The longest whisper ever

‘My words can give no suggestion of the self-transcendence invoked, and I fear, too, that any music I eventually write can only give the palest hint. One of the most serendipitous moments came when a snow avalanche poured and billowed down the mountain directly to starboard - imagine the mightiest, gentlest, longest whisper ever - we were enveloped for a space in mad, dancing flakes, a white-out - a moment that will last a lifetime.’ This is from the diary of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - who has just died - on a visit to the Antarctic, some 20 years ago, a journey which provided the inspiration for his Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8).

Peter Maxwell Davies (most commonly known as Max) was born in 1934, in Salford, Lancashire. He had piano lessons and began composing from an early age, submitting a composition called Blue Ice to the BBC when only 14. The BBC producer Trevor Hill nurtured Davies young talent, introducing him to professional musicians. After attending Leigh Boys Grammar School, he studied at the University of Manchester and at the Royal Manchester College of Music. With fellow students, including Harrison Birtwistle, he formed New Music Manchester, a group committed to contemporary music. He studied for a year under Goffredo Petrassi in Rome thanks to an Italian government scholarship, and, in 1959, became director of music at Cirencester Grammar School.

In 1962, Davies won a Harkness Fellowship for Princeton University (with the help of Aaron Copland and Benjamin Britten), after which he was composer-in-residence at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide. In 1966, he returned to the UK and went to live in the Orkney Islands, initially to Hoy and later to Sanday. In 1977, he was part of a group that founded the midsummer St Magnus Festival held on the islands. He was artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984, and from 1992 to 2002 he was associate conductor/composer with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he also held with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. He conducted a number of other prominent orchestras, and was also Composer Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Davies published over 200 musical works during his lifetime, including 10 symphonies and 17 concertos, operas (such as Taverner, The Martyrdom of St Magnus and The Doctor of Myddfai), and the full-length ballet Salome. One of his most popular shorter works, An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, was written on commission for the Boston Pops Orchestra. He also wrote many works for performance by children, premiering them at the St Magnus Festival. Other notable compositions include Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8), jointly commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra and the British Antarctic Survey, Mr Emmet Takes a Walk, and Sea Orpheus.

Davies was openly homosexual, though had a messy, and all-to-public separation from his long-term partner in 2012. He was often at odds with the establishment, whether politically or musically, though time found him embracing, and being embraced by, this very same establishment. Once considered a kind of enfant terrible, producing overly avant-garde music, he became one of the world’s most respected composers, being knighted in 1987, and, in 2004, being appointed Master of the Queen’s Music. Davies, for his part, abandoned his youthful republicanism, turning latterly to support the idea of monarchy. Davies died on 14 March. Further information can be found online via the official Peter Maxwell Davies (MaxOpus) website, Wikipedia, Boosey & Hawkes, inter.musica, Schott Music or many obituaries (The Guardian, for example, The Telegraph, The New York Times, and The Scotsman).

Before writing the Antarctic Symphony, Davies was invited by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to join its supply and research vessel RRS James Clark Ross on a visit to the region, and, in particular, BAS Rather station. Davies kept a detailed diary on the journey, which was later published in a limited edition of 1,500 as Notes from a cold climate : Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8). The diary text can be found on the MaxOpus website, which is the source of the following extracts.

21 December 1997
‘A procession of icebergs, mysterious and deeply awe-inspiring. Of course it is we who are moving faster, but in calmer waters one has the illusion of a stately mannequin parade, as the model’s outlines modulate, revealing new and secret shapes and colours. Contours suddenly glow with an irridescent blue of an unimaginable intensity: this is the best exhibition of abstract sculpture I ever saw. All that one has read of fractals and the Mandelbrot set floods the brain, perhaps as some kind of bulwark against the wonder, which I quietly admit is overwhelming, even transcendental. Some icebergs pick up and maintain the upward surge of wave motion: some repeat and develop the forms of clouds: others, seen against a backdrop of snow-covered cliffs and hills, take up the forms and energies characteristic of these, while the best combine all of these features with a capricious dynamism that constantly modifies and transforms as we pass. A whale, travelling at a furious fifteen knots, faster than the ship, briefly surfaces, its back confirming a neighbouring iceberg’s. Another iceberg suddenly appears as a gigantic swan. Another reveals a Norman arch, fifty foot high, with ice packed above this for another hundred feet - a broken-off fragment of a medieval abbey.

Sometimes I find mealtime conversation quite baffling - top scientists talk shop, their jargon bristling with acronyms. They are very patient when I enquire about their particular speciality and any possible future practical application.’

22 December 1997
‘The engines stop, and 33 scientists, Judy and I file down a rope ladder into a launch already bulging with boxes, barrels, crates. We are delivering supplies to the tiny station of Port Lockroy, and dropping off Dave Burkitt and Rod Downie who will man the place, alone for three months. It was established in 1944, and abandoned in 1962. In 1996 it was restored by the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust, and now boasts a small museum and post office, to open in summer for visits by cruise ships and private yachts.

The pack ice has broken up enough for us to land without problems - a very small, rocky island, with gentoo penguins nesting everywhere, so that you must take great care not to disturb them, right away upon beaching. The smell of penguin guana crinkles your nose - all pervasive bad fish. Everybody carries the cargo into the store-shed or up to the house: each case is clearly marked, and checked on a tally by Dave, who semaphores the operations. The privilege of raising the British flag to the top of its mast, at the highest point by the house, falls to Linda, on behalf of BAS, and me. Such an unaccustomed honour makes me very nervous, as I fumble with intransigent ropes, tugging ineffectively and desperately. A great relief when the flag ascends and unfurls.

A magical spot, an island surrounded by mainland cliffs, monumental white mountains. The all-pervasive sound is of broken packice lifting on and off the shore rocks - a Gargantuan cocktail shaker. Add to that the gentle buzz of conversation among the ubiquitous penguins, with the occasional raised squawk as a sheathbill - a small grubby white seabird - lunges towards a penguin egg - and that’s the island's sound spectrum.

The mainland is only 100 yards away from one point, but safety regulations determine that the keepers are not allowed to have a boat. Their accommodation is sparse but solid - there is plenty of coal still from the forties - and the museum has relics evocative of that time - ancient cans of food, oatmeal packets, tools in situ, all with excellent explanatory displays.

Once we have determined that the radio link to the main station at Rothera is operative, we pile back into the launch and return to the RRS James Clark Ross. This was the first time I had worn any of the Antarctic gear issued by BAS - it was surrealistic being kitted out at headquarters in Cambridge last July, pulling on the layer after layer of thermals and waterproofs on one of the hottest days ever - but here we would not survive without these. It is a great relief to take them off for lunch - particularly the huge guana-smeared boots. There are strict dress codes for meals on board, to be transgressed at one’s peril.

This afternoon we glide through the Lemaire Strait - a narrow passage between the almost vertical sides of mountains jutting thousands of feet up into cloud. Apart from the gentle hum of the boat’s engines - the JCR is extremely quiet, to facilitate very precise sonar experiments - the silence is profound. There is hardly any talk, either on the bridge or on deck - everyone is so over-awed by the grandeur, the power of the unfolding spectacle. My words can give no suggestion of the self-transendence invoked, and I fear, too, that any music I eventually write can only give the palest hint. One of the most serendipitous moments came when a snow avalanche poured and billowed down the mountain directly to starboard - imagine the mightiest, gentlest, longest whisper ever - we were enveloped for a space in mad, dancing flakes, a white-out - a moment that will last a lifetime.

Shortly after 4 p.m. a small party descended a very long rope ladder into a very small launch, to take Christmas mail to Vernadsky, the Ukranian Antarctic Expedition base. This base was formerly British, named Faraday after Michael Faraday, the Physicist and was handed over to the Ukrainians in 1995. John Harper, the mate of the JCR, was in charge, standing tall at the stem, shouting instructions and semaphoring to the wheel-house, to ensure a safe passage through the ice-flows. Even the unfrozen sea-water was like oil, thickly viscous. A gaggle of long huts on a small rise, where we tie up, welcomed enthusiastically, and are helped through deep snow to the Christmassy domestic warmth of the settlement. Such a joyful, beautiful welcome from the dozen or so men and women - we take off our boots and layers of gear, and troop up to the bar. This is the biggest and most famous bar in the Antarctic - a riot of decorative carving, made by over-enthusiastic British joiners, who, for the waste of time and wood, were promptly sent home.

Delighted hosts and guests, excellent black coffee of the kind that dissolves the spoon and scalds your tonsils, chocolate, generous globes of Ukrainian cognac. A welcoming speech from Vladimir Okrugin, the head of the team, and we are shown round the base by Svetlana, a meteorologist, climbing champion, guitarist and computer expert. Many things - equipment, notices, photographs - have been left as they were when the British ran the station. Up a ladder into a loft office, where we met Daphne, a Dobson spectrophotometer, the piece of scientific equipment, from 1957, which was the means of discovering the hole in the ozone layer. A speech by Julian Paren, generous vodka all round, stirring Ukranian music, and we are bobbing our way through corridors of ice back to the RRS James Clark Ross. A huddle of figures waving on the jetty: one wonders when anyone will visit them next. Pete Bucktrout, our official photographer, asks why all international and diplomatic relations can’t be like this. Why indeed?! I sport the badge of the Ukranian Antarctic Expedition, and clutch a book about their homeland.’

A disappointed man

William Bagshaw Stevens, born 260 years go today, died laughing. But, in his relatively short life, he had been an ineffective headmaster of Repton School, a failed poet, and a disappointed lover. Ironically, perhaps, he is best remembered for a journal he kept, one in which he chronicled his disappointments so candidly that one can hardly imagine he would ever have wanted to see it published. Nevertheless, it was kept safe and passed down the generations, and was finally published in the mid-20th century - it’s editor describing the work as the journal of a disappointed man.

William Bagshaw Stevens was born on 15 March 1756 in Abingdon, Berkshire, the son of an apothecary and surgeon. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and after graduating in 1776 went to teach at Repton School, Derbyshire, succeeding to the post of headmaster. He took deacon’s orders, and was appointed domestic chaplain by Sir Robert Burdett of nearby Foremark Hall (but didn’t take priest’s orders until 1798). 

Having published a volume of verse in 1775 (Poems, consisting of Indian Odes and Miscellaneous Pieces), Stevens published a second in 1782, but it was not reviewed well. Hugh Brogan, however, in his brief biography for the Oxford National Dictionary of Biography (log-in required), says: ‘Stevens was a better poet than his contemporaries knew. Some of his verse was still unpublished 200 years after his death, but, if the whole of it is read, he emerges as a man of real talent, humour, wit, and feeling, though trapped in the limbo of poetic diction that the great Romantics would soon blow apart.’

A promise by Sir Robert to bestow a good living on Stevens came to nothing over the years, and Stevens considered himself too poor to marry - though he did pursue liaisons with some passion. Repton School languished under his headship, as he was, it is said, naturally idle and neglectful of his duties. He did keep up a connection with Magdalen College, and for short periods later in life was a fellow and praelector of moral philosophy. Only in his last year did he attain a rectory (Seckington) and a nearby vicarage (Kingsbury) in Warwickshire, thanks to Sir Robert’s grandson and heir. Stevens died in 1800, from a fit of laughing at the antics of an Italian and his monkey in the village high street! (This knowledge comes from an unpublished journal kept by Stevens’ sister who lived with him - as reported by Galbraith, see below.) Further biographical information can be gleaned from an old version of the Dictionary of National Biography.

Stevens left behind six octavo volumes of a diary he had been keeping since his 37th birthday. This was not published until 1965, when Oxford University Press brought out The Journal of the Rev. William Bagshaw Stevens, as edited by Georgina Galbraith. In her introduction, Galbraith explains how the manuscripts had survived through various generations, well cared-for but quite unexamined, until they were sold in 1957 to Huntington Library, where she found them when researching Repton. The manuscripts are marred, Galbraith says, by many deletions (removal of leaves, blackening out, crossings out etc), especially in the first volume, mostly about his neighbours and benefactors, the Burdetts. She believes most of these deletions were made by Rev. Thomas Bosvile, Stevens’s closest friend, because it would have been dangerous to leave about attacks on the family who were supporting Stevens’s sister.

Many of Stevens’s entries - especially the longer ones - are simply the contents of letters he received or sent, and many shorter entries simply state who he dined with or visited, or where he preached. However, he does write with candid intimacy about his love for Fanny Coutts - a story with a bitter, sad ending - so much so in fact that it’s surely unlikely he would have wanted these diaries to have become public. Galbraith notes that the journal is one of a disappointed man, ‘disappointed in every one of his activities’. Here are several extracts from the published book, including the first few entries and the last three.

15 March 1792
‘On this day I commenced my thirty-seventh year. May God of his mercy grant that the remainder of my Life be spent more agreably to his Will, and with more satisfaction to myself than the former Part has been! . . .’

16 March 1792
‘Dined at the Mitre on Turbot and Claret in consequence of a Wager between Sir R. Burdett and Mr Pyott. Sir R. had laid that old Ashly would live to the 17th of this month. The Bet was made on the 17th of last March. Ashly is now in his 92nd Year. . .’

17 March 1792
‘Drank Tea at Spilsbury’s. Dalrymple there. Much conversation upon the Slave Trade. Dalrymple and Dodsly defended the Trade strongly upon the ground of Policy. I cannot but think that the Policy which disclaims honesty, humanity and religion is not the policy of a Good Man or a Great Minded Nation; but the Policy of a Thief, a Highwayman, and a Murderer.’

18 March 1792
‘After service at Foremark set out for Ashford for the sale of Mr Bullock’s Library on Monday. Spent the evening alone at Wirksworth.’

19 March 1792
‘Reached Bakewell by 10 o’Clock. Found that the Books, a mere collection of trash, would not be sold till Wednesday. Viewed Bakewell Church, a curious structure with a Saxon arched doorway, and an octagon Steeple. The Church contains some of the Richest Monuments in the Kingdom with a very singular large Saxon Font adorned with the Images of Saints in relief.’

14 August 1792
‘All went to Chee Tor, a most romantic, lovely spot - dined on the grass by the head of a Spring - ‘Lady Burdett, You have not performed your promise. You have not given me Fanny’s Picture.’ ‘That’s not my fault. You should have asked me for it.’

Jones and I were to go to the Isle of Man the next day - postponed our Journey that I might get Fanny’s Picture copied. It was agreed to leave Buxton on Saturday and go all together to Foremark. Lady Burdett hoped I would go with them to Tunbridge.’ 

30 July 1792
‘Rowed on Windemere round Christians Island. Curwen and his attendant fleet passed by us - The Bishop of Landaff’s Seat - Wilberforce’s pretty Cottage - The lake said to be 14 miles long and in some places two across, surrounded with magnificent well-wooded Hills - a glorious scene -After dinner rode to Coniston Water of much inferior merit to Windemere. Observed the Ruins of an old Abbey near Hawkshead. Coniston Water about 7 miles from Windemere. The Old Man, a huge Mountain against which the Clouds are continually dashing, appeared at Windemere to stand on its edge. At Coniston we were near it; it stood on the far side of the head of that Lake. Walked in the Evening to Gill Force, a Cascade near the Inn at Ambleside. Thought when filled by a thunderstorm with water, superior to the cascade of Tivoli, it falls in the shape of a Y about 50 yards.’

15 August 1794
‘Before breakfast met Fanny in the Grove. She had found great Comfort, she said, in having talked with me on the Subject. I was the only Person that ever inspired her with a desire of communicating her grief. O that I had the power of pouring balm into your wounded affections. What would I not do? But my Heart was not without an ‘emballed heaviness.’ I thanked her for the ingenuous tale and tender confession of her unfortunate Passion. It was worthy of her. As to myself, if I could do nothing to soothe her Grief, she might be certain I would not abuse her Confidence. I would listen to her for ever and mingle tears with hers. She had one comfort, at least, that Her sorrows were not now shut up in her own breast. Yes, in me she confided. To a younger Person she could not with propriety have unbosomed herself, but she was sometimes amazed at the impulse she had long felt to communicate her Distress of Mind to me. I spoke feelingly. She felt the force of my feelings. ‘You allow me to consider you as my Friend. You may safely place Confidence in me. Fanny, you may have occasion to pity me but shall never blush for me. It shall be the peculiar satisfaction of my Life, my Pride and my Glory to compell You in despite of yourself to esteem me.’ [. . .]

After breakfast again walked with Fanny. Her Heart, she said, was a great deal lightened. It was her duty to struggle with her grief. She wished I could be with her, wished I knew more of her Father, spoke enthusiastically of Him. When You are no longer with us in your Walks You will often think of us, We shall think and talk of You, and we shall know that you think of us, and this will be a great Comfort.’

15 March 1796
‘I am now Forty. . . A Fool at Forty is a Fool indeed. Dined at the Widow’s. - late home.’

1 February 1797
‘Gouty Pains in my feet - return home - Burdett with me. In his usual kind manner he gave me the Horse that brought Jones and Me from the Isle of Wight. He cost Burdett 60 guineas.’

1 April 1800
‘Leave Tamworth - dine at Wolferston’s. Home.’

5 April 1800
‘To Donnington.’

6 April 1800
‘Dine at Ingleby.’

The Diary Junction

Damascus diaries

It’s four years since Britain, and many other countries, closed their embassies in Damascus, Syria, and withdrew their diplomatic staff, the famous city having become too dangerous to live in or to visit. Before then, though, it had an exotic appeal to Westerners, especially Peter Clark, who fell in love with the place in the 1960s and then returned in the 1990s to run the British Council branch there. His diaries of that time have just been published by the specialist Middle East publisher, Gilgamesh. They paint, Gilgamesh says, ‘a vivid and almost nostalgic picture of life in this remarkable city’. I, too, have visited Damascus, in the mid-1970s, staying just a couple of days as I hitchhiked my way from Europe to Australia. As my own diary entries remind me, I found the Syrians most friendly and hospitable.

Peter Clark was schooled in Loughborough and Southend before studying at Keele, Cambridge and Leicester universities. He joined the British Council in 1967, mostly working abroad, in the Middle East and Africa, remaining with the institution for 30 years or so. In 1992, he was invited to reopen the British Council office in Syria, a country he’d first visited in 1962, and he remained until 1997. He enjoyed good relations with the British diplomatic staff, and, briefly, met successive foreign ministers, Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind, on their official visits to Damascus. Among Clark’s cultural successes were a production of Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas in Arabic and an exhibition of Freya Stark’s Syria photographs. After retiring from the Council, he returned to Syria occasionally leading lead tour groups.

Clark is fluent in Arabic, and has translated novels, drama, poetry and history by contemporary Arab writers. He has written books on the Islamic scholar Marmaduke Pickthall and the explorer Wilfred Thesiger, and published a collection of writings on the Middle East - Coffeehouse Footnotes - as well as a book on Istanbul. He is a trustee of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, a contributing editor of Banipal, and an adviser on cultural tourism to Turkey and Syria. He is married, and lives in Frome Somerset. A little further biographical information is available from Debretts, The International Prize for Arabic Fiction, the Gilmour Print Service or a Marmaduke Pickthall fansite.

Throughout most of his adult life, Clark has kept personal diaries, and his time in Damascus was no exception. Perhaps because of the troubles now afflicting Syria and its capital, Gilgamesh - a specialist in Middle East books - has chosen to publish Clark’s diaries of his Damascus years. It says of the book - Damascus Diaries: Life Under the Assads - ‘Here we see the dramas and routines of everyday life played out against the backdrop of the world’s oldest continually inhabited city on the eve of collapse into civil war. Enchanting and alarming by turns, everyday events combine to paint a vivid and almost nostalgic picture of life in this remarkable city.’ Reviews can be read online at The Economist and The Tanjara. Here are several extracts (with thanks to Gilgamesh Publushing).

23 October 1993
‘I am at the office early and at precisely 9.30 we hear the screaming of sirens, and Douglas Hurd, his detective, and the Ambassador arrive, followed by members of his entourage - Richard Culshaw in charge of the press and his Principal Private Secretary, John Sawers, whom I last saw in Yemen in 1980. I take Douglas Hurd round the exhibition of Freya Stark’s photographs, and he talks to some of the staff. He also signs my copy of his novel, The Palace of Enchantments, which was already signed by the co-author, Stephen Lamport, in Abu Dhabi. And that is that. The party disappears and so do we.

Douglas Hurd has called on the President, with Andrew Green. It is the first time Andrew has met him.’

24 October 1993
‘I am in the office very early. The Hurd visit has been seen as a success. A tide is moving in our favour, an enhancement of Syria-British relations. Meanwhile the situation in Algeria gets grimmer by the day. The country is slipping into confusion and foreigners are being kidnapped and assassinated. At this rate the British Council will withdraw and there may be extra funds for Syria. Every cloud has a silver lining.’

20 January 1994
‘In the afternoon we go for a walk, due north, beyond Muhajirin and up the mountain. Jabal Kasiyun has slowly had the city encroaching upon it. We climb up roads that are at a gradient of about 1 in 3. The views over the city get more and more splendid - skyscrapers stand out, tall white buildings, with here and there to the west patches of green, all that is left of the gardens of Damascus. It is invigorating. We descend, passing by an office that is surrounded by dozens of black Mercedes cars and lots of security people. I learn later that this is where the President has his office. It is a shabby building but one can, at least, walk within 20 yards of it, and the residential flats nearby in these leafy suburbs must be desirable.

We are invited to dinner with Dr and Mrs Drubi. He is a prosperous doctor from Homs. She has three daughters, one of whom is studying English at the British Council. Another was Miss Syria in 1986 and is now in Canada. I talk to Zelfa Samman, half-sister of and 20 years younger than the novelist, Ghada, who chooses to live in Paris. Zelfa’s mother is a Shishakli, a niece of the former President, Adib. Her mother’s mother is a sister of Akram Hourani, who is still alive, in exile in Amman, over 80 and frail. Zelfa’s father was President of the University of Damascus and has been briefly Minister of Higher Education. Our host’s brother was Minister of Petroleum. The older ruling official and the contemporary elites merge.’

22 January 1994
‘We walk into the city centre. There are more people around than usual. Men in dark suits persuade shopkeepers to close up and by 1 o’clock all shops have their shutters down. Groups of youths process in hooting cars, carrying pictures of Basil [the President’s son, who died the day before]. Newspapers with large photos are stuck on shop doorways and people pause to peruse. One paper has a long poem by the Minister of Culture. Yesterday people seemed to be too stunned to show any reaction. Today there are demonstrations. A human tragedy is perceived. Everyone can deplore the death of a child before his parent. Basil was writ large across Syria. His father, prematurely aged, must be shattered. I hear there were troop movements all last night, including tanks in the city. The accident, we hear, was on the road to the airport, perhaps late on Thursday night. Basil was perhaps drunk, driving to see a Makhlouf cousin off to Germany.’

23 January 1994
‘I try unsuccessfully to get some guidance from the Embassy. I decide myself to keep the teaching centre closed today. We arrange to put a notice of condolence in the paper and to send a cable to the President. Yesterday there were manifestations of grief: fake orchestrated and genuine. Today there are further demonstrations that border on the contrived. Shops and schools remain closed. I think in years to come Syrians will look on Basil al-Assad as the herald of a golden age that never dawned. His early death will be an alibi for frustration or disappointment.’

8 November 1995
‘At noon I get a summons to go to the Embassy to meet Malcolm Rifkind (or Rifkunt as one of my Syrian colleagues calls him). I bump into a breezy, relaxed Andrew Green who is accompanying him. The Secretary of State is in the loo when I arrive. The top floor of the Embassy is transformed into a mobile office. One man is busy on the phone. Another is scanning faxed press cuttings. A girl is at a typewriter. Coffee pots, teapots and cartons of fruit juice are on a shelf. Malcolm Rifkind comes in, relieved. We stand talking for my allotted five minutes. He fires questions at me and seems well briefed. I tell him that we see our role as subversive, promoting the values of an open and plural society. He laughs encouragingly. He has heard of the success of the opera. (Bully for him!)

I go to the airport to meet Leila Abouzeid, the Moroccan writer. I have been told that she is quite a big woman. I accost all the larger women coming off the plane from Tunis and Algiers and get “old-fashioned looks”. Eventually Leila accosts me. Actually she is quite petite in appearance, looking older than I expected. I take her to the house before the hotel. She is surprised at my interest in contemporary Arabic literature. I tell her I am an endangered species.’

14 December 1996
‘I am translating Sa’dallah’s play and am having difficulties. There is no problem getting the meaning but I am not getting the brio of the Arab text into English. I feel my present version is mechanical. The challenge is the dialogue that has to be spoken. It is different from translating a novel or story that has only to be read. I am now translating something with a production in mind.’

***

I have my own Damascus diaries, but they are only two entries long! In my youthful travelling days, back in 1974, I hitch-hiked from Europe to Australia, by way of the Middle East, stopping in Damascus for only two days. I was befriended by a young man named Khald, who so generously let me stay in his house, and took me around the city with his friends.

13 July 1974, Damascus
‘After a cold shower, I’m up and out quick. The bus driver tries to rip me off 40L for a ride to Syria, so I hitch - 8km of no mans land signalled by barbed wire. A visa costs me nearly £2 - big rip off. I should have got a transit visa. By 10 I am in Syria. I hitch a ride to Allepo and take a bus to Damascus S£5. There is an English couple on the bus, but I take an immediate dislike to them. We three English are befriended - given cucumbers and nuts and asked our names. One of the passengers, a teacher, speaks English so we talk for a while. Several little girls are always smiling. The journey is long - five hours sitting and standing. At first, all the land is ploughed, but dry-looking with something growing but later it becomes arid and desert-like. I see many soldiers, and tanks shunting backwards and forwards. On the bus, Khald befriends me. We arrive by 6:00. Khald takes me to his flat which he shares with his brother and a friend. In the evening, we stroll slowly around the town, stopping to talk to friends, and always shaking hands when meeting and leaving them. Many boys walk together with arms or hands joined, very strange - everywhere is very lively - a glass of ice with lemon juice - a chapati with egg and mayonnaise and tomato, and another with meat and cucumber. I sleep well on the floor even though I sweat a lot at first.’

14 July 1974, Damascus
‘This morning I walk for a few hours - it’s very, very busy with numerous street sellers, and a lot of smoke. I pass by several long narrow covered streets selling mostly clothing, shoes and fancy goods, handicrafts, copper, wood - rickety overhangs balanced on bent beams provide the shade. Everywhere, there are old buildings, once beautiful, but now falling down, and much building of modern blocks too. I visit the Umayyad Mosque. This is the most beautiful place I have yet seen. As you enter through the arches of a vast courtyard, there are the most fantastic mosaics of bright colours far above, with enchanting pictures of villages. To one side, there is a vast edifice with two beautiful altars of mother of pearl in wood and very detailed wood carving. People come here for cool and rest and prayer. In the middle is the tomb of the Prophet Yehia (John the Baptist) with a velvet cloth covering. So beautiful. For S£1 I go next to the Al Azm Palace, the 18th century home of The Pasha - one of the ruling class, a typical rich man’s house - here too are many lovely things. The rooms are smallish with the most beautiful wood carvings on doors and ceilings - painted so intricately with dour colours and gold in square patterns. The courtyard is very pretty, with many green plants - but this is usual. There’s a folkloric museum here too.

Later, I sit in a cafe drinking real lemon juice and watching a game of chess - everyone plays chess, backgammon or cards - a lot of water-pipes being smoked - iced water is free for all - shoe cleaners takes people’s shoes and clean them while they play or smoke. Khald is very happy because he has money. We all eat chicken brought to the house. They sleep, but I go out to walk a long way up a very steep hill. I turn and see Damascus - a panorama. Hot and weary I return. Khald goes to the cinema with his girl, while I walk in a pleasant garden in a mosque. I play a little chess with someone who claims to be the fifth best player in Syria. Khald is happy; but sad that I am going.’

Michaux in N. America

André Michaux, a French botanist and explorer sent to North America in search of new species to replenish the forests of France, was born 270 years ago today. He is credited with many botanical discoveries, and in particular a species of rhododendron which is the genetic parent of many modern hybrids. When revolution back home cut off his support, he turned to the American Philosophical Society (APS) to fund further botanical trips. Some of his journals were lost in a shipwreck when returning to France, but those manuscripts that survived were donated to, and published by, the APS.

Michaux was born at Satory, near Versailles, France, on 7 or 8 November 1846 (biography links, as below, give a different date) and grew up on a royal farm, where his father was manager. He was taken out of school at 14 to learn horticulture, and when his father died, Michaux shared the management of the farm with his brother. He married in late 1769, but his wife died the following year after giving birth to a son. The naturalist Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier, who lived nearby, recommended that Michaux study how to grow foreign plants in France, which he did with experiments on the farm.

Subsequently, Michaux became a student of the naturalist Bernard de Jussieu in the park of the château of Versailles, and, in 1779, he worked at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. That year, he began making botanical expeditions, within France, to England and Spain. In 1782, he was appointed secretary to the French consul in Persia, where he is said to have cured the shah of a dangerous illness. He returned, after two years, with a many new plants that were introduced to France’s botanical gardens.

Louis XVI appointed Michaux royal botanist, and he was sent to North America in 1785, to look for new species of shrubs and trees to rebuild the forests of France -  much of their timber having been felled during the wars with England. He took his son with him, as well as a gardener, and established, first, a nursery near Hackensack, New Jersey, and later a 111-acre garden outside Charleston, South Carolina. He made collecting trips throughout the wilderness frontier areas, often being the first botanist to visit, describing and naming species, and shipping many back to France.

After the collapse of the French monarchy, Michaux managed to secure, in 1793, funding from the American Philosophical Society for his explorations. Some consider his greatest discovery, at least for horticulture, was Rhododendron catawbiense, commonly known as Purple Laurel. He found it in the wild on the peaks of the highest mountains in the Southern Appalachians, and in a few places in the Piedmont. It became one of the genetic parents of many modern rhododendron hybrids.

In 1796, Michaux returned to France, being shipwrecked on the way, and for the next few years focused on the cultivation of his collected plants, and writing two books, Histoire des chênes de l’Amérique (1801) and Flora Boreali-Americana, sistens caracteres plantarum (1803), both of which were edited by his son, François-André, and illustrated by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. In 1800, Michaux sailed with Nicolas Baudin’s expedition to Australia, but he left the ship in Mauritius, and travelled to Madagascar to study the flora. There he died of a fever in 1802, or possibly in 1803. Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, JSTOR, The Dictionary of Canadian Biography, American Philosophical Society or a Michaux-dedicated website.

A few of the manuscript journal pages kept by Michaux in North America survived the 1796 shipwreck. These were eventually donated by François-André Michaux to the American Philosophical Society, and published with an introduction and notes in the society’s Proceedings (vol. 26, no. 129, 1889). This can be read at Internet Archive or JSTOR, but, although the introduction is in English, the text of the journal is in the original French. It was translated and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites for Early Western Travels 1748-1846 (vol. 3, 1904) - also available at Internet Archive.

Here are three extracts from the journal.

‘Sunday 23rd of August 1795 started from Post Vincennes situated on the Wabash River for the Illinois on the Mississipi. We journeyed six Miles and camped on the bank of a Little River [Embarras]. I had no other company than a Savage and his wife. I had hired the Savage for ten Dollars and promised him two Dollars more to induce him to carry all my baggage on his horse.

The 24th we made about 25 Miles; the Savage was ill and was obliged to stop more than three hours before sunset.

The 25th crossed several Prairies. Observed a new species of Gerardia. Stalk commonly simple, oval leaves opposite one another, sessile, axillary flowers purpurine flowers.

The 26th the Provision of meat was consumed. The Savage stopped very early, finding a favorable spot for hunting. Moreover heavy Rain fell about three o’clock in the afternoon. An hour after camping the Savage came back laden with a Bear cub and with the two hams of another and much older one. We boiled the kettle twice and had enough to satisfy us. We roasted what remained.

The 27th the Savage killed two Stags. We halted very early to dry the Skirts and to eat, for the Savage and his wife ate five meals a day. Moreover, they regaled themselves with the marrow of the bones which they ate raw; for, being unable to carry away the meat, they contented themselves with a piece of the animal’s loins.

The 28th of August 1795. Just as I was eager to see Game the 1st and 2nd day, so was I afraid to see it then owing to the waste of time. I was all the more anxious to proceed that it rained every day. I had already been obliged once to dry at a fire my baggage that had been wet through especially four books of Botany and Mineralogy I had with me, as I had been unwilling to expose them to the hazards of the River and had sent by way of the Mississipi two Trunks containing grey Paper, Powder, Lead, Alum, Boxes for collecting Insects, and all the articles required for making Collections of Plants, Animals, Insects and Minerals.

Sunday 30th of August arrived at the village of Kaskaskia situated two mile from the Mississipi river and half a mile from the Kaskaskia River. It is inhabited by former Frenchmen under the American Government. The number of families is about forty five. It is agreeably situated but the number of inhabitants had decreased; nothing is to be seen but houses in ruins and abandoned because the French of the Illinois country, having always been brought up in and accustomed to the Fur trade with the savages, have become the laziest and most ignorant of all men. They live and the majority of them are clothed in the manner of the Savages. They wear no breeches but pass between their thighs a piece of cloth of about one third of an ell [in length] which is kept in place before and behind above the hips by a belt.’

***

‘The 7th [December 1795] confirmed once more in my opinion that the Second Bark of Celtis occidentalis (called in the Illinois country Bois connu and toward New Orleans Bois inconnu) is an excellent remedy for curing jaundice; a handful of the roots or leaves of Smilax sarsaparilla is added to it; it is used for about eight days as a decoction.

The 8th of December 1795. The French Creoles call the species of Smilax found in the Illinois country, Squine. Only the thorny species grows there; it loses its leaves in the Autumn. The other species is herbaceous and climbing.

The 9th of December. The root of Fagara as a decoction is a powerful remedy for curing disease of the Spleen. I have no doubt that the root of Zanthoxilum clava-Herculi can be used for obstructions of the liver and Spleen.’

***

‘The 25th [February 1796] started to return to Carolina and slept 10 Miles away at the house of Colonel Mansko, a declared enemy of the French because, he said, they have killed their King. Although I had not dined I would not accept his supper believing that a Republican should not be under obligations to a fanatical partisan of Royalty. I was greatly mortified that the night and the rain should compel me to remain in his House. But I slept on my Deer skin and paid for the Maize he supplied me with to cross the Wilderness.’

Point of departure

Had he lived, Robin Cook, a British Labour party politician who served as Foreign Secretary under Tony Blair, would have reached three score years and ten today. Considered a great parliamentarian, he was also a man, apparently, of high principles, who resigned rather than be part of the government that supported George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. His only published book - at least as far as I can tell - is a selection of diary entries, written during the second New Labour government. He planned the book, he said, as an ‘honest attempt’ to explain how he ‘arrived at the point of departure’, i.e. resigning from his government cabinet post.

Robert - known as Robin - Finlayson Cook was born on 28 February 1946 in Bellshill, Scotland, the only son of a chemistry teacher, and the grandson of a miner. Educated in Aberdeen, Royal High School, Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh, he eschewed the idea of a career in religion for teaching and then politics. In 1969, he married Margaret Katherine Whitmore, with whom he had two sons. In 1970, he contested, unsuccessfully, the Edinburgh North constituency, but then he won Edinburgh Central at the next election becoming an MP in February 1974. When the constituency boundaries were changed in 1983, he transferred to the nearby Livingston constituency, which he represented for the rest of his life.

In Parliament, Cook joined the left-wing Tribune Group of the Parliamentary Labour Party and soon found himself opposing policies of the Wilson and Callaghan governments. He established himself in Parliament as a powerful debater, and rose through the party ranks, winning shadow cabinet posts in Opposition under Neil Kinnock (health 1987-1992), John Smith (trade and industry 1992-1994), and Tony Blair (foreign affairs 1994-1997). As Shadow Foreign Secretary, responding to the government’s presentation of the Scott report into the Arms-to-Iraq affair, he said, famously, ‘this is not just a Government which does not know how to accept blame; it is a Government which knows no shame’.

When the Labour Party came into power in 1997, Blair made Cook Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, a position he held throughout Blair’s first term of office. Only months after becoming Foreign Secretary, however, Cook was hit with a public scandal: before the newspapers released the story, he announced he was leaving his wife and would marry Gaynor Regan, a member of his staff with whom he’d been having an affair. They married the following year. Cook’s period as Foreign Secretary was characterised by controversial British interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, by his helping normalise relations with Iran after the death threats against Salman Rushdie, and by making progress with Libya after a long stand-off following the Lockerbie bombing.

After the 2001 general election, Blair replaced Cook, against his wishes, with Jack Straw at the Foreign Office, offering Cook the job of Leader of the House of Commons, still in the Cabinet but, nevertheless, considered a demotion. After consideration, Cook took the position, and set about trying to reform some Parliamentary practices. By 2003, though, he was increasingly at odds with Blair over the prospect of military action against Iraq; and on 17 March he resigned. In his resignation speech - widely praised -  he asked: ‘Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create?’ Outside of government, he remained an active Parliamentary Member, commenting on foreign affairs, education, Europe and reform of the House of Lords. He was also reconciled with Gordon Brown, after decades of mutual animosity, with the aim of ensuring progressive Labour Party policies beyond Blair’s leadership.

In 2005, Cook died, unexpectedly, from a heart attack while walking in the Scottish Highlands. Blair, on holiday at the time, was criticised for not attending his funeral, though he delivered a reading at Cook’s memorial in December at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Jack Straw said he was ‘the greatest parliamentarian of his generation and a very fine Foreign Secretary’. Further biographical information is available at Wikipedia or from obituaries at the BBC, The Guardian, The Telegraph, or The Independent. A longer profile can be found at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (though log-in is required).

As far as I can tell, Robin Cook only published one book, and this was based on a diary he kept during his term of office as Leader of the House of Commons: The ODNB says: ‘Since 2001 Cook had kept a diary and in October 2003 he published an edited version as The Point of Departure, his account of the Iraq crisis and other events of the period. The book stood out from other ministerial memoirs, usually evasive and self-serving, of the Thatcher–Blair era. Its style was fluent and sophisticated, and the account of cabinet government under New Labour was analytical and frank, but never vitriolic.’ Interestingly, this is in stark contrast to the bitter and rather self-justifying text, also full of diary material, published by Clare Short - who turned 70 a couple of weeks ago (see No. 10 hostile to me) - a short time after .

Introducing his book, Cook says: ‘The narrative charts a personal journey in which my early enthusiasm over my role in modernising the Commons and reforming the Lords became overshadowed by growing concern and eventual dismay at our complicity in George Bush’s intentions on Iraq. Although the culmination may have been Bush’s war, the prelude records my deepening disaffection with elements of the domestic agenda. It is the story of how I found myself losing touch with a leadership which often appeared to have instincts that were at odds with values that had brought me into the Labour Party and had sustained me through long barren years of Opposition. [. . .] This book is my honest attempt to explain how I arrived at the point of departure.’

It is worth noting that the tone and language of this introduction appear to suggest the book is significantly more than what it appears on the surface, a collection of diary entries: the way Cook writes, for example, of the book as a ‘narrative’, a ‘story’, and ‘my honest attempt to explain’, implies something closer to a moulded memoir. Any how, here are a couple of extracts from The Point of Departure (Simon & Schuster, see Amazon for a preview).

4 December 2001
’Began the day with a visit to Jack Straw at the Foreign Office to make my peace. The Secretary of State’s room has reverted to tradition. My examples of the best of British design have gone from the bookcase which has once again gone back to sleep with a collection of leather-bound early Hansards which no one will ever read.

I began by getting my apology in first. “Look, I’m sorry that I snapped at you at the Cabinet. But what’s important to me now is that we quit the argument as to who saw the document first and who got the document too late, and get on with agreeing on a package for modernisation.” Jack was generous in accepting the apology. “I have now had a chance to read the paper and it does have a lot of good ideas. I’ll make a point of writing in to support the revised version.” ’

13 March 2003
‘I am not out of the house before Jack Straw calls me to urge me not to resign. Jack and I go back a long way and were the two junior members of Peter Shore’s Treasury team in the early eighties. I got the impression that he clearly wants me to stay out of concern for me as a friend.

The case he put to me was rather legalistic. He went over how resolution 1441 gives us all the legal authority we require to launch war. I responded that my problem was the political and diplomatic absurdity of a unilateral war even if it were legal.

I saw Tony before Cabinet. I found him half-amused, half-furious with IDS. He had given IDS a briefing in Privy Councillor terms, and, to his dismay, IDS had walked straight out of the door and disclosed to camera that the Prime Minister thought a second resolution now ‘very unlikely’. Since the fiction that Tony still hopes to get a second resolution is central to his strategy for keeping the Labour Party in check, it is not welcome news that IDS has told the world that not even Tony believes this.

I began by joking: “I’m getting so many regular checks from colleagues that I’m beginning to think I’m on suicide watch. I wouldn’t be entirely surprise if someone came along and took away my belt and shoelaces to keep me out of harm’s way.” He laughed and said - and I think he meant it - “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

I was frank with him that my mind was made up, and that I would not mislead him into thinking that he could persuade me to change it. However, I was equally clear that I was not running any other agenda, or lending myself to an attack on his leadership. “You have been the most successful Labour leader in my lifetime. I want you to go on being leader and to on being successful.”

At this point his body language visibly softened as his muscles relaxed and he leaned back into his sofa. After that he was open, almost philosophical. All he said confirmed my impression that he is mystified as to quite how he got into such a hole and baffled as to whether there is any way out other than persisting in the strategy that has created his present difficulties.

He told me that he was going to call a special Cabinet meeting when the process in the UN was complete, and I promised that I would make no public move while he was still working for a result in the UN.

After me he was seeing Clare [Short], which had the effect of delaying Cabinet for fifteen minutes. [. . .]

When I got back to the office there was a message from the Foreign Office to say that Jack would be very grateful if I could represent the government at the funeral on Saturday of Zoran Djindjic, the Prime Minister of Serbia, who was assassinated yesterday. I readily agreed as I had worked with Zoran for years. We cooperated closely when I was Foreign Secretary and he was in opposition. It is a terrible irony that throughout those years he managed to avoid being assassinated by Milosevic, only to be killed now that he has brought Milosevic to the bar of justice. There is also something of an irony in that my last official engagement representing the government will be attending a funeral.’

A wish or a curse

‘Each word is a wish or a curse. One must be careful not to make words once one has acknowledged the power of the living word. The artist’s secret lies in fear and awe. Our times have turned them into terror and dismay.’ This is Hugo Ball, born 130 years ago today, writing in his diary just months, in fact, before he founded Cabaret Voltaire where, famously, the anarchic art movement Dada would soon emerge.

Hugo Ball was born in Pirmasens, near the German border with France, on 22 February 1886, and raised by a middle-class Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg, becoming interested in Nietzsche and writing plays, before moving to Berlin to study acting at Max Reinhardt’s drama school. Having worked for a short while as a stage manager, he was back in Munich by 1912, where he came into contact with the Blaue Reiter circle, and became critic-playwright at the Kammerspiele Theatre.

Around this time, Ball met a number of people who would have an influence on his life: Emmy Hennings, an actress and singer whom he would marry in 1920; Richard Huelsenbeck with whom he would open the Cabaret Voltaire; Hans Leybold, a young student radical, with whom he launched a new magazine, Revolution, though the first issue was confiscated by censors; and Wassily Kandinsky, the greatest of the Expressionist painters in the Munich circle.

In 1914, Ball applied for military service but was turned down several times. Impatient to experience war, he made a trip to Belgium. Appalled by what he saw, he turned pacifist, antiwar protester and anarchist. Soon after, he moved with Hennings, to Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, where the couple lived as unregistered aliens, unable to get work. It is thought, Ball tried to commit suicide at this point.

Nevertheless, things began improving for Ball. In 1916, he was able to get work as a touring pianist, but he also continued working on a book about German culture, and writing poems. His beliefs were shifting from anarchism towards mysticism, and he began experimenting with drugs. In 1916, back in Zurich, he opened Cabaret Voltaire, which served as the breeding ground for the Dada movement. In July of the same year, Collection Dada issued its first volume of writing (by the youngest member of the Zurich movement, Tristan Tzara). The following year Ball and Tzara opened Galerie Dada.

Ball’s involvement with Dada was short-lived. He left the movement and moved to Bern, to work as a journalist, and he published Zur Kritik der deutschen Intelligenz, a strident attack on German politics and culture. He then journeyed back, spiritually speaking, to Catholicism, and a couple of years later, published Byzantinisches Christendom. 

For the last years of his life, Ball lived relatively quietly and poorly, in the Canton of Ticino, southern Switzerland, with occasional trips to Italy. He became friends with Herman Hesse, who also lived in Ticino. Indeed, one of Ball’s last works was a study of Hesse (see also the recent post - Love of humanity). Ball died in 1927, aged only 41. Further biographical information can be found  at Wikipedia, the Dada Companion, or National Gallery of Art (Washington DC).

For a while, during his early and difficult days in Zurich, Ball kept a diary of sorts, in which he jotted down philosophical musings. These were were first published by Viking Press, New York City, in 1974 as Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary. The text was edited by John Elderfield and translated by Ann Raimes. More recently, in 1996, University of California Press has reissued the book with a few additions. Parts of the book are available to read online at Googlebooks or Scribd.

18 September 1915
‘The collapse is beginning to take on gigantic dimensions. We will not be able to use the old idealistic Germany as a basis any more either, so we will be completely without any basis. For the devout Protestant-enlightened Germany of the Reformation and the Wars of Liberation produced an authority, and one could say that this authority confused and destroyed the last opposition to the animal kingdom. That whole civilization was ultimately only a sham. It dominated the academic world enough to corrupt the common people too; for even the people approved of Bethmann’s words about necessity knowing no law; in fact, the Protestant pastors were the most unhesitating spokesmen and interpreters of this degrading slogan.’

20 September 1915
‘I can imagine a time when I will seek obedience as much as I have tasted disobedience: to the full. For a long time I have not obeyed even myself. I refuse to give ear to every halfway reasonable or nobler emotion; I have become so mistrustful of my origin. So 1 can only confess: I am eager to give up my Germanity. Is there not regimentation, Protestantism, and immorality in each of us, whether we know it or not? And the deeper it is, the less we know it?’

25 September 1915
‘The philosophy with which the generals try to justify their actions is a coarse version of Machiavelli. The peculiar words of the language of government (and unfortunately not only of the language of government) go back to a stale Renaissance ideal: the “right of the stronger,” the “necessity that knows no law,” the “place in the sun,” and other similar terms. Machiavellianism, however, has ruined itself. The Machiavellians are being called by their true name; the articles of the law are being remembered and used against them. Machiavellian wars in old Europe no longer succeed.

There is, in spite of everything, a folk morality. Frederick II’s saying “When princes want war, they begin one and call in a diligent lawyer who proves that it is right and just” is being rejected. How might a man feel, how must he live, when he feels he belongs, and when he seems disastrously willing to apply all kinds of adventure, all con- fusion of problems and offenses to his own unique constitution? How could a person assert himself if he is someone whose fantastic Ego seems to be created only to receive and suffer the scandal, the opposition, the rebellion of all these released forces? If language really makes us kings of our nation, then without doubt it is we, the poets and thinkers, who are to blame for this blood bath and who have to atone for it.’

4 October 1915
‘I tend to compare my own private experiences with the nation’s. I see it almost as a matter of conscience to perceive a certain parallel there. It may be a whim, but I could not live without the conviction that my own personal fate is an abbreviated version of the fate of the whole nation. If I had to admit that I was surrounded by highwaymen, nothing in the world could convince me that they were not my fellow countrymen whom I live among. I bear the signature of my homeland, and I feel surrounded by it everywhere I go.

If I ask myself in the dead of night what the purpose of all this might be, then I could well answer: So that I might lay aside my prejudices forever. So that I might experience the meaning of what I once took seriously: the backdrop. So that I might detach myself from this age and strengthen myself in the belief in the improbable.

The naiveté of those people who are afflicted with incurable diseases and are treated for rationalism. There is no doubt that it is a great time - for a healer of souls.’

25 November 1915
‘Each word is a wish or a curse. One must be careful not to make words once one has acknowledged the power of the living word.

The artist’s secret lies in fear and awe. Our times have turned them into terror and dismay.

People who live rashly and precipitately easily lose control over their impressions and are prey to unconscious emotions and motives. The activity of any art (painting, writing, composing) will do them good, provided that they do not pursue any purpose in their subjects, but follow the course of a free, unfettered imagination. The independent process of fantasy never fails to bring to light again those things that have crossed the threshold of consciousness without analysis. In an age like ours, when people are assaulted daily by the most monstrous things without being able to keep account of their impressions, in such an age aesthetic production becomes a prescribed course. But all living art will be irrational, primitive, and complex; it will speak a secret language and leave behind documents not of edification but of paradox.’

The cost of men and food

‘Married men are paid by the keep of a cow, a house, potatoe & flax ground, with a certain yearly sum in money. At one period of the war unmarried ploughmen paid by the year received 18£, and 6½ bolls of meal with milk. In 1816 the money wages fell to 9£. At present. 12£.’ This is Thomas Robert Malthus, the British scholar whose writings on political economy and populations studies - notably that population growth will always tend to outrun food supply - caused controversy in his time. Malthus, born 250 years ago today, left behind a few travel diaries, which show him always aware of ‘the economic aspect of things’ as well as ‘his persistent interest in the costs and amenities of living in different environments’.

Malthus was born on 13 February 1766 into a large prosperous family living in Westcott, Surrey. He was educated at home, then Warrington Academy, and entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1784, eventually being elected a Fellow in 1793. Earlier, though, he had taken orders for the Church of England, and become a curate. His first work - An Essay on the Principle of Population - was published anonymously in 1798, and then revised by him five or six times, during his lifetime, incorporating new information. The work made him famous at the time, and he remains one of the most well remembered of early economists.

Essentially, Malthus argued in his essay that hopes for future human happiness - as expressed by learned men, including his father - must be in vain because food supply, which increases in arithmetic progression, will always be outstripped by population growth, which increases by geometric progression if unchecked. Indeed, population, he argued, will expand to the limit of subsistence, and be held in check by war, famine, ill health.

In 1804, Malthus married Harriet Eckersall, and they had three children. When the East India Company College was founded, in 1805-1806, to train administrators for the Honourable East India Company, he was appointed professor of history and political economy. Although initially situated in Hertford, new buildings including accommodation for the professors and their families were soon after constructed at Haileybury, just outside the city, where Malthus taught and lived for the rest of his life (having helped, in 1817, defend the college against closure).

In 1818, Malthus was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1820, he published his Principles of Political Economy, and soon after was a founding member the Political Economy Club. Later, he was elected one of the 10 royal associates of the Royal Society of Literature, and he cofounded the Statistical Society of London. He died suddenly in late 1834. Further information is available at Wikipedia, The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, BBC, Encyclopaedia Britannica, New World Encyclopedia or the Biographical Dictionary of British Economists.

Malthus travelled infrequently: to northern Europe in 1799, through Sweden and Finland to St Petersburg; to France and Switzerland in 1802; to Ireland in 1819; to the Continent in 1825; and to Scotland in 1826. He may have kept diaries on all these trips, who knows, but only those from 1799, 1825 and 1826 appear to have survived - the 1799 diary (four notebooks) only being discovered in 1961. These diaries were transcribed and edited by Patricia James and published in 1966 in Cambridge at the University Press for the Royal Economic Society as The Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus.

According to the eminent British economist Lionel Robbins, who wrote the foreword, the diaries are not only notable for their occasional entries on population questions (shedding light on differences between the first and second editions of ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’), but because ‘they afford valuable evidence of general temper of the author’s mind in its focus on the economic aspect of things - his patient empiricism, his concern with the mundane details of institutions and customary behaviour, his persistent interest in the costs and amenities of living in different environments.’

Robbins finishes his foreword: ‘Since the discovery of these diaries, I have often thought of the pleasure which they would have given to Maynard Keynes who wrote so eloquently of their author and who valued so highly the ways of living and thinking for which he stood. How he would have relished the piquant details of travel and the agreeable parties at which such serious questions were discussed. It is a fitting thing that they should now be published by the Royal Economic Society whose fortunes he did so much to establish and whose meetings for so many years were made memorable by the liveliness of his wit and fancy.’

Here are several extracts from the three tours: Scandinavia, 1799 (four notebooks), the Continent, 1825, and Scotland, 1826.

13 June 1799
‘Showry. Therm at 2, 59. Saw the King’s library which consists of upwards of 300,000 volumes. It contains many scarce books & valuable manuscripts; but we were too much pressed for time to examine them with any attention. Talked to a man who had published a book on Statistics. According to his calculations, 1 in 40 die in Norway, 1 in 38 in the islands, 1 in 37 in the dutchies. He said that Professor Thaarup had stolen from him.  Call’d upon Monsr. Wad, professor of natural history in the University, a great mineralogist, & saw some curious specimens relating to the formation of coal & amber, a new semimetal & some new crystals & c. & c. We have found all the professors that we have seen extremely polite, & ready to give every kind of information. The King’s library is open every day from 10 till 12, & a professor generally attends.

There are no corn laws in Denmark & no publick store except a small one for the army. The Bank is entirely a government institution but in great credit. The notes are as low as 1 rix dollar. Silver must be paid at the bank when demanded. These notes bear a discount in Holstein. I heard, but do not know whether from good authority or not, that there was a discount on these notes in the islands about 10 yrs ago. The Bank is said now to be very rich in silver, & it is thought probable that in a few years the notes will be destroyed & that there will be only a silver currency.

Every thing is remarkably dear at present in Copenhagen. Beef & mutton 6d., Fresh butter is. Common labour in the environs of the town 2s. - in the country 1s. 4d. There is a very great demand for labour at present, and labourers are scarce. Every thing in the shops is remarkably dear, & books particularly so. Only four years ago labour in the country was 1 danish marc or 8d. a day. This rapid rise in the price of labour has placed the lower classes in a very good state, and it is expected that there will be a very rapid increase of population. In the afternoon went to see the review, which upon the whole went off very well, tho it was unluckily a showry afternoon. The soldiers at a distance appeared to be handsomely drest, but on a nearer view their cloathing was very coarse. The horses small, but handsome, & in good order - all with long tails. Towards the end of the review I got near the King’s tent & saw him quite close. He is treated quite as an idiot. The officers about the court have all orders not to give him any answer. Some of the party observed him talking very fast & making faces at an officer who was one of the sentinels at the tent, who preserved the utmost gravity of countenance & did not answer him a single word. Just before the royal party left the tent the Prince rode up full speed, & his father made him a very low bow. I could not well distinguish the Prince’s countenance, and could only see that he had a thin pale face & a small person. His father has the same kind of face & person, but is reckoned a better looking man.

We observed the French minister with his national cockade. He had an interesting, tho rather fier countenance, and seemed to look on what he saw as a poor farce not worth his attention. When he addressed any person his features relaxed into mildness & he seemed to be perfectly well bred in his manner. The Princess Royal is rather pretty, and is, I understand, a most agreeable & valuable woman. Lady R F spoke in the highest terms of her - She is a daughter of the Prince of Hesse who lives in the palace at Sleswic. We saw the Princess get into her carriage with her daughter, the only remaining child of five, who is now about five yrs old. There was a large party of nobility in the King’s tent, but Ld R F was not there. The King drove off first, accompanied by the Princess Royal & her daughter, in a gilt chariot with six very handsome grey horses.’

28 June 1799
‘We were engaged to dine with Mr Ancher at half past 2, & to go to his brother’s in the evening. In the morning, walked up to the Castle with the daughter of the landlord of our Inn as an interpreter. She speaks french, is a little of a coquette, & is much celebrated in the neighbourhood for the gracefulness of her manners; but she has not much pretension to beauty. On account of her superior accomplishments she is admitted into the first circle at Christiania. Mr A praised her highly & said that she was one of their best actresses. They have private theatricals at Christiania as well as at Frederickshall, & Mr A himself often takes a principal part - sometimes indeed that of author as well as actor. He told us of a tragedy that he had written on the subject of the death of Major Andre, which he performed before the Prince Royal, playing himself the part of the Major. The Prince, he told us, was highly pleased.’

8 June 1825
‘Bruges at 8 o’clock. Hotel nearly full.’

9 June 1825
‘Tower in the Market Place. Church of Notre Dame: Carved Pulpit. Statue of the Virgin by Michaelangelo. Tombs of Charles the Bold & his daughter. St Salvador. Baptism of John by Van Os. Resurrection not yet put up.

Church of Jerusalem not worth going to. Black Manteau’s. Some of the whitened houses do not suit the antient character of the Town.

At the Hotel Fleur de Bled Vin de Bordeaux ordinaire 2.f.’

10 June 1825
‘To Ghent by the Grand Barque. Passage 5½ francs each, dinner included, wine excluded. Vin de Bordeaux ordinaire 3 f. Claret at 4 f. not better. - rather approaching to the wine at 1½ f.’

For a great part of the way the banks were so high that the country was not visible - wood on each side - chiefly poplar of different kinds, and beech - Latter part of way banks lower - neat houses - good deal of rye the main food of the common people. Labour 14 sous, 28 French Sous. White bread 3½ pounds for 4 Sous or pence.’

11 June 1825
‘Town - marks of the wealth and splendour of the middle ages. Cathedrale de St Bavo rich in marble. Pulpit by Delvaux. Statue of Bishop Trieste by Quesnoy. Chch. St Michael. Crucifixion by Vandyke - a very fine picture, but dirty, and not distinct. -another copy in Academy in better order, but not reckoned so good. Van Kraeger. Boxon sculptor - single portrait of himself.

Nunnery. Town Hall Gothic side superb.

Sabots, women without stockings. Blue Carters frocks. Cotton cloaks.’

12 June 1825
‘Feats of swimming from the bridges of the Schelde and the Leys, numerous barges laden with Coals chiefly from Charleroix.

In the afternoon to Brussels by the Diligence - premiere caisse. Pavé the first half of the way between two rows of beeches. Country flat but not unpleasing from the number of trees - chiefly different kinds of poplar, and beech, - no large timber. Much rye in full ear, and good crops, some barley turning yellow, - but little wheat - just coming into ear. good crops flax. From Alost the crops of wheat and rye forwarder, and the finest and fullest I ever saw. - the first half of the way the houses the neatest, - last half thatched cottages, and a waving country much like England. Alost and Assche very white and cheerful. Blue frocks, women without shoes. Hotel Belle Vue. Place Royale. Park - splendid.’

4 July 4 1826
‘Hill by Turnpike before breakfast. Small hill the other way after breakfast. Down to Stoney river and wooden bridge. View of Luss & Ben Lomond. Steam boat. Rowerdennan. Tarbet. Inversnaith. Rob Roy’s cave. Tarbet. Walk on a shoulder of one of the mountains in the evening.

Heard at Luss that the wages of the man who worked in the slate quarries were about 20d. a day. All had been employed, and there had been little or no fall.

In Fifeshire, from Mr Bruce the same account. Wages had risen in 1825, and had not fallen again - no want of agricultural work. In 1811, 12 and 13 the price of labour for single men had been 12s. a week. In 1823, they had fallen to 9s. and in 1825 rose to 10s. at which price they remained, June 30th 1826. For about 3 months of the year the wages are only 9s,; and during the harvest much is done by piece work.

Married men are paid by the keep of a cow, a house, potatoe & flax ground, with a certain yearly sum in money. At one period of the war unmarried ploughmen paid by the year received 18£, and 6½ bolls of meal with milk. In 1816 the money wages fell to 9£. At present. 12£. Altogether what the married men receive is worth more than the earnings of the single man. Their wages in money are about half those of the single man.

The boll of wheat is rather above 4 bushels, of barly six, of oats six.

Farms are now for the most part let in Scotland so as to vary with the price of corn. Sometimes the whole rent varies with the price of corn, and sometimes a part is reserved in Money.’

Love of humanity

He does not follow a literary impulse; he does not write to please or to delight. He has been compelled to write by his thirst for truth, his need for morality, and his love of humanity. This is a description of Romain Rolland - a major French literary figure born 150 years ago today - on the Nobel Prize website. Though little remembered today in the English-speaking world, he was a principled and outspoken pacifist, engaging with many other intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. He kept a diary for much of his life, and extracts have been published in various forms, often compiled by theme - WWI, India (he was a great promoter of Gandhi), or a particular person. However, none have found their way into English, except for a few extracts about the German author Herman Hesse.

Rolland was born in Clamecy, central France, on 29 January 1866, but went to study in Paris from age 14. He was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure to study philosophy, but switched to history and became interested in music. After two years in Italy, he published, in 1895, two doctoral theses, one on the origins of modern lyric theatre and the other on the decline of Italian painting in the sixteenth century. Around 1892, he married Clotilde Bréal, although they were divorced by 1901.

Rolland became a teacher in Paris for some years, including at the the newly established music school École des Hautes Études Sociales from 1902 to 1911. In 1903, he was also appointed to the first chair of music history at the Sorbonne. During these years, he was writing and publishing plays, such as Le Triomphe de la raison and Le 14 Juillet - he dreamt of a ‘people’s theatre’, free from the domination of a selfish clique - as well as biographies of Beethoven, Michelangelo, Tolstoy.

Rolland collaborated with Charles Péguy in the journal Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, through which he published, from 1904 to 1912, his best-known novel, generally considered his masterpiece - Jean-Christophe. It is for Jean-Christophe, largely, that Rolland was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. According to the Sven Söderman, writing on the Nobel Prize website, ‘this powerful work describes the development of a character in whom we can recognize ourselves. It shows how an artistic temperament, by raising itself step by step, emerges like a genius above the level of humanity; how a powerful nature which has the noblest and most urgent desire for truth, moral health, and artistic purity, with an exuberant love of life, is forced to overcome obstacles that rise up ceaselessly before it; how it attains victory and independence; and how this character and this intelligence are significant enough to concentrate in themselves a complete image of the world.’

Söderman continues: ‘This book does not aim solely at describing the life of the principal hero and his environment. It seeks also to describe the causes of the tragedy of a whole generation; it gives a sweeping picture of the secret labour that goes on in the hidden depths and by which nations, little by little, are enlightened; it covers all the domains of life and art; it contains everything essential that has been discussed or attempted in the intellectual world during the last decades; it achieves a new musical aesthetic; it contains sociological, political and ethnological, biological, literary, and artistic discussions and judgments, often of the highest interest. [. . ] In this work Rolland has not simply followed a literary impulse; he does not write to please or to delight. He has been compelled to write by his thirst for truth, his need for morality, and his love of humanity. [Jean-Christophe . . .] is a combination of thought and poetry, of reality and symbol, of life and dream, which attracts us, excites us, reveals us to ourselves, and possesses a liberating power because it is the expression of a great moral force.’

High praise indeed! By 1914, Rolland had moved to Switzerland to work full-time as a writer - not returning to France until the late 1930s. He was a life-long pacifist, shown through his writings about WWI such as in Au-dessus de la Mêlée. He was a great admirer of Gandhi, and his 1924 book on the Indian leader is said to have contributed to his growing reputation in Europe. In 1928 Rolland collaborated with the Hungarian philosopher Edmund Bordeaux Szekely in founding the International Biogenic Society. In the early 1930s, he married Marie Koudachef, a half-Russian communist who had been his secretary for some years, and who, historians say, was a Stalinist agent charged by Moscow with securing Rolland’s allegiance.

In 1935, Rolland travelled to Moscow on the invitation of Maxim Gorky, and, significantly, gained an audience with Stalin. For years, he went on supporting the leader’s regime against growing evidence of his atrocities, but, as the truth about them became harder to ignore, so Rolland, once again in France, retreated into his work. He became something of a recluse, suffering from ill health and being closely monitored by the Vichy police. He died in late 1944. Further limited information is available in English at Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica, and in French at Association Romain Rolland. Also there are various biographies of Rolland available to preview at Googlebooks: David James Fisher’s Romain Rolland and the Politics of the intellectual Engagement; Stefan Zweig’s Romain Rolland the Man and his Work, and Patrick Wright’s Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War.

Throughout his life, Rolland maintained a steady correspondence with many intellectual figures - such as Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, and Rabindranath Tagore - much of which was published after his death. He also kept a diary, many extracts from which have also been published posthumously, some in books such as Journal des années de guerre, for example, Inde - Journal 1915-1943, and Journal de Vézelay 1938-1944. A list of other publications with diary extracts can be found in A Critical Bibliography of French Literature at Googlebooks. All of these, though, are in French. The only translated examples of Rolland’s diary material that I can find are in Hermann Hesse & Romain Rolland - Correspondence, diary entries and reflections, 1915 to 1940 translated from the French and German by M. G. Hesse, with an introduction by Pierre Grappin, and published in 1978 by Oswald Wolff, London and Humanities Press, New Jersey.

November 1914
‘An excellent article by the German poet and novelist Hermann Hesse in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of November 3, entitled “O Freunde, nicht diese Tone!” Since he lives in Switzerland Hesse escapes the German contagion. He addresses himself to writers, artists, and thinkers. He regrets seeing them eagerly participating in the war. In expressing his righteous idea, Hesse probably tends to exaggerate the artist’s duty to remain silent. This harmonizes only too well with the spirit of German docility. If it doesn’t manifest itself in force, it can only conceal its independence within itself. However, I would like to see a thinker from Germany who would resolutely oppose force. Anyway, we have to take men as they are! Hesse is one of the best of his race; and he says many things to which I could subscribe: against writers who arouse hatred; against the humanitarians in peace time who when war breaks out, etc.. Against the war itself, he doesn’t want to say anything. He hopes it will be very violent, so that it will end more quickly. And he recommends the attitude of Goethe “who held himself so marvellously aloof during the great war of independence of his people.” ’

18 February 1915
‘Hermann Hesse publishes in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Abendblatt) an article on a new German review. Die Weissen Blatter of Leipzig, which is reissued after an interruption of several months. Germany’s generation of young poets expresses itself in this journal. Hesse calls attention to their great serenity. One of its contributors, the Alsatian Ernst Stadler, has been killed. A lecturer at the Free University in Brussels, translator and friend of French poets, he was supposed to go to Canada last September to teach. He was thirty years old. Hesse compares the journal’s Europeanism to mine. He doesn’t see in it an isolated exception, but the early flowering of the Europeanism that is latent in the best German youth. Among the most gifted of these young writers, Hesse mentions Werfel, Stemheim, Schickele, Ehrenstein.’

September 1920
‘Hermann Hesse, who has been living for the past two years in Montagnola, above Lugano, comes to dinner (September 26). He is thin, gaunt, clean-shaven, ascetic, severely cut to the bone - like a figure by Hodler. Hesse has gone through an exceptionally severe crisis from which he has emerged - according to him - as a new man. External circumstances have contributed to it - his wife is mentally ill and confined to a hospital; he is reduced to poverty, his children are separated from him and are in schools in northern Switzerland. Hesse lives in complete isolation, and his material existence is reduced to the minimum. Under these circumstances the old principles, implanted in his mind by India and China, which had always attracted him, have developed in an exceptional manner. He maintains he has now attained a state of mind which fully conforms to his Asian ideals and he creates for himself a life that is in harmony with his thinking. He is completely detached from the entire contemporary world, from art, from today’s literature which he regards as a futile game, and especially from politics. He is even detached from almost everything that gives value to life for the modern man: comfort and public esteem. Hesse lives like a wise man from India (even though his ideal is rather the wisdom of China with its cheerful accommodation to life). Hesse claims he is happy. To keep busy and to earn some money, he has taken up painting. He embellishes with sketches the manuscripts of his poems which some collectors buy. Last year he published a work under a pseudonym.’

April 1923
‘Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, whose first part is dedicated to me, is one of the most profound works a European has ever written on (and in the spirit of) Hindu philosophy. When he read it in Lugano,
Kalidas Nag was filled with admiration for Siddhartha. The last fifteen to twenty pages may be added to the treasure of Hindu wisdom. They don’t merely paraphrase it, they complete it. Hesse writes me that none of his other works has been greeted with such absolute silence. His friends haven’t even taken the trouble to thank him for it.’

December 1923
‘A renewed exchange of affectionate letters with Waldemar Bonsels and with Hermann Hesse. My sister and I are going to publish under the Ollendorff imprint some volumes of Hesse’s tales and short stories. Hermann Hesse, who must be close to sixty, is going to marry again. He sends me a beautiful aquarelle which he painted in the Tessin.’

17 September 1933
‘Visited Hermann Hesse in his charming house in Montagnola on the ridge of the Golden Hill above the vineyards and chestnut trees. He had us picked up in a friend’s car. He awaits us with his wife and sister in front of his house. The misfortunes of our time have not marked his face which appears much fresher, calmer, and younger than the last time I saw him (two years ago on the eve of his remarriage). He complains only about his eyes which cause him some concern. Indiscreetly I perceive more anxiety on his wife’s face. She is a brunette with intelligent and attractive features. As far as the sister is concerned, she is a kind, stocky old lady who doesn’t speak, but who listens with an assenting smile. Hesse alludes only briefly at the beginning of our conversation to the afflictions caused by the events in Germany and the passage of emigrants in the Tessin. But throughout the balance of the conversation, Hesse reveals that he is quite detached and ill-informed (he avoids the reality of events that threaten to destroy his fragile mental equilibrium). He readily satisfies himself with the idea that the true German culture will remain safeguarded from the torrent. And he loves to cite the example of a friend, a musicologist who at this very moment is preoccupied with his research in folklore.

Also, in his innermost being Hesse feels utter contempt for Fuhrers - especially Hitler, whom he considers mediocre, but well attuned to the mediocre German sensitivity and therefore chosen by those who manage the whole business. But Hesse declares he is completely detached from his fatherland (which, he adds, he wouldn’t have said, nor felt, during the war of 1914). However, he didn’t have to suffer personally. No measures have been take against him in this respect: he continues to publish in Germany. The letters he receives from his young readers are quite similar to those he received in previous years. Undoubtedly because his public, like him, flees into art and dreams from the pressures of reality. For a year and a half Hesse has been working, but without haste, on a utopian work whose form he is in no hurry to find. [. . .]

His beautiful house and his supporter have shielded him from the need to act - even with his pen. I don’t think that this is good for him. His most substantial artistic activity is his work as aquarellist. He delights in colours. And every day he adds one sheet after another to his collection of landscapes. Last spring Hesse saw Thomas Mann who seems the most contemplative and worthiest among all the great German Emigres. This man who comes perhaps farthest - (for he was basically a great German bourgeois, most attached to the city and the fatherland, and I was harsh toward him in 1914-1915) - will probably have the courage to go furthest along the path of abandoning his former prejudices and convictions. But he will do so only after long and private struggles with his conscience and meditation. When he is strengthened in his convictions, it’s likely that his daily life will conform to them, whatever risks it may involve.’