Saturday, April 26, 2014

Saturday commute cvi: What's become of cat burglary?





   Gentlemen, raised by the ex-
   ample of Alfred Hitchcock's 
   John Robie to defend freedom 
   and collect a few fine neck-
   laces along the way, may pine
   in Myrtle Beach for those ram-
   parts and ledges of Beaux-Arts
   transit, associated with burg-
   lary's finest hours, that are
   ubiquitous as palms in Cannes.

   That said, we know of no de-
   cline in targets, reconciled to






































Alfred Hitchcock, director
John Michael Hayes, screenplay
Robert Burks, cinematography
To Catch a Thief
Paramount, 1955






Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Horace at your back vi: "And that determined me .. "





  The breast of the man who was the 
  first to dare
  To go out in a little boat upon 
  the waters
  Must have been made of oak and 
  triple bronze,
  Fearing neither the sudden African 
  squall
  Contending with the North Wind, 
  nor the storms
  The Hyades threaten, nor what the 
  South Wind, Notus,
  Who rules the Adriatic, is 
  capable of.




Feelingly I read these words from my pocket Horace as I sat on the crumbling volcanic summit of the Esja, having gained Iceland at last after five days of tempestuous buffeting in the North Atlantic sea. What could have impelled me, I sometimes wondered in the height of the storm, to face that terrible voyage? Curiosity, incredible romanticism, and the tedium of Europe. I had resolved to go somewhither, but not to Europe again, that devastated continent I knew too well, nor to America, which somehow I could not yet face; and then, looking at the map of the Temperate Zone to see what corners of the visitable earth remained when these rejected areas had been subtracted, I had seen the forgotten island, tucked away at the top of the page, in the northern ocean, hieroglyphically marked with eternal icecaps, and giant craters, and storm-broken creeks, and inhospitable wastes, and great fishful rivers with romantic unspeakable names.




   So I wrote to Thomas Cook's
   and said that I wanted to go
   to Iceland; and they replied
   that it was impossible to go
   to Iceland; and that deter-
   mined me to go, and I went.


















Horace
Odes
  I, iii
  [fragment, cited in
  the following in Latin]
David Ferry
  translation
op. cit.

Hugh Trevor-Roper
September, 1946
The Wartime Journals
op. cit.





Sunday, April 20, 2014

Am I ready to know


 what Renoir saw?






  It goes on, and on
  and on. Yes, but a
  familiar claim for
  love, is that it's
  inexhaustible. And
  this won't change.

















Protocols of the oenophile, revisited


  Access a mound
  of fresh chuck.

  Mold between the
  palms, lightly.

  Sear rare, clasp
  between two buns.

  Hoist to consume
  by hand, dripping
  all over the lap.






This oft-quoted - and, we have noticed, still widely heeded - extract from a culinary dialogue of ancient Sumer, had left for centuries a central, begging question: yes, fine, fine, fine, but with what wine? At last a worldwide up-heaval was held in the mid-20th Century, affording the meditation needed to un-lock the mystery. Only lately, however, has that discovery been published.



Having dealt with Hitler, I returned to England. I saw my friends, cracked several bottles with them, polished off a few items of work, had my mare clipped for the hunting, got up my car, collected some petrol, and motored to Oxford in the highest of spirits.. How de-lightful it seemed as I walked down the Broad again on a clear, cold November day, and allowed my eye to rest on a decaying nose of one of our Roman emper-ors who guard the Sheldonian theatre. How exhilarating is the intellectual life, how buoyant the air of a learned place, how beautiful its architecture and associations. I looked forward to a fresh taste of this half-forgotten flavour, and settled down to enthusiasm to a life in Christ Church.



The first night I sat next to Keith. He expounded his views on the cosmos. 'The outlook is very black', he said gloomily, filling a large glass brimful of port; 'there is no faith, no hope, no morals: and the polit-ical situation is worse, infin-itely worse than in 1938'.. {S]ince he evidently thought Chamberlain a more inspiring topic, I enquired about his researches into the life of his hero. He brightened a little at first; his studies had convinced him, he said, that Chamberlain was an even greater man than he had supposed.. Had he, I asked, heard.. revelations, of which a summary had appeared in the Press, and which bore so vitally on the whole question of Munich? No, he replied.. and looked suddenly bored..



[S]o I turned tactfully to my other neighbour, Michael.. We must understand, he said, that we are now in a new era; that there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth and a new Christ Church, for the former things have passed away; in future (he emphasised with melancholy relish) there will be no drink and no dances and no gaudies and no pleasure of any kind at all; and as a supererogatory mortification he suggested that the dons should in future have the same food as the undergraduates.. I determined to avoid any contentious subject, and merely asked him about recent contributions to philosophy.. Next morning I turned up for breakfast in a chastened mood..



What a set of old crashers! I said to myself; shall I ever stick it out? And my heart, that volatile organ, sank heavily down towards my stomach, which itself was feeling weak and hollow after a Christ Church breakfast; and I wondered why I had ever returned to this world of disconsolate reactionary gloom. But that night at last I knew there would be a change, for Hookie Hill was coming to dine, whom for four years I had dismissed as dead, but who in fact had been a prisoner of the Japanese, working on the Death Railway in Malaya and Siam, where he had buried most of his companions, but himself had survived. From him at least I could expect a breath of the old world, - and yet, I reflected, could I really be sure? For suffering and captivity work hardly on a man's mind, which fact the clergy.. ruthlessly exploit.




Hookie arrived, and.. he seemed well, and I asked him about his experiences. 'I am a different man now', he said; and I trembled to hear the words. But having begun, I felt I must persevere, and know the worst, so I bade him speak freely of the spiritual experience to which he referred. 'In my prison-camp', he replied meditatively, 'I had leisure to consider many things which I hadn't thought of before'. I pressed him further. To what particular reorientation of his thought did he refer? 


'Well', said Hookie, 'I have now decided that if I were condemned to drink only one wine for the rest of my life, I would choose Burgundy'. A great cloud rolled away from my spirit as I heard this sane answer, and I said, 'but come, Hookie, there are some excellent clarets'. 

'I thought of that too', he answered, 'and I know my answer to that: there hasn't been a decent claret since 1892'.
After that my spirits rose, and when I learnt.. that Hookie had applied as Steward, I decided that if he came here, I could perhaps stay after all.





  Who could have known, as this
  vital deposition was being tak-
  en, the vines of Bordeaux would
  yield a vintage to dissolve the
  dispute with effusive amity? It
  was not always the case for this
  diarist, who yet lifted spirits
  exceedingly diversely, higher
  than he found them, as he would.

  Denys Vivian Hill became Steward.


















Hugh Trevor-Roper
Student [Fellow] of
  Christ Church
Major, SIS
Regius Professor
  Oxford
Master of Peterhouse
  Cambridge
Lord Dacre of Glanton
1945







Clearly defined borders


Rapture of schoolmarms,
currency systems, and a
shower of safety glass:

I like to discover dis-
tinctions, don't you a-
gree? Not cut myself on
an arbitrary intrusion.





                       I see a valley of moist Montale plus                                myself plus George Herbert.
                       Wait here. Stay alert.

                       When the red apples are ready on
                       the trees,
                       Don't you feel like saying, 
                       "Apples, please .."



  Time and again, a light will
  elicit respect for a border
  shaped by nature - which, e-
  ven in error of application,
  is unforgettably worth pursu-
  ing. For this I am grateful:


  He was no democrat, no pacif-
  ist, no martyr (if these are
  pure professions); and the in-
  tellectual clarity he achieved
  was the clarity not of suffer-
  ing but of disillusion. But
  truth is independent of the
  stimulus that has provoked its
  discovery, and the conditions
  that have guided its expression.










































Frederick Seidel
  Sweet Day, So Cool,
  So Calm, So Bright

Hugh Trevor-Roper
Student [Fellow] of
  Christ Church, Oxford
The Last Days of Hitler
  i: Hitler and his Court
op. cit.