{"id":7260,"date":"2020-02-13T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2020-02-13T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=7260"},"modified":"2020-02-13T12:00:11","modified_gmt":"2020-02-13T12:00:11","slug":"anarchy-booked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/02\/13\/anarchy-booked\/","title":{"rendered":"Anarchy Booked"},"content":{"rendered":"

A poetaster\u2019s tribute to Geoffrey Hill\u2019s The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin<\/strong><\/a><\/span> (2019).<\/em><\/p>\n

I heard Sir Geoffrey refer many times in his Oxford lectures (2010-2015) to our current situation as one of \u2018plutocratic anarchy\u2019. I suspect that, like many, he was fascinated and frustrated by the oxymoronic sight of ordinary, \u2018common\u2019 people persistently voting for, excusing, and admiring those who would subject and exploit them.<\/p>\n

People voting against egalitarianism, that sort of thing. People claiming to hate \u00e9lites and experts, while lauding fatuous celebrities, mendacious politicians and tax-avoiding oligarchs to the skies. What the hell! It\u2019s a job to keep calm, it is. What\u2019s happened to intrinsic value? After such gnosis, what forgiveness?<\/p>\n

Hill is, in this Book, much concerned with our chaotic, self-defeating times, but he\u2019s concerned too with cultural instances of last words, late testaments, final goodbyes and deathbed flourishes. The barbarians may be at the ruined gates, but the professor has brought ashore and stored (in his memory) a whole load of good stuff for us. He\u2019s passing it on.<\/p>\n

The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin<\/em> is a Last Supper, a s\u00e9ance, a c\u00e9nacle<\/em>, a \u2018Scipionic Circle\u2019 (see poem 128), a consistory. Just look who\u2019s been invited, look who\u2019s turned up!<\/p>\n

What are they talking about? They can\u2019t be serious. Stuff about \u2018fate\u2019 and \u2018genius\u2019 and \u2018intrinsic value\u2019, and \u2018poetry\u2019 and \u2018gnosis\u2019 and \u2018hierarchy\u2019. And, what\u2019s this, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) \u2013 \u2018the Augsburger\u2019 \u2013 and his \u2018epic theatre\u2019, Brecht who once versified the Communist Manifesto in Lucretian hexameters, and named Brueghel\u2019s Dulle Griet<\/em> (Mad Meg) a \u2018great war painting\u2019 (see 123) \u2013 well, \u2018it is vital that we | resurrect Brecht\u2019 (124). Christ!<\/p>\n

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Bertolt Brecht<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Final Words?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How to categorise this weird offering, its preposterous form? Is it a biographia literaria<\/em> (Coleridge)? A tractatus theologico-politicus <\/em>(Spinoza)?\u00a0 A religio poetae<\/em> (Coventry Patmore)? A Day-Book of Counsel and Comfort (George Fox)?<\/p>\n

Does Hill intend for us to think this is epic theatre? He refers peevishly to W H Auden\u2019s political poem \u2018The Orators\u2019 in poem 158: \u2018The nearest we get to epic theatre is \u2018The Orators\u2019.\u2019<\/p>\n

Of this 1932 poem (G.H. was born in 1932), Auden wrote: \u2018The central theme of \u2018The Orators<\/a><\/span>\u2019 seems to be hero-worship, and we all know what that can lead to politically.\u2019<\/p>\n

There\u2019s plenty of hero-worship in The Book of Baruch<\/em>, plenty of wrestling too with the betrayal of the working class (31), and the embarrassments of the Tory tradition: \u2018Tory, to me at this latter day, is both rabble and oligarchy\u2019 (261).<\/p>\n

Is Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost epic theatre? I guess so. Milton\u2019s all over the place in The Book of Baruch<\/em>; amidst the civil war of austerity-and-Brexit, anarchic plutocracy\u2019s generous mess of potage, Hill takes comfort in the compensations of falling towards the grave.<\/p>\n

We might more readily expect a Last Will and Testament, I suppose. GH was in his 80s, and whilst he always seems to have written as if he thought he might die tomorrow, well, this is more obviously an apostrophe to those who would survive him. The poem numbered \u201847\u2019 begins, perhaps, with an old man muttering to himself:<\/p>\n

If this is going to be your testament best press on with it. <\/em><\/p>\n

A testament \u2013 leaving stuff to someone, testifying to having existed; let\u2019s also remember that GH is masquing himself as one \u2018gnostic Justin\u2019, who may understand \u2018testament\u2019 more grandly to mean a covenant or new dispensation of some sort, (for those who come after), a scripture, even.<\/p>\n

Well, William Blake\u2019s engraving (plate 14) for his America: A Prophecy (1793) is the jacket image, after all. (And Justin appraises that engraving too \u2013 see \u2018170\u2019: \u2018his beard imitates mine in my mock senile portraits\u2019. Sir Geoffrey threatens to get senile on us, but there\u2019s exquisite method in this discombobulation, I suspect).<\/p>\n

\u2018America is an early radiant work if we simply let the illumination bathe us\u2019, a voice declares. I propose that we take time to consider the professor\u2019s last things, and bathe in the illuminations and recriminations that Hill-Justin has to offer?<\/p>\n

A Great Gift<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So; a generic hybrid. A testament, a covenant, a witness statement, a testimony, a symposium, a reproach, a mockery (Pope\u2019s Dunciad is a lost friend). H\u2019m. I\u2019m only fussing over this because I feel that GH is bequeathing all us \u2018poetasters\u2019 \u2013 ok, I admit it \u2013 a new form to play with.<\/p>\n

It is a great gift, and I, for one, am moved to tears. You might say he\u2019s just teasing us with being mock prophetic (as well as mock senile), but that\u2019s ok too, isn\u2019t it? Look at the long lines \u2013 they don\u2019t even end at the right hand margin, do they?<\/p>\n

Folded back into hanging-indent paragraphs, like a manifesto or, (actually), a stanza from Andre Breton\u2019s \u2018Ode to Fourier\u2019 (see 179), or, I should say, looking remarkably like Rimbaud\u2019<\/a><\/span>s lineation in Une Saison en Enfer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019d \u2018ve thought it? GH makes something of this source in 167, raving about Rimbaud\u2019s (and David Bomberg\u2019s) part in the invention of \u2018modernist poetry\u2019, through an instinctive concurrence, apparently, with the philosopher Berkeley\u2019s redemptive notion \u2018that particles are units in the mind\u2019s energy\u2019. (This stuff may need some work doing: you could try D J Greene\u2019s 1953 journal article, \u2018Smart, Berkeley, the Scientists and the Poets: A Note on Eighteenth-Century Anti-Newtonianism<\/a><\/span>\u2019.) It\u2019s all part of a thrilling defence of poetry for the 21st century; and look out for Kit Smart (\u2018no hoodlum\u2019, 28) throughout the poem, and the product of his season in hell, Jubilate Agno<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not obviously poetry then, but beyond prose, certainly. A 21st century Walt Whitman, for sure, inventorying what\u2019s excitingly referred to (47) as \u2018the untenable sanctities of abiding things\u2019. Beyond grasping, out of kilter, implausible, but we do know such things, don\u2019t we?<\/p>\n

Certainly, [Listen to me \u2013 \u2018Certainly\u2019!], an old humanities professor might know a thing or two about what\u2019s worth preserving, what might stay us, what abides, what might redeem the time, dare I say. Is this about redemption, after all, HaShem\u2019s ways to man, and is it now delivered by these here genii and their gnomic achievements?<\/p>\n

GH reminds us, for example, of the poet Thomas Nashe\u2019s \u2018finest poem thrown away on a dull drama\u2019 \u2013 remember that invincible line?<\/p>\n

Brightness falls from the air<\/em><\/p>\n

This from a poem in Nashe\u2019s Summer\u2019s Last Will and Testament<\/em> (1600), a comedy. Well, if poems can do that<\/em>…<\/p>\n

\u2018old-fashioned encyclopedic knowledge\u2019 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The thing about testament and prophecy, we might remember, is that they\u2019re inevitably political and more or less obviously, satirical, (you can\u2019t get away from Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, the other mockers \u2013 Ben Jonson\u2019s \u2018On the Famous Voyage\u2019, for instance). Oh, yes \u2013 and also theological. Sorry. Well, just think S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard, if it helps \u2013 his many pseudonymous personae \u2013 Johannes Climacus, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it, the title of Johannes Climacus\u2019s 1846 work is perfect for GH\u2019s book: Concluding Unscientific Postscript<\/em><\/a><\/span> \u2013 \u2018scrapings and parings of systematic thought . . . divided into bits\u2019, as its epigraph notes. So much I have known, and know, don\u2019t you know? Unbelievable stuff, \u2018untenable\u2019, beyond my grasp, inordinate, but something there, let me tell you. I\u2019ve seen<\/em> things, as the replicant says before expiring in Ridley Scott\u2019s film Blade Runner<\/em>. Peace be upon him.<\/p>\n

It is a great gift, and I, for one, am moved to tears. I\u2019d like to try it too; who knows, my children might be grateful to their poetasting father, when he\u2019s gone? I\u2019m not as old, nor as learned, nor as wise as GH, nor would he have deemed me a poet, but there\u2019s plenty to encourage me here: \u2018Poets with old-fashioned encyclopedic knowledge bring good seed to tillage\u2019. (126) And then, later, he writes:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With always an encyclopedia on which to rest my left<\/em><\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 arm, I do not have to resort overmuch to erm.<\/em> (256)<\/p>\n

Seems to be down to knowledge, then, and not, erm, inspiration (or genius?) Phew! I can do this. The gnostic Jonathan. A gnostic poetaster. Let\u2019s see.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Geoffrey Hill 1932-2016.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Automatism<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What else? How to get started each day, overcome the embarrassment and inferiority of the poetaster? Well, I can tell you, GH recommends the practitioners of automatism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Robert Desnos is our (hu)man \u2013 \u2018far and away the best of those Surreal men\u2019 (139). I have to look into this. Peter Stockwell\u2019s book The Language of Surrealism<\/em> is certainly helpful. He writes: \u2018in principle anyone could engage in automatic writing\u2019, and refers to a \u2018meeting on 25 September 1922 [the year of \u2018The Waste Land\u2019, and of Ulysses<\/em>], in [Andr\u00e9] Breton\u2019s studio on the Rue de Fontaine in Paris, at which [Ren\u00e9] Crevel, newly arrived from a spiritualist s\u00e9ance, suggested using the same technique for writing.\u2019<\/p>\n

Apparently, Robert Desnos was proficient in writing during a \u2018self-induced trance-like sleep\u2019, \u2018in which striking images were often expressed with dense echoic sound-effects of alliteration, rhyme and punning.\u2019 He wrote, for instance: \u2018Mots, \u00eates-vous des mythes et pareils aux myrtes des morts?<\/em> [Words, are you myths and similar to the myrtles of the dead?]\u2019 This was published \u2018in Litt\u00e9rature<\/em> in December 1922 . . . under the name Rrose S\u00e9lavy (a pun on eros<\/em>, c\u2019est la vie<\/em>)\u201d. And these good mots duly make their appearance in Baruch \u2013 check number 139. Is this the discombobulating method?<\/p>\n

There has to be something in this for the gnostic Justin, right? I can\u2019t prove this \u2013 (Go-ogle doesn\u2019t know, for heaven\u2019s sake \u2013 how agnostic is that?) \u2013 but I think the line quoted in poem 73 of this Book of Baruch<\/em>: \u2018To run on empty is to achieve a sort of hallucinatory abundance and clarity\u2019 \u2013 I think this must be a translation of something in Andr\u00e9 Breton\u2019s Manifesto of Surrealism<\/em> (1924), and that Breton is the \u2018Parnassian and \u2026 sassy man\u2019 also mentioned there, (not Hopkins, who is above that, as we know).<\/p>\n

\"\"
Andr\u00e9 Breton in 1924.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The paradox, the oxymoron \u2013 they\u2019re pretty surreal, aren\u2019t they? GH always had plenty of time for the paradox, the oxymoron; and the cryptogram too, I\u2019d say; all is surreal in such verbal tourbillions (Robert Graves\u2019 brave word; see \u2018On Portents\u2019, and appraised by GH in one of his lectures). And \u2013 just in passing \u2013 there\u2019s plenty of focus in Baruch<\/em> on \u2018codes\u2019 \u2013 \u2018the codes from London were always that absurd\u2019 (89) \u2013 and the weird poetic lines\/codes in Jean Cocteau\u2019s film Orph\u00e9e <\/em>(\u2018a cultural film of established acclaim\u2019 (139)), and \u2013 would you believe it? \u2013 Alan Turing\u2019s turned up (227).<\/p>\n

There is something in this. Let\u2019s remember, those codes did mean something, (to those in the know, to those in the R\u00e9sistance (89) or the Widerstand<\/em> (255), for instance, God bless \u2018em). People do solve cryptograms, don\u2019t they? Poetasters are with the resistance too, right? Codes for a consistory. Like Polari, or Yiddish.<\/p>\n

But how much cryptic and recondite erudition can the nation \u2013 those to whom we bequeath all this \u2013 tolerate? (See 163) The poetaster will do well to remember how her work may be received; words of warning: \u2018Poem as inaccurate | prism inaccurately decoded; progressively derided; making honest | decent people appear stupid; all the pretence of a s\u00e9ance\u2019 (163).<\/p>\n

But take heart; let\u2019s not forget that final mystery about which the mystics advise, and via, apparently, this same automatic writing (see Evelyn Underhill\u2019s Mysticism<\/em>) \u2013 look at this in poem 40, our professor musing on \u2018intrinsic value\u2019 and John Donne\u2019s final writings: \u2018our grandest poetics | perform their mystic dance of savagely disputed provenance.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hallelujah. Hill-Justin notes, approvingly, \u2018Rouault\u2019s mystical aggressive passivity.\u2019 And has a mystical experience of his own, with \u2018[d]ense holly trees\u2019 (221). This is, after all, \u2018\u2019Geoff\u2019s Mystery Tour\u2019, perilous self-entertainment that would have | delighted my Aunt Nell, the bright one of our family.\u2019 (178) This delights me: \u2018All the mysterium of God is in the measure of time.\u2019 (183) Who knows otherwise?<\/p>\n

Form and Process<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So much for form and process? Worth pausing here; because I want to say that (what used to be called) the content of this mock-prophecy is absolutely fascinating too, no doubt about it, I\u2019m ashamed to admit. So I\u2019ll come back later, if you don\u2019t mind, to this thing about form and genre and provenance, this \u2018All Souls\u2019 Night\u2019 (Yeats) summoning to a final showdown, a last reckoning.<\/p>\n

A little bit about the content, even though the Professor insisted this is of no interest if it hasn\u2019t got \u2018technic\u2019, (also Yeats, (and Ezra Pound)). But we\u2019ve established the technic is automatism<\/em>, isn\u2019t it, the subjective-made-objective, the mask which is self-portrait, the sensibility-register. The anti-lyric, too. See 182: \u2018The form I choose is monologue though with frequent episodes of multi- | voiced fugue.\u2019<\/p>\n

Firstly, if you\u2019re the sort of person who likes to hear, say, Sir Geoffrey Hill choose his favourite bits of music, (he was once on Radio 3\u2019s Private Passions, where the \u2018Coventry Carol\u2019 played alongside Jimi Hendrix\u2019s \u2018Star-spangled Banner\u2019), well, this will be a revelation, (as prophecies are supposed to be, no?)<\/p>\n

Here \u2013 this is important to say \u2013 you have to simultaneously hear, as counterpoint to various musical miracles, the bells in Wren\u2019s churches crashing to the ground during the Blitz. This prophecy is \u2018loud with falling bell-chambers\u2019 (10), \u2018bells, a last | cascade of thrashing, mangled squeals\u2019 (36), \u2018bells falling and bawling\u2019 (2); and \u2018the toppling creel of half- | melted bell-metal\u2019 provides a great metaphor for automatic writing and this whole book: \u2018astonishing collocations of syntax and semiotics\u2019 (36). Hill-Justin listens, too, hoping to \u201ccough up the phlegm of a poem\u201d, to<\/p>\n

The mingled throps and thrangs of bell-ropes and bell metal, mangled and<\/em>
\n_\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 muffled songs, when you stand beneath the bell chamber, hearing the
\n<\/em>_\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ropes grunt and clamber.<\/em> (72)<\/p>\n

We might recall the opening lines of Yeats\u2019 s\u00e9ance poem, \u2018All Souls\u2019 Night: Epilogue to \u2018A Vision\u2019\u2019:<\/p>\n

Midnight has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
\n<\/em>And many a lesser bell sound through the room;
\n<\/em>And it is All Souls\u2019 Night<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
The Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, designed by Christopher Wren.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I think it\u2019s midnight for GH too, and HaShem\u2019s in the tomb, and Tennyson\u2019s \u2018Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky\u2019 is a distant memory, (lacking some \u2018obduracy of the mind\u2019s address\u2019, apparently (69)). When Hill-Justin tried to compose music himself, he informs us, he failed: \u2018My piano compositions failed because I could not compose a convincing | ground bass\u2019 (249). He succeeds here, with Wren\u2019s crashing bells.<\/p>\n

We should remember GH didn\u2019t want to be a poet, after all:<\/p>\n

I would have prayed to excel in mathematics and music if I had prayed at all;<\/em>
\n_\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 envying Wren and the musicians of the Chapel Royal; passacaglias and
\n<\/em>_\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Purcell; for that is where the mind stands to itself, albeit in hell. (25)<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, look \u2013 listen! \u2013 the music of Purcell does seem to come out on top here. (When GH was invited by The Economist<\/em> to read his Clavics<\/em> and work-in-progress at the Purcell Room on the South Bank in 2011 \u2013 \u2018What! Six daybooks, already?\u2019 we all declared. (Actually, seven now.) \u2013 GH closed proceedings with the most menacing<\/em> and atoning<\/em> rendition of Hopkins\u2019 sonnet \u2018Henry Purcell\u2019 you could ever dread to hear.) GH seems to agree with what Hopkins says of Purcell:<\/p>\n

The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell and praises him
\n<\/em>that, whereas other musicians have given utterance to the moods of
\n<\/em>man\u2019s mind, he has, beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and
\n<\/em>species of man as created both in him and in all men generally.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wow! (Plenty of derogatory stuff about \u2018moods\u2019 as the domain of mere poetasting in Baruch, be warned.)<\/p>\n

And Hopkins is a key presence at the table \u2013 this c\u00e9nacle \u2013 throughout. In 176 Hopkins and Purcell are linked via Purcell\u2019s ability to create \u2018sprung rhythm | two centuries before \u2018That Nature is a Heraclitean fire\u2019 which its | rediscoverer \u2013 a devout Purcell admirer \u2013 felt duty bound to keep | hidden lest he should bring notoriety upon the Society in which you do | as you are bidden.\u2019<\/p>\n

Odes and Welcome Songs<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see which bits of Purcell are playing at the Feast, on \u2018the wind-up gramophone\u2019 (137). Well, it seems to be his Odes and Welcome Songs (185; 187; 188), and this is what Hill-Justin says of them: \u2018these \u2018welcome songs\u2019 feature a benign vision for the future of the | kingdom in accordance with divine nature\u2019 (188).<\/p>\n

He goes on to express extraordinary gratitude and estimation (189): \u2018Tell him his saddest | music well-betides us, elides all but our last, worst fears.\u2019 Plenty of compensations, then, even after a referendum and all history\u2019s idiot repetitions.<\/p>\n

So much for content? O, but look out for, nevertheless, Schubert\u2019s Quintet (70; 253), Handel\u2019s Saul (79) \u2013 \u2018how profound the accessible can be, | given mastery\u201d \u2013 Thirties jazz \u2013\u00a0 \u201caccurate music appropriate to heaven\u201d (36) \u2013 Britten\u2019s A Ceremony of Carols (130), \u2018L\u2019hymne de l\u2019Union Europ\u00e9enne\u2019 (140), symphony number 9 by Malcolm Arnold \u2013 \u2018old Malc\u2019 \u2013 \u201cthat final untri- | umphing lento of twenty-odd minutes\u201d, \u201cits near subliminal song\u201d (197), and Ralph Vaughan Williams:<\/p>\n

I bless the marvellous
\n<\/em>\u2018Five Mystical Songs\u2019: although strong music cannot<\/em>
\n_\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 even begin to mend wrongs, it is, in some way I wish I could well relate,
\n<\/em>_\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 analogous to the Pentecostal tongues.<\/em> (85)<\/p>\n

Ok. So \u2013 poetry \u2013 this poetry \u2013 aspires to the condition of music, yes? Well, I\u2019m not sure about that with Hill-Justin, after all. Set down this, set down this: \u2018Not | music. Hebrew. Poetry aspires | to the condition of Hebrew.\u2019<\/p>\n

Of course! Now we\u2019re talking. This naughty apophthegm is ripped from Hill\u2019s 2000 prophecy, Speech! Speech!<\/em> (poem 20). Such wisdom bears contemplation. (Well, I\u2019m reading Yuri Slezkine\u2019s The Jewish Century<\/em> as back-up).<\/p>\n

And I was always told the three archetypes of the human condition to be Faust<\/em>, Don Juan<\/em> and Ahasuerus<\/em>, don\u2019t you know. [Whilst we\u2019re here, Wikipedia keeps us informed that Kant himself refers to the legendary Ahasuerus, wandering Jew, in his The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God<\/em>. I\u2019m reminded of Hill\u2019s long-time interest in Peirce\u2019s \u2018A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God\u2019. \u2013 Sorry \u2013 am I going into s\u00e9ance mode?] And what about Lear as archetype too (God\u2019s spy)? What about Falstaff (God\u2019s clown)? Our prophet is all these.)<\/p>\n

Hill-Justin \u2013 the poet-prophet \u2013 as Ahasuerus. Exiled, unhoused Adam. Well, this did preoccupy John Milton at the end of all his hopes and dreams. Where did it all go wrong? And Milton\u2019s all over The Book of Baruch<\/em>, as I say. \u2018Latterly, led by the hand in his good grey coat, a blind good looker, looking like | a Quaker.\u2019 (18)<\/p>\n

Supremely non-conformist, speaking truth to power, aficionado of peace. And a reader \u2013 don\u2019t you know \u2013 of the Hebrew scriptures. Geoffrey Hill, Hebraist, (there was a quotation in Hebrew for\u00a0The Triumph of Love<\/em> (1998), wasn\u2019t there?) He refers mysteriously in 96 to \u2018the | inexorable semitic-semantic code.\u2019 Is this that \u2018God\u2019s grammar\u2019 thing, again; isn\u2019t that from John Donne? Still, the still, small voice.<\/p>\n

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John Milton 1608-1674<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Love Supreme<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The gnostic Justin, we think, was \u2018Jewish-Christian\u2019, and, excitingly, considered a heretic by Hippolytus, (third century). And look at this:<\/p>\n

But because I am not a Jew I desire to know all that was said when, once a year,
\n__\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the high priest convened in holy fear with the Ark of God.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s naughtiness and perspicacity, his agile-mindedness and contrariness and impetuosity all remind me, at least, of the Hebrew prophets. It\u2019s a familiarity with HaShem (her omniscience and inordinacy), a longing to hear HaShem\u2019s voice (in the gathered silence of this Quakerly meeting), which makes Hill\u2019s encyclopaedic mind, too, into a psaltery of praise and vexation and vexatiousness. Isn\u2019t this the Hebraic mindset? Forgive me.<\/p>\n

Hill repeats this sense, actually, of exclusion from, what, the chosen race? In 216: \u2018I am not a Jew though I married one; and I subscribe to their iron scorn.\u2019<\/p>\n

Jewish cultural illuminati are prominent and are revered. Besides the anonymous authors of the Gnostic Bible (40) and The Book of Job<\/em> (86), there\u2019s Simone Weil, of course, Robert Desnos (very much so), Len Rosoman and his commentary on the epicentral Mad Meg painting (is it a pogrom?) by Brueghel; David Bomberg too, Celan, Tzara, Gershom Scholem (think his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism<\/em> (1941)), the Mandelstams, Gillian Rose (quoting from his late friend\u2019s Judaism and Modernity<\/em>, wouldn\u2019t you know; must read this), Sandy Goehr (his co-eval), even Leopold Bloom; the Jewish century, I\u2019m convinced.<\/p>\n

We see \u2018Willy Brandt at the | Ghetto memorial\u2019 (77), consider \u2018the topic of Jews and usury\u2019 (186), never forgetting strains of antisemitism in \u2018my grievous heroes\u2019 (186; 111; 177). And a strange and riddling identification: \u2018Ich bin Dreyfus<\/em>, an old man who walks with a cane, thus \u2013 \u2018 (189). If poetry aspires to the condition of Hebrew, then I suppose the poet\u2019s task is both to resist and to aspire to scriptural authority for herself. A bit much for a poetaster, truth be told.<\/p>\n

Anacoluthon<\/em>!, as decency demands. Yes, even Love Supreme<\/em> has to come to an end. Let me finish, please. We\u2019ve got the Hebraic mindset then, the surrealist automatism<\/em> and discombobulation, the musical passacaglia \u2013 and we\u2019ve also got pained awareness of the betrayal of the working class (and the European mindset, bien s\u00fbr<\/em>), the death of intrinsic value (O, no it\u2019s not!), there\u2019s Hill\u2019s gnostic \u2018back garden apple\u2019, his parents\u2019 suffering and his childhood, poet-soldiers and \u2013 pilots, (Eric Ravilious, d. 1942 (242)), war photography (Mathew Brady (247)), divination (everywhere), and Coke (1552-1634) and Grotius (1583-1645) laying the foundations for international law, as all great poets do, too. Mind you, let\u2019s be clear:<\/p>\n

The waters recede: neither covenant nor creed.<\/em> (236)<\/p>\n

This great prose poem, divine table-talk, is endless. You can\u2019t stop loving it. As Ezra Pound wrote of Wyndham Lewis\u2019s work in 1917 on illustrations for Timon of Athens, (and quoted in Baruch<\/em>, 229), we hear everywhere the prophetic \u201cfury of intelligence baffled and inspired by circumjacent stupidity.\u201d But this fury is never unmixed with \u201c \u2018summer\u2019s sovereign good\u2019\u201d (from, is it, the last poem Hopkins wrote?) and (though not \u201cirrefutable\u201d) \u201cevidence of cosmic cadence\u201d (256). How GH loved this all, all this wisdom, all this folly.<\/p>\n

Love you, Professor. Lead the way.<\/p>\n

Intrinsic value that I care about is as tenuous and wiry as a bit of great verse.<\/em> (163)<\/p>\n

It is a great gift, and I, for one, am moved to tears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A poetaster\u2019s tribute to Geoffrey Hill\u2019s The Book of Baruch by the Gnostic Justin (2019). I heard Sir Geoffrey refer many times in his Oxford lectures (2010-2015) to our current situation as one of \u2018plutocratic anarchy\u2019. I suspect that, like many, he was fascinated and frustrated by the oxymoronic sight of ordinary, \u2018common\u2019 people persistently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":7282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[510,746,936,1022,3662,3762,4920,4965,6194,8548,8761,8958,9207,9913],"class_list":["post-7260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-andre-breton","tag-automatism","tag-bertolt-brecht","tag-blade-runner","tag-geoffrey-hill","tag-gnostic","tag-johannes-climacus","tag-john-milton","tag-milton","tag-soren-kierkegaard","tag-surrealism","tag-the-book-of-baruch-by-gnostic-justin","tag-the-orators","tag-w-h-auden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}