An abiding regret for the space left in my literary life with Hilary Mantel’s death; all those bodies and ghosts – royal and heavenly, and not – silenced. Now, just over a year later, today is published in the UK a collection of her essays, exquisitely – albeit misleadingly – titled A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing (pub. John Murray). Pulled together by her former editor (at Fourth Estate and now at John Murray), Nicholas Pearson, are pieces from Mantel’s long writing career – on many subjects and from the many stations of her personal and professional life. It is not, then, a memoir in the usual sense, rather I read somewhere it described as a ‘memoir of the mind’ – and what a singularly brilliant mind it was. Perhaps this book will go a little way to fill that space that I still feel.
As her unpublished work and diaries are being deposited with her other papers at The Huntington Library in California and sealed until her husband’s death, for some, this collection is perhaps the last opportunity to wonder at Mantel’s gifts.
In April, a memorial service was held at Southwark Cathedral, around about which time it was revealed that, at the time of her death, Hilary Mantel had been working on an adaption – mash-up of sorts – of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the over-looked Bennett sister, Mary (the ‘plain Jane’ middle one), and tentatively or maybe definitely titled: ‘Provocation’. Lordy! Pride, prejudice AND ‘provocation’! Jane and Hilary in conversation (and now in heavenly union)! Regency England given the Tudor treatment – what a treat that would have been.
Here is The Guardian magazine piece that ends with the extract provided by Mantel’s widower, Gerald McEwen, and which was read at the memorial service. (What a divine thought: Darcy is not the brightest!) There are interesting reflections from McEwen and others, and I was reminded of Mantel’s Reith Lecture in which she said: “the dead are invisible, they are not absent”. I didn’t remember that to be a quote from Saint Augustine (looking back, those were indeed the first words of her first lecture), but it does then seem appropriate that her memorial service was held in Southwark with its ancient Augustinian tradition.
Imani Perry has been hanging out with the most wonderful writer and most thoroughly decent of human beings, Jesmyn Ward, and not surprisingly on Jesmyn’s home turf of DeLisle, Mississippi, and Gulf environs, so familiar to her fans. This will be part of my weekend reading but I just had to scribble a quick post with the link (NYT sub. probably required).
One of the very few women awarded a Nobel in economics, and the only one to do so alone, that is, not in the company of a male colleague. Perhaps, with this, Claudia Goldin may become a role model in encouraging women into a profession and a branch of academics in which they remain underrepresented.
I have downloaded this, her latest publication (for the National Bureau of Economic Research), tracing women’s historical and social status in the workplace in the United States. A hefty piece for sure – with lots of numbers and graphs and things – but may be well worth the effort.
Remember Trump’s wall? Then you probably also remember the perverse rallying chant of his supporters: Build that wall! Build that …! (When it wasn’t Lock her up! As an election year again approaches that such populist rabble rousing were but an aberration has been exposed as a pipe dream). I remember some sort of paper mâché (well maybe it wasn’t paper mâché exactly) prototype for sure and the haphazard erecting of or replacing of barriers in a limited way during this Trump term (I avoid saying “presidency”!). Exactly what the Biden administration’s position is could be described as fluid. But I do also remember Biden’s election rhetoric (for his more progressive clientele): No wall with me, folks!
Well, really? This week, succumbing to the pressure of numbers – especially out of Venezuela – and in the face of agitation from (mostly Democratic) mayors of the metropolises (where many of the migrants head) – the Biden administration announced the renewed construction of a physical barrier – yes, a wall! – in the Rio Grande Valley (and the deportation of Venezuelans). And, yes, I know the ‘appropriation’ argument. That is, congress has appropriated the funding, so it’s got to be spent. Really?
The Israel-Gaza barrier seen from the Israeli sideReplacement border fencing construction. California, 2019.
And, today, I think again of walls – this time in Israel, a nation that is seemingly forever building or planning to build walls. To keep in or keep out is a matter of perspective. As I write, one such, between Gaza and Israel, has been violently breached by Hamas. We are at war, says Netanyahu. Ergo: walls, like rivers (Rio Grande) or seas (Mediterranean) are limited in their function as a barrier, walls like their natural counterparts are there to be breached, and walls rarely hinder wars rather cement divisions.
This, another simmering conflict – always there, always ready to ignite. But such an incursion? Why now? Why did the intelligence seemingly fail? What next? I fear swift retaliation from Israel is assured.
So personally rewarding and intellectually enriching was a previous project in which I studiously followed through with a reading of Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of Homer’s Odyssey – an endeavor that stretched over an entire year – that I would like to set forth again on another literary escapade; again, with the intention of an equally rigorous (but unfettered by expectation) immersion in Wilson’s newly published translation of The Iliad – considered by many to be the more complex of the Homeric epics. Though I have read and explored the Iliad at other times (as the name I write under here suggests!) and in other translations and contexts, I look forward to doing so again – especially this time with this translation – in some form or another. (I admit to having browsed excitedly through this new volume immediately it landed on my doorstep; dipping in, tasting again that particular rhythm and cadence that Wilson brings to her translation, and which had so enchanted me previously.)
I already imagine – but am not necessarily committed to – a future project presenting itself in a similar format as that of the Odyssey; writing or posting in some (not yet defined) format as I read, with some regularity and without any unqualified attempt at interpretation, rather reflecting my own personal, perhaps idiosyncratic, meditations along the way. What I definitely can say is that any future commentary and ensuing citations – page numbers, book numbers and their titles – will follow my own hardback first edition copy:
Homer, The Iliad, translated by Emily Wilson, First Edition, New York: W.W. Norton, 2023.
My copy of Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s “The Iliad”
For my Odyssey project I video-recorded my readings; a first for me ([muted applause] Stop, I say!), and which was absolutely not a vanity thing (here speaks one amongst those of my acquaintance who shudders when faced with the task of a selfie or the like even in own company!), rather an approach decided upon having become infected by Wilson’s own enthusiasm for recitation and her encouragement for others to follow suit. In the end, I indeed found the effort worthwhile in helping me maintain concentration and involvement in the text and narrative; for that reason, it is an oral exercise that I would very much like to repeat; however, I also now know that it is one that demands a reasonable amount of time and space – the former (despite my incessant claims to the contrary!) I have enough of; the latter, not always – and so I may have to be a bit more modest in my aspirations and selective in my intentions.
Poet and Translator
Marble bust of Homer, British Museum, London.
Having written before on this most unlikely pair; the ancient Greek poet, Homer, and this, his (or their) most recent and, I would contend, most interesting of modern translators: Dr. Emily Wilson, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, it is hardly necessary that I do so again in any detail. Besides, in respect to Dr. Wilson, her renown is now such that there is a multitude of information – from her and about her – available in the internet, and, when it comes to the ancient bard, sowieso.
But in these days we call our own, when digital (and beyond, see A.I.) mass reproduction and the ensuing aesthetic dominate, it is difficult to get away without pictures – moving or otherwise – and visual representations are, after all, a powerful stimulant for the imagination. With this in mind, and with the observation that Homer surprisingly still retains the same stony gaze and, momentarily feigning blindness to the vagaries of the historical record, I republish an image (r.); chiseled from marmor, then iterated until the imagination and reality has morphed into one thing, something akin.
The very few years that have passed and the extraordinary success that has come her way, have also done little to change Emily Wilson’s charm and presentation (neither blinded by her success nor stony in her demeanor! but surely the tattoos are new?), but I did want to add something recent and so below is the video of an event at the Library of Philadelphia a short time ago to promote her newest work. Here, she is in conversation with Sheila Murnaghan, chair of the Department of Classical Studies at Penn (and, therefore, Emily’s colleague).
Author Events, Library of Philadelphia, September 26 2023
As the end of the year quickly approaches, I presume this to be a “project-in-waiting” of sorts – on my agenda for sometime in the next, or beyond. For the time being, I will pin this notice of intent under a new menu item in Classical Diversions, and will post here again in a timely fashion when I am ready to begin. I will of course remain alert to articles, reviews, interviews, etc. on the aforesaid writers and their epic adventures in this earthly space time continuum or perhaps another.
The god’s have favored me, and Emily Wilson’s new translation of Homer’s The Iliad has arrived promptly from across the wide Atlantic seas. And glorious it is indeed!
Too promptly I could say because my plan of action has not yet been settled upon. But a menu heading is a start! See My Iliad Reading at the top of the page
By the way, I have shifted the completed My Odyssey Reading; now to be found under Classical Diversions in the main menu.
Yes, I did say I was done with family ties! But then along came Catherine Macaulay in an LRB piece by Colin Kidd (Vol. 45 No. 17 · 7 September 2023). No, she is not related to Lord Macaulay who is the great-uncle of G. M(acaulay). Trevelyan. What all did have in common, though, were their ambitious writing down of the ‘big’ histories of a (then) ‘big’ England. And this Catharine did so well before those blokes – in a multi-volume affair written over twenty years titled The History of England from the Accession of James I to the Revolution (1763-1783). (Only much later came Lord (Th. Babington) Macaulay also making it to five volumes with his The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (1848) and Trevelyan, of course writing in the first half of the 20th century, had diverse titles to his credit but could also not resist a History of England in 1928, and in one tome.)
Kidd’s review of Catharine Macaulay: Political Writings edited by Max Skjönsberg for the Cambridge University Press series of Texts in the History of Political Thought comes for me as a wonderful introduction. Encouraged to look around, I discern some sense of renewed interest in Macaulay, and it is hardly surprising; for, however well-situated, however intelligent, the horizon for a woman in the 18th century was far and her opportunities limited in scope and only those with the most pertinacious of character and originality of thought have left their mark.
For further information, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a lengthy entry, which interestingly mentions the “Blue Stockings” portrait (above r.) in which Catharine Macaulay is seated left beneath Apollo and behind her stands, with goblet in hand, Hannah More whose acquaintanceship and name was to live on (via Zachary) in that other Macaulay/Trevelyan tribe. Further, a first taste of her original voice can be read at the Online Library of Liberty (new to me!) in a text written in 1790 (in response to Edmund Burke) on republicanism and the Revolution in France.
There are sure to be many in the next days, weeks, so as I come across new reviews I’ll directly post them (if possible) – and comment later if I think necessary . This from Edith Hall, who hardly needs an introduction – but here’s one anyway.
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