The Dark Poetry of Spain

In December, I spent two weeks in Andalucia, Spain with a friend. In terms of sheer well-rounded pleasure it was among the best holidays I've had. Years of living on chilly northern islands have definitely convinced me that there are advantages to chasing the winter sun. Here, it wasn't exactly hot (except for some particularly pleasant hours in the sun), but it was mild to warm and there were blue skies for at least part and often all of every day.

We stayed in Jerez de la Frontera, a little over an hour by train from Seville. It proved to be a perfect base - a lovely, friendly town well placed for day trips elsewhere; not too big and not too small; and home to the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art, where I spent several happy hours both at a show and on a training day, watching exquisite dancing horses and handsome caballeros. It really does not get much better. Elsewhere, we wandered Seville's ornate shopping streets; sat by the vast blue reaches of water on Cadiz's shores; had one of the best meals I've ever had on holiday, a stunningly artistic selection of tapas, in Puerto de Santa Maria; admired the vistas from Arcos de la Frontera, a medieval dream of a town; and drank a lot of delicious coffee.

I hadn't previously spent a lot of time in Spain, although I speak the language up to a point (I was pleased at how much I was able to use it on holiday, and how well I was generally able to get by) and have had some excellent friendships with Spanish people. I had already spent a week in Mallorca, but although there are flashes of Spanish culture, it is pretty touristy and you don't always know where you are. In 2010 I spent a few days in Madrid and a day trip to Toledo, and loved both. Madrid's Prado is hands down one of the finest art galleries I have ever visited, and I finally caught a tantalizing glimpse of the mystery of Velazquez's Las Meninas. Madrid is monumental but beguiling, dark but fun-loving - definitely a city I could revisit any time. And Toledo, a gemlike town, is truly the stuff of fantasy.

It may have been mere holiday-fuelled musings, but I concluded that Spain was probably where I'd chose to live if I had to go somewhere in southern Europe. I love the south of France but it is somehow a bit too Mediterranean for my taste. Italy is enchanting and rich and beautiful but I don't feel at all at home there or with the people. Spain has something in common with both but perhaps there is a little more darkness and solemnity, which has a certain appeal. Ted Hughes wrote of Sylvia Plath's reaction to the country:


Spain frightened you. Spain
Where I felt at home. The blood-raw light,
The oiled anchovy faces, the African
Black edges to everything, frightened you.
Your schooling had somehow neglected Spain.
The wrought-iron grille, death and the Arab drum.

(from 'You Hated Spain', Birthday Letters)


I know that my experience of Spain is still fairly limited, but this seems pretty accurate: especially "Black edges to everything." The Spanish friend who took me to Madrid refused to go to the Prado with me; with a shudder, she said "Oh, I hate Spanish art...it's so dark." It's hard to argue with her "dark" assessment.

I knew that Spain had a rich literature, most of it not very familiar to me. But I was really delighted to find that they love and honour their poets. In Seville especially, and in other towns too, I came across many plaques dedicated specifically to poets. This one is dedicated to José María Blanco White - "a life dedicated to fighting intolerance." He moved to England and wrote a sonnet, 'Night and Death' (in English), which was dedicated to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and has achieved some fame.

I certainly realised that I don't know very much about Spanish poetry. I bought a book of Antonio Machado's poems, which seems beautiful, but reading poetry in Spanish is bound to be a slow project for me.

Federico García Lorca is one of the greats, and an Andalucian as well. From dipping into his poems a little, they immediately seem profoundly Spanish with their imagery of death, horses, idealised women, winding roads through dry landscapes, and music - this is a deeply and passionately musical nation. This poem, 'Romance Sonambulo', chilled me to the bone with its morbid imagery and references to the Civil War - a tragic event which ultimately caused his death, as with so many others. You can find it on this link both in English translation and in the original Spanish:

ROMANCE SONAMBULO (Federico Garcia Lorca)

I'm glad that Spain loves its poets. Another good reason to return and try to uncover a little more of the mystery.

ReJoyce! James Is Out of Copyright

from A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN (James Joyce)


April 16. Away! Away!

The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone - come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsmen. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.

April 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.


James Joyce's work has now been in the public domain for two weeks, as it is 70 years since his death. According to this blog post from the New Yorker, this is one in the eye for Stephen Joyce, the author's grandson, who tried to keep a stranglehold on Joyce's estate and frankly sounds like a terrifying and insecure control freak of the type I have occasionally encountered. *cough cough*

The blog post mentions Stephen Joyce's interference in the 2004 Bloomsday celebrations. I'm pretty sure that 2004 was the year I saw more of Bloomsday than any other, and it seems everyone managed to have fun anyway. I remember O'Connell Street thronging with Dubliners, and some sort of strange and fascinating performance art by the Spike - there was a replacement Nelson's Column with a living Nelson on top, and Stephen Dedalus (or Joyce himself?) hanging precariously from a crane. Or something to that effect. It was a rather dreamlike example of the unfailing Irish habit of lateral thinking (ie. thinking outside the box 24/7). I kind of miss that.

Anyway, I thought that I would celebrate by posting a short excerpt from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It would have to be my favourite Joyce book. I read Ulysses just before I moved to Dublin, which was interesting, but a bit of a mistake - simply because I would have recognised a lot more had I waited to read it after I'd lived in Dublin for a year or two. I'd like to return to it, but even having read it before (now about ten years ago), it's a little daunting. I studied Portrait in university and it was something of a revelation. More abstract than Dubliners, it kept two feet on the ground to a certain extent and offered a fascinating and accessible insight into human consciousness. That is a book I would like to reread, more than the others. I've never read Finnegan's Wake. I mean, have you?

Joyce apparently wrote poetry too. A quick glance suggested to me that it wasn't up to much. But if I'm to stick rigidly to the format of this blog (which wasn't really the idea), you could argue that the above is prose poetry. It is certainly unforgettable. "Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead..."

"O City city": T S Eliot's The Waste Land

T S Eliot and THE WASTE LAND at The Poetry Archive


This link will take you to an excellent T S Eliot page at The Poetry Archive, featuring biographical information, the entire text of The Waste Land (broken down into its various sections) and other poems including 'Journey of the Magi' and extracts from Four Quartets.

There is also an entire recording of Eliot reading The Waste Land. I have to admit, though, that I'd probably rather listen to Viggo Mortensen reading it on Faber's Waste Land app for iPad - if I had an iPad, and I'm probably not going to buy one just for that.

If you are reading this entry and have not yet read The Waste Land, I can't urge you too strongly to read it. Complex, yes, long, yes, intensely referential and rather confusing, yes. It is also a profound, beautiful, organic and skilfully integrated poem with some of the most resonant lines in all of English literature. The reader who sits with it and returns to it over the years will find that reading it is like swimming in the collective poetic unconscious.

I took the above picture near City Hall some months ago. Tonight, as I was thinking about writing this entry, it occurred to me that it would be a good illustration for Eliot's fragmented and layered vision of London in The Waste Land. A little later, I noticed that one of the London pages that I've "liked" on Facebook was featuring an almost identical photograph. It was one of those odd London moments that happen so constantly that they're almost a commonplace.

It's hard to walk around London, particularly the more historic areas, without having Waste Land moments. London is Unreal City, after all:


Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.

(from 'Part I: The Burial of the Dead')


Of course, this is also Dante, one of the guardian spirits and governing principles of the poem. Dante saw the Inferno; Eliot saw London Bridge; I tend to see the outside of Victoria Station (and just possibly the inside). A couple of days ago I posted the following quotation from The Waste Land on my Facebook status - just because:


'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city [...]

(from 'Part III: The Fire Sermon')


Last night I was on my way to the Globe Theatre to meet a friend for a Shakespeare/Globe event, decided that the easiest station to get out at was Mansion House on the District Line, stepped out of the station and found myself on Queen Victoria Street. I've been in the City many times, and nearby, but on Queen Victoria Street perhaps only once or twice before. It was another strange London moment, and a Waste Land moment.

I was reading The Waste Land today and came across these lines:


[...] I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

(from 'Part I: The Burial of the Dead')


I had a sudden flashback to Watership Down, for a great many years one of my favourite books, if not my favourite. I'd probably still count it as such, though I haven't read it for several years. I read it so many times particularly between the ages of about 12 and 18 that I have a lot of it very nearly memorized. I was fairly sure that "the heart of light, the silence" was echoed in one of the poems contained in the book. Sure enough:


O take me with you, dropping behind the woods,
Far away, to the heart of light, the silence.
For I am ready to give you my breath, my life,
The shining circle of the sun, the sun and the rabbit.

(from Watership Down)


I realised over the years that there are so many literary references - some of them only faint and glancing - in Watership Down that the pleasure of reading it is only increased by having a wide literary frame of reference. Reading The Waste Land is very similar. It both references - the Bible, Dante, the Grail Quest, Shakespeare, Verlaine, The Golden Bough, and many other sources and incidents - and is referred to. I have heard echoes of The Waste Land in so many of my favourite authors. As well as Richard Adams, I can think of Ursula Le Guin, Michael Ende, and Susan Cooper, among others. It is such an extraordinary and pervasive work that it seems to have seeped consciously or unconsciously into the works of countless writers. I am not sure that there is another modern poetic work to equal it in this respect or in its sheer catastrophic, fragmented, disorienting power. Although published in 1922, it is surely a suitable epitaph for the entire 20th century:


What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

(from 'Part I: The Burial of the Dead')

John Milton - 'On His Blindness'

ON HIS BLINDNESS (John Milton)


When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."


John Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, but this poem is also well known and is certainly my favourite of his works - possibly one of my favourite poems by anyone.

Milton, a poet of the 17th century, found himself completely blind by his late forties; and from the evidence of this poem, sadly frustrated, as this impairment left him very limited. He had to dictate his writing to assistants, one of whom was the great metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell.

In this sonnet, Milton refers to Jesus' parable of the talents, found at Matthew 25:14-30. Milton obviously feared that he was becoming like the servant who deliberately hid his talent, rather than using it and making it grow. While the talents in this parable were actually monetary units, and could represent various gifts, opportunities or useful abilities, many artists and interpreters have seen them literally as "talents."

Milton, a devout man, obviously found himself in a difficult position. He didn't want to make excuses for himself, but he also saw that his blindness had left him severely limited. This poem also reminds me of the apostle Paul's comments on his friend Epaphroditus, who was "longing to see all of you and is depressed because you heard he had fallen sick." (Philippians 2:26). Epaphroditus evidently felt that he couldn't do all that he felt he should be doing, and that his weakness had left him somehow exposed.

'On His Blindness' offers the response: "They also serve who only stand and wait." Sometimes there is little else that we can do but hold on. It doesn't mean that we are worth any less, or that we are any less loved.

Michael Longley's 'Snow Water': Tea, Glorious Tea

SNOW WATER (Michael Longley)


The above link will take you through to Michael Longley's 'Snow Water' on the Poetry Archive website, as well as several of his other poems and biographical information.

Tea, the subject of 'Snow Water', feels like a subject as vast as time. Its devotees know that it is not just a hot drink; it is an art, and for some, a quasi-religion. Sydney Smith, a clergyman of the 18th and 19th centuries, was quoted as saying "Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea." I first came across this quotation at the British Library, on a lovely map of the world showing how tea was harvested and enjoyed on every continent (well, most of them). It was actually an odd sort of propaganda poster for wartime. Darkly, it noted regarding the Sahara Desert: "Sahara Desert. No water for tea."

I'm a sort of devo-tea (ahem): I love tea and have sampled many varieties, and friends and colleagues have commented on my enthusiasm. On the other hand, I do not much care about the exact temperature of the water or exactly how long the teabag should stay in or anything like that. (In fact, I now have a rather low habit of making it in the mug.) I would mainly like it to be hot and to taste tea-like. I admit, though, that it can be particularly fabulous if made with extreme correctness and served in just the proper way (bone china...cucumber sandwiches...). Also, when I first lived in England, I really did not understand the concept of Jaffa Cakes. I was ready to file them away along with mushy peas as an impenetrable English mystery. Until I tried eating one with a simultaneous sip of tea. Bliss!

The above picture was taken a year ago in Okinawa, Japan, in a beautiful palace tea-room, overlooking an extraordinary little Japanese garden with miniature palm trees. The biscuits were perhaps of even greater importance in Okinawa, since apparently they have been essential to Okinawan culture for centuries (an empire founded upon biscuits?). But Japan might be the ultimate nation of tea-lovers, though China and India would no doubt argue with that. I particularly love flavoured black teas, and Japanese tea-makers do those beautifully. There really is a tradition that snow water makes the finest tea, which I think is Chinese. And there actually is a blend called Eyebrows of Longevity.

Coffee is better on the Continent, of course; but in this part of the world, if you want great tea, stick with England. The English can still get terribly, terribly excited about a good cuppa, and I seem to be pretty English in that respect myself. (I blame my ancestry, and, surprisingly, my Finnish mother, who drinks vast quantities. She apparently picked up the habit while living in England.)

I just came back from a holiday in Spain with a friend, and we drank copious amounts of beautiful coffee. But to furnish our rented apartment and to avoid mediocre Lipton, we brought a good-sized box of Yorkshire Tea, and consumed nearly all of it in the space of two weeks. I think that says it all.


---------------------------
My Spanish holiday and Spanish poets are very much on my mind, but I have realised that Spanish poetry is mostly an unknown (and marvelous-looking) land to me, and I need to explore a bit more before writing about it.

"Her Fevered Smile By Night": Louise Imogen Guiney's 'The Lights of London'

THE LIGHTS OF LONDON (Louise Imogen Guiney)

The evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot

Far down into the valley’s cold extreme,

Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream

Like fleeing specters, shudder and are not.

The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot

Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream,

From chaos climb with many a sudden gleam,

London, one moment fallen and forgot.

Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright

Prick door and window; all her streets obscure

Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure,

Full as a marsh of mist and winking light;

Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure

Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.

I have a view from my current flat in south London that I never thought I'd have in this city. It looks out into a small park, which is a blessing just for the glimpse of trees and greenery; but beyond are almost all the major landmarks of the London skyline. Battersea Power Station is proudly front and centre; Big Ben and Westminster distant but clear, a small curve of the London Eye, the elegant, futuristic towers of the City. A friend pointed out one day that if you know where to look, you can even see the dome of the National Gallery, and Nelson's column.

I often prefer London by night. Especially if I have had a chance to watch a magnificent sunset first, which is surprisingly often the case. The City is like a huge space station, complete with bright red twinkles on the highest points, and the near-complete spikey Shard, even rising well above the lovable Gherkin. Big Ben's moon face is pale and watchful, and I can never quite believe that's what I'm looking at from my window.

Those London bridge walks, too; those delight me by day, but thrill me by night. I love emerging from Embankment station and seeing what colours are washing over the National Theatre that night. Off in the distance, the Oxo Tower and the magnificent spotlit St Paul's. The best view is from Waterloo Bridge. It gives those striking views both down to the City and to Westminster, and allows a view of the beautiful Hungerford Bridge, too.

Louise Imogen Guiney's sonnet 'The Lights of London' was unfamiliar to me, as was the poet - a turn-of-the-century American woman who also lived in England and was known for both poetry and criticism, now mostly lost to time. This poem struck me with its London truth. When I read it I can so vividly see nineteenth-century London and the gradual starring of its nights with the lighting of the gaslamps. A few years ago I went to see U2 at Wembley, and when they played 'Moment of Surrender' as the magnificent finale, all the lights were turned out and we all held up our lit mobile phones. Although it was so simple, it was one of the most beautiful moments of a show mostly filled with a very impressive light show. I imagine London in this poem "turning on" at night in much the same way.

This poet understood London skies, I think...those hazy, ever-changing, heartbreaking skies. And "Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure/Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night" - yes, that is London, to the very core.

MacLeish's 'You, Andrew Marvell': The Fall of Vast Empires

YOU, ANDREW MARVELL (Archibald MacLeish)


The above link will take you through to 'You, Andrew Marvell' on the Poetry Foundation website, as well as other poems and biographical information about MacLeish.

I think that 'You, Andrew Marvell' - which I could probably rank amongst my favourite poems - was another random anthology-browsing discovery; not sure, though. I was a bit puzzled for years by the title, though I'd read Marvell by then. Marvell's 'The Garden' is definitely a favourite poem, and I would like to write about it another time.

Eventually I realised, or had it pointed out to me (probably the latter - I'm often quite slow on the uptake) that it was a reference to Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress', the best pickup artist poem ever written by a long shot. The following lines from the Marvell poem are especially notable:


My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
[...] But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.


'To His Coy Mistress' is very funny, and very clever, and weirdly erotic; but it is also sobering. Whether or not you're after something more profound than the speaker, time is hurrying on.

'You, Andrew Marvell' is no kind of love poem - it is about the vast empires that Marvell alluded to, and their eventual fall and decay. The poem has a racing, incantatory energy which has sometimes been criticized as repetitive, but to me it makes the poem. I see the speaker on a beach, with a vision in his mind of night's shadow falling over the turning earth. But he sees more than nightfall; he sees empires being swept under. The places that he name-checks were once world powers, and now are entirely gone, or are only weak copies of their former glory.

And Baghdad darken and the bridge

Across the silent river gone

And through Arabia the edge

Of evening widen and steal on

And deepen on Palmyra's street

The wheel rut in the ruined stone

And Lebanon fade out and Crete

High through the clouds and overblown

MacLeish was American, and I picture the speaker on a beach in the Hamptons of Long Island, or perhaps Florida. The shadow has already passed over the westernmost parts of Europe; now it looms over the sea and advances toward the coast of America. What really makes this poem special, after all the forward momentum, is the deliberate breath drawn in the split last stanza:


Nor now the long light on the sea:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of the night comes on...


Is it simply to draw breath? Is it fear, is it wonder?

I thought of this poem today partly because I hadn't read it for a while and I love it; but also, 2011 has surely been a year to reflect upon the fall of empires. There have been few years like it in my lifetime.

I took the above picture in Cairo in August/September 2010, at the gates of the Egyptian Museum. Only a few months later the country was flung into upheaval with the Egyptian Revolution - outside those very gates, and occasionally inside - and the growing impetus of the Arab Spring. Recently I saw a photo from 2010 of an African-Arab summit where the leaders of Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia all stood together in the front row. Now, all have fallen and one is dead.

Other "empires" have been shaken; Japan, one of the largest economies in the world, after an appalling disaster which killed tens of thousands; the financial powers, through economic crisis and protest movements. This has been a momentous year. What will 2012, now so close, bring?

'I Am!' - John Clare

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest - that I loved the best -
Are strange - nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below - above the vaulted sky.


I particularly love the last stanza of this poem, although I think John Clare was dreaming of some lonely spot in England, not Antarctica.

Interestingly, Clare wrote about "the living sea of waking dreams" (and "shipwreck", sadly). As I said previously - a universal, often unconscious symbol.