"Not even not wrong" Email to: michaelpeverett@live.co.uk
Thursday, April 30, 2020
facts lock into the fictions we hang them by
My very slow reading of the anthology women:poetry:migration ed. Jane Joritz-Nakagawa (2017) has brought me up against a poem I've read before, Hazel Smith's "Metaphorics", which had appeared in her 2016 collection Word Migrants. (HS: born in the UK, lives in Sydney)
She links "Metaphorics" with "a choice of metonym over metaphor" in HS's own poetry and more generally in the world of experimental poetry, e.g. the Language school. (I'm not quite easy with this formulation, because there are plentiful metaphors in Word Migrants, both in "Metaphorics" and in other poems. I do sense that those metaphors often do have a vague air of being quoted, which I suppose puts a metatextual spotlight on them. But at the same time I don't feel that a metaphor ceases to operate as a metaphor when it's put in quotes. The poem shares the metaphor.)
One of the sources in the first part of "Metaphorics" - ("I want to argue against metaphor -- against substituting one thing for another, to enrich or complicate our understanding") comes from a discussion of inclusive language, it refers to how some metaphoric language can smuggle in exclusionary ideas, for instance using "dark" to mean wicked, or using "blind" to mean ignorant.
"Metaphorics" is three poems constructed in a musical way. Here's some extracts (the end of 1, most of 2, and the beginning of 3).
Metaphorics (in three parts)
1. Metaphor (an internet cut and paste)
...
Use all metaphors, dead or alive, sparingly, otherwise you will make trouble for yourself. "Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside." During the treatment of violent individuals the authors noticed that physical assaults were often preceded by an onslaught of metaphors. There is no way to metaphorize the actual experience of losing any or all of your senses. The metaphors for talking about sex in the US all come from baseball, let's talk about pizza instead. Music as metaphor: a powerful tool in leadership development. It hurts the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef. You are welcome to your opinion of course. But these are metaphors and in the end are likely to be misleading.
2. The Unanswered Question
answers rarely fit with their questions
...
her ideal script was never the one she composed
she googles her CV, it no longer fits
it was years since he had died, the crime scene was yellowing
facts lock into the fictions we hang them by
3. Windfall (a polylogue)
I don't know whether I want to shake my life into bits or grip it like a handrail. The lightest wind can cause the ball to swerve. It's a crossing of bumps and abrasions, missed stations and barred gates. Every day I slip on the dropped peelings of somebody else's intent.
The grail they desire was never conceived, nor will the quest gestate. The black box is slowly liquidating, the ocean sucks in its own depths. I watched the news and didn't absorb the details, I surf by floating on my back. They suggested I write down my objectives, as if I knew what they were. If I knew, I wouldn't need to write them down I said.
There's no such thing as a goal, just whims; heresy defines the route. I'm an experimental poet she said, hoping cartographically that might fit. The moon outsmarts every poem about it, a compass pins words west and east. He's standing behind her, mapping what she writes, while a rhythm nods its unhinged head.
In poetry metaphor is everything; she wondered if she believed what she proposed. The rain saws the hapless day in half, the bark will keep the soil moist. Is it so new to them they won't understand or have they heard it all before? No self-help book ever worked it out. Her colleagues will never tell her what they really think. And the world wears indifference as its tell-all badge.
Ants in the sink in the morning, possums pounding on the roof. Being helpless is his strategy. The personal is like a violent toothache, while an earthquake on TV sidles by. You've never experienced genocide, she said, taking an unanswerable stance. Nobody noticed I was irate. There is a part of me that expects people to read my feelings, while the other me knows they can't.
...
Nearly all the sentences, in all three parts, are metaphorical. A sentence like "The moon outsmarts every poem about it" even uses a metaphorical construction to express the failure of moon poems that are (presumably) metaphorical.
In a way the poem sometimes noisily and sometimes quietly portrays the questionable nature of discourse in a highly discursive society. Spoken freedom isn't freedom, which (like the moon) can't be spoken. Language is more often a claim about action than an action. Language is in a material context. Communication ("He's standing behind her") happens through more than language; it's act, mood, atmosphere, gesture, inferences of intent. Our true objectives, like the ideal script, are never what's written down. Language is a structure of fictions (upon which we hang facts), it is only an approximate fit.
While I'm thinking all this, the wind blows through the third part of the poem. A remembered wind that is also the real wind outside. It's difficult to control what happens in a poem.
Shakespeare's sonnets were published in 1609. The following year, the 17-year old George Herbert wrote this sonnet (sent in a letter to his mother, "to declare my resolution to be, that my poor abilities in Poetry, shall be all and ever consecrated to God’s glory"):
My God, where is that ancient heat towards thee,
Wherewith whole shoals of Martyrs once did burn,
Besides their other flames? Doth Poetry
Wear Venus livery? only serve her turn?
Why are not Sonnets made of thee? and lays
Upon thine Altar burnt? Cannot thy love
Heighten a spirit to sound out thy praise
As well as any she? Cannot thy Dove
Out-strip their Cupid easily in flight?
Or, since thy ways are deep, and still the same,
Will not a verse run smooth that bears thy name?
Why doth that fire, which by thy power and might
Each breast does feel, no braver fuel choose
Than that, which one day, Worms, may chance refuse?
[It might be fanciful to suppose that the young Herbert had just been reading Shakespeare's sonnets. But surely the phrase "as any she" is bound to trigger belied with false compare in many readers' minds (Sonnet 130)? Or what about sonnets like "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments" (55) in the background of Herbert's closing lines?
The rhyme scheme is ababcdcdeffegg; so the octet is like a Shakespeare/Daniel sonnet (sometimes termed an English sonnet), but the sestet's form is Petrarchan. Herbert used it again in the other sonnet in the 1610 letter, and would use it again in later sonnets like "Prayer" and "Love (I)"; "Sin", however, is in the pure Shakespearean form ababcdcdefefgg. (If you compare the two schemes, the only difference is the switch of lines 11-12, but the impact is huge.) I haven't yet found anyone else using the "Herbertian" form in his own time. It has been used in later times by e.g. Charlotte Smith, Wilfred Owen, Edna St Vincent Millay... ]
Serving God by repurposing the secular to other ends turned out to be not so simple. Nor, in his own life, could service to God be treated as merely an add-on.
When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave;
So many joys I writ down for my part
Besides what I might have
Out of my stock of natural delights,
Augmented with thy gracious benefits.
I lookèd on thy furniture so fine,
And made it fine to me;
Thy glorious household-stuff did me entwine,
And 'tice me unto thee.
Such stars I counted mine: both heaven and earth
Paid me my wages in a world of mirth.
This win-win arrangement is shattered by the troubles that follow. Serving God can be no other than a complete transformation, and it can't be defined in secular terms.
Yet, though thou troublest me, I must be meek;
In weakness must be stout;
Well, I will change the service, and go seek
Some other master out.
Ah my dear God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.
(End of "Affliction (I)")
I've seen several attempts to explain these lines, but I'm not sure if they can be settled down into any one interpretation.
Here are two shots at it:
1. Well, I will stop serving you and seek another master (in other words, a worldly career, where I might win some favour and recognition).
Ah my dear God, (No, I won't do that). Even though you appear to have completely forgotten me
(I acknowledge the validity of you treating me like this, for)
Heaven forbid that I should go through the motions of loving you unless I (have been proven to) really love you.
2. I am tired of this existence and will seek another master: the extinction of death. (Job 3:19 -- The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master)
Ah my dear God (goodbye). Even though I'll be utterly forgotten when I'm dead*
That is better than persisting in (the pretence of) loving you when (it's been proven by my evident uselessness and wretchedness that) I don't love you enough.
* This interpretation overlooks the strict implications of the little word "am", taking it loosely as a subjunctive "be".
But if I were to self-critique these interpretations, both of them are at odds with a certain jauntiness in the poem and its plain (if elusive) words. Despite the poem's title of "Affliction", it doesn't really wallow in pain but exemplifies being "stout" in "weakness". And I even register a sort of submerged twirling moustachio in the final half-line ("if I love thee not"), --- its natural inference, "I do love thee" ... (Excellent rogue, beshrew me if I love thee not...)
At length the moon set, and boys came round with wine-skins and baskets containing small fragments of biscuit. Each man had a swallow and a mouthful; a few, exceptionally lucky, fell out to relieve themselves in the gutter, but the majority were still constipated from lack of food and irregular hours. Then grooms were to be seen tightening the girths of the bony warhorses, and Roger got an obliging crossbowman to run over the fastenings of his mail shirt and hauberk. As the light grew the chaplains appeared at every street corner and muttered through a short Mass; then, as the sun rose, the great Bridge Gate was thrown wide open with a loud creaking of hinges and the army began to march down the street.
Roger limped along on his inflamed and aching feet, hoping that exercise and excitement would soon make them more active; he found that if he carried his shield correctly on his left arm the point of it banged irritatingly against his scabbard, and threatened to trip him; so he slung it on his back until he should arrive within range of the enemy's arrows. It was the first time he had marched on foot, fully armed, in the midst of a dense column, and even though he was in the right-hand file he found it awkward and enraging; those in front were always too fast or too slow, and he could not see the rough places in the street in time to avoid them. But very soon he was through the Gate and on the Bridge; here a breeze was blowing, and though it brought the stench from all the refuse of the long-occupied pilgrim camp it was reviving after the foetid and stagnant air of the city. He was in the centre of the Norman column, and if they had got so far the French of the Ile-de-France must be already across and formed up on the northern bank. They all moved more briskly as they crossed the Bridge, and the breeze blew away their early morning headaches and sleepiness; one or two men began to sing marching-songs, and everyone laughed when a donkey ridden by a lame knight behind them brayed fiercely. Perhaps they would go into battle in better spirits than had seemed possible during the long night in the stuffy town. (pp. 198-199)
I wrote about Alfred Duggan before, but I thought Knight with Armour (1950) deserved its own post. Duggan lived at Bodiam Manor with his now comparatively impoverished mother from 1943 (she had married Lord Curzon and inherited all his wealth after his death, but contrived to throw it away in six years). Here, I suppose, Duggan conceived his first novel, tracking the First Crusade through the eyes of a younger son of the manor that was then called "Bodeham".
Roger is an earnest but undistinguished knight. He is killed just as the invaders enter the walls of Jerusalem in 1099. The novel thus omits an account of the Jerusalem massacres that immediately followed, but there had been massacres before, and Roger had not paid them much attention. "On the 30th the ravaging continued, with little bloodshed save of the very old and very young who could not get out of the way in time; the pilgrims wanted food, not conquest" (p. 123). In fact the pilgrims (i.e. the crusaders) have hardly any contact with the inhabitants of the lands they pass through. There is no shared language or faith, nor the slightest interest in getting to know the people.
(It's all very different from how Scott imagined the Third Crusade in The Talisman: there, the cultural encounter of West and East was one of the principal themes.)
The novel is such a flexible form that it can grade into being an educational textbook; and that's maybe the best way to see Duggan's historical novels; and also Galdos' Episodios Nacionales. I have a lot of admiration for the hard work and unpretentiousness in such evidently useful enterprises.
Duggan had a lot of information. He had inspected most of the novel's sites at first hand, he knew the archaeology and the technological history of e.g. warfare, armour, horses, feudalism, he also knew the contemporary accounts of the campaign. Besides, Duggan had seen active service in Norway during WW2. Bringing all these together allows us to share the journey of the crusade as a history book could hardly do, to make us feel materially present at Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Antioch, Acre, Jerusalem...
The doubt, which can never be finally answered, is whether we can know how the historical participants thought and felt about it. Contemporary texts rarely talk about such quotidian human experience. Was the daily experience of 11th-century people fundamentally different from ours, or do the writings of the time simply filter it differently? (Doubtless the answer is both, but this answers nothing if the differences can't be described.) It's surely relevant that even knights like Roger couldn't write and could read only with difficulty if at all.
What made the Christian inhabitants of Europe at this particular moment take up the idea of "liberating" Jerusalem with such mass enthusiasm? There's no satisfactory single answer, beyond Tolstoy's unaccountable movement of peoples.
Roger inquired eagerly as he wolfed his biscuit, and soon heard the full story; how a Provençal priest, Father Peter Bartholomew, had seen a vision of Saint Andrew the Apostle, who had told him that the head of the very lance which had pierced Our Saviour as He hung on the Cross had been hidden under the altar of Saint Peter's Church, to save it from profanation by the infidels; how that now Antioch was again in Christian hands the time had come for the Lance-head to be revealed by the agency of Peter Bartholomew, and that it would infallibly lead the pilgrim army to victory over all unbelievers. This was very good news indeed. Roger had never thought of Antioch as being part of the Holy Land, and Our Redeemer had never been in the city in His earthly life, but it reminded him that they were already in the cradle of Christianity, in fact in the place where that name was first given to the followers of Christ. Obviously the first step for any God-fearing man was to go and reverence the relic, with all adoration short of Latria. . .
. . . After High Mass the Count of Toulouse ascended the altar-steps, dressed in a gorgeous silk mantle over his mail shirt and mail breeches, and holding a small silk-wrapped object. The whole congregation sang Te Deum Laudamus, then knelt as the Holy Lance was unwrapped and displayed, much in the same manner as the Sacred Host at Benediction. This was a Relic indeed, at least as holy as the True Cross that the Greek Emperor guarded so carefully at Constantinople, and it had been revealed, by the direct miraculous intervention of the Blessed Apostle Saint Andrew, to help the pilgrim army in its utmost need. Roger knelt and prayed in ecstacy, as he had not prayed since the day he took his pilgrim's vows in the Abbey Church at Battle, so many lifetimes ago. (pp. 186-187)
Antioch is now ruins, near to the modern city of Antakya in Turkey.
Latria: in Roman Catholic theology, adoration; a reverence directed only to the Holy Trinity.
The Antioch Lance:
Some have wondered if the lance-head only captured the crusaders' imagination in the hindsight of the improbable victory that came on 28th June 1098. But later, many voiced doubts about its authenticity; the doubts were political in nature. The question was not resolved by Peter Bartholomew's survival of voluntary ordeal by fire outside Acre in April 1099. Peter died of his injuries two weeks later. Were the injuries bad burns -- the story Duggan adopts in Knight with Armour -- or were they injuries sustained by the congratulations of a huge and hysterical crowd, as Raymond d'Aguilers claimed?
We don't know what happened to the Antioch lance-head. There is a contemporary record that Raymond of Toulouse presented it to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople, where they already had a Holy Lance, the one mentioned by Cassiodorus (late 5th century) as being worshipped in Jerusalem. A lance-head was among the Byzantine relics presented to Innocent VIII in 1492 and this is still preserved in St Peter's: it's usually said to be the Jerusalem one, but it has never been exhibited or examined, and the Vatican make no claims about it.
[Information in the above two paragraphs comes from an excellent thesis by Marius Kjørmo (2009).]
Bodiam Castle, 29th October 2018
I've decorated this post with photos from a family visit to Bodiam Castle, but the castle was built in 1385, nearly three centuries after the period depicted in Knight with Armour.
Alfred Duggan's Bodiam Manor (left), now transformed into Claremont Senior School
1. A new visitor to my garden, the diminutive Wall Speedwell (Veronica arvensis, Sw: Fältveronika). The OED says of the English name speedwell, "apparently speed + well" but speculates no further. (The earliest record is 1578.) One suggestion is that the name refers to the rapid fading of the flowers, but I doubt that, surely this must be speed in the sense of thriving or prospering. However, it's quite true that the individual flowers don't last long. You can see a faded corolla on the left.
Veronica, the name Linnaeus adopted for the genus, was another popular name in various European languages including Swedish. The name is thought to allude to Saint Veronica, who lent Jesus her veil to wipe his face on the way to his crucifixion; the veil was miraculously imprinted with his features. Perhaps it's only the name's familiarity that makes this seem to me rather appropriate, the blue flowers imaging the gaze of heaven.
One of the distinguishing ID features of Wall Speedwell is that all four of the corolla-lobes are identically blue. Another is that the flowers emerge from leafy terminal racemes, not from leaf axils all along the stem like the next three species shown below. Another is its small size, which the photo above misrepresents. Each flower is only 3-4mm across and you could easily not notice them at all. The photo below gives a better impression. The guides often describe it as upright but quite a few plants, like mine, are almost procumbent.
It occurs throughout the UK and most of Europe but, like so many other species, finds Norrland a step too far, so only gets about half-way up Sweden.
Veronica arvensis. Swindon, 16th April 2020.
Veronica filiformis. Swindon, 16th April 2020.
2. This is a much more noticeable speedwell: Slender Speedwell (Veronica filiformis, Sw: Trådveronika). It's a mat of long slender stems with neat round leaves, from whose axils the long-stalked and rather showy flowers arise.
It was introduced from the Caucasus and is now common throughout the UK, also Denmark and the Alps, but rather infrequent elsewhere in Europe. In Sweden it's restricted to the extreme south.
Veronica filiformis. Swindon, 16th April 2020.
Veronica filiformis among daisies. Swindon, 23rd April 2020.
Veronica hederifolia. Swindon, 16th April 2020.
3. This is Ivy-leafed Speedwell (Veronica hederifolia, Sw: Murgrönsveronika). It now occurs throughout most of Europe including the UK and the southern half of Sweden, but is thought to be native only to southern Europe and an archaeophyte (ancient introduction) elsewhere.
The lower photo shows subspecies lucorum (white or pale lilac with white anthers). The photo above may show the other subspecies hederifolia (pale blue with blue anthers) but the anthers aren't visible so I'm not particularly confident.
Veronica hederifolia ssp. lucorum. Frome, 18th March 2020.
Veronica persica. Swindon, 23rd April 2020.
4. This is Common Field Speedwell (Veronica persica, Sw: Trädgårdsveronika). Flowers springing from leaf-axils again; three blue corolla-lobes and a white lip. (It seems to be a chancy business with speedwells whether I ever manage to get the flower in sharp focus, and with this one I failed.) The fruit is distinguished from a couple of other similar species by being wider than long. The fruit is also supposed to have rather pointed lobes -- the one in my close-up didn't, but you can't have everything, and probably this fruit is still not fully developed.
Native to the Caucasus and N. Iran -- hence the specific name --, but now found throughout mainland Europe, the UK (first recorded in 1826) and the southern half of Sweden (first recorded in Lund in 1918).
Veronica persica. Swindon, 23rd April 2020.
Ripening fruit of Veronica persica. Swindon, 23rd April 2020.
Veronica serpyllifolia. Swindon, 23rd April 2020.
5. Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia, Sw: Majveronika). Perennial, ascending, leaves elliptical and virtually untoothed, flowers in terminal leafy racemes. This is the lowland subspecies serpyllifolia with pale blue or white flowers, streaked with dark blue or lilac. Common throughout Europe, including nearly all of Sweden.
[The alpine subspecies humifusa has deeper blue flowers, among other differences. It's in the Scottish highlands and more rarely on mountains elsewhere in the UK. In Sweden (where it's called Lappveronika) it occurs only in the most northerly mountains, though across the border in Norway it occurs further south.]
Veronica serpyllifolia. Swindon, 23rd April 2020.
Veronica chamaedrys, 26th April 2020.
6. Germander Speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys, Sw: Teveronika). I suppose for a lot of us this beautiful species is the plant we visualize when we imagine a typical speedwell.
The blue flowers are in axillary racemes. The leaves are stalkless and the hairs don't grow all round the stems but in two opposite tufts (both features that distinguish it from Wood Speedwell (7)). My experience is that the latter feature is often not apparent on the upper stems (to check it out, zoom in on the lower stems in the photo below).
Common in woods and waste ground throughout the UK and most of Europe, but with a slightly more northerly distribution than most of the other common species; for example it's absent from all of Spain except the north. In Sweden it's common as far up as Ångermanland, scarcer in the far north.
The Swedish name alludes to its leaves being used to make a herbal tea. It was once a very popular tea (and apparently it tastes a bit like real tea, i.e. bitter and astringent); I have read that in the 18th century it became scarce around London because of over-harvesting. Veronica officinalis (Heath Speedwell) was the other species commonly used.
I suppose it's because of the tea connection that it acquired the name Germander which is also used of the unrelated Teucrium genus (e.g. Wall Germander), formerly another very popular herbal tea. [But in 1992 Teucrium was shown to be damaging to the liver, though this was only discovered when it was sold in supplements, so perhaps the concentration in traditional teas was too low to do much harm.]
Veronica chamaedrys waking up. 26th April 2020.
Veronica montana, 25th April 2020.
7. Wood Speedwell (Veronica montana, Sw: Skogsveronika). Restricted to woods and shady places.
The flowers, in axillary racemes, are lilac rather than blue, but it nevertheless resembles Veronica chamaedrys in general appearance. Otherdifferences are: the stalked, noticeably pale green leaves; hairs all round the stems (but see above); larger leaves and somewhat smaller flowers. (In the photo below, compare the size of the leaves with those of the Ivy-leaved Speedwell in the bottom left corner!)
Throughout most of the UK. Similar European distribution to many of the other species, but more limited at the extremes. It doesn't seem to like being near the coast, it scarcely ventures into the Iberian peninsula, and in Sweden it occurs only in the far south.
Harry took a drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke in Wilsons direction, dropped the butt on the floor and squashed it under his shoe. What we do at the union meetings is none of your business unless we want ta tellya about it. O, I know that Harry, I certainly didnt mean to imply otherwise. All I am trying to say is that this organisation, like your union, is like any other organisation in that it is a team and everyone connected with the organisation from the President to the elevator operators are a member of that team and we all have to pull together. Everyones job is equally important. The Presidents job is no more important than yours in that if you dont co-operate, just as he must co-operate, we can not get the job done. That is what I am trying to say. We all have to get behind the wheel, just like in the union. Now, we have a job that must be done and it must be done now. This new man is the only man available to do it at this time. That is the only reason he is doing it. We certainly had no intention of being instrumental in asking anyone to do anything that might even be considered a breach of union rules, but the job has to be done -- look, this guys a new man and aint cuttin no stainless so just stop the shit. If ya put him back on the job I'll call the whole goddamn plant out, Harrys face becoming redder, his eyes glaring, ya get that? I'll stand by that fuckin bench all day if I have ta and if ya try to putim back on that job I swear to krist the whole fuckin plantll be out on the street in two fuckin seconds and you and no ballbreakin fuck in the jointll stop me. Ya getit? If ya want a strike I'll giveya one. (Hubert Selby Jr., Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964), pp. 98-99)
Even in this quiet-ish extract, we can see that Harry's verbs are characterized by constant effort grading into aggression and threat. To live on the streets of 1950s Brooklyn means, in the minds of the characters, to assert and often to execute violence on others. (The bosses' "shit" is comically different.)
I'm really pleased to have finally read Last Exit to Brooklyn. (I did so, at first, with justified trepidation; it's a ferocious book, not suitable reading for bedtime, or at mealtimes, or while waiting for a phone call.) It connects with a number of other books and authors that are important to me, for instance Zola's L'Assommoir, Frank Norris, and La Vida, Oscar Lewis' 1967 oral history of Puerto Rican and New York poverty. So in short I'm coming at it from the perspective of naturalism rather than modernism, and from my own fleeting contacts with the poor, troubled and disadvantaged. So I've picked quotations in this post to give some idea of the range of Brooklyn registers that Selby finds ways to represent.
VINNIE YELLED AGAIN TA GET THE KID DRESSED SO HE COULD TAKEIM FOR A HAIRCUT AND MARY SAID HE DONT NEED ONE. MEEEEEE, WHAT A FUCKIN JERK. THE KIDS HAIRS DOWN TA HISZASS AND SHE SAYS HE DONT NEED NO HAIRCUT. YEAH. I SAY. I SAY. IT LOOKS NICE. I LIKE IT. HE AINT SUPPOSEDTA LOOK LIKE A GURL. WHO SEZ, EH? WHO SEZ. AND ANYWAY HE DONT LOOK LIKE NO GURL. HE LOOKS CUTE. VINNIE SLAPPED HIS HEAD AND GROANED. MEEEEEE, HE LOOKS CUTE. WHAT KINDA CUTE WITH ALL DOZE CURLS. WHATSAMATTA WITH CURLS, EH? WHATSAMATTA? DIDNT YA BRODDA AUGIES KID HAVE CURLS AND DIDNT ROSIE MAKE IT STAY LONG, EH? EH? SO WHAT THE FUCK YAYELLIN ABOUT? YEAH. YEAH. AND YA SEE HOW CREEPY THE KID IS. LONG HAIR MAKES A KID CREEPY. THATS WHAT IT DOES. GODFABID MY KID GROWS UP LIKE THAT. ID GIVEM A SHOT IN THE HEAD. joey peeked at them from his room. WHO YA GONNA GIVE A SHOT IN THE HEAD, EH? WHO? WHATTAYAMEAN WHO? ILL GIVEYA ONE TOO. YA THINK SO, EH? YEAH. GOAHEAD. GOAHEAD. ILL SPLIT YA FUCKIN SKULL. (pp. 203-204)
And yes, this scene soon descends into violence. For all that, Vinnie's and Mary's marriage is almost a comedy compared to the dark things that Vinnie engaged in before his marriage. He hasn't consciously changed, he's just older, so the fountainhead of rage, lust and viciousness pumps a bit less furiously.
But perhaps that doesn't quite say it right. It doesn't express the emptiness of the endless drugs, booze and kicks. Most terrifyingly and pitifully this is portrayed through the self-destruct journey of Tralala, a robber-prostitute burning up with hate and frustration, unable to comprehend love or kindness or any kind of fellowship, driven only by a meaningless belief in being the queen of the street. (And ending as the desecrated body of the novel's most shocking scene.) As with punks like Vinnie, street status is everything to Tralala. This passage is from when her downward trajectory is just beginning to accelerate.
A CPO came up to her and asked her if she wanted a drink and she damn near spit in his face, but just mumbled as she looked at the clock and said shit. Yeah, yeah, lets go. She gulped down her drink and they left. Her mind was still such a fury of screechings (and that sonofabitch gives me nothin but a fuckin letter) that she just lay in bed staring at the ceiling and ignored the sailor as he screwed her and when he finally rolled off for the last time and fell asleep she continued staring and cursing for hours before falling asleep. The next afternoon she demanded that he giver some money and he laughed. She tried to hit him but he grabbed her arm, slapped her across the face and told her she was out of her mind. He laughed and told her to take it easy. He had a few days leave and he had enough money for both of them. They could have a good time. She cursed him and spit and he told her to grab her gear and shove off. She stopped in a cafeteria and went to the ladies room and threw some water on her face and bought a cup of coffee and a bun. She left and went back to the same bar. It was not very crowded being filled mostly with servicemen trying to drink away hangovers, and she sat and sipped a few drinks until the bar started filling. She tried looking for a liveone, but after an hour or so, and a few drinks, she ignored everyone and waited. A couple of sailors asked her if she wanted a drink and she said whatthefuck and left with them. They roamed around for hours drinking and then she went to a room with two of them and they gave her a few bucks in the morning so she stayed with them for a few days, 2 or 3, staying drunk most of the time and going back to the room now and then with them and their friends. (pp. 77-78)
Nor are the hip queers, like Georgette, free from the same desperation, a compulsive but unconscious and never satisfied search for peace. But they are the only people we meet who try to shadow forth a semblance (it's not much more than a semblance) of love, culture, courtesy and civilisation. Their party with the rough trade is so drug-hazed that it's increasingly difficult for us (and Georgette) to keep track of the excessive action, locations, people and drug intake.
She was sleeping so Goldie lit a few candles and told her Sheila was turning a trick so they had to come down here and Im sure you dont mind honey, handing her some bennie, and told Rosie to make coffee. Rosie lit the small kerosene stove in the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. When it was ready she passed out paper cups of coffee then went back to the kitchen and made another pot, continuing to make pot after pot of coffee, coming inbetween to sit at Goldies feet. The guys slowly snapped out of the tea goof and soon the bennie got to their tongues too and everybody yakked. Goldie said she felt ever so much better. I guess I needed a good cry and she passed around the bennie again and they all popped bennie and sipped hot coffee and Goldie sat next to Malfie and asked him if he was enjoying himself, and he said yeah, Im havin a ball; and Goldie just floated along on a soft purple cloud, feeling luxurious and slightly smug: a handsome piece of trade beside her; wonderful girl friends; and a beautiful bennie connection in the corner drugstore where she could get a dozen 10 grain tablets for 50c. (p. 36)
*
Selby's novel doesn't sentimentalize any part of the brutal society he depicts; no gender, ethnic group, or age group (the children in the playground are nightmarish). But I think he's particularly insightful about the destructive harm of his era's macho ideals of manliness. (I wish I could say this was just history.) Perhaps he wrote so well about those wretched beliefs because he knew them, as he must have done, from within, or perhaps I particularly notice that aspect of the novel because I do too.
*
The early chapters of Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893) are astonishingly prophetic of Last Exit in their violence, innovative rendering of speech, minimalism and hopelessness.
Prunus 'Kanzan' just coming into bloom, 7th April, 2020.
With fine dry weather over the past week, the climax of the cherry blossom season is going to be brief and brilliant this year, so I'm rushing this post out while it's still timely. Everything is record-breakingly early, but it might have been even earlier if not for that week of continental chill towards the end of March. Climate change continues apace.
Here is Prunus 'Kanzan', which we usually think of as a "late" zakura cherry, breaking into blossom on the 7th of April.
Prunus 'Kanzan' just coming into bloom, 7th April 2020.
Prunus 'Kanzan' fully out, 10th April 2020.
Three days later, it's in full bloom.
Prunus 'Kanzan' fully out, 10th April 2020.
Prunus 'Pink Perfection', 12th April 2020
Here's the other common bright pink cherry, 'Pink Perfection', a smaller but even lovelier tree, with darker opening buds, more variety in the colour of the open blossoms (white-stained-with-pink, rather than pure pink) and fresher green leaves.
Double variety of Wild Cherry, Prunus avium var. 'Plena', 14th April 2020.
Our native Wild Cherry (Prunus avium) has proved an amazingly valuable tree. Apart from its timber, prized for both carpentry and fuel, it is the ancestor of all the sweet cherries we eat raw. (And most experts think that the Sour Cherry, Prunus cerasus, is of hybrid origin, with Wild Cherry one of its ancestors, the other the dwarf cherry Prunus fruticosa.)
It's also widely grown around towns for its blossom, both in its wild form and in numerous varieties. The double form, Prunus avium var. 'Plena', is as flamboyant as a zakura cherry, and it grows much bigger.
"Sleeved" variety of Wild Cherry (Prunus avium), 14th April 2020.
Here's another variety of Wild Cherry that's widely planted in urban environments. I don't know its name, but the long sleeves of blossom are spectacular.
"Sleeved" variety of Wild Cherry (Prunus avium), 14th April 2020.
Wild Cherry (Prunus avium), 16th April 2020.
Here, for contrast, is a normal specimen of Wild Cherry in flower. An uplifting sight, but not quite so dramatic.
Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), 8th April 2020
Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) is another species that seems to be grown in many varieties. This is what I think of as the normal form. Relatively fresh green glossy leaves, obovate in shape and not pointed.
Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus), 8th April 2020
Variety of Cherry Laurel? 5th April 2020.
I'm pretty sure this is a Cherry Laurel variety but that's all I know. The leaves are darker green and a bit more matt, narrower in shape and pointed, the racemes of blossom narrower too. It might be "Schip Laurel", Prunus laurocerasus var. 'Schipkaensis', discovered in the Schipka mountains in Bulgaria. But this one doesn't show the barrel-shaped habit that has made 'Schipkaensis' a popular choice for hedges and privacy screens. (Deer won't nibble any Cherry Laurel, very sensibly.)
Variety of Cherry Laurel? 8th April 2020.
Variety of Cherry Laurel? 8th April 2020
Prunus laurocerasus var. 'Otto Luyken', 16th April 2020.
Another Cherry Laurel variety, 'Otto Luyken'. Erect pointed leaves and lots of puffy racemes of blossom. A compact variety, widely planted in town environments.
Nettle-leaved Bellflower (Campanula trachelium). Swindon, 29th March 2020.
S L O T H
PROSECUTION
first to you who think yourselves innocent
you the indolent
a heavy burden you bind to yourselves
heavier than the worst crimes heavier than the earth can bear
on you the guilt of all the evil that never was stopped
on you the guilt of all the good that never was done
a heavy burden that because of you
the world goes down
Common Gromwell (Lithospermum officinale). Swindon, 29th March 2020.
CHORUS
it's by our own heart we are forsaken
and below its steep wall is our camp in the night
we are those who from life are condemned to living death
thirsting in torpor for the springs' water
our arms we clasp hard round our knees
tense with strain not with rest
above the wall coping sway the fresh trees
under their roots we hear the springs trickle
there our life is there our soul is
you who come to punish how will you free us
if you know the way in then all will be well
but take us from the springs the desert storm crushes us
bring no crocks to these hot dry mouths
never shall we lift our hands to business
never till we drink from the innermost sources
by the walls of our hearts we wait to be transformed
Green Hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum germanicum). Swindon, 29th March 2020.
SOLO
You call, within me echoes
feebly a reply;
but deep in all my dales
is the repugnance, still.
It's something: one only
of all my people,
willing to serve you, o caller,
as your champion and advocate.
But see, I'm scared of violence
in the soul's world
and especially the strong's stupidity,
those who win by the sword.
Let my unnumbered slowly
be healed into one,
thus maybe one day our drop of blood
can answer your call!
How invincible would he be
in simple faith,
who succeeded in knitting together as one
in growing peace.
How powerless from his living skin
the day's dust would fall away.
How powerful his silent gliding
forth from the hurlyburly.
Pignut (Conopodium majus). Swindon, 31st March 2020.
CHORALE
All that is scattered and split apart
longs to be made whole
and yet prays in faithfulness.
You live among us.
Yes, though our doubt has held us bound
you too, Lord, were concealed within.
Seedlings of Green Hound's-tongue (Cynoglossum germanicum). Swindon, 5th April 2020.
A freely rendered extract from Karin Boye's uncompleted cantata The Seven Deadly Sins (De sju dödssynderna), posthumously published in 1941 in the collection of the same name. Probably relevant is the background of an imminent world war, as well as the author's own tormented struggle for integrity.
[Lady.] Yet do I fear thy nature:
It is too full o'the milk of human-kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly
That wouldst thou holily, wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win. (I.5.14-20)
We don't know how long the Macbeths have been together but it feels like a relationship that's matured over a long time, and certainly one that's closer than many marriages are. What has taken root in the heart of it, though, isn't sex or family or attending cultural events or doing up the house, but a dreadful obsession with getting to the top, no matter how. Macbeth in the letter calls her "my dearest partner of greatness". Evidently, they've been talking about their joint ambition for a long time. In that secret converse they refer to the present ruler not as "the King", but as plain "Duncan"; just an occupant, waiting to be dislodged (cf. Richard II III.3, where York picks up Northumberland for saying plain "Richard").
And she knows her husband very well. "[Thou] wouldst not play false, / And yet wouldst wrongly win" exactly describes what Macbeth has just been thinking:
[Macbeth.] Stars, hide your fires,
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (I.4.51-54)
yet let that be: happen, take place, come to pass when it is done: at the moment of execution
Most humans who do an evil thing use their extravagant powers of ingenuity to persuade themselves that the thing is really good, or if not absolutely good, then absolutely necessary, or at least understandable, or not so simple to label. We use phrases about being big enough to take the tough decisions, or about having the vision to see a greater good, or we blame others (especially the victims), say that they deserved it or brought it on themselves, or we say that everyone's doing it, and that others would do it to us if they got half a chance, and that you wouldn't rush to judgment if you were in my position or knew all the facts.
One of the most admirable yet most truly terrible things about the Macbeths is that they have no truck with this pathetically all-too-human litany of excuses, rationalizations and tactical half-truths. It never occurs to Macbeth to think that he's only doing what others would do if they dared, or that Duncan's too-trusting nature showed him unfit to rule, or that he was led on to it by the Witches, or forced into it by his wife's taunts. He sees with perfect clarity that there are no extenuating circumstances. (Perhaps there's a kind of personal pride in declining to make any excuses, even in his own mind.)
[Macbeth.] He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of his taking-off . . . (I.7.12-20)
No wonder Macbeth doesn't want to see what his hand is doing. Without any recourse to the palliative powers of rationalization, the only other way to ease the execution is to undertake it in a state of mental derangement, such as exalted intoxication or stupefied automation. Lady Macbeth takes the first approach; her husband takes the second.
In her ecstatic invocation of the "murdering ministers", she says:
[Lady.] Make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. (I.5.41-45)
The last part of this sentence is difficult to construe, though I think everyone understands the general drift. Benjamin Heath's paraphrase (from back in 1765) remains the most persuasive: "That no compunctious visitings of nature may prevail upon me to give place in my mind to peaceful thoughts, or to rest one moment in quiet from this hour of my purpose to its full completion in the effect." (It might have helped if Shakespeare had preserved the temporal sequence, i.e. by writing "It and the effect".)
Lady Macbeth knows how fatally easy it is to "go off the boil". And Macbeth quickly learns from her:
[Macbeth.] - Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. (II.1.59-60)
Later in the play, as he gets more used to murder, he comes to pride himself on instant execution (the only thing left, perhaps, that he could pride himself on):
[Macbeth.] And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise,
Seize upon Fife, give to the edge o'the sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. No boasting, like a fool;
This deed I'll do before this purpose cool. (IV.1.147-153)
It's almost as if he's been watching Hamlet and is determined not to make the same mistake!
Lady Macbeth's "compunctious visitings" are revealing. Right in the middle of dedicating herself to pure evil, she shows that compunction ("a feeling of moral scruple") is part of her nature, a feeling not wholly alien to her. We see other signs of it elsewhere, in her knowing "how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me" or "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept"... She makes the decision to bury her pity; it's a wilful self-traumatization.
Macbeth, on the other hand, shows no susceptibility to pity. He is far from despising his victims (indeed he openly admires Duncan and Banquo) but he has no pity for them, just phrases of conventional piety:
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell. (II.1.63-64)
It is concluded! Banquo, thy soul's flight,
If it find heaven, must find it out tonight. (III.1.140-141)
What holds him back before his first crime is something else, a moral horror of his own act, especially as seen through the eyes of others. Macbeth at this early stage is by no means unsusceptible to looking well in the eyes of the world:
[Macbeth.] Hehath honoured me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon. (I.7.32-35)
He has a great, if conventional, respect for social forms. Even later on, he takes some pains to appear well in the eyes of Banquo, Banquo's murderers, and the lords at the "solemn supper"; it's increasingly pathetic, horrible, and ineffective. It's a fitting punishment that Macbeth does know, before the end, that everyone hates him.
Angus. Now does he feel
His secret murders sticking on his hands;
Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach.
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief. (V.2.16-22)
[Macbeth.] I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not. (V.3.22-28)
*
Enter Lady Macbeth Lady. What's the business
That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley
The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak! Macduff. O gentle lady,
'Tis not for you to hear what I can speak.
The repetition in a woman's ear
Would murder as it fell. Enter Banquo O Banquo, Banquo!
Our royal master's murdered. Lady. Woe, alas!
What, in our house! Banquo. Too cruel, anywhere.
Dear Duff, I prithee contradict thyself
And say it is not so. (II.3.78-87)
It's conventional for commentators to remark that Lady Macbeth's "What, in our house!" is a false note, betraying a shallow nature, and that Banquo's "Too cruel, anywhere" is a reproof: as if he's saying "You're making it all about you". I have even seen performances where her naïve self-centredness raises a laugh.
I think that's wrong. As Macduff's preceding speech shows, the Scottish lords are firm believers in gender roles and would absolutely expect a woman to see things from a narrowly domestic point of view. And from that point of view, while the murder of a king is certainly a tragic thing, the really devastating aspect is for it to happen while he's a guest in your own house. Banquo wouldn't, I feel, address his hostess at this moment, certainly not in reproof. He's responding to Macduff by expressing his own strong emotion of horror, as often in the drama of Shakespeare's time, and indeed in real life, by capping the previous expression with an even stronger one.
Lady Macbeth's surprise is, of course, feigned. But the best way to feign is to say just what you would genuinely say, and I think she does. (And though the surprise is feigned, the horror is perhaps real.)
And in fact Shakespeare does portray her as someone whose world is a domestic one. She is an accomplished hostess, she's in the habit of preparing a hot drink for her husband at bed-time, she knows where all her guests are lodged. No-one in Macbeth is very learned -- just the odd reference to biblical or classical lore -- but Lady Macbeth's range of allusion is especially homely: to the "poor cat i'the adage", or "A woman's story at a winter's fire, / Authorized by her grandam". Imagination for her means a child's silliness: "'Tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil". We might not know how many children she had, but the nursery is evidently a familiar place to her.
*
[Macbeth.] Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; and in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be feared. 'Tis much he dares,
And to that dauntless temper of his mind
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety. There is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and under him
My genius is rebuked as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Caesar. (III.1.48-56)
Macbeth. Why should I play the Roman fool and die
On mine own sword? Whiles I see lives, the gashes
Do better upon them. (V.6.40-42)
Evidently, Shakespeare was already thinking about Antony and Cleopatra, the tragedy that came next (in 1607). And there are some aspects of Macbeth that recall his Roman plays, especially Julius Caesar. Tyranny, nobles, ghosts, the heavens shadowing the murderous deeds of men.
Ross. Ha, good father,
Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man's act,
Threatens his bloody stage. By the clock 'tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp . . . (II.4.4-7)
There's even a certain resemblance in the structure: a first half of overwhelming dramatic tension leading up to a desperate act, the killing of a ruler. And then a second half at a somewhat lower pitch, nevertheless consisting of individually brilliant scenes that, in the re-reading anyway, we come to deeply relish. (A bit like the form later taken by many romantic symphonies and concertos).
*
A. C. Bradley pointed out how many of the lines of Macbeth, aside from those belonging to its principal couple, would be quite difficult for most of us to attribute to their speaker. This is because of the important yet essentially choral roles played by the other thanes. All of them speak wonderful poetry, concise, pithy, and yet subdued, impersonal.
Five of them that may be said to represent typical thanes, indeed the whole Scottish nation: Lennox, Ross, Angus, Menteth, and Cathness. Macduff emerges from that crowd gradually; Banquo more immediately; Malcolm and Donalbain are different in being younger, and the sons of Duncan. The Seywards are English. But all these characters have a common ingredient, a certain undifferentiated decency. A reminder of what Macbeth (also a thane) perhaps never truly had, and certainly throws away.
It's interesting to watch how Shakespeare shuffles his pack of lesser lords.
(I'm including Macduff in this list, too):
I.2 Lennox, then Ross and Angus (mute)
I.3 Ross and Angus
I.4 Lennox, then Ross and Angus (all mute)
I.6 Macduff, Lennox, Ross and Angus (all mute)
II.3 Macduff and Lennox; Lennox briefly leaves the stage, returns with Ross (mute)
II.4 Ross, then Macduff
III.4 Ross, Lennox and "Lords". The latter speak only in chorus.
III.6 Lennox and another Lord (definitely not Macduff and probably not Ross, but could be Angus, Menteth or Cathness).
IV.1 Lennox
IV.2 Ross
IV.3 Macduff, then Ross
V.2 Menteth, Angus, Cathness, Lennox
V.4 Macduff, Menteth, Angus (mute), Cathness (mute)
V.6 Macduff, Ross. All the others are probably included (and mute) in Malcolm's "army".
They form a group portrait. Shakespeare suggests a living, interlinked society while leaving the details shadowy, not spelled out. Banquo is apparently the cousin of Ross and Angus; Ross is cousin to the Macduffs; Macbeth is cousin to Duncan (the word in Shakespeare's day was used loosely, but it did imply kinship). Macbeth is the friend of Banquo and, in former days, Macduff. So society is organized in clusters, but they are dynamic ones.
After Macbeth becomes king, society elongates into a spectrum. Macduff places a definite distance between himself and the tyrant. Ross represents those who have connections with Macduff. Lennox becomes representative of those who, like Banquo, stay closer to Macbeth (though nearly or quite as horrified by him as the others are).
*
If (as most believe) the three witches were played by men rather than boys, their parts could be doubled with Menteth or Cathness (or Seyward, the Old Man, the Doctor...) -- but not with Lennox, Ross or Angus.
*
*
When Shakespeare wrote Macbeth there was plenty of spectacle: the possibly airborne witches, their sudden vanishings, the cauldron lit by flames from below, the ghost of Banquo and the procession of kings. But in its gloomy half-lit world there was, it seems, no music; the music was in the poetry.
The text as it appears in the 1623 First Folio contains some minor additions, by Thomas Middleton after 1609, to accommodate a bit of song and dance. Sir William Davenant's "operatic" adaptation of Macbeth (1666?) had music by Matthew Locke that was once much loved and continued to be used in performances right up to the early twentieth century. [The fashion for musical pantomime witches can also be seen in Thomas Shadwell's The Lancashire Witches (1681) and even Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (c. 1685, libretto by Nahum Tate).]
Macbeth music of various kinds has accreted ever since.
The London composer Samuel Arnold wrote some excellent incidental music for Macbeth in 1778.
Beethoven wrote sketches for a Macbeth opera (1809-11), but his librettist Heinrich Joachim von Collin decided the subject was too gloomy, so the project came to nothing. It's sometimes claimed that the eerie Largo of the "Ghost" Trio (Op. 70 No. 1, composed summer 1808) originated as an idea for this Macbeth project, but there's no evidence for that.
The third of Robert Schumann's Noveletten for solo piano, (Op. 21, 1838) originally bore the epigraph "When shall we three meet again?" and Schumann elsewhere referred to it as a "Macbeth-novelette". (I wonder if the nickname arose because the rhythm of Shakespeare's opening trochees underlies much of the music and emerges into a plain "song without words" at around 0'40", again at 1'30" and to end the piece at 4'15".)
The most famous rendering, of course, is Giuseppe Verdi's 1847 opera Macbeth (Macbetto) ; a thoroughly canonical work in its own right.
Henry Hugh Pierson's apparently remarkable symphonic poem Macbeth (Op. 54, 1859) is programmatic in form, musically representing parts of the drama in ways that might have influenced Wagner. (NB, he is also known as Heinrich Hugo Pierson; he worked and published in Germany.)
In the same year of 1859, Bedřich Smetana (then living in Gothenburg in Sweden) wrote his striking piano sketch "Macbeth and the Witches", performed by Ashley Wass in the video above. (The full title, corrected from Smetana's imperfect Czech, is "Macbeth, skizza ke scéně „Macbeth a čarodějnice“ ze Shakespeara".) [Smetana's residence in Sweden might explain why his famous Vltava theme is so like the beloved Swedish song "Ack Värmland, du sköna"!]
The German composer Joachim Raff (1822 - 1882) wrote an orchestral prelude to Macbeth -- one of four (the others were to The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, and Othello).
Hector Berlioz never wrote any Macbeth music, but he was an ardent Shakespearean and he used the lines beginning "Life's but a walking shadow" as the deathbed epigraph to his Mémoires (1869).
Nearly as well known as Verdi's opera is the first of Richard Strauss' tone poems, Macbeth (Op. 23, 1886-88).
Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote his Macbeth overture for an 1888 production by Sir Henry Irving. (I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected.)
Ernst Mielck (Finnish composer, 1877-1899) wrote an Ouverture zuMacbeth (Op. 2, 1896); his four-year composing career ended when he died of TB at 22. (NB The stupendous painting is by John Martin, from 1820.)
Ernest Bloch's opera Macbeth was performed in 1910; the earliest sketches are from 1904.
A card party in Leipzig, c. 1887: Nina and Edvard Grieg, Johan Halvorsen, Frederick Delius, Christian Sinding
Johan Halvorsen (Norwegian composer, 1864-1935) wrote incidental music for Macbeth in 1920.
Dmitry Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934) is based on Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novella, and is only distantly connected with Shakespeare's play (the sexually attractive murderess of the title is part of a graphically Zolaesque portrait of provincial life). Leskov was himself alluding to Turgenev's story "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District" (first published 1849, collected in A Hunter's Sketches in 1852): Mtsensk is 10km south of Turgenev's childhood home Spasskoye-Lutovinovo. (Turgenev's protagonist isn't much like Hamlet, either.)
Jacques Ibert (French composer, 1890 - 1962) wrote sinisterly playful music for Orson Welles' 1948 film of Macbeth.
Geraldine Mucha (1917 - 2012, Scottish composer who lived in Prague) wrote music for a Macbeth ballet in 1965: the excellent suite is one of her best-known works.
