William Shakespeare and John Fletcher: The History of Cardenio (1613)

The wedding scene (cf. Double Falshood Act III Scene 2)

[Image source: https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/quijote_banco_imagenes_qbi/ficha_imagen/?id=5571

 . An illustration by Alphonse Lalauze (1838 - 1905) for Don Quixote, Ch 27.]

ACT I. SCENE I.

SCENE, A Royal Palace.

Duke Angelo, Roderick, and Courtiers.

RODERICK

My gracious Father, this unwonted Strain
Visits my Heart with Sadness.

DUKE

                                               Why, my Son?
Making my Death familiar to my Tongue
Digs not my Grave one Jot before the Date.
I've worn the Garland of my Honours long,
And would not leave it wither'd to thy Brow,
But flourishing and green; worthy the Man,
​Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better Glories.

RODERICK

This Praise, which is my Pride, spreads me with Blushes.

DUKE

Think not, that I can flatter thee, my Roderick;
Or let the Scale of Love o'er-poize my Judgment.
Like a fair Glass of Retrospection, Thou
Reflect'st the Virtues of my early Youth;
Making my old Blood mend its Pace with Transport:
While fond Henriquez, thy irregular Brother,
Sets the large Credit of his Name at Stake,
A Truant to my Wishes, and his Birth.
His Taints of Wildness hurt our nicer Honour,
And call for swift Reclaim.

RODERICK 

                                          I trust, my Brother
Will, by the Vantage of his cooler Wisdom,
E'er-while redeem the hot Escapes of Youth,
And court Opinion with a golden Conduct.

DUKE

Be Thou a Prophet in that kind Suggestion!
But I, by Fears weighing his unweigh'd Course,
Interpret for the Future from the Past.
And strange Misgivings, why he hath of late
By Importunity, and strain'd Petition,
Wrested our Leave of Absence from the Court,
Awake Suspicion. Thou art inward with him;
And, haply, from the bosom'd Trust can'st shape
Some formal Cause to qualify my Doubts.

RODERICK 

Why he hath press'd this Absence, Sir, I know not;
But have his Letters of a modern Date,
Wherein by Julio, good Camillo's Son,
(Who, as he says, shall follow hard upon;
And whom I with the growing Hour expect:)
He doth sollicit the Return of Gold
To purchase certain Horse, that like him well.
This Julio he encounter'd first in France,
And lovingly commends him to my Favour;
Wishing, I would detain him some few Days,
To know the Value of his well-placed Trust.
​
DUKE

O, do it, Roderick; and assay to mould him
An honest Spy upon thy Brother's Riots.
Make us acquainted when the Youth arrives;
We'll see this Julio, and he shall from Us
Receive the secret Loan his Friend requires.
Bring him to Court.

[Exeunt.]

(Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood, or The Distrest Lovers, Act I Scene 1)

*

This opening scene is the one that feels most like Shakespeare. A typical Shakespeare opening, you might say, thinking e.g. of King Lear or The Winter's Tale. 

                                          worthy the Man,
Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better Glories.

I want to believe that Shakespeare wrote that. It means: something befitting the man who inherits not just my Dukedoms (Roderick being the eldest son) but what is better than worldly titles and possessions, i.e. whatever good principles I happen to possess (Roderick being the good son, in contrast to his wayward younger brother). 

It's just a normal low-key line of late Shakespeare, but how swift and intuitive! It's supercharged with meaning, yet it isn't weighty; a dream-language vivid with semi-emergent images. 

Still, this can't be altogether the scene as Shakespeare wrote it. For one thing, Julio was certainly Cardenio in 1613 (as in Don Quixote), but you can't simply retrofit the name "Cardenio" into the three lines that name "Julio". (And Henriquez was probably Fernando, but at least those names are metrically equivalent.)

And then there are the lines that look disquietingly like sub-quotations. I wish 

And court Opinion with a golden Conduct

didn't remind me so much of Macbeth's "I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people" (I.7.35-36).

And I wish 

Making my old Blood mend its Pace with Transport

didn't remind me so much of 

This were to be new made when thou art old

And see thy blood warm when thou feelst it cold

(Sonnet 2). 

It isn't really Shakespeare's thing to half-quote his own work. But it might be the kind of thing Theobald would do to bolster his play's Shakespearian credentials. Start thinking like that and you soon suspect everything. 

And then there's the basic skimpiness of Double Falshood, the brief scenes, few characters, absence of spectacle, bare-bones realization. It's a glaring contrast with the unhurried plenitude of Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. To produce something like this from something like that would entail not just slashing but rewriting. 

But I'm tempted to hear Shakespeare in these lines:

... Will, by the Vantage of his cooler Wisdom,

E'er-while redeem the hot Escapes of Youth...

Shakespeare does use "escape" in the sense of "escapade" elsewhere, though not often (Othello, Measure for Measure).

                        Thou art inward with him;
And, haply, from the bosom'd Trust can'st shape...

This too isn't how Shakespeare normally uses one of his favourite words, but the connection of "bosom" with sharing our secret thoughts (trusted confidante, bosom friend) appears in Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII.

But if we can't be very confident about which particular words go all the way back to the 1613 Cardenio, at least we can get a general sense of how Shakespeare and Fletcher reshaped the story they found in Don Quixote. 

The two characters in this opening scene are essentially their own invention: the duke and the elder son are very minor figures in the Cardenio story as told by Cervantes.

The denouement of the story (Don Quixote Ch 36) was going to be tricky to stage. Don Fernando's (= Henriquez's) change of heart occurs in the public forum of an inn: his own inner nobility, Luscinda's intention to die rather than yield to his will, Dorothea's inspiring assertion of her rights, the sympathies of the barber and Sancho Panza and even Fernando's own followers, and perhaps above all the sound moral advice of the good curate, all play a part in his conversion. Even so, it's a close-run thing: headstrong aristocrats like Don Fernando don't usually pay much heed to their social inferiors. The scene in the novel is elaborate, populous, long on speeches but light on dramatic turns or physical action. (On stage, if someone puts their hand to their sword you want them to draw it.)

Shakespeare and Fletcher decided, I suppose, that in the theatre Don Fernando's change of heart would be most credibly and swiftly effected by the shaming presence of his own father and brother. Instead of being the only aristocrat in the room he would stand exposed before his elders and betters. And that way, too, they could cleanly detach the Cardenio story from the world of Don Quixote: no La Mancha inn or curate or Sancho Panza would be required. 

Besides, their reworking brought to the fore the parent-child relationship that had driven so much Shakespearean drama, especially since King Lear. The parent was nearly always a father; the child nearly always of marriageable age. The History of Cardenio was going to be squarely grounded on the interplay between parental authority and parental love (both gift-love and need-love). It's surprising how relatively unimportant those themes are to the Cardenio story in Don Quixote. 

*

I'm late to the party as far as Cardenio is concerned. It began from finally setting about reading Don Quixote, and here I encountered the madman in the Sierra Morena (Ch 23) who eventually names himself as Cardenio (Ch 24). Something twitched in my memory and I thought, Oh, is this the guy that Shakespeare's lost play was about? 

Fateful thought! Well, I soon came up to speed. There's a mass of information and speculation online about Cardenio, and within a few days I was reading Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood (1727), which I was thrilled to discover on Wikisource. 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Double_Falshood;_or,_The_Distrest_Lovers

Every other Shakespeare fan seems to have opinions about this, so here, somewhat baldly, are mine. 

Double Falshood is distantly derived from a lost play written by Shakespeare and Fletcher in early 1613 and titled The History of Cardenio. The story came from Shelton's translation of the first part of Don Quixote, published the previous year. (Fletcher may have been able to read Don Quixote in Spanish, like Beaumont did, but Shakespeare wasn't big on Spanish.)

It was Shakespeare and Fletcher's first collaboration and it was a hit, as witnessed by two royal command performances. In pretty short order the same team followed it up with Henry VIII, then The Two Noble Kinsmen. Shakespeare's output had slowed after 1607, but with Fletcher he briefly resumed the high churn of his early years. 

A text of Cardenio came into Humphrey Moseley's hands and he registered it in 1653 but never published it. The text also came to Davenant's company and in the 1660s they adapted it for performance. (Did they perform it? I suppose so, but I'm surprised there's no record.) Sixty years later Lewis Theobald acquired manuscripts of that adaptation, which he then re-adapted to produce his Double Falshood in 1727; a success, apparently. He publicized it as by Shakespeare, to the derision of Alexander Pope and others. The extant play is short, and at some point the names were changed; Cardenio, for example, has become Julio. But even Pope admitted (privately) that Double Falshood seemed to be based on an old play. 

My opinions are thus of the romantic school, since I'm thinking that the extant Double Falshood does offer us a very distant, blurry and selective image of the lost Cardenio. Many would agree, but there's definitely no consensus. Brian Vickers, the king of Shakespeare authorship studies, doesn't buy it. It's easy to see arguments for both sides; the evidence is distinctly mixed. There's a mass of discussion online. 

Particularly enjoyable are the wide-ranging essays in The Quest for Cardenio (2012), ed. David Carnegie and Gary Taylor. You can only preview limited pages, but adroit Google searches will get you to the different parts. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZxHbuvet1XkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cardenio+double+falsehood+taylor&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cardenio%20double%20falsehood%20taylor&f=false

*

Comparing Don Quixote and Double Falshood. 

The names

Fernando (first named in DQ Ch 23), Duke Ricardo's second son (Ch 24) = Henriquez in DF

Cardenio (first named in DQ Ch 24) = Julio in DF

Luscinda (first named in DQ Ch 24) = Leonora in DF

Luscinda's unnamed father (DQ Ch 24) = Don Bernard in DF.

Cardenio's unnamed father (DQ Ch 24) = Camillo in DF. This is also the name of a character in The Winter's Tale.

Duke Ricardo (DQ Ch 24) = Duke Angelo in DF, but the name doesn't appear in any speeches, only the Dramatis Personae. Angelo is also the name of a lead character in Measure for Measure.

The peasant girl (DQ Ch 24), later named as Dorothea in DQ Ch 28 = Violante in DF.

Fernando's unnamed elder brother (DQ Ch 27), later described as the marquis (DQ Ch 42) = Roderick in DF. The name isn't common in Jacobean or Restoration plays. You might expect Shakespeare and Fletcher to have preferred Rodrigo or Roderigo (as previously used in Othello), but Shakespeare was never too bothered with linguistically appropriate forms. Roderick was the name of a lost play from 1600, recorded by Henslowe (one suggestion is that it concerned Roderic, the last Visigothic king of Spain).

The plot

In DQ, the Cardenio story is told in dribs and drabs (mainly Chs 23, 24, 27, 28, 29 and 36). It's interleaved with other material mostly concerned with Don Quixote, but also e.g. the substantial tale of Anselmo, Lothario and Camilla. The Cardenio and Don Quixote stories have some crossover, e.g. at one point Don Quixote gets into an argument with Cardenio (about chivalric romances of course); the good curate who has come to the Sierra Morena to extricate Don Quixote also dispels Cardenio's madness and Dorothea's fears; Dorothea, Don Fernando, Luscinda and Cardenio all participate in the curate's schemes to induce Don Quixote to return home. In fact it's not until Ch 47 that they finally take their leave from the novel.

DQ's narrative doesn't have the constraints of a stage play. Its events aren't always told in time sequence, and it has a larger time allowance. Don Fernando's betrayal of Dorothea takes place before he even meets Cardenio, let alone Luscinda. DF, naturally, wants all the leads in action from the start. It rejigs the plot so the double falsehoods of Henriquez (Fernando) run in parallel; when he rapes Violante (Dorothea), he is already set on obtaining Leonora (Luscinda) and has already taken steps to isolate her from Julio (Cardenio) (DF II.1). Even the investigations that will finally expose him are being prepared. DF's realization is inadequate, but its design is excellent.  

In DQ the Duke's offer to take Cardenio into service is genuine and unprompted. At the duke's court Cardenio meets Fernando for the first time. In DF Henriquez (Fernando) already knows Julio (Cardenio) and has dispatched him to the ducal court to get him out of the way. (DF in fact conflates two separate events in DQ: Cardenio entering the Duke's service and Fernando sending Cardenio to his elder brother, along with a request to detain him as long as possible.)

In DQ, when Fernando meets Cardenio he has already seduced Dorothea with false promises of marriage and abandoned her. DF runs the two stories in parallel: Henriquez/Fernando rapes Violante/Dorothea when he has already decided to pursue Leonora/Luscinda and betray Julio/Cardenio.

In DQ Don Fernando absents himself and Cardenio from court because he fears Cardenio will be duty-bound to inform the Duke his master what Fernando got up to with Dorothea. He makes up a story about them going to buy horses, and they take up residence at the house of Cardenio's father, where an incautious Cardenio can't resist showing Fernando his beloved Luscinda. In DF Henriquez (Fernando)is already staying at the house of Julio's (Cardenio's) father when the action begins. 

In DQ Cardenio has been afraid to ask his father for permission to marry Luscinda, and in fact takes up his pal Fernando's treacherous offer to ask it on his behalf. In DF Julio (Cardenio) does ask his father.

The unnamed elder brother in DQ is only briefly involved (as Fernando's accomplice in keeping Cardenio away from Luscinda). There's no suggestion he's a notably "good" brother and unlike Roderick in DF he plays no part in the denouement.

In DQ Cardenio at the wedding does not (as in DF) leap forth sword in hand to threaten others, but instead departs in despair, intending to kill himself. 

In DQ Dorothea is threatened with rape by her own servant (she throws him off a precipice) as well as by the Master of the shepherds (Ch 28).

In DQ Dorothea's rich peasant father is named Clenardo (Ch 29). DF doesn't go into details about Violante's (Dorothea's) family, it only says she's of humble birth. 

In DQ (Ch 36) Fernando and his companions (not his brother) abduct Luscinda from the convent and arrive at an inn where they encounter Dorothea and Cardenio (along with the curate, Sancho Panza, etc). The resolution occurs when Dorothea calls heaven to witness that Fernando is her husband, and he is (rather slowly) brought round to accepting her claim, surrendering Luscinda to Cardenio. In DF the resolution is effected by Roderick and the Duke.

In DQ it's Dorothea who is the dynamic force; our sympathies are all with her and Luscinda. Cardenio is generally characterized as a bit feeble (something still discernible in DF's Julio). 

*

Cardenio and Luscinda

[Image source: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/apr/28/cardenio-review . Photo by Tristram Kenton from a 2011 RSC production. Cardenio was played by Oliver Rix and Luscinda by Lucy Briggs-Owen.]

*

These notes on Shakespeare: full list

jolly hill of grapes

 

and moreover wasps and bees are born as worms and when the lion steps on a stone-oak leaf his whole body turns to stone and the beaver bites off its testicles when it is hunted and the hyena is sometimes male sometimes female and is sometimes impregnated by others and sometimes impregnates others and therefore that creature is impure because its nature is mixed and changeable and when the hedgehog enters a garden he lies on his side under the grapes and spears the grapes on his spines and heads back home like a jolly hill of grapes and the elephant feels no desire for marriage so she wanders east where Paradise lies and tears a mandrake from the ground with her trunk which exudes a seductive scent and makes her pregnant and funniest of all is of course the unicorn which is caught by a virgin baring her breast and letting it suckle and then the hunters come and tie it up and life is finite for anyone who comes into being through reproduction and the parrotfish is the only fish that chews the cud

and moreover our life is the wasps nest or swallows nest that we build for ourselves and everything is different in different places because in Florence Savonarola has forced the servants to spy on their masters and the children on their parents and they burn masquerade costumes and books by Boccaccio and Petrarch and perfume and mirrors and musical instruments and chessboards and all the paintings depicting naked female beauty and the moral children dance in a ring round the bonfire in triple rings moreover and chant Savonarolas words about the Church of Prostitution whose poisonous stinking breath rises up to despairing Heaven and the Pope sits sullenly in Rome and curses the tumult

but in Bologna it is the exact opposite because there a doctor can blaspheme against the shifty Christ who deserved to die on the cross and still be let off after a simple expression of regret

and in the worlds heart Rome the Popes eldest son is murdered by his younger son and his corpse is found in the Tiber with nine stab wounds in his throat and is carried in a torchlight procession to his resting place while the Pope cries and refuses to eat for three days and it is the first fast the Pope has ever submitted to and everyone whispers that his murderer son Cesare loves his sister Lucrezia passionately and that her eldest brother was murdered out of jealousy because he also loved her and for the first time in my life I heard about the disease

(pp 10-11)

someone told me that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India around the southern tip of Africa and when the Portuguese reached the equator the astrolabe stopped working

the nearer you got to the equator the nearer the North Star approached the horizon and when you crossed the line the star disappeared entirely

there is thus a place where all instruments fail and it became a peculiar point in my mind and the point became a dream hall where I could send all dangerous thoughts and bizarre sounds and secret tones and the order of words and amidst the tempting mythology surrounding the wild carnival in Rome and the fratricide Cesare Borgias feats as a newlywed lover with eight orgasms a day in front of an open curtain I found myself sitting with Double Vigilance before Priscian's Latin grammar and enjoying the images of the initials and listening to the expositions of Thomas Aquinas about everything that "God" is not

he is not moved and simultaneously he is not still

and he is like a human being?

no

he is his own essence and his own existence and he lacks a body because he is not composed.

for a body consists of parts

but if we are his parts?

no

we are divided into Essence and Existence while He is Essence and Existence simultaneously and forever

while we change existence now and then

we did not understand the meaning of this and I know that even today an old woman sits a few houses away from here pouring oil into a cup of water and watching with staring eyes the shapes of the oil on the surface of the water

(pp. 12-13)

*

These are two extracts from the early pages of Molza, älskaren (Molza, the lover), a 1988 novel by Torbjörn Säfve.

The Italian poet Francesco Molza (1489 - 1544) lies dying of syphilis. In these extracts he recalls his childhood in Modena (c. 1500), the things he learned at school and the sensational news stories of the day. 

stone-oak: the Holm Oak.

parrotfish: this ancient observation (e.g. by Aristotle) identified the fish's constant mechanical grinding of dead corals with cows chewing the cud.

the shapes of the oil: a type of divination called lecanomancy. 

Inquiry of bowl divination and necromancy: Whenever you want to inquire about matters, take a bronze vessel, either a bowl or a saucer, whichever you prefer. Pour water into it—rainwater, if you call on the heavenly gods, seawater, if [you call] on the gods of the earth, river water, if you call on Osiris or Sarapis, spring water, if you call on the dead. Holding the vessel on your knees, pour green olive oil into it. Bend over the vessel and recite the prescribed spell. Address any god you desire and ask him any questions you wish. He will reply and tell you everything. After he has spoken to you, dismiss him with the dismissal formula. Having used this spell, you will be amazed. 

Spell to be recited over the water: amoun auantau riptou mantauiimantou .... etc

Translated from the Egyptian magical text PGM IV, aka the Great Magical Papyrus of Paris, written out in c. 300 CE but the material is probably much older.

From Yvette Hunt, "Exploring Ancient Lecanomancy", University of Queensland, 2019.

https://www.academia.edu/39640230/Exploring_Ancient_Lecanomancy

*

Here's a Google Translate of what Swedish Wikipedia says about Torbjörn Säfve (omitting references, links, etc):

Lars Torbjörn Säfve, also known as Ali Touba, born 6 July 1941 in Jukkasjärvi parish, Norrbotten County, is a Swedish author and debater. Säfve lives in Haddebo in Närke.

Biography

Torbjörn Säfve was born in Kiruna, but the family moved to Luleå and the Malmudden district when he was two years old. After graduating from Luleå Higher General Education in 1962, he moved south, settling first in Uppsala, then in Stockholm. Säfve studied literature and philosophy at Uppsala University from 1963 to 1966 and from 1968 to 1971. During his time as an active member of the Norrland Nation at Uppsala University, where he has been an honorary member since 2001, he was chairman of the Debating Society. In his youth, Säfve was also an active Maoist as well as describing himself as an "anarcho-Stalinist".

He was a directing student at the Stockholm Film School from 1966 to 1968 and made the film Masturbationsdrama and the short film Montebello in 1967, in which, among others, the actress Ulla-Britt Norrman made her film debut. Säfve then returned to Norrbotten and lived for a number of years in Luleå before moving south again. Säfve is very interested in boxing, and boxing is also the theme of several of his books. Siki (1977), Gorilla (1986) and Druidparken (1996) are three novels on the theme. In 1973 he competed in the New 10,000-Kronor Question on the subject of professional boxing.

He has converted to Islam and professes Sufism, and there is a statue in the Örnäset district of Luleå. Säfve regularly contributes to the Islamic cultural magazine Minaret. His Islamic name is Ali Touba.

Norrland Nation: Uppsala University has a number of student "Nations" relating to regions of Sweden. Membership of a Nation was formerly obligatory for students. Uppsala's Nations are loosely comparable to Oxbridge colleges, or Durham ones anyway. 

Debating Society: The Norrland Nation's Talförening was once famous, and the post of chairman was considered quite prestigious. It existed from c. 1900 until 1972. 

New 10,000-Kronor Question: This was the name of a relaunch of the long-running Swedish TV quiz show Double Or Quits, based on the US show The 64,000 Dollar Question. 

Omar Khayaam

Rubā‘ī C 134 from the Calcutta MS

[Image source: from Edward Heron-Allen (2), link below.]

AWAKE! for Morning in the Bowl of Night

Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:

    And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught

The Sultán's Turret in a Noose of Light.

(Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 1st edition, 1859)

WAKE! For the Sun who scatter'd into flight

The Stars before him from the Field of Night,

   Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,                                                                    and strikes

The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

(Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 4th edition, 1879. Unchanged in the posthumous 5th edition.)

The Sun casts the noose of morning upon the roofs,

Kai Khosrū of the day, he throws a stone into the bowl:

Drink wine! for the Herald of the Day, rising up,

Hurls into the days the cry of "Drink ye!"

(Edward Heron-Allen's literal translation of Rubā‘ī C 134, 1899)

The sun doth smite the roofs with Orient ray.

And, Khosrau like, his wine-red sheen display;

    Arise, and drink! the herald of the dawn

Uplifts his voice, and cries, "O drink to-day!"

(Edward Henry Whinfield's 1883 translation, 233 in his numbering)

While Dawn, Day's herald straddling the whole sky,

Offers the drowsy world a toast 'To Wine',

The Sun spills early gold on city roofs –

Day's regal Host, replenishing his jug.

(Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah, The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam, 1967)

*

Kai Khosrū or Kay Khosrow, a legendary king of Iran whose story is told in the Shahnahmeh. He was brought up in exile in the desert. He avenged the murder of his father Siavash, ruled for sixty years, and finally disappeared mysteriously into the mountains. In this rubā‘ī he figures, presumably, as an embodiment of kingship: it's simply a fancy way of saying that the sun is the king of the day. Kay Khosrow turns up again in another rubā‘ī (Fitzgerald 1st edition 9, Graves/Ali-Shah 9)

Throwing a stone in the bowl. According to Heron-Allen it was a Bedouin signal to strike camp. No more drinking, so to speak? But the Calcutta MS is anomalous: most other texts of this rubā‘ī throw "wine" (badeh) rather than a "stone" (sakhareh) into the bowl, a much better  fit with the rest of the quatrain. I suppose that's why Fitzgerald rejigged his opening stanza but, reluctant to lose all the energy of that summons to physical movement, made it even less of a translation). Whinfield is surely right to see the image as wine-colour in the bowl of the sky: a pink sunrise.  

[Image source: from Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah, The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam (1967), p. 72. This is the same rubā‘ī as C 134, but with the word "wine" (badeh) instead of "stone" (sakhareh).]

*

Omar Khayyam (or "Khayaam", in Graves and Ali-Shah), 1048 - 1131, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, from Nishapur (NE Iran, not far from the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan). 

In his 1174 anthology of Arabic poetry Kharidat al-qasr (Pearl Pendant of the Palace), Imad al-Din al-Isfahani for the first time describes Omar as a poet and quotes four short Arabic poems. 

But the poems with which Omar is associated all over the world are quatrains in Persian (Rubā‘iyāt). These Rubā‘iyāt were independent, pithy, memorable poems that were at first orally shared. It was a popular form, I suppose, somewhat comparable to haiku in Japan or bayati in Azerbaijan. Over time a good many Rubā‘iyāt were attributed to Omar. Perhaps they were the ones especially characterized by a sceptical flavour, appropriate to a renowned philosopher in the Greek tradition. The upshot is an "Omarian" literature, around 1200 quatrains in all. The main manuscripts are diwans, implying the collected work of a single author (what's more, one who constantly refers to himself by name), but their contents vary enormously. It's possible that the historical mathematician Omar didn't write a single one of these poems. But supposing he did, was it half a dozen, thirty-five, a hundred, 250? Readers and scholars have had many different impressions of a more authentic or central core.

What many have sought, Omar Ali-Shah claimed to possess. A twelfth-century manuscript of "uncontradictable authority" containing 111 Rubā‘iyāt. Reading his words (p. 32), you have the feeling that Ali-Shah hardly expected anyone to believe this, noting that at any rate the chosen 111 quatrains were all in one or more of the older manuscripts in  libraries (manuscripts, in other words, that demonstrably exist). Whether his co-translator Robert Graves fully grasped the rules of the game is rather an open question.  But both translators wanted to fashion Omar anew, that is, to reclaim the poetry from what they saw as Edward Fitzgerald's imposition of 19th-century scepticism and hedonism. The idea that Fitzgerald had misrepresented Omar had been around a long time. Fitzgerald himself remarked (preface to Third Edition): 

While the second Edition of this version of Omar was preparing, Monsieur Nicolas, French Consul at Resht, published a very careful and very good Edition of the Text, from a lithograph copy at Teheran, comprising 464 Rubaiyat, with translation and notes of his own.

Mons. Nicolas, whose Edition has reminded me of several things, and instructed me in others, does not consider Omar to be the material Epicurean that I have literally taken him for, but a Mystic, shadowing the Deity under the figure of Wine, Wine-bearer, &c., as Hafiz is supposed to do; in short, a Sufi Poet like Hafiz and the rest.

I cannot see reason to alter my opinion. . .

(Referring to Jean-Baptiste Nicolas, Les Quatrains de Khèyam (1867), link below.)

E. H. Whinfield remarked, in the Introduction to his own 1883 translation: 

European critics, like his contemporaries, mostly consider him an infidel and a voluptuary "of like mind with Sardanapalus." On the other hand, the Sufis have contrived to affix mystical and devotional meanings even to his most Epicurean quatrains; and this method of interpretation is nowadays as universally accepted in Persia and India as the mystical interpretation of the Canticles is in Europe. But neither of these views can be accepted in its entirety. Even if the Sufi symbolism had been definitely formulated as early as Omar's time, which is very doubtful, common sense would forbid us to force a devotional meaning on the palpably Epicurean quatrains; and, on the other hand, unless we are prepared to throw over the authority of all the MSS., including the most ancient ones, we must reckon with the obviously mystical and devotional quatrains. The essential contradiction in the tone and temper of these two sections of Omar's poetry cannot be glossed over, but imperatively calls for explanation.

*

A great deal depends on whether the Omarian poems came from a wine-drinking culture or a teetotal one. A simple question, not so easy to answer conclusively. If nobody drank wine but everyone wrote about it, then yes, it probably signified something else.  

It's a kind of debate that I recognize from my student days, when I was navigating the literature of medieval Christendom. Our favourite poets (Chaucer, Gottfried, Chrétien, Marie de France, Guillaume de Lorris) so often seemed daring, heterodox, rebellious... We were thrilled and a bit taken aback by their seeming failure to comply with the orthodoxy of a very authoritarian age. But were we hopelessly deluded, selectively picking out what spoke to our own Age of Faithlessness, ignorant of the tremendous sophistication of a very different culture, addicted to literalism and averse to allegory, surely the fundamental tool of the imaginative artist in that era of the Ovide Moralisé? Those were the questions raised by D.W. Robertson, Jr and his colleagues. Whether their own interpretations were any better than ours was a moot point, but the methodological issue couldn't be dodged. Since it was medieval poetry we were reading, what did that mean for how we go about reading it? We lived in a time when intuitive common sense was constantly being proved wrong: in psychology, biology, economics, to name but three glaring examples. So why would we continue to trust our common-sense intuitions when reading the poetry of a very different culture? 

*

Graves and Ali-Shah were offering a counter-Fitzgerald, but their poem owes a lot to his, in particular the sequence. 

Most real Persian manuscripts present their quatrains in Diwan order*, that is, alphabetical order of the final letter of the end-rhyme of lines 1, 2 and 4. It's a handy way to find a specific rub'ai if you can only remember one line. It wouldn't work in English, where words that rhyme often end in different letters (mist/kissed, sun/done, fly/high...).

So it was Fitzgerald himself who chose to begin with a quatrain about the dawn that he picked out of the Calcutta manuscript (C 134 in Heron-Allen's numbering). Fitzgerald was constructing a meditation-cum-elegy that would begin in the hopeful dawn, ponder metaphysics in a noon garden, and reserve its most searching and desolate summations for dusk. Yet Ali-Shah's purported 800-year-old manuscript turned out to be in virtually the same sequence as the one Fitzgerald himself had constructed; dawn at the beginning, the garden, the musings of the pots, the fall of night... 

*

Except that the Graves/Ali-Shah version doesn't end with the starkness of Khayyam's empty glass, but in a more pious state of fragile hope. 

LXXV

And when Thyself with shining Foot shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on The Grass,
   And in Thy joyous Errand reach the Spot
Where I made one—turn down an empty Glass!

TAMÁM SHUD.

(Final stanza of Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 1st edition, 1859.)

CI.

 And when like her, oh Saki, you shall pass
 Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
   And in your joyous errand reach the spot
 Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass!

TAMAM.

(Final stanza of Edward Fitzgerald, Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, 4th edition, 1879. Unchanged in the posthumous 5th edition.)

107

Sweet friends, in joy assembled here together,

Never forget us, once your sweetest friends.

Before you greet the jug, Khayaam adjures you:

When his turn comes, turn down his empty bowl.

108

Khayaam, who stitched the hides for Wisdom's tent

Has tumbled in Grief's clutches. He lies burning;

The shears of Death have closed upon his guys

And Hope the Broker sells him for a song.

109

Fools, with damnation as your destiny,

Sentenced to fuel the eternal fires of Hell, 

How long will you still plead for Omar's pardon,

Nudging his mercy from the Merciful?

110

Though pearls in praise of God I never strung,

Though dust of sin lies clotted on my brow,

Yet will I not despair of mercy. When

Did Omar argue that the One was Two?

111

The palace with huge walls soaring to Heaven,

Where prostrate Kings did reverence at the gate –

A ring-dove perches on its battlements;

'Where, where?' it coos, 'where, where?'

(Final five stanzas of Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah, The Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam, 1967.)

TAMÁM SHUD, TAMAM: FINIS.

Though pearls in praise of God...  This is the first rubā‘ī in the 15th-century Ouseley MS in the Bodleian Library; like some other diwan collections, the Ouseley MS starts with a couple of praise poems that are not in diwan sequence. (See Edward Heron-Allen (1)). The Ouseley MS was Fitzgerald's main source of rubā‘iyāt, but he made no use of this first one; evidently he thought it was spurious (see his Preface to the 5th edition). Graves and Ali-Shah, on the other hand, positioned it so it would resound in the departing reader's ear. Perhaps Ali-Shah had in mind the story told by al-Shahrazuri (13th century CE), that Omar on the day of his death left his gold toothpick as a place-marker in  Avicenna's account of The One and the Many; see Robert Arnot for a translation. Juan Cole suggests that the "two" is an allusion to Zoroastrianism, which was often accused (inaccurately) of dualism. (All links below.)

The palace with huge walls... Fitzgerald translated this rub'ai in his 2nd edition (quatrain 20), but subsequently dropped the idea. 

*

The five editions of Edward Fitzgerald's poem, on Wikisource.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam_(tr._Fitzgerald)

The first and fifth editions, on Project Gutenberg.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/246/246-h/246-h.htm

Jean-Baptiste Nicolas, Les Quatrains de Khèyam, 1867. His 464 quatrains don't include a parallel to C 134, as far as I can see. 

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Quatrains_de_Kh%C3%A8yam

Edward Henry Whinfield, The Quatrains of Omar Khayyám: The Persian Text with an English Verse Translation, 1883. Selects 500 quatrains from various sources. 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Quatrains_of_Omar_Khayyam_(tr._Whinfield,_1883)

Edward Heron-Allen (1), The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyām: Being A Facsimile of the Manuscript in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, with a Transcript into Modern Persian Characters; Translated, with an Introduction and Notes, and Some Sidelights upon Edward Fitzgerald's Poem, by Edward Heron-Allen (2nd Edition, 1898).

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pqNfHgsRvHEC&pg=PR22&dq=edward+heron-allen+ouseley&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjcitG_z7GWAxUsR0EAHdubLLIQuwV6BAgLEAg#v=onepage&q=edward%20heron-allen%20ouseley&f=false

Edward Heron-Allen (2), Edward Fitzgerald's Rubâ‘iyât of Omar Khayyâm, With their Original Persian Sources Collated from his Own MSS., and Literally Translated (1899).

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ahe95OSJZ1MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=edward+heron-allen+rubaiyat&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

On Omar Khayyam in Sufi culture I learnt a lot from Robert Arnot's General Introduction to The Sufistic Quatrains of Omar Khayyam (1903). I can't find out anything about Robert Arnot, except that he had an MA and had previously written a study of "The Vine in Symbolism". He was presumably American. I was delighted to discover this book on Project Gutenberg. And since it contains all the quatrains translated by Fitzgerald, Heron-Allen, Whinfield and Nicolas (the latter retranslated into English), it's also a handy way to search them all at once!

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38511/38511-h/38511-h.htm

Also on Omar and Sufism, check out this recent and excellent paper by Ali Yansori, "Theology of Play in Omar Khayyam: Unacknowledged Parallels Between Hinduism, Persian Sufism, and Khayyam’s Quatrains" (2024):

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/10/1266

Juan Cole on the Rubā‘iyāt of Omar Khayyam (interview with Mitch Jeserich):

https://www.juancole.com/2025/04/history-rubaiyat-khayyam.html

Juan Cole is a recent translator of the Ouseley MS (though like Fitzgerald he ignores the first rub'ai, reckoning it's an imposition). Here he outlines his own plausible if speculative ideas about the Rubā‘iyāt; the poems were anonymous and by many hands, some popular and some courtly.  The notion of constructing a corpus attached to the name of Omar Khayyam really took off in the 15th century CE, when Persia was under Mongol rule and relatively liberal in terms of religious orthodoxy. The Rubā‘ī form had evolved earlier, but is not in Old Persian; perhaps it owed something, both in form and content, to Chinese influence along the Silk Road.

On the Rubā‘ī form in Persian literature:

https://kamaustine.com/2025/08/19/what-are-persian-quatrains-rubaiyat/

*

Visiting my mum and dad's I took new interest in the Rubā‘iyāt in their bookcase. It was a Folio Society edition from 1955, containing Fitzgerald's first version but with the four miniatures below. 

The miniatures were taken from a manuscript of the Rubā‘iyāt originating in Herat and dated 911 AH (1505-1506 CE). The manuscript, in the collection of the scholar S. Najib Ashraf Nadvi, was a recent discovery; a facsimile was published by M. Mahfuz-ul-Haq in 1939. Apparently it's the only early text of the Rubā‘iyāt to have illustrations. They are of the school of (but probably not by) the celebrated miniaturist Behzād. 

I found some of this information in an interesting article by William H. Martin and Sandra Mason:

https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khayyam-omar/khayyam-omar-v-illustrations-of-english-translations-of-the-rubaiyat/

*

Suddenly his eyes lit up. He went back toward his disciples, and then turned towards the crowd triumphantly and shouted, 'By God, how did I not recognize Omar, son of Ibrahim Khayyam of Nishapur? Omar, the star of Khorassan, the genius of Persia and Mesopotamia, the prince of philosophers!'

As he mimed a deep bow, he fluttered his fingers on both sides of his turban and succeeded in drawing out the guffaws of the onlookers. 'How did I not recognize the man who composed such a pious and devotional rubai:

  You have broken my jug of wine, Lord.

You have barred me from the path of pleasure, Lord.

  You have spilt my ruby wine on the ground.

God forgive me, but perchance you are drunk, Lord.

Omar listened indignantly, but worried. This provocation could provide an excuse for murder on the spot. Without wasting a second, he shot back his response in a loud, clear voice lest anyone in the crowd be fooled. 'I do not recognize this quatrain. Indeed this is the first time I have ever heard it. But here is a rubai which I myself have composed:

They know nothing, neither do they desire to know.

  Men with no knowledge who rule the world!

   If you are not of them, they call you infidel

    Ignore them, Khayyam, go your own way.

Omar really should not have accompanied the words 'men with no knowledge' with a scornful gesture toward his opponents. Hands came at him, grabbing his robe which started to rip. He tottered, his back struck someone's knee and then landed on a paving stone ....

(Amin Maalouf, Samarkand Ch 1, translation by Russell Harris)

Both these manuscripts, the unseen one purportedly belonging to the Shah family and the illustrated one belonging to Professor Nadvi, look like they fed into Amin Maalouf's fabulously wide-ranging historical novel Samarcande (1989). Here the premise is that Omar Khayyam's own handwritten manuscript, with illustrations and an accompanying biography of its author, survives unknown almost into modern times. The first half retells Khayyam's story, supposedly based on this biography (actually interweaving history, the old legend of the Three Schoolfellows, and the author's own invention). The second half tells how the fabled manuscript is tracked down and eventually read by the novel's American narrator and his lover the Persian princess Shireen, but is lost for ever when the Titanic goes down. (This unrepentant garnish of Hollywood-style romance invites us into a shared meditation on Persian history; in the wake of the 1979 Iranian revolution, the novel asserts that the history concerns everyone and belongs to everyone; that Iran and the wider world are a single question.) 

*

* Diwan:  an important word across the Middle East, with numerous meanings. The basic one is "register", related to the ancient Sumerian word dub ("clay tablet"). It was thus used to mean a collection of poems, as in this post. But as a register of citizens it also came to mean the collective ministries of central government (e.g. Persian, Ottoman empires), hence e.g. a family council, an assembly room. It lies behind the English word divan (low couch) and the French word douane (customs house). 

*

Medieval European literature: exegetical methodologies, contrasted with new critical methodology.

I found a lively outline of this debate in Paul A. Olson's 2017 Foreword to D.W Robertson Jr's Uncollected Essays.  

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1188&context=englishfacpubs

The three friends

The three friends. 20 November, 2025.

One evening last November I was walking up the alley and noticed that someone had chucked out some bedding plants. They lay on the gravel, out of their pots and with very little soil on their roots, but in the November gloom you could still see a flower or two, like a lost bead.  

After a couple of days I took it into my head to try and rescue them. There were two geraniums (pelargoniums I mean), one of which had shut up shop, but the other was still making a gallant effort to produce new flowers. There was also a begonia with dark red leaves, but it was so tiny and bedraggled I didn't expect much from it.

Anyway, they were company. Back home in Swindon, I potted them up and sat them on a recycling bin in my porch, where the sun sometimes reached them. 

The three friends indoors. 11 December, 2025.

Nothing much changed through the winter. They didn't die, was about the best you could say. It was a mild winter and there was little danger of frost in the back of the porch. All the same there were a few nights when I brought them inside. The induction hob seemed like the perfect spot to plonk them.

Then in April I moved back to Frome, so I passed them on to a friend with a garden. She took care of them, potted them on, kept them watered through the long dry summer. Here's what they looked like last week.

The two pelargoniums, 6 August 

Pelargonium is a southern hemisphere genus, mostly southern Africa (some in Australia). The ancestors of our garden hybrids are predominantly South African. 

Classifying the garden types is phenomenally complicated. Typical schemes involve up to twenty categories. I think both of my plants would fall into the zonal category, though only one of them shows the zonal marking on the leaves. 

It's become a blur already. The one fact I'll retain is that in Pelargonium each bunch of flower buds is considered a pseudoumbel, because the flowers don't all bloom at the same time. 

The begonia, 2 August 2026.

Begonia is one of the largest plant families. Aside from its 2,000 wild species there are endless hybrids and cultivars. 

I think this is what they call a wax begonia: plants of many different colours but all with rounded gleaming fleshy leaves and small cheerful flowers. They are grown as bedding annuals (though as my plant demonstrates they are not actually annuals).

The wax begonias (Begonia x sempervirens-cultorum) are cultivars with several species in their makeup. One of them is Begonia cucullata, native to Argentina, Brazil, etc. -- The Wikipedia entry is fairly informative.

When I did some image matching on my plant I kept hitting references to Begonia sparreana. Frustratingly, I still can't decide if there's any substance to this. 

Begonia sparreana is a plant endemic to Ecuador, rather threatened in its native habitat (moist tropical lowland forest on the Amazonian side of the Andes). From the invaluable Missouri Botanical Garden site (it's free to use, but you have to create an account) I downloaded Jorgensen and Léon-Yánez's Catalogue of the Vascular Plants of Ecuador, which is fascinating about Ecuador plant life in general, but it doesn't describe individual species, and as far as B. sparreana was concerned I wasn't much the wiser (it's on p. 318). 

Much of the internet fluff derived from the English and Spanish Wikipedia entries for B. sparreana, which both appear to show an image of a standard wax begonia just like mine, snapped in a British garden. (I couldn't find any images of B. sparreana in its native habitat.)

Do wax begonias with burgundy leaves and pink flowers have B. sparreana in their ancestry? It's tempting to dismiss it as a simple error replicated dozens of times, but I found just enough variation in my search hits to leave the matter in doubt. 

For example Casey Elizabeth Dennis has a post showing B. sparreana as a hanging basket type of begonia with small pink flowers on bright red stems (there's a picture). Different from my plant, but not so different as to rule out any connection.  Yet her lengthy post has a naggingly synthetic feel, suggesting it's mostly computer-generated. So is B. sparreana really a thing, in the horticulture world? I still don't know. 

https://plantophiles.com/plant-care/begonia-sparreana/

Afterwards I had a nightmare vision of a future in which human beings can no longer find anything out from the internet, because truth and falsehood have become inextricably tangled. Only Al can work the internet. Al can't tell the difference between true and false, but it can chew through so much data that the truth mostly lands uppermost. And true or not, there's no means of questioning it.

My SF dystopian fiction has begun!

The two pelargoniums, 10 August 2026.

 

the sitters

Ikegobo to the Iyoba (Hand Altar to the Queen Mother). By an unrecorded Edo artist, Benin, c. 1800.

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/unknown-west-african-artist/ .]

I decided to read some poetry by Claire Crowther, a name I bookmarked and have been meaning to follow up for far too long.  

Anyway, I arrived at this poem which appeared with five others on Peter Philpott's long-dormant GreatWorks site (which in case you don't know is an absolute treasure house.)

ALTAR OF THE HAND

To claim your inheritance:

Birmingham.
Soft shape of black dots.
Ignore its green rivulets where trams rode,
its village making chocolate, the Rotunda.

Concentrate on:

the sitters for Rubens, Tintoretto, Ghisi,
those immigrant paintings.
That lugubrious man in his feathered cap
and peplum. Beccafumi's Venus covered in blusher,
even her knees, the goddess of the hand altar,
thumbs up, stuck in a pattern of palms and fingers.

To become Mistress of the Legend:

See that view of a landscape near Malines,
its blue wings of wood, lake, grey sky?
There is nothing for you in such a healthy grave,
the classical skyline.
Only the sitters, left at home, hold their myth,
St Catherine propped by a wheel,
St Ursula sensing the suburbs as it would be.

Old woman:

Here are your lines, your red eyelids.

[Poem source: https://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/cc1.html .]

*

Altar of the hand: A literal translation of ikegobo, a type of Edo royal artefact. There's one at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham (see the image at the head of this post). At least there is for now; I imagine it might go back to Benin pretty soon.  

Unusually this ikegobo celebrates a woman, or rather a woman's role (the iyoma or queen mother). In Edo religion -- this is a hasty impression from probably non-authoritative sources -- the hand relates to actual achievements, wealth and prosperity (in contrast to inner personality, represented by the head). As the poem says, the queen mother is doing a thumbs-up with both hands. 

In a way the Barber Institute itself is a hand altar, endowed by Lady Barber to celebrate the achievements of her late husband, a property developer who made his fortune building the suburbs of Birmingham.  

The poem's other artworks are also in the Barber Institute. 

green rivulets: For such a large city Birmingham is notable for the smallness of its rivers (the Tame, Rea and Cole).

where trams rode: Birmingham's tram system began to decline from the 1930s and ceased altogether in 1953. (It began again on a small scale in 1999, and has since expanded; it's called the West Midlands Metro.)

village making chocolate: Bournville, originally a model village, now a residential area of SW Birmingham. 

Rotunda: Cylindrical high-rise building in central Birmingham. 

Rubens, A Portrait of a Carmelite Prior. 

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/peter-paul-rubens-1577-1640-2/ .]

Rubens:

Peter Paul Rubens' Portrait of a Carmelite Prior (c. 1616). The sitter has not been identified. 

Tintoretto's Portrait of a Young Man (1554).

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/jacopo-robusti-called-tintoretto-1518-1594/ .]

Tintoretto:

Tintoretto's Portrait of a Young Man (1554). The sitter has not been identified. 

"That lugubrious man in his feathered cap and peplum" also seems to refer to this painting. (Peplum in modern clothing design = a short or false overskirt at the waist line.)

Giorgio Ghisi's An Allegory of Life (The Dream of Raphael), 1561.

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/giorgio-ghisi-1520-4-1582/ .]

Ghisi:

Giorgio Ghisi's enigmatic engraving An Allegory of Life (it claims to be after Raphael, though scholars doubt this). 

There's more information here:

https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5755214 .

It's hardly a portrait! Ghisi's "sitter", you'd think, is nothing short of Life itself. 

Venus and Cupid, painting (c. 1519) by Domenico Beccafumi. 

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/domenico-beccafumi-1484-1551/ .]

Beccafumi's Venus covered in blusher, even her knees: Domenico Beccafumi (1486 - 1551) was a Sienese painter. His painting Venus and Cupid (also known as Reclining Nymph, c. 1519) is in the Barber Institute. In the painting Venus and Cupid have rosy cheeks and her knees are a bit red too. This painting was originally a headboard, part of the bedroom decoration for Francesco Petrucci and Caterina Piccolomini, celebrating marriage, fertility and virtuous women. 

[Not to be confused with Beccafumi's later painting Venus and Cupid with Vulcan, which is in the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Obviously I'm saying this precisely because I did confuse them!]

Rubens' Landscape in Flanders, c. 1635-1640.

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/peter-paul-rubens-1577-1640/ .]

landscape near Malines: Peter Paul Rubens' Landscape in Flanders, painted c. 1635-1640. (Malines = Mechelen.)

Bernardo Cavallino's Saint Catherine of Alexandria, late 1640s.

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/bernardo-cavallino-1616-1656/ .]

St Catherine propped by a wheel: Bernardo Cavallino's Saint Catherine of Alexandria (late 1640s). 

This is the St Catherine at the Barber Institute.  Cavallino painted another St Catherine, which is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam:

https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/4185/saint-catherine-of-alexandria

Bernardo Cavallino's Saint Ursula, c. 1650.

[Image source: https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/saint-ursula-4484 .]

St Ursula sensing the suburbs as it would be: Basically I can't find a St Ursula at the Barber Institute. The details in Claire Crowther's poem suggest an intimate interior portrait of the saint, much like Cavallino's Saint Catherine. Well, that was Cavallino's speciality. So my first thought is that the poem is talking about his Saint Ursula, which is at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Maybe it was loaned to the Barber for a while, though I've found no evidence. Anyway, this St Ursula is caught in the very act of sensing something, the suburbs of Cologne maybe, or Birmingham. 

But there's another possibility. After all, the poem doesn't say that the saints themselves are at home, but that the sitters have been "left at home" (in contrast to the "immigrant paintings" that, by one means or another, have fetched up in Birmingham). So perhaps I shouldn't be looking for an interior. 

Christ on the Cross, with a Donor (Bruges, 1480s?)

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/the-circle-of-hans-memling-about-1430-1494/ .]

Here's a painting that is in the Barber Institute, titled Christ on the Cross, with a Donor. It's currently just "circle of Hans Memling", but is sometimes credited to the Master of the Legend of Saint Ursula (a cycle of scenes produced for the convent of the Black Sisters in Bruges, though now dispersed to museums elsewhere). Well, overlooking the total absence of St Ursula from this particular painting, could the scene behind the two figures be envisaged as a kind of prophetic vision of the leafy suburbs of SW Birmingham and its university? That's my second thought. It doesn't really add up, I know. On the other hand, the poem's "Mistress of the Legend" also seems to gesture in this direction.

Bernardo Strozzi's The Head of an Old Woman, 1620s.

[Image source: https://barber.org.uk/bernardo-strozzi-1581-1644/ .]

Old woman: Bernardo Strozzi's The Head of an Old Woman (1620s). The sitter has not been identified. (Given the tenderness of the portrait, some have wondered if it's Strozzi's mother.)

*

Claire Crowther's poem covers a lot of ground in small compass, and it doesn't waste words. A poem to inhabit rather than interpret, maybe. 

My abiding impression is of the protagonist essaying a "light touch", and coming away with paint on her fingers. Ignore that, concentrate on this, the protagonist instructs herself, but it turns out that things aren't so easily partitioned, they are characterized by what printers call bleed. An artwork is like a face, it both conceals and reveals, and there can be a shock of communication. You hover between admiration, cool amusement, alienation, appraisal, but sometimes the artwork breaks through, and then you're confronted with the personal preoccupations you intended to leave with your backpack. 

The unidentified sitters are important to the poem. The artwork can be transported away from them, it usually will be, but it can't wholly leave them behind, no matter how much distance and centuries and sumptuous presentation seem to assure its transcendence. 

The poem keeps tripping over intrusions, oppressions, insecurities, worries... It's anxiously and perhaps distractedly searching, but not for "a healthy grave". Life won't be kept out. As an artwork itself, it lets us see its smudgy hands.