The Fighting Téméraire is my favourite painting.  So it is for the English.  If you want to know why, read the views of William Makepeace Thackeray set out below.  The painting for me is like parts of Shakespeare or Mozart – a show stopper that renders language useless.  But they did not have to wait a century for people to get the point.

‘If you are particularly anxious to know what is the best picture in the room, not the biggest, and exactly contrary to the best, I must request you to turn your attention to a noble river-piece by J. W. M. Turner, Esquire, R.A., “The Fighting Téméraire” — as grand a painting as ever figured on the walls of any Academy, or came from the easel of any painter. The old Téméraire is dragged to her last home by a little, spiteful, diabolical steamer. A mighty red sun, amidst a host of flaring clouds, sinks to rest on one side of the picture, and illumines a river that seems interminable, and a countless navy that fades away into such a wonderful distance as never was painted before. The little demon of a steamer is belching out a volume (why do I say a volume? not a hundred volumes could express it) of foul, lurid, red-hot, malignant smoke, paddling furiously, and lashing up the water round about it; while behind it (a cold grey moon looking down on it), slow, sad, and majestic, follows the brave old ship, with death, as it were, written on her. I think we ought not, in common gratitude, to sacrifice entirely these noble old champions of ours, but that we should have somewhere a museum of their skeletons, which our children might visit, and think of the brave deeds which were done in them. The bones of the Agammemnon and the Captain, the Vanguard, the Culloden, and the Victory ought to be sacred relics, for Englishmen to worship almost. Think of them when alive, and braving the battle and the breeze, they carried Nelson and his heroes victorious by the cape of Saint Vincent, in the dark waters of Aboukir, and through the fatal conflict of Trafalgar. All these things, my dear Bricabrac, are, you will say, absurd, and not to the purpose. Be it so; but Bowbellites as we are, we Cockneys feel our hearts leap up when we recall them to memory; and every clerk in Threadneedle Street feels the strength of a Nelson, when he thinks of the mighty actions performed by him.

It is absurd, you will say (and with a great deal of reason), for Titmarsh, or any other Briton, to grow so politically enthusiastic about a four-foot canvas, representing a ship, a steamer, a river, and a sunset. But herein surely lies the power of the great artist. He makes you see and think of a great deal more than the objects before you; he knows how to soothe or intoxicate, to fire or to depress, by a few notes, or forms, or colours, of which we cannot trace the effect to the source, but only acknowledge the power. I recollect some years ago, at the theatre at Weimar, hearing Beethoven’s “Battle of Vittoria,” in which, amidst a storm of glorious music, the air of ” God save the King” was introduced. The very instant it began, every Englishman in the house was bolt upright, and so stood reverently until the air was played out. Why so? From some such thrill of excitement as makes us glow and rejoice over Mr. Turner and his “Fighting Téméraire” which I am sure, when the art of translating colours into music or poetry shall be discovered, will be found to be a magnificent national ode or piece of music.

I must tell you, however, that Mr. Turner’s performances are the most part quite incomprehensible. to me; and that his other pictures, which he is pleased to call “Cicero at his Villa,” “Agrippina with the Ashes of Germanicus,” “Pluto carrying off Proserpina,” or what you will, are not a whit more natural, or less mad, than they used to be in former years, since he has taken nature, or attempted (like your French barbers) to embellish it…. O ye gods ! why will he not stick to copying her majestical countenance, instead of daubing it with some absurd antics of his own?’

Passing Bull 375 – Nonsense about a cricketer

Where we live here in Australia, it is not unlawful to say something that is unreasonable, unhinged, or likely to offend someone.  It is different in Iran, Russia, or Turkey. 

But an Australian cricketer, Usman Khawaja, as decent a national representative as we are likely to see, is being roundly castigated for making what are called ‘motherhood’ statements.  Among other things, it is said that in the context of a dreadful war, the statements are ‘political’. 

To the extent that you can give any meaning to that kind of weasel proposition, it is bloody dangerous.  The last form of speech you want to shut down is ‘political’ speech.  That is why people who want to undermine decency in public life move to stop people speaking out against them.  And war being the scourge of humanity, it is vital that people are free to say so.  The greatest crimes against humanity have been committed by people who so terrified others that they kept silent in the face of the crimes of their government.

There are two paintings that are monuments not just to Spanish art but to civilisation – and not just western civilisation.  They are The Third of May 1808 by Goya, and Guernica by Picasso.  They are and have been admired and revered throughput the world.  They are protests against, and denunciations of, the horrors of war by two of the greatest painters we have known.  And each artist obviously invested what might be called his soul into the painting.  And, if you wanted to, you might say that each painting involved a statement that might be called moral, or political, or worse – propaganda.  (For example, Guernica makes clear that the main victims of the bombing were women and children.)

Any such statement about either painting being ‘political’ would add precisely nothing to our understanding of the world, but I have not heard it said that Goya should also have also put forward the views of Napoleon and the Vatican on his subject, or that Picasso should have also put forward the views of Hitler, Franco, Mussolini and the Vatican on his subject.  (Franco saw himself as standing for Christendom and engaged the clergy in his missions of death.)

Sadly, there are times when the level of what passes for debate about the current war in the Middle East fails to rise above a squabble between seven-year-olds behind the State School shelter shed and the universal riposte – ‘Well – you started it!’ 

In the name of Heaven, you can be scolded for suggesting that people should stop killing each other – at least for a while.  The word ‘ceasefire’ is apparently fraught – very fraught.

And may I come back to art and politics or morals?  Have you ever felt like me at a place like the Uffizi Gallery – ‘If I see just one more half-naked bloke dying in agony of open wounds, I will throw up on the bloody spot, and get out of this chamber horrors forever’?  When you look at the art of what we call the Renaissance, all that stuff that Kenneth Clark moons over, how much of it was not full-on propaganda for what was then in the process of ceasing to be the one universal church?

Blessings for Christmas – if I may be permitted either of those terms.

Khawaja – Gaza - freedom of speech – offensive language,

According to Shakespeare, the mob went wild when Caesar refused the crown.  They loved him even more when he failed physically in front of them.  He could be one of them!

He could also be like Trump – who said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and his followers would not blink. 

Casca had seen it all.

Marry, before he fell down, when he perceived the common herd was glad he refused the crown, he plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut.  An I had been a man of any occupation, if I would not have taken him at a word, I would I might go to hell among the rogues.  And so he fell.  When he came to himself again, he said, if he had done or said anything amiss, he desired their worships to think it was his infirmity.  Three or four wenches, where I stood, cried ‘Alas, good soul!’ and forgave him with all their hearts: but there’s no heed to be taken of them; if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.  (1.2.269-275)

A learned commentator (Philip Brockbank) says:

Caesar uses his histrionic abilities to satisfy his audience’s expectations, contriving to make himself appear not only more god like but also more human than ordinary mortals.  That tense and ambivalent relationship between the public and its leader can make or unmake tyrants – it is ready to go either way – the divergence effect of catastrophe theory.  Because the people are satisfied as spectators, it seems that they acquiesce in or participate in the casual terror of Caesar’s regime.

The playwright saw it all – if Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less.

Except that Trump would not have refused the crown.  He can’t help himself. 

And in the play, the crowd is about to whipped up to havoc and the dogs of war by the most duplicitous piece of mob oratory known in our letters – and then they butcher an innocent poet in the Roman gutter. 

P J Brockbank was led to conclude his paper as follows.

The play was, and remains, capable of awaking its audiences to a fuller and more sympathetic understanding of the catastrophic dynamics of human community.  But if it teaches us to distrust our rulers, it also teaches us to distrust the distrusters.

The World Cup in cricket was a great result for Australia. 

Big games turn on character.  This team has it, and it has character as a team.  It is obviously very well led and coached.  You can tell that from their demeanour on and off the field.  The captain, coaches and selectors deserve all the praise they are getting. 

I cannot recall a better run outfit wearing my colours than the squad that has just won the World Cup.  I can recall disasters – under people like Langer or Michael Clarke. 

And the previous winners were infected by an arrogance that still showed itself in the denigration of Cummins – who is in my view the model for captain of the Australian cricket team.  Which makes him about the most important person in Australia.  (The white ants are as helpful as the RSL on Vietnam veterans.)

The final was set up by the three quicks and the best fielding in the competition.  (The semi-final was in my view decided on fielding.)  I think the selectors have struck the right balance in both bowling and batting.  Zampa is now a strike bowler, as good as any.  Smith and Marnus give the batting test match ballast, and Marnus and Warner set the tone for fielding.  The scene was set precisely to suit Marnus in our innings.  He is just the foil for hitters off the leash like Maxwell or Head.  When the third wicket fell, Ian Smith called the reaction of Head and Marnus one of ‘absolute courage.’ Marnus would be about the first bloke I would pick. 

And every team needs cheer leaders and talismen.

Good luck to all of them.  This is what Australian cricket is capable of and what we should get.  And what our children should grow up with.

The national footy codes, with the exception of the Matildas and, on a good day, the boys, can just look on and weep.

Finally, a word for those gentlemen at Lord’s who insulted those wearing my colours – you have not, and you never will, put a team in the field as good as this one of mine.

World Cup

The World Cup in cricket was a great result for Australia. 

Big games turn on character.  This team has it, and it has character as a team.  It is obviously very well led and coached.  You can tell that from their demeanour on and off the field.  The captain, coaches and selectors deserve all the praise they are getting. 

I cannot recall a better run outfit wearing my colours than the squad that has just won the World Cup.  I can recall disasters – under people like Langer or Michael Clarke. 

And the previous winners were infected by an arrogance that still showed itself in the denigration of Cummins – who is in my view the model for captain of the Australian cricket team.  Which makes him about the most important person in Australia.  (The white ants are as helpful as the RSL on Vietnam veterans.)

The final was set up by the three quicks and the best fielding in the competition.  (The semi-final was in my view decided on fielding.)  I think the selectors have struck the right balance in both bowling and batting.  Zampa is now a strike bowler, as good as any.  Smith and Marnus give the batting test match ballast, and Marnus and Warner set the tone for fielding.  The scene was set precisely to suit Marnus in our innings.  He is just the foil for hitters off the leash like Maxwell or Head.  When the third wicket fell, Ian Smith called the reaction of Head and Marnus one of ‘absolute courage.’ Marnus would be about the first bloke I would pick. 

And every team needs cheer leaders and talismen.

Good luck to all of them.  This is what Australian cricket is capable of and what we should get.  And what our children should grow up with.

The national footy codes, with the exception of the Matildas and, on a good day, the boys, can just look on and weep.

Finally, a word for those gentlemen at Lord’s who insulted those wearing my colours – you have not, and you never will, put a team in the field as good as this one of mine.

A political row in England erupted when a sacked Minister accused her Prime Minister of breaching a secret deal between them.  She says that to secure her support in his bid for the top job, she extracted promises from him about government policy – relating, say, to the government of Northern Ireland. 

Neither would or could allege that any such agreement could be binding in law.  But it is said be binding in honour – that is, morally binding.

But how could this be so?  A Minister of the Crown is in a position of trust.  He or she must act in good faith, and avoid assuming obligations to others that might conflict with the obligations of their office.  And they must account candidly to the public for the way they discharge their duty.

They cannot do that if they have subjected themselves to an obligation to another as to how they will conduct their office which they cannot divulge to the public.

And that is before you get to the question: Why did the deal have to be secret?

Ministers of the Crown must have the confidence of Parliament and the King.  They are obliged by their office to give true counsel to the King – that is, they are obliged to give such advice as they consider best suited to the nature of the case.  And they must candidly account for the way they discharge such obligations. 

Ministers fail in discharging those obligations if they undertake obligations with third parties about the way they will perform them in a way that precludes them from revealing such undertakings to other people.

Of course compromises and deals are the stuff of politics – but not when they have the consequences referred to above.

The deal referred to in the press was said to have been made between one Minister and another.  Imagine the uproar if the other was not a Minister, but Rupert Murdoch, Arthur Scargill, or Vladimir Putin.

That these considerations go unremarked shows how far we have fallen.

Recent events in the Middle East are shocking, but they are not novel in our history. 

We did not have to wait for Stalin, Hitler or Mao to see sheer depravity.  We saw it in the nation that thought it was the most civilised in Europe, and therefore the world, in 1792 in France, in what are called the September Massacres. 

The French were threatened from outside and inside.  Here are extracts from Carlyle, The French Revolution.

So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the Prison-Registers before them; unwonted wild tumult howling all round: the Prisoners in dread expectancy within.  Swift: a name is called; bolts jingle, a Prisoner is there.  A few questions are put; swiftly this sudden Jury decides: Royalist Plotter or not?  Clearly not; in that case, Let the Prisoner be enlarged With Vive la Nation. Probably yea; then still, Let the Prisoner be enlarged, but without Vive la Nation; or else it may run, Let the prisoner be conducted to La Force.  At La Force again their formula is, Let the Prisoner be conducted to the Abbaye.—‘To La Force then!’  Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man; he is at the outer gate; “enlarged,” or “conducted,”—not into La Force, but into a howling sea; forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes and pikes; and sinks, hewn asunder.  And another sinks, and another; and there forms itself a piled heap of corpses, and the kennels begin to run red.  Fancy the yells of these men, their faces of sweat and blood; the crueller shrieks of these women, for there are women too; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it all! …….

Man after man is cut down; the sabres need sharpening, the killers refresh themselves from wine jugs.  Onward and onward goes the butchery; the loud yells wearying down into bass growls.  A sombre-faced, shifting multitude looks on; in dull approval, or dull disapproval; in dull recognition that it is Necessity.  “An Anglais in drab greatcoat” was seen, or seemed to be seen, serving liquor from his own dram-bottle;—for what purpose, “if not set on by Pitt,” Satan and himself know best!  Witty Dr. Moore grew sick on approaching, and turned into another street.—Quick enough goes this Jury-Court; and rigorous. The brave are not spared, nor the beautiful, nor the weak……

In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books: “To workers employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons “who presided over these dangerous operations,” so much,—in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling.  To carters employed to “the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,” at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an entry.  Then so many francs and odd sous “for the necessary quantity of quick-lime!”  Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking up:—seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis.  Take pity on the Sons of Men!—Mercier saw it, as he walked down “the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:” but not a Hand; it was a Foot,—which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven?  Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation? Even there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,—surely for right not for wrong, for good not evil! “I saw that Foot,” says Mercier; “I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septembers……

But the Constituted Authorities, all this while?  The Legislative Assembly; the Six Ministers; the Townhall; Santerre with the National Guard?—It is very curious to think what a City is.  Theatres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open every night during these prodigies: while right-arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on melodious catgut; at the very instant when Abbé Sicard was clambering up his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing were amiss.

But of course, the horror got so much worse when the government orchestrated the killing in what is known as the Terror – which led I think to the term ‘terrorist.’  That just about tipped Carlyle over the edge.

One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still mention; and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon. Great talk is of these Perruques blondes: O Reader, they are made from the Heads of Guillotined women!  The locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her blond German Frankism his black Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn affectionately, as relics; rendering one suspect?.   Citizens use them, not without mockery; of a rather cannibal sort.

Still deeper into one’s heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! “At Meudon,” says Montgaillard with considerable calmness, “there was a Tannery of Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of which perfectly good wash-leather was made:” for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture! —History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas’s Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide!   Alas then, is man’s civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?  Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial.

In France the issue involved crown and caste.  In the Middle East, God and the tribe are there.  Third parties in all.

But the misery blights mankind.

You may be aware of my fondness for Tony Tanner on Shakespeare.  He was taught by Philip Brockbank.  Brockbank wrote a book Players of Shakespeare.  RSC leaders talk of some great characters.  There is a follow up. 

The book is immensely instructive.  Shakespeare was in business to entertain.  This is from the people who do the entertainment.  Why have not we seen it before?

I will leave it to the Melbourne Shakespeare Society to look at some characters in detail, but here are some morsels.

Brockbank:

The life of a part, as distinct from its significance, is the prime responsibility of the actor, and actors have traditionally been suspicious of theory or analysis, ascribing the creation of character in performance to decisions instinctively made, perceptions unconsciously arrived at, fine discriminations mysteriously achieved.  ‘Analysis,’ said Michael Redgrave, ‘does not come easily….’

So it is in my profession – and we might wonder why actors do not make more of theirs.  But suspicion of analysis dos not mean not being ruled by the text – and studying it with religious zeal.

Patrick Stewart on Shylock:

Shylock and his kind are outsiders, strangers, feared and hated for being different.  They belong to the world’s minorities.  They are, as the laws of Venice state, alien, stamped by that world to be always vulnerable and at risk; therefore survival is paramount….But however important Jewishness and antisemitism are in the play, they are secondary to the consideration of Shylock the man; unhappy, unloved, lonely, frightened and angry….Shakespeare created a portrait of an outsider who happened to be a Jew.

When Donald Sinden was offered the part of Malvolio, he said the part was tragic.  His director thanked God.  At the end of his essay, Sinden says suicide is the only option for Malvolio.  Comedy often entails cruelty.

Michael Pennington sees Hamlet as born in the wrong time and place:

…alongside the evident generosity and grace in the man, there was now a strong current of violence, particularly toward the women in his life, aggravated by a sense of betrayal , and sadly misdirected towards them rather than toward his real enemy….A deep concern for the past runs through him and he never speaks of the future.

The final essay is by David Suchet on Caliban.  Suchet was obviously ferociously bright and a keen analyst of the text.  Caliban is seen as less than human and rudely dispossessed of his native land by someone of superior force.  Empire builders saw the natives as monsters.  Suchet is guided not just by the language, but its sound.

This discovery led to my playing Caliban at times dangerous and at times childish, but at all times totally spontaneous… Caliban has learned that being obedient he will be safe.  But when anybody else should ever come to his island again, he certainly will not even try to befriend them – he will kill on sight.

Well, as Babe Ruth said, when he had knocked one into the bleachers – ‘How do you like them apples?’

The insight of this playwright into us is endless.

And it is with us here now.