Not an aftermath exactly, but preoccupied still with words, words, words, this much more than a mere afterthought: the NYT reports under the headline “Hip, Woke, Cool” – also three words – that Henry Louis Gates as director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard is editing in cooperation with Oxford University Press a new lexicon dedicated to the richness of the African American language, the Oxford Dictionary of African American English (ODAAE)
It’s a long way from the Harvard of Longfellow and Lowell to that of Henry Louis Gates, and as far from Trench’s mid-nineteenth century idiosyncratic glossary to this one in planning across the pond and in this 21st century, with all the creativity, nuances and melodies that time and place bring to the English language in all its variations; a vibrant reminder of the evolutionary power of language as ideas and experience are given form and rhythm. A terrific project, I think, and with a multidisciplinary character and application; projected completion in 2024.
“Dr. Hepcat and the Heptser’s Dictionary” – a BBC radio documentary about the roots and language of jive, including an interview with Calloway’s daughter.
Diverging to dabble in some amateur wordsmithing (is that a word?); inspired by a word pondered by Woolf; inconsequential to all intents and purposes and simply said in passing, but worthy of thought.
In her diary entry of Wednesday 7 November 1928, Virginia Woolf wonders at her poor physical and mental state in the aftermath of the publication of Orlando. And true to form, that contemplation once written sets her searching mind, unhindered by its fragile state, momentarily meandering, and she wonders about the etymology of a rather ordinary word, the word “aftermath”, and turns to, as she says, “Trench”, for some reconciliation.
Well, none was forthcoming from the said Trench. But I was curious and wondered at her reference, and a footnote explained the tome to be: A Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present (1859) compiled by Richard Chenevix Trench. Rather dated, even during Woolf’s time to be sure, and one may presume that it was long in her possession; from her father’s library perhaps.
To my surprise a digitized version (of the American edition) is on the hathitrust website, and this curious work of reference is certainly well worth a browse – even if it doesn’t help on the matter concerning “aftermath”!
Some further research on my part indicates that the word does in fact fit the criteria insinuated in the title, so the good Mr. Trench was indeed remiss.
aftermath (n.)
1520s, originally a second crop of grass grown on the same land after the first had been harvested, from after + -math, from Old English mæð “a mowing, cutting of grass,” from PIE root *me- (4) “to cut down grass or grain.”
Also known as aftercrop (1560s), aftergrass (1680s), lattermath, fog (n.2). Figurative sense is by 1650s. Compare French regain “aftermath,” from re- + Old French gain, gaain “grass which grows in mown meadows,” from Frankish or some other Germanic source similar to Old High German weida “grass, pasture.”
A modern definition, “figurative sense” as mentioned above or in the original might read:
aftermath | ˈɑːftəmaθ, ˈɑːftəmɑːθ | noun
1 the consequences or after-effects of a significant unpleasant event: food prices soared in the aftermath of the drought.
2 Farming new grass growing after mowing or harvest. ORIGIN late 15th century (in aftermath (sense 2)): from after (as an adjective) + dialect math ‘mowing’, of Germanic origin; related to German Mahd.
(My) Apple Dictionary
I note that the Online Etymology entry suggests the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem so named to further illustrate the meaning of the word, and it does so in a lyrical fashion. The poem (see below) appears to have been first published in 1873, and I make the observation that, in the sense that it combines the agricultural meaning with the figurative idea of change – natural and man-made – and what remains, that Longfellow may have been moved – even subconsciously – by the slaughter upon the battle fields of the Civil War – and its aftermath. (I don’t know this, of course, and probably am influenced by Siegfried Sassoon’s 1919 poem also called “Aftermath”; in which the aftermath in question is that of the First World War – no tepid “gloom” to be found in Sassoon’s poem, rather the stark, bitter reality of war.)
Aftermath
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When the summer fields are mown,
When the birds are fledged and flown,
And the dry leaves strew the path;
With the falling of the snow,
With the cawing of the crow,
Once again the fields we mow
And gather in the aftermath.
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
- Poetry Foundation
There is no need to connect Longfellow with Trench, but I can’t resist. Both were born in the same year and died only a few years apart. Trench (1807-86), for a time Dean of Westminster, is buried in the knave of the Abbey and Longfellow (1807-82) is one of the few Americans, and the first, to have a memorial dedicated in Poet’s Corner at that same venerated place. Whether the pair met during any of Longfellow’s sojourns to Europe I couldn’t say but, even had they, “aftermath” probably didn’t arise in polite conversation, for had it done so Trench would surely have recognized the special characteristic of interest to him and noted it for his scholarly volume; and many, many years later Virginia Woolf’s curiosity could well have been quickly satisfied. Was she ever the wiser? Did she inquire of Leonard or one of her many gentleman (or not so) farmer acquaintances in the home counties?
These could Boris Johnson still not see – or, at least, admit to – as the curtain begins to fall on his chaotic tenure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Some would relegate Johnston to the role of court jester; one there to amuse, to charm, to garner favor and applause. Too lazy a conclusion, I would suggest, insinuating him to be but a minor performer – hovering in the wings, just the filler during drunken intervals. For, oh how well he used those intervals – to discombobulate, to prevaricate, to slyly maneuver himself to center stage. Good riddance I say.
And A.N. Wilson says it so much better in Oldie Magazine. As always, on those fabled Isles, Shakespeare is there to be turned to for just the right anecdote, just the right personage, to explain (away) the most inexplicable; like the petty frivolities and conceits of Westminster and its players. With Johnson it is as with Falstaff; where the comic ends and the tragic begins rests in the eye of the beholder, at the mercy of a fickle audience and electorate alike. So, let the curtain fall on this 21st century Falstaff. (A drink at the bar may be in order as one awaits, and with trepidation, the next act! Believe me – it ain’t promising!)
For the last days, sleep has come at intervals, and when it arrives then never lasting very long. Too warm nights interrupted by god knows what, and accompanied by mentionable – and not – bodily needs, including the cerebral. Unable to return to sleep, this latter (the head bit) is satisfied only by reading until the eye lids become heavy and then drop. At times such as these, it is not usually to the book(s) I am presently in the midst of that I turn, rather I reach to short stories or essays that I can read through in one fell swoop.
So it was, during one disturbed night last week, that I picked up Hilary Mantel’s 2014 short story collection “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher”.
I remember at the time of publication, there was a right royal hoo-ha at the title – lent from the final story of the collection. (Printed somewhere pre-publication, and read by me back then.) This was, after all, not very long after Thatcher’s death and the bells (in our heads) still rung with the sounds of: Ding dong! The Witch is dead. That, a rather distasteful appropriation I thought, and those chanting said ditty (not as the Munchkins do in the Land of Oz; rather, substituting a word that rhymes with ‘witch’ I seem to recall) too young and too privileged to have been affected by Thatcherism and the social coldness it brought. The title Hilary Mantel gives to her story, which very much describes the substance of it – not a metaphor, not a dream – doesn’t particularly concern me; I am confident that the author’s disaffection of Thatcher would be well informed and well felt, and could hardly surprise. Margaret Thatcher, after all, may have been a lot of things, but boring was she not, and offers a perfect template for a fictional character. And, a writer of the Mantel magnitude can well afford the well earned luxury of artistic risk and transgression. In my opinion. And, one could surmise she knew she would be asking for trouble; perhaps she was looking for it!
The collection (eleven stories) is framed by its opener andthe said Assassination, and while the latter gets the title and ISBN, most of the attention and the tut-tuts, it is the first, “Sorry to Disturb”, that paves the way (one is tempted to again return to Oz and trip along a yellow brick road) that leads to the grisly end, via a series of various degrees of grotesque interludes. I say framed, because both stories evolve from male strangers intruding into the constricted domestic space of a woman; their motivations may be other but both are accompanied by an aura of deceit and the suspicion of a ‘not good’ agenda. In the first story, that agenda is based on opportunism, cultural expectations and misunderstandings and is, in the end, warded off and ultimately harmless, in the last, both the intent and the outcome are clear – and deadly.
“Sorry to Disturb” is written in the first person and is a memoir piece (first published as“Someone to Disturb“ in the LRB in 2009 and referencing diary notations) set in Saudi Arabia where Mantel lived with her husband during the 1980s. An excellent read, in my opinion, that illustrates well, and gives perspective to, the daily dilemmas Westerners living for a time in countries with vastly different social and cultural norms are confronted with – the atmospherics (in an extended sense), the solitude, and just the sheer strangeness of the whole adventure.
After reading the Assassination story again, I was struck, not just by how extraordinarily similar the narrative voice was, but the odd sameness of the structure. Almost like the same story spun on its axis and transplanted from the suffocating heat of Jeddah to the leafy green of the English home counties. In both stories the narrator is not just complicit in the chain of events that follow, but makes herself almost into a co-conspirator, even as she – or is it another entity – stands outside the plot considering the action. Do I recognize the magnificent style of the Cromwell trilogy here?
In-between are, of course, ten other stories. Maybe some are better than others but, to my mind, all have a peculiar slant and psychological depth. They are short and succinct, and with the fine composition one would expect from Hilary Mantel. Mostly in the first person, but not all. Some are grotesque, some tragic. There is often humor where good taste says it shouldn’t be – which just shows how overrated good taste is. They are very idiosyncratic.
In the end, Mantel’s stories may well have worked magic – but not upon my eyelids; in fact, I devoured the entire volume. However unsettling the subject matter, my conscious self was not over stimulated. Rather, my intellect nourished, sleep became my reward.
[22nd June 2022] Well, who would have thunk it! Some things have a longer life on the internet than others – at The Guardian (where it was that I probably first read it) – is, still, the fictional demise of Mrs. Thatcher, titled:Hilary Mantel: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983.
Elif Batuman is another of those writers – and there are enough – known to me through various long forms of journalism but whose books I haven’t read. But, having just listened to her and been reminded, I am encouraged to remedy this omission in the near future. Batuman’s recently released novel, Either/Or, has been very well received, and I have always had a penchant for the bildungsroman (as do some whose bildung only ever got so tend to have), or as which it was so described somewhere. This new work is, in fact, a sequel to her 2017 – also highly praised – book, The Idiot, and so I may have to read that first – if only to find out what Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard have in common, and what they both have in common with Batuman and her protagonist (be they not somehow the same!). Anyway, below is a Kindle preview that entices, and there is more information on the publisher’s website.
And, here, Alex Clarke’s review at The Guardian a couple of months ago that further whets the appetite.
One hundred of them; if counted from the 1922 publication of James Joyce’s modernist novel, Ulysses. Or, if one will, add another eighteen to count from the 16th June of 1904; the Dublin day fictionalized by Joyce, and presumably lived by him in a first carnal – or romantic, or both – encounter with Nora Barnacle.
Some resources for Bloomsday 2022, sponsored by The James Joyce Centre in Dublin, can be found here.
Enough that I castigate myself – again! – for not having read this bloomin’ legendary book. And, swear – again! – that I will. I will, I will! Or thus do I will myself.
…or maybe not – of course not; not this day! For this one gifted to us nearly a century ago, and more recently to have become a quiet but special celebration of literary reflection.
This year the weather plays its part as written (by Virginia Woolf, and today – in Germany anyway) and though bad tidings continue to whirl (wars and pandemics; in the here and now as once they haunted the streets of 1922 London), there is always some time to give to a Dalloway Day. At the Royal Society of Literature there are some links for this year and previous years, but the embedded clip below is something lighter and bit different.
This Lit Hub video is a good-humored discussion; presenting some transatlantic perspective through the person of Elif Batuman in conversation with the young, Black and British writer Yomi Adegoki. Though they divert quickly from talking specifically about Virginia Woolf, it was not before Batuman set the tone of the discussion by relating the peculiar atmosphere of unresolved grief, personal and societal, that pervades Mrs. Dalloway to her own method of working in these uncertain times. Specifically, the hazards of moving between writing as a journalist, concerned often with matters of the real world, and those of the novelist which can’t help but reach into an interior life for inspiration. Such so-called ‘life writing’ brings with it responsibilities – to one’s own self and to others. These were, of course, concerns that Virginia Woolf was aware of and attended to in her own way; this to be discerned in an informed reading of Mrs. Dalloway.
My copy of The Essex Serpent, pub. UK Serpent’s Tail (new paperback resplendent with Claire Danes & Tom Hiddleston!)
Sometimes a darn good yarn is in order, and it is as such that I would describe Sarah Perry’s 2016 novel The Essex Serpent that I have just finished reading. I recall that it was well received at the time of publication and quickly became a public’s darling (in the first instance, very much through ‘word of mouth’) and having read of a newly released streaming series (about which I heard the author speak on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme a short time ago), I was easily enough tempted by a bookshop display.
Not a complex book, but an intelligent and thoughtful one – well structured, with original, well formed characters and very nicely written indeed. If so inclined – and Perry encourages the inclination – it can also inspire to some historical and philosophical reflection on the last decades of the 19th century in Victorian England – a tumultuous time in which the social consequences of the industrial age were still settling, rigid class structures showing signs of fracture and Darwinism already being hijacked to explain “the evils” in society. Specifically, Perry uses this latter; imagined as a new “religion” based on science and rational thought, in conflict with the mysticism and belief system of the Christian tradition, and fought in proxy and along different lines by several of the characters.
Here, a review from 2016, a 2020 piece by Sarah Perry on how she came to write the novel, and, here, her thoughts about the Apple TV adaptation which premiered at the end of May (all in The Guardian). Like the author, I didn’t exactly envisage a Claire Danes sort as Cora, but Perry embraces the choice (so so will I!), and is very satisfied indeed with the production. Below, the trailer. I don’t have Apple TV but I will certainly try to see the series some time in the future.
