A sentence in Rob Roy

Coin of Gelimer, king of the Vandals and Alans (530-534 CE)

[Image source: https://picclick.co.uk/Kingdom-of-the-Vandals-and-Alans-Coin-401478112041.html ]


This post is about just one sentence in Sir Walter Scott's 1817 novel Rob Roy, but I'd better quote the passage leading up to it. Young Frank Osbaldistone,  sent to his uncle in Northumberland, has encountered the gardener Andrew Fairservice, and a silver coin has changed hands. ...

“Ye maun ken, then, young gentleman, since it imports you to know, that Miss Vernon is”—
          Here breaking off, he sucked in both his cheeks, till his lantern jaws and long chin assumed the appearance of a pair of nut-crackers; winked hard once more, frowned, shook his head, and seemed to think his physiognomy had completed the information which his tongue had not fully told.
          “Good God!” said I—“so young, so beautiful, so early lost!”*
          “Troth ye may say sae—she's in a manner lost, body and saul; forby being a Papist, I'se uphaud her for”—and his northern caution prevailed, and he was again silent.
          “For what, sir?” said I sternly. “I insist on knowing the plain meaning of all this.”
          “Ou, just for the bitterest Jacobite in the haill shire.”
          “Pshaw! a Jacobite?—is that all?”
          Andrew looked at me with some astonishment, at hearing his information treated so lightly; and then muttering, “Aweel, it's the warst thing I ken aboot the lassie, howsoe'er,” he resumed his spade, like the king of the Vandals, in Marmontel's late novel.

(Rob Roy, end of Chapter VI)




If I'd been reading an annotated edition, I would probably have glanced at a dry little note at this point (something like: "Jean-François Marmontel's Bélisaire (1767)") and then thought no more about it.  But as it happened, the Rob Roy I was reading was a very clean-limbed one. It was one of a number of classic books that were originally published under the imprint of "Penguin Popular Classics",  I suppose with the idea of appealing to no-nonsense readers by being cheap and doing without flimflam. But when it turned out that no-nonsense readers had much better things to do than read books like Rob Roy, these publications were misleadingly re-clothed as true Penguin Classics, despite lacking all the usual accoutrements of the latter series: no editor, no account of the text, no introduction (not even Scott's own), no Scots glossary and scarcely any footnotes.

I relish all those things, but I must admit the simple presentation does make an attractive change, and there's even something liberating about the absence of reader aids. Do your own work if you want to, it seems to say...

So I paused over that last sentence -- how to weigh its meaning? What king, what novel, who was Marmontel, and why mention them at all, why append this insouciant flourish? Not all those questions can be answered, but here's my journey.


*

Let's jump straight to that king. (Belisarius, the anonymous 1774 English translation of Bélisaire, is happily available on Google Books.)

[Belisarius says:] Now all is over; and, thanks be to Heaven, I have but a little time to crawl about, blind and wretched. --- Pass that time with me, says Gilimer: here, under my roof, close an illustrious life. --- That, returned Belisarius, would have something soothing in it ; but I must give myself to my family, and I now go to expire in their arms. Farewell !
      Gilimer embraced him, bathed him with his tears, and could hardly quit his hold. At length he let him go with a parting pang, and straining his eyes after him, O Prosperity ! says he, thou cheat Prosperity ! who can confide in thee ? The warlike hero, the great, the good Belisarius ! --- Now indeed he may think himself happy who digs his garden. With these words, the king of the Vandals resumed his spade.

(Belisarius, Chapter II)


*

Gilimer, more usually spelled Gelimer, was the last of the Vandal kings. After his defeat by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 534 (for these two had once been foes) he surrendered all claim to sovereignty in North Africa, in exchange for large estates in Galatia (central Turkey). [Most of what we know about him comes from Procopius' contemporary history of the Vandalic wars.]

*

The story of Rob Roy takes place in 1715. Its narrator is the now-old Frank Osbaldistone, looking back to the times of his youth. Scott, often so careless, is quite attentive to the date implications of this framework. When for instance the narrator has occasion to speak of eminent poets, his example is Pope. The reference to "Marmontel's late novel" is attentive too. It means that the narrator (aged twenty in 1715) is writing his memoir a little after 1767 (or 1774); so is now at least 72, maybe as old as 80. That fits. In the opening pages he says that his life has been prolonged but that the end cannot now be far off; in the closing pages we learn that his wife (yes, the Jacobitical papist Diana Vernon) has predeceased him, after a long and happy marriage.

 Scott himself was 46. He was shuttling between the experience of someone much younger, and the reflection of someone much older.

*

Jean-François Marmontel (1723 - 1799) was an encyclopédiste, historian, writer of opera librettos, and novelist. Bélisaire was published in 1767, eight years after the book Gilimer is evidently thinking of, Voltaire's Candide.

Bélisaire is based on the legend that in old age the renowned general Belisarius was unjustly blinded, at the orders of his Emperor Justinian. The earliest source is a 12-century Byzantine poem. (Procopius tells us only that Belisarius was temporarily disgraced and lost half his estates.)

You couldn't be sued for describing Bélisaire as a historical novel, but it would be misleading. Certainly, the narrative does take place in the mid-6th century and it features historical characters. But after some brief introductory episodes (including the encounter between Belisarius and Gilimer), the book settles down to being an earnest discussion of virtue, patriotism, government, justice and the sovereign. Most of this is put into the mouth of Belisarius, still the staunchest and most loyal servant of the Empire and its Emperor.

It might surprise you, from that description, that the Sorbonne attempted to ban Bélisaire from being published. The professed reason was the Deistical chapter in defence of religious toleration, but surely it was also because Belisarius' account of Byzantine despotism sounded uncannily like the court of Louis XV.  Bélisaire was just as evidently about the politics of the here and now as, say, Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel.

"Marmontel’s novel was widely seen at the time as a condemnation of the unjust execution in 1766 of the French general Lally-Tollendal for the French defeat in India. " (https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jean-francois-pierre-peyron-belisarius-receiving-hospitality-from-a-peasant .)

Be that as it may, it was impossible to read such passages as the following without thinking of Versailles:

Of sovereign authority the highest act is the distribution of favours and marks of grace : this partakes of the nature of beneficence, and is therefore a pleasing exertion of power ; but in the exercise of it, it is requisite that the Prince should be guarded against seduction. The whole of his intelligence must arise from those who approach his person ; and of that number there is not one who does not for ever inculcate, that the seat of majesty is in the court ; that all regal splendour derives from the brilliant appearance that enlivens the palace ; and that the most valuable prerogative of the crown displays itself by a profusion of favours, which are stiled the munificence of the sovereign. Gracious Heaven ! the munificence ! It is the substance of the people he bestows ; the spoils of the poor and indigent ! Thus the Prince is deceived by words: Adulation and Treachery besige his throne ; Assiduity for ever pays its court ; and the habit of refusing nothing, gains upon the credulous sovereign, who little thinks of the tears extorted from the poor by the extravagance of the court : exultation fills the palace, and every room echoes with praise of the royal munificence. That munificence assumes the mien of Virtue, and wealth is squandered, without considering whence it came. Alas ! would kings reflect how their splendour grows out of the misery of others, and for the sake of an ungrateful crew, what a number groan in wretchedness !

(Bélisaire, Chapter X)

Over the course of the novel Belisarius' disquisitions persuade the Emperor (attending in disguise) both of his injured general's probity and of the urgent need for drastic reform of his court and government. All seems about to be set in order. But the novel ends with an abrupt deflation.

The hero continued to support the same modest reserve that adorned him in disgrace. He never deigned to recognize any of his accusers; and honoured to his death with the Emperor's confidence, he made it his study to obtain an amnesty for the passed, and to inspire his master with a vigilant attention to the present, and an awful severity to controul all future crimes. But he did not live long enough for the good of mankind, and the glory of his master. The Emperor, quite enfeebled and dispirited, contented himself with shedding a few tears to his memory, and the counsels of Belisarius died with himself. 

(Chapter XVI)

The radical challenge to the novel's readers is palpable: If these things concern you, don't just shed tears! 

*

The blinded Belisarius became a popular subject for paintings in the Revolutionary era.

Belisarius, by Vincent (1776)

[Image source: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fran%C3%A7ois-Andr%C3%A9_Vincent_-_Belisarius_-_WGA25107.jpg .]

François-André Vincent, 1746 - 1816. The painting is in the Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

Belisarius receiving hospitality from a peasant, by Peyron (1779)

[Image source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Belisarius_by_Peyron.jpg .]

Jean-François Pierre Peyron, usually known as Pierre Peyron (1744 - 1814).

This painting is in the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. It illustrates another of the early scenes of Bélisaire (Chapter IV), in which the hero is invited to stay with a family of peasants, ever grateful to him for having turned back the rampaging Huns.

Belisarius begging for alms, by David (1781)

[Image source: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:David_-_Belisarius.jpg .]

Jacques-Louis David, 1748 - 1825. This painting, an important early success for David, is in the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille.

Belisarius by Gérard (1797)

[Image source: https://www.wikiart.org/en/francois-gerard/belisarius .]

François Pascal Simon Gérard (François Gérard), 1770 - 1837. This painting is in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Gérard invents an episode in which Belisarius' boy guide is bitten by a snake, and the blind hero carries him to where he can receive treatment.

Frank Osbaldistone and Andrew Fairservice

[Image source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7025/7025-h/7025-h.htm .]


*

But after all this high-mindedness and revolutionary intent, what to make of Scott's (or Frank's) off-the-cuff comment, that Andrew "resumed his spade, like the king of the Vandals, in Marmontel's late novel"?


*

Scott, be it noted, uses the exact phrase that appeared in Belisarius, the English translation of Bélisaire. Arguably, his sentence should be re-punctuated, thus:

.... he "resumed his spade", like the king of the Vandals, in Marmontel's late novel.

The phrase had lodged in his mind. When Scott was composing his novels, he often found phrases coming to hand that he had read somewhere. He welcomed them into his book. He believed, and perhaps wasn't wrong, that his readership would relish the enlarged horizon for its own sake; it's a highly poetic device.

Compare this:

[Dougal] ran to the boatmen to show them the prize, and a small gratuity made them take part in his raptures. He then, to use a favourite expression of the dramatic John Bunyan, "went on his way, and I saw him no more."  (Chapter XXXVI)

Bunyan isn't much to the purpose (though he and Dougal both knew the inside of a prison), but the little bit of meta-narrative makes us pause on the phrase, and think about how quickly some people vanish.

But it's one thing to remember an author's distinctive and frequently-used catchphrase. Why would Scott remember these words of Marmontel -- or rather, his translator? Was there anything bizarre or intrinsically memorable about the phrase resumed his spade?

The OED doesn't lend much support to this hypothesis. "Resumed his spade" may indeed seem a bit odd to a modern reader, who anticipates the resumption of an activity rather than an implement. But this way of using "resume" is well attested throughout the 18th and 19th centuries (OED resume, v.1, 5b. : "To take or pick up (something) to use again..."). A Google search reveals that Scott used "resumed his spade", without further comment, in The Abbot (1820). H.G. Wells used it in The War of the Worlds (1898); and there are plenty of other examples.

Nevertheless, the passage in Belisarius stuck in Scott's mind.

*

Apart from having both resumed their spades, there's no other obvious point of resemblance between the captious gardener and the philosophical ex-monarch; nor between their respective interlocutors, the bumptious, over-energized Frank and the elderly, blinded Belisarius. Is part of Scott's intention, indeed, to underline the incongruity of the comparison -- to supply a dash of the mock-heroic?
Remembering the high-minded conversation between Belisarius and his former adversary, overflowing with virtuous sentiment, isn't this to be struck anew by the distinctly worldly nature of the exchange we've just been witnessing between Frank and Andrew? Or is it, perhaps, to admire the naturalness, the elbow-room, the scope for surprise in Scott's fictions, in contrast to Marmontel's neoclassicist conte moral , abounding with high ideals, yet -- perhaps comically, and perhaps dangerously -- lacking in realism?

Yet this latter interpretation, inferring from Scott's own politics his likely disapproval of a proto-revolutionary encyclopédiste, strikes me as out of tune with the way Scott operates, especially in his novels; he's habitually humble about his own work, and habitually respectful of other authors, his political adversaries in particular. So I don't think there was any mockery in the Marmontel reference. (And, incidentally, I reflect how widely read Scott was in European literature, and not only in his obvious Romantic predecessors.)

*

Let me put forward one more view that, if not entirely satisfactory, is at least congruent with how Scott goes about things in Rob Roy.

Our sentence exemplifies a certain quality of skittish randomness in the early pages of Scott's novel. There's a surplus of energy in them, we certainly have a story boiling up but the randomness rather emphasizes that we don't know what kind of story it's going to be. The energy is, as it were, carried within Frank himself. It will evidently find a way to come out, but what way?

Young Frank is in most respects deeply out of sympathy with the life he finds at Osbaldistone Hall. There is nothing he can profit from, nothing that he approves, about a narrow round of field sports and copious alcohol; his uncle and his cousins are boorish rustics. But in spite of these firm opinions he senses, even so early as this scene, the breath of romance, a premonition, excitement, alertness. It has a lot to do with Die Vernon, of course, but not only with her; some of it is about Frank having cut the traces, of having no real business, and only the vaguest kind of mission, but a growing sense of adventure and change. (We already see that Frank's early aspirations to poetizing are fast ebbing away.) It's that pervasive excitement, that excess of  response, that are perhaps expressed by the narrative's incongruous shafts of light:  Osbaldistone Hall as ancient Athens (Chapter XIII), for example; or Andrew Fairservice as St Paul  (his own idea) or as king of the Vandals.

Well, it's time to talk about Andrew. Frank's first encounter with the gardener, which ends with our sentence, is comparatively rudimentary. And it's the last we hear of him for the next hundred pages; the first-time reader might begin to wonder if he had been introduced, after all, merely to convey a rumour. Far from it, of course. Scott was lighting a long fuse, which explodes into life twelve chapters later, in a torrent of Andrew's kailyard Scots, with transformative impact on both the novel and its hero.

And siclike dung as the grieve has gien me!—it should be wheat-strae, or aiten at the warst o't, and it's pease dirt, as fizzenless as chuckie-stanes. But the huntsman guides a' as he likes about the stable-yard, and he's selled the best o' the litter, I'se warrant. But, howsoever, we mauna lose a turn o' this Saturday at e'en, for the wather's sair broken, and if there's a fair day in seven, Sunday's sure to come and lick it up—Howsomever, I'm no denying that it may settle, if it be Heaven's will, till Monday morning,—and what's the use o' my breaking my back at this rate?—I think, I'll e'en awa' hame, for yon's the curfew, as they ca' their jowing-in bell.

Andrew is imperturbably taunting Frank. This "crafty knave", this "tiresome rascal", this "meddling fellow", unlikely as it seems, will be the first of the hero's three substitute father figures. Andrew is obstinately alive and real, the possessor of himself. As often in Scott's novels, kings may be seen to be commoners and commoners may be seen to be kings. And that, perhaps, is why Scott remembered Marmontel's sentence: the happy encapsulation of that theme in a king handling a spade.

And after all, if Andrew has no obvious resemblance to Marmontel's king of the Vandals, he does have one rather subtle one. Both are plying their spades in a foreign soil, a pursuit they have long accepted, but not altogether a voluntary one. That will turn out to be important, as the novel restlessly turns its gaze northwards.

*

Other literary parallels in Rob Roy


Scott was very fond of drawing a parallel from out of the vast databank of his reading. Maybe it originated as an advocate's habit, a sort of ornament to his speeches, to entertain and persuade. Scott read widely and with sympathy, and he had an incredibly retentive memory. I suppose you could also connect these literary parallels with another practice in the novels, of affixing literary epitaphs to chapters.  Anyway, here, without further commentary, are a few other "literary parallels" taken from the later chapters of Rob Roy.

"The waur, the waur -- just sae muckle the waur, Robin," replied the Bailie, averting his eyes from the money, though, like Caesar on the Lupercal, his fingers seemed to itch for it -- "Rebellion is waur than witchcraft, or robbery either; there's gospel warrant for't."  (Chapter XXXIV)

[The relevant passage in Julius Caesar is Casca's "I told you, he put it by once; but for all that, to my thinking he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again; but to my thinking he very loath to lay his fingers off it. ..." (I.2)]

[Diana's] name was written in every book which I attempted to peruse; and her image forced itself on me in whatever train of thought I strove to engage myself. It was like the officious slave of Prior's Solomon, --
                           Abra was ready ere I named her name,
                           And when I call'd another, Abra came.   (Chapter XXXIX)

Rashleigh was our first object. He groaned when I approached him, as much through spite as through pain, and shut his eyes, as if determined, like Iago, to speak no word more.(Chapter XXXIX)

*

An informative account of Belisarius, his changing reputation, and Byzantine strategic thinking, by Iskander Rehman:

https://warontherocks.com/2017/09/historys-model-general-reflections-on-the-life-and-times-of-belisarius/

*

This post supplements and apologizes for the jejune waspishness of my older note on Rob Roy (I wrote it in about 2001), just as that note claimed to emancipate itself from earlier and even more critical views, slavishly absorbed from what then passed as orthodoxy.

*

* Scott recycled this hasty response, many years later:  “Ha!” said Arthur; “so young, so beautiful, and already in league with the destroyer of mankind? It is impossible.” (Anne of Geierstein, Ch X)


Scott's novels: A brief guide

January marmalade

Last week I did the traditional January thing and made a batch of marmalade. The fruit, known as "Seville oranges", "marmalade oranges" or "bitter oranges", appears in our shops for only a few weeks.

Bitter oranges arrived in Moorish Seville as early as the 10th century, and they are used in Spanish cuisine today, but not in anything like the quantities demanded by millions of British breakfast tables, so most of the annual Seville crop ends up here.

See how she simpers it, as if marmalade

Would not melt in her mouth. 

(Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women, c. 1620)

The oafish Ward means a fruit conserve, but not necessarily oranges. The earliest British recipe for "marmelat of oranges" dates from 1677. Iberian marmalade recipes go back to the 15th century. They were solid and fairly homogeneous conserves, perhaps like today's mermelada de membrillo, a quince conserve cut into wedges and eaten with cheese.  Janet Keiller of Dundee, in 1797, helping her son make the most of an unwanted cargo of Seville oranges, may be the true inventor of what we think of as marmalade today, i.e. a spreadable semi-liquid that includes shreds of peel.

The Bitter Orange is a "species" of hybrid origin. Its scientific name is Citrus x aurantium. Ultimately it derives from two wild species, the Mandarin (Citrus reticulata) and the Pomelo (Citrus maxima). The same two ancestors, in differing proportions, lie behind the Sweet Orange (Citrus x sinensis), the Grapefruit (Citrus x paradisi), and all the small oranges you see in shops (Satsumas, Clementines, Easypeelers, etc). Broadly speaking, the sweetness and orange colour derive from the Mandarin, the size and firmness from the Pomelo.

Apart from British marmalade, the bitter orange also flavours drinks like Curaçao and Grand Marnier, canard à l'orange, and even Finnish and Swedish pepparkakor (though it isn't among the ingredients of my own family's recipe). It's much valued in Iranian cuisine.

Bitter orange is thought to have some of the same adverse impacts as grapefruit on people who take statins and many other prescription drugs. (The effect was discovered by accident in 1989, when grapefruit juice was used in a medical test to hide the taste of ethanol.) The problematic substances in Citrus fruits, which cause the prescription drug either to accumulate to dangerously high levels, or dwindle to such low levels that it no longer does its job, seem to be mainly connected with the Pomelo ancestry.

I do wonder if these substances would be likely to survive the several hours of boiling involved in making marmalade, but I've seen no advice on that.

We page-turn

Just enough time today for another dip into Andrea Brady's 2016 collection The Strong Room. This is the final poem. (It was previously published in Cordite Poetry Review so I feel it's OK to quote it in full.)

  [But I'm not pasting the text from there. Since I'm not in a hurry I'm typing it out word by word. I always feel that something happens then, for example I start to experience the words more as if they were part of my own immediate surroundings, or maybe I might wonder what would need to be different for me to use these precise expressions... Anyway, I find it a useful exercise.]


Marlow One

Sky-head dashing through Chelyabinsk
distant intimate,
tumble yourself out shattering
glassy fears, we know no other.
Life has always looked set
to begin tomorrow, its ancientness
burns now the motorways and blasts out
windows and boils the ice under which you lay
so your corpse comes up like an apple.

With a name writ in water
with eyes clear to water transitional
species appearing to watch
your own appearance, your eel nature
that loves to hide
pinks up and comes wired with songs.

You give names to the unknown future,
make its fashions specific. If you keep
these almonds for eyes, will the rain glaze
with universal justice your membranous head.
Will you retain yourself in safety
if your crushing or exhaustion
is the black hole of thought, will you scatter
your radiant occult sugars
over a world quivering momentarily with peace?

Will you keep the nutty heat of the sacred
in your thumb-sized heart.
We page-turn for you forever,
because life is actually very stupid,
because we bide your admiration stupidly,
in proverbs, in grand precise speeches,
in flashes better than this

shows the limits of my power:
a limit lying alongside you through our intimately broken
night, like the silver horizon of waters
of promises whose writ you are the name




This poem was written about her newborn third child Marlow. He was born on 3 March 2013 -- just a couple of weeks after the superbolide meteor that blindingly burst over Chelyabinsk, as alluded to in the opening lines.

Another allusion is to the epitaph on Keats' gravestone in Rome.

This grave contains all that was Mortal of a Young English Poet who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart at the Malicious Power of his Enemies Desired these words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone: Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. 

Only the final words are Keats' own; the first part of the epitaph was written perhaps by Charles Brown or by Shelley, though the threat of "Malicious Power" hovers in the background of this poem and many others in The Strong Room -- perhaps in contrast to the "limits" of the poet's own "power". It has been disputed whether the epitaph misrepresents the context of Keats's words, though they do seem to refer to a lack of established fame.

Anyway, AB's poem identifies the "name writ in water" not with a forgotten dead poet but with that other kind of unknown, a  just-born child; it forms part of a kind of thought about the tangible yet elusive significance of every life.

The image of the parents who "page-turn for you forever" is pregnant. A page-turner is a very lowly role compared with a pianist. Yet the pianist can only play what's shown on the page.

It's curious how this fleeting brush with Keats spotlights some concealed aspects of AB's own poetry that -- rather unexpectedly -- could recall the poetry of Keats and his age: e.g. "loves to hide", "nutty heat", "universal justice"... Indeed, the very Romantic conception of a poem at an infant's side, the apostrophe to that infant.




Andrea Brady reading "Marlow One" in Beirut in May 2015. Her emphases at various points were helpful in navigating the poem, I found. This version, incidentally, contains one extra word:

                                                  If you keep
these almonds for eyes, will the rain even glaze
with universal justice your membranous head.

Andrea Brady talks about The Strong Room with Andrew Spragg:

https://poetrylondon.co.uk/on-radical-tenderness-andrea-brady-talks-to-andrew-spragg/

I've read this interview before (probably linked to it before, too), but there were a couple of things that stood out for me today.

One is about the poet's (or at least, AB's) refusal of control. "The poems which interest me tend to be a series of edges and noise, not allegorical code. Even if poets begin with an explicit intention, the poem will take them to unplanned destinations." I think it's salutary to apply that idea when reading her poetry: to consider that while the above poem may have begun with the twin arrivals of baby Marlow and the stupendous meteor, the poem doesn't necessarily remain within a preconceived thought: that initial impulse may be only the first of its edges.

The other is her acknowledgement, at the start, that it seems very difficult to write poetry "in this moment", that is, in a time of crisis. It's not a new thought: it was often mentioned by writers at the time of the second world war. But I expect a lot of people, me included, will relate to what AB says here.

But why is it so? Because onrushing events preoccupy our thoughts? Because the  kind of poetry we write is intrinsically one of the arts of peace? Because poetry seems trivial now, our old self-justifications exploded? Or because, on the contrary, there seems to be more at stake now, the challenge is paralysing, the penalty of getting it wrong more severe?

Tropical fruit

Because of Storm Brendan the River Ray has spread all over its floodplain. But indoors from this Swindon January I'm in the tropics, reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's devastating novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006).

The novel's world is often articulated through fruit trees, and as I've been spending so much of my reading time in Nigeria recently (e.g. here) I thought I would learn a bit more about some of them.

Ripe cashew apples

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

Cashew tree, Nsukka, p. 13, 15, 16, 24, 175, 419. The "wine-like scent of ripening cashews". Orlu, p. 311, 318, 391, 402, 406, 409, 412, 414. Anacardium occidentale, native to tropical America. The pulp of the cashew apple can be distilled into liquor. Its seed is the cashew "nut".

Ube fruit

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

Ube tree, Opi, p. 8. Dacryodes edulis, native to tropical Africa. The fruit can be eaten raw or cooked. It's valued for its high fat content.

Avocado, Lagos, p. 30, 32. At a posh dinner. From "one of our farms.. the one near Asaba". Persea americana, native to South-central Mexico.

Kuka pod

[Image source: Wikipedia.]

"ripe gourdlike pods on the kuka tree". Kano, p. 39, 40, 129, 148. I.e. the baobab (Adansonia digitata), native to savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa. Kuka soup is a popular delicacy in northern Nigeria.

Indian Almond fruit

[Image source: https://afrikahnqueen.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/a-fruit-called-fruit/ .]

Umbrella tree fruit, p. 73. "they had fallen during the previous night and lay, oval and pale yellow, on the lawn. ..smelt the over-sweetness of their rotting". I'm pretty sure this is the Indian Almond, Terminalia catappa , known in Nigeria as umbrella tree, according to the link above. Both flesh and kernel are eaten. The native range is uncertain; long naturalized in a broad belt from Australia through S. Asia to Africa.

Pawpaw (papaya) tree

[Image source: https://plantinstructions.com/tropical-fruit/grow-papaya-seed/ .]

Pawpaw, Nsukka, p. 15, 24, 107. "blackbirds that ate the pawpaws in the garden". This must be the papaya (Carica papaya), often called pawpaw, native to tropical America (not the pawpaw of the Eastern USA and Canada (Asimina triloba)).

Orange tree, Port Harcourt, p. 77, 113, 316, 426. Orlu, p. 390. The sweet orange Citrus x sinensis is the world's most cultivated tree. It arose in ancient China, a hybrid between pomelo and mandarin.

The sound of the rain slapping against the window woke him up the next morning. Kainene lay beside him, her eyes half open in that eerie way that meant she was deeply asleep. He looked at her dark chocolate skin, which shone with oil, and lowered his head to her face. He didn't kiss her, didn't let his face touch hers, but placed it close enough so that he could feel the moistness of her breath and smell its faintly curdled scent. He stretched and went to the window. It rained in slants here in Port Harcourt so that the water hit the windows and walls rather than the roof. Perhaps it was because the ocean was so close, because the air was so heavy with water that it let it fall too soon. For a moment, the rain became intense and the sound against the window grew loud, like pebbles being flung against the glass. He stretched again. The rain had stopped and the windowpanes were cloudy. Behind him, Kainene stirred and mumbled something.
     "Kainene?" he said.
     Her eyes were still half open, her breathing still regular.
      "I'm going for a walk," he said, although he was sure she didn't hear him.
      Outside, Ikejide was plucking oranges; his uniform bunched up at the back as he nudged fruit down with a stick.
       "Good morning, sah," he said.
       "Kedu?" Richard asked. He felt comfortable practising his Igbo with Kainene's stewards, because they were always so expressionless that it did not matter whether or not he got the tones right.
        "I am well, sah."
        "Jisie ike."
        "Yes, sah."
        Richard went to the bottom of the orchard, where he could see, through the thicket of trees, the white foam of the sea's waves. He sat on the ground. He wished that Major Madu had not invited them to dinner ....  (p. 113-114)

Breadfruit

[Image source: https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/breadfruit/breadfruit-tree-facts.htm . Photo by bennyartist.]

Breadfruit tree. Opi, p. 7, 420, 421. Orlu, p. 400. Artocarpus altilis, probably deriving from a wild species native to the Philippines and New Guinea.

Udala fruit

[Image source: https://www.kitchenbutterfly.com/2017/01/06/thou-shalt-not-pluck-fruit-from-the-agbalumo-star-apple-tree/ .]

Udala tree, Abba, p. 190. Children "fighting over the fallen udala fruit. They could not climb the tree or pluck the fruit because it was taboo; udala belonged to the spirits." Chrysophyllum albidum, native to tropical Africa, also known as white star apple.

Mango tree

[Image source: http://www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de/images/pictures/mangifera_indica_img_6465_ralfbiechele_1058_6b680e.jpg .]

Mango tree, Nsukka, p. 175, 215. Abba, p. 185. "fruit drooping down like heavy earrings." Umuahia, p. 264. Orlu, p. 398. Mangifera indica and other species, native to S. Asia.

Olanna ran past the Town square on her way to Akwakuma Primary School in the morning. She always did that in open spaces, running until she got to the thick shade of trees that would give good cover in case of an air raid. Some children were standing under the mango tree in the school compound, throwing stones up at the fruit. She shouted, "Go to your classes, osiso!" and they scattered briefly before coming back to aim at the mangoes. She heard a cheer when one fell, and then the raised voices as they quarrelled over whose throw had brought the fruit down. (p. 264)

Guava tree

[Image source: http://www.westafricanplants.senckenberg.de/images/pictures/psidium_guajava_img_0761_ralfbiechele_1306_ceb19a.jpg .]

Guava tree, Abba, p. 184, 194. Its bark "a light clay alternating with a darker slate, much like the skin of village children with the nlacha skin disease." Psidium guajava, native to tropical America.

Kola-nut pods

[Image source: https://bellafricana.com/the-precious-african-nut-kola-nut/ .]

Kola-nut tree. Nsukka, p. 18, 175.
Obosi, pp. 164-165. "broke the kola nut apart into five lobes".
 Abba, p. 185, 188, 195, 299. One of various species, especially Cola acuminata and Cola nitida, native to tropical Africa. The nut contains caffeine. It is chewed, releasing the bitter taste. It reduces hunger pangs and has many social and ceremonial uses.

Lemon tree, Nsukka, p. 15, 24, 209, 365, 432. "'I also use lemons to make cake; lemons are very good for the body...The food of white people makes you healthy, it is not like all of the nonsense that our people eat.'" For both Harrison and Ugwu (his sceptical listener) citrus fruits are alien introductions. Citrus limon seems to have originated in NE India, perhaps as a hybrid between bitter orange and citron.

Banana "tree" (technically the world's tallest herbaceous plant).  Umuahia, p. 326, 331. One of various Musa species, native to tropical Indomalaya and Australia.

*

The fruit trees in Half of a Yellow Sun are naturally eloquent in ways that need no commentary: they speak variously of locality, community, hospitality, shelter, native culture, alien culture, fulfilment, betrayal, desecration, corruption, memory, loss, continuity, resolve...

But one general aspect of their meaning I might have missed if I hadn't looked up kwashiorkor, the particular brand of starvation that killed so many Biafran children, characterized by a swollen abdomen and pitted ankles. Kwashiorkor occurs where there's a relative availability of energy foods (sugars, carbs) but an extreme lack of protein. (The abdominal swelling is the enlargement of the liver with fatty deposits.) This is the dietary vulnerability that Ugwu's aunty hints at on the very first page of Adichie's novel, when she promises him that in his new job as houseboy "as long as you work well, you will eat well. You will even eat meat every day."

The Biafran war ended in 1970. But
malnutrition and child mortality remain terrible facts of life in some parts of Nigeria even today. Kevin Watkins' recent Guardian article (15 January 2020):

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jan/15/nigerias-child-development-crisis-is-a-tragedy-heres-how-we-can-end-it

Frederick Forsyth's article about Britain's involvement in the Biafran war:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/21/buried-50-years-britain-shamesful-role-biafran-war-frederick-forsyth

*

There's plenty of debate about Half of a Yellow Sun within Nigeria and elsewhere, but it's mostly behind academic paywalls so involves a trip to a university library. Some aspects of that fraught discussion are represented in this 2017 paper by Abayomi Abewela:

https://lucas.leeds.ac.uk/article/adichies-half-of-a-yellow-sun-abayomi-awelewa/

Kate Kellaway's piece for the Observer was the most interesting I've seen of the newspaper reviews that came out at the time of publication:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/aug/13/fiction.features2

One more extract. People are on relief flour by now.

The cake turned out crisp on the outside and moistly soft inside, and he cut slim slices and took them out in saucers. Special Julius and Olanna were sitting down while Master was standing, gesturing, talking about the last village he visited, how the people had sacrificed a goat at the shrine of oyi to keep the vandals away.
          "A whole goat! All that wasted protein!" Special Julius said and laughed.
          Master did not laugh. "No, no, you must never underestimate the psychological importance of such things. We never ask them to eat the goat instead."
          "Ah, cake!" Special Julius said. He ignored the fork and stuffed the piece in his mouth. "Very good, very good. Ugwu, you have to teach the people in my house because all they do with our flour is chin-chin, every day is chin-chin, chin-chin, and it is the hard kind with no taste! My teeth have finished."
          "Ugwu is a wonder at everything," Olanna said. "He would easily put that woman in Rising Sun Bar out of business."
          Professor Ekwenugo knocked on the open door and walked in. His hands were swathed in cream-coloured bandages.
          "Dianyi, what happened to you?" Master asked.
          "Just a little burn." Professor Ekwenugo stared at his bandaged hands as if he had only just realized that they meant he no longer had a long nail to stroke. "We are putting together something very big."
          "Is it our first Biafran-built bomber jet?" Olanna teased.
           "Something very big that will reveal itself with time," Professor Ekwenugo said, with a mysterious smile. He ate clumsily; bits of cake fell away before they got to his mouth.
            "It should be a saboteur-detecting machine," Master said.
            "Yes! Bloody saboteurs." Special Julius made the sound of spitting. "They sold Enugu out. How can you leave civilians to defend our capital with mere machetes? This is the same way they lost Nsukka, by pulling back for no reason. Doesn't one of the commanding officers have a Hausa wife? She has put medicine in his food." .... (pp. 284-285)

Mindful of kitchen sounds

Willow  tree with galls, Swindon, 14 January 2020.

Two poets in this fleeting post, both born in the same year as me (1958).

*

The clink-clanging of
knives and forks
against a susurrus
of sobs escaping
the steel faucet...

Me in this twilight hour
sipping red in cobalt...

Mindful of kitchen
sounds slowly seeping
into the woods from
whence appear a family
of deer I sometimes
spy from the
square window

And point out
to the delight
even now
Of grown children
And their father
familiar with the
madness of mothering

the Other

(from Fawzia Afzal-Khan, "M/Other")

Reading Fawzia Afzal-Khan's poems (in women: poetry: migration ed. Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, 2017) takes me not to more poetry but to singing, theatre, academic writing, journalism. "My poetry -- like my scholarly and memoir writings, my teaching and other forms of art such as my singing -- sits astride, explores and emerges from the border crossings that make up my life." She was born in Lahore, lives and works in the USA.

History of Unforgetting: Fawzia Afzal-Khan (that's her singing, from about the 5-minute mark) with the Kathak dancer Parul Shah:



Mullahs and music in Morocco (2010):
https://tribune.com.pk/story/25868/mullahs-and-music-in-morocco/
How my daughter's interracial relationship opened my eyes (2017):
https://www.salon.com/2017/12/25/i-thought-i-was-open-minded-my-daughters-interracial-relationship-opened-my-eyes/
Journey to the house of stone: where past meets the present in the Levant (2017):
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/10/journey-to-the-house-of-stone-where-past-meets-the-present-in-the-levant/


*

Mir Mahfuz Ali's poem "A Lizard by my Hospital Bed" came up for discussion yesterday at my reading group. I've found the text online on Kim Moore's blog, so I'm feeling OK about requoting it in full.


A Lizard by My Hospital Bed

The mouth of silence trickles forward a bloodless lizard.
I take off my oxygen mask and allow

his cracked sound to crawl into my teenage head.
Like me he puffs for air.  I wheeze.  He pants.

He does not break his meditation as the hours pass,
my eyes still on him when he jumps on a thinking fly

with a fine open-air gesture.  An education by lizard:
focus, don’t rely on impulse.

Keep the foam clear so my voice doesn’t burst
through my trachea hole

like shrapnel in a pomegranate.
My eyes flick a question, city kerosene thuds

echoing in my head.  My friend says nothing.
Goes one step back, two steps forward.

How can I let him go?  I grab the fellow by his tail,
but he still escapes through the gap in my throat.


This poem (which refers to his injury after being shot in the throat by riot police during an anti-war protest in Bangladesh) comes from his only collection to date (Midnight, Dhaka (2014)). He was born in Dhaka and lives in the UK.

Mir Mahfuz Ali reading a poem about Salma:

Willow sprig with gall

These galls might be the work of the saw-fly Rabdophaga rosaria, which produces terminal rosette galls on willows. But they don't look quite like the images I've found online, so take this with a pinch of salt.

Gall of reduced leaves on willow

Stone Parsley (Sison amomum)

My floral companion over the darkest time of the year was a specimen of Stone Parsley (Sison amomum) that made a very belated decision to throw up a flowering stem, when we were already well into autumn. In the spring I had transplanted two Stone Parsley plants from a nearby verge. (The other one had flowered at midsummer and was long gone.)

The carrot family (Apiaceae, formerly called Umbelliferae) contains many species that make wonderful subjects for photographs, but Stone Parsley isn't one of them. The adult plant consists almost entirely of narrow, divergent, stems making a zigzag network in the air. They terminate in small, widely separated, white flowers, which mature into small dark fruits. There's just nothing for the camera to focus on.

But that didn't stop me trying, and I took hundreds of snaps of this plant and of others (Stone Parsley is very common in Swindon). The photos here, for what it's worth, were the best.

One cobwebby morning.

From Dioscorides' De Materia Medica (50 - 70 CE). This is from the translation available online by Tess Anne Osbaldeston (2000). As ever, a degree of doubt exists about which species Dioscorides (a physican in Cilicia, SE Turkey) was referring to. 

3-64. SISON

Sison is a little seed similar to apium [3-77] that grows in

Syria — somewhat long, black, with an acrid taste. It

is taken in a drink for the spleen, painful urination, and

retention of the menstrual flow. The inhabitants use it for

a sauce, eating it with cucurbita [2-164] boiled with

vinegar. It has (as it were) many little grains on the tops.

[SUGGESTED: Sison amomum, Sium amomum, Sium aromaticum

— Hedge Sison, Bastard Stone Parsley]

The most frequently repeated fact about Stone Parsley is that the crushed plant has a nauseating smell of petroleum. I'm sure this is true, but my own sense of smell is so fitful that I've yet to experience it.

Despite the smell, it's apparently edible and the seeds have been used as a condiment. The stems are said to taste like celery.

The 1684 sex and midwifery manual known as Aristotle's Masterpiece talks about Stone Parsley's usefulness for cleansing the womb, suggesting that it may be abortifacient.

Stone Parsley doesn't occur in Sweden. It's considered sub-Atlantic / sub-Mediterranean. In the UK it mostly occurs SE of a line from Lincolnshire to Glamorgan, but even within that region its frequency varies greatly. I never noticed it around Hastings (E. Sussex), nor do I ever see it around Frome (Somerset), but in residential West Swindon it grows all along the footpaths and shelter-belts, often in large numbers.

Small snails on the upper part of the main stem, January 2020.