Functions of style

Possibly it falls to all publishers

in this medium to encounter 'style'

finally in the perspective of their

own interests. Mine are in the chan-

neling functions of style, and only

moderately in the others; it is in-

teresting to me as a boulevard of a

personality, albeit laced with some

intersections.

  I have lately introduced one

  of the most notably problem-

  atical personalities ever to

  be heard from, in selections

  chosen for a humaneness that

  I find uncanny and inspiring.

  These discoveries stir genu-

  ine surprise in me, although

  this has been suggested only

  once. But he was a figure of

  renown for rhetoric of other

  qualities, that drove one of

  his early editors to wonder:

  I find it difficult to decide

  whether he is a fundamentally

  nice person in the grip of a

  prose style in which it is im-

  possible to be polite, or a

  fundamentally unpleasant per-

  son using rudeness as a dis-

  guise for nastiness.

The question could not conceivably

have been framed in these terms if

the stylist were any less exorbit-

antly attractive than he was, when

at his best. Such persons are ava-

tars of hope to anyone who senses

the power of rhetoric, not merely

to lead but to illuminate. Custom-

arily, we discard them, throw them

away; but truly, I think, this is

a surrendering of them which is a

great mistake. In the case of this

personality, entire cadres in the

ostensibly learned world stood by

in prayer that he would hurl him-

self upon a great mistake. Yet it

was his nature to hurl himself; he

rode with the hunt, religiously.

I am tending to entertain the proposition,

that if there are tragic figures, the pre-

sumptive 'failure of their light' is one

in which the bystander participates. If I

am correct to be pursuing this line of

thought, what can it mean that such a fig-

ure is the one who opened that boulevard?

If I confer prestige of tragedy upon an-

other person, have I struggled sincerely

enough to preserve its dignity as rare?

Sipping from Goti

 for Paul Gervais

   From whatever place

   they may have come from,

   from under rocks,

   that moistness, or the sea,

   or else in those

   slanting places of darkness,

   in the woods, they

   are here and ourselves

   with them. All

   the forms we know,

   the designs, the

   closed-eye visions of

   order - these too they are,

   in the skin we

   share with them.

   

  

   if you twist one

   even insignificant part

   of your body

   to another, imagined

   situation of where it

   might be, you'll

   feel the pain of all

   such distortion and

   the voices will

   flood your head with

   terror. No thing 

   you can do can

   be otherwise than

   these people, large

   or small, however

   you choose to think

   them - a drop of

   water, glistening

   on a grassblade, or

   the whole continent,

   the whole world of size ..

Robert Creeley

Selected Poems

  People

  [fragment]

University of California Press, 1991©

But you can't say, Martin, forum shopping's shopping as we know it

  You always knew, they'd come

  after us, Martin, on that very

  ground, seeking redress in the

  courts instead of another gen-

  eration of sporting battery,

  you know, that sort of thing.

  They seem to be saying that

  we've taken the fun out of the

  open secret of their play, and

  there are those who say one ought

  to see their point. Why, only over

  the weekend, we were cautioned

  against ebullience, but then I do

  think this advice is rather fam-

  iliar. It reminds me of these en-

  dearing warnings, that they'll

  get tired of us. Have you ever

  quaked more wretchedly in fear?

Saturday commute cv: A walk in the meadow

         this wasn't here yesterday

Springtime has a way of re-viving the same impression which gained such currency, at such strenuous insis-tence, when we were told, history is over. On our after-breakfast stroll today, Thorny and I were repeatedly drawn to remark as novelties emerged to our inspection. Whereas my gaze may stray into diffuse approbations of a meadow in morning sun, and my inhalations commingle somewhat broadly, his remain excruciatingly thorough and detailed. Yet even he, an English dog, does not con-strue a new blossom as a new genus, and doesn't claim to have invented it. Is he in-corruptible because he is subhuman, or because he stud-ies facts?

  The longest tyranny that ever 
    swayed
  Was that wherein our ancestors
    betrayed
  Their freeborn reason to the
    Stagirite
  And made his torch their univer-
    sal light.

  So truth, while only one supplied
    the state,
  Grew scarce, and dear, and yet
    sophisticate,
  Until 'twas bought, like emp'ric
    wares or charms,
  Hard words sealed up with 
    Aristotle's arms.
  ..























John Dryden
To my honoured friend,
  Dr Charleton ..
1663
Selected Poems
Steven N. Zwicker and
  David Bywaters, editors
Penguin Books, 2001©

Finn Donnelly

Suppose it were Friday xciii: If ye love me

      This is payday
      in America for
      the bearers of
      our promissory
      note. Like you
      I didn't know.

    
    

     

McCutcheon v FEC

  So let me get

  this straight.

  The Bush fam-

  ily have yet

  another boy,

  who wants to

  be President?

   

Poor town is always "simply not the same"

Mark Danner - whom we all like -

has been reminding us at The New

York Review, of how Washington

came to be, once again, simply

not the same, thanks to Richard

Cheney, of the bionic pacemaker.

He adopts the hideous catchphrase

for watersheds such as this, the

new normal, and I keep meaning to

upbraid him for it here, but I've

been more interested in his facts.

Trouble is, there is no normal to

be found in Washington, ever; and

since the swamp was severed from

the Fairfax estate, nothing new.

You well remember, I know, what

palms there used to be on embassy

row, until Donald Maclean, Guy

Burgess, and Kim Philby material-

ised to shake our first security

establishment to its roots, such

as they were. There was the ner-

vous, bibulous Maclean, disturbed

by his own shadow; the flagrantly

louche (a redundancy?) Burgess

for distraction; and ever the es-

timably natty Kim of determined

calm, as noted above. Yet unto

every generation, their story is

retold; and it seems to be the

fate of our experience, to bridge 

the gap between the shocked and 

the unshockable, between the wit

of Acheson and the bile of Rich-

ard Cheney. Possibly we will be

the last to know the fault line.

The present embodiment of this re-

telling just arrived from London yes-

terday, where it has been somewhat

unnervingly well received, for a

"history" which appears to take the

position, that class consciousness

led to class cohesion in Britain's

espionage sieve, and explains most

of this whole sensational tale. How

very inadequate this perspective is,

will be known to every girl and boy

who ever attended a dance open to 

the public. But here it is again.

I welcome this new volume because it does enrich the context of details in a story worth understanding, even though that under-standing has already been persuasively conveyed to our hands. The greater part of our debt is owed to a deceased historian this book undertakes gratuitously to defame. Here a journalist portrays what truly was the destruction of the British security apparatus, to the gigantic cost and uncured confusion of the one we run, here, as a narrative of betrayal. We know it was a great deal more than that, and this is the common reader's excuse for revisiting the spectacle. It was a collusion in the fallacies of true belief. That restaurant is still open, feeding every horseman.

Mark Danner

The Massacre at

  El Mozote

  A Parable of the

  Cold War

Vintage Books, 1993©

Torture and Truth
  America, Abu Ghraib and
  the War on Terror
New York Review Books, 2004©

Ben Macintyre

A Spy among Friends

  Kim Philby and the

  Great Betrayal

Bloomsbury, 2014©

Hugh Trevor-Roper

The Philby Affair

  Espionage, Treason, 

  and Secret Services

Encounter, 1968©

The Ideal Husband

May 9, 1968

The New York Review

  of Books©

Acts of the Apostles

March 31, 1983

The New York Review

  of Books©

Learning "were" is as good as "have been"

  For Barry Leach

But I had never seen the Solway.

And then, resting on a rocky

ledge above Crag Lough, I sudden-

ly realized, what I had long con-

cealed from myself, that I was ill

.. and so home, and spent a week

in bed, and read Guy Mannering again.

But after I had been up two days

(for I was determined to go), I was

taken to Blindburn in the Cheviots,

north-west of Alwinton, and after

lunch I walked, over the old Roman

Dere Street, down the Cottonhope

Burn to Byrness, over the fells by

the Blackhope Nick to Kielder ..

on again next morning up the Lewis-

burn valley, and over to Becastle

Fells, a killing struggle, over peat-

hags and bogs and clefts, making ev-

ery mile as two; and at last, from

Sighty Crag, I saw it, a sheet of

twinkling water and a long reach of

desolate sand, the Solway Firth;

  

and at the same time I heard the

bubbling of a spring nearby among

the moss, and slaked my thirst

with its cool dark water; for my

throat was parched with the long

weary climb. After which I felt 

as I daresay the Israelites felt

when, from a hilltop, they viewed

the Promised Land, that it wasn't

very different from anywhere else;

still, it was something to be out 

of the wilderness.

                  .. and dropping lightly down the

                  fells I met a shepherd, the first 

                  human face I had seen for eighteen 

                  miles, and so to Bewcastle, where 

                  I found, against all probability

                  (for it is a lonely steading) an-

                  other man, in the middle of a field,

                  delivering lime from a lorry. So I

                  asked him for a lift, and he took 

                  me to Brampton, whence I gradually

                  found my way home. He drove a lime-

                  lorry now, he said, but he had once

                  lived far away in Northumberland,

                  and had spent his childhood in the

                  village of Powburn, where his uncle

                  was the policeman. So I told him

                  that I had been born in the parish

                  of Powburn, in Glanton, and from

                  that time we were intimate friends.

Hugh Trevor-Roper

Lord Dacre of Glanton

The Solway Firth

  [fragment]

June, 1945

The Wartime Journals

Richard Davenport-Hines

  editor

op. cit.