; and when someone reads it aloud without persuasiveness and without putting any personal feeling into it, but as though he were repeating a table of figures,— in these circumstances it is natural, I think, that it should make an indifferent impression upon its hearers. And these are the very circumstances which may detract most seriously also from the discourse which is now presented to you and cause it to impress you as a very indifferent performance; the more so since I have not adorned it with the rhythmic flow and manifold graces of style which I myself employed when I was younger and taught by example to others as a means by which they might make their oratory more pleasing and at the same time more convincing. For I have now no longer any capacity for these things because of my years.” (To Philip)

Fosse: A Shining

A Shining
Jon Fosse
(Transit, 2023)
74 p.

I was reading something online. It was nice. Sometimes I don’t remember what I am reading, or I don’t remember the order in which I read things, or why. Because some things are not very memorable. I was probably clicking one link and then another. Maybe I first clicked something on the left side of the screen, and then something on the right side. I probably did that over and over again, but I don’t remember exactly. Yes, that’s probably how it was. And I was getting lost. And then I was reading about Jon Fosse, who is from Norway, which is a place I have not been. It is cold there and the snow falls and makes everything white. I read that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year. Most everyone has heard of the Nobel Prize for Literature. People who read books know about it. People who write books probably also know about it. Because why wouldn’t they. And they probably would like to win the prize one day. I don’t write books but I know about the Nobel Prize for Literature. That’s the sort of thing I know about. But I do not usually pay much attention to who wins the prize. Many people win it. One person every year. Often they write in a language that I do not understand, and why would I read a book I can’t understand. Because either that doesn’t make sense or it would be boring. But the thing I read when I was lost said that Jon Fosse won the Nobel Prize for Literature and that he is a Catholic. I paid attention because I am also a Catholic. It made me think that maybe Jon Fosse and I were a bit similar even though I have not won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have not even been nominated. But two people who are similar are not similar in every way. They are not the same person, but different people even though they are similar. And I thought maybe that is how it is for Jon Fosse and me. And I thought that it was strange that I did not know about him. Before reading about him, I mean. Because afterwards I knew that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature and that he is from Norway and that he is a Catholic. Those are the things I learned. But I wondered what books he wrote, and if I could read one. Then I saw that he wrote a short book called a shining. I saw that it was short, maybe even too short to be a book. I mean a proper book. How long is a proper book. Because I guess there are really no rules about that, when I think about it. Who would make a rule like that. But it is not often that I see a book as short as a shining. But I like short books, come to think of it, because I am a pretty busy person, and I have a lot of things to do and not very much time for reading a book. So a short book is good for me. Probably other people like short books too, at least sometimes, because I am not the only busy person in the world. So I bought the book. It was different from other books. I noticed that there were no paragraphs. That was something new. Or I guess you could say that there was one paragraph. One big paragraph that went from the beginning of the book to the end. Although it is a short book, the paragraph was not short but long. How can that be. But that’s how it was. And the book told me about a man who went into the woods and got lost. The story was told by the man, and I could hear his thoughts. Everything he was thinking was written down for me to read. And I read that he thought he saw something shining in the dark woods, in the snow. What was it. He didn’t know and neither did I. It was shining in its shimmering whiteness, right there in the dark woods, shining in the snow.  And the story of the man went on, even though the book is not very long. There was a man wearing black and he made me feel nervous. I had not read a book like that before. Maybe only Jon Fosse writes a book like that. Or maybe only people who win the Nobel Prize for Literature write books like that, yes, at least sometimes. And I wondered if the book was really about that man in the woods at night. I thought maybe the book was about anyone. Or about everyone. Yes, maybe the book was about me, or about you, or anybody, because everyone is lost sometimes, and sometimes everyone seems lost together, even though we are not often lost in the woods in the snow at night, and we don’t all see a shining thing in the woods, no, I have never seen a shining thing like that, no never, and no shimmering whiteness and no man wearing black ever stood close like that, but I liked that book even though it was strange and not like other books.

Trollope: The Warden

The Warden
Anthony Trollope
Illustrated by Alexy Pendle
(Folio Society, 1995) [1855]
172 p.

“If it were necessary for him to suffer, he felt that he could endure without complaint and without cowardice, providing that he was self-satisfied of the justice of his own cause. What he could not endure was, that he should be accused by others, and not acquitted by himself.”

**

Mr Harding enjoys a quiet life as a church warden, lending his modest talents to enriching the music for worship, and providing food and shelter, on the strength of a centuries-old bequest, to twelve elderly poor men, himself, and his daughter. But when the legality — or, worse, the justice — of the warden’s own share of the bequest is challenged, Mr Harding’s world begins to fracture and crumble under the strain.

It had never occurred to Mr Harding that there might be something unjust about his situation. It was offered him by the bishop; he accepted it in good faith. But when once the question is raised whether he rightly enjoys it, or whether it ought not, on the contrary, to be given entirely to the poor, he is distressed. Mr Harding is a good man, but not a fighter, and he has no appetite for legal wrangling, standing on his rights, or, worst of all, public controversy. He is willing to compromise, but such a course is opposed by the bishop and the other churchmen. He is willing to abandon his post, if only to get himself out of the hot seat, but he also has a duty to provide for his daughter, now a young woman of marriageable age. What is he to do?

The situation is complicated by the fact that the man who has raised the controversy over the wardenship, John Bold, is also his daughter’s suitor. Mr Harding is not one to hold a grudge, not one to make his own hardships an obstacle to his daughter’s happiness, but, all the same, it is deuced awkward.

**

The novel makes an interesting study of the conservative and progressive temperaments. Mr Harding values the traditions and inheritances of the Church of England. He feels that the wardenship, which has for centuries belonged to a series of men before him, should as a matter of course continue, and he feels an obligation to preserve it for those who will be offered it after him. It doesn’t occur to him that maybe it should be torn down. He is, if you like, complacent in his comfort. Are we not all? He is not unmindful of those less fortunate than himself, but is not one to overthrow established ways of doing things out of a reforming zeal.

On the other side is his prospective son-in-law, who upends the established ways out of a sense that they’re not as good as they might be.

“I mean to inquire about it. I mean to see who is entitled to this property. I mean to see, if I can, that justice be done to the poor of the city of Barchester generally, who are, in fact, the legatees under the will. I mean, in short, to put the matter right, if I can.” … And Bold began to comfort himself in the warmth of his own virtue.

This is a portrait of the reformer: the man who sees something wrong, maybe, and who wants to set it right, but who doesn’t consider that there might be unintended consequences to doing so. There is something admirable about the love for justice that he exhibits, but something narrow about his scope too, a certain myopia.

The myopia is especially pronounced in this case because a sensible observer would expect that attacking the living of your prospective father-in-law might not be good for your marriage plans, but Bold appears oblivious to this, or, in his zeal, doesn’t care. For him it’s impersonal, the pursuit of an abstract ideal. He doesn’t so much damn the torpedoes as overlook them.

Trollope himself appears skeptical of the reformer’s motives being entirely good, as evidenced by the last sentence quoted above. The reformer likes being a reformer; it feels good. Elsewhere he refers to Bold as “the Barchester Brutus”, which made me laugh. Later, when Bold is trying to justify his actions to his fiancée, he does so on the grounds of his public duties, “which,” says Trollope, “it is by no means worth while to repeat.” So Trollope is, by and large, on the conservative side, it seems to me.

Which does not mean that he’s uncritical of the establishment. There is some sly humour in the book about the self-importance of important people. The lawyer whom Harding consults about his case is renowned and judged competent by all, but Trollope names him Abraham Haphazard, which seems an almost Dickensian comedic touch (though Trollope is, in most respects, decidedly un-Dickensian). Harding himself is portrayed as rather weak and unheroic, and the bishop mostly clueless about why Bold, and the press and the public, might look askance at the wardenship he oversees.

Speaking of the press and the public, the book’s treatment of a man under public pressure, and of the psychological pressure that presses on a man whose life is fodder for public critique and whose name is on everyone’s lips, surprised me by its contemporary relevance. The nameless and faceless mob may have grown bigger and badder in the wake of social media, but it is not something entirely new. It’s hard to imagine being the object of public ire on a large scale, but it must be a terrible thing to endure. Harding, in whom I confess I see myself in many ways, dreads the clouds gathering over him as the charge against him gets into the press:

He had wondered how men could live under such a load of disgrace; how they could face their fellow-creatures while their names were bandied about so injuriously and so publicly; — and now this lot was to be his.

Trollope is especially good in a set-piece chapter devoted to the power of the newspapers to shape public opinion and to deal out good or bad fortune to poor mortals. Trollope describes the newspaper editor as a Zeus who sends down thunderbolts on those he criticizes, or as a pope who denounces heretics:

A pope who manages his own inquisition, who punishes unbelievers as no more skillful inquisitor of Spain ever dreamt of doing; — one who can excommunicate thoroughly, fearfully, radically; put you beyond the pale of men’s charity; make you odious to your dearest friends, and turn you into a monster to be pointed at by the finger!

In the end, though, the book is really about poor Mr Harding, a meek, gentle man caught up in a controversy he did not desire, and of its effects on himself and his family. There is no Mrs Harding in the story, but the relationship between Harding and his daughter is painted very tenderly, and stood, for me, close to the heart of the novel.

*

The Warden has been my introduction to Trollope, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Based on what I’d picked up here and there, I’d been expecting a pleasant little tale about parsons living lives of cozy, low-stakes drama, but actually I found the book remarkably funny, unexpectedly thoughtful and relevant, and dramatically engaging. I’m glad, too, because The Warden is but the first book in the six-volume Barchester Chronicles, which I just acquired in a beautiful Folio Society edition, and the subsequent five volumes are considerably bigger and more imposing. A good beginning!

Stoppard: Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
Tom Stoppard & Andre Previn
(Faber & Faber, 1978)
96 p.

Only as I am sitting down to write do I understand the title; I learned it as “Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge”. Stoppard collaborated with Andre Previn to produce this drama in which most of the stage is occupied by an orchestra, and Previn wrote the music. It is a play, not a musical; the dialogue is spoken, not sung, but the orchestra is one of the characters.

In his introductory notes Stoppard describes the origin of the piece, which was a proposal by Previn, and Stoppard found himself in the unusual position of trying to find an idea to fit a form rather than a form to fit an idea. He struggled with it — he himself calls the process “putting the cart before the horse” — and perhaps that’s why it’s not terribly successful. He came up with a fairly interesting idea about a political prisoner condemned to an insane asylum where he shares a cell with a man who conducts an orchestra that only he (and we) can hear. It allows him to bring in serious themes about political oppression and thought police (DOCTOR: We have to consider seriously whether an Ordinary Hospital can deal with your symptoms. PRISONER: I have no symptoms. I have opinions. DOCTOR: Your opinions are your symptoms.) while also making room for the musical concept of the piece, but it’s a stretch to say that the two parts are organically related; it feels to me that they are stapled together.

The play premiered with big name actors, including Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart, in lead roles, and the same cast made a recording on which Andre Previn himself led the London Symphony Orchestra. I listened to this recording and read along, and this was a good way to encounter it, although naturally the visual elements were missed. It mostly failed to please me.

Xenophon: Conversations of Socrates

Conversations of Socrates
Xenophon
(Penguin Classics, 1990) [c.380 BC]
384 p.

As was noted when I wrote about his Anabasis some months ago, Xenophon knew Socrates personally, and admired him. Among the many works he wrote later in life were several Socratic dialogues. They are the principal historical documents we have about Socrates apart, of course, from Plato’s much more numerous (and much more ambitious) dialogues. Xenophon wasn’t a great philosopher, and he wasn’t the artist that Plato was, but his dialogues still have their interest.

This volume collects most (or all?) of Xenophon’s Socratabilia, including his version of Socrates’ speech at his trial (called, as in Plato’s case, the Apology), and a series of shorter vignettes of Socrates in conversation with a variety of people in Athens. There are also two other dialogues, a Symposium (again, like Plato’s, a drinking party dialogue) and the Oeconomicus, about household management. But, since I didn’t read these latter two, I’ll say nothing further about them.

*

The Apology is a piece of considerable interest, and quite fascinating to set beside Plato’s version of the speech. It is always advantageous to have more than one account of an historical event; comparison and contrast give us some guidance, perhaps, to sift what actually happened from how it was adapted or interpreted by particular authors, especially for a person and an event as central to our tradition as Socrates and his trial. The similarities between Xenophon’s account of the speech and Plato’s are striking. They are in agreement on certain major features: that Socrates was accused of corrupting the youth and of not believing in the gods of Athens, for instance; that Socrates professed to have a “divine sign” that warned him against wrongdoing, and that he believed this lay somewhere in the background of the charges that he was facing; that he entered into dialogue with his accuser during his speech; that he declined to propose a penalty other than death because to do so would be a tacit admission of guilt; that he refused to ingratiate himself with the jury; and that he afterward rejected an offer to help him escape from prison.

Xenophon also corroborates Plato’s account in which Socrates maintained that he had not done anything wrong (“I have consistently done no wrong, and this, I think, is the finest preparation for a defense.”) and argued that those who condemned him were more to blame than himself (“If I am wrongly executed, this may be discreditable to those who wrongly put me to death, because if it is shameful to do wrong, it is surely shameful to do *anything* wrongly; but what disgrace is it to me if other people fail to decide or act rightly with regard to me?”)

Even certain small details are the same: that Socrates, for instance, did not prepare a speech in advance, and that he made reference to the prophetic powers of those who are approaching death.

The two versions of the speech differ in certain respects also, of course. In Plato’s version Socrates devotes considerable time to relating the story of the mysterious statement of the Oracle at Delphi with regard to him, viz. that no-one was wiser, and of his efforts to discover what it meant, whereas in Xenophon’s version of the speech Socrates says that the Oracle said that he was “the most free, upright, and prudent of all people”, which is not quite the same thing, though I suppose it might still be surprising enough to provoke a search for its true meaning. Xenophon’s Socrates claims that he is wise because he “never stopped investigating and learning any good thing”; it is notable that he does not profess ignorance as Plato’s Socrates does; Xenophon’s Socrates teaches, and this indeed is what Xenophon seems most to admire and appreciate about him. I don’t recall seeing in Xenophon’s speech much about the fear of death, whereas Plato analyzes it in some depth, nor does Plato’s claim that Socrates believed that “no evil can happen to a good man” make an appearance in Xenophon’s speech, as I recall.

I’m not sure what to make of these differences. Xenophon’s speech is significantly shorter than Plato’s, and he says outright that he left things out, so I don’t think one would be on a stable footing trying to be decisive about what was really said in the speech.

*

The Memorabilia is a much longer work in which Xenophon compiles short vignettes of Socrates in conversation with a variety of people in Athens. They bear a superficial resemblance to Plato’s dialogues insofar as they feature Socrates conversing with another individual or a small group, but the similarity doesn’t go much deeper than that. For Xenophon, Socrates is mainly a sage who gives advice and moral guidance on all kinds of things: household management, military affairs, friendship, religion. Occasionally these conversations have a certain aphoristic charm:

“He said that it was a poor thing for the gods if they took more pleasure in great sacrifices than in small ones, because then they would often be better pleased with the offerings of the wicked than with those of the good.”

“If you want to be thought good at anything, the shortest, safest and most reputable way is to try to make yourself really good at it.”

But more often than not Xenophon’s version of Socrates is sort of bland and conventional, as are his interlocutors, who rarely emerge from the page with any particular shape. The most startling thing about Xenophon’s portrait of Socrates may be that he’s not much of a philosopher at all — he’s Socratic, in the sense of asking questions of his conversation partners, but not much interested in abstract ideas about ethics or metaphysics.

*

We might wonder if Socrates was really as Xenophon portrays him, or really as Plato does, but ultimately it’s a false dichotomy. It’s possible that Socrates as he comes down to us is largely a creation of the writers who tell us about him, but it’s also possible that Socrates simply calibrated his conversation to his audience; to Xenophon he was as Xenophon recounts, and to Plato as Plato.

In any case, my view is that these little dialogues are inferior to Plato’s in pretty much every respect. But it was just his bad luck that he found himself in competition with a genius; Xenophon admired Socrates, and wrote so that we could admire Socrates too:

If anyone in his search for virtue has encountered a more helpful person than Socrates, then he deserves, in my opinion, to be called the most fortunate of all men.

Would that the same could be said of me, and that there could be someone who would say it.

Austen: Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park
Jane Austen
(Everyman, 1992) [1814]
536 p.

My daughter asked a few months ago where she might find our copy of Mansfield Park. “On the shelves at the foot of the stairs. First bookcase, top shelf,” was my ready answer. “It’s not there,” was hers. On inspection, she was right. Puzzled, I checked our home library catalogue and discovered, to my surprise, that we didn’t have it. Looking at my reading log, I then found, to my even greater surprise, that I’d apparently never read it. How it was that I had come to know Fanny Price without reading her book is a bit of a mystery, but, anyway, I resolved to read the book at my earliest opportunity. And here I am.

Novel writing is an art, not a science, and while there might be ways to turn a crank and generate something serviceable, there’s no such method in the realm of high artistic achievement. Even if one can succeed sometimes, there is no guarantee that the muse will sing and the spark catch flame every time. Mansfield Park, I fear to say, is evidence of this. It was Austen’s third published novel, coming between Pride and Prejudice and Emma, two of the great novels of the nineteenth century, and one might expect, as I did, that it would be similarly wonderful.

And of course it is, in many respects, similar. It exhibits for us the world of the English gentility; it illustrates Austen’s marvellous eye for nuances of character and her precise ear for describing them; it provides us with a tangle of ill-matched romances that eventually resolve, for our heroine at least, in a most satisfying way. It has the right ingredients.

But somehow it still, for me, fell short of being wonderful. This particular set of characters just didn’t come alive as they usually do. Austen’s plotting, which is, on other occasions, such a marvel of economy and sure judgement, here seemed strangely meandering and inconsequential. (That play!) For the first time in Austen’s world I found myself understanding the complaint that her stories are merely drawing-room tales formed of a thin tissue of incidents of little consequence. Normally I regard such criticisms as coarse and superficial; in this case, though, maybe there’s something to them?

Part of the problem may be Miss Fanny Price herself, who largely failed to take shape in my imagination. Even here, at the end of the novel, she feels oddly inert and faceless. I could not fall in love with her as I could (and did, and do) with Elizabeth Bennett, or laugh lovingly at her as I do at Emma Woodhouse. And the supporting cast, too, felt distant and undifferentiated. The one exception to this rule was Mrs Norris, Fanny’s deliciously selfish aunt, whose every appearance was a reliable occasion for comic relief.

It’s hard for me to be disappointed with a novel by Jane Austen. She’s one of our great writers, and I admire her tremendously. I’d much rather blame myself, and of course that might be the just thing, for I have been pressed by circumstance and the cares of the world as I’ve tried to read. But I don’t think so, not entirely.

***

[Fanny visits my house]
The living in incessant noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and nervous like Fanny’s, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody’s feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother’s, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram’s, only worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.

Stoppard: Dirty Linen & New-Found-Land

Dirty Linen
and
New-Found-Land
Tom Stoppard
(Faber & Faber, 1976)
75 p.

The Select Committee of Parliament has been convened to investigate and report on moral standards of House members. The usual background level of promiscuity and infidelity has, it seems, been dwarfed by a recent surge of scandalous activity in which, we are told, 119 MPs have compromised themselves with a particular, but unnamed, young woman. The Committee’s mandate is to get to the bottom of things, and to air the dirty linen for the good of the nation.

And to the bottom they certainly do get, right down into the gutter. The Committee members, for reasons that gradually become clear, are generally not so keen to do their job very conscientiously, but they do apply themselves with zest to producing a riot of Freudian slips, double-entendres, and off-colour jokes. Speaking as one who appreciates good word-play, I’ll confess that I found it a delightful performance.

We are introduced to the work of the Committee through their new amanuensis, Maggie. She’s an attractive young woman, and it doesn’t take us long to put two and two together. This Committee is well and truly committed to keeping the dirty linen stuffed deep down in the laundry bag.

The play is a satire, then, on politicians, and their hypocrisy, which is a pretty easy target, but carried off with verve. It’s also a critique of the idea that the moral lives of those in public office might have some bearing on their fitness for office, which is an idea that I think is plausible in a broad sense. From our vantage point, where workplace exploitation of women by powerful men is acknowledged as a legitimate problem, the play’s insouciance is unconvincing.

But the playbill advertises not just Dirty Linen but also New-Found-Land. What’s going on? There comes a moment in Dirty Linen when the Committee takes a break and all the characters leave the stage, whereupon two new characters enter, find the room unoccupied, and move in. And so a second play begins. It’s a shorter piece than Dirty Linen, and soon enough the first cast of characters returns, whereupon a dispute arises as to who has rights to the meeting room — that is, to the stage. It makes for an amusing bit of meta-theatre.

New-Found-Land itself is a comedy about America, and its centerpiece is a long and eloquent speech about the glorious vastness of American geography. Indeed, the play consists of little else. I found an audio recording of a performance before a live audience, and it was delightful to hear how the actors could get hearty laughter from lines that I’d not have guessed had such potential.

Why Stoppard might have thought to put these particular two plays together is a question to entertain graduate students in English literature departments, perhaps. I confess I have no clear idea about it.

I’d consider this pair of plays to be relatively minor additions to Stoppard’s body of work. Dirty Linen in particular is a romp, and together they are somewhat weightier than either would be alone.

The woman with the alabaster box

On Palm Sunday this year the Passion reading was from St. Mark, and began with the story of the woman with the alabaster box containing ointment, which she poured on Jesus’ head, an act which he interpreted as a sign of his forthcoming death and burial.

I was reminded of Arvo Part’s beautiful setting of the story — although he used the text from St. Matthew. Here is The Sixteen signing it very well indeed:

Matthew 26, 6–13

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,
There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.
But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?
For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.
When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me.
For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.
For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.
Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.