Felix Dusquesnel on Sarah Bernhardt, quoted in Robert Gottleib's Sarah, The Life of Sarah Bernhardt,
She wasn't just pretty, she was far more dangerous than that.
It might be best to leave it at that since I'm not halfway it yet but it's been a rewarding discovery prompted by the recent Julian Barnes book without which I would never have known. Although quite how much one can know when so many of the stories exist in very different versions or are dubious is hard to say. Perhaps we can take some small solace in reflecting that there's nothing new about Donald Trump, Boris and Prince Andrew and not being able to believe anything they say. The difference is that Sarah seemed to be somehow on the side of the angels whereas the others clearly aren't.
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I'm due at Chichester tomorrow for my third concert in four days. That's nothing to complain about but it stretches my reviewing resources to their limited limits.
It strikes me that a concert review should review the performance and a record review something very similar, like the interpretation, since a recording might be made up of a few performances jig-sawed together. One takes the piece as read, as a known thing, and move on from there.
There are a few things to say in music reviews about the musician, their phrasing, tempi and what they do with the piece, the sound, the acoustics, the recording, and how it compares with others. It strikes me that I'm in it for the composer and then the piece rather than the messenger that delivers it. But still I'll keep trying because in the same way that Socrates regarded the 'unexamined life as not worth living', I can't just go to a concert, read a book or listen to a record (films don't really come into it for me) without thinking I need to think about it.
I remember the aesthetician, Colin Lyas, much admired lecturer when I was at Lancaster, saying somewhere that he wasn't a proper aesthete because they should, if on their deathbed, still philosophize about a work rather than just enjoy it whereas he wouldn't, he'd just enjoy it.
I enjoy it alright. Involved in a piece of music, a book of poems, any book or occasionally in a film if I must, is the best place to be but afterwards I'm back with Xanthippe's husband wanting to wonder about it.
What was that all about. How did it work. What was it like, what other things was it like. And, most crucially, was it any good.
While the Stylistics and Criticism course (Lancaster, circa 1979, Geoff Leech and Mick Short) provided 'tools' - as they might be called now- with which to answer the first questions, they said they weren't going to attempt to answer the important, last one.
They didn't know, did they.
So, we saunter on regardless and if my reviews become more like diary entries padded out with weather reports or sundry, circumstantial anecdote, as they can be, so be it. By all means, if ever I review anything of yours and I omit to mention the bit you thought was best about it and say it reminds me of something that happened in 1975, I apologize in advance.
That quote about Sarah above almost made me want to write a poem but after not much thought I realized it might be a tame affair compared to the real thing and the restraint I've shown for 18 months now is a much more admirable achievement than any half-baked lines I might produce in celebration of someone I can only read about.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I published booklets of my own poems. The original allocation of ISBN numbers is used up now, though. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become, often more about music than books and not so often about poems. It will be about whatever suggests itself.
