Dutifully padding about the temples of Impression

     Is travel then the mirage where
     the real self itself becomes mi-
     rage ..? When we are in Rome or
     Athens, do they evade us, lost
     under the scurrying modern life
     imposed on them, an ancient ghost
     behind a modern ghost? Do we meet
     always and everywhere nothing but
     ourselves?

     Or are there, in Florence, for ex-

     ample, moments when the emanation

     of the past stamped on stone and

     bronze surges up above the present,

     with a greater order perhaps than

     it ever had in the past? This is

     surely so when, from Fiesole, we 

     see the dome of the cathedral like

     a shield made of rust-coloured pet-

     als guarding the city ..

     

Stephen Spender

World Within World

1951

Random House, 2001©

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of gastronomy

      And yet she loved all things 
      French, loved being in France.
      When we went there en famille
      after the war she exclaimed
      continuously on its marvelous
      Frenchness, everything was just
      as French as she remembered it -
      'Look,' she said, as we drove
      away from the boat through Cal-
      ais, 'the very streets - the 
      cars, a Citroën, James! - oh,
      a gendarme, and there, the lit-
      tle outside lavatory, they're
      called pissoires, and you see
      the wine shops - James, see the
      windows! all that wine - and the
      pavement cafés and there's a pâ-
      tisserie' - she said the word
      with such a French flourish -
      'you boys have never tasted a
      real French pâtisserie - do stop,
      James, and we'll have a pâtisser-
      ie, the boys can have their first
      tarte aux pommes!'

      James stopped, and she led us
      to the little shop, its open
      counter just off the pavement
      laden with cakes, fruit tarts,
      &c, the smell of their recent
      baking hanging in the warm air,
      and it's certainly true that
      Nigel and I had never seen such
      a display, not smelt such smells
      - 'peach, pear, apple,' she said,
      'apricot, fraises, framboises -
      and that's the one I'll have' -
      she gestured at it, one of her
      grand gestures - 'the black-
      berry!' and a swarm of flies
      rose up from it, leaving not a
      blackberry but a plain custard
      tart - ...

     

















Simon Gray
The Last Cigarette
Granta, 2008©

This volume in the
"Smoking Diaries"
was nominated by
the Head Master
of Eton for Hey-
wood Hill's List
of 100 Something-
or-Other. Fright-
ening to consider,
one could have
missed it.

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of Persepolis

     2 March 1935

     Dear Dr Herzfeld

         Since both the Governor
     of Fars and Dr Mostafavi have
     stated categorically that you
     have no right to prevent my
     photographing the portions of
     arches and columns which have
     always been above ground, the
     only means of stopping my pho-
     tographing them are either

       (1) to show me the wording
     of your concession proving
     that you have the right, or
       (2) force.

     Please choose your means.

     There are still some things to
     be said about Persepolis.

     Only the stone has survived, but
     for a few of Alexander's ashes
     which they dig up now and then.
     And stone worked with such opu-
     lence and precision has great
     splendour, whatever one may think
     of the forms employed on it. This
     is increased by the contrast be-
     tween the stones used, the hard
     opaque grey and the more lucent
     white. Isolated ornaments have al-
     so been discovered in a jet-black
     marble without vein or blemish.

     Is that all?

     Patience! In the old days you ar-
     rived by horse. You rode up the
     steps on to the platform. You made
     a camp there, while the columns
     and winged beasts kept their sol-
     itude beneath the stars, and not
     a sound or movement disturbed the
     empty moonlit plain. You thought
     of Darius and Xerxes and Alexander.
     You were alone with the ancient
     world. You saw Asia as the Greeks
     saw it, and you felt their magic
     breath stretching out toward China
     itself. Such emotions left no room
     for the aesthetic question, or for
     any question.

     

     Today you step out of a motor, 

     while a couple of lorries thun-

     der by in a cloud of dust. You

     find the approaches defended by

     walls. You enter by leave of a

     porter, and are greeted, on 

     reaching the platform, by a light

     railway, a neo-German hostel, and

     a code of academic malice control-

     led from Chicago. These useful ad-

     ditions clarify the intelligence.

    

     You may persuade yourself, in spite

     of them, into a mood of romance. 

     But the mood they invite is that

     of a critic at an exhibition. This

     is the penalty of greater knowledge.

     It isn't my fault. No one would have

     been more pleased than I to leave

     the brain idle in a dream of history

     and landscape and light and wind and

     other impalpable accidents. But if

     circumstances insist on showing me

     more than I want to see, it is no

     good telling lies about it.

Robert Byron

The Road to Oxiana

1937

Oxford University Press

op. cit.

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of the Vatican

  

   The bit about the children

   went like clockwork. I told

   [His Holiness Pius XII] that

   I had a single daughter -

   our son was not yet thought

   of - and a white rosary was

   immediately handed by a cham-

   berlain to the Pope, who

   blessed it and delivered it

   to me. I was rather hoping he

   would repeat the mistake he

   was said to have made among a

   party of American congressmen

   when, instead of asking, "boy

   or girl?" he murmured, "black

   or white?"; but no such luck.

John Julius Norwich

Trying to Please

  A Memoir

2010

op. cit.

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of Mt Athos

    Woke up this morning, the weight
    of my twenty years heavy upon me,
    wondering how many people at home
    were wishing me many happy returns
    and whether the waves of their 
    well-wishing would reach me through
    the air. The arbondaris, with whom
    I have made great friends, brought
    me tea and jam and bread. He seems
    to have taken me under his wing, as
    I'm his only guest.

    After dressing, I was just setting
    out in quest of Father Basil, when
    I met him on the threshold, coming
    to visit me. So we sat talking in
    my room, and then we set off to
    look around the chapel, where the
    ikons and frescoes were all new,
    and though not unpleasant, not very
    interesting. The gilding in the up-
    per chapel is all recent, and some
    of the stencilling on the wall aw-
    ful, and luckily not very obvious.
    The two-storey library is enormous,
    with long, pleasant rooms packed
    full of books in expensive cases.
    It is very poor in manuscripts how-
    ever, except for one with the gos-
    pels for each day of the year, which
    has fascinating illustrations, a Na-
    tivity where the interest and adora-
    tion in the eyes of the animals is
    really wonderful, and another of the
    Baptism of Christ, naked in Jordan,
    with the devil, or some evil water
    sprite, in a posture of submarine
    thwartedness.

    Then I bade Basil goodbye, and he

    returned to his cell, I to mine,

    he dragging his heavy boots behind

    him, and giving the impression, in

    his youthfulness, of a schoolboy

    dressed up in a flowing beard and

    hair, tall hat and long robes.

Patrick Leigh-Fermor
February 11, 1935
The Broken Road
  From the Iron Gates
  to Mount Athos
Artemis Cooper and
Colin Thubron, editors
2013
op. cit.

Fionn Creber

Dutifully padding about the temples of Agrigento

     The Bishop now elected

     to fall into a shaft,

     gracefully and without

     damage, and for a moment

     a terrible beauty was

     born. One touch of mu-

     sic-hall makes the whole 

     world kin.

Lawrence Durrell

Sicilian Carousel

1976

op. cit.

Fionn Creber

Aeneas, Isabel Archer and "the conquest of time"

What has brought about such recurrence

of scrutiny of these two figures in

literature, as to have made it impos-

sible for anyone in the generation in

which I participate ever to be free of

asking oneself, how much one cares a-

bout them? The question is not entire-

ly the same as, how settled one may

be in understanding their story, giv-

en that it is so frequently raised by

ventures - critical, creative, indus-

trial - committed to reopening every-

thing one has thought of them. Now we

come upon another Christmas season,

with two unquestionably leading lights

in our language, presenting the ques-

tion yet again, and competing for our

attention and laurels with fine works

without their notorious provenance.

This year, there can be no doubt that

Aeneas and Isabel ride in on conveyances

of such prestige - the poet David Ferry,

the novelist John Banville - as to draw

an almost nervous apprehension that, per-

haps, one's lifetime indenture to their

stories had not actually been as sincere

as we'd supposed. But how often this is

the case, whenever the chance exists to

learn anything about what one already

likes; one doesn't really resist, it's

just a question of how appallingly dull

one's going to be revealed to be.

The art historian and critic Jed Perl,

in introducing us to Alexander Calder

for truly the first time (for all in-

tents and purposes), has subtitled his

critical biography with a suggestion

which certainly applies to this phen-

omenon, "the conquest of time." What

we spontaneously like about Perl's

assertion for Calder, only excites

the keenest interest. For Aeneas and

for Isabel, it conveys almost a chas-

tisement, and the reader enjoys a

gruesome sense of one's mortality, as

having simply stood in the way of an

immortality he has never fathomed. 

Belong as one may, to that pathetic

fan club of the Great and the Good

in literature, with any new burst of

radiance from The Aeneid or subtlety

in The Portrait of a Lady, one is

apt to beg to believe that this must 

be the end, and we'll not be stuck in

Mobile, with the Memphis blues again.

Banville has done this, as you must 

know, with a character not of fic-

tion but certainly of myth, the spy,

Anthony Blunt. Saturated as our lib-

raries are, with tales and counter-

tales of the talented Cambridge

traitors, Banville created the

most penetrating study of Blunt in

print; and it is so convincing that

even (say) Miranda Carter's fine bi-

ography answered, to be fair, to a

simple fan club interest in the nar-

rative of naughty Apostleship. Now

that he opens his imaginative eye

upon the later life of Isabel Archer,

we stand in acute peril of his il-

luminating Henry James. Is anyone

honestly ready for that?

The hazard with David Ferry is en-

tirely the same, only more extreme.

It isn't really Aeneas, we haven't

fathomed; and we know it. It's the

poet. Precisely as the truth of Is-

abel's story is locked within the

structure of her own seeing what it

is, the truth of Aeneas' enterprise

is embedded within the extraordinary

interaction of past tense and present

tense of cognition, within the same

passage. Virgil's "historical pres-

ent" sustains suspense, in a story 

whose every shred of content has been 

known for two thousand years (roughly

as long, many undergraduates must feel,

as they've known Isabel Archer). To

take us with Aeneas is to unpack us

of factual mass and temporal certainty, 

even of memory, in the face of poetry.

In appraising the mastery of Alexander

Calder at his fortieth year, Jed Perl

makes reference to one of the great

critical texts of our time, Charles

Rosen's The Classical Style - finding

in the sculptor's reconciliation of

mass and movement an imaginative elas-

ticity, an optimistic solution to time

which is at the heart of The Aeneid, 

and inherently beats within the heart

of its reader. Perl is gifted, as

Rosen was, with acute learning in a

variety of disciplines, and a fine

polemicist's zeal for principles,

in which regard for form is not mere-

ly pre-eminent, but defining. With

this perspective his guidance through

the evolution of Calder's art has the

buoyancy and grounding it deserves, 

with a thrilling range of delectation.

The projects of David Ferry and Jed

Perl took more than a decade to bring

forth, and probably John Banville has

not known a moment's distance from his

great heroine. What a fortunate con-

vergence it is, for any English read-

er at this Christmas, to find three

such stunning adventures in poetics

by one's side, just now, in our caul-

dron of misdirected fascinations - to 

cite but one of Perl's fierce denig-

rations of populist topicality in the 

arts. These wonderful gifts plainly

disqualify themselves as a Book of 

the Year, for having earned no less

than they give, a better life.

John Banville

Mrs Osmond

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017©

The Untouchable

Alfred A. Knopf, 1997©

April Bernard

Virgil Revisited

  A review of David Ferry's

  translation of The Aeneid

The New York Review of Books

November 23, 2017©

Hermann Broch

The Death of Virgil

  A Novel

Jean Starr Untermeyer

  translation and

  Translator's Note

Random House, 1945©

Henry James

The Portrait of a Lady

1881

Peter Washington

  introduction

Everyman's Library

Alfred A. Knopf, 1991©

Jed Perl

Calder

  The Conquest of Time

  The Early Years: 1898-1940

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017©

Charles Rosen

The Classical Style

  Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven

W.W. Norton & Company, 1971©

Virgil

The Aeneid

ca 20 BC

David Ferry

  translation

University of Chicago Press, 2017©

Alexander Calder

Eucalyptus

1940

National Gallery of Art

Washington,  DC

Fionn Creber x Cecilie Harris

Nevs Models

2013