Whan that Septembre with its ayre coole,
those hydeous kids due back in schoole,
the herte is gladde to welcom inne
Goddes fynest monthes that, wythout synne,
he did ynamen gentil Septembre
and noblest birthday monthe, Octobre.
It always seems like an achievement to arrive at September although, like a gin and tonic, you seem to no sooner have been glad of its arrival than it's gone again.
For those who still come here because it was once a poetry website, there are new books by Michael Hofmann and Paul Muldoon. It's not my fault, it turns out, that Hofmann had fallen below the radar - it's his. His first book of poems for twenty years is an admirable state of affairs but not sufficiently attention-seeking to remain where one can be seen. I suspect
One Lark, One Horse will be highly worthwhile and I ought to be ordering it now rather than 'doing a Monday night'.
Having checked out the Cheltenham Literature Festival, I realize I will miss Paul Muldoon having arranged my visit to nearby for not quite when he's there. Never mind. I saw him last time and elsewhere before. Well worth it then but not to be regretted now.
Frolic and Detour might be his last chance.
It was once justifiable to say, circa 1998, that we lived 'in the Age of Muldoon', as the eminent critic wrote, and I was a keen admirer of
The Annals of Chile, Incantata, Hay and where the great man had got to by then but the worst thing about being the height of fashion is that you might live long enough to outlive the fashion you contributed so much to. Ask Sigue Sigue Sputnik. No, don't. Ask Shakespeare, whose reputation has been restored since but saw the theatre move into a vogue for plays other than his before he had quite finished. Perhaps that's why he stopped.
It might be an old joke and we know the
TLS will publish letters from any old pranksters these days but following their big scoop of the huge
American Standard earlier this year, someone was facetious enough to ask the following week 'when was he going to publish the answers' and now that someone's been brave enough to ask, it's either time for Prof. Muldoon to come halfway to meet us or disappear into a parody of his own elusive method. We will see if we are prepared to keep the faith but there can come a time to stop being 'brand loyal' to those one once regarded as essential.
I understand
that
James Joyce might have gone back to something like
Dubliners after
Finnegans Wake had illness not deprived him of the chance to redeem his reputation so it isn't too late until it's too late.
But while I remain devoted to some poets, some poetry and certain things about poetry and unwilling to throw away the last 40-odd years of thinking about it, I'm not devout anymore. There is something Eastern, mystical or transcendent about not doing it any more. How much wiser do I seem in my assessments of cycling, cricket or football on account of the fact I haven't done any of them for twenty years or more. Or it might just be that I'm passed it, lazy, too ready with an opinion and there's nothing remotely Buddhist about it.
But the idea occurs in Japanese literature, and I'm sure in plenty of places elsewhere, about 'going beyond' and that is what all great art should surely be trying to do. To find some release from the shackles of itself, of us being ourselves, and resolve the difficulty that made it necessary.
I'm on page 220 out of 510 in Thomas Mann's
Doktor Faustus. It was recommended to me.
One has to size up any recommendation by assessing the recommendor, one's own pre-conceptions and make a decision. I've been eternally grateful for The Magnetic Fields, Patrick Hamilton and Richard Yates but not taken up computer games (when chess will do), science fiction or whisky.
I hoped
Doktor Faustus would be a short book, like
Death in Venice or
any of those
other
European masterpieces by Gide, Turgenev, Camus or Hesse
, but it's a monster.
It is a deep, hugely detailed thump of a novel that must have been C19th, when novels were like that, except it was published in 1947. There is no prospect of me embarking on another Mann novel once I've finished this because I'll need a rest but, heaven knows, there's enough to keep on mind.
During its account of 'the discord between genius and sanity', one can find one's own place among the many ideas on offer. There is Schildknapp, who 'wanted to be a poet, in his own estimation he was one', but complained 'if only I could work instead of drudging, I would show them!' but,
what he considered an obstacle was really a pretext with which he deceived himself over his lack of a genuine and telling creative impulse.
That might hurt anyone who hadn't realized it already but it falls refreshingly on those of us who knew.
So far,
Doktor Faustus has mentioned Buxtehude twice which is double the number of times the only other novel I've read that did, which was
The Glass Bead Game. That is a measure of how serious and clever it is. The title hints that one ought not to expect a happy ending but perhaps the thrill of what one finds out en route to the inevitable creates the illusion of it having been worthwhile.
But let's not hope to learn anything from literature or that it might make us better people. It can only be what it is for its own sake. Brilliant at its best but useless. Let's hope Paul Muldoon can sort it all out for us rather than provide something like the Listener crossword.
