Continuing my defence of my dog walking wages, in the edition of the LRB that I mentioned yesterday, I also found these gems.
1) In a review by Julian Barnes, I discovered what I'd been looking for for years - someone else who doesn't like Hugo. Barnes quotes Richard Cobb's description of him as "France's National Bore".
2) This Churchill comment (supposedly made to Stalin): " In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.".
3) Best of all, as so often, some unintentional humour, from a review of recent books about Iris Murdoch. It turns out that, when Murdoch was 20, she and some friends from Oxford formed a touring concert party called the Magpies and travelled round the Cotswolds, bringing dance, ballads and "allegorical Tudor drama to varyingly enthusiastic audiences" (sounds a bit like the sort of thing Lucky Jim's professor was "keen on").
As Rosemary Hill, the reviewer, explains, quoting liberally from Murdoch's diary of the period:
"Here, not quite a writer yet and not quite at war either, Murdoch is at her most endearing, earnestly practising 'Greensleeves' on the recorder in a field full of cows, discussing the international situation while wondering with rather more urgency whether the scenery will turn up in time. The journal evokes a Betjemanesque interwar world of japes and ginger biscuits, 'strenuous breakfasts' and undergraduate tantrums. "Apparently while I was singing 'Love is a sickness' yesterday Denys [another troupe member] gave an appalling display of temperament because he couldn't find his tights."
The Magpies went over very well in Aston Bampton, where the local children did some songs and dances in the interval and were 'most spontaneous and charming', but at Northleach everything was ruined by 'a great mob of toughs at the back' who reduced Denys to tears and sent Murdoch into a rage by laughing all through her ballad. She was inconsolable, she notes, despite the rest of the cast being 'terribly upset for me' ...Talk of politics among the Magpies was desultory, even as rumours of war grew louder: 'We try not to think of it at all - and find it amazingly easy.'"
Very sensible that Cobb.
ReplyDeleteDespite his words, I still feel ashamed to say that the last verse of this poem -
ReplyDeleteLa Vache (Hugo)
Devant la blanche ferme où parfois vers midi
Un vieillard vient s'asseoir sur le seuil attiédi,
Où cent poules gaîment mêlent leurs crêtes rouges,
Où, gardiens du sommeil, les dogues dans leurs bouges
Ecoutent les chansons du gardien du réveil,
Du beau coq vernissé qui reluit au soleil,
Une vache était là, tout à l'heure arrêtée.
Superbe, énorme, rousse et de blanc tachetée,
Douce comme une biche avec ses jeunes faons,
Elle avait sous le ventre un beau groupe d'enfants,
D'enfants aux dents de marbre, aux cheveux en broussailles
Frais, et plus charbonnés que de vieilles murailles,
Qui, bruyants, tous ensemble, à grands cris appelant
D'autres qui, tout petits, se hâtaient en tremblant,
Dérobant sans pitié quelque laitière absente,
Sous leur bouche joyeuse et peut-être blessante
Et sous leurs doigts pressant le lait pas mille trous,
Tiraient le pis fécond de la mère au poil roux.
Elle, bonne et puissante et de son trésor pleine,
Sous leurs mains par moments faisant frémir à peine
Son beau flanc plus ombré qu'un flanc de léopard,
Distraite, regardait vaguement quelque part.
Ainsi, Nature ! abri de toute créature !
O mère universelle ! indulgente Nature !
Ainsi, tous à la fois, mystiques et charnels,
Cherchant l'ombre et le lait sous tes flancs éternels,
Nous sommes là, savants, poëtes, pêle-mêle,
Pendus de toutes parts à ta forte mamelle !
Et tandis qu'affamés, avec des cris vainqueurs,
A tes sources sans fin désaltérant nos cœurs,
Pour en faire plus tard notre sang et nos âme,
Nous aspirons à flots ta lumière et ta flamme,
Les feuillages, les monts, les prés verts, le ciel bleu,
Toi, sans te déranger, tu rêves à ton Dieu !
- is, I think, the most nauseating thing I have ever read (mind you, I really hate milk)