For I will consider my cat

I’ve been wanting to post this bit of eighteenth-century kookiness for a while but feared it was too long. As I don’t have anything else to hand today, and as it really is bizarrely worth the read, here it is. It’s an excerpt from Christopher Smart’s “Jubilate Agno,” a thirty-two pager he penned while locked up in an asylum between 1756 and 1758, presumably with cat in tow. His particular malady was “religious mania,” though Dr Johnson, after visiting him, didn’t think there was anything the matter. He was later imprisoned for debt. During a varied career he wrote under the pseudonyms “Mary Midnight” and “Pentweazle,” translated Horace, responded to John Hill’s criticism of his poems with a lengthy satire called “The Hilliad,” and edited a weekly journal ingenuously titled The Old Woman’s Magazine. In all, one of those intriguing and slightly dubious figures that people literary history. This piece does smack of mania, but as Shakespeare knew, “the lunatic…and the poet are of imagination all compact.” And what looks like madness in one age might look like post-modernism in another. Enjoy.

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.
For having done duty and received blessing he begins to consider himself.
For this he performs in ten degrees.
For first he looks upon his forepaws to see if they are clean.
For secondly he kicks up behind to clear away there.
For thirdly he works it upon stretch with the forepaws extended.
For fourthly he sharpens his paws by wood.
For fifthly he washes himself.
For sixthly he rolls upon wash.
For seventhly he fleas himself, that he may not be interrupted upon the beat.
For eighthly he rubs himself against a post.
For ninthly he looks up for his instructions.
For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbour.
For if he meets another cat he will kiss her in kindness.
For when he takes his prey he plays with it to give it a chance.
For one mouse in seven escapes by his dallying.
For when his day’s work is done his business more properly begins.
For he keeps the Lord’s watch in the night against the adversary.
For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes.
For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.
For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him.
For he is of the tribe of Tiger.
For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger.
For he has the subtlety and hissing of a serpent, which in goodness he suppresses.
For he will not do destruction, if he is well-fed, neither will he spit without provocation.
For he purrs in thankfulness, when God tells him he’s a good Cat.
For he is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon.
For every house is incomplete without him and a blessing is lacking in the spirit.
For the Lord commanded Moses concerning the cats at the departure of the Children of Israel from Egypt.
For every family had one cat at least in the bag.
For the English Cats are the best in Europe.
For he is the cleanest in the use of his forepaws of any quadruped.
For the dexterity of his defence is an instance of the love of God to him exceedingly.
For he is the quickest to his mark of any creature.
For he is tenacious of his point.
For he is a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.
For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
For he is of the Lord's poor and so indeed is he called by benevolence perpetually--Poor Jeoffry! poor Jeoffry! the rat has bit thy throat.
For I bless the name of the Lord Jesus that Jeoffry is better.
For the divine spirit comes about his body to sustain it in complete cat.
For his tongue is exceeding pure so that it has in purity what it wants in music.
For he is docile and can learn certain things.
For he can set up with gravity which is patience upon approbation.
For he can fetch and carry, which is patience in employment.
For he can jump over a stick which is patience upon proof positive.
For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.
For he can jump from an eminence into his master's bosom.
For he can catch the cork and toss it again.
For he is hated by the hypocrite and miser.
For the former is afraid of detection.
For the latter refuses the charge.
For he camels his back to bear the first notion of business.
For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.
For he made a great figure in Egypt for his signal services.
For he killed the Ichneumon-rat very pernicious by land.
For his ears are so acute that they sting again.
For from this proceeds the passing quickness of his attention.
For by stroking of him I have found out electricity.
For I perceived God's light about him both wax and fire.
For the Electrical fire is the spiritual substance, which God sends from heaven to sustain the bodies both of man and beast.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.
For, tho he cannot fly, he is an excellent clamberer.
For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.
For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

The soul of Twitter

I've been feeling bad about the books that lie unblogged in my wake. I've also been reflecting on the one-line review as a particularly artful and expeditious reading record. The harbinger of one-liners, Twitter is bagged for eroding language and maiming expression, but it could equally prove a useful discipline, a healthy moderation. Brevity, after all, is the soul of wit. In the spirit of Twitter, then, herewith some 140 character (count them!) reviews of my recent reads.

Served with a mint julep and a jazz band, Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s greatest, shatters America’s gleaming dreams on the dark shore of modernity.

In Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel remarkably makes both Thomas Cromwell and historical fiction rich, rounded, beguiling, believable and likeable.

Brutal sins long hidden surface on the southern coast in The Broken Shore, Peter Temple’s bleak, bluntly understated slice of modern gothic.

My Brother Jack calls up classic Australian types, the literate prig and the larrikin digger, to chronicle a young nation’s wars and wounds.

The Glittering Prizes

For anyone with literary aspirations, the Prime Minister's Literary Awards are a shining beacon, but a word from the winners might give us pause.

One said the money would help his family “survive a bit more.”

Another described his winnings as “somewhat of a financial relief.”

A third said the prize would allow her to write “in relative comfort for a year,” and that she looked forward to buying a new kettle.

Since the PM's are generous as prizes go, the apparently parlous state of these winners speaks more to the condition of writing and publishing in this country than to the meagreness of the prize. What this says to me is that if you want to write, you might win a prize but you've got Buckley's of making a living.

Recommended Reading

“Do you have any books the Faculty doesn't particularly recommend?”

This cartoon is from a collection by Flannery O'Connor, about to be published for the first time. Better known for her short stories, O'Connor is one of those writers, like Simone Weil, who is on my to-read list because of the other authors who've recommended her; she was even, ironically, on my reading list in first year uni. I've come across her name and repute in various places, most often in arguments for the possibility of a Christian literature, distinct from the kind of genre fiction (usually romance) peddled by Christian bookshops. Like Simone Weil, and Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and now Marilynne Robinson, she's taken seriously by secular readers, and her work, infused with religious sensibility, meets every test of intellect and art. Perhaps as proof of this, I've also come across her in accounts of the American short story, and of Southern literature, and of writers who stand out from their time and place. By all accounts she's worth attention.

She was lonely and sickly, and like Simone Weil, she died horribly, young. A Georgian, and a Catholic, she's known for keen observation, moral acuity, and sharp irony.  Though she lived almost reclusively, she had a gift for seeing and sketching folks in all their flawed glory. She's proof that writers can reach greatness without going too far from their own front door. And she comes highly recommended.

Look down, look down

Threaded through the yarns in Bill Bryson's Down Under is a quite earnest consideration of Aboriginal Australia: its amazing pre-history, troubling history, and present predicament. As an outsider, what he noticed was the invisibility of Aboriginal people, compounded by the tendency of white Australia not to look. Sitting in a cafe in Alice Springs, he felt as though he were watching two different countries overlaid, each unconscious of the other.  Bobbi Sykes,  who died last November, captured this assumed unconsciousness simply: “Moving along Main St. / Whitesville / Digging all them white face / (Staring, or ‘not staring’).” “Not staring” (I've done it) is both cause and symptom.  Looking isn't everything, but it's a start. The meeting of gazes begins to look like equality.

In the 1960s, Oodgeroo's stirring “Song of Hope” began “Look up, my people.” Contemporary poet Elizabeth Hodgson, who won the David Unaipon Award for her 2008 collection Skin Painting, calls for some reciprocity. Her poem cries: “Look down, look down,” urging us to see another country; to see this one the way someone else does and has. 

When you walk this land do you notice
the tracks of my people?

Look down, look down
see the footprints criss-crossing your path.
Look down past the concrete and bitumen
gardens choking with imported flora.

Look down, look down
See where you plant your feet.
Can you fill the footprints of the past?
When you cross a river, a mountain range,
do you know you've walked into another country?