Ponderings

Tag: writing

  • Lyric Grace

    On the 31st March, 1621 the English poet and politician Andrew Marvell was born. He lived and worked through one of the most tumultuous periods of English history, and this is reflected in his work. His first poems were published while he was still a student at Cambridge, and these were effusive tributes to the reigning King Charles I.

    However after the King was executed in 1649 his loyalties changed. Eventually he was persuaded to support the new political establishment and he firmly allied himself with the new regime. In 1650 he worked for Lord Fairfax, who was Oliver Cromwell’s military commander during the Civil Wars. He was employed as the private tutor to his daughter at his residency, Appleton House.

    The verdant surroundings inspired him to write the poem “Upon Appleton House”. This was an extraordinarily vivid poem, praising his patron and his generosity. The poem is also an allegory of England during the Interregnum, a society in great flux and wrestling with its religious and cultural identity.

    One year later he was appointed to Cromwell’s Council of State and worked as his Latin Secretary alongside his friend and fellow poet John Milton. They shared a similar sensibility, perceiving England as a uniquely sacred nation, akin to Zionism.

    This belief was sincere and profound. The argument was that just as God promised the land of Israel to the Jews, England too was a kind of Promised Land for pious and devout Protestants. This was a very common belief for the time. Milton’s epic verse was a lamentation for a lost tribe of chosen people, bewildered and exiled on England’s vast green plains searching for manna.

    This concept was often held in tandem with the practice of complete abstinence from worldly desires to maintain spiritual purity and to restore the covenant with God. Both of these beliefs were integral to the Puritan philosophy which helped to sustain Oliver Cromwell’s governance. Ultimately, however Puritanism had its limits, and its harsh strictures were questioned by the populace.

    Cromwell’s tyrannical measures against excesses of the flesh did not seem particularly Christian at all. It seemed that Puritan leaders were held captive by a delusion, believing that God had only created a spirit world, rather than a material world replete with flesh and blood humans.

    Cromwell died in 1658 and his son Richard succeeded him. It was a hallmark of the regime’s hypocrisy that one hereditary system was merely replaced with another. In 1659 Marvell was elected the Member of Parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull in the Third Protectorate Parliament. In 1660 the Monarchy was restored, and King Charles II ascended to the throne. Both Marvell and Milton were incredibly fortunate to avoid the death penalty for being possible co-conspirators and collaborators in the previous administration, one that was held responsible for the execution of the King’s father.

    It was a testament to their persuasive literary powers that they could even convince Royalty that they were not traitors. Marvell was re-elected as the MP for Hull in the Cavalier Parliament. However he was soon dissatisfied, and appalled by the extent of government corruption which had become endemic. He composed poems expressing his feelings of disgust and disappointment, but these were written surreptitiously and were only published posthumously.

    Marvell died in mysterious circumstances in 1678, reputedly this was a targeted political assassination. In the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, his poetry experienced a revival, with previously unpublished poems added to the canon. His poetry felt timely and it resonated with people.

    Poems like “The Garden” and “To HIs Coy Mistress” were subtle allusions to England’s divided self, a nation and a people grappling with ambiguity. It was a perennial battle between the body and the soul, the flesh and the spirit. His oeuvre was a significant influence on T.S Eliot, who was also inspired by similar themes.

    Eliot wrote that his poetry “is more than a technical accomplishment, or the vocabulary and syntax of an epoch; it is what we have designated tentatively as wit, a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace”. This “slight lyric grace” epitomises English culture, quiet, unassuming and too hesitant to express any heartfelt emotion. His work is a delicate dedication to England, and it continues to reverberate to this day.

  • Southern Mystic

    On the 25th March, 1925 the American writer Flannery O’Connor was born. She spent all her life in Georgia, and her writing was inspired by the people and the culture that surrounded her. This was a Southern state with a unique reputation. It was characterised by its deep religious piety, but it also attracted notoriety for something altogether darker and unsettling.

    Smalltown Georgia in the forties and fifties was not an especially tolerant place. It maintained an outward civility but it remained hostile to anyone who was perceived as different. Black people, especially young black men were subject to the worst kind of prejudice and discrimination. In the pre-civil rights era, an astonishing 531 lynchings occurred, the second highest number of extralegal executions within the entire southern United States.

    O’Connor writes in an unsparing and pitiless tone about this climate of suspicion and fear, and the obstinacy displayed by the people living within it. It is a stark contrast to the wholesome and glamourised image of the south as evinced by Margaret Mitchell in her romantic novel “Gone With The Wind”. In Mitchell’s imagination this is a rich and lush landscape inhabited by a happy and harmonious set of people unscathed by slavery. O’Connor’s version of the south is bleak, and steeped in bathos. Her 1952 novella “Wise Blood” illustrates this perfectly. The narrative is nihilistic and cynical. It is purposefully stripped of any superficiality and romance to reveal the decadent underbelly.

    The book uncovers the harsh reality of post-war America. It is a battle scarred nation that is wrestling with its identity. Many of the characters are solitary figures who privately struggle with afflictions of one kind or another. Empathy is entirely absent and all that emerges from the story is the sense that desperation is the most valuable commodity. This is exploited for maximum gain. It is a merciless system where the most vulnerable are manipulated and corrupted to enrich others.

    However the individuals depicted are not presented as helpless victims of fate, they are painted as proud, dignified and singular in their suffering. They are the embodiment of martyrdom. They resemble Biblical figures who strive only to seek meaning in a place and time that has no real semblance of meaning, and seems just random and cruel. O’Connor herself had her own private health battles, and died aged only 39, but her legacy endures.

  • Native Wit

    On the 7th January, 1891 the African-American writer, anthropologist, folklorist and filmmaker Zora Neale Hurston was born. She grew up in Eatonville, Florida, one of the first autonomous black principalities in the United States. Her father was the Mayor, and a Baptist minister in the town.

    She was educated at a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville but was forced to leave after her father failed to pay her tuition fees. She worked as a maid and attended night school, before leaving for University in Washington. While on the course she grew fascinated by anthropology and folklore.

    It opened up her mind to other cultures, which seemed so remote and distinct from the earthy humour and superstition of her hometown. However, as her upbringing was so detached from the experience of white Americans, it gave her a much greater sense of appreciation for the wisdom that she acquired growing up in an all black neighbourhood. She realised that her memories of the stories, traditions and rituals had a profound significance. She decided to continue to pursue anthropology as an academic subject, and she also composed short stories and satirical pieces.

    In 1925 she was granted a scholarship at Columbia University, and three years later she received her B.A in anthropology. Her literary and scholarly talents were recognised by the philanthropist and literary patron Charlotte Osgood Mason. She provided Hurston with a stipend of $200 a month to help further her research into folklore. In 1935 she published her first literary anthology on African-American folklore called “Mules and Men”. This was swiftly followed by the novels “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Moses, Man of the Mountain”. Her extensive research work took her to the Southern states of America and also the Caribbean, where she collected stories and testimonies from the African diaspora.

    In 1938, another collection of folklore was published. It was called “Tell My Horse” and it details the syncretic beliefs of the post-colonial world. Hurston’s work was overlooked in her lifetime, as she was overshadowed by literary titans like Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. Both Wright and Hughes were overtly partisan in their political beliefs, and this inevitably gave them more gravitas culturally. Hurston only reflected her experiences, and did not perceive herself as a propagandist for the cause of racial equality. Her objectivity, and obvious affection for the community of Eatonville resonates in her writing.

  • Chipping Away

    On the 20th December, 1954 the acclaimed author and screenwriter James Hilton died. His most famous work was “Goodbye Mr Chips”. This slim novella was published in 1934 but contains lessons which resonate throughout the ages. It is a romantic evocation of a schoolmaster at Brookfield, a provincial public school for boys. Mr. Chipping or “Chips” is the archetypal teacher, a warm, paternalistic and familiar presence in a world that refuses to stay still.

    Chips knows that history has undoubtedly shaped him, but he is uncomfortably aware that the future is a constant intrusion into his carefully ordered life. Chips finds himself in later years,a solitary widower after losing both his wife and child in childbirth. He is bereft of biological children, but nonetheless perceives himself as the adopted father of hundreds of boys. The boys who were fortunate enough to have been taught by him regard him as a mentor and a confidante, and by extension a father figure.

    The old “boys” of the school include high ranking church ministers, top businessmen, judges, lawyers and assorted pillars of the community. Chips’ role in their success has been incalculable, he is not merely a teacher to them he is the arbiter of moral correction. His lessons in civilisation are set and precise formulas for everyone to follow, this, he believes, is the natural order of everything.

    Chips’ is a traditionalist and a conservative. He is an unfashionable figure in a world that is constantly striving for modernity and the future. However his political and ethical position is not completely implacable, as it is revealed that his young wife helped to soften his stance. In their brief but eventful marriage he opens himself up to her liberal outlook.

    Under her influence he is willing and receptive to new ideas, and his prejudices, particularly those around class, are confounded. Yet his actual standards never change, and he refuses to waver, even in the face of external pressures, as Hilton explains,

    “Because always, whatever happened and however the avenues of politics twisted and curved, he had faith in England, in English flesh and blood, and in Brookfield as a place whose ultimate worth depended on whether she fitted herself into the English scene with dignity and without disproportion”.

    Chips is ultimately a product of a specific time and place. He is the personification of Victorian England, an upstanding figure, both patrician and correct.

    However the radicalism of the early twentieth century is alarming to him, along with the increasing appetite for war. As the First World War erupts, he is forced out of retirement to replace the younger masters who are conscripted. Every Sunday assembly is punctuated with a roll call of death notices, a poignant reminder of the waste wrought by war. An interesting twist occurs when it is announced that the master of German had been killed, another victim of this random and senseless event in history. Chips correctly admonishes the boys who denounced him as the “enemy” when in fact he was called up by his country’s government and had no real choice in the matter.

    Chips never forgets any of his pupils, he continues to invite them to tea at his lodgings. He is loved for his wisdom, his kindness and his tireless duty. The concluding chapter, when Chips says his final goodbye is so touching it is difficult to read it without tears. The vision of England that Hilton depicts, of immaculate cricket lawns and impeccable manners may not have existed, but it is recognised by most of us as the country in which we would like to live.

    This hopeful vision is dwindling year after year and seems more remote than ever in an age of technocratic globalism. Cynics paint this as a sanitised view of the country, and sneer at the supposed absurdity, complaining that it is excessively sentimental.

    However this criticism is hollow and contemptuous, revealing a coarseness and a bluntness which we have sadly become too accustomed to, it offers nothing positive. Hilton’s elegy to a lost England is timely, and even more necessary today than when it was written.

  • A Desolate Beauty

    On the 25th November 1970, the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima died. He died in a ritual suicide which was broadcast on television. His suicide, and the central role that he played in a failed political coup has been well documented. Mishima’s last public appearance was intended as a forewarning to the world, a graphic method of self-sacrifice to highlight the decadence inherent to the movement of twentieth-century progressivism. It was apt to depart in such a dramatic fashion, as his entire life, and his work explored the bleakest aspects of modernity. He made a deliberate choice to die in the traditional way of the samurai warriors, a stark counterpoint to the futuristic notions of living, working and dying amongst the remnants of post-war Japan.

    However, his life and death have almost overshadowed his work. His artistic brilliance as a writer is rarely spoken of, especially his last work, a tetralogy of novels entitled “The Sea of Fertility”. This was a saga rich in historical detail. It is evident that in his final days he dedicated himself fully to this project, putting his heart and soul, and in the end literally sacrificing his own life to finish it.

    His research was exemplary. And painstaking. His love of the Japanese nation, history, culture and people reverberates throughout the books, but there is a tinge of despair for the loss of the old ways. Many modern commentators decry his supposed “fascism” but ignore the important context. Their criticisms are shallow and ignorant, it is easy to throw around accusations of chauvinism or extremism, but it is much harder to truly examine the work in depth. Diminishing him and reducing him to a political caricature is crass because there are so many elements in his work that transcend political categories, and there is a powerfully emotive message which is omitted. His work explores fundamental philosophical themes, and the meanings are complex and multilayered.

    The main protagonist is Shigekuni Honda. Honda considers the meaning of life and is caught in a desperate bind between the material, rational world and the vague, subjective notion of the individual human “soul”. He examines the concepts of life, death and rebirth. At the beginning of the series, he is a young student and

    searching in vain for something substantial in a state of impermanence, Mishima illuminates his state of mind in vivid and illuminating prose, explaining,

    “The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions-gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose”. Fate in particular hangs heavily in his mind.

    This becomes abundantly clear when he discovers the corpse of a dog in a river. The arbitrary cruelty of life affects him greatly. The death of an innocent and defenceless animal is just one loss of life in a catalogue of deaths that occur throughout the first book. In this unceasing tale of tragedy he questions the purpose of karma, while in the background there is the very real and frightening prospect of international conflict. Honda’s reveries coincide as foreign generals and diplomats contemplate carving up the map of the world once more without any thought of how this will impact upon the people who will be uprooted.

    The second book in the series focuses on the trial of a youth movement of nationalists accused of planning a military takeover of the government. Honda is now working as a judge and is assigned to this case. He is middle-aged and married, but the preoccupations that bedevilled him as a youth remain with him. Justice and mercy, innocence and guilt are perennial themes.

    Karma is deeply embedded within these concepts. Amidst the machinations at court, he ponders the fleeting aspect of mortal life, and contrasts it with the apparent immortality and permanence of the natural world. Poetic illustrations of the sacred mountains of Japan are contrasted with the dry business of the legal system. Eventually the conspirators are found not guilty, but shockwaves from the rebellion continue to resound throughout the nation.

    In the third book, Honda is sent to Bangkok on a business trip, tasked with settling a legal issue with a Japanese company called Itsui Products who trade with Thailand. He is intoxicated by the landscape and culture and experiences a divine epiphany at a temple. The old familiar feelings return to him, the love of beauty and sentiment and the dislike of cold rationalism. However, as soon as he finds a measure of equilibrium Japan is embroiled in the Second World War, with devastating consequences. In the final book of the series, Honda is elderly and widowed. Japan is barren and struggling to reconcile itself with its militaristic past. Honda himself is rueful, but has found a modicum of meaning in his life as a father to his adopted son. Honda is diagnosed with a terminal illness and on his deathbed realises that what he believed was reality was in fact illusion.

    The tone is characteristically and recognisably Mishima. He was renowned as a master of capturing the desolate beauty of nihilism. The books are replete with lengthy meditations on vitality itself, in sharp contrast to the all pervading sense of decay. These vignettes describe an environment inimical to sustaining life. It is a sterile landscape primed for destruction rather than any promise of regeneration or renewal. This magnum opus is a symbol for the limits of ideologies that seek to negate the past.

  • The Inheritor Of Unfulfilled Renown

    On the 20th of November, 1752 the English poet Thomas Chatterton was born. He was born in Bristol to a family who played an important and prestigious role in the office of sexton for St Mary Radcliffe Church. His mother, Sarah Chatterton was a part-time seamstress. His father, also called Thomas, was a numismatist who died shortly after he was born.

    He was educated at Edward Colston’s charity school, reputedly on the site of a ruined Carmelite convent. His childhood was steeped in mystery and myth, but also difficulty and poverty. This inauspicious start in life did not bode well for his future. In spite of his efforts to establish himself as a professional poet he died at the tragically young age of 17. His death occurred in murky circumstances. Many assumed that he had taken his own life.

    However other commentators have suggested that his demise may have been accidental, as his death was attributed to arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was a common treatment for venereal disease at that time. Nonetheless his death still created a myth that lingers to this day, of the tortured, doomed and misunderstood poet destined for obscurity.

    His death and the legend that surrounded it influenced other writers and artists for at least a century afterwards, and beyond. In 1835 the French playwright Alfred de Vigny wrote the visionary drama “Chatterton”. The troubled Victorian poet and Catholic mystic Francis Thompson believed that he was saved from suicide by the comforting presence of Chatterton’s ghost.

    The myth was also immortalised in the popular imagination by the pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Wallis in his 1856 painting “The Death of Chatterton”. In 2010 the outsider artist George Harding was inspired to create his own interpretation of this iconic image in the painting “Everything is Real except God and Death”, inspired by his experience as an in-patient at Bethlem hospital.

    Harding re-imagined the mythic figure of Chatterton, and re-created the infamous death scene with himself at the centre. However in the painting, Harding is not dead, but in a state of madness and confusion. In the grip of his delusion, he has no head, in its place is the Eye of Providence. The painting illustrates that disturbing and unsettling no-man’s land that exists between reality and insanity in which death itself has no meaning.

    Chatterton’s extraordinary life and death provides a dark inspiration for those who have found themselves adrift in society. Chatterton was an imaginative and sensitive child. When he was six he amused himself with solitary pursuits, and spent entire days reading and writing. At school he was prone to daydreaming, and neglected his academic work. He started writing poetry at the age of eleven, and this was encouraged by his mother.

    He was fascinated by history, particularly folklore and many of his earliest writings illuminate the old myths and tales of England. The ancient legends and landscapes of England, especially Bristol animated his verse. This was something that he cultivated while still a schoolboy at Colston’s school. It was staggering to consider that he was only sixteen, and unlike many youths of today who are only too keen to forge ahead and create new ideas for the future, he was more inclined to look back into the past.

    Chatterton adored the rarefied world of Medieval England. This was a period replete with ornate mythology and lore. It was a realm so captivating that he would frequently lose himself within it. He even adopted the persona of a Medieval poet, and attempted to appropriate the syntax and style. He created the pseudonym “Thomas Rowley”. The “Rowley” poems are an astounding testament to his literary and linguistic talents, honed at such a young age.

    Chatterton believed that the character that he imagined, of a Medieval scholar, scribe and Priest, was so convincing, that he could fool the literary establishment. He appealed to the great and good of Bristol. He told them that he had discovered a neglected masterpiece written by an unknown and unrenowned poet from the fifteenth century. However they were unwilling to remunerate him.

    Unchastened by this rejection, he sent his appeal further, to the esteemed Horace Walpole, who initially believed his account until he was informed of Chatterton’s age. He was sceptical of the veracity of the poems, and consulted his friend Thomas Gray. Gray instantly declared that the poems were fake. Walpole wrote a denouncing letter to Chatterton in which he called his poems “facile”, and the correspondence ended.

    The rejection wounded him, and it sent Chatterton on a path to self-destruction, and led to his untimely demise. It seems tragic now to consider that he died not knowing that his work of medieval parody and pastiche would become a major influence on the Romantic poets, and inspire further generations of English poets.

  • In Xanadu

    On the 21st October, 1772 the English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born. Coleridge was a prominent member of a rarefied group of writers and artists known collectively as the Romantics. This was an intellectual movement dedicated to the cultivation of the human imagination, regarded as the ultimate source of enlightenment and the key to the development and progression of civilisation.

    In our modern understanding of the term, Romantics are idealistic dreamers with an excessively optimistic perception of human nature and its destiny. Romantics were the heirs of utopians, who themselves had too much faith in humankind, at least in terms of solving the almost intractable problems of existence. However we are living in a time of cynicism and scepticism, and these concepts do not have much significance or resonance, but in the past these ideas were considered radical.

    Writers associated with utopianism include the moral philosopher William Godwin.

    In 1793 Godwin published “An Enquiry Into Political Justice”. This essay fired the imagination of a young William Wordsworth. He implored others, in a spirit of reckless extravagance to “throw aside your books of chemistry” and urged his contemporaries to focus on Godwin’s theories instead. Coleridge himself was encouraged by his message and composed a “hymn” honouring him, announcing in emphatic tones.

    “For that thy voice, in Passion’s stormy day,

    When wild I roam’d the bleak heath of Distress,

    Bade the bright form of Justice meet my way-

    And told me that her name was HAPPINESS.”

    At this time, Coleridge was young and fiery and determined to rid the world of all of its iniquities.

    He was a bold and ambitious young man with tremendous zeal. However he was also afflicted with a sensitivity that was frequently misunderstood and maligned by mainstream society and its institutions. He was invalided out of the Army, and in spite of early academic promise, failed to graduate from Cambridge University. He published his first volume of poetry in 1796, which also featured poems from Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.

    One year later he moved to a cottage in Nether Stowey, Somerset. He resided there for a year and created his best work, including “Kubla Khan”. This visionary, extraordinary poem was composed after an opium induced dream. The poem describes Xanadu, the summer capital of Mongol China. It details Emperor Kublai Khan’s pleasure dome, situated next to a holy river. The poem is a testament to the sacred and hallowed elements of the natural world.

    Voyages into far flung lands are enduring themes in English literature. These are mythic tales which are not meant to be literally true. These are works designed to represent a national sensibility. These reflect a common experience living on a cold, dark island cut off from the rest of the world. The yearning for escape to more exotic climes speaks to an insular people who have a deep longing for a land of promise, a paradise, or even a garden of Eden.

    Coleridge and his fellow Romantics were deeply committed to the artistic recreation of Godwin’s utopia. Utopia is more of a symbol than an actual destination, it represents the centre of goodness and harmony. The political philosophy of utopia has dwindled, but the art it inspired has left a lasting and profound legacy.

  • Irish Blood, English Heart

    Next week, the singer-songwriter Morrissey will celebrate his 66th birthday. He has enjoyed a long and fruitful career in music, but at the same time his name has become synonymous with “controversy”. He is the bete noire in an increasingly bland, anodyne and conformist industry.

    The music industry is dominated by big and powerful corporations. Consequently, the link between pop music and art has weakened. The record labels are solely motivated by commercial concerns, and this is the reason why he is currently without a recording contract.

    He has deliberately cultivated his outsider status, not in a spirit of cynicism or contrarianism, but as a purely artistic principle. Freedom of speech, and freedom of expression includes, as the saying goes, the freedom to say things that others do not want to hear. He makes other people feel uncomfortable, and that is the point. Art exists to challenge. Individuality is scorned in music, and groupthink perpetuates.

    It is bizarre to reflect on the amount of abuse and vitriol heaped upon just one artist for daring to express an opinion. It is considered acceptable to share mainstream opinions on political and cultural issues, but it is regarded as unacceptable to deviate or disagree. Modern pop stars resemble clones rather than real people with authentic voices. They are all marketed to fit into narrow boxes.

    It is an abhorrent situation which reveals a distinct absence of imagination. The end result is equally distasteful. The product churned out from the record labels does not sound like music at all, rather it is rendered an audible “mush”. These are identical, soulless creations made by computers rather than human beings.

    It is obvious that if an industry attempts to create flawless musicians, then the human connection is severed. The whole process is fake and artificial, and alienates the listener. On the other hand, if the industry allows its artists to reveal their human side then the listener can relate and empathise, and the link is strengthened. Morrissey has not deliberately “courted controversy” as the media like to claim, he has just been honest about how he feels about the world. His feelings are shared by many people.

    The media are not representative of society, they are not the spokespeople. Sometimes they convince themselves that they understand, and suggest that they reflect our views. However, like the music industry, they are simply a corporate business. They do not exist to enhance our wellbeing, only to make a profit from their product. They are not creative or imaginative people either, most journalists write basic, formulaic pieces. Again, it is purely a commercial, rather than an artistic product.

    Dull, unimaginative people lack the intelligence to understand the unique importance of art. It is tragic, but it is also comical to read the levels of ignorance that emanate from the critics. Unfortunately narrow minded people are very fond of stereotypes, and are perplexed when there are individuals who do not fit their ideas of how certain people should express themselves. They have a peculiar fixation on group identities, which are inventions themselves.

    The criticism has just provided Morrissey with yet more material to base songs around, like his hero Oscar Wilde he uses wit and subversion in his writing. However this just goes over the heads of the literal minded who fail to recognise irony. Wilde, the Irish born outsider who charmed the English intelligentsia was ultimately scorned by the very people who made his literary career. The British Establishment did not realise at the time that his apparent polite drawing room comedies were actually satirical dramas in disguise. Hopefully Morrissey, rather than the behemoth enterprise that calls itself the recording industry will have the last laugh.

  • In Praise of Cats

    The English poet, Christopher Smart was born on the 11th April, 1722. He is chiefly remembered for his startling and innovative religious poetry. However he was misunderstood in his lifetime. He was part of the tradition of fragile genius, epitomised by other original and solitary poets like John Clare. Clare was declared mad and confined to an asylum, an unhappy experience which nonetheless allowed him free rein to develop his poetic sensibility.

    It is a fine line to tread, as the division between truly original thought and madness is tenuous. Conventional society is suspicious of free thinkers, and those who are blessed with the gift of imagination often find the business of ordinary living stifling. It is hard to feel confined by the everyday restrictions of life, and authority figures always attempt to undermine anyone who dares to be creative. It is therefore inevitable that artistic and creative people are prone to mental illness as they are overwhelmed by prejudices and philistinism.

    In 1757, Smart was committed to St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics. He was isolated in this bleak, forbidding asylum with only his beloved cat Jeoffry for company. While interned at St Luke’s he composed a moving paean to Jeoffry. In “My Cat Jeoffry”, Smart pays tribute to a creature who, in his mind, embodies godly virtues. According to the poet, every action, no matter how banal, is Jeoffry’s way of communing with God.

    However the poem is much more than an outpouring of love for a cherished pet, it is actually an important lesson in humility. This is something that humanity rarely takes heed, as it is a species in which the ego is paramount. As Smart acknowledges,

    “For he is good to think on, if a man would express himself neatly.”

    The poem is reminiscent of St Francis’ profound eulogies to animals. The animals are holy and noble, and part of the wonder and beauty of God’s creation.

    Smart’s verse resonates with anyone who has ever had the privilege of owning a cat. It is not far-fetched to state that they are imbued with a distinct quality of magic wisdom. Jeoffry was just one remarkable cat among a magnificent species.