Minister Describes Fall of Icarus as "Tragic"

Of course, the 24 hour news cycle has changed things somewhat: most of us pause for a moment or two to hear the announcement about the boy falling out of the sky before we turn quite leisurely away. And in that moment there is a breathless expectation that someone in a suit will capture for us the momentousness of what has happened. However banal and bleedingly obvious it might seem when a politician labels a disaster as ‘tragic,’ ‘shocking,’ ‘appalling,’ or any other of his list of synonyms, there is also I think a genuine satisfaction of a genuine need. Human suffering and natural catastrophe demand language. Words that both gauge and contain their depths, and words delivered in a voice of authority. In fact these labels, though they seem pointless, move beyond mere verbalising into the realm of religious incantation. The blessing of a priest; the elevation of the ordinary into the sacred. It is also an acknowledgement, the same one Breughel's painting so conspicuously lacks, that something amazing has happened.

Poetry Challenge

Though I think poetry is tremendously important, I am not myself a writer of poetry. I gave that up after some adolescent attempts that, though long since destroyed, still bring a blush of shame to my cheeks. However, there are some ideas best (or only) expressed in verse, and since in this case I can’t follow Philip Larkin’s advice and write what I want to read, I thought I’d throw out a challenge to any aspiring poets who happen by this post.

I’ve been thinking a lot about boat people, oil spills, whaling, and how these issues circle and plumb our collective soul, and particularly as a country ‘girt' by sea. The word ‘seaworthy’ continues to float atop these thoughts. I feel constitutionally incapable of producing the poem they seem to demand, so I thought I’d cast them adrift and see if any passing poet hauls them aboard.

Any takers?

How everything turns away

Last week's offering made me think about other poems that respond to paintings. I like this one, "Musée des Beaux Arts," by W.H. Auden about Pieter Breughel's “Landscape with the Fall of Icharus.” It's a neat comment on the way those old Dutch paintings exquisitely rendered the ordinary, but it's also a poignant observation of the world's propensity to sail calmly away from the boy falling out of the sky.  The museum of the title is the Musée Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique, which is well worth a visit if you're ever strolling up the Rue de Musée in Brussels.

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's
horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns
away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
 

Sense and Sensuousness

With the advent of digital books and reading devices, many avid readers lamented the loss of the sensuous pleasures of reading: the bowed boards of old hardcovers; the feel of aging paper between the fingers; their fragrance of ruin. (For a lovely description of these effects, see the first paragraph of AS Byatt’s Possession.) These are indeed lost, or at least replaced with a new pleasure: the sleekness of plastic and the gentle clack of tiny keys. In some ways the loss is grievous and irretrievable, but in others, it is a virtue. If, like me, you’re seduced by the covers of new books – by their design and texture, the éclat they acquire from media exposure – the e-reader imposes some much-needed rigour to the reading diet. I’m not remotely tempted to download new and fashionable books on the strength of their glossy finish. Whereas, unleashed in Borders, I could easily spend a small fortune on books that will forever unfinished adorn my coffee table.

Scribes and Pharisees

Noted atheist Philip Pullman has written a book called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. It’s a fable based on the premise that Mary had twins: Jesus, a respected moral teacher, and Christ, a traitor who invents a spurious religion around the death of his brother. No doubt it will invite a tiresome downpour of righteous wrath, and an equally tiresome uproar of atheist enthusiasm. Amid the clash, I hope the gentle voice of the Archbishop of Canterbury will be heard. His review is careful, thoughtful, and gracious. It pays Pullman the compliment of serious attention, without yielding any of the ground claimed by Christians who take the gospel seriously. Moreover by taking the book seriously as thought-provoking fiction, it avoids the righteous error of being provoked by fiction into serious dispute.