Train to Sussex

 07:27. It moves off while I'm still settling my guitar in the overhead rack. Gosh we're not fucking about, I think, the bad language merely my excitement. This time, I managed to pick up a Costa Express on the way to the station. It was dark when I left home, but now the light's growing.

I've already checked the paper (Portugal v Uruguay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Twa Corbies) and wish I hadn't. It isn't the topics, it's the medium, that feels like a corruption.

Next, the daily Duolingo stint, while the train moves mistily through Wiltshire fields. 

Nu så är det jul igen, jultomten myser,

Julegran och klappar han skickar så snäll.

In i minsta koja nu julljuset lyser,

Alla äro glada på julaftons kväll.

Now it's Christmas again, Santa smiles,

Christmas spruce and presents he sends so kindly.

In the smallest hut now the Christmas candle shines,

All are glad for Christmas Eve.

I've brought my copy of Sjung Svenska Folk! so that I can sing this song with my mum, to Alice Tegnér's charming melody. 

It begins as a Christmas song, but it doesn't know when to stop, and ends up being both funny and sad. 

Kära jul, välkommen, välkommen till jorden!

Nu den långa hösten är slut för i år.

Med dig kommer snön och lyser upp Norden,

Sen så få vi påska och så blir det vår.

Dear Christmas, welcome, welcome to the earth!

Now the long autumn is over for this year.

With you the snow comes and lights up the North,

Then it's Easter and then comes spring.

Och så kommer sommarn, då grönt är i skogen, 

Smultronen de rodna, och åkern blir gul.

Men i höst, då skörden är inkörd på logen,

Då vi önska åter: Ack, vore det jul!

And then comes summer when it's green in the forest,

The wild strawberries redden and the fields become yellow.

But in autumn, when the harvest is brought into the barn,

Then we wish again, Ah, if only it were Christmas!

Also in my backpack is the Bulverhythe Variations by Elaine Edwards, a recent purchase that I'm bringing to show my sister (who lives in Bulverhythe). There's a performative aspect to these family visits. I'm wearing clothes that they've given me, so that they can "see them on". It's a bit silly, but it isn't wrong. Because of our European trip I haven't seen them since the beginning of September. And I'm coming to tell them that I'm starting a job next week. 

It's 09:05, the train has reached Basingstoke, and I'm reading a chatty verse epistle by Rubén Darío. He's reached Majorca, and has just described George Sand as "la vampiresa", though he can't remember if she was here with Musset or Chopin. (I suddenly remember that Chopin and Sand are the subject of Donald McLeod's programmes this week, and wonder if I might listen to them on BBC Sounds, but I certainly won't.) 

Sand has it seems always attracted this kind of abuse. I recently read an article about the book she wrote about Majorca, a very bad one apparently. I only know her Indiana, a brilliant novel. 

The verse epistle (Epístola a la Señora de Leopoldo Lugones) was published 7 January 1907, perhaps all written in Majorca in late 1906, as proposed by Vicente Sanz García here: https://buscarubendario.blogspot.com/2019/07/epistola-la-senora-de-lugones.html ; he calls it "el menos modernista de sus poemas".

In Ch LXI of La vida de Rubén Darío: Escrita por él mismo (1913), he wrote more diplomatically of "la inspirada y cálida hembra de letras y su nocturno y tísico amante" (the inspired and warm female of letters and her nocturnal and consumptive lover). 

As it happened, Darío would himself reside at Valdemossa in 1915, not long before his death.

Darío writes about everything and everyone, and is rather irresistible. At least half his references are beyond me. In Darío (unlike his contemporary, Galdós) English-speaking culture has an insignificant place, but he switchbacks through the Romance languages with relish. His Spanish is sprinkled with French and Catalan. (He is writing to Madame Lugones.)

Madame Lugones, j'ai commencé ces vers,

en écoutant la voix d'un carillon d'Anvers...

Así empecé, en francés, pensando en Rodenbach, 

cuando hice hacia el Brasil una fuga... ¡de Bach!

En Río de Janeiro iba yo a proseguir 

poniendo en cada verso el oro y el zafir 

y la esmeralda de esos pájaros-moscas 

que melifican entre las áureas siestas foscas 

que temen los que temen el cruel vómito negro.

Ya no existe allá fiebre amarilla. ¡Me alegro!

Et pour cause. Yo pan-americanicé 

con un vago temor y con muy poco fe, 

en la tierra de los diamantes y la dicha 

tropical. Me encantó ver la vera machicha, 

mas encontré también un gran núcleo cordial

de almas llenas de amor, de ensueño, de ideal.

Y si había un calor atroz, también había 

todas las consecuencias y ventajas del día, 

en panorama igual al de los cuadros y hasta 

igual al mejor de lo fantasía. Basta. 

Mi ditirambo brasileño es ditirambo 

que aprobaría tu marido. Arcades ambo.

Madame Lugones, I began these lines

while hearing the sound of bells in Anvers.. 

Thus I began, in French, thinking of Rodenbach,

When I made unto Brazil a fugue... by Bach!

In Rio de Janeiro I was going to carry on

putting in each line the gold and sapphire

and emerald of those bird-flies

that sip honey all through the golden murky afternoons

feared by those who fear the black vomit.

There is no longer yellow fever there. Happy me!

Et pour cause. I pan-Americanized

with a vague fear and with very little faith,

in the land of diamonds and tropical

bliss. I loved seeing the true maxixe,

but I also found a great warm nucleus

of souls filled with love, dreams and ideals.

And if the heat was excruciating there were also

all the consequences and advantages of the day,

in a panorama matching those of paintings and even

matchng the best of fantasy. Enough.

My Brazilian dithyramb is a dithyramb

your husband would approve. Arcades ambo. 

"Anvers" is the Belgian city that we call Antwerp.

Georges Rodenbach, Belgian symbolist novelist. Churchbells are a major motif in his books.

"pájaros-moscas": hummingbirds.

One of the symptoms of a severe attack of yellow fever is blood in the vomit, hence the Spanish name "vómito negro". The slave trade brought the yellow fever virus from Africa to  the Americas.

I suppose the gold hazy afternoons are feared because they bring mosquitoes, carriers of yellow fever.

"pan-americanicé": referring to the strategy of promoting pan-American cooperation, pursued by the USA (James G Blaine). Darío was appointed secretary of the Nicaraguan delegation at the Pan-American conference in Rio de Janeiro (Jul-Aug 1906), as described in Ch LXI of La vida de Rubén Darío: Escrita por él mismo (1913). 

Maxixe (machiche in Spanish): sometimes called the Brazilian tango, a dance invented in Rio de Janeiro in 1868; it later (like tango) became an international dance craze.

Dithyramb: wildly enthusiastic song, originally to Dionysus. (Maybe glancing at the author's liking for alcohol?)

Arcades ambo. From Virgil's seventh eclogue: "Arcadians both"; Darío uses the tag in the usual way, to signify two people with shared tastes.  [Duncan F. Kennedy points out that the idea of Arcadia as the pastoral locus par excellence arose during the Renaissance, not in classical times. He thinks Virgil's unusual emphasis on Arcadia in the Eclogues had something to do with his friend Gallus, and perhaps symbolized the poetic ideals they shared. See "Arcades ambo: Virgil, Gallus and Arcadia", Hermathena No. 143, In honor of D. E. W. Wormell (Winter 1987), pp. 47-59:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23040873 .]

*

I crossed the col in London again, and wondered what the church with the striking spire was. (St John's Waterloo). On the platform at Waterloo East I played them Alice Tegnér's melody.

I'm south of Tunbridge Wells now, and phone reception is becoming intermittent, so this rambling broadcast is now coming to an end without a conclusion, as I always sensed it would.... Bye for now!