COUNT BELISARIUS

no I have never read that novel, but have always meant to. in fact very few people know of it and it would be quite hard to find a copy. but I know the epoch, 6th century AD, early Byzantium, the conflict between the Byzantines, Arabs and the remnants of the Roman Empire.
I talked to a South African girl last night about books but it was the usual dismal stuff. she knew only the most topical works like Alexander McCall Smith's 'No. 1 Lady Detective's Agency'. He's presently big cheese but for how long?
The thing about Graves' historical novels is that they are presently read far more than the serious poetry that he wrote. Ironically he wrote the novels in order to have the time to work on his poetry. Reading 'I Claudius' I get the sense of someone having cribbed the historians of the era: I don't get a real sense of Graves as novelist peering beyond the history. But its definitely interesting nevertheless but not as interesting as Flaubert 'Sentimenal Education' or James Joyce 'Ulysses' as a historical reconstruction principally because the author has little connection with his material. It just sounds like a smart public school boy who has read a lot and decided to make his fortune by rendering the classics to the masses. I mean, fair enough, but not exactly challenging stuff. Graves never came over to me as a poet either, too sane, always looking for the obtuse image. I have incredible amounts of obtuse images, but I hardly have to look for them.

I've always liked Graves' historical novels. Did you read Count Belisarius?
England does sound curious now. MY travelling days are over unfortunately. I'm not much of a popular culture enthusiast, and I barely knew who the Supremes were.

Christopher

I, CLAUDIUS

this morning woke early and listened to Robert Graves account of Germanicus defeat of Hermann after the disaster when Varrus lost 3 legions at the Teutoburgerwald. Varrus committed suicide at the battle. Interestingly the Germans were extremely reluctant to close with the Roman infantry and just sat in cover hurling darts and assegais. Only later when the Romans were worn down did the close in.

After the defeat Germanicus re-conquered Germany, stopping at the Rhine. Indeed the Romans never conquered Germania, as they called it, beyond the Rhine. (if you've been to Germany you'll realise that most of Germany lies beyond the Rhine. In Cologne there were many Roman sites and a museum too, full of Roman antiquities) Germanicus brought his son, whom the Roman legionaries named 'Caligula' or 'little boots'. Later stories about Caligula appear to be propaganda, although we will never really know the truth about his reign as Emperor. Marriage of Emperors and ruling members of dynasties to their sisters was quite common in the ancient world. This was practised so that no outsider could ever enter the ruling family (this seems to suggest that the ruling family were almost a different species, that whatever entitled them to rule, or whatever it was that marked them out as leaders, was something that they were born and died with...). The myth that he made a horse into a Senator seems to be just that. In other words: black propaganda of the period means that the truth is utterly obscured.

What becomes apparant however is that the Augustine Age was much more successful than the Republican, since Augustus made decisions without reference to any consultative body such as the Senate. What is remarkable is that many of these decisions proved to be right and that many were made not by Augustus, but by his wife Livia, who seems to have been the real power behind the throne.

After suppressing the revolt of Hermann (Arminius) Germanicus has a kind of world tour, visiting Alexandria and other famous sites in Egypt and Syria. Germanicus is poisoned after a series of ghostly happenings at his villa, even though he thinks he is protected by possession of a statuette of Hecate, the goddess who controls everything to do with witches and spells. He thinks he is being poisoned by his rival Piso at first: all kinds of strange happenings at Germanicus' villa, a cock crows at midnight, (something Germanicus is very superstitious about, also the number 25) a child's head is found beneath the floorboards, the head of a negro (black man) with a child's hand in his mouth, a cat with a pair of rudimentary wings. In the end Germanicus' statuette of Hecate vanishes and he dies. Piso is arraigned in Rome for the murder, but dies mysteriously after threatening to reveal a letter in his possession from Livia to Augustus. (which reveals all) Claudius is eventually relieved of his duties as a Priest of Augustus, (Augustus was made into a god after his death), and is sent to Carthage to bless a temple (sent out of the way, where he can't make a fool of himself in front of anyone except African provincial monkey types).
Claudius is the man of destiny, because he is the least self-deluded of the Claudian/Julian dynasty.

JENNER ALONE

Herod Antipater greets talking head of Simon Erect, a very minor painting by an adept of the Umbrian School, smewhere Toscana nr middle Zeit. Simonus banished from the group known as Zealots travelled to Rome with the unguent bowl used to wash the feet of the Pretender Messiah, Moses Magonides. It became a sacred artifact, along with the scythe Moses used to cut his beard and pubic hair off with before his crucifixion (he's known to have stolen away from his cross, married a baker called Marzipanus Orangeboom: sired little nickel plates and a whole batch of led pencils.). Meanwhile Simonus' very modern relative is found, a scribe in fishing village Brighthelm, found only with the Holy Gourd and aforesaid painting. Also his pome 'Aloof, Alone, yet furrowed orifice/hangs from my groove/belittling these offices/burrowing into my fetid footstool. This masterwork, winner of the Brighthelm annual Ditty Award, placed into 3.15 at Epsom Downs, yet another winner and a good one at 3 to 1. Herod Antipater relinquished the ballless marble lion, sent it crashing to the floor. Later he regretted destroying the artefact (but more fact than art), deciding to set the portrait of Simonus in its place. He gazed up at the Duomo and back at the marketplace, noticed the artist Giotto wading through the usual interminable shit that covered everything. Simon fell out of bed, as if in sympathy with his progenitor, upset the coffee cup and the wall-less shelf. About a thousand CDs crashed to the floor with a massive crash. Lots of plastic shards hit Simon just as he crawled from out his pit to make an arrangement of rubber tubing. For a moment he supposed himself to be about 14 and back in the chemistry lab.

PROMETEO

A HOELDERLIN

Bavarian black-faced sheep
A pair of headphones,
A wind instrument
Eructation, appetency.

I hold a Hoelderlin and blow
A jazz cornet or saxophone
The hedgerows modulate to the concern
The ever-burgeoning blue note heat.

That rises on a May evening
To clutch every straw hatted star.
That is pinned down
By those black notes and bars.

Burning against the blue heavens
Foaming near the moon’s wave
Its cool glow reflected
In the unending crowds that throng

Dissipate, modulating on the sound
Of trains, blues, moonlight, starshine.

NOCTURNE

A revolution. In spite of insanity
Chopin revolved primly and grimly
On the black piano seat he crouched
like a jaguar flashing eyes, teeth.
So the big black piano was tuned
A Chopin flew past: tit or eagle?
The many bird metamorphoses
my glass was empty, empty.

 A JENNER

A Jenner was born upon this day
A little sparrow child, growing up
All perturbed wing crowing indolently
Beating against it all.

Living near the sea in a cul de sac
Named Waterloo, he gazed seawards.
All the names rushed inwards
All the meanings were one.

He shook his wings, fell off his perch
Fluttered downwards to womb or tomb
One day he gazed across the blue slime:
“This is a sea, I shan’t forget.”

Mother named me Jenner
A name that rhymes with tenner.
The sea is my acupuncture
It whispers inanely then flows.

Like toffee under the grey quagmire sky.
It’s a nest, a place to be, a beaches
And all the peaches
Are aquatinted, mine.

“I want to find the author of this poem.”
Says Jenner, “buckshot, grapeshot him.”
I’ll plant an erection on his sable grave:
Shoot him, burn him, flay him, eat him.

Bury him alive, sup on his tongue.
I’ll Kerensky him, bombard him with shite
From my little biplane: for he knows
We all know, everyman meets his Waterloo.

POETRY INSTRUCTION KIT

1. Tear off cellophane wrap.
2. Place on table
3. Apply turgid poetic verses.
4. Stir with pre-packed plastic ladle.
5. Recite to wall.
6. You have created a pome. Store in freezer far past its sell-by date.
7. Take out in 30 yrs time, recite to aged Professors of Iambs.
8. You are now on the Curriculum.
9. You die (are deified)

Maerchen

MAERCHEN


Grandmother: ´Christopher, will you bring your Grandmother apples?´

I´m up at the log cabin, the one in the woods (yes that isolated log cabin far from civilisation). I´m sitting here with a long shawl and hungering for your apples.

Christopher: ´Grandmother what long fangs you have!´

Grandmother: `All the better to eat you with.´

Christoper: ´You can´t inhabit the märchen, Grandmother, its already been done!´

Grandmother: ´Just get the apples out, smartass.´

Christopher: ´Can you eat my good side? I´m told that my left side is more succulent than my right which is generally gnarled, rancid and inedible.

My what a long muzzle you have Grandmother, what long fingers and nails.´

Grandmother: ´Listen you putrid-tasting cloth eared git. I´ve been inhabiting this märchen for 4 weeks now. I´m sick of this silly wolf costume and Grandmother´s boring habits. Never washing, repeating these inane lines over and over again. Just show me the apples and stop the backchat.´

BERLIN DIARY

Dear Simon, 

tonight I went to Frederichshain to look for a studio. I stopped off
at the Kunst Kino cafe and talked for hours to 3 groups of people: some Japanese girls, some Chilean guys: a girl from Hamburg. It was great to just sit down and relax. It looks as if an American called Mitch is helping me find a studio: this could work. The gallery seemed interested. Its a really classy gallery on Frederichstraße, more or less the tourist hub. (the Ku´Damm used to be the centre before the fall of Mauer) I made sketches of the Japanese girls. Their facial structure is so different from Western Europeans, obviously, but also different from
other East Asian folks. It was fascinating and they seemed really pleased with my work. The Chileans talked endlessly about Chomsky and Marx. Usual futile debate. The video shop is incredible, full of stuff I´m dying to see or re-view. Films from everywhere in the world, the best stuff. The girl from Hamburg taught me more German, there was a useful exchange. Says she studied to be an actress in Wien, then went to LAm. You´d love that shop. Home-made lemonade, ice-cream from this clanking old ice-cream machine and great lattes.

Menus written on old plays by Hugo von Hoffmansthal. (those plays become more interesting because of the frisson between the menu and this high Jugendstil period. The plays are deeply artificial and laughably conventional. Its a very subtle, interesting point and funny too.)

Simon Jenner wrote:
 
Hi Paul,

I first came across him in Kenneth Clark and then in 1980 in Hamburg's museum. He really is breathtaking, especially the Wreck of the Hesperus and the mountain scenes. He seesm happiest in frozen wastes.

Wrote a poem on this experience, Frankfurt and Delingsdorf's lesbian commune where I was staying wuth my sister, rather than CDF. Nor was he CDM... not chocolate box at all. I was suitably amazed by his work.
Just catching up with myself, glanced over your emails and read them them trying to eat. No good. christiane and heroin. I wrote of another Christiane.

I'll write when I've digested.

Cheers,

Simon

On 5 Jul 2006, at 17:59, Paul Murphy wrote:

Hi Simon,
saw the CDF´s for the first time today live. Bigger than I expected and many are undoubted masterpieces of that period. They stand out above most of the rest. The German Turner, possibly better.
bfn,

Paul

Simon Jenner wrote:
Hui Paul,

I'm late for work as having written a letter to tacitus, brooding day off and on, then a dream image and words wae me and I start, so there it is.
one thing, it has made me horribly late for work and I've not read you very thoroughly, but love the anecdotes re body-building Murphy vs landlady's thugs, Holinghurst persona non granta, beckett in Berlin but perhaps Walter Bejamin could have cheered him? And this. I'm away till Friday when normal service will be resumed, unless a poem gets in the way of my opening my emails.

Cheers,

Simon
On 4 Jul 2006, at 11:30, Paul Murphy wrote:

Hi, I couldnt believe that the drivers were just coming on straight at me. The cars seemed to fly at the speed of rockets. I was very shaken afterwards, just couldnt believe that it was worth almost killing someone in order to get to your destination a few seconds earlier. Of course, if she had actually run me over she would have
been held up there for hours, but the drivers here might think themselves to be rather streetwise and consider a hit and run too.
Who´s going to care about a tourist run over at the Ku´Damm?
Other people here have sustained injuries. I think its the WM, everything is a bit more manic than usual.
Discovered that the Siegesäule was moved from Königsplatz nr the Reichstag by the Nazis to this area. There are 3 statues beside it, Bismarck, Roon and Moltke all sporting ridiculour Victorian beards and moustaches apart from Moltke, who looks very modern. The statue of Bismarck is fantastic. I think the rationale for moving them is that they reminded the Nazi heirarchy of a too great connection with the golden era of Prussian militarism. (at that time, circa 1870, the Prussians had defeated the Southern Germans - who formed a confederation with the Austrians, the Danish and then the French.
They really proved that they were the pre-eminent continental land army and Prussia became a bi-word for militarism, aggression and success. But the British still ruled the waves and the world.)
But they didnt destroy the statues and monument either. That´s interesting and proves something. The Siegesäule is covered with gilded French cannon from the German victory over the French at Sedan. (Have you read a history of the Paris Commune, by the way?
Karl Marx agreed with the Communards but thought that a revolutionary movement wouldnt succeed at that time and felt that the Commune should wait and build itself up politically. In the end he was right and the Commune was defeated, the Communards massacred in their 1000s by the French military. A countries military defeat often means change in a leftwards direction, as with the Russian Revolution, which was also sponsored by the Germans, who put Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks on a sealed train in Zürich to the Finland Station in St Petersburg, as it was then known. So left can also mean German, a very subtle thing to understand, if you know what I mean?!?)
The area of Berlin I´m in is Alte Moabit. Its part of West Berlin, not one of the best areas. There are lots of cafes and restaurants, Arabic, Turkish, Vietnamese and Indian.

best wishes
Paul