by D J Enright
There was trouble between the Perinthians and the Paeonians. An oracle told the Paeonians that once they had come face to face with the Perinthians, if the latter called on them by name they should attack, but otherwise withdraw. When the two armies met, a challenge was issued and three champions from each side met in single combat: man against man, horse against horse, and dog against dog. Seeing that their champions were gaining the upper hand in this curtain-raiser, the Perinthians shouted out the cry of triumph, Io Paean. Whereupon the Paeonians, following the oracle’s advice, fell on them at once and won a great victory.
The ancients had a proper respect for language, including the power of puns. (The derivation of ‘pun’ is uncertain, but it seems unrelated to ‘pundit’.) Puns were of immense value to the oracles: if an oracle proved wrong in one interpretation, another interpretation could show how right it was. Oracles weren’t meant to be simple and straightforward; if they were, there wouldn’t be anything divine about them. As it was, they stayed in business.
Quite possibly the oracles went in for anagrams, too. At the time when Alexander the Great was thinking of abandoning the siege of Tyre, he dreamt that he saw a satyr dancing round him. This he interpreted as an omen since the Greek for ‘satyr’ could be turned into the words ‘Tyre is yours’. And the next day Tyre was his. Tony Augarde (Oxford Guide to Word Games) also mentions the Frenchman, André Pujam, who discovered that his name could be read as ‘pendu à Riom’. Believing that anagrams foretold things to come, he committed a murder and was duly hanged at Riom, in Auvergne. So how should we interpret the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s anagram mentioned earlier: ‘Untied Kingdom’?
It appears that Cubby Broccoli, producer of James Bond films, when asked why he continued working into his eighties, replied: ‘If I didn’t, I would turn into a vegetable.’
‘A work of wonderful bad taste that is part cannibalistic sex and part revenge farce … What the play is actually about is anybody’s guess, but it’s so gut-wrenchingly funny that it doesn’t really matter.’ Two days later the same critic hailed a play featuring Jesus as a Texan homosexual whose relationship with Judas turns sour; his lover betrays him with a kiss. The play – called (a gift!) Corpus Christi – is ‘perfect for a time in which gay bars can be bombed’. And the critic jeers at ‘the knee-jerk reactions of self-appointed moral guardians’.
Knee-jerks: you are reactionary, I am responsive.
The reflection above is just one example of what someone in the same ‘paper of record’, reviewing (quite amiably) this book’s predecessor, referred to as ‘old-fartism’. I fear my flatulence hasn’t subsided since.
The language of criticism … Of a new novel: ‘Phrases, anecdotes and atmosphere roll off the page with the ease and sublime, scary grace of drunken eels.’ And what the devil does this signify, said of another book?: ‘Although I never want to read this novel again, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to a jaundiced reader.’ Are there special schools teaching how to express putative judgements in dazzling tropes, outré allusions and generally extravagant prose? ‘XY writes like a dream. Almost literally.’ One is so grateful for the ‘almost’ that one almost supposes one knows what is meant. A fourth novel elicits a weird but maybe apt token of praise: ‘As fresh as a new gun wound.’
The Man Without Qualities points towards a partial explanation of the phenomenon in its early stages. All those epithets distinguished men have applied to other distinguished men (Shakespeare’s ‘wealth of imagination’, Goethe’s ‘universality’, and so on) outlive their recipients and hang about in their hundreds. They have to be put to use, and hence you hear every fashionable writer (not to say tennis player) described as ‘great’, ‘richly imaginative’, ‘all-embracing’, etc. Eventually these epithets wear thin from excessive handling, and a new vocabulary is sought out.
*
How is it one acquires an unwarranted reputation for large-scale philanthropy? A letter from a mission school in Malawi, neatly handwritten, explains that by the grace of God they have discovered my name and address, and God has led them to ask for £1,000. Two days later another letter arrives, even more handsomely penned, with only one mistake (‘recieve’), from Gladys, a student nurse in Uganda, whose parents perished recently in a boat disaster on Lake Victoria, asking for a mere £200 towards her school dues. ‘It is a blessing from God that I have been able to write to you.’ An omniscient God really ought to be better informed on the subject of my finances. I send Gladys a little something, partly because of a cheery nurse of the same name at St George’s Hospital.
‘Praise the Lord for getting your Address!’ A letter from Kampala written – ostensibly written – by a young woman whose misfortunes do not bear repetition. Enclosed is a photocopy of a barely literate communication from a firm of Advocates and Solicitors respecting 216 dollars US in ground rent owed to ‘the land lord on which you are residing’, and informing the young woman that she has 45 days to pay this debt ‘or else you will face and bear the consequences without any regrets’. The communication ends: ‘No further Notice will be issued to you, so stand dully warned.’
Saw – was seen by – brilliant, witty surgeon at St George’s. ‘So you’re a writer?’ (Better than being a waiter?) To keep my end up, I mentioned the Oxford Book of Death. ‘Every doctor should have a copy, eh?’ he (who obviously didn’t) quipped. ‘And every patient,’ I muttered. He gave me an appointment for an endoscopy (‘Upper GI’) on the very next day at 1 p.m. I couldn’t believe it.
The next day I fast obediently and prepare spiritually (well, mentally) for the examination, with the help of a jaunty pamphlet. (‘The back of your throat may feel sore for the rest of the day. You may also feel a little bloated if some of the air has remained in your stomach. Both these discomforts will pass.’) Around 10 a.m. the surgeon’s secretary phones to explain, a little sheepishly, that as it happens the Endoscopy Unit is closed for maintenance work all day, and the appointment has to be deferred sine die. I can believe it.
Sine die? No such luck. The appointment was deferred by a mere week. I’d better believe it. Fasted from midnight (no great sacrifice). Then had to hang about, to the muted drone of anodyne pop music, for four hours. The procedure itself was surprisingly discomfort-free. Throat sprayed with something tasting of banana soaked in acid. The sedative injection worked like a dream, a dreamless one. Then a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits. I couldn’t believe it. No fault of the endoscopy that it couldn’t reveal the cause of my anaemia. Related to rheumatoid arthritis, our GP and I agreed. Just another consequence of officiousness on the part of the immune system, the white blood cells mistaking the red for noxious raiders and shooting them down.
Several years back, a scientific study concluded that a stag experiences severe stress when hunted. A supporter of stag-hunting promptly claimed that another scientific study, in progress, would prove the opposite: a hunted stag does not experience stress.
This new study has just been published. It maintains that the stress levels of a hunted stag are no greater than those of a racehorse engaged in long courses such as the Grand National (not much of an endorsement), and that the deer are not pushed far beyond their physiological limits. (No mention of their emotional limits.)
How stress levels are measured or physiological limits determined is not divulged. Perhaps some variety of tachograph or black box is attached to a test animal who is then chased across the countryside for a few hours. Clearly imagination and common sense are not consulted. Next we shall hear that stags, like other animals, positively enjoy being hunted – you can tell by the light in their eyes and the grin on their faces.
*
‘And God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ And multiply they did, and had dominion.
At first, a line of flame and smoke cloud in the distance.
Next, closer to, a mound of legs, sticking up in the air, wreathed in wispy smoke. Then, very close, clearly visible, piles of dead animals smouldering or waiting to be burnt or buried. We move from the first book of the Bible to the last. ‘There arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened.’ And, a sore point: ‘The merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.’
A fourteen-day-old calf is found alive, next to its dead mother, under a pile of slaughtered cows. Phoenix – as her perspicacious owners now call her – is eminently photogenic and features widely and repeatedly in the media. The Ministry of Agriculture attributes the ‘fuss’ about Phoenix to ‘hideous sentimentality’. None the less, shortly afterwards, the policy of slaughter is modified, and the calf is spared – ‘saved by a change of heart’, one newspaper says (doing the spin-doctors’ work for them), as if the Ministry had a heart. The Minister himself, however, insists that the change or ‘refinement’ of policy has been made in accord with scientific advice, not sentiment.
‘Hideous sentimentality’! The story of Phoenix is the only thing about the foot-and-mouth outbreak not to be hideous. ‘Sentimentality’ may seem a handy way of discounting some irksome little inconvenience – a sad reflection on our society, if so – but the Ministry really should watch its words. Phoenix has become a symbol, and governments do well to show a proper respect for symbols.
Now a pig unhelpfully called Porky is in peril. The pet of a couple of pensioners, who describe him as a ‘polite old gentleman’ disinclined to consort with farm animals, he too has his picture in the papers: pot-bellied, eighteen stone in weight, ten years of age, ‘less visually appealing’ than Phoenix, and less prone to arouse hideous sentimentality. The ‘refinement’ of policy doesn’t seem to favour Porky; there must have been quite a few gentlemanly or ladylike creatures among the eight million or so already slaughtered. Lawyers have been engaged to plead for his life. Lawyers and symbols don’t go well together. Moreover, we can have too much of a good thing. One symbol good, two symbols bad.
We old gents in Vernon Ward compliment the nurses at every turn – their skill, their kindness, their looks – and behave with the utmost decorum. But we can’t compete with the likes of this young doctor: Dr Leal by name, so a nurse vouchsafes, one of those crowding excitedly around him. Later, calm (or boredom) having returned to the ward, I discover that his name is Dr Neil B.
The speech of many doctors is as indecipherable as their handwriting. Not so with Dr B., who is telling the patient in the bed opposite mine that he had been terminally ill – the poor man, obviously frail, looks mildly confused: could he have been terminally ill without actually dying? – but they had saved him then, and they will save him now, just as long as he does exactly what he is told. So masterful! The patient smiles indeterminately: silence seems his best bet. ‘Let me know the number of my days: that I may be certified how long I have to live’ – Dr B. would come out with the answer, to the nearest hour, at the drop of a stethoscope.
My turn comes, and he fixes his unwavering gaze on my decrepit person. I search desperately for something innocuous, totally unprovocative, to say, and nearly come out with ‘Shall I be around for Christmas?’, inadvertently recalling the words, a week before he died, of a young friend, a bearded teacher of English in Tokyo, alluding to a famous department store: ‘Takashimaya will damned well have to find another Father Christmas this year.’ Luckily, Dr B. gets in first with a poetic reference to ‘a carpet of tumours’ excised the previous day, and follows up by predicating with some gusto an untoward connection between my tobacco pipe and the state of my bladder.
A month later I am recalled to hospital. X-rays taken as I was leaving on the previous occasion have shown a tumour lurking uncomfortably near my remaining kidney. I gather circuitously that the ureter may have to be reinforced with a plastic tube. (Ureter, not urethra.) Sounds nasty. Once again I pull out a large old envelope marked ‘Important Papers’, containing my will, birth certificate, marriage certificate, national insurance and health service numbers, share certificates relating to a small bankrupt publishing house (kept as a souvenir), an Equitable Life policy, a testimonial from F. R. Leavis dated 1946, and a letter from L. C. Knights regretting that he couldn’t act as a referee since my published work mostly concerned German literature, a subject with which he was less than intimate – and place it conspicuously in the centre of my desk.
Fully armed, the cystoscope advances along the well-worn thoroughfare into the bladder (not that I am aware of this, being under general anaesthetic), but can find no trace of a tumour. What showed up on the photograph must have been old scarring, Dr B. admits testily, as the great consultant and his entourage sweep through the ward. Dr B. gives the impression of having disclosed what ought to have been left unsaid. I attempt an emollient joke about a sense of tumour. But the doctor has vanished.
Patients who crack jokes, even jokes meant to make life just a little easier for their medics, are not welcome in the NHS, which is no laughing matter. A solemn, humble and dutiful demeanour is advisable at all times. (This rule excludes dealings with nurses, who might be moved to press the panic button.)
*
Mad for most of his life, the great philosopher had even so caused a great stir. Then, in Turin, recovering from a plethora of aphorisms, he ran into the street and threw his arms around the neck of an old cart-horse being flogged by its driver. This caused a small public stir in the piazza. A measure of sanity was renewed in him, along with gentleness, compassion and a childlike sweetness. This spelt the end of his career as a great philosopher.
‘Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav’ring sprite, friend and associate of this clay!’ The soul, not accounted for at all convincingly in encyclopaedias (‘the ultimate identity of a person’: like a passport or identity card?), maltreated in uncouth idioms (in French, l’âme: the hollow bubble at the bottom of a wine bottle), a flimsy shade among giant genes, though not so uncommon in the scattered metaphors of ancient poets and even a few moderns. Whatever it is that isn’t the body, although the one is the best picture of the other; the guest of the body (not always to its advantage or the body’s); a nightingale’s soul is poured forth abroad; in age, if you are lucky, clapping hands and singing; a numberless infinity of them; even housemaids used to have them, albeit damp.
Otherwise, largely undefined, address unknown, denied yet not wholly dispensable. Immortal it must be: just consider all the things that would have killed the soul stone-dead if it hadn’t been. Yet if immortal, to what extent can it be a true friend and equal associate of our distinctly mortal part? What then, if at all, can it be? Not its sundry sometimes synonyms. Hardly the mind, which reasons: Not me, thank you, better things to be thought; even less the brain, doing its sums, brisk in workplace, in profit and loss, interned in the Internet. (And not the self, whose hatefulness we have noted.) A rather dismal concept on the whole, the soul, you need to die to know for certain whether or not it lives.
Robert Musil remarked, the young cannot pronounce the word without laughing (they have other, less laughable concerns); the middle-aged fight shy of it (perhaps it hints at hitherto unrecognized misdemeanours and shames resisted). It is decidedly a word for the elderly, who have nothing further to lose, who might conceivably (inconceivably) have something to gain, who may even prefer to talk to themselves. Or ask, like the soldier on the eve of battle: Please, God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.
‘Do you have a soul? This question, which may be philosophical, theological, or simply misguided in nature, has a particular relevance for our time. In the wake of psychiatric medicines, aerobics, and media zapping, does the soul still exist?’ Julia Kristeva’s New Maladies of the Soul starts off promisingly – in this context one can condone, even welcome, the shifty word ‘relevance’, and perhaps satisfy oneself for the nonce with the supposition that aerobics feature here as a popular activity exclusively
and zealously concerned with the flesh – but very soon the book slides into what its English translator almost apologetically describes as a ‘highly technical psychoanalytic and semiological terminology’. Bang goes the soul.
‘How can a soul be a merchant? What relation to an immortal being have the price of linseed, the fall of butter, the tare on tallow, the brokerage on hemp? Can an undying creature debit “petty expenses” and charge for “carriage paid”?’ Thus Walter Bagehot, many-sided journalist and editor of The Economist (1860–77) in seriocomic vein. ‘The soul ties its shoes; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous.’ An awkward customer, the soul.
Professor Lupin, specialist in Defence Against the Dark Arts in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, offers a neat account: ‘You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self any more, no memory, no … anything. You’ll just – exist. As an empty shell.’ Wisdom out of the mouth of a children’s book. To it one might add a question asked in Karl Čapek’s R.U.R.: ‘Do you think that the soul first shows itself by a gnashing of teeth?’ A feasible start – after those happy, early days, as Henry Vaughan wrote,
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought.
‘Before I understood this place.’ A new year’s wish: that one could read the newspaper without wanting to throw up. Once it was the best that was known and thought in the world that our attention seized on, however fumblingly. Now – and so deftly – it’s the worst that is done in the world.
If we didn’t do such dreadful things, we would have a better opinion of ourselves. If we had a better opinion of ourselves, we wouldn’t do such dreadful things.