Relics of St Salami

Or

Portrait of the English from the Inside

Local. Branded crazy. Crazy, so to speak. Urbane. Easy. Miserly-go-unlucky. Much easier, for example, to be crazy, internationale.

Home is constantly on the mind and reaps its rewards from bewilderment and admiration to public censure or hatred. But it’s damn’d hard to reap such benefits, especially if you are dealing with any interlocutor or used to watching him on the hoof. Too much attention. At international level it is somehow the same; you can afford to appear in whatever country, but not for long.

I took advantage of local legends about the eccentricity of each ethnic group, how being Russian means adopting the West European myth of the East Slavic bastard. Then, figuratively speaking, made a mattress out of crap and,without waiting for a reply, would snore happily away, leaving the receiving party in mute admiration ( or not?!)  I.e. An idiot abroad never attracts much attention, thus spake the prophet!!

… I could have been a contender: a promising journalist, a great artist, a talented animator ..  maybe I should never again communicate with anyone not of my own calibre ..   such people are a bad influence on my “epic” (soundtrax? re: Swell Maps??) biography .. I dropped a beat. Gave a financially embarrassed civil servant whom I met secretly in the underpass a hundred rouble note.

Once, leaving a tour, I got involved with a circle of strangers who were genuinely interested, (or “sympa”, as one of those French frogs would say). Transformed. Touchy. I would joke with them sometimes about whether it would be worth it to come to Berlin next time in a fucking tank. I got so drunk before some show in Kreuzberg that I confused the front of the stage with the back, as if I were a dyslexic.

Re: Owen Chadwick

Designed by the Fifth Man, on page 100 of this book, there exists a code which begins with a pencil line pointing to the words "justify intention ..." The bookmark neatly tucked behind the cover lists a series of pages numbers which unlock the rest, which states ".. of Just War: economic cost - West Berlin technology." I believe it to be a mediation upon corruption; upon the philosophy of Just War, a reflection upon communism and also on the relation of Church and State . More on this later.

No More Sorry

What if we were all wrong? What if Thomas More was just a man who lost his nerve? And if he wasn't a Catholic? And Anne Boleyn a Gentile Jewess? How does this relate to the search for Elizabeth I's true father? As if any of this would've occurred to the paranoiac King Henry.. As if Psalm 46 wasn't a mischievous clue by the mysterious, ineffable and ever-elusive "Hand D"..

Created as a response to the American Constitution, Empire of the Senseless consists of three major chapters which can be read as opposing its core values “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Beginning with ‘Elegy for the World of our Fathers’, Kathy Acker opens with a chapter based on ‘World of our Fathers' by Irving Howe. By means of this novel, which narrates the journey made by the East European Jews to America, she rewrites its tale into one of death.

The second main chapter, ‘Alone’ may be read as a metaphor for entrapment in its description of the love affair between Abhor and Thivai.

In the third chapter, her oppositional reading of the “pursuit of happiness” illustrates the self-destructive nature of Abhor and what I see as an interesting foreshadowing of Arabic transformations.

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Economy and Violence in the Writings of Muriel Spark

There is something hypnotic about The Public Image.  With the character of Annabel as its main focus, Spark ignites a tale of an actress caught in a web of deceit due to her husband’s role in Rome, the "eternal" city.

My main point about this book is what I find its underlying cross-rhythm of nationalist and internationalist themes, a particular obsession of Spark’s. Dubbed the ‘Tiger-lady’, Annabel appears to function as an allegory of the dangers of conforming to type, highlighting the problematic nature of nationalism; its obsession with violent imagery, its viral sense of nostalgia and its atavism.

Written in 1968, the novel is set in Italy which, as Spark rather disingenuously stated in an interview with Martin McQuillan in 2001, was a time that “everyone was going international”. She suggests the reversion to type inherent in Catholic doctrine concerning the Deadly Sins and their influence on Italian culture, aptly summed in an early paragraph where Italy is described as

a country of dramatic history, cradled in the Seven Capital sins ... Never a week but one of these pure vices formed the topic of a new sensation at the time Annabel Christopher’s public image was launched and beyond that time

The rest of the passage quoted above goes on to imply how the “flagrant flouting” of what she calls “cardinal virtues” are symbolised in the figure of the Madonna, (aka "the Creature") a recurring motif in the novel. After her husband's violent suicide, Annabel shrewdly stages his redemption, making full use of the media and its mawkish interest in celebrity culture, watched over her Italian director who was

admiring her thrift. The rich understand thrift while the poor spend
quickly on trifles.

Ending with an enigmatic comparison of  the connection between Annabel and her child “as an empty shell contains, by its very structure, the echo and harking image of former and former seas”, Spark reflects upon the powerful nature of the symbol and its enduring influence.

Written at a time of an emerging ideology of the nation-state, The Public Image seems divided between the overtly sentimental culture of nationalism and the apolitical or "mystical" assumptions of statism.

~

Published on January 1st, 1984, The Only Problem narrates Muriel Spark's obsessions with terror, direct action and the Book of Job. This time around, it is the figure of Effie who emblematises the reactionary impulse aggravated by religious orthodoxy. In her support for the FLE, or 'Front de Liberation de l'Europe', her story illustrates how the search for freedom often involves what seems an impossible union of opposites, or extremes.

'Metaphors We Live By' states that oppositional points of view can only exist by virtue of holding the same metaphorical ground, even though their focus has a completely different viewpoint. Thus we can read Effie's opposite, Harvey Gotham, as doggedly pursuing his academic career to a state of piety almost as bad as the Hasadim. Yet not quite. For he cannot give up his love of his ex-wife. As if it were true, that all's well that ends well.

Whoso List to Hunt by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, 
But as for me, alas, I may no more: 
The vain travail hath worried me so sore, 
I am of them that furthest come behind. 
Yet may I by no means, my wearied mind 
Draw from the deer; but as she fleeth afore 
Fainting I follow; I leave off therefore, 
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. 
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, 
As well as I, may spend his time in vain; 
And graven with diamonds in letters plain 
There is written, her fair neck round about, 
"Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame."

Often understood by academics to be about Sir Thomas Wyatt's unrequited love for Anne Boleyn, who at the time had caught the eye of  Henry VIII, this poem is open to a variety of other readings. One analysis might view Wyatt as walking a dangerous political tightrope just for his acquaintance with Anne Boleyn. However, I believe that its subversion goes much deeper. 

The poem contains an acrostic: taking the first letters of each line the poem and then reassembling them, they form the code "Wyatt bids a fawn". Unlike other Renaissance acrostics though, this one has curiously not been brought to light to my knowledge. Like Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, Wyatt held an ambiguous relationship with the ruler he allegedly served and had his own particular views on the relation between Church and State. Based upon the woman who sparked a fundamental change in English history, the code in this poem offers a tantalising glimpse of covert politics in the English court during the Reformation. Her associations with Thomas Cromwell only serve to deepen the mystery.

A great deal of the ambiguity of this sonnet seems to arise from conjecture over its date of composition. According to his grandson, Wyatt felt a romantic connection with Anne the moment he met her when she returned from France, which would make the date 1522 at the earliest; yet more speculation suggests a lifelong friendship between Boleyn and Wyatt dating back many years before she first left France for England. Meanwhile Gilfillan (1858) sees the sonnet as alluding to the attraction the King felt for Anne Boleyn, thus dating the poem to the time of courtship prior to their marriage in 1533. Another poem of Wyatt's from the 1530s contains an acrostic spelling SHELTUN. An interpretation of this poem as a declaration of his love for Mary Shelton becomes more equivocal in the realisation that she was the first cousin of Anne Boleyn and mistress of Henry VIII in 1535. 

Rather than dealing with courtly love, the conventions of Petrarchan sonnets were often adopted as a cover when addressing highly sensitive subjects in allegorical form. In 1536, when controversy about the Queen's adultery was rife, the Orwellian atmosphere of the Tudor state would have reached a new height. Simon Schama, in his BBC programme A History of Britain (2000), shows how a sermon given by Anne Boleyn's almoner, John Skip, marks something of a turning point in her fortunes. Quoting the story of Queen Esther from the Old Testament, Skip appears to denounce "the wicked counsellor" to the King who advocates destruction of the Jews, while the Queen saves them by stepping in with different advice. What Skip apparently intended was to invite a comparison with the minister to the King in the biblical story; in this way, he implicates Cromwell, the controversial figure who made the marriage to Anne Boleyn possible and who introduced the Act of Suppression of the Lesser Monastries. Coming back to the sonnet, "caesar" is often cited as a reference to the King via its original meaning of emperor. In later Roman usage however, Caesar was the name given to the heir presumptive.

Earlier I mentioned the Queen's associations with Cromwell as a key to unlocking the meaning of 'Whoso List to Hunt'; its frequent allusions to a pursuit fraught with risk and the need for a covert approach are a subtle musing on the changes happening in the relation between Church and State. Her passionate belief in overcoming the corruption of the Church is often attested to, but the extent of her influence less so. With a network of spies, Cromwell was in a position to see to it that it was not in conflict with his own. The "fawn" that Wyatt refers to in the poem's acrostic may well suggest the naivety of Anne Boleyn, which contrasts with the more cynical manoeuvering of Cromwell, (who, perhaps, the poem is also addressing), in his pursuit of political power. However, it is also a word recalling how Machiavelli advised flattery and shows of affection when courting favour; a tactic Wyatt is perhaps advocating when dealing with the monarchy. Taking the conspiratorial theme even further, it could even be said that Wyatt and Boleyn were plotting the overthrow of the King, with the State imagined as the heir presumptive, as if it were a newly fledged animal, like a fawn. But of course that would be going too far ... Like Cromwell, Boleyn rose from extremely humble beginnings to what must have seemed unimaginable heights. Where she differed from him is less apparent. In a sonnet such as this which seems replete with codes, her wretched position can sometimes be frustratingly, almost maddeningly glimpsed; as if it would ever be quite close enough, not for Cromwell, nor Wyatt ... and certainly not for the King.

But then again, maybe all this speculation on conspiracy is just child's play... maybe the only available option to the 'elite' manuscript culture of the 16th century was to make a sardonic bid on the next heir to the throne, the supposed "heir presumptive" that would inherit the bloated ambitions of Henry VIII and his attempts to takeover the Holy See.