Final Demands - Frederic Raphael

This is the final part of a series of three books chronicling the lives of Cambridge graduates from the 1950s to the recent past. Adam Morris first appears in The Glittering Prizes as a young undergraduate who becomes a writer in literary London. Fame and Fortune continues the careers of the group of students through their working lives which culminate in this last series as they reach the beginnings of old age. Frederic Raphael was a brilliant classicist at Charterhouse (an English public school; the English public school?) and began Classics at Cambridge before switching (as you are allowed, even encouraged, to do at Cambridge) to Philosophy. Classics, however, continues to play an important role in his writing and he one of the few writers who include Latin and Greek literature seriously, without condescension, as a major part of European literature. He is one of the most European of writers in English, drawing for his inspiration on a wide range of authors of all languages into which he draws the Classical authors as a matter of course. For the classicist interested in how the subject is portrayed in a modern novel the figure of Adam Morris’s daughter Rachael is the most involving. She is a young classicist who surprisingly goes to California with Bill Bourne, also a classicist and one of Adam’s Cambridge contemporaries. Her work on Catullus is well received, although Adam takes a little of the credit for himself; but he should be ashamed of himself for the muddled line of poem 51 on page 185. It should read identidem te (not et) and the line ends after te. Can he really be quoting the text of a JRS article? Or is FR having an elaborate game with us here? Is Adam supposed to be so well-read that he can misquote Catullus? Not with the text in front of him, surely. Nevertheless it is a pleasure to have a young, female and pretty cool character given Latin literature as her subject in a modern novel.
The reviewers all recognise that Adam is a thinly veiled autobiographical version of Raphael himself: the polished wit, the long-windedness, the Jewishness, the prickliness. He is not always a likeable character, but I guess he is not meant to be. Hearing Tom Conti from the BBC television and radio versions say the words in your head, however, makes him a more real person than just the words off the page.
Reviewers are less forthcoming about the basis for the other characters. So who are they based on? Is Bill Bourne based on John Sullivan who worked on Martial and Petronius, as Bill did? Sullivan did, I think, die relatively young, but did he also run into trouble with the black faculty for alleged racism? Adam gets embroiled in a Black Athena-type argument at Bill’s memorial gathering in Los Angeles. As for the others: is Joyce Hadleigh drawn from Joan Bakewell? Is Alan Parks Clive James? Or could he be David Frost? Is Samuel Marcus Cohen George Steiner? Is there a website devoted to this kind of pointless but intriguing speculation?

What a Carve Up!

The theme for the set text for Latin at the European Baccalaureate in 2011 will be Virgil Aeneid 6 and the Descent to the Underworld. My colleagues and I have been looking for passages from European art and literature to accompany the Virgil and to give an idea of the use of this theme in later periods. We came up with the usual suspects: Dante, Milton, Sartre, but a French colleague said she had been reading a novel by an English writer whose title I didn’t recognise. The author, Jonathan Coe, I had read, but this particular work was a puzzle. In the end it turned out that the title is What a Carve Up! which defeated the French translator who had to make do with “Testament à l'anglaise”. The title refers to an old film starring Sid James and Kenneth Connor which is woven into the novel in original ways, that combine comic horror with social satire of Britain in the 1980s. The passage (page 94-5, Penguin edition) which relates to the underworld is a scene where the narrator goes down into the tunnels of the London Tube system for a dreadful journey. (A sort of Descent into the Underground.) There is embedded into the text a line of Latin: perque leves populos simulacraque functa sepulchro (Ovid Metamorphoses 10. 14) which is unusual in a modern English novel, where writers often wish to conceal their learning for fear of putting off readers by a show of perceived elitism. Nothing much more is made of this at the time, but slowly through the book other allusions begin to appear to the myth of Orpheus. The narrator meets a young painter, Phoebe, whose work he unwittingly misunderstands and which she then destroys. These paintings are an interpretation of the Orpheus and Eurydice story and the theme of the search for the past by a descent into Hell becomes clearer step by step as the novel progresses. Though not slavishly following the outline of the mythical story, it becomes clear that Michael (the writer and narrator) bears some resemblance to an Orpheus figure and Phoebe has elements of Eurydice. She repeatedly urges him at the end of the book: “Don’t look back.” As a result the scene of the katabasis earlier on is not a casual classical reference but an integral part of the novel’s structure. A quick trawl through some of the reviews of this novel do not appear to have picked up on this Orpheus reference although one or two did make a connection to Cocteau’s film of the Orpheus tale. The author, Jonathan Coe, makes wide use of film in all his work and may have been thinking of Orpheus through Cocteau, but the inclusion of the line of Ovid seems to indicate a wish to go further back to the original myth. Or at least to Ovid’s version of it. So I was introduced to this accomplished postmodern piece of English literature by a French colleague to include in a collection of Latin texts. The European School is often full of surprises like this. At the same time I found I was introducing, by way of the same process, my German colleagues to the writing of Max Sebald, who wrote in German but is perhaps better known in England. He also has a key passage in Austerlitz featuring a descent into Hades by way of Liverpool Street railway station. There must be something about London train stations that makes writers think of Hell. I can’t imagine what it is.

An Education and Latin A Level

An Education

This film starring Carey Mulligan as the 16 year old schoolgirl who has an affair with an older man in the early 1960s has been receiving a lot of notice with awards, good reviews and Oscar nominations. It is always difficult when you know the period and background to a film through personal experience to avoid criticising the details but in this film there are too many mistakes and misjudgements to ignore, especially when you compare the original brief memoir by Lynn Barber on which it is based. (You can read it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/07/lynn-barber-virginity-relationships
It is easy to forgive the fact that the film places the concert to which the girl Jenny is taken in St John’s Smith Square. I remember that this church was converted to a concert hall only in 1969, well after the time in which the action takes place. Unimportant perhaps, but shouldn’t somebody have checked? When she finally receives her acceptance from Oxford (the chance of which she initially abandons to marry the unsuitable lover) it is addressed to her by the University of Oxford. Didn’t anyone involved on the script know that admission to Oxford is only through a college? The business with C S Lewis and the supposed visit to him in Oxford is set up to be unmasked as a falsehood, but it is highly unlikely that the girl would have read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at her age. Though it was published it was never very popular with young readers in the early 1950s when she was growing up. The film is also very vague about the Oxford entrance exams which we had to sit after A levels. In fact Jenny gets her A levels and at first withdraws from the entrance examinations. Only on the intervention of her father is she allowed back to take them. What is really annoying though is the way Latin is set up to the representative symbol of the old fashioned nature of her school. This is not the case in the memoir, where Latin is mentioned only as her weakest subject (not surprising as then Latin A level was a difficult subject). In fact in the memoir Lynn Barber mentions the fact that (mirabile dictu, as she says) she got the top grade in it as well top grades as expected in English and French. Latin was required as entrance to English at Oxford at that time and indeed first year English undergraduates had to take a Latin paper. The fictional persona of Lynn Barber in the film is very unlikely to have scorned Latin at A level, and may well have enjoyed it. She may have found it challenging, we all did, but the memoir shows she is proud of her final result. This default denigration of Latin is all to prevalent in English culture where to succeed at something difficult is seen as being a mark of a lack of sophistication. English is fine, French with all that existentialism is a sign of being cool. Why is reading the classic texts of European literature regarded as being a bit odd by English writers and intellectuals? Can it be that it is a bit too much like hard work?
Complaints aside, An Education is a remarkable piece of work, beautifully acted and painstakingly set in its period (visually, at least, but perhaps others are screaming equally loudly that the model of car being driven went out of production before the film’s setting). It is very thought-provoking about the time, especially for anyone who was at school then. Carey Mulligan deserves her Oscar nomination. But why couldn’t they be more careful over the details?

Dulce et Decorum

The new British poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has recently published a poem to commemorate the deaths of the last survivors of the First World War trenches:
Last Post Carol Ann Duffy
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud . . .
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home —
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce — No — Decorum — No — Pro patria mori.
You walk away.
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too —
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert —
and light a cigarette.
There’s coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.
You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.
At its heart this poem quotes Wilfred Owen in turn quoting Horace from his poem Dulce et Decorum Est. Perhaps more about this later: is Duffy being fair to Horace by wrenching him so far out of context and so far away from what he may really have meant? But for the moment a question of pronunciation. How should the Latin in this poem be pronounced? There is an audio recording of the poet herself reading her poem in which she pronounces “dulce” as if it were Italian (doolchay). Where has this pronunciation come from? Is it because of Catholic Latin where schools and churches perhaps founded by Italian orders used this sound in their services? Almost certainly Owen himself would have said in the old English pronunciation of Latin dulce (dulcie), as in the girl’s name, with a soft “c” pronounced as “s”. He would probably not have used the pronuntiatio restituta as used in Latin teaching in most European countries today dulce with a hard “c” (dulke) unless he was taught Latin by a particularly radical young teacher. Rather he would have used the current English style which had been used for many years, until recent scholarship had established that this pronunciation was inauthentic. The battle over this change in sound lasted for many years until the last of those taught the old pronunciation had died out. The British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was apparently one of the last survivors who persistently stuck to the old pronunciation until the end of his life in 1986. Owen’s Latin was apparently fairly minimal and he could not go beyond the basics when he was engaged as a private tutor to a family in France. In the end what sound should be adopted here in this new poem? An authentic or restored pronunciation would be understood by modern listeners with a basic knowledge of Latin; the traditional English pronunciation would be historically accurate, reflecting the usage of the poet who is being quoted (Owen, not Horace). But certainly not an Italian style which makes Wilfred Owen sound either like a Catholic priest trained in Rome or a waiter asking what you would like after your pasta.

Paul Delvaux and the Ancient World

Paul Delvaux was one of the Belgian surrealists best known for his Sleeping Venus pictures and his railway stations. He was for a long time resident in our part of Brussels (Watermael-Boitsfort) and you can sometimes see a background to his paintings as you go around the commune. He was particularly fond of Watermael station which turns up in several works. A small exhibition at the Musee Royale in Brussels is devoted to the influence on him from antiquity. He studied (as many young Belgians still do) Latin and Greek at school and he testifies to the impact the Iliad and the Odyssey made on him. He visited Italy and Greece in the late thirties and then in the fifties when travel to such exotic places was not easy. The open spaces of Pompeii and Herculaneum appear often as backgrounds to the moonlit settings of his female nudes, giving them dream-like quality. His female figures (often recalling the waxwork Sleeping Venus he saw exhibited in Brussels) are inspired by classical sculpture in their simple elegance but are unnervingly modern in their just not quite realistic depiction. Placing a porcelain-skinned female nude before a deserted Greek temple at night he achieves a disturbing nightmarish quality. He makes use of the figure of Venus as a signature to many paintings, but he also uses mythology in, for example, his Pygmalion which reverses the usual story. This use of the ancient world for visual inspiration from the material remains seems to anticipate one of our modern approaches to Classics: Delvaux discovered the power of the stories in school, and then he then went on trips to most rewarding sites to see for himself. In the exhibition there are sketches he did on site from Paestum, Pompeii and Herculaneum, and also from Olympia and Athens. He made sketches of the sculptures from the temple of Zeus at Olympia when they were scarcely known to a wider public. All these influences consequently find their way into his surrealist images transformed by his imagination into an entirely new vision of what are now familiar images. His view of the classical world is not the philological, text-based image often portrayed in critical comment by administrators wishing to show off their modernity by dismissing Classics: this is how the early introduction to the ancient world can work on the imagination of a creative artist who can absorb these ideas and aspects to change the way we look at ourselves.

Iphigénie en Aulide: Greek Tragedy in the French style

The Brussels opera house (La Monnaie) is presenting Gluck’s two Iphigénies in tandem. On some days you can see both of them in one go, an evening of Wagnerian length; the two operas performed without intervals and a long break between. Or you can see them separately and I opted for the first of the two. The inspiration is more Racine than Euripides with a lengthy treatment of the love between Iphigeneia and Achilles which allows for the themes of obedience, duty, guilt and love in different forms to be developed. Achilles loves Iphigeneia and is prepared to defy the orders of Agamemenon for her sacrifice, but his duty compels him to obey his commander; Clytemnestra is conflicted between her love for daughter and her duty towards her husband; Iphigeneia herself loves her father even though he gives the order to sacrifice her under threat from the gods. Gluck’s through-composed music is serious and always pushes the momentum forward. It suits the tragic atmosphere well and is a highly suitable style for Greek tragedy with its combination of recitative, short arias and choruses. It has few great moments and is ultimately unmemorable but for the expression of dramatic scenes it is highly successful, especially when shaped and made urgent by the conductor Christophe Rousset, whose musical triumphs continue at the Monnaie after Semele. A strong cast, headed by Véronique Gens in the title role, conveyed the tension and conflict within their tragic characters. After Katie Mitchell’s staging of Euripides’ Iphigeneia in Aulis at the National Theatre in London recently this seemed restrained and cool, but the Racinean pacing of the events in this treatment develops into real tragic tension. Only the rather soppy happy ending detracts from the full horror of what we are capable of when put into impossible situations.

The main problem of this production lies in the staging and the director’s lack of appreciation for the audience in the theatre. Obviously the producer did not climb up to the balcony where I found my seat to check the sight-lines. I could only see half of the action and only part of the surtitles. Pierre Audi brought the stage over the orchestra pit, put the orchestra on the stage and placed the chorus behind them as a sort of reflection of the audience. (We are all spectators in this postmodern world; there are no hidden actions; all is there in front of us, we get the point). What he forgot is that the Monnaie is a traditional house where you can’t do this sort of thing without depriving the audience of most of what you want to show them. The seats which have poor enough lines of sight for conventional productions are designed to look at the stage not the pit. So we had a good view of the orchestra who we wanted to hear, and half a glimpse of the singers who we wanted to see. The staging would go well in a school hall or a gym or other improvised venue, but not in a traditional opera house which did after all commission the piece. It had “touring production” written all over it and will no doubt be sold all round Europe. But it shows contempt for its original audience. In addition I think the health and safety authorities should be called in to look at the tilt of the stairs which his singers had to negotiate their way down. I feared for the sopranos in their long dresses each time.

Vitruvius on architecture

Does anyone read Vitruvius today? Do architecture students have some familiarity with the basic text on architecture from the ancient world. Judging from the splendid new Penguin Classics (http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141441689,00.html?strSrchSql=vitruvius*/On_Architecture_Vitruvius) translation of the ten books de architectura, perhaps they do. But does anyone read him in Latin? Our European Baccalaureate last year decided on Latin scientific writers as the set texts for the final examination, and so we have become familiar with this text, in fact for the first time. It is a much more entertaining read than may be imagined at first, and is far more than a dry technical analysis of building techniques. (Though in its own way that would still be pretty interesting.) He spends quite a long time telling stories about the origin of architectural features, and about the famous figures of science and technology. His is the story about Archimedes in his bath, and about Ctesibius and his mirror in his father’s barber shop (the origin of hydraulic pumps). He is also fascinating on the origin of the Caryatid figure on temple buildings, and on the origin of the Corinthian capital. A young girl died from disease and her nurse collected up her things and placed them by her tomb in a basket with a tile on top. By chance she put this basket over the root of an acanthus plant which sprouted in the spring shooting its foliage up around and through the basket. A passing artist, Callimachus, observed the pleasing shape of the different elements and decided it would look well as a new type of capital on top of a column.

Sometimes you have to read him with the illustrations to hand to see exactly what he means, but the modern editions are full of diagrams and sketches to make the text clear. Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian man sketch seems just such an attempt: the meaning of the text becomes apparent when you see it rather than just read it.

The classic sections are those on the different orders of architecture, the styles of painting in houses and theatres and town planning. He is also good on astrology and how to defend a city from sieges. There is much more to him than just architecture: in fact architectus is not confined to the narrow sense of the word in modern languages. As a stylist, Vitruvius is not a Cicero or an Ovid, but he doesn’t pretend to be. He is trying to write clear plain Latin for other architects and engineers as well as a general readership to explain things that may have become lost if he hadn’t written them down. He does not deserve to be patronised in the way the translator of an online version of his work looks down on his Latin style. As an intermediate author he has a lot to offer students of Latin who are beginning on their exploration of authentic texts but who may still find the subtleties and complexities of the classic works a bit daunting.