Fireworks and falling stars

 “Knowing within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public. What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished...[It] may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honour of English literature.” So wrote Keats in the preface to Endymion, published in 1818.  So might Jane Campion have prefaced her film.

Physically, it is beautiful, particularly the photography of fabric, paper, flowers, butterflies, and luminous interiors.  But as an accomplished deed, as a contribution to the honour of English literature, it leaves much to be desired.  I wasn't surprised to find myself out of sympathy with the tone, as I think most period films fail to recreate the sensibility of their period, content to stick gen-y celebs in ye olde garb and assume that folks in the nineteenth century thought, felt and spoke much as we do. Beyond this elementary shortfall, I was struggling to find out what the film is about.  It's not about Keats, as the only biographical cues we get are a puffy shirt and a slight cough.  It's not about Fanny, in the sense that we see her inner world and understand her passion for the poet or the poems. It's not about the affair, which is anaemic and ambiguous, and has no clear genesis or consummation. And it's certainly not about poetry, though the central characters lurch into verse at key moments, much as leads launch into song in stage musicals.  I have to conclude that it's in fact about the visual beauty of fabric, paper, flowers, butterflies and luminous interiors; that Keats was not a text but a pretext; and that Campion is in company with many a director who mistakes the medium for the subject. Maybe it's impossible to translate into film the synchronous evolution of a romantic poet and a poetic romance. Or maybe our generation is incapable of a rich and nuanced visualisation of great literature, preferring a shimmering spectacle to an enduring work of art.

In the beginning...

Listen to the first sentence of Cormac McCarthy's Pullitzer prize-winning The Road:

“When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.”

Wow. This is like beat poetry. I haven't got very far with this one yet, but I can tell it's going to require concentration. This is a good thing. I think too few modern writers pay attention to prosody - the music and rhythm of their writing, the way it sounds in your head and feels in your mouth when you read it.

This also got me thinking about great first lines. Moby Dick's “Call me Ishmael” comes to mind, and of course Dickens' Tale of Two Cities opener. I know I harp on Henry James, but how exquisite is this from Portrait of a Lady:

“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

I also like the one-word openers. Bleak House begins with “London.” Unbeatably, Beowulf begins with “So.”

And how can you go past Genesis? When you think about it, it's a spine-tingling way to begin a book:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Manning Clark('s) House

I had only the vaguest idea of who Manning Clark was (something about several volumes of Australian history?) before I visited Manning Clark House last Friday for informal drinks with the Friends of Manning Clark House - a fairly nerdy but genial bunch. The house is preserved as Manning and Dymphna (a translator of some note) left it, replete with their 10,000 volume library, which inhabits every spare inch of space at eye level and above.  Tellingly, there is a bench in the kitchen where Dymphna apparently did her translating while cooking dinner for the many guests Manning brought unexpectedly home.  His study, by contrast, is accessible only by a ladder, and commands several square feet and the best views in the house.  This room contains probably half of the 10,000 books, as well as a large wooden desk that bears an inky mark in the shape of Clark's hand (he wrote with a quill and always blotted in the same place).  The division of space made me reflect on Virginia Woolf's thoughts on room, and how women rarely got one of their own.  When I probed my own ideas further, I realised that I, like most of western civilisation, tend to idealise the cloistered scholarly space, which has also traditionally been a male space; but perhaps there is something to be said for literary work undertaken in the thick of life as it is lived, in the full current of food, wine, conversation, family, community. Maybe the watermark in her work is more authentic than the inky one in his. Not being a mother of six children nor the wife of an eccentric academic, I should probably speculate no further.

This tender conceptual blue net

Friday Poetry is an idea I'm borrowing from Alison.  For my first Friday poem, I've chosen David Malouf's “Moonflowers.” Like all his poems, it's evocative and graceful, never obvious. I especially like the delicacy of the final thought. Though more truthful than the single narrative, sometimes the tender net is a perilous thing to cling to.

Gone and not gone. Is this
garden the one
we walked in hand in hand
watching the moon-
flower at the gate
climb back into our lives
out of winter bones –
decades of round crimped candescent
origami satellite-dishes
all cocked towards Venus?
One garden opens
to let another through, the green
heart-shapes a new season holds
our hearts to like the old.
The moonflower lingers
in its fat scent. We move
in and in and out of
each other’s warmed spaces,
there is
no single narrative.
And we like it that way,
if we like it at all, this
tender conceptual
blue net that holds, and holds us
so lightly against fall.

A truth universally acknowledged

Today is the 197th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, which Jane Austen wrote at the age of 21.  While a lot of people will say Emma or Persuasion is the better novel, the enduring popularity of Pride and Prejudice is irrefutable.  Apart from the chemistry between Elizabeth and Darcy, I think this novel has an energy and momentum which the others lack; it glides where the others stroll. It feels effortless. Also, it's the funniest. No adaptation quite manages to capture the quirkiness of the humour in this one, nor the complexity of a comic character like Mrs Bennet, who is at once irritating and endearing.  My favourite moment in the book is a throw-away line at the close of one insignificant scene, where Mrs Bennet tells a young Lucas son that if she saw him drinking a bottle of wine a day she would take his bottle away from him. “He declared that she wouldn't. She continued to declare that she would, and the argument only ended with the visit.” Delicious.