Sunday, June 28, 2015

Pale Flax (Linum bienne)



Pale Flax (Linum bienne) - photos from June 21st 2015, on a roundabout just outside Frome, 
Somerset. 

A plant that epitomizes the many transient beauties of midsummer. Driving through the long twilights of that blessed season, one is constantly accompanied by the starry whites of the roadside: Hogweed, Hemlock, Oxeye Daisy, Rough Chervil, Bramble...  But a rarer plant like this is seen only by chance. Once I'd taken the photographs, I never saw it again. It retires into fruit. 




The plants are so slender and leggy that it's hard to contain them in a photograph. 




I'd never noticed these plants before. In the past the species was mainly coastal but it is now spreading and I imagine it could find its own way along the road network to suitably dry verges inland. Or the plants might have originated as part of a "wild seed mix", a popular choice for urban roundabouts nowadays,  but this one is out in the countryside and I didn't see any other sign of exotic "wild flowers".













 Fading flowers and fruit, at the end of bending stems.






Stems, with closely adpressed leaves. 

Flower-colour isn't totally conclusive for distinguishing this species. The 1-3-veined leaves (see close-up below) are another indication. (Cultivated Flax always has 3, Perennial Flax always has 1)





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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

by the roadside

Nectaroscordum siculum

A large colony of Honey Garlic (Nectaroscordum siculum), in a shady spot beside the M4 westbound, near Chippenham, Wilts.

Identifying plants at 70 mph tends to be a bit approximate.  Every so often, over the past fifteen years of commuting,  I'd get a flash of a strange group of what looked like a cross between bulrush and a giant cocksfoot. I never pinned down exactly where this was, and sometimes I even wondered if I'd dreamt the whole thing up. (Evidently, the plants are not noticeable for most of the year.)

When I spied the colony again last week, my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I determined to find a way to get closer. That turned out to be easy. Exit at Jct 17 (2 miles up the road), take the road to Sutton Benger, then from there the road to Seagry. Handy lay-by just before you cross the motorway. The plants are just beneath you.




On June 21st 2015, the flower-heads looked extraordinary, as weird as a Cappadocian landscape.

(When I was on the spot I assumed that the upright pinnacles were "buds", i.e. yet to flower, but I've since been told that these were post-flowering. In Nectaroscordum the flowers are upright in bud, drooping when open, then upright again in fruit.)  


And of course seeing the plants in such quantity and in wild surroundings makes them look even more impressive. This morning they were humming with bees and the smell of garlic.

The flowering stems are up to five feet tall and appear to have no problem thrusting through dense bramble-cover.





Nectaroscordum siculum is a plant of the Mediterranean region (from S. France to Turkey), where it grows in damp, shady woods. In Northern Europe it has been grown as a garden bulb since the sixteenth century. In the UK it's infrequently naturalized, mostly in the south. (It's been known for many years in the Avon Gorge.)

Considering how many botanists must have driven past here, it's a bit surprising that the site doesn't seem to have been recorded before.




Flower colour-ranges: red, pink-and-green, and almost white. The flowers are popular with bumble-bees. 

According to Richard Dadd, the flowers "of subsp. siculum [the western form] are predominantly a dull greenish red, and those of supsp. bulgaricum [the eastern form] are predominantly a dull greenish cream tinged with pink". Concerning the latter, Sell and Murrell add:  "with green mid-vein, red inside near the base". 

So maybe this is ssp. bulgaricum, but I'm not claiming that with any confidence.  










Stems. Round (or terete, if you prefer), about a centimeter in diameter. 

A curious thing: I couldn't see any leaves, the stems appeared to come naked straight out of the ground. 

When I visited my Mum and Dad a couple of days later, I was astonished to find Nectaroscordum siculum in their garden and to see the stems sheathed in large keeled leaves. An online horticulture book confirmed: the leaves appear in the spring and fade after flowering. But maybe this depends on the variety. I've since been told of other garden Nectaroscordums whose leaves have disappeared by flowering time.  

(On my return visit a couple of weeks later, I realized that the leaves had shrivelled to a brownish membrane adhering to the stem - you can make it out in the photo above.) 




Nectaroscordum is a small genus: just a single species. Or two, if you give ssp. bulgaricum specific status, as some people do.  Or none, if you lump them into Allium, as has been done in the past, and as there are fresh moves afoot to do again (according to the Wikipedia Allium article).

To a lay-person there would seem to be features that set Nectaroscordum apart e.g. the remarkable activity of the flower-stalks.








Below: Re-visit a couple of weeks later, on 5th July. Fruits maturing. 






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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

a double circuit of barbury castle

Visit to Barbury Castle last Monday evening, June 15th 2015. The Iron Age hillfort has two concentric ramparts. The steep banks support what appears to be a fairly unspectacular chalk-land flora (e.g. Common Spotted Orchid was the only orchid that I noticed), but I found a few things interesting enough to photograph. As I sank into the details of this landscape, I knew I'd want to come back soon. 





A patch of Crested Hair-grass (Koeleria macrantha) growing on an old ant-hill. (Try to ignore the intrusive fescue...)






Panicle in full flower. 






Panicle just coming in to flower. 



Downy stem. 





The most characteristic "old ant-hill" plant of all - a mat of Wild Thyme (Thymus polytrichus ssp. britannicus)

Below, close-up with some sort of Forester moth. 






Most of the standard chalkland specialities are on the south-facing slopes. The north-facing slopes look more like ordinary vegetation, but here, as at my old stamping-ground of Cley Hill (near Frome), they are favoured by Meadow Saxifrage (Saxifraga granulata). A plant that's becoming steadily less frequent, and has almost deserted the SE of the UK.





Horseshoe Vetch (Hippocrepis comosa), one of the most characteristic chalkland plants. Close-up of flowers below. 







Bird's-foot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus). Common on chalk and in lots of other places too. Because of the mixture of yellow and red-orange (the latter confined to the buds),  older members of  my family called it "Eggs-and-Bacon".  They gave the same name to Common Toadflax (Linaria vulgaris).

Close-up of flowers below.







Most people walk around the ridge-paths at the top of the ramparts, to enjoy their inspiring views. But walking around the fosses at their foot is the best way to see the flowers on the slopes. The bottoms themselves are relatively rank (though, this being chalk, there is no standing water). Lots of Silverweed and one impressive Musk Thistle (Carduus nutans), preparing to flower but not quite there yet. At this stage the flower-head is, nevertheless, highly impressive. 






After one and a half circuits, variously on ridge and fosse, I walked back across the flat centre of the hill-fort. Nothing much here to see - like most flat-land on chalk, it has built up a neutral top-soil. But I did take a photo of this nice group of Wild Mignonette (Reseda lutea), looking rather more mysterious growing among tall grasses than in the bare waste ground where it's more commonly encountered. 




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Monday, June 15, 2015

botanist in bath


A couple of interesting plants seen during yesterday's visit to Bath. 




A weird-looking bramble, growing among "normal" brambles, on the edge of the park at Bear Flat. With the help of the internet I've pinned this down to Rubus laciniatus, a species that's been given various English names, including Parsley-leaved Bramble, Fern-leaved Bramble, Evergreen Blackberry, and Cutleaf Evergreen Blackberry. (French: Ronce laciniée. Dutch: Peterseliebraam.)




The stems have thorns; the buds have distinctive elongations; the petals are relatively narrow and 3-lobed (or double-notched, if you prefer).

The black fruit is said to have a delicious flavour, "fruitier" than most R. fructicosus agg.  I pass by this spot fairly often, so I might get the chance to check it out.








Rubus laciniatus is now a global traveller, well-established as an escape from cultivation in NW Europe, USA, Australia and New Zealand (see  the map on this useful Dutch site). Wikipedia says it's native to Europe, but no native range is known. According to Mansfeld's Encyclopaedia of Agricultural and Horticultural Crops (English edn 2001, Peter Hanelt etc): "First cultivated (since late 17th cent.) in England. Most probably originated there as a mutation of R. nemoralis P. J. Müller, but not known in the wild."  It is most commonly grown in the thornless form "Thornless evergreen".
 
I don't know why the parent is surmised to be R. nemoralis in particular, a bramble with round leaflets and a long terminal pedicel. [Description here (in German): http://www.rubus-sh.de/nemoralis/nemoralis.pdf]

Stace, on the other hand, separates the two taxa.  He place R. laciniatus in Rubus Sect. 2. Glandulosus Series Sylvatici and  R. nemoralis in Series Rhamnifolii. He describes R.laciniatus as an alien species, "origin unknown". Interesting subject for some DNA analysis, I'd say.



From Bear Flat, we took the Linear Park walk (Two Tunnels cycleway) down to the Lower Bristol Road, then crossed the river and came in to the city centre through Royal Victoria Park,

Here in the city centre, I found my second plant.




This is the neophyte grass Polypogon viridis (Water Bent, Water Beard-Grass). It seems to like dry-ish waste ground here, though in its native Mediterranean region it's associated with water. Whether that water is strewn with fag-butts I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, the UK is always relatively wet by Mediterranean standards. An increasing species. (I was told it's now widespread in Bristol.)  

In Hubbard (3rd edn, 1984), this grass - then described as "rare" - is called Agrostis semiverticillata. Hubbard was aware of the other name and commented: "Water Bent resembles Polypogon in its pedicels being articulated and falling attached to the main spikelet and in its epidermal structure, but this genus may be readily distinguished by the 2-notched or 2-lobed and awned tips of the glumes". Apparently this argument didn't carry the day, and the plant is now accepted as Polypogon despite its unlobed and unawned glumes.






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Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Portrait of Robert Browning by Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1855)

[Image source: The Fitzwilliam Museum]


This post compiles all the pieces that I've written about Browning. The two most substantial pieces appeared in Intercapillary Space, so I've just given links to them.

*

Pauline: A Fragment of a Confession (1833)

http://intercapillaryspace.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/robert-brownings-pauline.html

The name in the title should perhaps be pronounced in the French manner, as Pauline apparently hails from the Alps and her sole intervention (a footnote) is in French. But I don't think I'll be trying this in public.


*


Strafford (1837)



*

"Bishop Blougram’s Apology" (published in Men and Women, 1855)

Of course you are remarking all this time
How narrowly and grossly I view life,
Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
The masses, and regard complacently
‘The cabin’, in our old phrase. Well, I do.

The bishop is fascinated (in what is finally a generous way) by his effect on the young man. Whom he doesn’t wholly understand, but he knows that “life” is a revered word. He enjoys the words “narrowly” and “grossly”; intended as criticisms of him, he smacks his lips over them. This is talk not lecturing, so his sentence leaves its moorings - he obviously does not mean, what he logically implies, “how narrowly and grossly I regard complacently...”

“in our old phrase” politely includes Gigadibs (he would feel, “implicates”).

“Care to rule” is an odd phrase, perhaps a false note, but it passes the crozier/crook under our nose.




***

Everyone who has done the canon knows a few things about Browning. They know that he is copiously good. Also, that he isn’t good like Shakespeare’s sonnets or Keats’ odes. (You can read Men and Women with exuberant pleasure, but you don’t bother to learn any of his lines by heart.) Finally, that apart from the copiously good there is also a more-than-copious not-so-good, mainly in the last twenty years of his career, and there’s no conceivable requirement to dip into it.

So finding yourself in company with a volume of late Browning is a very liberating experience, though it is death to stay there.


Ferishtah’s Fancies (1884), published when the author was 72, is in no way outstanding. The man who had produced a great collection (Men and Women) was as interested as ever in the shape of a collection, and this one is typically complex, the poems about the Persian philosopher (a pleasant image of the ageing author) interspersed with slight love-lyrics that play with the same themes. In the “Prologue” Browning supplies us with the image of spitted ortolans separated from each other by bread and sage-leaves.

Browning’s “poems” are, as Wilde acutely noted, a new kind of form that is close to prose. Much of it is barely more exciting than prose:

Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust
As wholly love allied to ignorance!
There lies thy truth and safety. Love is praise,
And praise is love! Refine the same, contrive
An intellectual tribute – ignorance
Appreciating ere approbative
Of knowledge that is infinite? With us
The small, who use the knowledge of our kind
Greater than we, more wisely ignorance
Restricts its apprehension, sees and knows
No more than brain accepts in faith of sight,
Takes first what comes first, only sure so far. 

It is, no doubt, rather frustrating that this is not “even” very limpid prose. The last sentence in this passage draws a parallel between the infinite knowledge of God and the merely “greater” knowledge of our more skilled peers, but the parallel is hardly laid out to the eye, and the curious expression “our kind greater than we” is a positive hindrance to understanding. Yet this casualness of exposition is important. It took me several readings of Shah Abbas to grasp exactly what the point of difference was between the two speakers – this is because the speakers are not lecturing, and some things are just implied in the tone. Towards the end of A Bean-stripe, a moving conciseness is achieved by the speakers’ digressiveness; the proposed discussion is in effect cancelled by the influx of solider things. From there I quote some examples of the poetry that lies lurking in the seams of the argument:

- Those Seven Thrones, Zurah’s beauty, weird Parwin!

Then let the stars thank me who apprehend
That such an one is white, such other blue!
But for my apprehension both were blank.
Cannot I close my eyes and bid my brain
Make whites and blues, conceive without stars’ help,
New qualities of colour? Were my sight
Lost or misleading, would yon red – I judge
A ruby’s benefaction – stand for aught
But green from vulgar glass? Myself appraise
Lustre and lustre; should I overlook
Fomalhaut and declare some fen-fire king,
Who shall correct me, lend me eyes he trusts
No more than I trust mine?

Yet I think the most memorable lines are after all quieter and close to prose.

Shelter, of some sort, no experienced chill
Warrants that I despair to find.

And there seems no reason why a valid art could not contain this high proportion of prose-interest to poetry-interest. Obviously, though, the arguments need to be grasped, so here are my brief summaries:

The Eagle: You should work for the world, and be a “helpful strength”.
The Melon-Seller: Do not bewail a fall from grace, but give thinks for your undeserved past happiness.
Shah Abbas: To be right-hearted, to be on the side of God and virtue, is more important than strict belief.
The Family: To pray is human. To submit to God’s will too easily may be less than human.
The Sun: In praising, we attribute a human aspect to the divine.
Mihrab Shah: The existence of pain is necessary for us to give thanks to God and love to each other.
A Camel-Driver: God does not punish like man may need to.
Two Camels: Enjoy the good things in life – it makes you more fit for work, and more aware of what joy is.
Cherries: Give praise for the smallest things, don’t despise them for the greater things you hardly understand.
Plot-Culture: God does not need to spy on the details of sensual love.
A Pillar at Sebzevar: Love is sure, knowledge is uncertain.
A Bean-Stripe; also, Apple-Eating: This is the most substantial poem in the collection; a discussion that begins with whether life is good or bad; it sinks all in man’s impotence and God’s omnipotence, and in the humbly optimistic faith of one who does not try to know too much.

Browning’s later career of course attracts the charge of facile optimism, as well as that damning facility for verse.  To do him justice, he is prepared to defend the optimism. I don’t know why we should be so unforgiving to this aspect of the late Victorian sages, when there is a clear line of descent to the scientific writers of today, whose universal optimism is a matter of no note.

[nb this sentence was written with a memory of Gregg Easterbrook’s remarkable A Moment on the Earth (1995) and Adam Philips’s Darwin’s Worms (1999), where the blurb’s statement that the author “unexpectedly finds much to celebrate” unwittingly emphasises just how expected, in another sense, it all is.]

Browning was a happy poet. Of Browning’s optimism we can say in reproof that he ignored – well, the Victorian slums, for instance. Yet he saved Elizabeth Barrett; through egocentrism and ignorance, it may be, but I don’t know that. I have to listen to his sanity, cheerfully selfish though it may have been. It is the selfish and rich who are intelligent.  Charity exacts a cost. If you love your neighbour, as Browning perhaps did not do (I mean in a practical way), do not suppose that you will write better, or even think better, as a result. On the contrary, to fight evil is to court the probable infection of evil. You must do it, if you’re going to do it, only because it’s right.

Did Browning, we may wonder, take drugs, or was it a natural high? Was it just his temperament? In the Prologue to the Parleyings with Certain People (1887), he puts it down to wine – this poem, which considers his own cheerfulness, pursues many of the same themes as A Bean-Stripe.


Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day (1887)


By the time of Men and Women (1855) Browning had developed the form of the dramatic monologue (DM) to a stage where it seems to us simply a natural form that we accept unquestioningly – and this was a monumental achievement.

The problem arose when he tried to think about what he was doing in an analytical way. He observed that the material of a DM was highly partial, usually chosen by the speaker to defend his own way of life. In The Ring and the Book (1868-69) he had the idea of composing a multiplicity of DMs that all addressed the same material. This would make clearer the partiality of each speaker; it would also supply a peculiarly rich presentation of the material itself, presented from many different viewpoints. But when we try to read the Ring and the Book we see that the experiment fails. Because each speaker is made to go over the same ground, s/he is inevitably compelled to rehearse long stretches of material that shed no interesting light on her/his character. Nor does the story itself gain greatly from this repetition; where slight contradictions appear, we are left not with a deeper insight but merely with doubt. 

The Parleyings, too, have the air of being composed in response to an over-schematic idea. The speaker is Browning, and the “people” (they are all men, by the way) are brought in to inspire his meditations on a number of interlinked themes. These, we might suppose, are the sort of thought-processes that precede the composition of DMs. But in the Parleyings, instead of progressing to writing the DMs, Browning versifies the notes. In principle, and occasionally in practice, this allows him to introduce frankly contemporary material – instead of composing a historical fiction, he can openly ponder the relevance of the past to his present. But this constitutes a loss of belief in poetry – what we value in the younger Browning is not his ideas, but his fiction.


(My prose – your poetry I dare not give,
purpling too much my mere grey argument)

he writes, as an aside, in Christopher Smart – and these are among the more memorable lines, because one tends to concede the rightness of Browning’s choice of colours. Yet the Parleyings deserve some attention.

Apollo and the Fates: A Prologue.  (The meter is similar to the Epilogue; galloping stanzas rhyming ababb where a is normally disyllabic.)  Apollo visits the Fates to plead for the life of Admetus. They scornfully point out that the life of man is mere misery; happiness only an illusion. Apollo persuades them to drink wine, man’s consolation, and they become temporarily merry, and applaud man’s potential and stubborn survival – “no defeat but a triumph”.  But then a mysterious “explosion at the earth’s centre” sobers them. Man is fated, they re-assert. But they grant Apollo’s plea for Admetus if anyone, for love’s sake, will offer to die for him. Apollo agrees, and sees his relatives contending for the honour. And sees Admetus refuse them – he’d rather die. The Fates laugh, interpreting this as a confirmation of their argument and a thwarting of Apollo’s plan. Our own response is more ambiguous, of course.

Bernard de Mandeville.  The central part of the poem is (I find) extremely obscurely expressed, but the basic argument is clear. A “parlous friend” asks for one plain demonstration that God is on the side of good. Browning argues by analogy; it’s impossible to comprehend the sun doing good, but thanks to Prometheus we have the little gift of fire and with it can do good ourselves. Not intellectual knowledge which fails before immensities, but our mere senses and our practical application, are enough to supply the faith that is wanted. [The poem’s drift became somewhat clearer once I looked up Mandeville, and learned that his idea was that in society individual evil such as pride and avarice led to the common good – for instance, by boosting the economy. It was an argument whose sources can be guessed at, for instance, in the medieval poem Wynnere and Wastoure – but after Mandeville it became dominant in economic thinking. Browning considers only the moral aspect, and seems to approve of it.]

Daniel Bartoli.  Largely devoted to the story of a woman who gives up a great Duke’s love so that he can retain his political power. Browning finds “saintship” in this worldly chronicle (not in a legendary) – he means the woman’s, though her life is not religious. He even finds something to please him in the duke, who tamely goes along with this (i.e. gives her up) – at least he too was once devoted to love, and though now a mere ghost of his past idealism, might rise again to that splendour.  

Christopher Smart.  Browning wonders why Smart produced only one inspired work (i.e. the Song to David). Browning seems to approve Smart’s humility in retiring to commonplace once the visionary experience had passed away, and contrasts him with those who seek “the end ere the beginning”. But the last section is confusing.

George Bubb Dodington. Concerned with statesmanship, and the politician’s habit of feathering his own nest. Browning decides (for the sake of argument) to accept this selfish motive as valid, but criticizes GBD for advising the statesman to adopt a sham zeal which will deceive no-one. Suggests that the statesman should go further and create in us a sense of awe by revealing his blatant lack of human conscience; behaviour which might persuade us, perhaps, that he is mystifyingly superhuman and thus merits our subservience. In George Bubb Dodington it’s quite clear that Browning doesn’t mean what he’s saying – this is an example of what (I think) is meant by Browning’s “casuistry”.

Francis Furini. FF was a painter-priest who painted nudes as well as religious subjects and who, according to legend, requested on his death-bed that his works be destroyed. But Browning refuses to credit this legend – assumes that Francis was a defender of the noble profession of art. Imagines him addressing the sceptical evolutionists and other speculators – putting forward the nobility of the body and man’s own desire for righteousness as signs of the innate goodness of the world. This “starting from what we know” links up with Christopher Smart and with Ferishtah’s optimism; it’s a fairly plain statement of what Browning himself had, it seems, come to think of as his “philosophy”.

Gerard de Lairesse. A fanciful and mythological writer, because he became blind? But Browning tries to achieve an insight into the world that is based only on sober sense and not on fancy. The centrepiece of the poem is a lengthy description of a day, from dawn to dusk, peopled by Lairesse-style imaginings – but Browning calls it “fooling”. Browning criticizes the “Greek” (perhaps Platonic) despair of the world – everything merely a shade. His joy in the actual.

Charles Avison. An organist of Newcastle, who composed a simple march. Browning considers music, an art whose expression of the soul exceeds any other, but which is necessarily transient, displaced by what follows it, so that the music of Avison’s time has no inspiring power for us moderns (e.g. of Browning’s time) who have Wagner and Brahms. And yet the fading is not inglorious. “Soon shall fade and fall / Myth after myth – the husk-like lies I call / New truth’s corolla-safeguard: Autumn comes, / So much the better!”

Fust and his Friends: An Epilogue  The friends, a conventional and benighted crew, come to Fust’s study – he is discovered, a “lost wretch” apparently sunk in despair. They conclude that he has made a pact with the devil. But Fust proudly demonstrates his astonishing invention – a printing press. Fust praises its power for spreading the truth, the faultless multiplication of a psalm. But asked why then he was found in such a woebegone attitude, he confesses his fear of how the press could be used to multiply falsehood. The friends agree – what if another Huss should make use of it? “I foresee such a man”, Fust agrees (i.e. Luther).  The basic connection with the Prologue is the concern (ultimately optimistic) with man’s potential for both good and evil. [Fust was also of interest to Jonathan Oldbuck – see The Antiquary, Ch XI. Scott has the astrologer Galeotti deliver a similar effusion on the ambiguous powers of the printing-press in Quentin Durward, Ch XIII.]

In writing up these notes (which I think ought to be useful, since few will trouble to read such a book) I have injured my vanity, both by admitting that some passages defeat me and also by revealing to a better reader – who I hope may enlighten me – where I’ve unwittingly missed the drift. It can be infuriatingly difficult to follow the argument. Often I am in doubt who is speaking, and whether they are expressing their own beliefs, or putting a case, or surmising or burlesquing someone else’s argument. Often the point at issue is bafflingly buried in the mass of common ground.

It’s easy to see why modernist poets who followed in Browning’s paths decided to drop the interconnecting links between “presentations” (such as a description of the dawn (Gerard de Lairesse) or a visit to a great house (Christopher Smart) or a bird picking at a thread (Charles Avison) and allowed the reader to do the work of inferring a connection between the materials. One can perhaps interpret the unresolvable pseudo-argument of Ashbery’s poetry as a reaction against these disjunct and imagistic “presentations”, in a certain way readmitting the “process” that we meet with in the Parleyings*.  Browning’s subjects are of such a kind that argument is in any case necessarily hazy and/or mercurial. It comes quite close itself to being pseudo-argument, except that there is a repetitious chiming of certain abstract words (such as will and beauty) which had a positive meaning for Browning because of his religion and his culture.


*Note. This has been noticed before, e.g. by Peter Porter.

[2001, 2002, 2007, 2009]

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Monday, June 08, 2015

Benito Pérez Galdós: Electra (1901)


Sara Casanovas as Electra in a 2010 production at the Teatro Español


I listened to Electra in the impressive Librivox presentation - the most professional-quality Librivox play-reading that I've heard, and highly recommended! (The excellent translation was by Charles Alfred Turrell.)

Possibly because I'd found Balzac's plays such a let-down in comparison to his novels, I didn't have very high expectations of a play by Galdós. But I was wrong: Electra is terrific. And it has an importance in Galdós' career that Balzac's plays never did. Its premiere, on January 30, 1901, was scandalous. It was a great success, but its powerfully anti-clerical message led to public demonstrations. 

The traditional comparison of Galdós in Madrid with Balzac in Paris or Dickens in London is misleading in several respects. Both the earlier authors can be reasonably claimed to have had truly national audiences. Balzac was an idiosyncratic kind-of-conservative; but so large a presence rose above political divisions. And the great radical Dickens was read by all of English society. There might be mutterings from some quarters about the "sullen socialism" of The Chimes and Hard Times, but even conservative readers had been unable to resist Pickwick and Little Nell. By the time of Dicken's greatest novels, he was as much of an established institution as Christmas. 

Galdós wrote in a more fiercely polarized society. His audience in his own lifetime was far more restricted. For the conservative and pious majority, his work was considered off limits. And Electra set the seal on that.




It isn't a masterpiece, don't start thinking of Ibsen, but it is charming, funny, intelligent and intermittently powerful. Over the first four acts the 18-year-old Electra is pulled in different directions - between the liberal scientist Maximo, whom she adores, and the scary fanatic Pantoja, who wants her to spend her life in a convent to atone for his own youthful sins (with her mother). The briefer fifth act, with its climactic appearance of the ghost of her mother, seems perhaps rather a stretch after the prevalent realistic comedy of the rest of the play. 

But up to this point, at least, the drama compels by its conviction and by Galdós' skill with ensemble scenes. Evarista, Don Urbano, Cuesta, the Marquis, and the three principals are splendid realizations. In particular, there's a wonderfully pointed contrast between the talk of angels, demons and serpents among the more religious elders, and the headstrong yet lovable heroine that we come to know and whose personality makes such a bonfire of those outworn categories. 

*

I've managed to track down a digitisation of Turrell's translation of Electra, in his Contemporary Spanish Dramatists (1919). 

Here's a section from near the end of Act II. I've done what I can to correct the OCR errors, and interleaved it with the Spanish original. As this extract begins, the elders have just discovered some letters in Electra's pockets. 


Evarista. My daughter, you are a real letter-box.
Evarista. Hija, tu cuerpo es un buzón.

Cuesta (Reading).  "Heartless Electra: With what words shall I express my despair, my madness, my frenzy...
Cuesta (leyendo). «Despiadada Electra, ¿con qué palabras expresaré mi desesperación, mi locura, mi frenesí...?»

Evarista. Enough . This is certainly not innocent. (Troubled, examining the letters.) I will wager there are more.
Evarista. Basta... Eso ya no es inocente. (Incomodada, registrándole los bolsillos.) Apostaría que hay más.

Cuesta. Evarista, indulgence.
Cuesta. Evarista, indulgencia.

Electra. Aunt, don't be angry.
Electra. Tía, no se enfade usted...

Evarista. Not be angry! I will settle it with you. Now go and dress.
Evarista. ¡Que no me enfade! Ya te arreglaré, ya. Corre a vestirte.

Don Urbano (Looking at his watch).  It is almost time.
Don Urbano (mirando su reloj). Casi es la hora.

Electra. I shall be here in a minute .
Electra. En un instante estoy...

Evarista. Go along, go along.
Evarista. Anda, anda. 

(Glad to see herself free, Electra runs to her room.)
(Gozosa de verse libre, corre Electra a su habitación.)


Scene 12 / Escena XII: Cuesta; Don Urbano; Evarista; Pantoja


Evarista (With sadness and dismay). Now you see, Don Leonardo...
Evarista (con tristeza y desaliento). Ya ve usted, Leonardo...

Cuesta. The tranquility with which she allowed her secrets to be exposed shows that there is in all this little or no evil intent.
Cuesta. La tranquilidad con que se ha dejado sorprender sus secretos revela que hay en todo ello poca o ninguna malicia.

Evarista. Alas! I do not think the same way, no, no...
Evarista. ¡Ay! no opino lo mismo, no, no...

Pantoja (At the back, somewhat out of breath).  Here they are... and Cuesta too, just so one cannot talk freely...
Pantoja (por el foro algo sofocado). Aquí están... y también Cuesta, para que no pueda uno hablar con libertad...

Evarista (Pleased to see him). At last you come.
Evarista (gozosa de verle). Al fin parece usted...

(They form two groups: at the left Cuesta seated, Don Urbano standing; at the right, Pantoja and Evarista, seated.)
(Se forman dos grupos: a la izquierda, Cuesta sentado, Don Urbano en pie; a la derecha, Pantoja y Evarista sentados.)

Pantoja. I have come to tell you of very serious things.
Pantoja. Vengo a contar a usted cosas de la mayor gravedad.

Evarista (Frightened). Oh, dear! God's will be done!
Evarista (asustada). ¡Ay de mí! Sea lo que Dios quiera.

Pantoja (Repeating the phrase with reservations). God's will be done! ... yes.. But let our will be the same as God's and let us use our will to bring about good, cost what it may.
Pantoja (repitiendo la frase con reservas). Sea lo que Dios quiera... sí... Pero queramos lo que quiere Dios, y apliquemos nuestra voluntad a producir el bien, cueste lo que cueste.

Evarista. Your strength fortifies my soul . Well, and what?
Evarista. La energía de usted fortifica mi ánimo... Bueno...¿y qué...?

Pantoja. Today at the Requesens' they talked about the girl in the most shameful terms. They said that, pursued most indecorously by a whole crowd of lovers, she delights in receiving and sending letters at all hours of the day.
Pantoja. Hoy en casa de Requesens, han hablado de la chiquilla en los términos más desvergonzados. Contaban que acosada indecorosamente del enjambre de novios, se deleita recibiendo y mandando cartitas a todas horas del día.

Evarista. Unfortunately, Salvador, the frivolities of the girl are such that although I love her so much I cannot come to her defense.
Evarista. Desgraciadamente, Salvador, las frivolidades de la niña son tales, que aun queriéndola tanto, no puedo salir a su defensa.

Pantoja {Anxiously) Well, listen further and you will see that human malice has no limits. Last night the Marquis of Ronda, in a company at his house, before Virginia, his saintly wife, and other persons of great respectability, did not cease to praise the charms of Electra in a very worldly and repugnant manner.
Pantoja (angustiado). Pues oiga usted más, y entérese de que la malicia humana no tiene límites. Anoche el Marqués de Ronda, en la tertulia de su casa, delante de Virginia, su santa esposa, y de otras personas de grandísimo respeto, no cesaba de encomiar las gracias de Electra en términos harto mundanos, repugnantes.

Evarista. Let us have patience, my friend .
Evarista. Tengamos paciencia, amigo mío...

Pantoja. Patience.. yes, patience, a virtue which is worth very little if it is not inspired by resolution. Let us determine, my dear friend, to put Electra where she will not see examples of levity, not hear any word spoken with malicious accent.
Pantoja. Paciencia... sí, paciencia; virtud que vale muy poco si no se avalora con la resolución. Determinémonos, amiga del alma, a poner a Electra donde no vea ejemplos de liviandad, ni oiga ninguna palabra con dejos maliciosos...

Evarista. Where she will breathe an atmosphere of austere virtue .
Evarista. Donde respire el ambiente de la virtud austera...

Pantoja. Where the buzz of the poisonous and immodest suitors will not disturb her ...
Pantoja. Donde no la trastorne el zumbido de los venenosos pretendientes sin pudor... 



Galdós at 51, portrait by Joaquín Sorolla



(Image source: Wikipedia)





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