Ponderings

Tag: writing

  • Prometheus Found

    On the 30th August, 1797 the English author Mary Shelley was born. Her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, were radicals and intellectuals standing on the cusp of a new world. It was the first stirrings of “the Enlightenment”, a rapidly progressive age of cultural, scientific innovation and political change. Europe was soon convulsed by revolution and counter revolution. The old certainties were waning and dramatically new ideas were emerging in their place.

    It was also a fraught and uncertain time in history. Ideas were perceived as dangerous, treasonous, heretical or blasphemous but amidst danger there was a groundswell of hope. The changing social and political fortunes in France provided vital succour to intellectuals and artists who observed that dictatorial systems could founder and fairer, more equitable societies were possible.

    However the French Revolution was not seamless, and despite the hopes and aspirations of the newly liberated people it quickly descended into anarchy and violence. It seems ironic to reflect that a political system that was supposedly driven by reason eventually transformed into an arena of chaos.

    The violence and terror that was unleashed did not deter luminaries in this country from championing their cause. The “Lunar Society” in Birmingham were prominent supporters, as a collective of scientists and philosophers they had great sympathy with the grand ambitions of the French revolutionaries.

    The British public, however, were not so enamoured by them and their presence provoked riots. When a celebratory dinner was held to mark the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, rioters broke into the house of Joseph Priestley and set fire to all of his furniture and books.

    The riots continued for a week. Rioters daubed “Church and King for ever” on the walls. The continent of Europe was disintegrating, and there were genuine fears that the same devastating scenario would be replicated in England. Edmund Burke was one of the first to sound the warning bell. He outlined his many objections in a remarkably prescient letter to the Jacobite politician Lord Bolingbroke, written in 1757.

    Burke’s words were prophetic, and it is incredible that he had enough foresight to realise what could happen in a post-revolutionary society. Utopia was a foolish pipe dream. He explains it all in startlingly lucid and convincing prose, clearly stating that “I have sometimes been in a good deal of doubt, whether the creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness. He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils (in spite of the boasts of stoicism they are evils) and every endeavour which the art and policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day, in order to alleviate, or cure them, has only served to introduce new mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old”. Decades would pass before anyone took his warnings seriously.

    In the meantime, scientists and philosophers continued in their ceaseless quest to perfect human society. It was met with a combination of admiration and scepticism. Coleridge was unimpressed, in spite of the initial enthusiasm expressed by his contemporary poet Wordsworth. He seriously doubted the claims made by these learned men and in a letter to him, he complained vociferously that the notion that, “Man’s having progressed from an Ouran Outang state is contrary to all history, to all religion, nay, to all possibility”. Such cynicism was common. However a young poet named Percy Shelley was inspired by the bold theories presented by the scientists and thinkers.

    According to literary legend, Shelley recounted these alarming scientific discoveries to his wife on that stormy evening on Lake Geneva when the assembled guests of Lord Byron were challenged to conceive ghost stories. Mary Shelley, haunted by the notion that life could be manufactured by godless scientists with supernatural ambitions, was stricken with a nightmare. In her diary she remembered this dream of “a pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man…It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet”. Now we recognise “Frankenstein” as the embodiment of science divorced from human ethics, the personification of a mortal man believing himself to have Godlike powers. This novel continues to resonate today.

  • Love and Poison

    London is a city of extremes. It is the financial, cultural and political capital of England and the centre of the global mass media. It looms large in the popular imagination as an exciting, vibrant hub of art and ideas. On the surface it offers opportunity, fame and wealth. However, beneath this glossy exterior lies a hidden seam of exploitation, violence and venality.

    The Celtic word for “cruel” is “londos”, and the city is aptly named, if indeed this is where the name actually comes from. The most malevolent side of the capital, in an ironic twist, has created a new market of dark tourism. The Whitechapel murders and the mystery of the identity of the murderer remain a perennial source of fascination, and tours are conducted of the area to willing participants who are even prepared to pay good money for the privilege.

    The murders were real events, but over the past century they have acquired the status of myth and legend. Most of the fascination focuses on the murderer and his motives yet scant attention is paid towards his victims. Everybody has heard of “Jack the Ripper”, but very few remember the names of the women he murdered. Not many people are aware of the personal details of these unfortunate women either.

    However this is merely a reflection of a sad and pitiful feature of human nature. It seems that less interest is garnered towards ordinary lives but morbid curiosity is perpetually centred upon the evil doers. The media mirrors popular sensibilities but it also profits from the worst elements. Over time the victims of crime are gradually dehumanised, while the perpetrators are humanised and even sympathised with, because their personalities are discussed and analysed in obsessive detail. Human empathy is dwindling, while the most brutal and sadistic characters are lionised. It is a strange inversion of a civilised society.

    “The Ripper”’s eleven victims were Emma Elizabeth Smith, Martha Tabram, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, Mary Jane Kelly, Rose Mylett, Alice McKenzie, Frances Coles and tragically, a woman whose name and identity was never ascertained. They were all murdered in the Whitechapel district between 1888 and 1891, and the perpetrator was never found despite the combined efforts of the police and the local people. However the gruesome nature of these crimes were recorded for posterity by Inspector Dew. Dew was the police officer who attended the scene of one of the murders, he stated that “what happened there, the old nausea, indignation and horror overwhelm me still..It was all before me now, Jack the Ripper at his most devilish. No savage could have been more barbaric. No wild animal could have done anything so horrifying…On the bed, which was drawn obliquely across the small room, was all that remained of a good looking and buxom woman. There was little left of her, not much more than a skeleton. Her face was terribly scarred and mutilated”. The tawdry aspects of East-End existence were put under media glare for the first time.

    The vulnerability of the poorest, most downtrodden women was exposed to the public and it generated an outcry. It led to a vociferous campaign to change the living conditions in the most neglected part of London. Acts of Parliament were passed to guarantee a minimum standard of housing and over the following two decades the East-End slums were demolished. The East-End still has an insalubrious reputation for crime, villainy and vice but it also has a proud history of community, jocularity and solidarity. That is the most important thing to remember.

  • Infinite Gifts

    On the 7th August, 1941 the Bengali poet, thinker and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore died. His work was praised for its depth and compassion. His life, and his legacy was celebrated all over the world, but he was revered with particular devotion in his native birthplace, and this has consolidated over the decades. His writing and philosophy remain a formative influence in India and in modern day Bangladesh and he is still regarded as an integral part of contemporary Bengali identity.

    Tagore became a prominent literary voice during the “Bengal Renaissance”. This was a unique period of Indian history when radically new ideas and artistic innovations developed. India was continually shaped and reshaped by multiple imperial conquests and occupations.

    The British arrival moulded India in a truly distinctive way, but it was a double edged sword. The Raj helped to improve prosperity, educational prospects and health outcomes but with significant costs to the liberty and freedom of ordinary Indians. It was an imperial realm, the “jewel” of the British crown, but administered under martial rule.

    India’s progression and dynamism as an emerging and thriving nation rested on this paradox. However unlike other imperial forces, the British were comparatively benign. The Mughal emperors, in comparison, were intolerant of the native religion and suppressed Indian identity. Islam was a violent imposition, and anyone who dared to resist was murdered.

    In stark contrast, when the British colonised India many of the administrators acquired an affinity for Indian culture and history. One was an esteemed and respected judge based in Calcutta, Sir William Jones. Jones was overwhelmed by the extent of India’s rich classical past. Its wealth and sophistication rivalled Ancient Greece and Rome. He devoted his life to the preservation of India’s antiquity, mastering Sanskrit, translating ancient Indian texts and using this knowledge to uncover India’s hidden history.

    Jones enthused about his new passion, declaring that the Sanskrit language was “more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either…the warriors of the Mahabharata appear greater in my eyes, than Ajax and Achilles appeared when I first read the Iliad”. However while the histories of Ancient Greece and Rome were detailed in written sources, India’s past left no trace.

    It was a painstaking challenge to reconstruct the history purely from the remnants of archaeology. In 1794, the governor-general, Warren Hastings, became the patron of the Asiatic Society, and Jones was its original founder. The society recruited a collective of volunteers, mostly British civil and military officers who searched vast areas of the Indian countryside for historical artefacts.

    The Bengal Renaissance coincided with this new effort to reclaim Indian identity and culture. The first notable figure was the Brahmin sage Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Roy’s gifts as an intellectual and persuasive polemicist were recognised by the East India Company who employed him as a translator. Roy understood that conciliation was the best tactic. He was useful to the British as he was an effective mediator and could even quell any nascent rebellion.

    Roy was also an eminent scholar, a fluent linguist and expert theologian. He was also a practicing Hindu and was resistant to Christian conversion. In fact, he felt deeply affronted by the very suggestion. He criticised the British missionaries who “travel to a distant country for the purpose of overturning the opinions of its inhabitants and introducing their own”. In spite of this, he acquired an insight into the benevolent intentions of Christianity.

    Roy attempted to reconcile and adapt to the religion, culture and sensibilities of the British. He acknowledged that the education system that was established under British rule was fairer and more equitable than the system that preceded it. Under the previous regime, education was restricted to higher caste Indians, as learning was conducted in temples or mosques where the so-called “untouchables” were forbidden to enter. The British built schools on public land, allowing every Indian child the chance to be educated.

    Roy went on cultural exchanges, visiting officials in Britain and he soon became an instrumental figure. He managed to convince his fellow co-religionists that the practice of widow burning was heretical, quoting a verse from the 7th century Sanskrit poet Bana. Bana called these unnecessarily cruel and pointless deaths as a “mere freak of madness, a path of ignorance”. Roy’s pioneering work endeared him to the British, and to the Indians. However as Indian confidence grew, his collaboration with the imperialists was perceived with suspicion.

    He died in 1833, but for decades afterwards his work was dissected and analysed, and his reputation was mixed. Many other Indian thinkers attacked him, and sought to eradicate him from Indian history. However Tagore soon became his greatest champion, and defended his allegiance with the British.

    He admired his work in Indian education and corrected his critics. He stated that “Roy had the full inheritance of Indian wisdom. He was never a school boy of the West, and therefore had the dignity to be a friend of the West”. Tagore, as a fellow Brahmin and Hindu followed his example, and continued in the proud tradition of learning and seeking wisdom.

    Tagore’s most revered collection is “Gitanjali”, which was published in 1910. Three years later an English translation was published, entitled “Song Offerings”. These are powerful, lyrical meditations on the conflict between the spiritual and material, and the attempts to find a semblance of harmony with both. A truly harmonious existence is never truly realised, and it is intensely onerous for the narrator to find any degree of equanimity.

    The narrator is engaged in a perpetual search for transcendence, but is continually thwarted by worldly concerns. Enlightenment is clearly a luxury and indulgence in a state of material penury. However, attaining wisdom is an example of true courage in a world inhabited by those who are fixated by superficial, earthly concepts like money, status and possessions. Very few individuals are brave enough to divest themselves of these elements to seek substance and meaning. Even now, his message of universal love continues to resonate, not just in the East, but all over the world.

  • Shooting the Elephant

    On the 25th June, 1903 the author George Orwell was born. Orwell was the literary pseudonym of Eric Blair and he was born into a lower middle-class English family in India. All of his ancestors had deep and enduring connections to the British Empire. He returned to England for his education at the age of five. He won a scholarship to Eton in 1911 and although he loathed it, his nascent literary skills were honed at this august institution. He became a prolific contributor to the in-house magazine.

    When he left Eton he found employment as a military policeman in Burma. This heady experience informed and shaped his political perspective. He acquired a very real and visceral understanding of imperialism and the effects, both direct and indirect on the psyche and sensibility of the British people. It politicised him in a truly profound way, even more significantly than his school days at Eton when he was embedded with the sons of the English elites.

    Orwell’s formative years coincided with seismic historical events, and shifting epochs. Concepts of nation, and Empire were subverted throughout the twentieth century. The presence of the British in South and East Asia was fraught and complicated. The British sent administrators and military personnel to a region of the world steeped in culture and heritage. Over time, they developed a great affection for these places, and many sought to preserve and conserve the history of this fascinating corner of the world. In spite of their valiant efforts they were not always appreciated by the local people. They were met with resistance, which sometimes turned violent.

    Orwell was frustrated and even confined by this contradiction, complaining that he “was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible”. It inspired him to write a polemic entitled “Shooting an Elephant”, based on his work as a military policeman in a rural enclave of Burma.

    The essay details an incident involving an unruly elephant threatening the villagers. He is reluctant to kill this magnificent but dangerous beast but in the face of an angry and terrified populace he is coerced into shooting it. The tale itself is an allegory of the British Empire. The Empire focussed upon bringing the benefits of British political systems to enable other countries to develop and thrive, but in practice only served to alienate.

    It remains a bitter irony that this was a project initially conceived to revitalise the world. However it altered the nature of the countries that were colonised in a fundamental and irrevocable way, and ruined the ambitions of enterprising young men seeking fortune and adventure.

    However the failures of the Empire are actually overstated, and the benefits are often ignored. It is easy to castigate a historical entity in hindsight. Modern commentators, lacking the lived experience of the Empire builders, enjoy criticising it. It is almost a fashion, resulting from ignorance and cynicism. The same tired tropes are constantly reiterated. It is tiresome to even attempt to counter them.

    However one important distinction must be made, between English nationalism and British imperialism. These two concepts are polar opposites, and Orwell was one of the first writers to explain the difference. Orwell loved England, its culture, its history and its people. He loved the quaintness of “stamp collectors, pigeon fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts players and crossword-puzzle fans”. And, in spite of his numerous adventures and travels over the world, he longed to return to the familiarity of England, “the sleekest landscape in the world”. The British Empire was an early incarnation of globalism, and the neo-liberal economic experiment. It is like that lumbering elephant and it needs to die.

  • Dreams of Wessex

    On the 2nd June, 1840 the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy was born. Many readers have admired him throughout the ages as one of the best chroniclers of “Deep England”. This is a concept which evokes much more than a sense of a specific place and time, it is the encapsulation of a feeling of innocence and wonder, and a yearning to return to a simpler existence.

    Hardy was born in Dorset. The location of his birth is significant. All of his novels were set in the South West of England, he referred to this corner of England as Wessex. This was the archaic name for a region which encompassed the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devon, Hampshire and Berkshire. Hardy was essentially a pastoral writer, illuminating the climate and landscape of the furthest fringes of England.

    He defended this parochial style by declaring,

    “It is better for a writer to know a little bit of the world remarkably well than to know a great part of the world remarkably little”.

    He left Dorset to train as an architect in London, but he felt lost and homesick. Increasingly despondent, he retired to the college chapel to ponder his fate. Then the ghost of William Wordsworth appeared to him, almost like a talisman to guide him on his future path. This was seared in his memory as the unmistakable, yet shadowy figure of the poet appeared, “lingering and wandering on somewhere alone in the fan-traceried Vaulting”. He took this as a sign that his destiny did not actually lie in architecture. He knew that he had to pursue his literary ambitions, just as Wordsworth illustrated the magic and mystery of the Lake District, Hardy endeavoured to bring out the majesty of the West Country.

    Both were part of the Romantic tradition, a form of cultural conservatism rooted in place. They understood that the landscape moulded the people who lived, worked and depended upon it for their sustenance. It was precious and there was an urgent necessity to preserve it, as it was so much more than a random patch of land, it defined their identity, perceptions and outlook on life.

    Hardy declared,

    “There exists a great background, vital and wild, which matters..”

    Similarly, Wordsworth waxed lyrical about the magic of the Northern landscape in his book, “A Guide Through the District of the Lakes”. He imagined a lone walker wandering the lakes and fells. He described how this solitary pilgrim of nature felt overwhelmed by the beauty that surrounded him. As he contemplated the landscape, he experienced a kind of epiphany, as if encountering the sublime.

    In one passage he recalled that as “the winds sweeping over the lakes, or piping with a loud voice among the mountain peaks…(he) may think of the primeval woods shedding and renewing their leaves.” This distinct landscape was haunted by the footsteps of other lone travellers, who also trod the same paths.

    The land resonates with the memory of these wanderers. Wordsworth felt their presence and described the “low breathings coming after him”. The profound sense of the elemental reverberates throughout the work of Wordsworth and Hardy.

    The haunting memories of Egdon Heath were revealed within Hardy’s powerfully affecting novel “Return of the Native”. In his imagination, he thought that the Heath “had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities”. Hardy maintained that all of the land possessed this tragic possibility. Hardy’s childhood on a bleak, windy corner of England left an indelible impression on him.

    Outsiders were oblivious to the reality of such an existence, for them, on the surface at least, country living was benign and bucolic, unaware that horror and drama are buried beneath, and arise at the most inopportune time. When they least expect it, the characters soon succumb to their fate. Hardy lived through a time of dramatic change, the late Victorian era when England was on the cusp of modernity. He was deeply sceptical of the supposed benefits of industrialisation. In his eyes it simply destroyed rural communities and people lost their connection to the land. He maintained that it was natural to remain on the land and to eke out an existence despite the hardships.

  • Ghosts Again

    April 24th is St. Mark’s Eve, a solemn date of fasting and prayer dedicated to the dying. Tradition in England dictated that those observing the feast must keep vigil in the churchyard between 11PM and 1AM. It was believed that anyone who passed through the church porch during that time was destined to die within that year.

    The symbol most commonly associated with St. Mark is a winged lion, an indefatigable and heroic figure. It is an icon reproduced in medieval heraldry. Mark’s influence was especially pronounced in Italy and was particularly revered by communicants of the English Church. The legend still reverberates throughout our culture, albeit in a watered down version in comparison to the devotions of previous centuries.

    Mark was born in the spiritual wastelands of North Africa, yet through his tireless evangelism he established the foundations of Christianity in the desert, and ultimately across the whole of the African continent. The English poet John Keats was inspired by this prophetic story of building substance from sand, and could see parallels between this and the spiritual void of England.

    Keats spoke of “the vale of soul making”, and alluded to the perpetual struggle of the English people to find a cohesive religious and cultural identity. He also made the declaration that “I am certain of nothing but the Holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination”. Keats was a visionary poet and part of a long tradition of seers and poets.

    This originated with the omens and prophecies of the Druidic priests and was established on this island before continental invasion and colonisation. It has endured and remains a part of us, and our sensibility as a people. The foundation myth of our island was itself based upon a vision.

    The legend states that the goddess Diana appeared before Brutus and declared, “beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old. Now void it fits thy people…And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded might shall awe the world and conquer nations bold”. This is our inheritance and it has left an indelible impression on generations of English writers.

    Keats’ poem, “The Eve of Saint Mark” focusses upon a vigil attended by a young woman called Bertha. The tone is both dream-like and melancholic. Bertha is sitting in the shadows of the graveyard, reading, praying and contemplating the significance of the occasion.

    Keats illustrates this tremendously evocative scene, replete with visions of ghostly silhouettes,

    “All was silent, all was gloom

    Abroad and in the homely room:

    Down she sat, poor cheated soul!

    And struck a lamp from the dismal coal”.

    In her fatigue she reaches some level of epiphany, as the poem concludes,

    “At length her constant eyelids come

    Upon the fervent martyrdom;

    Then lastly to his holy shrine

    Exalt amid the tapers’ shine

    At Venice”.

    Keats’ observations captured a different England, now lost to modernity.

    It was a nation that was still steeped in piety, although that was beginning to wane in his lifetime. At that stage in our history, people still believed in the literal presence of ghosts. It is obvious that during a period of great privation and high mortality, certain beliefs or perhaps superstitions would be prevalent. Many churches in this country are dedicated to St. Mark and continue to attract large congregations. However the Church of England discourages these ancient practices and instead advises parishioners to light candles and pray for those facing death.

    It is sad that there are negative connotations, it reflects our disconnection between ourselves and our ancestors and the modern taboo about death. It is the only inevitability in our lives, and we should not be ashamed. Keats faced his own demise with an admirable level of maturity and acceptance. We should acknowledge our own mortality in the same manner.

  • Dark Horse

    On the 19th April, 1824 the English poet Lord Byron died. He left an enduring poetic legacy, but also a dark reputation, both historically and culturally. Byron became a legend and a kind of totem for a new and startling epoch. The Romantic age was signified by its individualism, and its cast of unique characters. Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” symbolises this, the narrative and characterisation almost mirrors the life and times of Byron. Byron was the bete noir of the English establishment and in the wake of scandal was exiled to the far fringes of Europe. Byron personified the louche sensibilities of the aristocracy. His behaviour demonstrated all of the worst characteristics associated with the upper echelons. He was libidinous and profligate with money.

    He represented amorality, and displayed the kind of behaviour that fuelled widespread resentment, but in particular within the lower echelons of society. While banished to a remote corner of the continent, he attempted to restore his literary reputation. He was accompanied by his personal doctor, John William Polidori. On that stormy weekend Byron devised a test for his friends and fellow literary luminaries; he wanted to discover who could tell the best ghost story.

    Dr. Polidori presented an early version of his story “The Vampyre”, the first prose piece of a legend only evinced in poetry. This mythic creature was also unearthly and immortal, and in Polidori’s imagination an alter ego of Byron himself. This was the first example of a “Byronic” figure before this term had even been coined. It is now such a familiar literary trope that we often fail to remember the origin. The Vampire is high born and has an impressive intellect, he is also tremendously alluring and amorous.

    In the story, a young man called Aubrey is intrigued by the presence of a strange and enigmatic figure called Lord Ruthven and the unsettling infamy entwined within the character. Ruthven’s powers are legendary but they are also terrifying, which Aubrey encounters when he meets him in Rome. He leaves under a cloud, but Ruthven’s presence continues to haunt him. This story was a formative and important influence on the Irish writer Bram Stoker, who regenerated this theme nearly eighty years later.

    “Dracula” is a new European reanimation of Ruthven, transmogrified into a dapper and urbane Count inhabiting a ghostly castle, rumoured to be the seat of Romanian aristocrats. This remnant of a palace is situated amidst the misty Transylvanian mountains. The trope is revived once more. The vampire seeks the vitality of youth and draws blood to remain immortal, and in the process ensures that the host also remains immortal. However this vampire story was simply a clever version of an old folk legend and not particularly shocking nor surprising.

    However the world was undoubtedly disturbed and shaken by the unique and unforgettable creature created by Victor Frankenstein. It is a testament to Shelley’s originality and literary brilliance that her work had a much greater and wider cultural influence, and legacy. “Frankenstein” subtitled “The Modern Prometheus” subverted all of the conventions and mores of the age.

    All of the characters imagined on that stormy night were Promethean figures. This was an entirely new concept of the Romantic era. They imagined characters imbued with superhuman and supernatural powers, defiantly challenging the natural order with their quest for omnipotence. Romantic literature exposes the flaws of the human ego when it is left unchecked. The romantic poet is a fragile figure, forced to play an unnatural role in a world of artifice. He is a ghostly presence in an arena that demands authenticity and spurns pretension.

    Ghost stories themselves are allegories, designed to illustrate transgressive or repressed sexual desires. This theme resonates throughout “Frankenstein”. There is an all pervading sense of sexual repression, a blight upon the age. The notion that an immortal being could be created and then given life by a mad scientist was in itself a shocking concept.

    However Frankenstein manufactured an unearthly and ageless being, utilising the tools of science. It was an entirely artificial construction devoid of original sin and in his own godlike vision it was a creature destined to supersede the follies of mortal men and eventually transcend death itself. Frankenstein himself does not feel ashamed that he has meddled with nature. He only feels a sense of enormous personal achievement, as the inventor of an entirely new kind of creature, one that will never die.

    His delusions of grandeur render him a secular deity, entirely detached from the historical and clerical foundations of European civilisation. Imagining a creature that is neither dead nor alive in the conventional sense is now a familiar literary trope, but it was an innovative idea for the time. This was a time of political foment on the continent, particularly in France.

    In spite of growing alarm in Britain, the antics of the French revolutionaries left a trail of devastation. They were defiantly and belligerently anti-clerical and looted the churches and monasteries. It was a repudiation of the proud legacy of religious women who raised the status of women after the indignities of Pagan Rome. They had chosen to devote their lives to Christ for centuries, until the revolutionaries forced them to relinquish their property and divest themselves of their visibly religious status. In 1794, 16 Carmelite nuns refused to surrender to them and they were arrested and put to death. Each nun approached the guillotine in calm defiance singing a hymn to the Holy Spirit, their voices silenced by the sound of the blade. It was a scene of true courage.

    Percy Shelley was another louche scion of the aristocracy. Shelley also had Byronic characteristics. He too, was profligate, promiscuous and almost by default, intensely alluring to women. The young Mary Godwin was just one out of many young women who had fallen under his spell. Their alliance was scandalous, and they too were exiled to Europe. Yet Europe was unfamiliar, strange and detached from civilisation. It was a continent that would be torn apart by the Napoleonic wars. The Faustian spirit that inspired the greatest art and literature also contained the seeds of its own destruction.

  • 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.