I thought I must be 'seeing things', an hour and a half programme on Saturday night all about Seamus Heaney. So I turned the telly on and there it was.
Seamus Heaney and the music of what happens was more biographical than literary with first hand reportage from Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon and several brothers, Marie and a daughter. So, the early days, the marriage, the television work, the Troubles, a quick rise to star status, Harvard, the Republic, the Nobel Prize, the stroke and noli timere. It was just about what was required for 'the general reader, without saying quite enough about why he was any good.
It's usually the words, you see, that make a poet great, rather than what they say. Michael Longley is a very good poet and would have attracted more attention had Heaney not been there but he is only in second gear in comparison. It's the difference between Shakespeare and his contemporaries and between Mozart and Salieri. There was nothing about the delicate music, the apparent naturalness and the richness of the language that came as standard.
But there's always one, isn't there. In this case it is A.N. Wilson, the doyen of English fogeyness, who I generally approve of for his fey Derek Nimmo-ishness as well as his Jesus book. He wasn't in this programme, of course, but I saw a disparaging remark by him about Heaney recently which didn't seem like the first so I've looked him up on the subject. He's always at it, it seems. There's always one.
Such a programme makes it plain that where the words come from is essential to any understanding of them and the more one thinks about the old 'text is all there is' approach, the bleaker it looks. The Irishness, the bog people and, indeed, the avoidance of anything partisan beyond the poem declining Motion and Morrison's offer of the post of figurehead to a generation of British poets are crucial and one begins to wonder if any poets should be read without a biography to accompany the poems. But few are going to be awarded a book biography, never mind a television documentary. Most are sadly not going to be deemed worth the effort. Although I'd be grateful of a similar thing on J.H. Prynne, I can't see it happening. The very idea. Perhaps it's a podcast for a devoted admirer to do.
But we are grateful for what we are offered, even if the poet needs a Nobel Prize to qualify.
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So, three and a half years' worth of TLS went upstairs into a room it's not advisable to try to navigate in the dark. The Gramophones fitted onto the music book shelves and that freed up the bottom shelf of the bookcase here in the back room which now reads, top to bottom- poetry biographies, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop/Sean O'Brien, Philip Larkin and Shakespeare biography. And I now have my choice of lying down places in the front room restored and that is that minor crisis resolved. I knew you'd be relieved.
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The Beethoven and Brahms Violin Sonatas both took their separate times to arrive and then did. You may be aware by now that I've only really got one line on each composer and the Brahms line is that he forever felt overshadowed by Beethoven. But, on first playing these sets, I'm not sure I don't prefer Brahms if we keep it to violin sonatas. Of course, there are three discs of Beethoven (Renaud Capucon/Frank Braley) compared to one of Brahms and so maybe the latter is more readily assimilated but it's smoother, for want of a better word, even if one suspects - knows, really- that there is much more going on in Beethoven.
The recent need to re-aarrange books and records again is a big hint that perhaps I have plenty and less time needs to be spent clicking on things to make them arrive the following week. In the end its the sheer weight of the stuff - but that won't persuade me to move to a kindle and downloads. So those two sets are likely to be the playlist for some time. Something there is that does love a violin sonata.
I suspect a big part in the early Brahms preference is Alina Ibragimova who might be just about the violin player of her generation, and not overlooking Cedric Terberghien on piano with her. In a piano sonata, the piano does all its own work but it is usual for other instruments to have a piano to help which says a lot for the range, resources and completeness of the piano compared to much of the opposition.
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But, on the subject of buying fewer books and thus borrowing them where possible, it's not got off to a good start. Volume 1 of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews isn't going to be easy to give back. Like the origin of many things (the universe, the Thames, the Prime Minister's tendency towards pathological lying), the origin of the Jews is vague but thereby more interesting. From the start, there was always a debate about what was properly Jewish . In fact, that debate might be what it is. But Ezra, Ezekiel and all those Old Testament writers are made real, mainly because they were. It took a while for the idea that anyone human wrote those words to be accepted ( ! ). I'm only disappointed that it's David that might not have been.
Imagine that. A religion, or anybody with a doctrine, making things up.
But, Schama is scholarly, or at least a great summarizer of other scholars and Vol. 1 should be finished and handed back in time for Vol. 2 over Christmas. Or perhaps I should say Hannukah.