Cult figure for sure, like an American Ivor Cutler, been listening to a C.D of him reading recently, I needed something poignant and surreal in my life , two funerals in a week, but hey gotta keep on keeping on.
Brautigan one of my favourite writers, their are many....... it's Brautigan I return to more often than not whenI want to smile, he also liked a drink or two or three,four and in his later work because of this it began to get dark...... The 60s were his hey day and he was one of the most prominent to emerge from its counterculture. Born in Tacoma, Washington where he spent most of his childhood and teenage years. In the mid 50s he moved to San Fracisco where he publishe his first volume of poetry and became involved with other writers of the emerging Beat movement. The Beatles loved him, not that that in itself means anything,were they not into most things. I personally discovered him through the works of that wonderful Welsh Band, Gorkys Zygotic Mynci , that's another story , but I would recommend all his books though, wonderful, can make you wonder, giggle and laugh out loud, the 60 odd stories contained within Revenge to the Lawn I would say is his masterpiece , heres a few of them , hope you enjoy. Contained within one of my favourite short stories, it's also one of the smallest in my library. Prose poetry of the highest order.
Sadly he was found dead in 1984, aged 49, beside a bottle of alcohol and a .44 calibre gun. We all cast long shadows.
Hauntingly his work still magically shines for me.
Women When They Put Their Clothes on in the morning
It's really a very beautiful exchange of values when women put their clothes on in the mornig and she is brand-new and you've never seen her put on her clothes before.
You've been lovers and you've slept together and there's nothing more you can do about that, so iy's time for her to put her clothes on.
Maybe you've already had breakfast and she's slipped her sweater on to cook a nice bare-assed breakfast for you, padding in sweet flesh around the kitchen, and you both discussed in length the poetry of Rilke which she knew a great deal about, surprising you.
But now it's time for her to put her clothes on because you've both had so much coffee that you can't drink any more and it's time for her to go home and it's time for her to go to work and you want to stay there alone because you've got some things to do around the house and you're going outside together for a nice walk and it's time for you to go home and it's time for you to go to work and she's got some things that she wants to do around the house.
Or ...maybe it's even love.
But anyway:It's time for her to put her clothes on and it's so beautiful when she does it. Her body slowly dissapears and comes out quite nicely all in clothes. There's a virginial quality to it. She's got her clothes on, and the beginning is over.
Bannersof My Own Choosing
Drunk laid and drunk unlaid and drunk laid again, it makes no difference. I return to this story as one who has been away but one who was always destined to return and perhaps that's for the best.
I found no statues nor bouquets of flowers, no beloved to say: 'Now we will fly banners from the castle, and they will be of your own choosing,' and to hold my hand again, to take my hand in yours.
None of that stuff for me.
My typewriter is fast enough as if it were a horse that's just escaped from the ether, plunging through silence, and the words gallop in order while outside the sun is shining.
Perhaps the words remember me.
It is the fourth day of Marcg 1964. The birds are singing on the back porch, a bunch of them in an aviary, and I try to sing with them: Drunk laid and drunk unlaid and drunk laid again, I'm back in town.
Lint
I'm haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that shold be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.
I've been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.
The Scarlatti Tilt
' It's very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who's learning to play the violin.' That's what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.
Ernest Hemingway's Typist
It sounds like religios music. A friend of mine just came back from New York where he had Ernest Hemingway's typist do some typing for him.
He's a successful writer, so he went and got the very best which happens to be the woman who did Ernest Hemingways typing. It's enough to take your breath away, to marble your lungs with silence.
Ernest Heminway' typist!
She's every writer's dream come true with the appearance of her hands which are like a harsichord and the perfect intensity of her gaze and all to be followed by the profound sound of her typing.
He paid her fifteen dollars an hour. That's more than a plumber oran electrician gets.
$120 a day! for a typist!
He said that she does eveything for you. You must hand her the copy and like a miracle you have attractive, correct spelling and punctuation that is so beautiful that it brings tears to your eyes and paragraphs that look like Greek temples and she even finished sentences for you.
She's Ernest Heminway's
She's Ernest Hemingway's typist.
All above selections from Revenge of the Lawn, Jonathan Cape 1972.
Other masterpieces are
Trout Fishing in America, Sombrero Fallout, A Confederate General from Big Sur,
and In Watermelon Sugar.
I would also strongly recommend a book of memoirs by his daughter Ianthe Brautigan, ' You can't catch death'. A fascinating glimpse into Richard Brautigans life and shedding light on some of his own ghosts.
All watched over by machines of loving Grace
Taken from the Adam Curtis series of the same name
-A short poem by Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan
(a 5 minute presentation)
Richard Brautigan reads from Trout Fishing in Watermelon Sugar
We had an island
Oh were a stomping old tribe on an island
Red faces, hairy bodies
Happy to be hairy
Happy to be hairy
When the breezes tickled
The hairs of our bodies
Happy to be hairy
Happy to be hairy
Next best thing to having feathers-
That was our national anthem.
Right. Hairy tribe,
Hairy red story-telling, song-singing, dragon fighting,
fire-drinking tribe.
Used to get invaded every other weekend.
Romans, Vikings, Celts - fire and sword-
Pushed us back but they never broke us down.
In between invasions we grew spuds and barley,
Took our animals wherever there was a river and some
grass.
When the snows came, we moved south
When the rivers dried, we moved west
When the invaders came, we burnt our crops, moved.
Until one day we were surrounded by warriors,
The same old fire and sword, but used efficiently.
They slaughtered our warriors, lined up the rest of us
And there were speeches
About law and order, and firm but fair government.
And this is what they did,
This is government.
You take an island and cut it carefully
With the razorblade called law and order
Into a jugsaw of pieces
The big, rich-coloured pieces
Go to the big, rich men.
The smaller, paler pieces
(Five beds two recep barn mooring rights five acres)
Go to the small, rich men.
And nothing at all
Goes to those who have nothing at all.
Absurd? The many nothing-at alls
Wouldn't stand back and see their island
Slashed into ten thousand pieces.
They didn't stand back, our hairy tribal anscestors.
Some of them spoke oot. Some fought back.
They were slashed down by the giant razorblade.
And now, and now the rich seldom have to kill
To defend the land they stole from all the tribe-
Wire fences, Guard Dogs Loose on these Premises
No Trespassing.
Bailiffs. Security Guards. Police. Magistrates' Courts.
Judges. Prisons-
Grey prisons where the brain and the flesh turn grey
As the green English years stroll by outside the walls.
So who needs fire and sword?
The tribe has been tamed
And our island
Our daft green stony gentle rough amazing haven
Entirely surrounded by fish
Has been stolen from the tribe.
It was robbery with most bloody violence.
And that was history, history is about the dead.
Then is our tribe dead? Is our tribe dead?
Is the tribe dead?
Revolution
Its first shots will burst out of the earth
silently, at the wrong time of year
in a silent part of the island
far from the patrolling armoured cars.
A finger, pointing towards the sun,
which will be mistaken for blades of grass
if anybody notices it at all.
One deep night, an armoured division,
returning from an easy mission
in Leicester or in Birmingham
will be crushed by the branches
of the numberless, nameless trees
of an overnight forest.
And those breeding trees
with eccentric outlines
will be no more like our theories
than a hippoptamus
is like a parrallelogram.
Poems reprinted from :-
The apeman cometh - Adrian Mitchell, Jonathan Cape, 1975
governments only serve governments let the tribes increase.
In todays Guardian , an article about what we should do if we find ourselelves living next to anarchists. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/31/westminster-police-anarchist-whistleblower-advice
Apparently according to the Metropoliton police , members of the public should report them straightaway.
No warning attached about other political groups like the fascist English Defence League. No it's calling instead for anti-anarchist whistleblowers stating " Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society , or anarchy. Any infomation relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police." Hello Big Brother, I don't bloody think so. Teifidancer might have a few ideological little differences with some aspects of anarchism, but sees nothing wrong in trying to change the world, ideas of no borders, peace, social justice, removing money from the profiteers , a shared abhorence of capitalism. Since when was holding anarchist sympathies considered a crime anyway.
So here I say solidarity with the anarchists. It is the walls that divide us that should be made illegal, it has been noted 'round here that captalism does not seem to be working, bankers and media barons, their friends the tories private interests bankrupting the public realm. Power has for so long been hidden in pockets of a cosy elite, and those who yield it have been found wanting. And of course their is nothing new about this, just the same rules for them, different rules for people with opposing points of view. Is it not the case that with no pressure for higher ethical standards, the powerful elites were like kids left free in the sweatshop, going feral as they lost all self control and all touch with reality and society.
Are not the rulers of the land still supporting the mysterious rebels in Libya now murdering one another, their friends, saving money with housing benefit cuts,attacking the most vulnerable, closing hospitals and schools. Yes this is their real reality, divide and rule. If people are reawakening from transient states that is good, solidarity is a good thing, mutual coperation, a valid calling, for some complaceny is no longer enough, call me old fashioned,but the future of humanity is at stake, I think we need to stand a little more united, less divided, may the ranters and the dissenters grow. Many of the anarchist writers that I myself have on my bookshelves, the ideology contained within supports building communities without hierarchial or bueracratic structures that are seen in mainstream society. Most writers of an anarchistic bent that I ascribe to adhere to non-violent alternatives, so at the moment some are being cast as convenient scapegoats in order to distract from the state and it's allies, who are doing the real damage. Who really are doin, the most misbehaving.
So I say report the state, time again members of the state have proved themselves to be self serving, war mongering, corporate whores. If you suspect a member of your family, friends or neighbours may be a member of or helping the U.K government in any way and any of its subsidiary bodies, why not question their activities, do not condone, oh and go on report them, but do not get embroiled in witch hunts.
Oh, seperately I may have no higher secular belief to speak of but to any who follow, happy ramadan, and remember too that capitalism is only unbeatable as long as everybody thinks it is. and the powers that be don't want that do they? and even if the lovely Emma Goldman did not say " If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution." I will still sing to this tune.......finally, I have no idea what an anarchists look like, they look the same as you and me, tall, short, fat, thin, use the same language, walk the same way, one thing I'm sure of their busy making plans.
(This is ) the most accurate account I can give you of the Utopian Republic. To my mind, it's not only the best country in the world, but the only one that has any right to call itself a republic. Elsewhere, people are always talking about the public interest. but all they really care about is private property. In Utopia, where there's no private property, people take their duty to the public seriously. And both attitudes are perfectly reasonable. In other 'republics' practically everyone knows that, if he doesn't look out for himself, he'll starve to death, however prosperous his country may be. He's therefore compelled to give his own interests priority over those of the public; that is, of other people. But in Utopia, where everything's under public ownership, no one has any fear of going short, as long as the public storehouses are full. Everyone gets a fair share, so there are never any poor men or beggars. Nobody owns anything, but everyoneis rich - for what greater wealth can there be than cheerfulness, peace of mind, and freedom from anxiety?
THOMAS MORE, 1516, Book II
Unfortunately , it seems to me, that at this moment in time , we have none of the latter. The tories and their friends, and yes they still have a few in the mainstream media, very much into the opposite ideal. They seem intent on getting rid of any egalitarian value gained, fostering divde and rule. Attacking the marginalised and the vulnerable in the name of greed.
A whole ideology based on some outdated notion on the superior rights of the wealthy. Nothing is sacred to the profit maker.
I beleve their's another way, one of dignity and equality. What do I know?
Gotta go, someones offering me a smoke.In this library at least a glimpse of our shared humanity.Now where's my rizlas? Laters have a good weekend, avoid/remove all obstacles. All together now, kick out the Tories.
The final chapter revealed as devious fate Hush now! It's just till those tears have dried; The sun goes down, but what's inside never dies Stolen moments tasting both bitter and sweet. Some are born but do not get to choose As silence stumbles their escape, Falling on crimson road, an audience of one Staggers by following, a crooked vapour, . Behind dazed curtains the world watches
Sucked into a mad man's masquerade. Across the landscape, the sound of sirens rings
Barbarous behaviour suspends belief, From this darkness we will begin again As we announce our love, from flowerbeds of dust, Hope again will become a wonderful thing standing together against xenophobic tides, Future will reveal dove's wings flapping infinitely, forever beyond humanities call.
" Greetings to the solitary. Friends, fellow beings you are not strangers to us. We are closer to one another than we realise. Let us remember one another at night, even though we do not know each other's names." ( from Night Thoughts, 1956 )
David Gasgoyne established his reputation at an early age, gaining recognition as one of the most original voices of his age. Born in Harrow, on the 10th of October 1916, his father was a Bank Clerk, he was one of the earliest champions of Surrealism. Educated at Salisbury Cathedral Choir School and Regent Street Polytechnic.
His talent arrived early,his first book of poems Roman Balcony was published in 1932, and the following year his only novel, Opening Day appeared, signalling his remarkabe precocity.
In 1935 his A short Survey of Surrealism was published, and in 1936 he helped organise the London International Surrealist Exhibition. For a time he lived in France, living there on and off until the mid 1960s. Among his circle of friends were Dali, Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Paul Eluard . He became well regarded as a translator, notably of many of the leading French Surrealists.Between the 1930s and the 1950s he also exhibited his abstract drawings.
For a time in the 1930s he flirted with the Communist Party a time when both poetry and radical politics went hand in hand, but he became dissillisioned finding his natural bed among the surrealists. He did however spend time fighting Mosley's fascist thugs in Londons East End and also went to Spain at the time of the civil war, and in Barcelona translated the news bulletin during the day, and then broadcasting them in English each evening for the propoganda bureau of the republican side.
However he had a tendecy to depression exasberated by a serious encroaching addiction to amphetimines,whilst struggling with his homosexuality. He subsequently suffered from a severe nervous breakdown. I think if you look at his poetry , their are signs that he was on something, his poems like vast canvasses, dazzling in form and subject.. He returned to live with his parents and spend the rest of his life on the Isle of Wight, generally spending two decades in suffering .After his fathers' death , acute depression dogged him for years. He began to explore the depths of existentionalist philosophy.
Before his breakdown he had been prolific, however his output then slowed down. He said of himself once that he was " a poet wrote himself out when young, and then went mad."
But it was whilst recuperating in hospital on the Isle of Wight that he met his wife, Judy, she was reading poems to the inmates of the hospital ( Whitecroft), and after reading one of her favourite poems, September Sun, one of the patient's told her afterwards : " I wrote that". It was David Gasgoyne who she married in 1975, and who he was to spend the rest of his days with. His spirit was rekindled and in this revitalised state he travelled widely over the next decade giving many poetry readings at home and abroad.
September Sun
Magnificent strong sun! In these last days
So prodigally generous of pristine light
That's wasted only men's sight who will not see
And by self-darkened spirits from whose night
Can rise no longer orison or praise
Let us consume in fire unfed like yours
And may the quickened gold within me come
To mintage in due season, and not be
Transmitted to no better, end than dumb
And self sufficient usyry. These days and years
May bring the sudden call to harvesting,
When in the fields man's labours only yield
Glitter and husks, then with an angrier sun may He
Who first with His gold seed the sightless field
of Chaos planted, all our trash to cinders bring.
Later his poetry moved away from the surreal towards a more metaphysical and religious poetry.
I like his work a lot, mysterious and full of wonder. Magical, mesmeric, wide awake, charged with elemental force. Mixing darkness and light, different shades cast from his magnificent poetic pulse. I think because he did not do to University, he maintained his originality, and what he wrote was not dictated to by schools of learning, largely self-taught which made him spontaneous and free.
He was an influence and friend to the beat iconclast Allen Ginsberg, and a huge influence on another poet I admire Jeremy Reed, Kathleen Raine the mercurial English writer was a long term friend, and the psychogeographer Iain Sinclair weas also an acquaintance.
Other poetical works of his are Poems 1937-42 , The Vagrant and Other Poems (1950), and Night Thoughts (1956). His "collected poems " were published in 1965 by the Oxford University Press to be reprinted 6 times. His "selected poems" coming out in 1994.
He died on the 25th of November 2001 aged 85.
Long may his influence grow.
And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis
1
white curtains of infinite fatigue
dominating the starborn heritage of the colonies of St
Francis
white curtains of tortured destinies
inheriting the calamities of the plagues of the desert
encourage the waistlines of women to expand
and the eyes of men to enlarge like pocket-cameras
teach children to sin at the age of five
to cut out the eyes of their sisters with nail-scissors
to run into the streets and offer themselves to unfrocked
priests
teach insects to invade the deathbeds of rich spinsters
and to engage the foreheads of their footmen with purple
signs
for the year is open the year is complete
and the time of earthquakes is at hand
today is the day when the streets are full of hearses
and when women cover their ring fingers with pieces of silk
when the doors fall of their hinges in ruined cathedrals
when hosts of white birds fly across the ocean from america
and make their nests in the trees of punlic gardens
the pavements of cities are covered with needles
the resevoirs are full of human hair
fumes of sulphur envelop the houses of ill-fame
out of which bloodred lilies appear.
across the square where crowds are dying in thousands
a man is walking a tightrope covered in moths
2
there is an explosion of geraniums in the ballroom of the
hotel
there is an extremely unpleasant odour of decaying meat
arising from the depetalled flower growing out of her ear
her arms are like pieces of sandpaper
or wings of leprous birds in taxis
and when she sings her hair stands on end
and lights itself with a millon little lamps like glowworms
you must always write the last two letters of her christian
name
upside down with a blue pencil
she was standing at the window clothed only in a ribbon
she was burning the eyes of snails in a candle
she was writing a letter to the president of france
3
the edges of leaves must be examined through microscopes
in order to see the stains made by dying flies
at the other end of the tube is a woman bathing her husband
and a box of newspapers covered with handwriting
when an angel writes the word TOBACCO across the sky
the sea becomes covered with patchees of dandruff
the trunk of trees burst open to release streams of milk
little girls stick photographs of genitals to the windows of
their homes
prayerbooks in churches open themselves at the death service
and virgins cover their parents' bed with tealeaves
there is an extraordinary epidemic of tuberculosis in york-
shire
where medical dictionaries are banned from the public
libraries
and salt turns a pale violet colour every day at seven o'clock
when the hearts of troubadours unfold like soaked mat-
tresses
when the leaven of the gruesome slum-visitors
and the wings of private airplanes look like shoeleather
shoeleather on which pentagrams have been drawn
shoeleather covered with vomitings of hedgehogs
shoeleather used for decorating wedding- cakes
and the gums of queens like glass marbles
queens whose wrists are chained to the walls of houses
and whose fingernails are covered with little drawings of
flowers
we rejoice to recieve the blessings of criminals
and we illuminate the roofs of convents when they are hung
we look through a telescope on which the lord's prayer has
been written
and we see an old woman making a scarecrow
on a mountain near a village in the middle of spain
we see an elephant killing a stag-beetle
by letting hot tears fall onto the small of its back
we see a large cocoa-tin full of shapeless lumps of wax
there is a horrible dentist walking out of a ship's funnel
and leaving behind him footsteps which makes noises
on account of his accent he was discharged from the sana-
torium
and sent to examine the methods of cannibals
so that wreaths of passion-flowers were floating in the dark-
ness
giving terrible illnesses to the possessors of pistols
so that large quantities of rats disguised as pigeons
were sold to various customers from neighbouring towns
who were adepts at painting gothic letters on screens
and at tying up parcels with pieces of grass
we told them to cut off the buttons on their trousers
but they swore in our faces and took off their shoes
whereupon the whole place was stifled with vast clouds of
smoke
and with theatres and eggshells and droppings of eagles
and the drums of the hospitals were broken like glass
and glass were the faces in the last looking glass.
p.1933 imagebelow by Paul Nash
Figure in a Landscape
The verdant valley full of rivers
Sang a fresh song to the thirsty hills.
The rivers sang:
'Our mother is the Night, into the Day we flow. The mills
Which toil our waters have no thirst. We flow
Like Light.'
And the great birds
Which dwell among the rocks, flew down
Into the dales to drink, and their dark wings
Threw flying shades across the pastures green.
At dawn the rivers flowed into the sea.
The mountain birds
Rose out of sleep like a winged cloud, a single fleet,
And flew into a newly-risen sun.
- Anger of the sun: the deadly blood-red rays which strike
oblique
Through olive branches on the slopes and kill the kine
- Tears of the sun: the summer evening rains which hang
grey veils
Between the earth and sky, and soak the corn, and brim the
lakes
- Dream of the sun: the mists which swim down from the
icy heights
And hide the gods who wander on the mountain-sides at
noon.
The sun was anquished, and the sea
Threw up its crested arms and cried aloud out of the depths;
And the white horses of the waves raced the black horses of
the clouds;
The rocky peaks clawed in the sky like gnarled imploding
hands:
And the black cypresses strained upwards like the sex of a
hanged man.
.
Across the agonising land there fled
Among the landscape's limbs (the limbs
Of a vast denuded body torn and vanquished from within)
The chaste white road,
Prolonged into the distance like a plaint.
Between the oppossition of the night and day
Between the opposition of the earth and sky
Between the opposition of the sea and land
Between the opposition of the landscape and the road
A traveller came
Whose only nudity his armour was
Against the whirlwind and the weapon, the undoing wound
And met himself half-way.
Spectre as white as salt in the crude light of the sky
Spectre confronted by flesh, the present and past
Meet timelessly upon the endless road,
Merge timelessly in time and pass awy,
Dreamed face away from stricken face into the bourn
Of the unborn, and the real face of age into the fastness of
death.
Infinitely small among the infinite huge
Drunk with the rising fluids of his breast, his boiling heart,
Exposed and naked as the skeleton - upon his knees
Like some tormented desert saint -he flung
The last curse of regret against Omnipotence
And the lightning struck his face. .
After the blow, the bruised earth blooms again,
The storm-wrack, wrack of the cloudy sea
Dissolve, the rocks relax,
As the pallid phallus sinks in the clear dawn
Of a new day, and the wild eyes melt and close,
And the eye of the sun is no more blind-
Clear milk of love, O lave the devastated vale,
And peace of high-noon, soothe the traveller's pain
Whose hands still grope and clutch, whose head
Thrown back entreats the guerison
And music of your light!
The valley rivers irrigate the land, the mills
Revolve, the hills are fecund with the cypresses and the vine,
And the great eagles guard the mountain heights.
Above the peaks in mystery thre sit
The Presences, the Unseen in the sky,
Inscrutable, whose influence like rays
Descend upon him, pass through and again
Like golden bees the hive of his lost head.
c.1938
The cold renuciatory beauty
The cold renunciatory beauty of those who would die
to hide their love from scornful fingers of the drab
is not that which gistens like wings or leaf in eyes
of erotic statues standing breast to chest
on high and open mountainside.
Complex draws tighter like a steel wire mesh
about the awkward bodies of those born under shame,
striping the tender flesh with blood like tears
flowing; their love they dare not name;
Each is divided by desire and fear.
The young songs of the hopeless blind shall strike
matches in the marble corridor and find
their bodies cool and white as the stone walls,
and shall embrace, emerging like mingled springs
onto the height to face the fearless sun.
Variations on a phrase by David Gascoyne
read by David Gasgoyne
Persueus & Andromeda (1935)
-David Gasgoyne
Lowland
Heavy with rain and dense stagnating green
Of old trees guarding tombs these gardens
Sink in the dark and drown. The wet fields run
Together in the middle of the plain. And there are heard
Stampeding herds of horses and a cry,
More long and lametable as the rains increase,
From out of the beyond.
O dionysian
Desire breaking that voice, released
By fear and torment, out of our lowland rear
A lofty, savage and enduring monument!
Charity Week
To Max Ernst
Have presented the lion with medals of mud
One for each day of the week
One for each beast in this sombre menagerie
Shipwrecked among the clouds
Shattered by the violently closed eyelids
Garments of the seminary
Worn by the bocturnal expedition
By all the chimeras
Climbing in the window
With lice in their hair
Noughts in their crosses
Ice in their eyes
Hysteria upon the staircase
Hair torn out by the roots
Lace handkerchiefs torn to shreds
And stained by tears of blood
Their fragment strewn upon the waters
These are the phenomenem of zero
Invisible men on the pavement
Spittle in the yellow grass
The distant roar of disaster
And the great byrsting womb of desire.
The Fortress
The socket-free lone visionary eye,
Soaring reflectively
Through regions sealed from macrocosmic light
By inner sky's impenetrable shell,
Often is able to descry:
Beyond the abdominal range's hairless hills
And lunar chasms of the porphyry
Mines; and beyond the forest whose each branch
Bears a lit candle, and the nine
Zigzagging paths which lead into the mind's
Most dangerous far reach; beyond
The calm lymphatic sea
Laving the wound of birth, and the
Red dunes of rot upon its farther shore:
A heaving fortess built up ike a breast
Exposed like a huge breast high on its rock.
Streaming wth milky brightness, the domed top
Wreathed in irradiant rainbow cloud.
The shock
Of visions stuns the hovering eye, which cannot see
What cvernsof deep blood those white walls hide,
Concealing ever rampant underneath
The dark chimera Death-in-life
Defending life from death.
Unspoken
Words spoken leave no time for regret
Yet regret
The unviolated silence and
Wite sanctuses of sleep
Under the heaped veils
The inexorably prolonged vigils
Speech flowing away like water
With its undertow of violence and darkness
Carrying with it forever
All tose formless vessels
Abandoned palaces
Tottering under the strain of being
Full-blossoming hysterias
Lavishly scattering their stained veined petals
In sleep there are places places
Places overlap
Yellow sleep in the afternoon sunlight
Coming invisibly in through the pinewood door
White sleep wrapped warm in the midwinter
Inhaling the tepid snow
And sleeping in April at night in sleeping in
Shadow as shallow as water and articulate with pain
Rercurrent words
Slipping between the cracks
With the face of memory and the sound of its voice
More intimate than sweat at the roots of the hair
Frozen stiff in a moment and then melted
Swifter than air between the lips
Swifter to vanish than enormous buildings
Seen for a moment from the corners of the eyes
Travelling through man's enormous continent
No two roads he same
Nor ever the same name to places
Migrating towns and fliuid boundaries
Thre are no settlers here there are
No solid stones
Travelling through man's unspoken continent
Among the unspeaking mountains
The dumblakes and the deafened valleys
Illuninied by paraoxysms of vision
Clear waves of soundless sight
Lapping out the heart of darkness
Flowing endless over buried speech
Drowning the words and words
And here I am caught up among the glistenings of
Bodies proud with the opulence of flesh
The silent limbs of beings lying across the light
Silken at the hips and pinched between two fingers
Their thirsty faces turned upwards towards breaking
Their long legs shifting slanting turning
In a parade of unknown virtues
Beginning again and beginning
Again
Till unspoken is unseen
Until unknown
Descending from knowledge to knowledge
A dim word uttering a voiceless cry
Spinning helpless between sleep and waking
A blossom scattered by a motionless wind
A wheel of fortune turning in the fog
Predicting the lucid moment
Cating the bodiless body from its hub
Back into the cycle of return and change
Breathing the mottled petals
Out across the circling seas
And foamimg oceans of disintegration
Where navigate our daylight vessels
Following certain routes to uncertain lands
Poems reprinted from:-
Selected Poems - David Gasgoyne, enitharmon, 1994.
Collected Poems - David Gasgoyne , Oxford University Press, 1979
Penguin Modern Poets 17 / David Gasgoyne, W.S Graham, Kathleen Raine (1970)
Today sees the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War. In 1931 with the proclamation of a Republic a Socialist-Republican Government was formed in Spain, which had the support of many revolutionary forces active in Spain.It had a commitment to the seperation of the church and the state, and a commitment to international peace, modern systems of education, land reform, and more equal roles for both men and women. By 1936 the Spanish Republic had recently been revived by the election of a moderately liberal government after 5 years of tension and retrenchment. A new popular front alliance of all anti-fascist parties had swept the country the previous year. However on the night of 18th July , 1936 the army mutinied with their generals against the people. They bought in foreign legionairres and colonial troops and under General Franco proclaimed a military takeover. A bitter struggle had begun.
Executions without trial were common place, Franco had the support of the aristocracy,the army, the landlords, the bankers, and the Church hierararchy and a clique of corrupt politicians went over to the conspirators the rest backed the Republic.The left wing of the popular front was determined to resist the Generals and resolved to distribute arms and weapons to newly formed militias. By the morning of 19th July truckloads of rifles from the Ministry of War were on their way to the headquarters of the Socialist and Anarchist trade unions for distribution to their members. A few weeks later a government emerged more than capable of defending the Republic against the Generals. It was the first Republican Government to have full Socialist, Communist and Anarchist support. However Franco had both Italian and German fascist support, with their finance and intervention. The fascists defended a common view of the past, while the republican coalition though, had widely different visions of the future.
About 300 people volunteered from Wales against the tyranny of fascism, with 35 of whom not returning home but the important historical truth is the international flavour of those who volunteered to fight in this brutal war. A great idealistic cause of the first half of the twentieth century, that has been of great interest to me over the years. Two local people from my neck of the woods went to serve Arthur Morris and a Percy Jones. More infomation here http://irelandscw.com/docs-WelshMorris , I have yet to see a monument erected to them I believe perhaps one daytheir should be one. Over 40,000 other selfless men and women fought side by side for the ideas of liberty and social justice, solidarity and mutual aid from 53 different nationalities.Rallying to the republican cause. Alongside the war millions of workers collectiveised the land and took over industry to pursue their vision of a new society. Fighting valiantly against the reactionary medieval ideology that was Francoism, they tried to stop fascism in their tracks. Theirnummber was severely outnumbered by Franco's forces.
For many it was not just a war to defeat the fascists it was the beginning of a new society ,completely. A revolution in fact, unfortunately revolutions do not succeed when the people are divided. Their are many lessons to be learnt from this struggle, a struggle that continues to do this day.
The spectre of fascism still haunts and universal equality has not been achieved.
We should not forget the international brigaders who preceded us, and we must continue to resist oppressive forces, with our shout of no pasaran.
Guernica - Picasso
The Spanish Civil War was a symbol become reality, it was forged on the class struggle, also the struggle of the artists against tyranny( did not the fascists brutally murder Lorca).
It caught the poet's imagination too. Many subsequently joining the International Brigade. Many were determined to fight for Spain, to the inernational cause of solidarity. Unfortunately as the war progressed many became confused and dissullusioned by certain divisions that had begun to set in. Communists became more intent on destroying Anarchists and Trotskyists instead of standing together against the fascists. A problem that continues to this day with members of the left fighting one another instead of our common enemies. We have a lot of lessons to learn. Complex ideas were fiercely fought but all who stood up against fascism were heroic and worthy of respect, their cause in my opinion just , a flame that will never die, sharing principles of brotherhood of man and a sense of justice, driven by political and humanitarian convictions.
It was not however just a poet's war, it was fought on the most part by ordinary people, for the people. Many courageous brigadeers died, and their were many tales of atrocities and heroism on this cultural battlefield where opposing notions were violently played out. Sincerely and bravely translating their faith into works, ready to endure death in their passionate unswaying convictions.
The Welsh volunteers in particular raised the morale of their comrades, by their unity, their strength, their tenacity and in particular their singing, with the miners amongst them put to good use with their tunnelling skills.
By 1938, their were 600,000 dead, 100,000 executed, 250,000 people imprisoned, many towns destoyed .
Thee war ended in March 1939 when Franco's forces finally captured Madrid. Why oh why international governments had not intervened earlier to help the republic side I don't know. Perversely after the Second World War after both Hitler and Mussolini were defeated, Franco was allowed to continue his totalitarian role in Spain, and for years to come his brutal force held sway and continued to destroy lives, dissent was brutally suppressed with many thousands of voices silenced , and forced into exile , untill Franco's death in 1975.
Many, many people died in their struggle for a better world,we must never forget, no pasaran, another world is not only possible it is inevitable, we must remain in solidarity with all those who believe in freedom, and social justice.
the following are a selection of poems that emerged from this conflict. Powerful and still inspiring.
For the Fallen -W.B. Keal
Brave sons of liberty, fallen in battle,
Fallen that we, their successors, might live,
Bravely they faced the machine-gunner's rattle,
Giving so bravely all they'd to give.
Hurriedly, carelessly, rudely,we buried them,
Buried them quickly, beneath the brown soil.
Hurriedly, quickly, we gave them our blessing,
Then we returned to our heart-breaking toil.
Theirs wasno splendour, the fallen in action;
Theirs was no pomp, neither glory nor show,
They were the cream of the Communist fraction
We are the reapers, but they went to sow.
Shall we forget them who never forget us,
Defending theworkers, while fighting in Spain?
Shall we stay passive while Fascism threatens us?
Shall their great effort be made all in vain?
Never forget them, the lessons they taught us,
Think of their travail, their suffering, pain!
Raise the Red Standard and help support us,
Lest we seein England what happened in Spain.
To the Mothers of the Dead Militia - Pablo Neruda
They have not died!
they stand upright in the midst of the gunpowder,
they live, burning as brands there.
In the copper-coloured prairie
their pure shadows have come together
like a curtain of armoured wind,
a barrier colour of fury
like that same invisible beast of sky.
Mothers, they are standing amidst the corn
as tall as the profundity of noon
that possesses the giant plains.
They area peal of sombre voices
calling for victory through the shapes of murdered steel.
Sisters as close as
the dust fallen,
hearts that have been broken
keep faith in your dead -
they are not roots only
beneath stones dyed in blood,
not only poor fallen bones
at work now in the finality of earth,
for their mouths are shaping the dry powder ready for action,
they attack in waves of iron,
in their clenched fists lies death's own contradiction.
See, from so many bodies an invincible life rises!
mothers, sons,banners,
in one single being as living as life;
one face made of all the slain eyes is guard in the darkness
with a sword that is strengthened and tempered with human
hope.
Cast aside your mourning veils, join all of your tears
tillthey transmute into metal-
so that we may strike day and night,
so that we may hammer day and night,
so that we may spit dorth day and night,
till the portals of hatred be overthrown.
I have not forgotten your tragedies
and your sons, they are known to me,
and if I have pride in their deaths
in their lives, too, I have pride.
Their smiles
are like flashes in the murk of the workshops,
and in the underground
every day their feet ring by mine.
I have seen
amongst the oranges ofLevante
and the fishing-nets of the south,
in the ink of the printshops
and the masonry of the buildings,
I have seen
the flame of their hearts fashioned out of fire and valour.
And, as in your hearts, mothers,
in mine there is so much od death and mourning
that it seems like a forest flooded
with the blood that quenched their smiles;
to it come the furious snows of sleeplessness,
the wrenching solitude of the dys.
But beyond your curse on the hyenas
out of Africa, blood-parched, baying their foul cries,
beyond wrath and contempt, beyond tears,
Oothers, transpierced by anquish and death,
look into the heart of the new day that is dawning
and know that your dead smile up at you from the earth,
raising their clenched fists above the corn, there, look, they are
standing!
Translated from the Spanish by Nancy Cunard.
T.E. Nicholas - In Rememberance of a Son of Wales ( Who Fel in Spain)
Amid the roar of guns that split the air,
Faint moaning reached him from a tortured field;
He followed to a city passing fair,
His soul aflame, his flesh a living shield.
There death-charged missiles blazed a trail of woe,
Leaving each shattered hearth a vain defence
While flocks of iron eagles, swooping low,
Clawed out the life of cradled innocence.
Far from the hills he loved, he faced the night,
Bearing, for freedon's sake, an alien yoke;
He fell exalting brotherhood and right,
His bleeding visage scorched by fire and smoke;
E'en as the sweetest note is born of pain,
So shall the song of songs be born in Spain.
Guernica - A.S Knowland
Irun-Badajoz-Malaga-and then Guernica
So that te swastika and the eagle
might spting from the blood-red soil,
bombs were sown into the earth at Geurnica,
whose only harvest was a calculated slaughter,
Lest freedom should wave between the grasses
and the corn its proud emblem, or love
be allowed to tread its native fields,
Fascism was sent to destroy the innocent,
and, goose-stepping to the exaggerated waving
of the two-faced flag, to save Spain.
But though the soil be saturated with blood
as a very efficient fertilzer, the furrow
of the ghastly Fasces shall remain barren.
The planted swastika, he eagle grafted
on natural stock shall wither and remain sere;
for no uniformed force shall marshall the sap
thrilling to thrust buds into blossoms, or quicken
the dead ends of the blighted branches;
but the soli shall be set against an alien crop
and the seed be blasted in the planting
But strength lies in the strength of the roots. They shall not pass to ruin Spain!
LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION - Gonzalez Tunon
The bullfighters are monarchists,
The monks are preachers of fascism.
And the miners of the Asturias?
Long live the revolution!
My grandfather came from Mieres;
His wife from Pola de Siero.
The capital city of my blood
Must surely be called Oviedo!
The Moors are outside Oviedo.
Oviedo they'll never take
Though they'll kill all the Spaniards and threaten
Their wives with murder and rape!
The Regulars are bathing
In the Covandonga flood.
The lords swim at Majorca,
While the miners swim in blood.
In October there are no fiestas
Except those of the season.
But October only means to us
'LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!'
translated from the Spanish by A.L. Lloyd
The Hero- Richard Church
I could tell you of a young man
Blown with heroism into Spain.
He had a knapsack of philosophy,
And as he went he scatterred thesmall grain
Of his few songs under the dangerous sky.
A girl, grown fond, thought him too young to die.
She put the memory of teir secret joy
Behind her heart, and turned to public deeds,
Neglecting the earth he trod, and his scattered seeds.
But soon she was brought to child-bed, with a boy
Smiling up at her as his father had smiled.
And thankfully she saw that his plump back
Carried no philososopic haversack.
She saw, but only for his mother's breast
That being so, she found she could forgive
The man who died so that a dream might live,
And faith with prudence remain unreconciled.
POEMS REPRINTED FROM EXCELLENT ANTHOLOGY :- The penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse Edited by Valentine Cunningham 1980
( their are so many lovely poems in this collection,
essential reading for anyone interested in this period)
Selection of Spanish
Selection of Spanish Civil War Songs.
There have been many , many books written on the
Spanish Civil War, here are some I would strongly
reccommend for further perusal.
The Spanish Civil War - Hugh Thomas ( Penguin) 1983. They shall not Pass ( the Spanish people at war 1936-9) -Richard Kirch (wayland publications 1974). Lessons of the Spanish Revolution -Vernon Richards (freedom press 1972). Miners against fascism -Wales and the Spanish Civil War - Hywel Francis ( Lawrence and Wishart )1984. We Live -Lewis Jones ( library of Wales). incidentally this is one of my favourite books.
John Dee was a noted Welsh mathematician, geographer, occultist, astronomer. astrologer and advisor to the Queen.He was one of the most fascinating characters of the Elizabethan period. The events of his life are filled with science, experiments, astrology and mathematics which he aligned with magic, the supernatural and alchemy.
Born in London on July 13th 1527, to a welsh father, his was an age of illusion and supernatural conviction. He was fascinated by the 'Dark Side'. His name, strangely enough, even reflects the life he would lead. The surname 'Dee' derives from the Welsh Celtic word 'du' which means black.
He went to St John's College. Cambridge at the age of 15 in 1542 where he developed a formidable reputation for his burning intelligence and as some kind of magician. He seemed possessed by a thirst for knowledge, driven by an otherworldly sense, with a taste for theatrics that were driven on by divine schemes, accompanied by alchemical secrets that coursed through his bloodstream.
Dee was a brilliant scholar. Interested in Mathematics, physics and astrology which he studied at Cambridge and in Europe. The Elizabethan era was the age of the Renaissance and new thinking and ideas. It was also the age of Nostradamus, Marsilio Ficino and Trithemius and the Renaissance fusion of Christianity, Hermetic Philosophy and its attendant sciences of magic, astrology and alchemy. His interest in science and mathematics led John Dee to a particular interest in astrology and all of its associated supernatural subjects.
John Dee was well travelled and was obsessive in collecting books and manuscripts. He collected so many books that he created the greatest personal library in England, which he housed at his mother's residence at Mortlake, and was considered one of the finest in Europe. He also amassed a vast array of musical instruments from around the globe which he was more than capable of playing.John Dee and his extensive library attracted visits from the foremost scholars in England.
Also a notable cartographer, Dee drew maps and routes (especially of the North Sea and across the Atlantic). It’s said that Dee possessed an impressive collection of maps, globes, and navigational devices. Dee, mystic that he was, believed that divine power could be exercised through these mathematics which he understood as a spiritual discipline During his early travels to Europe he was associated with the great cartographer Gerardus Mercator.
It was to the world of the occult that he became engrossed and he came to believe himself in communication with angels and spirits, a gentle, unsuspicious man, dressing and looking the part of a magus, wearing a long gown with a long beard as white as milk.
He became something of an expert on various occult disciplines, including alchemy and hermetic philosophy and engaged in the discipline of scrying.
Because of what people thought he knew he was courted by royalty, first by Queen Mary, which led to difficulties because he was charged with treason and swiftly thrown into jail,this could have been the end of his career, lucky for him however Mary passed away and her sister Elizabeth looked upon him more favourably, and he became her sort of errand boy, travelling on many occasions to the continent on her behalf, becoming in the end a kind of personal consultant to her. He was also to have engaged on a number of spying activities on her behalf, an all seeing eye and all that. It has been said that he invented British imperialism , because through his visionary experiences he found reasons for England's territorial claims on the New World and hence it's colonisation. He certainly perpetrated the Madoc myth, a story of a Welsh Prince who apparently discovered America in 1170 and together with other Welsh people settled with Native Americans, it was said that their were red indians who spoke Welsh, it is a story I would love to believe.
It must be said though that most of his magic seemed benevolent and philanthropic, and he did not seem to use his skills for personal advancement or to harm anyone with his powers, devoting himself to his dreams and prophecies, and a quest to find the secret of the Philosophers Stone and the secret of divining buried treasure, spending long hours crystal gazing. looking for future's glimpse to reveal themselves to him. In his time quite powerful, popular too, pious but devoted. Feeding the intellectual streams of Elizabethan England. An active mind ,perhaps too busy for simple serene contemplation .
He has been painted as a deluded man who looked to the stars for guidance, dabbled in alchemy and communed with angels. But an alternative view is that he was one of the most brilliant men of the Renaissance, whose contribution has been muddied by centuries of slander. He was a polymath, engaged with the most cutting-edge science of his day, which at the time was intertwined with magic and the occult.
In 1564 he wrote the hermetic text Monas Hieroqlytica ( the Hicroglypic Moda,) an exhaustive mystical tract bringing together a myriad of strands that he was interested in, unifying numerology, mysticism and textual Qabalah using symbolist language and revelatory insight, and within it lay foundations for the spiritual ideas of alchemy. He was apparently held in high regard, and was courted by various luminaries.
John Dee's intellectual curiosity was at all times enormous, and there is little doubt that the occult interested him more than anything else, in spite of his great learning in other directions. However he was not a witch, and he bitterly resented his own all too firmly established reputation as a magician. In the Preface which he wrote to Henry Billingsley's translation of the Euchid's Elements in 1571, he complained of the injustice he suffered from those who think of him as 'a companion of Hellhounds, and a caller and a conjurer of wicked and damned spirits'.
He married twice and had 8 children. Details of his first marriage are not readily available, but it is certain that in 1578 he married the 23 year old Jane Fromond when he was 51.
On March 10th 1582, he was visited by an irishman called Edward Kelley who seemed in awe of his power and wanted to learn more, unfortunately Kelley was a forger and coiner who had a bad reputation as a confidence trickster. Somehow Dee fell for his charms and had soon moved into Dee's house and during this period all manners of strange manifestations occurred, contacting spirits, with Kelley soon beginning to see himself as the master and claiming to have the gift of second sight. Together they developed a communication system from divine sources and established a dialogue with angels through language called 'Enocha'. Kelley himself was a fast learner. They summoned up a spirit who appeared and announced its name as Uriel, given directions for the invocation of other spirits. Perhaps under the influence of Kelley, Uriel urged Dee to engage Kelley as his regular scryer and telling him that him and Kelley should always work together. Any money that Dee made at this time wound up in the lining of Kelley's pockets. They travelled together to Europe and had a number of mystical adventures together. Whilst at Glastonbury Kelly was lucky enough to unearth a supply of the philosophers stone but this was of very dubious authenticity, whereas their was something of the genuine about Dee, for me I feel that Kelley was something of a charlatan.
Kelley was a skilled manipulator, that Dee trusted ,and in April 1587 in Bohemia, Kelley saw in the crystal a naked woman who directed that in future the scryer and his master should have their wives in common. Dee at first could not accept this, but Kelley pushed and pushed, telling Dee that they had to obey the command of the spirit, and in the end Dee succumbed to Kelley's will.
Dee himself wrote : ' On Sunday the third of May, Anno 1587, I , John Dee, Edward Kelley, and our two wives ( Jane Dee and Joan Kelley), covenated with God, and subscribed the same, for insoluble and inviable unities, charity and friendship keeping between us four; and all things between us to be common, as God by sundry means willed us to do.'
Their were probably many strange sexual encounters, but inevitably I suppose it did not work out, they quarelled constantly. In 1588 Kelley left for Prague where he ended up in prison, released after 4 years he was imprisoned again and was killed attempting to escape.
Dee returned to England in 1589 to Mortlake and was received by the Queen at Richmond, and awarded him a pension of £200 a year that was her debt to him. Unfortunately his library had been ranshacked and lay in ruins and many of his beloved musical instruments were stolen. He spent his final days with his influence on the wain, but was given the wardenship of Manchester College.In 1604, he was evidently once again troubled by his own reputation for sorcery, or feared persecution, in view of the new Witchcraft Act then being debated in Parliament. He petitioned King James to have him 'tryed and cleared of that horrible and damnable, and to him the most grevious and damnable slander... that he is, or hath been a conjurer or caller or invocator of devels'. The King did not grant him his request, but did not bother him in any way.
He died peacefully, though sadly in poverty, though at the ripe old age of 82, four years later at Mortlake. His life had long flown, but he was still writing , still chasing his dreams.
By then the age of magic and sorcery was passing too, but I for one am still dazzled and grateful for his story. Every passionate assertion calls forth some contradiction and every firmly-held creed knows at least some doubters and some sceptics.
Through time, he was not forgotten, Shakespeare's character Prospero was based on him, and he still flickers through the centuries in many a fine book,and he is currently back in vogue due to Damon Albarn's English opera ' Doctor Dee.'His business as a wise man, still incredulous to this day. Tempests still hurled, and on the window sills , oceans of treachery.So follow your own dreams, your own paths, if you can!
Be careful who you mix with, sometimes destiny's forecast is everlasting.
Create your own way, with your own maps and scattered illusions. You only have one chance.
Further Reading:-
The Private Diary of John Dee - John Dee, Bastion Books.
The Queens Conjurer : the science and magic of Doctor Dee - Benjamin Woolley
The House of Doctor Dee - Peter Ackroyd.
Oh incidentally first became aware of Dee, in the film Jubilee (1977) - Derek Jarman, where Queen Elizabeth is magically transported through time by Dee ( Richard O Brien)
and as for borrowing, it was the great Alan Moore, whose idea that Mr Gorillaz man inevitably pinched.
Richard O Brien as John Dee in Jubilee (1977)
On a Portrait of John Dee - Robert Minhinnick
( Spy, Astrologer, Mathematician.)
This black canvas n Elizabethan night.
Only the dimmed lantern of the face,
That hand holding a testament
Obstruct the gloom. Appropriate
The artis'ts doubt. How to decipher
code of this man's life, the lean
Courtier, bittern-necked, in corset of stiff lace,
His slightest thread of smile itself
A wordless cryptogram? Could oils preserve
A pale astrologer, whose superstitious
Scholarship transferred the evenings bestiary
Of stars to royal horoscopes, whose harmless
Chess became a skill deployed round living kings.
Such brilliant paradox must fascinate.
This squalid agent of a vicious state
Grew older, found retirement, and poses here
Respectable and rich. Profound John Dee
Your life suggests the real, essential irony
Our flatter lives conceal. You, modernist,
A riddle to our reasoning, our medieval mind.
Poetry Wales , Winter 1977, Volume 13 No.3
Olde England has vanished, but the hidden mysteries of the arcane still flow.
A cartoon strip on Israel violence and depicting the response of a Palestinian child to the racist remarks of an Israeli kid has won the U.S best political Cartoon award.
The award was given to freelance political cartoonist Carlos Latuff. His work deals with a number of themes including anti-globalization and ant-capitalism. He himself has described his own work as controversial.
In the cartoon the Israeli child addresses rhe Palestinian child saying ' My father told me that you Arabs are evil terrorist animals. In response the Palestinian child says ' My father told me nothing, he was murdered by yours. Simple but effective.
As with sense, so with lie the importance of a pun must be in the first place a matter of the enduring and central matters which it encompasses. Lies are important irrespective of any pun that may visit them. For one thing, the telling of the truth is necessary to those social and cultural agreements without which there cannot be a society or a culture. Even the devils know this, for as Sir Thomas Browne said ' so also in \moral verities, although they decieve us, they lie not unto each other; as well understanding that all community is continued by Truth, and that of Hell cannot exist without it.' For another thing, telling the truth is a necessary condition for the existence of a language at all. Which is why in the language - indeed, in most of all languages, one may guess - there is no truth verb that is the counterpart to the verb to lie. (And there are, from similar causes or with similar effects, no puns on true and truth that amount to anything.) You cannot truth , a fact which both makes the telling of a truth a less glib matter than lying ('the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth'), and also brings out the speaking has to be posited on a presumption of the speaking of the truth. Even if it were not accepted that words about words all have a special force, though not necessarily a grater force than other words ( for this claim might be merely a literary critic's professional predilection), it is nevertheless the case that lie has the special potency of immediate paradoxiical properties, since it strikes at the roots of language and may strike, self-incrimiinattingly, at itself. The importance of lying therefore ranges from all those daily falsehoods in the orinary world to such absract but intense considerations of language, society, and philosophy. In 1970 there was published a book wholly devotted to the paradox of the liar.
Yet the importance of the phenomenem oflying is necessary but not sufficient condition of any claimed importance for the pun on lie and lying. Then there are the linguistic pressures on the word lie which themselves make the word a creator of pressure. There is, first, a depoulation around lie which gives it the potency of salience. For instance, lie calls up no manifest etymolology for us; as ashort and simple Old English word, it seems - as does the word truth - to be a root concept behind or below which we cannot penetrate. ( The contrast would be with the words veracity and mendacity which sends our toughts abroad, in both senses.) Next there is the fact that there are no profound or memorable proverbs about lies or truth, so that the words themselves have to muster all the energy of the phenomena. A comparable depopulation, lending prominence and salience to lie and truth, is that by which a great many lie and truth terms have fallen out of the language, as if by some evolutionary concentration upon the survival of the fittest words. Middle English gab, to lie , survives only in its weakened child, gabble; leasing has gone as has the plural lyings; the adjective lie ( from Old English lyze, lying); various tansistive and quasi-transistive uses of to lie (OED 3 and 4 ); and 'to give the lieto' ( accuse of lyiing). You can no longer 'make a lie', you can only tell it; you can now lie only about, not - as you can only tell it; you can now lie only about, not - as you once could - of, on, or upon (OED 1b).
Again, there is the salience given by the marked absence of synonyms for lie; all we have is either ephemeral or infantile slang (bounce, crammer, whopper, fib - to cite Roget's Thesarus ) or eupehemisms: falsehood and untruth, neither of which strictly means lie and both of which therefore can on occasions have the special offence of a euphemism.
.... The final linguistic consideration is one of the many asymmetries between lie and truth, one which lends to lie ( and to its pun) a range of suggestions which are denied to or disdained by truth. This is the fact that rhymes for truth are few, and only one of them * has much potentiality for discovering or urging insights...
This marked paucity of suggestive rhyming for truth, which lends it a lonely dignity and integrity, contrasts sharply with the manifest and manifold rhymes which crowd upon or from lie: fly ( with its altruism or cowardice), die ( with its moment of truth and its horizantality), I and my ( with their sincerity or insincerity), eye ( with its honesty or shiftiness), and so on.
... It is Shakespear's work which provides the transition from those linguistic considerations which give salience to the lie/lie pun, to the more largely human considerations which give importance to it. For there is a prima facie likelihood that a pun which is so ubiquiously necessary to the greatest writer inthe language is a very important pun. Shakespear, who needs and wants the words lie, lies, and lying hundreds of times in his work, has only three times thepunless form lied. We should ask ourselves whether the fretfulness or impatience which we sometimes feel with these puns is to Shakespeare's siscredit or to ours- have we lost, or bebome blinded to, the important considerations that presumably seemed to Shakespeare to raise above triviality such an insistence as this?
That, Lye, shall lieso heavy on my Sword, That it shall render Vengeance, and Revenge, Till thou the Lye-giver, and that Lye, do Lye In earth as quiet, as thy Father's Scull. ( Richard 11 !V.i) ... The importance of the llie/lie is that it concentates an exraordinary wide-ranging and profound network of truth testing situations and postures. It brings mendacity up against those situations and postures which constitute thegreat moments or endurances of truth: the child-bed, the love-bed, the bed of sleep and dreams, the sick-bed, the death-bed, the grave....And even perhaps the modern secular counterpart to the confessional's kneeling: the psychiatrist's couch. It conentrates this network, or rather concentrated it, since historical and cultural circumstances are now disintegrating it.
* The word 'youth'.
Christopher Ricks Reprinted from:- 'Lies, in The Force of Poetry, Oxford University Press, 1984.
