Bounteous Plenty

There can be times when one scratches around wondering what to read next, mostly a steady stream of suitable items suggest themselves but sometimes, like now, one seems to hit a rich seam and look forward to a few weeks of bounteous plenty across several genres.

The recent find, The Dyer's Hand, exceeded expectations and moving on to the other, the George Eliot Essays, she's immediately in good form with her statement of intent for the Westminster Review and then 30 pages on Madame de Sablé, not least for forseeing text messages and Twitter from as far back as 1854 in,

the evident tendency of things to contract personal communication within the narrowest limits makes us tremble lest some further development of the electric telegraph should reduce us to a society of mutes, or to a sort of insects, communicating by ingenmious antemnnae of our own invention. 

There might have been a time when I'd have thought the George Eliot essays might be a bit dry, Victorian and Causaubon-ish but she's a lot of fun so far. Or maybe by now I'm sufficienyly dry, Victorian and Causaubon-ish to appreciate her.

'Long-awaited' but not necessarily with too much relish is the second half of Robert Crawford's scholarly biography of T.S. Eliot. The first half was a grim read, if I remember rightly, which wasn't Prof. Crawford's fault and maybe not entirely Eliot's but such things seem essential and must be done so it'll be on its way on publication day. There was a time, in the 1970's when it seemed generally accepted that Eliot was 'the' poet of the C20th just as much as Stairway to Heaven was the ultimate rock track. Neither of those assumptions are quite so convincing by now but one doesn't deny the continuing significance of Eliot or the job that Prof. Crawford has put in and vol. 1 would look silly on the shelf without vol. 2 next to it.

 

I waited for the Christopher Hogwood recording of the Coffee Cantata to arrive but it didn't. Probably because it looks like I didn't order it. But while one can keep buying more Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven, their shelves are full and other prteviously neglected composers have been presenting impressive credentials.

One never leaves an Angela Kopyrina recital without feeling blown away and that has more than once been due to her playing Liszt and so, hearing another torrential surge of another pianist doing something similar on the wireless, I looked out for records and one by Stephen Hough is on its way. I wasn't expecting it to be him but I'm sure I'll be in good hands.

Also, from Wigmore Hall yesterday lunchtime, Borodin's String Quartet no. 2, with particular reference to the third movement. While one might have thought one should have found out about most of what is worth having by now, there is always more. I had thought that the complete Bach Cantatas might be a retirement project but, two years in, there just isn't time enough, or world, with so much else to consider and, usually, enjoy.

I'm also most grateful for a tip received for a film called Reaching for the Moon (2013), about Elizabeth Bishop, which was immediately found for less than a fiver. And so, the guilt that I might feel about invading the privacy of people who ostensibly valued their privacy has every reason to increase. Quite possibly the three poets I am most interestd in are Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin and Rosemary Tonks, all of who went to some lengths to protect their privacy. To which my best defence is that if they were that serious about being private they need not have published any poems.

On the subject of Rosemary, the project here was enhanced by finding this podcast from Lunar Poetry Podcasts in which Lucy Reynolds tells that Rosemary didn't disappear quite as completely as we thought, she was just a well-kept secret. Which means it's a good thing I hadn't finished my new essay on her yet and I can include that,

Lunar Poetry- Rosemary Tonks 

Which only leaves me to say how good three episodes from series 3 of Upstart Crow were on a repeat channel the other night. I thought I'd sen them all but I can't remember the Hamlet, Much Ado or Julius Caesar episodes which made for a great evening. It might have been thought that Ben Elton had been lost to worthwhile writing for some years and even that Upstart Crow was just Blackadder remade with Shakespeare instead of Edmund Blackadder but it keeps recycling its set piece jokes - the quality of public transport, Shakespeare lifting ideas from those around him and anywhere he can find them but, most perspicaciously of all, one feels, Ben Elton nailing Ricky Gervais with the host of the first London Theatre Awards. 

In the same way that I'm sure I'd have done better at 'A' level History if I'd had Blackadder as source material, students of Shakespeare ought to be given Upstart Crow ahead of Stanley Wells.