Scrubbing the Furious Walls of Mikuyu

Jack Mapanje reading "Scrubbing the Furious Walls of Mikuyu", the most powerful of the poems he composed and kept entirely in his head when he was imprisoned -- "without charge, without trial" in the poem's refrain -- for three years, seven months, sixteen days and more than twelve hours:

Chinua Achebe on the Power and Purpose of Stories

In Anthills of the Savannah, Chinua Achebe's fifth major novel, one of the characters, an old man, explains the power and purpose of stories:

To some of us the Owner of the World has apportioned the gift to tell their fellows that the time to get up has finally come. To others He gives the eagerness to rise when they hear the call; to rise with racing blood and put on their garbs of war and go to the boundary of their town to engage the invading enemy boldly in battle. And then there are those others whose part is to wait and when the struggle is ended, to take over and recount its story.

The sounding of the battle-drum is important; the fierce waging of the war itself is important; and the telling of the story afterwards--each is important in its own way. I tell you there is not one of them we could do without. But if you ask me which of them takes the eagle-feather I will say boldly: the story. Do you hear me? Now, when I was younger, if you had asked me the same question I would have replied without a pause: the battle. But age gives to a man some things with the right hand even as it takes away others with the left. The torrent of an old man’s water may no longer smash into the bole of the roadside tree a full stride away as it once did but fall around his feet like a woman’s; but in return the eye of his mind is given wing to fly away beyond the familiar sights of the homestead…

So why do I say that the story is chief among his fellows? The same reason I think that our people sometimes will give the name Nkolika to their daughters--Recalling-Is-Greatest. Why? Because it is only the story that can continue beyond the war and the warrior. Because it is only the story that outlives the sound of war-drums and the exploits of brave fighters. It is the story, not the others, that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence. The story is our escort; without it, we are blind. Does the blind man own his escort? No, neither do we the story; rather it is the story that owns us and directs us. It is the thing that makes us different from cattle; it is the mark on the face that sets one people apart from their neighbours. […]

So the arrogant fool who sits astride the story as though it were a bowl of foo-foo set before him by his wife understands little about the world. The story will roll him into a ball, dip him in the soup and swallow him first. I tell you he is like the puppy who swings himself around and farts into a blazing fire with the aim to put it out. Can he? No, the story is everlasting…Like fire, when it is not blazing it is smouldering under its own ashes or sleeping and resting inside its flint-house.

Mere Anarchy: The Life and Work of Chinua Achebe

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

     -- W. B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

Chinua Achebe died this week. He was 82. At 28, he loosed "Things Fall Apart" upon a completely unsuspecting and unprepared world. It was a cataclysmic event, but only his first and most famous act of mere anarchy. Achebe had a habit of doing that: totally changing the world's thinking with gracious nonchalance. He did it again in the 1970s with his critique of Western conceptions of Africa and Africans, of which Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" just happened to be the unfortunate literary example. No one has ever read "Heart of Darkness" in quite the same way since. A deeply principled and thoughtful man, Achebe has left an indelible mark on world literature. Several commentators have invoked a fitting West African proverb: A great tree has fallen. Indeed: a great tree has fallen, but it will continue to nourish the earth with its substance.

Biko and the Tough Alchemy of Africa

Ben Okri commemorating the 35th anniversary (12th September 2012) of the death of Bantu Stephen Biko:

Justice with Michael Sandel

"This is a course about justice and we begin with a story. Suppose you're the driver of a trolley car..."

Michael Sandel's introduction to his 12-part series on moral philosophy. 

A life of significance

Edward Kennedy's deeply moving funeral oration for his brother Robert F. Kennedy:

Swallows for my son at seven

Jack Mapanje reading (beautifully as always) at the launch of his latest book last month:

the sky in monocle

WATERMAID

by Christopher Okigbo

EYE OPEN on the sea,
eyes open, of the prodigal;
upward to heaven shoot
where stars will fall from.
Secret I have told into no ear,
save into a dughole, to hold, not to drown with –
Secret I have planted into beachsand
Now breaks
salt-white surf on the stones and me,
and lobsters and shells
in iodine smell-
maid of the salt-emptiness,
sophisticreamy,
whose secret I have covered up with beachsand…
Shadow of rain over sunbeaten beach,
Shadow of rain over man with woman.

BRIGHT
with the armpit-dazzle of a lioness,
she answers,
wearing white light about her;
and the waves escort her,
my lioness,
crowned with moonlight.
So brief her presence-
match-flare in wind's breath-
so brief with mirrors around me.
Downward…
the waves distil her;
gold crop
sinking ungathered.
Watermaid of the salt-emptiness,
grown are the ears of the secret.

AND I WHO am here abandoned,
count the sand by wave lash abandoned,
count her blessing, my white queen.
But the spent sea reflects
from his mirrored visage
not my queen, a broken shadow.
So I who count in my island the moments,
count the hour which will bring
my lost queen with angels' ash in the wind.

THE STARS have departed,
the sky in monocle
surveys the world under
The stars have departed,
and I-where am I?
Stretch, stretch, O antennae,
to clutch at this hour,
fulfilling each moment in a
broken monody.

And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night

The Malawian poet and linguist Jack Mapanje has a gift for striking titles. And Crocodiles are Hungry at Night (Ayebia, 2011) is the title of his latest book, a memoir (some 20 years in the writing) of his detention without charge or trial on the 25th of September, 1987. He spent the next "three years, seven months, 16 days and more than 12 hours" in Malawi's infamous Mikuyu Prison. He was released on the 10th of May, 1991. He has never received an official explanation for his detention.

Some of Mapanje's other titles are:

• Of Chameleons and Gods (1981), his first collection of poems.
• The Chattering Wagtails of Mikuyu Prison (1993), more poems.
• Skipping Without Ropes (1998), even more poems.
  
• Gathering Seaweed (2002), a collection of African prison writing (selector/editor).
  
• The Last of the Sweet Bananas (2004), poems again.
• Beasts of Nalunga (2007), his latest collection of poems.
  

The danger of a single story

The Inimitable Dylan Thomas

The great man reciting two of his finest poems (courtesy of NPR):

• Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (01:38)
  
• A Child's Christmas In Wales (19:55)
  

The Creator's Credo

Faulkner's 1950 Nobel speech reverberates across the decades and speaks powerfully, still, to, and of, all creators, artistic, scientific and otherwise:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

The Poetry of Commentary

Jimmy Magee's famous "different class" commentary on Maradona's 1986 wonder goal:



And for comparison, here's how other commentators described the goal:

• First, my favourite, Byron Butler: "Maradona, turns like a little eel, he comes away from trouble, little squat man, comes inside Butcher, leaves him for dead, outside Fenwick, leaves him for dead, and puts the ball away...and that is why Maradona is the greatest player in the world! He buries the English defence..."
  
• Martin Tyler: "But we haven't been able to control the play in midfield, the way Maradona has been able to do...And he's hurting England again here! It's a brilliant run! It's one of the World Cup great goals!"
  
• Barry Davies: "Oh! You have to say that's magnificent! There is no debate about that goal. That was just pure football genius. And the crowd in the Azteca Stadium stand to him. Inside one, away from another, and the coolness under pressure to play the ball home with the side of his foot."

Fragments of Poetry

As a child, I used to know quite a lot of poetry by heart. There's no better way to learn the beauty of language.

I can still remember fragments of some of these poems. And in certain cases, more than just fragments. For instance, I still know most of Jabberwocky and all of Tennyson's The Eagle from back then.

But one of these poems has always bothered me over the years. All I could remember was that it was about a man who was standing "amidst a bed of wild geranium" for some reason. The poem had a uniform rhyme, words ending in "-ium", like "geranium", and one other word that inexplicably stuck in my mind: "cranium". But that's all my memory could tell me. That, and how much I had loved that poem.

Until now: enter Google. It turns out the poem is called "Uriconium" and was written by James Reeves. (Uriconium, incidentally, was a large ancient Roman City near what is now Wroxeter in Shropshire, England.)

The poem is of the kind that's usually classified as "nonsense verse", but it the classification and not the poem that's nonsense.

This cannot be nonsense; this is sheer class:

Uriconium

There was a man of Uriconium
Who played a primitive harmonium,
Inventing, to relieve his tedium,
Melodies high, low, and medium,
And standing on his Roman cranium
Amidst a bed of wild geranium,
Better known as pelargonium,
Since with odium his harmonium
Was received in Uriconium.

- James Reeves

Probably the best sitcom of all time

Blackadder, that is.

A morsel of proof-producing pudding:

Blackadder: Personally I thought you were the least convincing female impressionist since Tarzan went through Jane's handbag and ate her lipstick, but I'm clearly in a minority.

Behold: The vast Blackadder quote generator.

Mapanje's Musings

Jack Mapanje, who hails from Malawi, is one of Africa's most distinguished living poets. His poems are constructed with great skill and subtlety and suffused with delicate humour and deep humanity. Mapanje's delivery in person is as impressive as it is on the page, as amply demonstrated by these four online recordings.

The Sword of Cicero

Cicero's sword was his razor-sharp mind, tongue and pen. Cicero's biography by Plutarch (John Dryden's translation, 1683) notes that "to make his orations more striking, he neglected decorum and dignity. [...] To use this sharp raillery against opponents and antagonists in judicial pleading seems allowable rhetoric. But he excited much ill feeling by his readiness to attack anyone for the sake of a jest."

Plutarch supplies numerous examples:

• When Munatius, who had escaped conviction by his advocacy, immediately prosecuted his friend Sabinus, he said in the warmth of his resentment, “Do you suppose you were acquitted for your own meets, Munatius, and was it not that I so darkened the case, that the court could not see your guilt?”
  

• When from the Rostra he had made an eulogy on Marcus Crassus, with much applause, and within a few days after again as publicly reproached him, Crassus called to him, and said, “Did not you yourself two days ago, in this same place, commend me?” “Yes,” said Cicero, “I exercised my eloquence in declaiming upon a bad subject.”
  

• At another time, Crassus had said that no one of his family had ever lived beyond sixty years of age, and afterwards denied it, and asked, “What should put it into my head to say so?” “It was to gain the people’s favor,” answered Cicero; “you knew how glad they would be to hear it.”
  

• When Crassus expressed admiration of the Stoic doctrine, that the good man is always rich, “Do you not mean,” said Cicero, “their doctrine that all things belong to the wise?” Crassus being generally accused of covetousness.
  

• One of Crassus’s sons, who was thought so exceedingly like a man of the name of Axius as to throw some suspicion on his mother’s honor, made a successful speech in the senate. Cicero on being asked how he liked it, replied with the Greek words, Axios Crassou.

• When Crassus was about to go into Syria, he desired to leave Cicero rather his friend than his enemy, and, therefore, one day saluting him, told him he would come and sup with him, which the other as courteously received. Within a few days after, on some of Cicero’s acquaintances interceding for Vatinius, as desirous of reconciliation and friendship, for he was then his enemy, “What,” he replied, “does Vatinius also wish to come and sup with me?”
  

• When Vatinius, who had swellings in his neck, was pleading a cause, he called him the tumid orator; and having been told by someone that Vatinius was dead, on hearing presently after that he was alive, “May the rascal perish,” said he, “for his news not being true.”

• Upon Caesar’s bringing forward a law for the division of the lands in Campania amongst the soldiers, many in the senate opposed it; amongst the rest, Lucius Gellius, one of the oldest men in the house, said it should never pass whilst he lived. “Let us postpone it,” said Cicero, “Gellius does not ask us to wait long.”
  

• There was a man of the name of Octavius, suspected to be of African descent. He once said, when Cicero was pleading, that he could not hear him; “Yet there are holes,” said Cicero, “in your ears.”
  

• When Metellus Nepos told him, that he had ruined more as a witness, than he had saved as an advocate, “I admit,” said Cicero, “that I have more truth than eloquence.”
  

• To a young man who was suspected of having given a poisoned cake to his father, and who talked largely of the invectives he meant to deliver against Cicero, “Better these,” replied he, “than your cakes.”
  

• Publius Sextius, having amongst others retained Cicero as his advocate in a certain cause, was yet desirous to say all for himself, and would not allow anybody to speak for him; when he was about to receive his acquittal from the judges, and the ballots were passing, Cicero called to him, “Make haste, Sextius, and use your time; tomorrow you will be nobody.”
  

• He cited Publius Cotta to bear testimony in a certain cause, one who affected to be thought a lawyer, though ignorant and unlearned; to whom, when he had said, “I know nothing of the matter,” he answered, “You think, perhaps, we ask you about a point of law.”
  

• To Metellus Nepos, who, in a dispute between them, repeated several times, “Who was your father, Cicero?” he replied, “Your mother has made the answer to such a question in your case more difficult;” Nepos’s mother having been of ill repute.
  

• [Metellus Nepos'] son, also, was of a giddy, uncertain temper. At one time, he suddenly threw up his office of tribune, and sailed off into Syria to Pompey; and immediately after, with as little reason, came back again. He gave his tutor, Philagrus, a funeral with more than necessary attention, and then set up the stone figure of a crow over his tomb. “This,” said Cicero, “is really appropriate; as he did not teach you to speak, but to fly about.”
  

• When Marcus Appius, in the opening of some speech in a court of justice, said that his friend had desired him to employ industry, eloquence, and fidelity in that cause, Cicero answered, “And how have you had the heart not to accede to any one of his requests?”

• Marcus Aquinius, who had two sons-in-law in exile, received from him the name of king Adrastus.
  

• Lucius Cotta, an intemperate lover of wine, was censor when Cicero stood for the consulship. Cicero, being thirsty at the election, his friends stood round about him while he was drinking. “You have reason to be afraid,” he said, “lest the censor should be angry with me for drinking water.”
  

• Meeting one day Voconius with his three very ugly daughters, he quoted the verse,

  He reared a race without Apollo’s leave.

• When Marcus Gellius, who was reputed the son of a slave, had read several letters in the senate with a very shrill, and loud voice, “Wonder not,” said Cicero, “he comes of the criers.”
  

• When Faustus Sylla, the son of Sylla the dictator, who had, during his dictatorship, by public bills proscribed and condemned so many citizens, had so far wasted his estate, and got into debt, that he was forced to publish his bills of sale, Cicero told him that he liked these bills much better than those of his father.
  

Plutarch concludes: "By this habit [Cicero] made himself odious with many people."

Cicero lived by his sword and he died by it:

In the aftermath of the assassination of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BC in a conspiracy led by Brutus and Cassius, Mark Antony, a close associate of Caesar, assumed control of Caesar's political and military forces. Meanwhile, Cicero, a stauch republican, was thrust into the role of leader and spokesman of the Roman Senate. Octavian, Julius Caesar's 19-year-old great nephew, adopted son, and designated heir, arrived in Rome on 6 May 44 BC and set about trying to wrest control of Ceasar's legacy from Mark Antony. Cicero saw this as an opportunity to divide the anti-republican Caesarean faction. In 44 and 43 BC, he made a series of scathing speeches denouncing Mark Antony (the so-called Philippics) and threw in his support with Octavian. Cicero quipped: "laudandum, adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum" ("the young man should be praised, honoured, and then done away with"; the last word "tollendum", meaning either "to be done away with" or "to be exalted"). It was a quip Cicero would live, and die, to regret.

Cicero's plan back-fired. Octavian and Mark Antony reconciled and, in alliance with Lepidus, formed the Second Triumvirate on 26 November 43 BC. The three men drew up a list of more than 200 people who were to be killed. Cicero's name was at the top.

Cicero, an elderly man of 63 by this time, half-heartedly fled Rome. He was caught by his assassins on 7 December 43 BC, as he was leaving his villa in the Mediterranean resort of Formiae on a litter (a covered, curtained couch carried by slaves), on his way to catch a ship to Greece. His last words are said to have been, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." Cicero was Ciceronian to the very last.

Plutarch records a poignant incident that occured long after these events (Loeb Classical Library edition, 1919):

I learn that [Octavian], a long time after this, paid a visit to one of his daughter's sons; and the boy, since he had in his hands a book of Cicero's, was terrified and sought to hide it in his gown; but [Octavian] saw it, and took the book, and read a great part of it as he stood, and then gave it back to the youth, saying: "A learned man, my child, a learned man and a lover of his country."