What is a Critic? The Evil of Violence Conversation Cerith Mathias looks at the Gary Raymond explores the nature of Steph Power talks to Window of Birmingham, arts criticism in a letter addressed to WNO’s David Alabama the future Pountney Wales Arts Review

ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 1 Wales Arts Contents Review

Senior Editor Gary Raymond Managing Editor Phil Morris Design Editor Dean Lewis Fiction Editor John Lavin Music Editor Steph Power Non Fiction Up Front 3 A Letter Addressed to the Future: Editor What is a Critic? Ben Glover Gary Raymond

Features 5 Against the Evil of Violence – The Wales Window of Alabama Cerith Mathias PDF Designer 8 An Interview with David Pountney, Artistic Ben Glover Director of WNO Steph Power

15 Epiphanies – On Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ John Lavin

20 Wales on Film: Zulu (1964) Phil Morris

22 Miles Beyond Glyndwr: What Does the Future Hold for Music? Elin Williams

24 Occupy Gezi: The Cultural Impact James Lloyd

28 The Thrill of it All: Glam! David Bowie Is… and the Curious Case of Adrian Street Craig Austin

31 Wales’ Past, Present and Future: A Land of Possibilities? Rhian E Jones

34 Jimmy Carter: Truth and Dare Ben Glover

36 Women and Parliament Jenny Willott MP

38 Cambriol Jon Gower

41 Postcards From The Basque Country: Imagined Communities Dylan Moore

43 Tennessee Williams: There’s No Success Like Failure Georgina Deverell

47 To the Detriment of Us All: The Untouched Legacy of Arthur Koestler and George Orwell Gary Raymond

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 2 by Gary Raymond

In the final episode of Julian Barnes’ 1989 book, The History read to know we are not alone, as CS Lewis famously said, of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, titled ‘The Dream’, the then we write for similar reasons, and we write criticism protagonist finds himself in a Heaven, his every desire because it is the next step on from discursiveness; it is the catered for by a dedicated celestial personal assistant. purest form of debate, crystallised passion. Perhaps predictably, the protagonist spends some time working his way through the fantasies his time on earth Critics are not journalists, (although they are often mistaken would not or could not accommodate. He sleeps with for journalists by artists, the public, and, often, by actual women, those whom he had known and those further journalists). Critics are not outsiders, they are not those who beyond his reach. He takes the opportunity to meet his cannot; they are the artists, the thinkers, who trawl through heroes, and then to encounter history’s giants. After what the embers while the firestarters are asleep. Criticism is a must be aeons in this timeless domain, he turns to his conversation, and the places where criticism is published assistant and declares that he is bored; he has done are the dark oaky pubs, the bohemian coffee houses, the everything he could ever have wanted to do, and much late night wine-singed debates around the dinner tables; more besides. He has climbed every mountain and sailed they are the places that host the best conversations you every sea. What’s next? His assistant takes him to a have ever had, ever wanted to have, or one day hope to. heavenly cleric to answer this question. His options are two: he can either cease to exist (he isn’t so sure of this pathway) ‘Criticism’, that label we give the speech of the engaged or he can read every book ever written. The people who artisan committed to paper, is simply an extension of the read books, he is told, are the ones who tend to last the purest connection that we, as humans, have with our longest in Heaven. The protagonist asks what happens after creative processes. When Jean Genet was locked in his that? Well, says the cleric, once you have spent the ages French prison he began to collect small pieces of brown reading every book ever written, then you get to spend even scrap paper, on which he wrote, in pencil, the whole of Our longer discussing those books with the others who have Lady of the Flowers, one of the greatest novels of the lasted that long. You can take forever arguing about books, twentieth century. He did so because of the need to do so, he is told. the need to be part of the eternal conversation. When a prison guard found the writings he burned them. Genet It is perhaps worth thinking of this parable whenever started again, and recreated the novel, knowing it would the question that sits atop this essay makes it into a never be read, never be published, and would no doubt be conversation. The consumers of literature inherit the burned again. (It was published in 1951 and duly banned). Kingdom of Heaven, or at least inhabit its pubs and What is the need to have this conversation with the page? coffee dens. Is it obsessional? Is it insanity? Or is it the thing that keeps us sane? The eternal conversation, whatever, is the thing. If art, if writing literature, is talking to yourself, then criticism is a conversation with whomever you like; your best friend, Critics have had a hand in changing things just as the artists your greatest enemy, the girl you never got or the girl you’re have. Susan Sontag is as important to photography for her grateful to have ended up with. I’ve never met a writer I’ve 1977 book On Photography as any of the great photo liked whose top-of-the-list conversation topic is their own journalists who preceded it. John Berger’s Ways of Seeing work. We swirl around books, around plays and paintings, changed not only the way people look at paintings, but in them and out of them, as writers. And we never write altered the way art is taught in universities. Kenneth Tynan anything that impresses us more than something somebody and Harold Hobson, rival theatre critics at the Observer and else has written. We always want to write the story that Sunday Times respectively, found an unlikely union of another person has nabbed and nailed. Every writer fell in outlook when they marked the profound genius of Waiting love with art before they wrote their first sentence, before for Godot for a confused and disgruntled public when they decided it was literature for them. Beckett’s masterpiece came to London in 1955. The reviews changed theatre, they made the world realise that The great critics of art and culture are almost always Beckett was a major figure, and Beckett, as we all know, practitioners first and foremost, and all the best practitioners changed everything. are consumers of the art of others before they are drawn to Tynan, who rarely wrote about his craft as a critic, did once the blank page themselves. In short, we are all readers, be write a response to the publication of a collection of essays it of books or images or soundscapes, and it is never by American critic Theodore L Shaw (author of such satisfying to keep these experiences to ourselves. If we companionable titles as War on Critics and The

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 3 Hypocrisy of Criticism). Tynan, arguably the finest theatre potent stuff. There is a rumble, the type most commonly critic of the twentieth century, wrote, associated with the coming of a storm; the filing cabinet rattling moments before the earthquake. The arts in What counts is not their [critics'] opinion, but the art with Wales are about to enter an unprecedented era of which it is expressed. They differ from the novelist only in creative excellence, a seismic movement that will provide that they take as their subject-matter life rehearsed, instead a significant platform that is visible way beyond the of life unrehearsed. The subtlest and best-informed of men borders Wales has held on to so dearly for so long. It will still be a bad critic if his style is bad. It is irrelevant cannot happen without criticism and criticism of the whether his opinion is ‘right or ‘wrong’: I learn more from George Bernard Shaw when he is wrong than I do from highest calibre. It cannot happen without passion, Clement Strong when he is right. intellectualism, elitism. It will not happen with star ratings (a fishing line designed specifically to catch the smallest And here is the weight behind the blade:- fish), advertorials or soft porn in the margins. Great criticism is as important as the art that inspires it and the The true critic cares little for the here and now. The last thing Critic is the writer who cannot give up the conversation. he bothers about is the man who will read him first. His real Wales is a country filled with talent; with serious-minded rendezvous is with posterity. His review is a letter addressed practitioners of the arts. And the country is too small for to the future. us all to crawl over one another doffing our caps as we pass on Escher’s stairwell. May we have permission from In Iron in the Soul, a novel in which the main character is whoever is in charge to respectfully move on from Dylan an artist and critic, Sartre wrote that the business of a Thomas? May we take the opportunity to perhaps critic is ‘to know what other men have thought.’ This may introduce this great country to the outside world as a seem obvious, but it is true on many levels. ‘An art critic,’ place not filled with sombre preachers and drunken he writes, ‘is not paid to spend his time worrying about the cherubs? We have the talent. But it can only be achieved imperfect colour-sense of wild grass.’ I suppose there are with that critical culture as a part of it. We need to fire the many other imperfections to consider. Any art can only be canons, we need to shed these puerile ideas of ‘good’ truly valued if it is evaluated. I was asked on a radio show and ‘bad’ and announce to the world that – its recently, ‘Isn’t everybody a critic?’ Well of course literature, its theatre, its painting and sculpting and everybody’s a critic. But not everybody is a Critic. circuses and music and cinema – it is a conversation you’ll want to join in with. Spinoza said that man’s duty, So what is a Critic? A Critic is insatiable. A Critic is the when surveying the world, ‘was neither to laugh nor to most generous of egoists. A Critic is elitist but welcoming weep, but to understand.’ Now is the time to nail that with it. A Critic takes things seriously, sometimes too- above the doorway. seriously, but also has a broad sense of humour, always cocked. A Critic is just as ready to raise their arms as they A Critic is an investor into a culture. As artists we invest in are their nose. A Critic is often yearning for that moment the , not latch onto it; we are working to of profundity. The Critic, after all, is doing this in the hope build it, to brighten it, and to make other nations envious of enlightenment, in the hope of becoming a better of us. We are part of the global community now. Wales person. The same reason why anybody else experiences may have had a difficult time in recognising this, having art. When New York art critic Clement Greenberg said, spent so long splitting its energies between introspection ‘Art criticism is about the most ungrateful form of elevated and hating the English. If I may use a personal example writing I know of,’ he was not being self-effacing, but was to make a point: I have never felt particularly Welsh. It is displaying all of the above traits. A Critic can be my blood, part of my ancestry, but culturally it has never ungrateful, abrasive, vindictive, snappy, cold, isolated, been under my skin. Blame it a little on being born and bloated, flag-waving, attention-seeking, cruel, perverse, brought up in Newport, the town treated as the child rabble-rousing and many other ugly things; but to be neither parent wanted in the divorce. Blame it on unengaged is No Man’s Land. To be ill-informed, under- whatever you like. But in the last two years I have not only informed, lazy, is the wilderness with no end. To play at begun to feel Welsh, but it is the first time I have ever being a Critic does nobody any good, least of all the recognised myself as having any identity outside of my player. So well-crafted wrongness is worthy, whereas personality. The emblematic reason for this is my piffle is a waste of everybody’s time. editorship of Wales Arts Review. It is culture that makes a country and Wales Arts Review has introduced me to In Wales at the moment, we are at the verge of mine. It has helped me realise that Welsh art is art just something. The arts are awakening. And history shows us like anywhere else: human, stained with the colours of the that these things do not happen without a vibrant critical culture it sprouts out from. I now realise that Wales is a culture being a part of it. What cannot be part of the part of the world I travelled when young and continue to conversation is the trend for regurgitated press releases, explore now less young. Wales is not sombre preachers fan bits, and (a new word for me) ‘advertorials’ – and drunken cherubs, and Tolstoy and Tennessee commercial promotions structured and coloured to Williams and Beckett and Alban Berg are as much ours masquerade as the words of a genuinely impressed as they are anyone else’s. Wales is a remarkable country; journalist. We are, of course, in an era of squeezed embattled always, but beautiful always too. At its heart middles and pushed down tops, but these are mere are music and poetry and socialism – the most important excuses when sterner stuff is needed. A Critic does not things the human creature has ever mined from the exist to help ticket sales. cosmos. The eternal conversation is the thing, and you are mistaken if you don’t think Wales deserves a part in it. Does Wales have a strong history of cultural criticism? I don’t know; I’m not a historian of such things. But I do know its current health. It is refilling its veins with some

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 4 Against the Evil of Violence – The Wales Window of Alabama

by Cerith Mathias

The sky looms low, heavy with dark the church’s main stained glass cloud as I step from the car into the ‘It was a typical Sunday morning at my window was blown clean out. humidity of a deserted parking lot. The household,’ recalls William Bell, who hot air crackles with the promise of a was 11. Now Birmingham’s Mayor, he Jim Lowe, who was 11 years old, was downpour; often the fare, or so I’m told, is the fourth African American to hold with his classmates in a room three of a mid-September morning here in the office in the city, something doors down from where the bomb had Birmingham, the largest of Alabama’s unimaginable at that time. ‘It was a been planted. He knew all four girls cities. The streets are unexpectedly dreary day, not really a sunshine day who perished. empty, an almost eerie quiet but overcast… my mother woke reverberating from the gleaming-grey everyone up for breakfast… then we ‘I remember a loud deafening noise pavements. A befitting first glimpse, began the process of getting ready for and seeing glass flying out of the perhaps, of where, this year, the painful church.’ windows’ he tells me. ‘My ears were events of the past are being ushered ringing and I could hear muffled voices to the forefront of the present. As his family was about the leave the yelling and screaming… I had no idea house, he remembers a loud noise what was happening.’ The street on which I am standing was ‘that was like nothing that we’d heard at the heart of the Civil Rights before… it was a strange noise. Inside the church were nearly two Movement of 1960′s America; the Everything seemed to get quiet and the hundred congregants, mostly all concrete underfoot once pounded by world seemed to stop.’ children, attending Sunday school. the soles of marching children and Around 23 were injured. Four were baton wielding police officers. Dr Martin Moments earlier, on the other side of killed instantly. The bodies of 14 year- Luther King’s calls for non-violent town, as her friends came to the end olds Carole Robertson, Addie Mae protest in what he dubbed ‘the most of their Sunday school class, 15 year- Collins and Cynthia Wesley, along with segregated city in the US’ were met on old Carolyn McKinstry answered the 11 year-old Denise McNair were found this very corner with water cannons ringing telephone of the 16th St Baptist huddled together under the twisted and the snarling jaws of police dogs. Church. debris. And in the Baptist Church, here on Birmingham’s 16th Street, the lives of ‘Three minutes’ said a male voice ‘I don’t remember how I got to and from four young girls were snuffed out by a before hanging up. church that day’ says Lowe, who is now racist bomb attack. the Bishop of the Guiding Light Church McKinstry reportedly replaced the in Birmingham. The horrific events of that day would phone receiver in its cradle and made prove a turning point in American her way into the next room. She’d ‘The one event seems to have history and the actions of one Welsh taken around 15 steps when, at exactly overwhelmed everything else.’ artist and a campaigning newspaper 10.22 am, a bomb exploded near the editor forever linked Wales with the church basement, tearing violently Racially motivated bombings were not struggle to be ‘Free in ’63′. through the large stone building, extraordinary at that time, with nearly destroying its steps, shattering its fifty unsolved incidents taking place The morning of September 15th, 1963 windows and spilling rubble and glass from the late 1940s through to the began much like the day of my visit. out into the street. The face of Jesus in mid-1960s – earning the city the

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 5 nickname ‘Bombingham’. This, news of the injustice was met with Avenue North and 16th Street. Walking however, was the first to result in the indignation by Welsh-based artist John up its stone staircase, it is difficult to loss of life. Petts. marry the structure before me with the images of devastation from fifty years The months leading up to September In a series of interviews, archived by ago. Opening the heavy wooden doors 15th had been tumultuous. The church, the Imperial War Museum, the artist, I’m met by the church’s custodian, at the centre of Birmingham’s black who died in 1991, recalled hearing the Richard Young, along with the clatter community, was the headquarters of news on the radio. and chitter-chatter of cleaners and the local civil rights movement. In May workmen. Only a few days previously that year, it had become the organising ‘Naturally as a father I was horrified by the church was host to a ceremony centre of the children’s crusade, a the death of the children. As a commemorating the events of 1963, a campaign that produced the craftsman… I was horrified at the service so well attended, Young says, Birmingham Accord, which sanctioned, smashing of all those windows, and I that it was ‘…packed out. We even had amongst other things, the thought to myself: my word, what can a screen over in the park opposite, desegregation of lunch counters, public we do about this?’ because so many people wanted to bathrooms, fitting rooms and drinking come and be a part of it.’ fountains. Petts contacted David Cole, the editor of The Western Mail suggesting a Richard Young is a lifetime member of Martin Luther King proclaimed ‘…the fundraising campaign to replace the the church, which he tells me has an walls of segregation will crumble in church’s main stained glass window as active congregation of almost two and Birmingham and they will crumble ‘…a gift from the people of Wales. A a half thousand. Though his own soon.’ national gesture of goodwill.’ personal history is deeply interwoven with that of 16th Street – he has his On August 28th 1963, just a fortnight The following day, the paper launched own seat for Sunday services, which before the 16th Street bombing, King the campaign with the headline he jokes that ‘no one can sit in if I’m not shared his dream with over 200,000 ‘Alabama: Chance for Wales to Show here’, he however narrowly missed people who had marched on the Way.’ More than 3,000 people ‘…that terrible, terrible day.’ Washington. Tension rippled through donated no more than half a crown Birmingham’s streets. each, as per Petts’ stipulation. Within The afternoon before the bombing, days the £500 target had been Young left Birmingham for college, Alabama’s high profile, outspoken pro- reached, with the fund closing at £900. enrolling in the historic Tuskegee segregation Governor, George Wallace Institute, located around two hours’ stood firm in his prejudice, telling The ‘Photographs were shown of children drive south of the city. New York Times in order to stop both black and white in the integration, the state needed a ‘few Docks area queuing up at the Western ‘I couldn’t believe what had happened’, first class funerals.’ Mail offices handing over their pocket he says of hearing the news: money,’ Petts recalled. A week later, a small splinter group of One of the girls lived around the the Ku Klux Klan, the Cahaba Boys, ‘And within a short while the fund was corner from my family – we were enacted Wallace’s rhetoric by planting closed and I found myself flown over friends. It hurt me. A lot of people a box of dynamite beneath the steps of to Alabama… They had never heard of were very upset; there was a lot the 16th Street Baptist Church; its Wales, had no idea where it was, but of hurt for a long time. detonation forever slashing a deep, they very quickly were told something ugly scar on Birmingham’s timeline. of the little country Wales.’ I follow Young down to the basement, Despite the biggest FBI operation since watching as he runs his hand along the the pursuit of bank robber John Petts’ bold design for what has become wall as we walk, patting the smooth Dillinger in the 1930s, it would take known as The Wales Window depicts white plaster gently every now and another forty years before the bombers a black Jesus ‘…a suffering figure in a again. We enter a large room filled will were brought to justice. crucified gesture, with one hand flung folding chairs and tables, still used for wide in protest, the other in Sunday school classes. At the back, The tragedy altered forever the course acceptance.’ behind a small partition, are some of of the civil rights movement, according the objects rescued from the church to many, acting as a catalyst for the Written underneath are the words ‘You following the blast; a clock stopped at Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Do it to Me’, inspired by the words of exactly 10.22 am, the telephone Rights Act of 1965. Jesus in Matthew 25:40: answered by McKinstry along with framed pictures of the events of the ‘They became martyrs,’ Bishop Lowe Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one civil rights movement. On the wall, explains. ‘Their deaths started a of the least of these my brethren, ye hangs a yellowing copy of The Western movement for change that could not be have done it unto me. Mail from 1964, complete with Petts’ stopped… That explosion ignited an charcoal designs for the window. In a even greater explosion – an explosive Back in the Birmingham of today – it’s glass case underneath sit four stones movement that changed the heart of a the result of that gesture of fellowship pained with the names of the four girls. nation.’ that I’m here to see. We move back upstairs to the main America was not alone in her revulsion. The 16th Street Baptist Church is an hall, a bright, light-filled room, where Across the Atlantic, in the small imposing building. It stands broad and row upon row of wooden pews sink Carmarthenshire village of Llansteffan, solid occupying the corner of 6th comfortably into the pile of a deep red

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 6 carpet. A balcony with further seating engrossed in an activity of some sort, From my conversations with the hangs overhead. Young raises his bringing the statues very much to life. people affected – those who survived eyes, and nods upwards towards the While researching her design, she and lived through those events – centre balcony. There in a dazzling became close with Carolyn Petts’ voice has been heard loud and haze of purples and blues stands The McKinstry, who had been talking with clear. Wales Window. the girls in the church’s basement, immediately before going to answer ‘The people of Wales showed they Chuckling at my reaction, Young says the telephone. cared in a tangible way, even if ‘Yep, it’s a beauty all right.’ people here did not,’ says Bishop Jim ‘They were all friends and I saw them Lowe. More vibrant and intricate than any talking together and getting ready for photo could ever do justice, Petts’ their service upstairs,’ MacQueen ‘That impression upon me as a young window is truly breathtaking. Above says. child was very important to help me the figure of Jesus, arms eradicate the belief that hatred outstretched, curves a rainbow ‘Carolyn told me Addie Mae was tying against me and my people was not as constructed of tiny pieces of blue, the bow on the dress of Denise… widespread as I had been led to purple and pink glass – representing Carole was a Girl Scout, so I have her believe.’ racial unity. The daylight streams saying “Come on y’all we are late!” through, making kaleidoscopic Cynthia was the child of teachers, she patterns on the carpet. loved reading.’

What does Richard Young know of Indeed, Cynthia Wesley, the only one the story behind the window I of the four statues who is seated, is wonder? depicted reading WB Yeats’ The Stolen Child. ‘I remember that the children in Wales wanted to give the pennies they had ‘I wanted a quote that was original if to us,’ he says. possible’ states MacQueen:

‘And the window was a symbol here It took me nights and nights. I looked of their love for us when we were at so many quotes, including Ralph suffering. It really means a lot to the Ellison, Maya Angelou – on and on church.’ into the nights. Eventually someone sent me The Stolen Child and I wept. Many events are taking place in That was it. Birmingham throughout the year to mark the 50th anniversary of that Elizabeth MacQueen’s statues are fateful day. The weeks preceding my not the only ones that inhabit Kelly visit have been especially busy. In Ingram Park. The small square of addition to the service at the 16th green has its own difficult story to tell; Street Baptist Church, prayer often the location of police water meetings, and talks have also been cannons and vicious attack dogs held. A website – Kids in Birmingham used against civil rights campaigners. 1963 – has been established as a These events are also immortalised in platform for all; white and black, who stone here, as is another martyr of were children at the time to share the movement, The Rev Dr Martin their experiences. And a further piece Luther King. In the shadow of the of art commemorating the lives lost 16th Street Baptist Church, he stands has been unveiled in the city. at a distance, but directly behind the four girls, a watchful parent presiding Sculptor Elizabeth MacQueen’s Four over innocents at play. Spirits - life-size statues of the four little girls – stand in the gateway of Walking amongst the shrubbery and Kelly Ingram Park, directly opposite sculpture, as the first fat drops of rain, the Baptist Church. overdue from the morning, start to fall, the value of art in not only MacQueen, herself from Mountain recording and honouring events like Brook, just outside Birmingham, was those of September 15th 1963, but of 14 at the time of the bombing, the also healing the pain caused, is same age as three of the girls who incredibly apparent. died. ‘In my work, I have fought and ‘It bored a hole in my psyche for shouted aloud against the evil of justice,’ she tells me. violence – especially with the Alabama window,’ John Petts once MacQueen’s artwork depicts the girls told a reporter. playing and reading – all four are

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 7 An Interview with David Pountney, Artistic Director of WNO

by Steph Power

David Pountney is an opera director and producer of amazing to have that combination with the invention of a international distinction and was appointed Chief Executive really strikingly individual character. Actually, there are not and Artistic Director of in September many stories in the world – didn’t somebody say there are 2011. He won renown for his pioneering Janáček cycle in only seven basic plots? collaboration with Welsh National Opera as Director of Production for Scottish Opera (1975-80) and his Yes – the bases for myths. subsequent staging of over twenty operas including , Osud, , Doctor Faust But you know Lulu comes close to being the invention of a and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for , new character – although she obviously has very clear where he became Director of Productions in 1980. He has connections with Carmen and Don Giovanni; they’re all directed over ten world premières, including three by Sir trying to do the same thing in a way. But no, it’s fascinating for which he also wrote the libretto, to have that combination of Berg’s re-thinking about musical and has translated many operas into English from Russian, language and his espousal of what was then very Czech, German and Italian. As a freelance Director from revolutionary dramatic ideas of Wedekind. So it’s a very 1992 he has worked regularly in Zürich, at the Vienna State exciting piece to do. Fun actually, a lot of fun. Opera, at the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich as well as opera houses in America and Japan, and in the UK has a Where do you feel that Lulu sits on that continuum long-standing association with . He has won between, say, post-Romantic tragedy, black comedy numerous international awards and is a CBE and a and quite serious social critique? Chevalier in the French Ordre des Arts et Lettres. There is quite a lot of black comedy in the piece and I would As part of Wales Arts Review’s coverage of the new WNO say that it observes society in quite a cynical way, but season, Steph Power spoke with David about Alban Berg’s without necessarily being a critique of it; at least, it doesn’t Lulu, which opens tonight at the Millennium Centre, Cardiff. wear its heart on its sleeve and there’s not much attempt It is a significant first staging of the complete, three-act work to make you feel sorry for Lulu. Lulu is at the same time a in Wales. There are further Cardiff performances on victim and a perpetrator and that’s one of the interesting February 16th and 23rd and the production will tour to things about combining this opera with The Cunning Little Birmingham, Llandudno, Southampton, Milton Keynes and Vixen this season. Because the vixen herself, like any Plymouth. predatory animal, is potentially a victim – of us, for example – and also a predator of all kinds of other, less powerful creatures. And Lulu inhabits very much the same kind of world. Steph Power: David, Lulu is your first new production for Welsh National Opera as Artistic Director. I was I quite often see Lulu as a mirror for those characters wondering what attracted you to the piece? around her. I don’t know if you agree with that? It’s as if she’s a huge character, and yet she’s not a character David Pountney: Well Lulu is one of the great masterpieces in her own right. of twentieth century opera. First of all, it’s a fantastic play and a fantastic concept of a central character – which I think that’s absolutely correct, yes. To me she’s a spirit. comes from Wedekind, obviously. Berg is one of the leading The first play of Wedekind’s is called Earth Spirit and Lulu thinkers about opera of the twentieth century, so it’s is not really a person – and that’s made clear in a way

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 8 by the fact that nobody’s quite sure what her name is and with equal indifference. I suppose, in that sense, Lulu has nobody knows where she came from. There’s a lot of the same function as the famous play by Schnitzler, La discussion about who her father might be. Ronde, where, in a group of people, the prostitute sleeps with the soldier, the soldier sleeps with the countess, the Whether he’s Schigolch? countess sleeps with the farmer, the farmer sleeps with the tax collector, the tax collector sleeps with the prostitute and Yes, exactly. So she’s a mythic being really and I’ve made so on. By the end, everybody’s slept with everybody else that quite clear in the production. And, as you absolutely by a distance of one or two or whatever. And it’s that same rightly say, you learn what she is by watching everybody kind of feeling with Lulu; a levelling of all these things that else go crazy around her. So I’m deliberately adopting a have separated everybody into a kind of hierarchy. strategy in the production of not making her too extravagant. Sometimes people play Lulu by throwing their legs around And so, pulling apart the social hypocrisy. and taking their clothes off; that, to my mind, is not what erotic power Yes exactly. But, alongside that, is – it’s much more to do with there’s also another reason for suggestion. Just simply the the consistent element of humour, magnetism of somebody walking clowning, circus and cabaret; this into the room and everybody world of popular entertainment is thinking ‘I want to sleep with that important in Lulu, partly because person’. There are people who of that idea of not taking anything have that without flaunting it or too seriously. Though it has to be doing anything or being overt about said, the music takes itself very it. seriously!

In terms of the piece as a It does! dramatic whole, it’s quite notorious really for being And that’s another story in a way! paradoxical, in that the dialogue, But, picking up on the Dadaist the plot and the intensely tendency, that is something that’s emotional music are quite often reflected right across the art of juxtaposed. that period. If one thinks of all those paintings of harlequins and Well, Wedekind was deliberately circuses – of all those Picasso protesting against the kind of circus paintings and of Max bourgeois drama where everybody Beckmann – and all the people takes themselves terribly seriously. who were fascinated, in that period, by popular art. That was The whole naturalist, realist very much a move away from movement? seriousness, or pretentious seriousness. Yes – and I think you can sense that. I think what really destroyed The whole idea of the pierrot that – and the entire pretension of Photo: Clive Barda figure is present in Lulu with taking almost anything seriously – her portrait – which, in the was the First World War, which was a gigantic catastrophe. score is described by Berg as a portrait of her dressed All those things like patriotism and religion and politics – all as a pierrot. Do you incorporate the portrait into your those ground bases of society up to that point – were shown production? themselves to be involved in the First World War in a totally disgusting way. That created such a tide of reaction, and I’ve done the portrait in quite a different sort of way. First of one of the things that reaction produced was Dada. The all, it’s a sculpture and, secondly, it’s based on – or really point about Dada is that it sees everything as absurd; and is a copy of – the work of a very eccentric artist called Hans so Dada took everything that people had taken seriously – Bellmer. Bellmer made all kinds of constructions of nearly like religion and politics and belief in your country and always female limbs, so that he objectified the body, if you morals – and revealed them to be, in a certain sense and like, in a very provocative way. Because, again, he’s saying: in certain circumstances, absurd. Wedekind very much these are just limbs. The whole idea of the portrait or the picks up on that idea – so that’s why you have in Lulu that nude has been the embodiment of a sort of beauty; of amazing gallery of absurd figures. nature, or the goddess within man, or whatever. But Bellmer deliberately subverts all that – also in a kind of Dadaist, - The ‘freaks’. rather absurdist way – by producing these kind of assemblies of parts; actually, he started out by working with Freaks, caricatures. Because he’s saying it doesn’t matter doll parts and there’s a whole series called Bellmer’s Dolls. who you are – a bit like Leporello’s catalogue. It doesn’t So he very neatly captures that feeling of an absurdist vision matter whether you’re thin, fat, tall or rich, poor, ugly, mixed with an element of perversion – which is undoubtedly beautiful – Lulu’s erotic power possesses all those people also lurking there in the Lulu story. I mean, part of the Lulu equally. And that destroys the whole edifice of importance story is a story about a young woman who’s been groomed or class or respect; all those orders of society are for underage sex – which, of course, strikes a very powerful completely subverted by this power which treats them all chord with us today.

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 9 Yes, very much so – and which goes right back to the Of course, having said that, we are talking on a very high questioning of sexuality and identity that happened level and it’s still a fantastic piece. But it just doesn’t get to across fin de siècle Vienna, running right through to the very hard to reach level of absolute perfection that the Anschluss really. Wozzeck arrives at. Nonetheless, it is a fantastic experience to do and to watch and to listen to. Yes, absolutely. Somehow I think its flaws make it compelling in a way In terms of Lulu as a second opera, do you see it as – that sense of wondering what Berg was striving for, having moved on, as it were, in dramatic vision from which is so fascinating. Wozzeck – which, in some respects, is a much more straightforward depiction of someone who’s a victim Well, Wedekind did create this character who is, in the last of circumstance? analysis, absolutely unknowable. Whereas in Wozzeck, you end up being very clear about who’s the victim and who’s Strictly in terms of pure operatic achievement on a very high the perpetrator and about what’s gone wrong. Lulu is deeply level, Lulu is a decline from Wozzeck – and there’s a very ambiguous because it’s examining an aspect that is within simple reason for that. The author of the Wozzeck play, and which we all suppress – which we need to Georg Büchner – who lived a great many years earlier – suppress because otherwise we’d all destroy each other! was an incredibly Hopefully, each of us revolutionary writer. He finds one or two devised a completely moments in our life new way of structuring a when we can let that play, with very short out; run rampage for a scenes making a kind of bit. But you couldn’t go collage that add up to a on like that for very long. story. And he constructed these short No, society would fall scenes out of amazingly apart! economical, pithy sentences. This was the Yes! most perfect opera libretto that you could Coming back to the ever imagine, as one of idea of cuts, I the things that you most understand that want from a libretto is for you’ve chosen to use it to be concise – Eberhard Kloke’s new because music always completion of the multiplies the length of Photo: Clive Barda Third Act. Could you time it takes to say any say something about sentence by four! So the Büchner was an amazing libretto, that? What led you not to use the Cerha? both in terms of its concision and in terms of its scenic structure, which allowed Berg to create a kind of string of Well you know the Cerha is, from a scholastic point of view, pearls; short moments which absolutely define the progress utterly worthy, and done with indefatigable attention to of the story. But when he came to Wedekind, he was facing detail. Cerha probably got as close as it was possible to get somebody who had really no structure at all. to exactly what appeared to be the case regarding the state in which Berg left the score when he died. But, particularly Very sprawling actually. with a piece as dense and as complicated as Lulu, none of us can really know what Berg might have done had he gone Yes, Wedekind wrote two incredibly sprawling plays that on to revise it. And he did say himself that he needed to are pretty much unperformable even today as they stand, start again from the beginning and revise the whole piece in that everybody has to cut them in some way. And, you – he was aware himself that it wasn’t perfect. know, Berg did cut a great deal of the plays. But I think actually, in order to have achieved another opera as I think the fact is that the Paris scene – which is the main compelling as Wozzeck, he would have needed to cut difference in Kloke’s revision – is, in its full-blown Cerha another third of the text. And that’s one of the reasons why version, something which completely defeats the audience’s he didn’t finish Lulu. It’s tragic really. I always say that if he energy and ability to concentrate, and so to sustain their could have got on a train and taken a short trip to Brno and interest through to the magnificent final scene – which is gone to Janáček and said, ‘excuse me Leoš, how would one of the great scenes of all opera. So I think the Paris you cut this play’, Janáček would have got his pen out and scene as Kloke has it is considerably shorter – or, at least, gone like this [makes large crossing-out motions]. it opens options to making cuts, which we enthusiastically embraced! It’s just much more transparent and fluid and Yes I can imagine that! fast-moving and gets us through what is a kind of cabaret scene in itself, without overburdening that scene with too Then you’d end up with a few little lovely sentences here much detail and too much portentous significance so that and there! You know, Berg was much too in awe of we’re all ready – I think the final scene will make a much Wedekind, and too respectful of him. So, with each scene greater impact on the audience because they’re not being you think, ‘there are five sentences unnecessary in this inundated with density and complexity beforehand. scene’.

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 10 So I hope that it will really work in a positive way. I mean, staggeringly creative period. I mean, people tend to think nobody can say necessarily ‘yes, Mr Kloke’s version is the 19th Century with Verdi and Wagner was the great much better as a scholar of Berg than Mr Cerha’s version’ period but, if one looks at what was written in the twenties but I’m not really bothered either way about that argument and thirties, it’s absolutely amazing what an inspirational – I’m bothered about what makes it a good evening for the outburst of creativity there was, centred mainly in Germany audience. of course. And what really happened was that, first of all, the Nazis banned them all – which, in a way, wouldn’t in In terms of another aspect of where Lulu sits within itself have mattered very much since the Nazis didn’t last early Twentieth Century opera, there’s recently been very long. But then, in reaction to the Second World War, growing interest in composers like Franz Schreker and the whole modernist element of musical taste banned them Zemlinsky and Korngold. Do you think that that interest, again! So all the post-Romantic or late-Romantic and the growing awareness of their work, opens up an composers first of all had to suffer Hitler – and then they avenue for reassessment of where an opera like Lulu had to suffer Boulez! – There was a very damaging kind of might sit within that? hard-line view. And one only has to look at what happened to Goldschmidt at the BBC; he’d written one or two really Well I suppose to some extent, the survival of certain splendid operas but he was relentlessly ignored by the BBC masterpieces in each generation means that you lose the because it thought we didn’t want to go back into that context in which they were created. Most of the time, that’s late-Romantic quagmire, out of which people claimed – I a pretty good thing because there are a certain number of think quite wrongly and unfairly – that the whole poison of first-class operas and a certain number of second-class Nazism had arisen. operas – and you don’t really want to be bothered with the third-class operas! The second-class operas can often be So in a way those composers suffered doubly and so, yes, extremely interesting. But always, you’re left with these tips there is a good case for re-evaluating those pieces – and of the iceberg that survive down into history and you don’t Lulu – within the whole period. know – and probably don’t want to know – about all the stuff that’s sunk. Thank you very much for your time David. I’m really looking forward to Lulu and to continuing our But there was a particularly artificial reason why we got cut discussion with . off from the early twentieth century pieces – which was a An Interview with David Pountney, Artistic Director of WNO, Part Two

by Steph Power

David Pountney, Artistic Director of Welsh National Opera, actually the point really was that, having been asked to do is internationally celebrated for his many, pioneering Lulu, I’ve always wanted to bring those two pieces together, productions of operas by Janáček. Ahead of the opening so it seemed like the perfect moment to revive this, well, night of The Cunning Little Vixen, in revival at the Wales rather ancient production! Millennium Centre in Cardiff as part of WNO’s ‘free spirits’ themed season, he spoke with Steph Power about the But do you find that each time it’s done, you come to piece and about Janáček’s extraordinary achievement as the production with a combination of experience and the most innovative composer of music-drama in the fresh eyes so it becomes new – or renewed – in a twentieth century. tangible way?

The Cunning Little Vixen is currently touring to Birmingham, Yes, and also the Vixen has, as it so happens, matured into Llandudno, Southampton, Milton Keynes and Plymouth. a classic – although it wasn’t necessarily perceived as such at the time as I recall. And, probably, we got better at doing Steph Power: David, I believe you first produced The it. It’s a complicated piece to mount and we put it on in quite Cunning Little Vixen in 1980 as part of a large cycle of unusual circumstances in Edinburgh – it was part of the Janáček operas, staged in collaboration with Welsh Festival where preparation time is always very short National Opera when you were Director of Production because there are lots of other things going on. And the at Scottish Opera? piece has matured in the ears and eyes of the audience I think; all these pieces seemed very strange and difficult at David Pountney: Yes, correct. We did five pieces; The the time to many people and now the Vixen is evidently a Cunning Little Vixen, Kát’a Kabanová, the Makropulos kind of classic. And of course it’s been a very interesting Case, From the House of the Dead and Jenůfa. perspective doing it alongside Lulu because everybody says, ‘oh, it’s such a relief to come back to Vixen’! That was tremendously pioneering at the time and I wonder how it feels to you now, as Artistic Director of Do they? That’s interesting! WNO, to be bringing Vixen back to the company? Because it’s musically so much easier. Although people – Well, I suppose it might seem like an act of vanity! But I think particularly orchestral players – used always to

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 11 regard Vixen as difficult stage and choruses off- inability to express those erotic life! It’s one of the most because of the way Janáček stage and so on? desires or those feelings, profound statements, I think, writes. He’s not a very those necessities. So you by any artist about the efficient writer – more to the Yes, and using this kind of also have a whole gallery of human condition in a huge point, I think he’s not really collage technique where human characters who range of ways. interested in efficiency. scenes are juxtaposed one basically exhibit various against the other without traits of depression – and, of It’s remarkable how No, and he writes difficult necessarily being in a clear course, with great wit and Janáček manages to shift parts in extremes of linear direction – every intelligence he shows that the dramatic focus so register for the possibility of an opera the animals that have been smoothly from Vixen instruments. composer’s tool kit is used domesticated also exhibit Sharp Ears, once she’s with just terrific those same tendencies. So been shot dead, onto the Yes, and he wrote things appropriateness. that, you know, we have Forester and his final down in a way which could these men who sit around in epiphany. So there’s no have been done more As you say, Vixen’s the pub fantasising about sense of negativity or loss simply. But that’s all part of become a much-loved part this woman who’s the sort of when she dies; it’s about his energy and what he’s of the repertoire but it’s Lulu-Vixen equivalent. the totality of the cycle. doing. I remember, one not a straightforward, pre- conductor said to me, well lapsarian, sentimental Terynka? Yes, it’s a terrific trick to pull the whole point is that these vision by any means is it? off, isn’t it? – to kill your main scores should feel difficult to It’s multi-layered in its Terynka – but we also have character in the first scene of play; they’re not meant to be symbolism. the fact that the dog is the last act and give yourself comfortable in the way that howling away because he time to really discuss the fact you might think of, say, Very, very much so. It’s doesn’t know what love is that life or death is not the Brahms’s symphonies as obviously a discussion about and has a frustrated love-life most important thing but that comfortable to play. what is the role of nature, or – with the Cock and the actually it’s the continuum of nature which is important! A It seems ironic that Photo: Catherine Ashmore huge statement to make I Janáček’s been criticised think. for so-called ‘lack of technique’ and yet, in Throughout the opera, terms of dramatic vision, Sharp Ears basically gets he achieves an away with taunting men extraordinary meld of about their sexuality – until music and drama. I think the point at which she’s you once described Vixen shot, when she goes a as real Gesamtkunstwerk? step too far perhaps?

It’s the perfect Well, I have analysed this Gesamtkunstwerk, yes. point in the past and it’s quite Because it’s the best piece clear why she’s shot, in the of complex twentieth century sense that she herself has dramaturgy in terms of the been corrupted by her accuracy with which he uses of animal nature, within man Hens also exhibiting some contact with human beings. all the different media of an – particularly sexuality, kind of gender-dysfunctional Having received, as she opera composer; all the which is what makes it such society. So, on the one hand, says, her primary education different forms are used with an interesting comparison the human beings are at the hands of the Forester, brilliant accuracy, exactly with Lulu. And it’s the way in criticized, or mocked even, she meets this figure of the saying what they need to say which Janáček combines for their repression and their Poacher who is, in my view, in the right moment and with these themes. You have up-tightness. But, on the a kind of satyr, being halfway terrific concision. I think, these animals who exist in other hand, in the guise of between man and animal – dramaturgically, it’s a much actually quite a brutal, the Forester, we see a which is why he’s able to kill better work than Lulu amoral universe in which human character who is also her, of course. When she because he just focuses on they’re as much predators as granted a kind of amazing meets him, she gets carried what needs to be said, even victims – which is, of course, epiphany in the moment of away by an entirely human when it’s pure comedy or something that’s true about his death. And, on top of preoccupation which is slapstick – he’s always nature; something that’s that, there is a very spouting a whole lot of focuses on the point of the frequently forgotten in our optimistic, cyclical view of bullshit about justice and piece. supermarket, clingfilm- nature and rebirth – so it’s cruelty to foxes. Whereas wrapped world. But also he’s very, very complex. Written she should have And tremendously talking about the way in and composed, of course, by remembered that when she innovative in terms of the which the necessary a man himself in his early spouted the same stuff to the genesis and the writing of limitations that human seventies by this point, and Hens, it was a prelude to her the piece [which was beings put on their animal clearly grappling with his murdering them! And so, based on a cartoon], feelings – and particularly own idea of mortality – as what she forgets in this incorporating elements of their sexuality – to some well as his own perhaps moment of being distracted ballet, with children on- extent atrophies into an spasmodically functioning into human moral bullshit, is

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 12 the essential rule of self- life and death – and I think most pathetic way for totally a nap, and he talks about preservation; she hangs also of hunting; of one of the spurious reasons. Whether how his rifle has become his around to harangue and primary human instincts – or, you like hunting or not is sweetheart. So the whole politicise at the Poacher and of course, animal instincts. irrelevant; the fact is, it did idea of the atrophy of human therefore gets killed – well And the hunter and the express a truth that cannot erotic activity is right there in quite right too! That’ll teach hunted are there as two be found on a supermarket the very first few words of the her to get on her soapbox! poles of that. Then this shelf with a plastic-wrapped opera. And the interesting moment of joy rooted in the chicken – that we are in a thing is that the music She gets on her soapbox truth of nature morphs into cruel universe! Behaviour in doesn’t accompany the quite a lot in the opera an extraordinary final Inn nature is not perfect and is Forester at all! The music is doesn’t she? scene, which is a scene of not politically correct – it’s furiously energetic, sparkling farewells and resignation, full not sanitised, it’s predatory, with detail like a sort of Mostly to entirely spurious of human repression. So that’s the way it is. If you’re Bartókian insect world, ends. I mean, she we’ve had this wild man of so fastidious that you can’t describing the forest buzzing harangues the poor Badger the woods, the Poacher, put up with those truths, then and heaving with life and about his plutocrat who’s shot his gun off, with you try to suppress them and energy. And here’s this guy accommodation and Sharp Ears lying dead as a I think, you know, that’s who comes on and sort of promptly uses that to evict result, and then we meet dishonest. says ‘oh my God, it’s hot and him and move into his sett these morbid, repressed [yawns and stretches] I want herself! So she’s absolutely men sitting around regretting For me, that deeper, to lie down and my missus shameless in that way and things they’ve not done or amoral essence of human won’t notice, she’s a good that’s why it isn’t a tragedy missed or women they and animal nature comes wife, and anyway my rifle’s when she’s shot. It’s just part haven’t slept with or across very powerfully in really my of the ongoing battle whatever. Again, Janáček the opera and there’s sweetheart….[snores]’. And between different sections of succeeds in taking this sort certainly none of that so he’s in a completely the natural order, of which of banal and rather ‘animals – good, humans different tempo to the whole the men and women are also despicable, trivial scene and – bad’ nonsense that you orchestra. If that was Berg, part. elevating it into an get when people people would have written extraordinary musical sentimentalise about essays and chapters about Terynka never actually expression of compassion animals or nature it – but it’s just Janáček’s appears in the opera but for these rather pathetic generally. I wonder, too, if instinctive way of describing the men spend lots of time human beings and the way there’s something here two things at once in the way sitting around wishing she they talk about the past and about Janáček’s use of he’s setting the scene! was in their lives. about who’s no longer in the what’s been described as parish. Just one word is used ‘speech melody’; whether Janáček has still not really Another stroke of to describe the absent his pithy use of simple, been admitted to the ‘great extraordinary originality! Parson when the repeated phrases and pantheon’ of the Terynka is a leading Innkeeper’s wife says he’s musical ostinati coming modernists has he, despite character, but she never ‘lonely’; just one word – and out of the Czech language his extraordinary appears! She is the fantasy there’s a moment of silence is also somehow part of innovations? figure that haunts all these where they look at his empty his getting to the crux of men in their mid-life crises, chair. things? It’s taken Boulez many many their impotence. The piece is years to get round to a paean to the urges of It’s incredibly poignant and Well, I’ve often used this Janáček. Finally he has nature and how essential brilliantly done – and all in idea that the cellular done some in the last few they are and as part of twelve bars or something! development of Janáček’s years! reproduction and all of that. Then it erupts into this music starts from these So the Forester’s epiphany magnificent final epiphany speech patterns – he really It’s taken him a long while is in no way a resignation in for the Forester. It’s an uses that to create the DNA indeed and, from a music- any kind of bogus religious amazing achievement to of his characters; it’s as if history point of view, way of giving up on stuff. have packed in that amount he’s writing down a sort of there’s still a lingering, of perfectly judged emotion DNA code of who these ridiculous sort of idea that No, it seems pantheist in a and understanding about people actually are! The anybody outside a raw, primeval sense. And, human nature and about originality of his work as an perceived central Austro- again, optimistic but not nature itself. opera composer is just German strand is sentimental! staggering. If you take the somehow peripheral to You know, the more full of first scene – even putting musical development. Yes, I think the whole, last bullshit we become about aside the way in which it act is absolutely amazing animals the more significant moves in and out of ballet Oh it’s a kind of racism. The compositionally. Because, the piece becomes. We used and so on as a way of laying Germans don’t think first of all, you get Sharp to have what I would out the opening of an opera anybody Czech can be Ears’ death and then describe as a great ritual – it’s incredibly astute serious – that they’re sort of Janáček composes a kind of about the truth of human dramaturgically. whimsical. elegy which manages to be beings and animals, which very moving without being in was our whole visual When the Forester comes I think Sibelius suffers the least bit sentimental. This pageant of fox hunting. But on, he’s tired and hot and from this problem too. builds into a celebration of we vandalised that in the wants to lie down and have

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 13 Definitely. Certainly, in shelves’! development. He wrote a which was a retreat in Vienna people still don’t take series of what I call dramaturgical terms. Then Sibelius seriously because So, in terms of putting conventional works – he thinks ‘ok, now I’m ready Mahler didn’t. Vixen alongside Lulu, that conventional for Janáček to try again,’ and then comes makes for a very anyway – with Jenůfa, Kát’a Vixen. Then he retreats No, and nor did Adorno. interesting dialogue it and Makropulos; although again with Makropulos And, despite his seems to me. Makropulos has an odd before having a last, final tremendous creative content, it’s structure is a fling with House of the Dead. developments it seems to That’s part of the point of straightforward three-act Well, I don’t suppose it me that Janáček’s worth is twinning them and actually play and it has a beginning worked out quite so neatly as still in some ways not fully of asserting as I think I have and a middle and an end and that! – but you can see that appreciated, operatically. I – probably unwisely! – that tells a narrative story. sort of leap-frogging was wondering who, of of the two I think Janáček is Similarly, Kát’a is based on movement in his life. contemporary composers by far the superior composer a play – it could be an Ibsen – if anyone – might be said – in operatic terms at any or other bourgeois play – Yes, that’s really to be taking up his rate. and Jenůfa is also structured interesting – you can see dramatic mantle in any in a linear fashion and is a a real alternate leap and way do you think? Even with Wozzeck? I kind of final installation in the retrenchment there. And, mean, putting aside Lulu Czech tradition of operas in that way, Janáček’s Yes – I don’t know. I wouldn’t perhaps? about village life. But in hugely innovative drive know who to point to. But we between these operas come just kept going right to the in the UK, as a peripheral Well, as you know I think much stranger works, with end. operatic nation, have done Wozzeck is a kind of perfect Osud and The Excursions of much better by Janáček than opera so I mean obviously Mr Brouček, which are You know, by the time he’d many of the central operatic Berg is a very very good hugely ambitious following written House of the Dead, nations. I guess that we have composer. But what Lulu Jenůfa. Osud still today is a Janáček had pushed the an innate sympathy – though exposes is that he is not a hugely ambitious piece of genre as far as it was ever it is of course ridiculous to dramatist in the way that dramaturgy, with flashbacks going to go in the twentieth regard the Czechs as Janáček is. Because, faced and a kind of collage drama century – there’s nothing in peripheral, when you think of with intractable material he pulling together choruses Benjamin Britten that’s as the richness of their operatic doesn’t know how to sort it and a massive cast and little ambitious. So, apart from repertoire – but in terms of out, whereas look at what fragments – I mean it’s a film Shostakovich – the other this Germano-Austrian issue Janáček did, with Vixen script really. And Brouček of person who pushed the he is peripheral of course. I coming from a cartoon and course is a very complex genre in the same period remember arguing that was with House of the Dead double satire structure in with the Nose – nobody in one of the reasons why it being based on a great, which the satirising person, the twentieth century went was really necessary for rambling Dostoyevsky novel Mr. Brouček, is himself beyond what Janáček wrote; John Tyrell to write his about people in a prison; satirised. But Janáček nobody. massive two-volume tome how he just grips that and encountered such trouble in on Janáček. Because it was turns it into a musical- composing and structuring David, thank you very necessary to thump these dramatic text. these two pieces, let alone much for speaking with great books onto the table getting them performed and me, it’s been a fascinating and say ‘this is a composer Actually I have a sort of accepted, that he thinks, ‘Oh discussion. who deserves this amount of leap-frogging theory about crikey, I can’t go on like this’ space on your library Janáček’s operatic – so then comes Kát’a,

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 14 Epiphanies – On Joyce’s ‘The Dead’

by John Lavin

‘Joyce used to talk of the epiphany (‘He got some Greek This gives you an indication of Joyce’s ambition and of the out of his Latin lessons,‘ Gogarty sourly said), meaning the intention he put into everything he did. While Dubliners can showing forth of some great truth in the presentation of the be seen as ‘a summing up of a writer’s experience at a given ordinary. The Magi came to worship the Saviour of the time’, it is the work of a more advanced artistry that the World and found him wrapped in dirty blankets in a derelict rawer talent we can see on display in First Love, Last Rites. stable. Brightness does not fall from the air but suddenly Joyce has already moved beyond this. He believes in flashes out of the filthy Liffey or the remark of a prostitute Flaubert’s maxim that, ‘The author in his book must be like pinning up her hair for the evening’s trade. The truth about God in his creation… must be everywhere felt, but never human nature is revealed in an instant, when the epiphanic seen’ and so, as John McGahern says, character responds to the fumes of a tenth whiskey or a chance word about his sister Kate.’ Joyce does not judge. His characters live within the human constraints in space and time and within their Anthony Burgess, from his Preface to Modern Irish Short own city. The quality of the language is more Stories important than any system of ethics or aesthetics. Material and form are inseparable. So happy is the i. ‘a submerged population’ union of subject and object that they never become statements of any kind, but in their richness and truth Short story collections tend to differ in the degree to which are representations of particular lives – and all of life. they form a united whole. Most commonly they are, to quote Frank O’ Connor, ‘a summing up of a writer’s experience at Dubliners is in no way a compilation: it is an intentionally a given time’; the stories therein containing a unity of made whole. In this sense, it already points in the direction narrative and theme that is not exactly intentional, and is to of Ulysses, because Joyce is clearly already interested in a certain degree, instinctual. I think here of a collection like things beyond the parameters of the short story. Indeed, Ian McEwan’s debut, First Love, Last Rites, which is really John McGahern does a compilation of pieces he wrote while he was taking the inaugural MA in Creative Writing at East Anglia (and in the not see Dubliners as a book of separate stories. The time immediately afterwards). The stories are very much whole work has more the unity and completeness of individual pieces but all of their characters live in the same a novel. dusty, pent-up atmosphere of suburban England in the mid-to-late sixties and early seventies. The prevailing This would seem to suggest that Joyce was never really a themes, meanwhile, are of shifting identities and pent-up short story writer in the first place. This would be to disagree eroticism, of lives lived on the fringes of society. It is almost with O’Connor’s perspective, which was that Joyce was a coincidentally a brilliantly evocative snapshot of England supreme short story writer who gave up writing short stories during this period, whereas a collection like Dubliners was because: always intended to be all of this and much more, as Joyce himself made plain: One of his main passions – the elaboration of style and form – had taken control, and the short story is My intention was to write a chapter of the moral too tightly knit to permit expansion like this. history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me to represent the McGahern – and indeed, myself – would argue that Joyce centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the was never really interested in being a short story writer in indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, the strictest sense. First and foremost he was interested in adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories making perfect his vision. are arranged in this order.

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 15 In Dubliners Joyce is interested in the stories linking not that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to only through theme but also through character and place. us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of He is also intent on there being a beginning, a middle and the commonest object, the structure of which is so an end. Almost like a novel but perhaps, more pertinently, adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves like a piece of music. This, after all, was the way in which its epiphany. he had arranged his poetry collection Chamber Music, mostly written in the years directly prior to Dubliners. Here What he is essentially saying is look again; that the Christ he describes the arrangement of the poems in a letter to child is being born in a manger every day. He is saying that his brother, Stanislaus: the most insignificant person or event, if turned around and looked at from the correct angle will seem ‘to us radiant.’ The central song is XIV after which the movement is all downwards until XXXIV which is vitally the end of In describing Dubliners as a ‘series of epicleti’, Joyce is the book. XXXV and XXXVI are tailpieces just as I giving a clear indication that he is putting into practice the and III are preludes. artistic credo that he lays out in Stephen Hero, and that the stories that make up the book are all transformations of But while McEwan and Joyce’s story collections may differ base matter into gold. This is not achieved, it should be dramatically in what they make up as a whole, the thing stressed, by the use of artistic smoke and mirrors but simply which the two books share is something that all of the best by revealing people as they are. writers of the short story have in common; a strongly identifiable, to use O’Connor’s phrase, ‘submerged Indeed during this same period between 1901-02 and 1904 population’: Joyce was collecting a series of impressions that ‘he called ‘epiphanies’ – all that remains of a series that once included …the short story has never had a hero. What it has at least seventy-one entries’ (A. Walton Litz). Of the instead is a submerged population group… [which] forty-one that have survived – which have been published changes its character from writer to writer, from posthumously as Epiphanies – most found their way into generation to generation. It may be Gogol’s officials, either The Portrait or Ulysses. A. Walton Litz again: Turgenev’s serfs, Maupassant’s prostitutes, Checkov’s doctors and teachers…. …Always in the He carefully hoarded these fragments, and later – short story there is this sense of outlawed figures when he had determined their ‘spiritual’ significance wandering about the fringes of society. – incorporated many of them into his fictions.

Joyce’s submerged population, then, is clearly his largely When he first began to collect his epiphanies Joyce down-at-heel turn of the century Dubliners, while, in regarded them, in the words of his brother Stanislaus, as McEwan’s case, it is plainly his pale, introverted, sex- ‘little errors and gestures – mere straws in the wind – by obsessed, and indeed often sexually warped, young men. which people betrayed the very things they were most careful to conceal’.

Given Joyce’s use of these surviving forty-one impressions ii. ‘Epiphanies’ as a resource for either The Portrait or Ulysses it seems very likely to me that the lost epiphanies would have been In a letter to a friend in 1904 Joyce described Dubliners, at the ones which, to use Paul Muldoon’s phrase, worked as that time a work-in-progress, as a ‘series of epicleti’. the ‘feeder springs’ for at least some of the stories that Terence Brown, in his excellent introduction to the Penguin comprise Dubliners. edition of that book, explains:

The term epicleti here derives from the Greek iii. ‘The Dead’ Orthodox liturgy and refers to the moment in the sacrifice of the Mass when the bread and the wine It is fitting then – and quite clearly deliberate – that ‘The are transformed by the Holy Ghost into the body and Dead’, which is both of Dubliners and its coda; blood of Christ. At this moment of consecration the and which is the culmination of Joyce’s art as a short story everyday realities of bread and wine are charged with writer; should be ‘set at, or just before the feast of the significance. Epiphany’. As if to underline this it begins with a maid called Lily – This comparison of the transformative process that the bread and wine undergo to the process of storytelling seems whose name is symbolically associated with the very close to the artistic credo that Joyce lay down in Archangel Gabriel who, in the gospel account, Stephen Hero (the first version of The Portrait of the Artist informs Mary at the Annunciation of her role in the as a Young Man, which Terence Brown tells us that Joyce Incarnation. In church tradition the Virgin is ‘was at work on concurrently with Dubliners’), whereby he associated with Lily of the Valley or Madonna lily compares the process of storytelling to the three wise men (Terence Brown) discovering the Son of God in a manger. When he says that - opening the door to a man by the name of Gabriel. But …First we recognise that the object is one integral Gabriel Conroy is not the bringer of news in ‘The Dead’ so thing, then we recognise that it is an organised much as its recipient. composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are The setting for ‘The Dead’ is ‘the Misses Morkans’ [Gabriel’s adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 16 two aunts] annual dance’; an event that ‘Everybody who leaning on the banisters, listening to something. knew them came to….’ Joyce’s biographer, Richard Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained to Ellmann, says: his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a That he began with a party was due, at least in part, few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a to Joyce’s feeling that the rest of the stories in man’s voice singing. Dubliners had not completed his picture of the city. …he had written his brother from Rome to say that As well as illustrating Gabriel’s incomprehension of what some elements of Dublin had been left out of his Gretta is listening to, Joyce is also illustrating what Gabriel stories: ‘I have not reproduced its ingenious insularity does not at this point know and in doing this suggesting and its hospitality, the latter “virtue” so far as I can some of the emotional distance between the two of them. see does not exist elsewhere in Europe.’ It also ties in nicely with Gabriel’s somewhat smug attitude towards the West of Ireland and the Irish Ireland movement The events depicted in ‘The Dead’ are largely formed from (with which, in the shape of Miss Ivors, he has already had out of Joyce’s own life and so the uncharacteristic warmth a run-in) because the song that Gretta is listening to of this final piece in the Dubliners jigsaw is real enough. The ‘seemed to be in the old Irish tonality’ and is not one that Misses Morkans and the house where the party takes place Gabriel would probably have cared for himself: are based on ‘his hospitable great aunts Mrs Callahan and Mrs Lyons’ and The voice, made plaintive by distance and by the singer’s hoarseness, faintly illuminated the cadence their house at 15 Usher’s Island…. There every year the of the air with words expressing grief: Joyce’s who were old enough would go, and John Joyce carved the goose and made the speech. Stanislaus Joyce O, the rain falls on my heavy locks says that the speech of Gabriel Conroy… is a good example of his father’s oratorical style. And the dew wets my skin,

And indeed Ellmann goes on to say that, ‘Most of the other My babe lies cold… party guests were also reconstituted from Joyce’s recollections.’ It is Mr Bartell D’Arcy, a tenor with a bad cold, who is singing the song although he cannot remember all the words. This But if there is uncharacteristic warmth in this story it is at is another echo of distance and incomprehension but not least in part to contrast with the cold of the falling snow with only between Gabriel and Gretta but also between Gretta which the story ends. And we are still in very typical and Michael Furey, the dead boy who loved her when she Dubliners terrain in the party section of ‘The Dead’; as John was younger. Mr Bartell Darcy tells her the name of the McGahern says, ‘The prose [in Dubliners] never draws song: The Lass of Aughrim. To add to the West of Ireland attention to itself except at the end of “The Dead”, and by theme, the ever reliable Terence Brown tells us that then it has been earned….’ Aughrim is a village in the County Galway and the However, if we look at ‘The Dead’ as a separate story rather site of the catastrophic Irish defeat at the Battle of than as the culmination of a whole piece, we can see that Aughrim (in the Irish tradition the place is known as it is precisely because the prose ‘draws attention’ to itself Eachroim an áir - Aughrim of the slaughter) in 1691. at the close of the story that ‘The Dead’, as well as forming the crescendo and coda of one of our greatest works of Something in Gretta’s manner (combined perhaps with the literature, also stands as an equally major work in its own excitement and overindulgence of the party) fills Gabriel right. It is perhaps partly because of the contrast between with admiration and lust for his wife and during their journey the steady, ‘classical balance’ of the party section, with the to the Gresham hotel (where they are staying the night) lyric poetry of the Gresham section, that Gabriel’s epiphany ‘moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon moves us so greatly. As with Frank O’ Connor, Joyce’s first his memory’: desire was to be a poet. He turned to prose after reading Yeats’ The Wind Among the Reeds, a collection he greatly A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast- admired but one which made him realise that he could never cup and he was caressing it with his hand. Birds were hope to surpass Yeats’ abilities in verse and metre. He had twittering in the ivy and the sunny web of the curtain no such doubts about his abilities in prose. However, he was shimmering along the floor: he could not eat for unquestionably loved to write poetry and it appears to me happiness…. that McGahern is thoroughly correct to suggest that the poetry at the close of ‘The Dead’ ‘has been well earned’ Which must surely be one of the most beautiful descriptions because it seems to me that part of Joyce’s – possibly of love in the language. It is, I think, not only the beauty and subconscious motive – in contrasting a perfect version of perfect accuracy of that ‘sunny web of the curtain… Flaubert-esqe prose with a close relation of the work to be shimmering along the floor’ – and the way the ‘twittering’ found in his volume of poetry, Chamber Music, is to create birds from the ivy seem to be there in the web as well, an ideal environment within which his poetry could shine; because everything, at that moment, is in harmony – but whereas it could sometimes be found wanting – if only in also because this degree of tenderness and romanticism comparison with Yeats – when set by itself. in the character of Gabriel is, at this stage of the story, quite surprising and all the more moving for it. Something which At the end of the party Gabriel watches his wife, Gretta, is only compounded by these lines from a letter he had from the bottom of the stairs. She is above him, written to Gretta at that time:

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 17 Why is it that words like this seem to me so dull and life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough she had been comparing him in her mind with to be your name? another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous When we bring into account the fact that, according to figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous Ellmann, these last lines ‘are taken almost directly from a well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians letter Joyce wrote to Nora [his partner and eventual wife] in and idealising his own clownishlusts, the pitiable 1904’, we can begin to see how willing Joyce is to use his fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the private emotional life in the service of his art. Indeed there mirror. Instinctively he turned his back more to the are many elements of Joyce in Gabriel’s make up. As light lest she might see the shame that burned upon Ellmann says: his forehead.

There are several specific points at which Joyce This whole scene – and in a way perhaps all of ‘The Dead’ attributes his experiences to Gabriel…. Joyce… – seems to describe a coming of age moment in the life of wrote book reviews, just as Gabriel Conroy does, for Gabriel which parallels that in Joyce’s personal and artistic the Dublin Daily Express. Since the Daily Express life. Joyce had been dramatically changed by his meeting was pro-English he had probably been teased for it with Nora Barnacle and the date they had on June 16, 1904, during his frequent visits to the house of David a date on which he claimed Nora made him a man. Joyce Sheehy, M.P. One of the Sheehy daughters, scholars tend to argue over whether his meaning is literal Kathleen, may well have been the model for Miss or metaphorical here but for me this extract from a letter he Ivors, for she wore that austere bodice and sported wrote to Nora, (admittedly it was part of a series of erotically the same patriotic pin. imaginative letters they wrote to one another some years later – but still), seems fairly definite: Which is to say nothing of the way that Gabriel, with his ‘hair parted in the middle and rimmed glasses’ looks the mirror It was you yourself, you naughty shameless girl who image of Joyce. However, the one thing which assuredly first led the way. It was not I who first touched you marks ‘The Dead’ out as a an example of the transformation long ago down at Ringsend. It was you who slid your of the bread of personal experience into the body of art – hand down down inside my trousers and pulled my as an example, in other words, of epicleti – is the fact that shirt softly aside and touched my prick with your long like Gretta, Joyce’s wife Nora, also had a young man called tickling fingers and gradually took it all, fat and stiff Michael – only his surname was Bodkin – when she lived as it was, into your hand and frigged me slowly until in Galway, who: I came off through your fingers, all the time bending over me and gazing at me out of your quiet saintlike contracted tuberculosis and had to be confined to eyes. bed. Shortly afterwards, Bodkin seems to have stolen out of his sickroom, in spite of the rainy weather, to And, of course, this date was the one on which he chose sing to her. He died soon after. to set his most important book; the date which, in his artistic life, he chose to fill with a character named Bloom - a Joyce himself had been somewhat dismayed to learn of this surname, surely, of some sexual and spiritual significance. from Nora; he: But I digress, the essential point to make is that Nora did not much like to know that her heart was still Barnacle changed Joyce. On however many levels we moved, even in pity, by the recollection of the boy choose to read his phrase, ‘made him a man’, there can be who had loved her. The notion of being in some no question that she helped to change him from the sense in rivalry with a dead man buried in the ground somewhat priggish/dilettantish youth we find in the early at Rahoon was one that came easily, and gallingly, pages of Ellmann’s biography, and who we can recognise to a man of Joyce’s jealous disposition. in the Stephen Dedalus of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to the man who writes with such earthiness and And Joyce does not spare himself in his depiction of empathy of the inner and intimate lives of Leopold and Molly Gabriel’s struggles with jealousy and lust. When Gretta first Bloom. tells him about Michael Furey: Is it too much, then, to think of the portrait of Gabriel’s A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his shame in ‘The Dead’ as also -through the transubstantiating mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow process of art – a portrait of Joyce’s own shame? angrily in his veins Furthermore, if Gabriel’s admission that ‘The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward’, is both a and he asks her if that was why she so favoured a holiday recognition of the smug attitude he has had towards the in the West of Ireland – Miss Ivors had invited them to join Irish movement and Gretta’s (and therefore Nora’s) home her there at the party. Gretta doesn’t understand him and in the west of Ireland (as well, perhaps, as a nod to Yeats’ when he makes his jealous point clear, still doesn’t advice that he go to the west for artistic inspiration; a piece understand his implication and simply tells him that the ‘boy of advice J. M. Synge had taken and Joyce had not; Synge, died when he was only seventeen.’ Unashamed, Gabriel of course, subsequently wrote the artistically successful and ironically asks what profession the boy was in, to which riot-causing, The Playboy of the Western World) an attitude Gretta, unaware of his dishonourable intent, replies matter very accurately and amusing described by Ellman: of factly that ‘He was in the gasworks.’ Gabriel feels that During most of the story, the west of Ireland is While he had been full of memories of their secret connected in Gabriel’s mind with a dark and rather

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 18 painful primitivism, an aspect of his country which he epiphany – placing, as it does, the myth-like in the everyday. has steadily abjured by going off to the continent. The The Gabriel/Joyce character is, in a sense, destroyed in west is savagery; to the east and south lie people The Gresham Hotel by the sudden revelation that his wife who drink wine and wear galoshes. had once loved another man in a way (or so at any rate the jealous Gabriel/Joyce thinks) that she could never love - does it not seem parallel to Joyce’s own altered attitudes himself. This knowledge could indeed be seen in the sexual to his own country – which were seemingly brought about sense to represent the cutting off of his head – it would by a combination of Nora, moving abroad and simply certainly fit with Joyce’s Shakespearean sense of humour growing up – exemplified in this extract from a letter to his – while the killing of six hundred men would surely not be brother Stanislaus (written once he had completed all of out of place as a self-depreciating allusion to the jealous Dubliners save ‘The Dead’)?: and interrogative temperament Nora often witnessed in Joyce in their early days together. Sometimes thinking of Ireland it seems to me that I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have produced (in But for all that, ‘The Dead’ ends with Gabriel tenderly Dubliners at least) none of the attraction of the city…. watching his sleeping wife through ‘generous tears’ with ‘a I have not been just to its beauty: for it is more strange, friendly pity’ and with the admission that he beautiful in my opinion than what I have seen of England, Switzerland, France, Austria or Italy. had never felt [what Gretta had felt for Michael Furey] like that himself towards any woman but he knew that Further evidence that ‘The Dead’ is concerned with Joyce’s such a feeling must be love. reappraisal of his world view may also be found in the theory advanced first by John Kelleher in 1964 and now latterly by He has been the recipient of news; he has had his epiphany Paul Muldoon, in his excellent ‘abecedary’ of Irish Literature, and he sees the world as it is. He thinks of the boy, Michael, To Ireland, I: standing under the tree and imagines the forms of other shades near: a significant strain of ‘The Dead’ may be drawn from the old Irish saga Togail Bruidne Da Derga, ‘The His soul had approached that region where dwell the Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’… the story of vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but Conaire Mór, the king whom Kelleher identifies as could not apprehend their wayward and flickering ’Conroy’ from the fact that Gabriel smiles ’at the three existence. His own existence was fading out into a syllables’ Lily the caretaker’s daughter ‘had given his grey, impalpable world: the solid world itself which surname’. these dead had at one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling. Da Derga means ‘Red God’ and Kellerher argues that the Gresham hotel ‘“would suit admirably as a surrogate Da This act of dissolving shows Gabriel’s acceptance of his Derga’s Hostel” what with its “red brick”’. In the myth own limitations and of a new feeling of empathy towards Conaire Mór has broken a series of ‘geasa’ (social taboos) those close to him and for the entire human race. His grainy and meets a terrible fate in Da Derga’s Hostel. He has his perception of the dead feels similar to the grainy vision head cut off indeed. (Although not, it should be noted, caused by snow as does the dissolving of his before he has killed twelve hundred men defending himself.) consciousness and the eventual dissolving into water of snow. If the world of the snow is a world in-between life and To model the Gabriel/Joyce character on Da Derga would death then it is a world where one is acutely aware of the seem to me perfectly in keeping with the both the sense of frailty of individuality and of the sameness of individuals. humour and the artistic credo behind the thinking that had Gabriel’s ‘soul swoon[s] slowly’ at his apprehension of the Ulysses remodelled as a lowly Dublin advertising canvasser vast expanse of human consciousness ‘falling faintly named Leopold Bloom. Indeed, as with Bloom, this would through the universe.’ represent an exact manifestation of Joyce’s theory of the

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 19 Wales on Film: Zulu (1964)

by Phil Morris

Zulu is a perennial Christmas TV crafted, epic in scale, with enough Isandlwana. Later, that same day, a favourite: eminently quotable, it forms attention paid to the delineation of force of four-thousand Zulus is seen a matrix of reference points that complex characters to provide Stanley marching on Rorke’s Drift, an army facilitate a multitude of immediate Baker and Michael Caine with career- station-post manned by a meagre force intimacies between men – in particular defining roles. A supporting cast of of Royal Engineers and members of Welshmen – for whom the trials of war brilliant character actors, including Jack the twenty-fourth regiment of foot. have, for generations, been Hawkins, Patrick Magee and Nigel News of the earlier disaster, and the experienced vicariously through Green, flesh out a gallery of memorable prospect of imminent death, prompt the schoolboy comics and Playstation characters, most notably the latter two commanding officers to this video games. The screenplay for the creating an indelible impression as the sardonic exchange: film was based on an article, one of a steadfast Colour Sergeant Bourne. series on the topic of battlefield John Jympson’s innovative editing courage, written by the historian John allows Cy Endfield’s assured direction Lieutenant Chard: The army doesn’t Prebble, who peppered his subsequent of the action sequences to unfold with like more than one disaster in a day. script with occasional sideswipes at the electric pace and all in sumptuous savagery of colonial war. Such nods to Super Technirama 70mm film. John Lieutenant Bromhead: Looks bad in the the anti-war spirit of the nineteen Barry’s memorable and superbly- newspapers and upsets civilians at sixties, however, sit awkwardly orchestrated score, which was inspired their breakfast. alongside the Kiplingesque thrills of by recordings of Zulu music he had imperialist adventure that provide the researched, amplifies the grandeur of film with its dramatic and emotive the conflict and the Drakensberg These lines suggest that, rather than charge. Zulu venerates the martial Mountains where the film was shot. being dedicated to the military and bravery and supreme self-discipline of Both in creative and technical terms, ideological aims of British imperial an indigenous African people; but it is Zulu is a formidable film-making policy; both officers are estranged from also an unabashed nationalistic achievement; yet it is this very their fellow countrymen by a curious celebration of the Celtic warrior spirit. excellence that should compel us to blend of cynicism and fatalism – the One of the stranger aspects of the film examine its ideological flaws. eternal excuse of the soldier intended is that, in spite of its title, the heroic to absolve him of his crimes, I serve at function of the film belongs to a small Starring: Stanley Baker, Michael Caine, her majesty’s pleasure. In a later contingent of redcoats who hold out out Jack Hawkins and James Booth exchange, a young private demands of against successive tides of nameless Director: Cy Endfield his wise old NCO: black hordes, whose voices are raised Writers: John Prebble and Cy Endfield only in thunderous pre-battle chants. Producers: Stanley Baker, Cy Endfield Stranger still, this imperialist myth was and Joseph E. Levine Pte. Cole: Why is it us? Why us? shot, almost entirely, on location in Music: John Barry South Africa, and in full compliance Colour Sergeant Bourne: Because with the apartheid laws, by a formerly The broad facts of the story are we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us. blacklisted Hollywood liberal, Cy dramatised with reasonable historical Endfield, and the Welsh socialist actor- accuracy. The film opens with the producer, Stanley Baker. annihilation of a column of fifteen- The realpolitik of imperial conquest is hundred British soldiers by an army of thus glossed over with the soldier’s The film is an enduring classic; expertly twenty-thousand Zulus at the Battle of shrug: theirs not to reason why, theirs

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 20 but to do and die. In contrast, the spontaneous and polyphonic Zulu warrior does not even get to rendition of the Welsh anthem Men pose his question, never mind of Harlech. There is no historical receive an answer. The single record of soldiers singing during utterance of a black character in the battle. Only fifteen percent of the film is made by King Cetewayo, the British soldiers present were with the order of a summary actually Welsh. Over a third of them execution of a warrior who has were English. The regimental song man-handled the daughter of his of the soldiers at Rorke’s Drift was, guest, the white missionary Otto in truth, A Warwickshire Lad. The Witt. The moment attests to question then arises as to why Men Cetewayo’s immense power, but of Harlech features so prominently also to his otherness, his barbarity, in the film. A new set of lyrics for his supposed lack of civilisation. the song was written especially for Cetewayo’s political aims and Zulu. They are worth quoting in full: emotional ties to his country remain unexplored, a mystery, they are unimportant to the screenwriters Men of Harlech, stop your dreaming and film-makers. The voiceless grievances of the Zulus – who, let Can’t you see the spearpoints us not forget, have had their lands gleaming invaded by the British – loom in ominous silence over the film. No See the warrior pennants streaming one appears interested in why they are fighting or why they have to be O’er the battle field killed. The bravery of the Zulu is certainly acknowledged, even admired Men of Harlech, stand ye steady by the British (and the Boer Adendorff) playing at soldiers.’ but, ultimately, the presence of the It cannot be ever said ye Zulus serves only to contextualise the Historical epics require a little artistic bravery of their Welsh enemy. licence if they are to work as dramas, For the battle were not ready — and the minor historical inaccuracies in Welshmen never yield! The silencing and over-simplification of Zulu will not be listed here, as most of the Zulu is given added bite by the them concern changes to certain From the hills rebounding casting of Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi characters’ back-stories. Yet in one in the role of his great-grandfather King notable instance, the interpolation of Let this war cry sounding Cetewayo. Buthelezi would later lead an invented event, the paradoxical the Inkatha Freedom Party, which wrong-headedness of the film is vividly Summon all at Cambria’s call became notorious for its collaboration illustrated. Prior to a final charge, the with the Afrikaaner National Party in its Zulus begin a war-chant to summon up The mighty foe surrounding fight against Nelson Mandela’s ANC. their bloodlust and intimidate their Stanley Baker might not have predicted redoubtable enemy. Chard, played by Men of Harlech, on to glory Buthelezi’s future political career, but Baker, approaches Private Owen, according Baker’s widow, Ellen, the played by the Welsh singer Ivor This will ever be your story Sandhurst-educated Buthulezi was Immanuel: ‘treated very differently by the [South Keep these burning words before ye African] government’ which should have given Baker some inkling. Lieutenant Chard: Do you think the Welshmen will not yield! Welsh can’t do better than that, Owen? The Sharpeville Massacre had taken place a week before principal The original lyrics were written in the photography. Ellen Baker maintains Pte. Owen: Well, they’ve got a very late eighteenth-century and reportedly that the South African security police good bass section, mind, but no top celebrate the heroic defence of Harlech (BOSS) were present on set tenors, that’s for sure. Castle by Welsh soldiers under the throughout the shooting of Zulu. Given command of Dafydd ap Ieuan from this political context, and the strictures 1461 to 1468. Other sources claim it imposed on the producers by the In other words, the Zulus lack refers to another siege of the same apartheid regime, the casting of polyphony – they lack the complexity castle, involving Owain Glyndwr in Buthulezi and the lack of dialogue in and sophistication of Western music. 1404. The important point to note here the film for its black characters, seems They also lack that other signifier of is that this song, which refers to anti- at best naïve, and at worst complicity. Western prowess, the Henry-Martini imperial resistance against the English, Perhaps the exigencies of film repeating rifle. For lacking both, the is sung by Welsh soldiers wearing the production contrived to dull Stanley Zulus must die. uniform of their colonial masters in the Baker’s politically liberal instincts, as act of conducting imperialist James Booth, who played the iconic In the most celebrated scene of the aggression against people who are Private Hook, recalled twenty year film, the predominantly Welsh themselves expressing their resistance later, ‘It is fun, when you’re boys defenders of Rorke’s Drift break into a in song.

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 21 In this crucial scene, Baker’s Welsh Harlech is reprised. The final words of wants to distance himself from his role chauvinism has allowed him to present the song boom out ‘Welshmen will not within the imperial military machine, the defenders of Rorke’s Drift as yield!’ The historical reality of the whereas the historical Chard continued Welshmen notionally protecting their aftermath of the battle was more sordid to serve for many years in the British little patch of Wales located in the and prosaic, as the historian Ian Knight army after receiving his Victoria Cross, middle of the Drakensberg Mountains. describes: ’When the battle was over, as did Bromhead. Zulu tries to present The station-post is no longer Zulu-land; the garrison and relief column went both the British soldiers and Zulu it belongs to the Welsh who will defend over the field, and shot or bayoneted warriors as victims of a one-off it to the death. all the wounded Zulu they found there.’ historical happenstance over which neither had much control, They appear Some may argue that John Jympson’s There is one exchange in which the to fight each other reluctantly, yet expert cross-cut editing between the cruelty of colonial aggression is bravely – indeed as ‘fellow braves.’ The opposing ranks of singing soldiers in acknowledged: reality was genocide. Zulu is not an this scene, establishes some form of anti-war film, nor truly is it an historical moral equivalence between the two epic, it is a cavalry western in the old forces – their respective bravery Hollywood style, in which white men kill appears to evoke some form of mutual Lieutenant Bromhead: …I feel indigenous people in order to steal their respect. Yet while this spurious ashamed. Was that how it was for you? land, and are deemed heroic for doing equivalence credits the Zulus with The first time? so. immense physical courage, it ignores their moral right to their land. The film Lieutenant Chard: The first time? You The emotive power of Zulu, its ability climaxes with the Zulu army departing think I could stand this butcher’s yard to inspire within Welshmen a yearning the field, but not before saluting their more than once? for past military glories is largely fellow braves inside Rorke’s Drift. No attributable to the skilled film-makers such salutation is mentioned in the Lieutenant Bromhead: I didn’t know. who made it. Yet the film stands as a historical records, and it’s most likely warning about the insidiousness of that the Zulus made a tactical retreat Lieutenant Chard: I came up here to those old myths of empire and after spying a British relief column on build a bridge. conquest. It is also proof that even its way. those with a progressive political and social consciousness can be tempted Before the credits roll, the sonorous into sacrificing their values in the tones of narrator Richard Burton list the This seems to me a rather pursuit a telling a ‘good’ story. recipients of the Victoria Cross who disingenuous case of trying to have fought in the battle, before Men of your cake and eat it. Baker’s Chard Miles Beyond Glyndwr: What Does the Future Hold for Welsh Language Music?

by Elin Williams

Since 2007, there has been an ongoing Welsh language as those of a dying distinctive, it’s almost unbelievable that dispute over The Performing Rights culture. they are proposing an 80% cut to a Society cutting Radio Cymru artists’ station which is the sole output for airplay royalties by more than 80%. Unfortunately Wales is a country where exclusively Welsh music. It’s difficult to This has understandably caused less than 20% of the population speak see the issue completely objectively, outrage and sparked a series of strikes. the native tongue. That’s significantly to blame financial issues for the cuts, Many of these strikes were facilitated more than Gaelic speakers in Ireland, because when it is being enforced on by Radio Cymru’s decision to not play and unlike Ireland and Scotland, the a culture and language which isn’t records by the Welsh artists who took Welsh Language Act of 1993 requires exactly thriving, it seems to be rooted part in those strikes. Radio Cymru English and Welsh to be treated deeper; it seems to be highlighting this consequently had to cut its airtime after equally throughout the public sector. ignorance of Welsh culture of those losing the right to play over 30,000 Most Western languages have their outside, and indeed of many inside of songs by Welsh musicians. Many basic rights, and in this day and age, Wales. The tendency is to always see blamed the cuts on a general feeling of one of those rights is its media output. things like this as a direct blow to outsider ignorance; that the BBC Restricting the media output goes Wales’ efforts to develop. The administrators in London were largely hand-in-hand with the degeneration of perception of the Welsh language is unaware of what a Welsh music the language; the less you put out, the often distorted by figures, because broadcasting station is, and what it less that will come in. when you look at 20%, it seems a does. For some the cuts have been negligible amount, but it doesn’t feel seen as a marginalisation of a ‘minority It’s slightly poignant that these cuts are that way. Cultural events such as The language’ imposed by forces from the musical in nature, when Wales, not to National always seem to fill other end of the M4. But in truth, it is dwell on the stereotype here, is seen Wales for several weeks a year, and not always just the people outside of as ‘the land of song’. We have a the number of Welsh schools makes it Wales who see the travails of the musical history which is so rich and difficult to believe that only 20% are

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 22 able to speak the language. Last of Wales, and even though he was a stopped from going to the toilet unless weekend saw Theatr Genedlaethol’s gifted linguist, he didn’t speak Welsh. they asked in Welsh. Such accusations exclusive promenade production of Y Being a popular Welsh personality, are laughable, but that doesn’t detract Bont, performed in Aberystwyth on the vocalising such aversions to the from the fact that an apparent 50th anniversary of the Pont Trefechan language in the media was potentially Welshman felt this way about his own Protest, a protest which set the wheels jeopardising. He wrote about Wales of culture. Even though coming from an in motion for the official status of the course, and often expressed his love ignorant point of view, such Welsh language. With such definite for Welsh music: ‘Welsh hymn singing. condemnations were seen as steps into the future of Welsh Arts, can Hearing it, I walk again amongst all inexcusable. Something in the Welsh- we afford to be taking these giant steps those loved and loving people who speaking Welsh was stirred; the article back simultaneously? gave warmth and beauty to the first provoked one of the most populous years of my pilgrimage’. It seems in this responses recorded on ‘Wales Online’. The people who feel sufficiently instance, although Thomas felt a Such public outcry has parallels in the impassioned by such cuts are reacting certain disregard for the language of number and nature of responses to the by taking the BBC news of the Welsh and the music cuts. Performing Right’s Society head on. A group But perhaps these representing efforts should be Welsh musicians, concentrated and Eos, has been set focused on up to promote a creating more different Welsh radio stations to music act every support our Welsh day. This is musicians. Surely certainly positive, it’s more important but perhaps this to take things into should be our own hands happening and create anyway. Obviously something which Wales can’t rely on increases the these small niches demand for Welsh of broadcasting music? There has opportunity, so always been a perhaps it’s time to certain tension be creative, and to surrounding the be independent. Welsh language, There are for whatever demonstrably reason, and it feels enough people like a constant who feel battle. Even passionate looking back to enough about some of Wales’ Welsh cultural most influential rights, so why writers such as should we have to Dylan Thomas or rely on the BBC? Gwyn Thomas: Wales is capable these were Welsh of creating its own men who wrote in media output, and English, albeit this way, Wales about Wales most of the time. And why Wales, he embraced its culture as it would gain more independence. not? It has made them universally was able to evoke feelings of warmth popular figures; especially Dylan and nostalgia. Even if do If the incentive is to be broadcast and Thomas. This isn’t an issue. It’s when not speak the language themselves, it to be generally successful as a Welsh Welsh people are able to openly is vital that they support it regardless, artist, what happens when that output criticise the Welsh tongue in the media and don not condemn it. is taken away? What happens to the that harm can be done to the incentive? It is 2013, and the Welsh still development of the culture. It can be There has been, however, more seem to be caught in a ‘one step detrimental to a language. Gwyn unfortunate media-related incidents, forward, two steps back’ predicament. Thomas, a fantastic writer, satirist and which have been more destructive to It seems that more action needs to be general personality, was always the perception of the Welsh language taken. This goes beyond Welsh extremely open about his hostility outside of Wales. The infamous ‘: it’s become a matter of towards the Welsh language and Taliban’ article in the Daily Mail having to be productive. To do less indeed, toward the Nationalist sparked outrage, with Wales conveyed talking and less bargaining, and to movement. He seemed to have little as the language of ‘regional actually do something ourselves. sympathy with the national aspirations backwardness’, where children were

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 23 Occupy Gezi: The Cultural Impact

by James Lloyd

I am sitting drinking tea with friends in Turkish) – to remove all outdoor refitted on the fourth floor). the Cafe Grand Boulevard in the furniture from outside of street cafes Beyoğlu district of Istanbul. It is evening and restaurants, Cafe Grand Boulevard For me, this is the one that stands out. and the place is busier than usual. We is one of the very few places in Beyoğlu If the Occupy Gezi movement had a are sat so close together all our knees where you can sit outside to eat and most obvious predecessor, a close are touching. drink. warning of what was to come, the demonstration held in April to save Cafe Grand Boulevard is located in a One of our group, Kaan, works as an Turkey’s oldest theatre was it. courtyard of the Hazzopulo Pasajı. In architect for a local firm and lists the the Nineteenth-century this area had ‘table operations’ on the finger of his Among the Emek protesters and those been the domain of Ottoman Greeks, hand as one of the several decisions signing a petition against its demolition Armenians and Jews, and had been that has fuelled public resentment were the guests of this year’s İstanbul known since the middle-ages as Pera towards Turkey’s ruling AK Parti, International Film Festival, namely, (‘Across’ in Greek) until the particularly its leader, Prime Minister directors Costa-Gavras, Mike Newell, establishment of the Turkish Republic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Marco Becchis and Jan Ole Gerster. in 1923. Hazzopulo Pasajı (literally Taking this into account it seemed ‘Passage Hazzopulo’) is a testament However, it was the events of the incredible that police would exercise to its former Greek denizens. Built in Friday before, 31 May, that have indiscriminate force against a peaceful 1871 by the Istanbul Greek Hacopulo motivated him and thousands others to protest, including the use of pepper Family and restored in 2002, involve themselves in the movement spray and water cannons. Hazzopulo is one of many Pasajı’s to that has become known as Occupy flank the indomitable İstiklal Avenue. A Gezi. While I’d heard about the demolition, I humble entrance belies an elegant knew nothing about the Emek Cinema Ottoman-era structure which along with Kaan tells us about watching the Theater’s considerable history; its the teahouse and charming cobbled events unfold at home via Twitter, design and interior, the lives it had courtyard is comprised of second-hand Facebook and YouTube, and from cultivated, its role in the personal bookshops, jewellery and handbag friends texting him pictures and video histories of countless people; and stores, tattoo and piercing studios. In footage of police entering the park, when I looked at photographs of the the daytime, sunlight cut by the grape setting fire to the tents of protesters Emek, it fostered in me that strange leaves that adorn its inner sanctum camped there, using their batons to nostalgia a person feels when lend it an enchanted quality. At night beat them and then indiscriminately encountering something that you’ve people sit on the tiny Turkish stools spraying and firing canisters into never known – a letter in Akkadian they call “tabure”, huddled together like mounting crowds aghast at their written on a clay tablet or a restored penguins, talking until the early hours. unmerited brutality. Another of our film of London in 1927 – a sensation group, an archaeologist named Ayça, akin to déjà vu; a feeling that emanates Following the local municipality’s describes the demolition of the historic from our innate collective memory, the seemingly abrupt decision in July 2011 Emek Cinema Theater in order to build psychic residue of our ancestors. This – under a directive named ‘table a shopping mall (the theatre and its why culture, and heritage, matters: they operations’ (‘masa operasyonları’ in original reliefs are to be restored and

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 24 connect us to the past and future. cast a shadow over the main another gas attack. Above all though cause of this gathering [...] A is the Turkish flag and the image of Opening its doors in 1924, the Angel major cinema, a cultural centre, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Cinema (‘Melek Sineması’ in Turkish), should not be destroyed. It’s like as it was then known, was frequently eradicating the memory of the Occupy Gezi is a tactile movement, regarded as one of the most beautiful past, and an important place for people are scratching their protest on cinemas in Europe. It formed part of the future. It would be a mistake; the skin of the city. The protest is the Cercle d’Orient, a listed art deco politically, socially and everywhere. Not only in the cafes, building designed by Levantine artistically. With all due respect, streets and bars. It’s written on the architect Alexandre Vallaury in 1884. I’m asking the prime minister, walls, paint-sprayed on the roads and The theatre’s interior was a mix of the guarantor of İstanbul’s pavements, in the metro stations; baroque and rococo artistic styles; two cultural integrity, to intervene to leaflets have been printed and are Art Nouveau angels on either side of save the theatre and not let being handed out, stencils of penguins the screen inspired its name. commerce outweigh culture. have been designed and are sprayed on walls – during the worst of police I understood as best I could the It is difficult to build a culture without a violence CNN Turk instead chose to air frustrations of the protesters, actors, heritage. And these two events taken a documentary on penguins – all kinds filmmakers, but also the Emek’s place together – the ‘table operations’ and of flags are being flown, pots and pans in the collective memory of Istanbul, the demolition of the Emek Cinema hit by woman hanging out of apartment not only as a monument to Turkish Theater – can be seen as prime blocks, lights flashing on and off culture, but as a emblem of Ataturk’s examples of the AK Parti’s ‘wrecking against their windows, endless transformation of the old Ottoman- ball’ effect on the public sphere, what whistling; and the chanting – ‘Tayyip Turkish state into a European-styled the latter sees as a prioritising of Istifa’ (‘Resign Tayyip [Erdoğan]‘) and secular republic, thus cultivating a commerce over culture. With the ‘Her yer Taksim, her yer direniş!’ more cosmopolitan outlook. The proposed redevelopment of Gezi Park (‘Everywhere is Taksim, the resistance Guardian was one of the few and Taksim being seen as another is everywhere!’) – all this amid the international newspapers to report on hijacking of another civic domain in the aroma of roasted chestnuts and a faint its demolition, noting that: interests of private capitalism, people whiff of teargas. are asking where is this path leading Since 1958, the cinema has to? For several days we had all been been publicly owned and has awake until the early hours, some of us provided the backdrop for small, *** until the sun came up, keeping a close courageous revolts: the first big eye on the Twitter accounts and public 1 May celebrations after Kaan receives a phonecall, and from hashtags we had, through a process of the military coup of 1980 took his face we could tell it was bad news. trial and error, come to rely upon. place there, it housed left-wing His friend’s house – used on the Needless to say our bullshit detectors concerts and did not shy away previous weekend to escape being have been fine-tuned over the past from screening Martin tear-gassed – had been burgled. The twelve days. Scorsese’s The Last Temptation television, cigarettes and alcohol had of Christ while religious groups been taken. In many ways it is a relief Much has been said of the instant protested outside. to discover that it wasn’t some gratification impulse Twenty-first altercation with the police. century society and culture has The Emek demonstration turned seemingly fostered – next day delivery violent. Pepper gas and water cannons Since Sunday their presence around services, television programmes and were used. By its end four people had Taksim, Istiklal and Gezi Park had films can be streamed within a few been detained, including distinguished abated, so much so that I would not seconds (that is, if you have a fast film critic, Berke Göl, while Atila see a single officer for the next five internet connection, in which case most Dorsay, Turkey’s most respected film days, highly unusual in Istanbul. people won’t bother), likewise for the scholar, later announced he was to Whether this had anything to do with music we download; instant credit and retire. In an article entitled, ‘Time to say Kaan’s friend being burgled or not I tanned skin, ‘wait a minute I’ll Google farewell’, Dorsay wrote: don’t know, but the demonstration it.’ against perceived state oppression and This theatre had a value for the Erdoğan’s drift towards autocratism Speculation in situations such Gezi is cultural structure it carried and had also provided an opportunity for natural of course, as is the mix of the historic reservoir and lifestyle unnecessary vandalism. scepticism and hyperbole feeding it. it represented. Today there is Walking home that night I realised that nothing called Emek. We could We all leave the cafe together and we’d all been guilty of over-thinking, not manage to explain its separate on Istiklal. The opportunity to trying to explain away Occupy Gezi, symbolic and real value. cash in on the spirit of Occupy Gezi is reduce it to a series of symbols, when in full swing. Bottles and cans of Efes the fact remained that we were still too The overzealous reaction of the police in wooden boxes filled with crushed close to the events to make sense of and the demolition were criticised ice, hawkers line up fake pairs of them. Focus on the here and now, further by director Costa-Gavras in a trainers outside Adidas and Nike stores keep the protesters uppermost in your letter to PM Erdoğan: – heavily vandalised during the weekend; swimming goggles, snorkling The violence that followed the and surgical masks along with lemons peaceful [protest] should not and anticids are being sold in case of

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 25 mind, communicate what is happening easily create a glossary in book form damaging a public bus – it can be said here without hope or despair. This is based on the amount of slogans that in spite of the various restoration the conclusion I came to. We had spent communicated by members from projects he and his party have much of the day in contact with various almost every sphere of Turkish politics instigated (albeit somewhat protesters, through acquaintances, – there are secularists, nationalists, negligently) the largescale vandalism social media and by texting. Eventually leftists, and anarchists. enacted on Istanbul as a result of his the requests came through, what kinds party’s neo-liberal policies are of far of items they required and we took a It would be incredibly difficult to greater consequence. bag of supplies with us, mostly establish a political party that would personal hygiene products. encapsulate Occupy Gezi. Not only It is also the creeping Islamisation that, but the spread of protests to a instigated by Erdoğan that have made It is not my intent to portray the reported seventy cities around Turkey people suspicious of his long term protesters camped at Gezi Park itself whose concerns would differ to varying aims. These have of course informed as saints – I don’t believe that is how degrees. In short, there is no ‘one-size- the protest. However, Occupy Gezi is they see themselves or how they wish fits-all’ ideology. not a campaign against Islam to be seen. However, I have nothing regardless of the gulf that remains but admiration for their courage in the Nonetheless, we should not dismiss between religious and secular parties face of police brutality, pacifist the solidarity the mix of groups have in Turkey. Neither can Erdoğan’s commitment in protecting the park for demonstrated in what is surely a goal reshaping of Turkish society and themselves and future generations, that unites all at Taksim Square and culture restrict freedom of speech and and creative approach to organising Gezi Park – ensuring that both remain pass laws without public consultation and arranging the park into an autonomous space where the public (or even that of his own party). The cooperative. Their altruism has been can express themselves both singularly producers of Behzat Ç, a TV crime and overwhelming. It’s fair to say I have and collectively. detective series set in Ankara, and never witnessed anything like Occupy featuring a ‘morally ambiguous police Gezi; the same goes for the many Diversity as opposed to homogeneity, officer,’ were put under pressure to Turks I have spoken to. I feel democracy as opposed to autocracy, stop production as the show contained privileged. Of the many examples I culture as opposed to consumption – material considered contradictory to could give of the protesters’ energy and this is a message a majority of those traditional Turkish family values. When inventiveness, I think the Gezi Park protesting can agree on. fans of the series complained the Library and the ‘Museum of the government backed down and instead Revolution’ (where they continue to *** imposed a series of huge fines through collect pieces which embody the first the state-controlled Radio and weekend of violence following the Incompatibility defines Istanbul, Television Supreme Council (RTÜK). gung-ho offensive by the police) stand especially in terms of culture. The city Scriptwriters were forced to make the out as examples of their long-term has in the last decade, since Erdoğan eponymous protagonist of the show goals and the ideas feeding into them. came to power, become increasingly marry his live-in girlfriend, internationalised. This has had conversations between characters Each time I have visited Gezi there has repercussions both good and bad. were heavily censored as were scenes been some new addition to the culture Istanbul ’74, an arts and culture that involved alcohol. Speaking of and spirit of the park produced by a organisation founded in 2009 by Demet which, the proposed alcohol kind of electromagnetivity between the Müftüoglu-Eseli and Alphan Eseli, restrictions have now been ratified and people – predominately young, but initiated the Istanbul International Arts the sale of alcohol between 10pm – supported by professional creative & Culture Festival and international 6am is prohibited (the ban does not types, the middle classes, and a fashion and cultural celebration, extend to cafes, bars and restaurants, massive female presence (most of Istancool, which has attracted but will also apply to the open sale and those I have spoken to have been attendees such as the late Gore Vidal, consumption of alcohol in parks, women). Gezi has brought together Zoe Cassavetes and Zaha Hadid; there gardens, open spaces, highways, men and women of all ages, Muslims is the Istanbul Modern and Sultan picnic areas, historical ruins and the and non-believers, Kurds and Alevis, Selim III’s Tophane-i Amire (Tophane interior of all vehicles). When you and people of all classes. The park has Amoury) has been converted into an consider alcohol restrictions in the UK a childrens workshop area, the exhibition centre for the arts. But what or Sweden, the Turkish ban seems paintings made there are strewn from has been described as ‘bloodless compliant. However, critics argue that tree to tree on lines of twine (one of internationalism’, that is, of emulating there was no real call for the ban as them of a police Panzer using its water the west, has resulted in the Turkey has the lowest alcohol cannon against stickmen protesters). unchecked construction projects that consumption in Europe at 1.5 litres per There are yoga classes, Gezi Park TV have resulted in the destruction of capita. station – a reaction no doubt to historic buildings and turned parts of Turkey’s news channels ignoring the the Istanbul into a nondescript Last year, when Erdoğan’s youngest plight of the protesters in the face of conurbation of behemoth shopping daughter walked out of Young Osman, the excessive force used by the police malls and unimaginative glass a play based on the youthful, reforming – and an Activist Cinema Club. skyscrapers. While Erdoğan rightly sultan, Osman II, at the Ankara State dismisses a small minority of the Theatre, claiming she had been If this sounds ideal it’s because it really protesters as vandals – I witnessed insulted by an actor, the PM threatened is – for now. As mentioned, there are some teenagers wearing Guy Fawkes to withdraw state support from Turkey’s many different ideologies at work, masks being reprimanded by a large theatres. Among several others, especially at Taksim Square. You could party of Occupy Gezi protesters for Erdoğan has also looked to introduce

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 26 restrictions to the timing of abortions of the Ottoman Empire following the resulted in the burfication of Ottoman and public displays of affection. ruthless secularisation of Turkey by education and ultimately the Decree of However, these moral and cultural Ataturk. When Atila Dorsay wrote of the Tanzimat (1839). intrusions by the state cannot be said “historic reservoir and lifestyle” the to not impinge on the lifestyles of an Emek Cinema Theatre represented, of Before now the two Turkish societies excusively secular contingent. its ‘symbolic and real value’, and were kept separate. One had been Edorgan’s decision to build a third moreover when director Costas- stunted in its need to modernise by the bridge over the Bosphorus, naming it Gravas wrote that it was ‘like fall of the Ottoman Empire, the second after Sultan Selim I – nicknamed ‘Selim eradicating the memory of the past,’ relegated it to museums in London and the Grim’ following a massacre of they were right, but couldn’t the same other cities and imposed, as Turkey’s Alevi population (a sect of be said for the cultural amnesia Turkey mentioned, a kind of cultural amnesia Shi’a Islam with aspects of Sufism who suffered as a result of Ataturk’s own on the people of Turkey. espouse mystic poetry, music and single-mindedness? dance) in the Fifteen-century – is seen Critics say Ataturk went too far with his as a provocation to Turkey’s existing In establishing the Turkish Republic reforms, that they are outdated and largest minority. Liberal and from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, overly nationalistic. After ten years in Anticapitalist Muslims (Antikapitalist Ataturk expurgated the country’s power perhaps the same might be said Müslümanlar) advocating pluralism are Islamic elements by eradicating Arabic of Erdoğan, only from the opposite end also affected by government policies, script and adopting a new Turkish of the spectrum. The PM has said that hence their involvement (albeit to a alphabet (modified Latin form). He the redevelopment of Taksim and Gezi lesser extent than the main body of introduced European dress codes, Park will include a rebuilding of the secular protesters) in Occupy Gezi. laws and calender, including the Ottoman-replica Barracks that once controversial ban of women wearing stood there, and that this is a matter of At Gezi Park I saw a banner held aloft head-scarves if working in the public having ‘a respect for history.’ by two head-scarfed women which sector. Such a bouleversement Nonetheless, it is a misreading reading read, ‘the trees bow down before God.’ resulted, according to Esma Kurklu, a of history he claims to respect – it is A quote from the Qur’an. Another screenwriter for the satirical TV show guided by the greedy development of banner displays a line from My Name Heberler, in a kind of schizophrenia. In commercial capitalism. is Red by Turkey’s Nobel Prize an article for the Wall Street Journal by winning author, Orhan Pamuk, ‘I don’t novelist Lawrence Osborne, she says, In 1544, two Syrian merchants want to be a tree, I want to be its ‘The country is moving back to its introduced coffee to Istanbul and meaning.’ Ottoman subconscious.’ This in no way thereafter coffee houses became very means a return to a theocracy based popular around commercial areas of While there are pictures of John on rigid notions of hierarchy and order, the city. They were frequented first of Lennon and Yoko Ono along with with a sultan exercising absolute all by men who advocated a love of messages of non-violence, it’s power. As Zeynep Fadillioglu – the first high culture, enjoyed chess, read encouraging to the see that a majority woman in history to design a mosque: books and wrote poetry. Coffeehouse of the content used to symbolise the the Sakirin in Istanbul – says in culture become more popular and multifarious concerns of the protesters Osborne’s article: widespread, and acted as an escape are mostly Turkish or of their own from the social hierarchy of the time, heritage and culture. In other words, Urban elitism was always the with people of varying demographics they are not relying on western counter- problem in this country. Istanbul coming together for the first time under cultural figures. Close to a group of is not a bridge between East and the same roof. Clubs and associations practising musicians sat on the edge West—it’s a bridge between two were formed, information, ideas, gossip of a flower bed, I stop by a ‘wishing versions of the East. The secular and rumours exchanged, which posed tree’ from which post-it notes of Kemalist elite lorded it over a threat to established social and different colours loll from its branches, everyone else, and that could political order. As vehicles for political a ‘wish’ scribbled on each one. I not go on. So the Islamic debate and mobilization, attempts were recognise a name written on a pink element had to be admitted into madeto shut coffeehouses down all note, Nâzım Hikmet, a Turkish poet the picture eventually. It’s an over the Ottoman Empire. This top and revolutionary. I cannot translate inevitable process [...] But we down approach failed as ruling order the rest and ask my someone to help. have evolved too far to become failed to modernise and provide an It reads, ‘To live! Like a tree, alone and some kind of Islamic state now. adequate space for the public sphere. free, and like a forest in brotherhood / It’s too late. Look around this is our longing.’ you…What we are seeing, Can the same parallel be made with really, is the inevitable Erdoğan and his ‘table operations’? Jay Weissberg, a film critic with Variety, converging of two Turkish wrote in her LRB blog that, ‘Several societies: rural, Muslim Anatolia In his attempts to restrict people from people I spoke to at the [Istanbul Film] and elite, intellectual, secular expressing themselves both singular festival said the programme of Istanbul…It’ll be a bit tense for a and collectively in the public space, to demolition is part of the Erdoğan while. engage sufficiently in the public sphere, government’s long-term goal of and by limiting the information made eliminating Turkey’s multiethnic The Ottoman Empire under Sultan available to them by state-influenced Ottoman identity.’ I had wondered if Mahmud II had understood the need to newspapers and television, it would Erdoğan’s policies were in some way modernise. He heeded the seem then that culture has moved into a resurfacing of the Islamic building technological superiority of Europe and the virtual domain of Twitter. blocks that made Istanbul the capital instigated the various reforms that

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 27 The Thrill of it All: Glam! David Bowie Is… and the Curious Case of Adrian Street

by Craig Austin

For the thousands of Saturday night city-centre recycled, self-loathing ‘youth’ culture predominantly boozehounds presently tearing up the perversely-branded populated by angry middle-aged men with thinning quiffs retrospective theme bars of the nation, the 1970s must and sharpened blades. seem like a peculiarly bygone golden age where cheery glitter-strewn postmen went about their business in towering Conversely, and no doubt to the teds’ seething chagrin, it platform boots, and the factory floor’s most frequent was Marc Bolan and David Bowie – two fastidiously tailored industrial injury must surely have been the random trapping suburban mods of the 1960s, no less – in whom the nation’s of a perfectly coiffured white man’s afro in a printing press pop fans ultimately invested their obsessive faith and or a machine tool. The reality of course, could not have devotion. As the unmistakable and unapologetically been more diametrically opposed. The 1970s was a decade effeminate figureheads of a multi-layered and multifaceted of almost perpetual mayhem – an epoch of economic scene that encompassed the assorted contributions of art cataclysm, relentless terrorist activity, outrageous state- school visionaries, avant-garde designers and shameless endorsed discrimination, and the recurrent threat of random cultural opportunists – one that swiftly adopted the and brutal street violence. Throw in a shadowy backdrop conveniently catch-all moniker of Glam – they planted an of terrifying Cold War menace and it would be hard to aspirational seed of ambition within an audience that would dispute the bleakly austere summary of Francis Wheen in later bear abundant fruit in the flourishing of the British ‘new his exemplary and entertaining encapsulation of the pop’ phenomenon that would take the world by storm a decade, Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of decade or so after the event. Paranoia: ‘Slice the 70s where you will, the flavour is unmistakable – a pungent mélange of apocalyptic dread Though subsequently demeaned as both Thatcherite and and conspiratorial fever.’ Moreover, when the terminally self-regarding in its open embrace of la dolce vita, the doomed alien visionary Ziggy Stardust sang apocalyptically ‘riches’ lusted after by the ‘Blitz kid’ generation of Spandau about us only having ‘five years left to cry in’ there were and Duran were ultimately no different to those pursued by many who overlooked its overtones of pop art and science their template-setting Glam precursors and the first fiction and sincerely believed that to be our immovable generation of what would become known as punk; a . repudiation by working class men and women of the rigid and joyless framework of humble toil and know-your-place In the midst of such turmoil, almost certainly because of it deference that society had sought to set out before them, – and most perversely of all, at a time when the likes of a rejection of the petty morals and failed ideals of their Bowie, Eno, and Roxy Music were looking so resolutely to parents’ generation via a unique form of personal and the future – the UK and the USA seemingly conspired, via aesthetic renaissance. the prevailing medium of pop culture, to hark back to their own theoretical ‘golden age’ of rose-tinted societal safety; It’s often said that periods of social and economic turmoil the circle-skirted, velvet-trimmed conventionality of the are the ideal inspirational breeding ground for the creation 1950s. A singly bizarre phenomenon that eventually of trailblazing, and occasionally revolutionary, art and in spawned, in the US, the retro-themed boy-meets-girl Glam – a proto-punk for those who despised the notion of Hollywood cash-cow of Grease, and, in the UK, the entirely anything as conventionally gauche as a manifesto – the unexpected revival of the drape-coated Teddy Boy; a prevailing bleak economic circumstances of the early 1970s

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 28 inspired a relative few contemporary legend. to kick over the social As content as Ian and cultural statues of Hunter’s Mott the their starch-shirted Hoople were to kiss the forefathers and to seek painted hand that fed to rebuild the nation for them – it took a Bowie- the many, in their own penned song, the deliciously provocative immense ‘All The image. A Cavalier-led Young Dudes’, to give assault upon a still them their first proper decidedly Roundhead hit – it didn’t stop society by the preening Hunter bemoaning a peacock sons and seismic change in daughters of a fashion that was generation still frequently felt to collectively entrenched enforce vagaries of in the lethargic mindset unwanted ‘poovery’ of Upstairs Downstairs upon the less and World War II. stylistically inclined.

‘Wake up you sleepy ‘Glam!’s eclectic head / Put on some clothes, shake up your bed’, a pre-Ziggy collection of period ephemera; the Antony Price clothing, Bowie had intoned during the opening bars of ‘Oh, You the pulsating Roxy music soundtrack, the soft porn and Pretty Things’, a rallying call to arms to those seemingly fetish fashion, is perfectly complemented by the much less intent – almost literally – on ‘driving your Mamas and Papas glamorous, but equally valid, representation of ‘fandom’ and insane’. In doing so, they generated some of the most the often solitary experience of the aspirational bedroom exciting pop culture that this country has ever witnessed, dreamers who alleviated their otherwise dreary existences provided a fitting backdrop to an increasingly politicised via the glittering alternative ideal for living offered up by the campaign for sexual liberation and transformed themselves likes of Ferry, Bolan, Bowie et al. into obsessively flamboyant works of high-street art; an inspirationally indefinable philosophy that paradoxically American photographer Nancy Hellebrand’s unembellished inspired some of the greatest musicians, designers and and acutely intimate black and white images of teenage film-makers of the era. A groundbreaking and pioneering Glam devotees captured in their own homes presents the means of presenting oneself to the world not lost upon a stark contrast between the drab bedsits of her subjects and resolutely determined coal miner’s son from Brynmawr, the manifest escapism represented by the glamorous South Wales… posters pinned to their walls; the crippling recession of the early 1970s jostling for space with what was, in essence, Much like mod, and the imminent punk movement that was the decadent cabaret culture of 1930s Berlin. As a ‘crash in so many ways inspired by it, Glam was always more than course for the ravers’ it’s a lovingly assembled triumph and, just a visual style, defining an attitude and a state of mind though its deserved plaudits are likely to be suffocated by as much as it did a haircut or a record sleeve. Latterly, and the overarching shadow currently being cast by Bowie’s erroneously, dismissed as both novelty and nonsense, it ‘best-selling show’ at the V&A, it succeeds in touching the brought about an almost revolutionary appreciation of more unconventional and unashamedly outré elements of self-identity and a sense of escapist emancipation among a scene eternally rooted in the obscure and provocative. its wide-eyed devotees that bulldozed a way through the For many visitors, however, it won’t be the celluloid 50s/sci- once seemingly impregnable barricades of class and fi leer of Bryan Ferry or the aggressively sexual imagery of gender. In doing so, it crafted an alternative projection of Allen Jones’ ‘Table’ and ‘Chair’ that forms their abiding masculinity that set the template for so many of our future memory of ‘Glam!’ Not when a startling juxtaposed stars and which blew away decades and centuries of monochrome image of clashing generational cultures received wisdom about gender identity and the rules of screams out at them from the headframe of a South Wales attraction. mineshaft.

Tate Liverpool’s current and remarkable exhibition, ‘Glam! ‘Adrian was one of those misfits that was always involved The Performance of Style’, seeks to encapsulate the almost with the intrigues of life,’ recalls wrestling promoter Max limitless breadth of the movement’s cultural impact, going Crabtree, in conversation with Simon Garfield, author of the far beyond the realms of pop music to encompass exemplary The Wrestling: photography, film, literature and design. Knowingly split between the British phenomena of Bolan, Bowie, Biba and He never had the great success of a (Mick) Oz and a more fractured, yet equally essential U.S. scene McManus, but he did register. But the promoters that orbited around Warhol, Lou Reed and The New York didn’t particularly like what he did. He was a complex Dolls, ‘Glam!’ seeks to present the period as an man. He liked to portray the role of a poof but, behind unapologetically jarring schism that saw off any remaining that façade, if one of the customers said to him, “Get vestiges of the ailing 1960s and as one which set the out of it you bloody poof, Street!” he’d be at them. cultural tone for the rest of the 1970s and much of the And you had to watch him, because Adrian would do 1980s; one that doesn’t shy away from the fact that, in anything for attention. He would have shown his Britain at least, much of the scene was indeed made up of private parts on television if he thought it would have the archetypically opportunistic ‘hod-carriers in mascara’ of done him some good.

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 29 Professional wrestler ‘Exotic’ Adrian Street remains a groundbreaking and influential icon to this day. Though cruelly overlooked footnote in Welsh sporting/showbiz wholly aware of the significance of his place within the history (delete as appropriate). Though long-since relocated artistic scheme of things – ‘The fans hated it, but you could to Northern Florida, this iconic image of a preening Street, tell they were intrigued and I think the women were maybe in flamboyantly full flowing Glam regalia, and his father, a a bit turned on. Nobody was doing that before me. Boy weathered coal miner of fifty-one years and a former George wasn’t even born when I started’ – he remains one Japanese POW, remains the picture-perfect encapsulation of his nation’s most criminally overlooked cultural icons and, of the generational and social conflict that was writ large crucially, in his own words, ‘a fucking good wrestler’. through much of the 1970s; the confusion, the bafflement and the fear. On March 13th, just 10 days before the official opening of the V&A’s David Bowie Is… Adrian Street fought the final Born in the Welsh mining town of Brynmawr in 1940, Street bout of his career in Alabama. Street estimates that during left school at the age of fourteen and fell for the allure of the his career he has wrestled between 13,000 and 16,000 wrestling ring upon seeing his first live bout in Newport. In matches. He is seventy-three. conversation with Garfield, he recalled, ‘I thought the wrestling was great, but the characters were so dull. The very fact that an exhibition, in one of the nation’s most Everyone wore the same. Big woolly black trunks and little revered museums, in honour of a sixty-six year-old man, black or brown boots, but I was used to seeing all the forms the cultural and stylistic highpoint of the UK’s characters from America.’ Having moved, alone, to London contemporary music scene, says much about a barren pop at the tender age of sixteen – much like moving to Mars for culture in which – to appropriate a fine 1970s theme tune a South Wales valley boy in the mid-1950s – he ‘slogged – ‘the only thing to look forward to is the past’. David Bowie around for a long while’ before creating an image for himself is… has become such a resoundingly essential more resonant of Bolan than Big Daddy; an outrageous phenomenon – the V&A’s most successful event since it collision of make-up and glitter, the wrestler’s long shaggy chose to honour the legacy of another of the nation’s hair dyed platinum blond and teased into cutesy schoolgirl Dames, one Vivienne Westwood – that not to have an pigtails: opinion on either it, or its recently revitalised subject matter, renders you almost socially inconsequential. And with good I got my image and things began to take off for me reason. as soon as I had that established. To begin with the promoters said, “Oh, you don’t want to carry on like As Spandau Ballet’s Gary Kemp (an early devotee and an a queer” but in time they realized what a draw I was exhibition talking head) remarks, ‘Bowie was nothing less for them. than a form of subversive conceptual art delivered through the medium of popular culture.’ Given the astonishing Though unapologetically heterosexual, Street openly amount of hype that has accompanied the lead-up to the embraced the fast-shifting patterns of social behaviour and exhibition’s launch it would be slightly unusual if visitors used them to his personal and professional advantage. were not in some small way underwhelmed by the fact that Whilst it would be convenient to label him a cultural it’s, well, just an exhibition. An exhibition devoted to opportunist, (particularly in terms of the public perception arguably the nation’s greatest ever pop star, but a showcase of his then ambiguous sexuality), it is hard to grasp quite of things nonetheless. And David Bowie has always been what a precarious and confrontational image he ultimately more than just about ‘things’. chose to adopt, not least for a working class Welsh male from an almost aggressively heterosexual community: The outfits that looked so futuristic and glamorous on a 1970s TV screen – though innovative and trailblazing in Back in the dressing room the other wrestlers were their conception – look fragile, disposable and inexpensive a bit confused by it and thought maybe it was for real. within this context and without the avant-garde stagecraft And I used to mince and turn it back on them. I would that truly brought them to life; an appositional compromise wait until everyone else was in the shower and the of intent and resource that typifies the early 1970s and the glide in with the towel under my arms and go, ‘make do and mend’ reality of a society that to all intents “Mmmm, a smorgasbord!” The place would empty. still remained in hock to the financial liabilities of World War II and whose grandchildren still played amongst its Whilst the seeds of what was then know as ‘gay liberation’, bombsites. When the Spiders from Mars brought their an increasingly political and militant movement, were slowly travelling Technicolor carnival to the forgotten northern being sown, the prevailing image of gay men on primetime industrial towns of Preston and Doncaster – a string of dates TV remained either purposefully asexual or anaemically often overlooked by the historical records in favour of the unthreatening. Street, despite his own sexuality, legendary Hammersmith gigs that closed the book on both represented the antithesis of this and in doing so must the tour and The Spiders themselves – they played those surely have initially elicited, in some quarters, a reaction on shows in a series of relatively tiny music halls that looked a par with that of Bill Grundy’s notorious Sex Pistols almost exactly the same as they had prior to war breaking inquisition. For such a doggedly independent and wholly out in 1939. This was Glam done in the only way that Britain unique man it’s not even entirely clear as to what degree – knew how to operate at the time: on the cheap. For many, if at all – Street attributed his own image to the similarly including those who paraded the trappings of this brave perfumed music scene that flourished in parallel with his new world on Top of the Pops, the slick veneer of glamorous own. escapism hid a multitude of sins rooted firmly in the economic malaise of the period; a pessimistic sense of What is evident, however, is that devoid of either guitar or interminable despair and the ominous threat of totalitarian microphone, ‘Exotic’ Adrian Street was a pop star in the government reflected in the Clockwork Orange-aping stage truest sense of the term and one who remains a

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 30 sets and outfits of the ‘Ziggy’ period. It’s a mind-set that projected the most iconic moments of the final ‘Ziggy’ shows Bowie publicly obsessed over for a period of years, one that at Hammersmith Odeon. When Bowie famously spoke the V&A seeks to represent in its artistic context and which, about how he couldn’t ‘stand the premise of going on (stage) fueled by the ready availability of the purest cocaine on the in jeans and being real’, a statement he qualified by the market, began to manifest itself in ways that started to hilarious adjunct ‘it’s not normal’, he was sat in the dressing alienate the artist from many of his early devotees. rooms of the same venue, his face a picture of studied artistic otherness. Any reference to the notorious Victoria station ‘salute’, a stubborn stain upon the sartorial elegance of the Thin White Four decades after the event, and having viewed the exact Duke, is a wholly predictable omission from an event same footage on dozens of previous occasions, the focused purely on the celebration of the artist’s legacy and sweepingly magnificent intensity of this experience is still cultural impact. It is this period, the Berlin-based ‘black and an indisputable ‘hairs on the back of your neck’ moment, white years’, that forms the most fascinating element of the an emotion felt most acutely during the final act of exhibition. Whether it be a letter on headed Hansa Studios ‘Rock’n’Roll Suicide’ as it builds towards its grandiose notepaper addressed to ‘Herr Tony Visconti’ or the mere denouement. It remains the template for those who went notion of a body of work primarily recorded whilst looking on to remodel their image from the remnants of Bowie’s directly onto the watchtowers and machine gun turrets of own, and for anyone who has ever been dragged from the the Berlin Wall (or the ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart’ wreckage by the thrillingly restorative healing power of depending on your 70s geo-political worldview), this rock’n’roll. To know what it is to be, or to have been, a fan. representation of a peerless trilogy of albums that Bowie A magnetically irresistible stranger – be it Morrissey, himself described as being his ‘DNA’ is both darkly Manson or Gaga – reaching out to take your hand and evocative and appropriately self-contained. speaking the only words that can take the pain away: ‘You’re not alone’. Then suddenly we find ourselves back in Queen Caroline Street, a towering floor-to-ceiling canvas upon which are

Wales’ Past, Present and Future: A Land of Possibilities?

by Rhian E Jones

In the third in a series of essays contributing to what Gary being constructed and, when doing so, what balance is Raymond has termed ‘the eternal conversation’ of cultural being struck between past and present, between the criticism, author and critic Rhian E Jones gives her rose-tinted and the realistic, between the undeniable perspective, as a Welsh writer long resident in London, on positives of Wales’ devolutionary success story and the the current state of Welsh culture, the stains of the past, equally undeniable negatives of the aftermath of the 1980s? and the potentialities of its future. In this essay I wish to ask whether this cultural flowering offers the opportunity to create new, inclusive and tolerant accounts of identity that will broaden the meaning of what it is to be Welsh beyond the unhelpfully bleak or ‘The Welsh are all good actors; it’s only the bad ones who sentimental, to reconcile some historical tensions within the become professionals.’ – Richard Burton construction of ‘Welshness’, and to attempt to revitalize the country’s political possibilities. The Welsh, according to myth and reality, are adept at the art of playing a role and telling a story. What stories are we *** currently telling, and what roles are we choosing to play? Having read the recent pieces by Gary Raymond and Dylan Both Raymond and Moore emphasise the need to move Moore on the incipient blossoming of the arts scene in beyond a perceived national tendency for introspective Wales and the need for critical engagement with it, I am brooding, towards a view of Wales as player on a larger intrigued by what narratives of the past few decades are UK-wide or global stage. The confidence required for such

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 31 an undertaking is clearly in more abundant supply than was instead of the strengths they can be both culturally and the case even a decade ago, and Moore rightly traces this politically. back to devolution and ‘the ensuing quiet revolution in identity politics’. Popular music, my own area of interest, *** witnessed a brief flicker of Welsh flame kindled by the mid-Nineties emergence of a nebulous ‘New Welsh Cool’, Attempts to understand and explain what it means to be a somewhat awkward agglomeration of the sudden success Welsh have been consistently plagued by contested of the and the emergence in their conceptions of Welsh identity. Exclusionary ideas of the slipstream of Welsh bands of varying quality and longevity. ‘real’ Wales as being variously Welsh-speaking, hill-farming, When I left Wales for London, in my late adolescence and chapel-going, Labour-voting, insular, garrulous, poet- in the twilight of Cool Cymru, the handful of bands which warrior, or indelibly stained with coal dust, are falsely had made their distinctively Welsh mark on the mainstream absolutist, obscuring such interesting facets of the country allowed me to associate myself, if I so chose, with an as the diverse ethnic communities which shaped Cardiff or identity I found slightly more agreeable than the the internationalist tradition which produced an influx of anachronistic archetype or mere blank slate with which so Welsh participants to the Spanish Civil War. This kind of many otherwise associated the country I had come from. purist insistence has also led many to reject a Welsh identity Beyond the music scene, however, artistic self-actualising wholesale – as Raymond states, ‘… in the last two years I in the Nineties seemed impossible without leaving the have not only begun to feel Welsh, but it is the first time I country for vistas of greater space and opportunity, a have ever recognised myself as having any identity outside problem that seems far less apparent in post-devolutionary of my personality’. If the potential for a rejuvenated Welsh Wales. arts scene allows us to conceive of a more varied and inclusive form of belonging to Wales, then, how To accept the story that Welsh music prior to Cool Cymru prescriptively should this be policed? Should it be had consisted either of outmoded mass choral dirges or emphatically upbeat in order to mark its distance from the workmanlike pub-rock is to unfairly caricature the pre- past, or should it take account of present troubling realities, Nineties scene. Nevertheless, as music produced within whether or not it also seeks to suggest solutions to them? Wales has grown more eclectic and gained more respect, there has been a proportional reduction in antagonism by It is paradoxical that so many invocations of the heroic past Welsh artists towards their origins. I recall feeling both in Wales, from Owain Glyndŵr to Dic Penderyn onwards, surprise and unease at the Manics’ co-opting of a are reliant on conjuring memories and legends not of victory celebratory Welsh identity, when they had never previously but of struggle, martyrdom, loss and defeat. Echoing appeared to regard flags as anything other than combustible Raymond’s call to ‘respectfully move on from Dylan material. In addition, the band’s residual, essential Thomas’, Moore’s piece ups the ante by stating that many Welshness had inspired borderline-racist treatment in their of his and my generation experienced the Miners’ Strike early outings in the British music press, while their not- only as children or not at all. The epic clashes of the 1980s Welsh-enough origins in the English-speaking Valleys had are indeed so far behind us now as to seem more like prevented their acceptance within a narrow Welsh scene. nightmarish myth than history, but their effects remain This predicament, a stranding in no-man’s-land, was one obvious and substantial, their volatile rawness underlying, with which many Welsh artists could empathise and which for instance, the rituals of community catharsis that a Welsh establishment seemed disinclined to alleviate. The Margaret Thatcher’s death induced. The significance of the sudden change in dynamic between band and nation in the Miners’ Strike as a formative and enduring influence on my late Nineties, from poles of mutual repulsion to a mutually political identity, not to mention the continuing material beneficial embrace, seemed to reflect willingness on both reality of my family and community, is difficult to overstate, sides to consider a more inclusive and mature idea of Welsh and the ability to move on psychologically from such identity. Even if this appeasement stemmed from superficial disturbance does not mean that the social and economic and commercial considerations, its results were more wounds sustained have also healed. While I sympathise helpful than not. with Moore’s desire for the nation to define itself by our best qualities, rather than our worst, he is correct to note that The psychological buoyancy and optimistic exhortations of this will be an uphill struggle both within and outside the Cool Cymru’s cheerleaders, however, stood in stark country. I found it sobering to contrast Raymond’s optimistic contrast to the material conditions which prevailed in much overview of Welsh arts and culture with another recent of Nineties Wales, as the stubbornly post-industrial article in which an external observer tracks the post- economy and Old Labour politics of much of the country industrial Valleys’ economic decline, and its social and made it an awkward fit with the twin triumphalisms of cultural impact, in what sometimes reads like an echo of and Blairism. In addition to the dispiriting micro- the Victorian travelogues which eulogised the beauties of machinations surrounding the attempt to impose Alun the Welsh landscape and largely overlooked its quaint but Michael as London’s man in Cardiff, ’s post- inconvenient natives. socialist direction and the Assembly’s initial lack of tax- raising powers undermined the possibility of any The Valleys is a location over which hands have historically commitment to concrete economic improvement. No longer been wrung, its people objectified as nobly enduring defeat condemned to an industrial past, large areas of the country and oppression whether down the pit, on the pitch or on the remained condemned to a post-industrial future. picket line. Who can say to what extent these hellishly Furthermore, less fashionable aspects of Welsh identity – depressing assessments have been internalised by the the instinctive adherence to socialism, resistance to area’s present inhabitants?? Growing up in the former optimism, and persistence of a chippy outsider coalfield, made constantly aware of the idea of consciousness – were, in a reputedly post-ideological age industrialisation as catastrophe, as the corruption and of class drag and class denial, made to feel like weaknesses exploitation of a pure, resource-rich land, can feel like having

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 32 been born into a peculiar variant of original sin. An specifics. To brush under the national carpet all of alternative view of industrialisation, however, might see it these peculiarities, to smother them in fantasies of also as progress and opportunity, as a catalyst which gave ancient racial purity, the flag, the , or MTV’s rise to great things in the way of working-class organization, predictably execrable The Valleys, does justice to self-education, art, politics and culture – the National Health nothing. Service, for instance, was built around Bevan’s experience of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society. I hope, with extreme Ancestor-worship will remain endemic in a country which and probably naïve optimism, that the end of heavy industry lacks the self-confidence to believe we can produce in Wales might also come to be seen as giving rise to anything to replace the glories, or even the glorious failures, positives as well as negatives, acting as a spur to the of the past. If this situation is on the cusp of change in development of a different way of life. Lamentations over cultural terms, can a similar renewal and seizing of the day the social and economic crisis of the Valleys too often take place in Welsh politics? indulge in sentimental objectification, in preference to attempting to generate an appropriate level of anger and It has been perversely heartening to hear Welsh politicians desire for improvement. They mourn the loss of the spirit using words like ‘atrocity’ to describe current welfare that built the NHS, rather than striving to revive it. reforms, in contrast to the vacillating and equivocating that has characterised the Labour leadership nationally, as well It would be surprising if anyone living in post-industrial as to see Plaid Cymru under Leanne Wood display Wales needed the editorialising of a well-meaning national increasingly sharp flashes of republican socialist steel. As establishment to enlighten them as to their situation. The the acceleration of inequality rolls on under the guise of plight of the Valleys has been insultingly evident for austerity measures, given the relative left-leaning decades. As long ago as 1991, the Manics memorably consensus within Welsh politics and the progressively more claimed that a representation of post-industrial Blackwood ebullient radicalism of Plaid, could Wales carve out an would consist of ‘rubble and shit’ – but in doing so they were alternative path to neoliberalism and austerity which courting attentive recognition, not pity. Focusing on an consolidates and fulfils the political potential of the country’s oversimplified, often romanticised past, however grievous past? This of course would require economic as well as and traumatic its loss, produces only stasis and resentment artistic investment. While it’s one thing to move forward in – but while the stagnating effects of post-industrial identity terms of arts and culture, in socio-economic terms it’s quite are undeniably pernicious, this identity must be articulated another. and acknowledged in order for it to be overcome. Moving on from it needn’t mean considering oneself part of Moore’s Any worthwhile revival of Welsh arts and culture will ‘generation unscarred by the battles of the past’ – any recognise a multiplicity of identities, taking due account of product of the south Welsh coalfield, as of other parts of past traditions and narratives while not allowing them to post-industrial Britain, is thoroughly scarred by the battles obstruct future changes of direction. Meanwhile, any of the past and knows themselves to be. But it does mean worthwhile critical or political engagement with this should that these scars needn’t be one’s defining feature, in one’s recognise the economic effects of the past and their own view or that of outside observers. capacity to stifle social and cultural progression. Wales has come a long way, and that should be applauded, but as we - advance towards these promised sunlit uplands there remain whole handfuls of nettles to be grasped. Pulp’s ‘Last Day of the Miners’ Strike’, a song characteristically attentive to past disasters and their present-day fall-out, hints at the supplanting of historic political struggle with hedonistic euphoria. If modern Welsh identity is to witness the last days of the Miners’ Strike as a touchstone, how will it be replaced? In fashioning an inclusive, non-didactic narrative of modern Wales, tying in a capacity for social criticism and a political potential that draws on past traditions, it is vital to acknowledge the disparate, often overlooked or forgotten, identities which make up the nation. Earlier this year, in the course of examining historical tensions in the cultural and political construction of Welsh identity, I wrote:

… there is no One Wales. Even beyond the country’s Rhian E Jones’ latest linguistic, geographic and political divisions, there book Clampdown: Pop- exist multiple fractured identities, defining themselves Cultural Wars on Class by the local not the national – particularly through and Gender is available being from X, rather than from Cardiff. The Wales of now, and you can read swords and stone circles, drowned lands, dragons her blog at Velvet and druids, Taliesin and Eisteddfodau exists in Coalmine. romance alongside the reality of GLC’s Newport, Gavin & Stacey’s and Simon Price’s Barry Island, the drug-soaked, politically corrupt underworld of Lloyd Robson’s Cardiff Cut, the Valleys anti-romances of Rachel Trezise, and a multitude of other identities scattered and self-contained but highly secure in their

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 33 Jimmy Carter: Truth and Dare

by Ben Glover

There is a perpetual dance. A dance offered by the Washington Post during Unlike Peter Finch’s Howard Beale, in that is as choreographed and the Watergate scandal that ultimately the poignant Network, we are not engineered as any ballet that you have led to the downfall of the Nixon shouting out of the windows ‘I’m as witnessed. However, this dance does Administration or the exposition of mad as hell, and I’m not going to take not possess the beguiling beauty of MP’s expenses by this anymore!’ Instead we acquiesce Swan Lake or the wondrous charms of and Heather Brooke. Political and accept the malaise. The Giselle; instead it is the well rehearsed, journalists can, and often do, offer a distressing truth is we, as a society, are yet utterly impotent, dance of modern vital service to the public who rely upon responsible for the politicians we political discourse. Under the guise of their investigative abilities. acquire – we choose politicians who seeking the truth we, as a massage our collective egos, who disenfranchised electorate, watch a However, for every Heather Brooke or proclaim the tired adages of openness, series of banal politicians pandering to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, equality and community; only to the whims of the general public. These there are many more political observe their continual efforts to politicians continually endeavour to journalists that believe the only way to pursue of special interest and personal capture the imagination of a bored expose the truth from a politician is by reward. If the history of democracy populous by disclosing empty rhetoric claiming it from their cold, dead hands teaches us anything it is that politicians and vague half-truths in the attempt to after besting them in an interview. challenge our collective cognitive curry our favour once every election rules of these dances are unspoken; dissonance are severely punished. cycle; engaging the public just long the politician is unable to tell the whole Jimmy Carter’s infamous ‘Crisis of enough to keep their jobs for another truth, so will attempt to avoid disclosing Confidence’ speech bears testimony to term in office. The popular too much information for fear of this cruel irony. misconception is that these politicians straying ‘off message’, instead they are the gatekeepers to an undeniable deal in platitudes and generalisation. The America of the 1970s was a truth that if fully revealed would In understanding this internal dilemma, wounded beast; it was nation still extinguish their precious careers, whilst the interviewer will feign anger and suffering from the collective traumas of enlightening an entire nation. However, aggression, constantly appearing to be the Vietnam War, Watergate and the we are consoled by the thought that dismayed at the politician’s lack of assassinations of Martin Luther King there are many others in our society, integrity and honesty. If the politicians Jnr, and of John and Robert Kennedy. such as the Fourth Estate that will in this dance of discourse are the Prima The faith of the American people, in the continually engage and scrutinize the Ballerinas, then the journalists are institutions of government, was shaken political caste on our behalf; this unquestionably the Premier Danseur to its very foundations. The electorate delegation of responsibility allows us Nobles, with the public watching on in demanded a President to purify the freedom not to be constantly the stalls; marvelling at its effortless Washington of the stench of these conscious of current political discourse. posturing and captivated by its utter scandals and would welcome any Yet the malaise that engulfs us endures. futility. candidate who promised a return to the politics of a more innocent day when The Fourth Estate has always been a The final act of this dance of the special interest groups did not govern powerful force in British politics; the politicians reveals a disturbing and the country. Enter a peanut farmer from concept that the free press will serve uncomfortable scenario: the reason America’s Deep South; a man so as a watchman against the hubris of why our elected figures do not (and unrecognised that the media the political cabal is as comforting as it possibly cannot) burden us with the bequeathed him the insulting moniker is essential for democracy to thrive. pure, unadulterated truth is because of ‘Jimmy Who?’ during his successful Witness the checks and balances we castigate the politicians who do. presidential campaign in 1976. From

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 34 the very beginning of his political attempted to hide nothing in his brutally affecting the American people is not a career as a State Senator for Georgia, honest description of the malaise that problem that can be solved with Jimmy Carter was never an obvious struck at the very heart and soul of the government legislation or executive choice to be President of the United national will. In his uniquely, action. Instead Carter admonishes the States, but his quiet and humble staccatissimo Southern drawl, Jimmy American people; stating that ‘…there demeanour belied a self confidence Carter addressed a curious and is a growing disrespect for government and arrogance that has rarely been concerned nation – and for churches and for schools, the witnessed in Washington DC, the news media, and other institutions. spiritual heart of paranoia and avarice. We can see this crisis in the This is not a message of happiness or During the first few months of his growing doubt about the reassurance, but it is the truth and it is presidency, Carter was determined to meaning of our own lives and in a warning.’ re-establish faith in the federal the loss of a unity of purpose for government, both actual and our nation. The erosion of our However, it would be misleading to metaphysical, by confirming to the confidence in the future is present this speech as an entirely public that he was everything his threatening to destroy the social revolutionary departure from the predecessors had not been. He was and political fabric of America. normal conventions of political not the paranoid crook Richard Nixon dialogue, akin to Dudley Moore’s had been nor was he a warmonger like […] In a nation that was proud portrayal of an honest advertising Lyndon B. Johnson; instead he of hard work, strong families, executive on the verge of a nervous focused on placing God and human close-knit communities, and our breakdown in Crazy People. There are rights at the centre of his decision- faith in God, too many of us now many instances when Jimmy Carter making process. tend to worship self-indulgence returns to the stereotypical rhetoric and consumption. Human expected by the public; there are It soon became evident that despite his identity is no longer defined by platitudes concerning ‘…the decency powerful position, the House of what one does, but by what one and the strength and the wisdom of the Representatives and the Senate were owns. But we’ve discovered that American people’, and the outlining of both overwhelmingly under Democratic owning things and consuming a common enemy to which the public control; Carter was struggling to have things does not satisfy our can gather around Old Glory and any significant impact upon the political longing for meaning. regain their spiritual purpose. There are landscape. A combination of global numerous examples of this. Yet, even crises, his lack of any tangible The themes of Jimmy Carter’s ‘Crisis with consideration to these truisms, the experience and his naïve arrogance, of Confidence’ speech were obvious, essence of the speech is startling, meant that his presidency began to a collective political apathy and a being more comparable to a sermon lose direction. Events began to crippling energy crisis, but there was than a political articulation. The themes dominate his time as president, instead also an underlying anxiety from the of confession, redemption and sacrifice of instigating policies and driving the President which was palpable. Perhaps are not just alluded to, but are explicitly political debate forward, it seemed that Carter’s great strength, his single- expressed. Jimmy Carter was Jimmy Carter had been demoted to the minded honesty, was also his greatest attempting to guide the American level of manager and not the Leader of frailty. In troubling times, presidents, people into the spiritual process that he the Free World that his electorate had prime ministers and monarchs have had endured, like Moses leading the hoped for. It was becoming always appeared publicly resolute, Children of Israel out of the desert; conspicuously apparent that Jimmy attempting never to reveal their Carter hoped to escort his people to a Carter had little aptitude for the role of personal doubts and insecurities, promised land and the opportunity of Prima Ballerina. rather always stubbornly adhering to redemption. Whether it was political their policies regardless of apparent expediency or the pursuit of a higher By the summer of 1979 the Carter consequences. For instance, Franklin moral calling that led Carter to administration realised that the general D. Roosevelt never publicly allowed a pronounce a recalibration of what it public was losing confidence in their moment’s doubt that his federal was to be an American, the fact president; there was spiralling inflation, stimulus would lead the United States remains that this speech is a high water fuel prices were escalating and petrol through their darkest hours; the fear mark for honesty in Western political stations were running dry. However, was that uncertainty could derail his discourse. Jimmy Carter perceived a much fragile economic experiment. However, greater issue that was affecting the Jimmy Carter’s approach has a level Jimmy Carter is possibly the greatest United States, a crisis of confidence, of vulnerability and perplexity that is testament to the duplicity of the public not just concerning himself but in the rarely witnessed in a role that in their political choices. According to nature of American democracy as well. manifestly demands foresight and Hendrik Hertzberg, author of the ‘Crisis On July 15 1979, the President gave absolute conviction. A testament to this of Confidence’ speech, ‘Carter was potentially one of the boldest speeches perspective is how he openly offers a exactly what the American people say of any politician in living memory, in critique of his presidency, using third they want [in a politician] – above which he identifies the issues that have party testimonies to highlight his politics, determined to do the right thing beset the nation and attempts to outline potential shortcomings, before asking regardless of political consequences, a solution that he hopes may rekindle rhetorical questions, in which the only a simple person who does not lie, a the lost fire of brash American conclusions that can be drawn magnify modest man, not somebody with a lot confidence. Knowing that the nation his deficiencies. Then, in a truly of imperial pretences. That’s what had not recovering from government unorthodox departure from the theories people say they want and that’s what lies, cover-ups and political scandal of modern political discourse, Jimmy over the previous decade, Carter Carter warns that the current malaise

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 35 they got with Jimmy Carter.’ However, such as ‘the Founders intend…’, ‘our political advertising quoted in the New in the Darwinian world of politics, children deserve…’ and ‘we are all in York Times: survival is determined by public opinion this together…’ are meaningless – and Jimmy Carter became a byword designed specifically to resonate with First of all, ads are propaganda for presidential failure, a one term a disengaged populous. In this era of by definition. We are in the president who lacked the skills required post-truth politics some politicians, with persuasion business, the for global leadership. Instead the their Newspeak sleight-of-tongue, can propaganda business… Ads are electorate fittingly chose an actor, who rewrite history and reincarnate agitprop… Ads are about talked in simple terms of a better future. themselves as a person of integrity. hyperbole, they are about A President who would not challenge Now we are merely just consumers editing. It’s ludicrous for them to the public to think too deeply on making political brand choices, as say that an ad is taking complex issues; where perspective and opposed to Aristotle’s proposition that something out of context… All truth became highly subjective, and ‘man is by nature a political animal’ in ads do that. They are honesty just a thin veneer. The which the electorate is constantly manipulative pieces of American people got the leader that engaged and challenging the persuasive art. they really wanted, not just a leader conventions of society. This that they said they wanted. disconnection, between reality and the Jimmy Carter might not have been the public chimera, allows politicians to first President to challenge his This apparent dichotomy arises from re-brand themselves, and their policies, electorate by asking them to re- our collective insecurities; we find it with all the advantages of hindsight and evaluate their own expectation and reassuring when politicians massage neologisms. However, the issue is far beliefs with brutal honesty, but he may our egos with meretricious phrases deeper than a veneer of marketing, our be the last for a few generations. We which they cravenly use as a cudgel to apathy and compliance in this dance, get the politicians we deserve – enjoy project whatever provincial concerns has allowed an Orwellian industry to be the dance. they, or their political party, may wish created – witness the Mitt Romney to advance. Monolithic utterances, campaign’s view on the purpose of

Women and Parliament

by Jenny Willott MP

This year marks the hundreth Unfortunately, however, many of the similarly ‘missing’ in other spheres of anniversary of the death of Emily issues championed by Emily Davison public life: just 36% of public Wilding Davison, who was fatally and other equalitarian campaigners are appointments are women; 13% of the injured by King George V’s horse at the still relevant today. For example, pay senior judiciary; and 5% of editors of Epsom Derby on 4th June 1913 while differentials between men and women national daily newspapers. The campaigning for women’s suffrage. persist; horrific injustices are absence is particularly marked in Great strides have been made since committed against women around the finance and big business: there are no then: in 1928, the Representation of world and in this country, including women at all on the Bank of England the People (Equal Franchise) Act forced marriages, honour killings and Monetary Policy Committee, just 11% extended the vote to all women over female genital mutilation; and in UK bank chief executive positions the age of 21; in August 1958, women representation of women in public and and 17% in FTSE 100 director entered the House of Lords for the first private sector organisations is still positions. time, thanks to the Life Peerages Act; nowhere near 50%. and in 1963, with the passage of the We are seeing progress: 143 of the650 Peerage Act, hereditary peeresses Where I work, in Parliament, men MPs elected in the 2010 General were also permitted entry to the Lords. outnumber women 4 to 1. Women are Election were women, the highest

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 36 number and proportion ever; at the roles. As we see more women taking In wider UK society, I think we are National Assembly for Wales, women up leadership roles in different areas I moving towards a less clearly comprise 40%. Several women have hope it will encourage other women to delineated view of what is ostensibly also broken into hitherto male- believe not only that they can achieve ‘male’ and what is ‘female’. There are dominated environments: earlier this those positions, but also that they want still undeniably professions which are year Fiona Woolf was elected Lord to do so. Certainly, when it comes to dominated by one sex or the other, Mayor of London, only the second politics, I meet many women who such as primary school teaching or woman in the institution’s 800-year would make excellent parliamentary engineering, but barriers are gradually history, and Dame Heather Carol candidates but who would never stand being broken down. On a superficial Hallett has this month been appointed because they believe that the life of an note, some men now get their Vice-President of the Criminal Division MP is incompatible with their family eyebrows waxed or have a fake tan of the Court of Appeals. But we are not commitments. As more female (and, (though this is arguably an unfortunate there yet. for that matter, male) MPs show that equalisation of social pressures to you can have a young family and still conform to an image of what is There has been much debate, in the be a good MP, I hope that perceptions attractive). UK and at a European level, over the will start to change. idea of gender quotas in the workplace. Instead of pitting one sex against the Personally, I don’t believe this is the other in a zero-sum game, we need to way to go – I think there is a real value diversity and view our differences danger that quotas undermine women as complimentary, not contradictory. who then achieve positions of Having people with a variety of responsibility, whether as politicians or experiences results in more informed on company boards, suggesting they and rounded debate, which I believe are only there as a token gesture rather leads to better choices, whether than on merit. Campaigners like Emily business decisions or government Davison were proponents of the equal- policy. That’s why I want to see people rights tradition of feminism, asking for in Parliament from a variety of no favours, only for a level playing field. backgrounds, whether in terms of It seems to me that quotas can create education, previous career, race, a different kind of imbalance, rather disability or gender. All these elements than smoothing the ground. shape us, and given MPs are meant to represent the people of this country, it There is also a danger that a focus on is important we are as disparate as the quotas builds a misapprehension that UK population. getting women elected is an end in itself – 50% women on boards, tick, What, then, can we expect in the that’s that problem solved. The whole future? As the centenary of Emily reason we need more women Davison’s death focuses attention on represented in senior positions is women’s suffrage and gender equality, because I believe this results in better the picture is mixed. There are still decision-making, not just for women plenty of examples of inequality and but for companies themselves and Of course, more women at the top can discrimination, but there are also plenty society as a whole. There has been also help shape workplaces to better of reasons to be hopeful. extensive research around the world fit the needs of female employees, showing a direct correlation between which would then in turn make it easier The sitting hours of the House of representation of women board for women to stay in the workplace and Commons recently changed to become directors and higher financial make their way to the top. In more family-friendly, backed by both performance. When women are under- Parliament, part of the reason we need male and female MPs. This is one represented on corporate boards, more female MPs is to make sure that small example of how both sexes are companies are missing out, as they are issues that women care about are high increasingly looking for the same unable to draw from the widest possible up on the Government’s agenda. But changes to the status quo, which range of talent. The same applies in there is a danger that we create false benefit both men and women. I don’t Parliament, the judiciary, or any other divisions between ‘men’s issues’ and think gender equality is off the agenda, area of public life. The people involved ‘women’s issues’, based on outdated but perhaps future gender equality in selecting board members or other stereotypes. In reality childcare today campaigns will not be so senior figures need to be appointing is of great concern to many young overwhelmingly composed of women women because they understand they fathers as well as young mothers; we seeking equal rights to men, but will have something of value to contribute, have our first female Defence Minister, include more men seeking changes, not because they feel they have to, or Anna Soubry MP, demonstrating that not least because they are as women will simply be nominated to not only men are interested in our disadvantaged as women by issues positions in title only, without their armed forces and how we protect our like working practices which fail to fit voices actually being listened to. country. Likewise, we must avoid with a family life. talking about women as if we are a Much of the problem is also an issue homogenous block who think one way, of perception amongst women whilst men are another group with a themselves, which prevents them from completely different mindset. putting themselves forward for senior

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 37 Cambriol

by Jon Gower

The history and survival of the Welsh colony in Patagonia, Country stand in greater need of, then the Inhabitants… which celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2015, has been by reason of their Mountaines and hills, which cause the subject of whole shelves of books and many TV the winter there to be most bitter with stormy winds, documentaries, not to mention two recent movies, raine, or snow, and that for the space of eight moneths… Patagonia and Separado! It’s certainly the most famous overseas adventure by the Welsh, with the status, almost, There is no evidence that Vaughan ever visited of national myth. to assess it in advance of sending settlers, or to fully consider any mercantile possibilities, unlike, say, Yet the idea of establishing a specifically ‘Welsh’ community Lewis Jones who visited Patagonia three years before the in another part of the world emerged long before the settlers from Wales travelled there in 1865. But the mid-nineteenth century, and the famous journey across the existence of an earlier and established fishery in the area south Atlantic on a clipper ship, the Mimosa, out of gave Vaughan hope that the settlement would be Liverpool. As early as the 1610s, Sir sustainable, in terms of fish, at least. For, as he put it: ‘I saw sought to establish a Welsh community called ‘Cambriol’ in that God had reserved the Newfoundland for us Britaines.’ Newfoundland, almost two and a half centuries before the settlement in Chubut. The newly-found land had already been claimed for Henry Tudor by the Venetian John Cabot, who had sailed out of Vaughan was a polymath and peregrinator, a man of many Bristol in May 1497. Two months later, this maritime talents: an Oxford educated lawyer, scholar and poet. After adventurer, was steadfastly bound for the far shore of the a Grand Tour of France and Italy he studied for a further north Atlantic, in search of the then legendary North West degree at the University of Vienna and on his return to Passage through northern Canada to Japan and China. Wales he became High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire. His Like Christopher Columbus, who discovered America five early adult life was blighted by a freak accident and family years earlier, Cabot was searching for a sea-route to tragedy when his wife Elizabeth died as a result of lightning connect with the Far East and the fabled treasure houses striking their home. and chests of India and China.

The ensuing, deep grief had a profound effect on Vaughan, The North West Passage! This was a veritable grail for who at the same time became utterly sickened by the navigators and could not be found, or even looked for, poverty all around him in Carmarthenshire. He saw an without facing real and terrible dangers. As if proof was answer, if not the complete answer, in overseas needed, even as late as 1845 the perilous acres of ice at colonisation. His often oddball writings comment on the sad King William Island trapped Sir John Franklin and the crews state of Wales at the time, and castigate his fellow of his venturing ships the Erebus and the Terror. Not a countrymen for a lack of energy and enthusiasm, while his frozen soul survived. vision of an overseas colony was perhaps too confident and overambitious right from the start. Wales though was What Cabot had found was a three sided island, with a land over-populated, and Vaughan railed against a certain mass slightly larger than that of Ireland. He also found fecklessness that was responsible for the desertification of plentiful fish. Cabot would be followed by many like-minded the mountains and the poor crops of the wheat fields. He adventurers and questers, such as Martin Frobisher, not to wrote about a country stricken by poverty: mention two intrepid Welshmen, Sir Thomas Button from Cardiff and Captain Thomas James of Monmouthshire. Although many strange sicknesses haue diuers times They all faced winters of paralysing cold, complete with the of late yeares afflicted us, yet notwithstanding, the dangers and oppressions of endless ice or enshrouding fog multitudes of people are here so great, that thousands and mist. yearly doe perish for want of reliefe. Yea, I haue known in these last deare yeares, that 100 persons haue yearly But the fabled North-West passage wasn’t the only reason died in a parish, where the Tithes amounted not to for such risks: it also allowed countries to claim new lands fourscore pounds a yeare, the most part for lacke of and territories, through force of arms or simple subterfuge, food, fire and raiment, the which the poorer sort of that leading to the bitter and bloody disputes between England

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 38 and France over land in eastern Canada. and entirely remote, St Helena island suggested a certain impracticality if not downright fantasy in his way of thinking. This period was one of the high water marks of global exploration. Spain had already been busy in colonising But Newfoundland, if nothing else, was nearer Britain, and through the various voyages of Columbus, followed some Vaughan was probably seduced by the persuasive flow of seventy five years later by English settlements in Virginia. propaganda, expressly designed to lure settlers and a flow Famously, and contemporaneously with William Vaughan’s of investment to its rugged shores and wooded slopes, ultimately doomed adventure in Newfoundland, was the coincidentally and strategically thwarting the French desire voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, bringing the Pilgrim to also own the place. Vaughan’s ambitions must also have Fathers to a new home, and religious freedom, in Plymouth, been bolstered, too, by the achievements of his talented Massachusetts. Scottish friend, Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, who had managed to conjure Nova Scotia into being. From Cabot’s time onwards it was known that there were plentiful stocks of fish to be had in the churning cold seas In 1617 Vaughan sent some men and women – there is no off the island’s coast, promising both food and, ultimately, accurate figure of how many exactly – at his own cost to wealth. Commentators averred that ‘the sea there is full of the patch of earth he had baptized as Cambriol. It was a fish that can be taken not only with nets but with fishing- land he would later describe as being ‘entirely bountiful,’ baskets.’ Little wonder then that the seemingly illimitable although the reality would prove a little more austere and cod of the Grand Banks attracted tough fishermen from harsh: Devon, France, Spain – and especially the skilled sailors of the Basque country – and Portugal to cast their nets. The commodities of the Land are Furres of Beuer, Sables, Blacke Foxes, Marternes, Musk-rats, Otters, Vaughan knew all this and in 1578 a very favourable report and such like skinnes, as also of greater beasts; as appeared. It was written by Anthony Parkhurst and, perhaps Deere, and other wild creatures. To this I adioyne the a little too enthusiastically, described the quality and benefit, which may be made by woods, being pine, fecundity of the land, hinted at the value of the forests and birch, spruce, Furre, &c. fit for boords, Masts, barke for by way of clincher, suggested that the natives were benign. tanning, and dying, Charcoales for making of Iron. Out Later documents would suggest that these Indians could of these woods we may haue pitch, Tarre, Rosen, be ‘ruled wisely’ and thus ensure their obedience and Turpentine, Frankinscence, and honey out of the hollow furthermore that ‘only by establishing a settlement on the trees, as in Muscouy, and heretofore in our owne woods island could the poor pagans of the Country be led from before they were converted to the Iron Mills. There is their Barbarism to a knowledge of God and thus ensure great store of Mettals, if they be lookt after. their salvation.’ The cost of each passage was probably of the order of ten In August 1583 the island was officially claimed by Sir shillings a head, at a time when the trip to Virginia would Humphrey Gilbert on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I with the have cost five pounds. The settlers were taken to the area aim of encouraging the fishermen to settle the land, but near Trepassey. Vaughan soon ‘realized that the burden many of these only visited in the summer, and there was was too great for my weak shoulders.’ also the matter of French boats harrying and harassing the fishing fleets to dissuade those thinking of putting down new On the Grand Banks and other banks offshore it was found roots. reasonably simple to seek out the fish stocks at any time during the season, but inshore, where most of the English James I then authorised merchant adventurers to settle ships fished, a knowledge of the fishing grounds took years Newfoundland, with a Bristolian, John Guy, taking to acquire, and was added to in each generation. The advantage of this Royal Assent to create a settlement but inshore fishery was dependent on the cod migrating from an ultra hard winter in 1613, not to mention unruly settlers, their offshore feeding and breeding grounds, each year in sent him sailing home, tail coat between his legs. By 1660 early summer, and each harbour and inlet had certain only 150 families from England had crossed the Atlantic, so peculiarities. pioneers, and the basic skills needed to pioneer, were in short supply. The Spanish, Portuguese and French, concentrated on fishing on the Banks off Newfoundland where fish could Vaughan wasn’t among those who took up King James’ always be found; the catch was salted on board the ships early offer of land but in 1616 he bought himself a and brought back to Europe to be dried and sold. Even substantial tract. Indeed, he purchased the entire Avalon when they fished near shore these fishermen usually used peninsula south of a line from Caplin Bay (now called abundant supplies of salt. The English fishermen did not Calvert) stretching across to Placentia Bay, which he then have access to the supplies of salt that were available to christened Cambriol, thus creating a little Wales in the New the others and could not salt their fish to the same extent. World. The itself was so named ‘in They were, however, able to develop a system which imitation of Old Avalon in Somerset wherein Glassenbury combined light salting for a short period, followed by stands, the first fruits of Christianity in Britain.’ thorough washing, and then drying in the open air. The result was the light-salted product for which Newfoundland Vaughan had thus nursed his desire to establish a foreign eventually became famous. colony for a long time, and there are hints of that desire in a book called The Golden Grove which appeared in 1600, The settlers from Wales certainly had their work cut out. purporting to help ‘all such as would know how to gouerne Importantly, the Welsh migrants might not even have been themselves, their houses and their country.’ The fact that fishermen in the first place: we simply do not know if they he had at one time entertained the idea of settling far off, had actually left agricultural lives in the Tywi valley. Nets,

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 39 salt, tides and swell might well have been entirely Calvert and Falkland. The map also shows six Welsh place mysterious to them. names, arranged in a semi-circle, namely Brechonia, Cardigan, Pembrok, Cardiffe and Glamorgan. Vaughan’s So, ill equipped, especially for the severe weather, the old home, Golden Grove, has its Newfoundland counterpart, Cambriol venture quickly foundered, with the colonists too on the map, as well as ‘Colchos’ and the eponymous seeking refuge in the harbour of Aquaforte, where they ‘Vaughan’s Cove’ nearby. spent the bleak winter months huddled in temporary cabins built by migratory fishermen for summer use. Just as the establishment of the Welsh colony in Patagonia would later be touted in scores of books and many To compound their problems the other fishermen who had documentary series as a tale of stubbornness, grit and, been lured here were in no mood to share the fishy spoils ultimately, success, Vaughan equally promoted and did their best to interfere with the newcomers’ catch. Newfoundland in an unusual book The Golden Fleece which The French, in particular, had designs on claiming land, and appeared in 1626. they attacked the Welsh pioneers, scaring them with the intention of driving them away. In the face of these extra The Golden Fleece, transported from Cambriol Colchis, by challenges in 1618 Vaughan hired the experienced fishing Orpheus Junior, is a long and fantastic prose allegory, master Richard Whitborne to bring further colonists and dealing with the ‘Errours of Religion, the Vices and Decayes provisions to bolster the precarious settlement, and of the Kingdome, and lastly the Wayes to get wealth, and appointed him governor. to restore Trading’ through the colonisation of Newfoundland. Colchis was a reference to the mythical land Whitborne, a man with brine running in his veins in lieu of on the Eastern edge of the Black Sea, the departure point blood, had been pretty much born to the sea. He had been for Jason and the Argonauts in the Greek tale. Vaughan a sailor even as a young boy and had first visited was giving the adventure the apparatus of myth, and its Newfoundland in 1579. He was to become a renowned loftiness. captain and navigator, winning plaudits for his bravery during the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Whitborne Vaughan divided this eccentric literary outpouring into three did his best to reorganise the colony, beginning by moving parts, namely an attack on the Church in Rome; an account it to better quarters in Renews, but, even as he did so, he of the parlous state of the Empire and a section which had to deal with the consequences of one of his own ships purported to show ‘how to win money and to renew trade being attacked by piratical deserters from Sir Walter that’s the subject of so much complaining.’ This latter part Raleigh’s Guyana fleet. On another occasion, despite is was Vaughan’s own sales pitch for this northern island: nautical skills and experience, he was attacked by a French pirate ship and relieved of £860, which, in those days, would Towards the North, the land is more hilly and woody; have been a king’s ransom. but the South part, from Renoos, to Trepassa, plaine and champaine euen for 30. miles in extent. It abounds In the end only half a dozen colonists spent the winter of with Deere, as well fallow Deere, as Ellans, which are 1619 at Renews and they were forced to abandon the as bigge as our Oxen. And of all other sorts of wilde settlement completely the following year. Vaughan’s own Beasts, as here in Europe, Beuers, Hares, &c. The like health wasn’t sufficiently robust to visit the island during this I may /say: (23)/ say for Fowle and Fish. I knew one period, and thus offer encouragement to his own pioneers. Fowler in a winter, which killed aboue 700. Partridges himselfe at Renoos. But for the Fish, specially the Cod, Vaughan retained his property south of Renfrews, after which drawes all the chiefe Port townes in selling off the area to Sir George Calvert and a Christendome to send thither some ships euery yeare, plot in to Lord Falkland. Calvert built a house on either to fish, or to buy the same; it is most wonderfull, the island, but persistent harrying by the French led to its and almost incredible, vnlesse a man were there eventual abandonment, too. There is no real evidence that present to behold it. Of these, three men at Sea in a Vaughan made any further attempts at colonisation, though Boat, with some on shoare to dresse and dry them, in some sources claim he set up a short-lived settlement near thirty dayes will kill commonly betwixt fiue and twenty Trepassey. A trifle late in the day Vaughan may have visited and thirty thousand, worth with the Traine oyle arising the island for two extended stays, between 1622 and 1625 from them, one hundred or sixe score pounds. I haue and 1628 and 1630, although not everyone agrees that he heard of some Countries, commended for their twofold did actually visit the islands in person. haruest, which here we haue, although in a different kinde: yet both as profitable, I dare say, as theirs so Even in 1630 he still had vestigial hope for settling the new much extolld. There is no such place againe in the world found land, and suggested that grants of land might be for a poore man to raise his fortunes, comparable to forthcoming saying that ‘Our noble brother-in-law, Sir Henry this Plantation, for in one moneths space, with Salisbury, with some gentlemen of north Wales, will next reasonable paines, he may get as much as will pay both Spring proceed to do something in that country which with Land-lords Rent, Seruants wages, and all Houshold open arms awaits their coming.’ charges, for the whole yeare, and so the rest of his gaine to increase. Vaughan, if nothing else, managed to make some marks in the island’s history. A splendid map of the area was drawn Vaughan’s Golden Fleece was the latest addition to a small up in 1625 by ‘Captaine John Mason, an industrious gent: but growing shelf of persuasive volumes, such as who spent seven yeares in the Countrey,’ who was also the Whitbourne’s book about Newfoundland, published six second governor of the island.’ Cambriola is clearly marked, years earlier – and already reprinted three times: His showing the extent of Vaughan’s holdings, and Avalonia is governor, Whitbourne’s useful and detailed Discourse and also clearly marked, being the area transferred early on to Discovery of Newfoundland, came complete ‘with many

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 40 many reasons to prove how worthy and beneficiall a Jason and the Argonauts’ courage in the face of a myriad Plantation may there be made, after a far better manner dangers, from harpies to sirens. Vaughan’s attempt to settle than it now is. Together with the laying open of certaine a far-off and treacherous place, and the literary account of enormities and abuses committed by some that trade to the endeavours that followed, foreshadows accounts of the that Country, and the meanes laid downe for reformation later Patagonian adventure, which would similarly be thereof.’ Other books traversed the same terrain, such as redacted employing the language of myth. John Mason’s comprehensive A briefe discourse of the New-found-land, which also appeared in 1620. These books In the case of Y Wladfa in Patagonia it would generate sought not only to attract people to settle but more nothing short of a small library of such accounts and texts, importantly encourage people to invest in the overseas while Vaughan’s claimed land would be swallowed up in venturing. the fog of history’s forgetfulness.

The allusion to the Golden Fleece says a lot about Vaughan’s aim in penning his allegory, evoking, as it does,

Postcards From The Basque Country

by Dylan Moore

The first thing it did was rain. As the interests’. Each nation, to varying if I talked about the importance of sport long-distance grey and blue ALSA bus degrees, has had its nationalists, those in forging and expressing a cultural pulled into and then out of the red and who would argue strongly that in both identity, or how the countryside is still grey city of Bilbao, up into the hills of places there is a strong case for characterised by a timeless the Basque country, it began to drizzle ‘geographical collision’, that the cultural combination of small market towns and in such a way as to make the grey and nation deserves a political recognition. scattered farmhouses. the green settle in my mind as well as And both have achieved a greater on the window of the coach. I degree of political recognition and The two countries are to a large extent recognised the feeling, as well as the autonomy in the last thirty years. defined by the continuing stubborn weather, straight away. After months existence of their respective minority of unending Mediterranean sunshine Some of the parallels between Wales languages, each of which has survived on the arid east coast of Spain, the and the Basque country are well against the odds, each protected to Basque rain provoked a deep and documented, the Basques having some degree by the mountainous immediate hiraeth. It was not only a become something of a cause celebre landscape of the homeland. Here longing for home, but a confirmation for aspiring nationalists in all small Euskera and Cymraeg took refuge as that, wherever I go in the world, and for European nations. Even the most the territories associated with their however long, Wales will always be cursory resumé of national statistics speakers were subsumed by dominant that home. I suppose I am telling you reveals some startling similarities. neighbours in the process of becoming this personal story because perhaps it Wales is a country of 8,022 square imperial world powers. And just as confirms, at least in my mind, the very miles, with a population of 3 million. Cymru is the land of the Cymry, Herri existence of something called a nation. The Basque Country is a region of in Euskera means a country, a nation, 8,088 square miles with a population a people or settlement; therefore the According to theory, Wales and the of 3 million. If I described a primarily native term Euskal Herria for what the Basque Country are both examples of agrarian country whose towns and Spanish call ‘el Pais Vasco’, and ‘assimilated peripheral nations’; they cities nevertheless rapidly expanded therefore in English we call ‘the Basque share the very loose definition of being through in-migration to host heavy Country’, is a useful clue in formed from ‘a community of people industries that served the purposes of understanding Basque self-perception. who share a common language, the wider state beyond its borders, you ‘Country of Basque Speakers’ culture, ethnicity, descent or history’ would be right in guessing at either. foregrounds the language to such an without a general recognition of the Likewise if I were to explain how post- extent that we are forced to consider ‘much more impersonal, abstract and industrial decline has led to the rise of whether that, above all else perhaps, overtly political’ definition of a Nation service industries and cultural tourism, is what a nation might be: a linguistic State; that is, ‘a cultural-political or how the principal cities have grouping. It’s a difficult proposition to community that has become conscious undergone large-scale regeneration make in a country where only 19% of of its coherence, unity and particular projects centred on iconic buildings, or the population speak Cymraeg, but is

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 41 but is made doubly interesting by the The history of the Basques, as the very association with a single wing of fact that only 27% of the population of name of its ancient capital – Gernika in opinion within the region meant it ‘Euskal Herria’ currently speak its native orthology – and the simple wasn’t until 1938 and Franco’s Euskera, and that despite, in the post- three-letter acronym ETA (Euskadi Ta prohibition of the flag that it became a Franco years at least, much of the Askatasuna – Basque Homeland and powerful symbol of defiance (used social engineering we would recognise Freedom) attest, is one of violent, frequently by ETA and only legalised here. bloody struggle. Under Franco, like in 1977). Likewise the heraldic symbol other ‘regionalist’ flags – that of of the Basque Country is the Zazpiak The dominant Basque landscapes are Catalunya, for example – the ikurrina Bat (‘the seven are one’), a coat of dramatic coastlines and endless green was outlawed. The blood that R.S. arms that depicts all seven of the mountains. Walking the norte – the Thomas saw as going into ‘the making regions (Vizcaya, Gipuzkoa and Alava, rugged northern route of the Camino of the wild sky’ in Wales is here not plus Navarre in Spain, and Labourd, de Santiago – I was perpetually struck consigned to the ‘past’, ‘sham ghosts’, Soule and Lower Navarre in France) by sights that reminded me of home. ‘quarries and mines’. The last serious was designed in 1897. It was during The low-key surf town of Zarautz put armed national liberation struggle does this period that ideas of the territorial me in mind of Solva, Calle San not date to a time of cattle rustling and integrity of a Basque ‘nation’ spanning Francisco in downtown Bilbao made castle razing; it is very much in living the existing political borders was me think of Grangetown, and memory, the final ETA ceasefire developed, and it was through somewhat strangely, and movingly, announcement coming just two years emblematic representation that this Guernica reminded me of Machynlleth. ago. Even now, in the tentative peace ideal was best expressed. Maybe, especially after that emotional that exists, there are very public arrival, where the ALSA bus out of campaigns to repatriate the political The contemporary prevalence of Bilbao made me recall the exact feeling prisoners of the bloody conflict. silhouetted maps of this integral I used to get on the National Express territory further underscores the power out of Cardiff – past Castell Coch and Modern European nationalisms were a of pictorial representation to create out into the hinterlands of RCT and result of and reaction to the late ideas of nationhood in the minds of the Merthyr – I was looking for it. There has nineteenth century’s fortification of the populace. Indeed, Professor Steven even been research to suggest these nation state as the world’s primary, and Weber of the University of Berkeley, two tribes, occupying actually very later only, way of organising its California, has posited the theory that different mountain nations on Western territories. In the Basque Country, and the idea of the nation state was Europe’s wet Atlantic Fringe, are – Wales, as elsewhere, there were prefigured by fifteenth century despite Euskera’s famous status as a revivals in questions of nationality that developments in mapmaking non Indo-European ‘language isolate’ laid the ground for the course each technology; certainly the issue of a – genetically linked. nation was to take in the twentieth country’s border has been at the century and beyond. A comparison of forefront of politics and war for at least However, as tempting as it is to see the trajectories of nationalism in each the last half-millennium. It might be only the parallels the differences are country allows us to see the very idea tempting therefore to see the antiquity striking too. As noticeable as the of a nation; and, depending on your of Offa’s Dyke – an eighth century Cambrian-esque landscape of Euskal point of view, a nation is nothing if not, construction – as a pleasing piece of Herria are the manner of nationalist or nothing but, an idea. evidence of Wales’ territorial continuity, sentiments. ‘Tourist: You are neither in relative to the chequered and Spain nor France. You are in the Nations are constructed identities. somewhat lesser-known history of the Basque Country,’ announces a banner Sometimes they coincide with Euskera-speaking peoples. But one in the heart of Donostia/San geography or language or ethnicity, but might need only look to evidence as Sebastian’s old town. It is an none of these are a precondition. In recent as the Local Government Act unnecessary assertion. A visitor to Cymru and in Euskal Herria, the 1972, which finally settled centuries of Gipuzkoa, one of the Spanish landscapes may be similar and the ambiguity of the status of Autonomous Community of the Basque languages may have endured a Monmouthshire within Wales, or Country’s three constituent regions, parallel battle to survive but much of indeed to a Wales that includes or has could hardly fail to notice the banners the insignia, regalia and quasi-national included, in addition to the many official depicting a united Euskadi, stretching paraphernalia associated with each changes in local administration, across the France-Spain border, in country today is the product of the last popularly recognised regions such as silhouette, together with nationalist 150 years of sometimes slow and ‘Y Fro’, ‘the Valleys’, ‘the Marches’, slogans, that hang like washing from haphazard, but nevertheless ‘Border Country’ and ‘Little England every other apartment. In neighbouring deliberate, nation building. Beyond Wales’. Like the Basque Vizcaya, as well as the red-and-white Country, Wales is not linguistically or stripes of Athletic Club Bilbao replacing Let’s take the Basque example. The culturally homogenous. Surveys like the blue-and-white of San Sebastian’s ikurrina, which has come to be the one conducted in the province of Real Sociedad, there is also a wider recognised as the national flag, was Navarre, finding that 71% of preference for the ikurrina – the originally designed in 1894 by Luis and respondents did not define themselves Basque national flag. Here, despite the Sabino Arana, founders of the Basque as Basque and 53% opposed flag’s red, white and green livery (yet National Party, the EAJ-PNV. Although measures to support Euskera as a another reminder of Wales) politics is it depicts the red earth of Vizcaya, a language, sound familiar even if the a way of life in a way far more green saltire represents the oak of figures do not tally exactly with comparable to the North of Ireland. Guernica – the tree which symbolises perspectives in, say for example, the ancient fueros or laws – and the Flintshire. white cross of the Catholic church, its

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 42 The lesson of history is therefore that, aspects of the family myth that have looked, in the dappled sunlight of forest far from being what it purports to be – been a help or a hindrance in the past. glades and in the misty mornings and a fixed point or common thread – the In 1983, the theorist Benedict quiet harbours, and in the bustling idea of a nation is a fluid and malleable Anderson wrote of nations that they are market towns and green, green hills, one. At times, it hardens into a fixity; ‘imagined communities’. And so as I the landscape told a different story. these are perhaps the occasions when stepped off the coach and onto Basque Even surrounded by the unfamiliar nationalism’s negative connotations soil for the first time, perhaps trappings of über-nationalism, come to the fore. But at other times – appropriately in the town of Irun – at everywhere banners and flags and times perhaps like this – where the idea the border locals refuse to recognise – graffito slogans, I find myself caught up of the nation softens, when the guns I decided to keep reminding myself: the in a self-conscious Romantic idealism, have fallen silent and a conversation parallels with Wales are fancies I am daydreaming about the kind of country begins, we have the chance to reaffirm imposing upon the place. It is not like I would like, trying to imagine a and rediscover, revive or reinvent Wales, not really. But everywhere I community.

Tennessee Williams: There’s No Success Like Failure

by Georgina Deverell

Tennessee Williams died thirty years It’s true what Dylan says in the evangelical commitment. He was ago, having earned recognition in his following line, that failure’s no success driven, and his output was impressive own lifetime as the greatest living at all. The line doesn’t take much to say the least, but it wasn’t success playwright in the English-speaking examining. That’s where many of us that was driving him. It was truth. world. President Carter presented him are positioned in life, and it’s a pretty with the Medal of Freedom, declaring unequivocal reality to find oneself in. He had a sort of crazed compulsion to that ‘Tennessee show[ed] that the truly The magical buoyancy of the preceding communicate a truth that lay at the heroic in life or art is human line is the one I’m interested in because heart of his existence, and he chose to compassion.’ it speaks of our relationship with do this through theatre. It was his own ourselves, the world, and those rare confusions and personal struggles that So let’s just get one thing straight here, people who occasionally make us feel he laid bare in the characters he Tennessee Williams was no failure. at least reconciled with what it is that created; his fear, pain and sorrow that we are fighting against. What we are came to life onstage through those I’ve thought about what that lyric in all afraid of. When somebody we roles, illuminated by the miraculous Dylan’s ‘Love Minus Zero’ might mean; admire manages to successfully be conduit of an actor. He showed failure Dylan is talking about something heard, and has the unlikely grace to not as something to be condemned, intangibly present in human say something truthful about the rest but something to be identified with and consciousness, and I realise how of us, that is poetry. treated with compassion. He invested profoundly it pertains to everything I his protagonists with the dignity that understand about Tennessee Williams: We’re all failing, to some degree or exists within every human heart; and his plays, his philosophies, his life, or another, most of the time. And even insodoing, he made them noble, just the way he makes me feel. when we have successes, there will reminding his audiences that there but inevitably be more failures to follow. for the grace of God went they. Not everybody enjoys watching plays Tennessee Williams himself perceived about failure. Some people are more his own life and work to be a failure While one might admire a successful interested in success. Everywhere you much of the time – more of the time hero or heroine, the one who really look, there are rags-to-riches stories, than he didn’t, which goes to moves us – who haunts us through our celebrations of survival against the demonstrate the very subjective notion lives – is the one who has failed. odds, films with romantic plots that end of success or failure. He worked Because that person lives in each of with weddings. A lot of people crave tirelessly, every morning, drafting and us. We relate to his suffering, and if we escapism. reworking his plays, with an almost can see that he has failed simply

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 43 because of being human, we love him what we ought not to feel, falling apart characters that he wrote as much as, and forgive him all the more. when we ought to be keeping it if not more than the male leads together; succumbing where we ought because he identified with the Williams possessed that most unusual to be resisting. All the while this is underdog, the misfit. In his Memoirs, of qualities, emotional intelligence. And happening in our lives, we feel he confesses, ‘it is extremely he gifted all his significant characters mortified, and want to hide from the unattractive and humiliating and sleep- with the same. It’s a beautiful feature judgment of those who appear to be destroying to still be at my age a and it points towards something that happier, or more functional than sensualist as well as a romanticist.’ sets the possessor apart from the ourselves. We are locked in the pain of otherwise ugly morass of humanity, isolation. His beloved sister Rose was and that thing is awareness. lobotomised at a tragically young age, But Williams does something amazing one of the first people in the United Williams deals with the stuff of being with his work – he invests intelligence, States to be subjected to the human. His themes are sex and spirituality and awareness into the procedure. Tennessee’s mixed sexuality, frailty, weakness, addiction, hearts of the afflicted. emotions of regret and loss of trust in madness and love. Our daily bread the world over his family’s decision, indeed, but that we strive to take He dares to bring the ‘little people,’ as haunted him for the rest of his life. His control of in our quest for stability, he called them, as his hero D H own fear of insanity and confinement normality, and sanity. Lawrence called them before him, was exacerbated by the horror of his some of that glory. He says: Look! sister’s experience, and many of Mainstream and low culture are full of These people are not famous or rich, Williams’ characters are at the mercy pornography, failure, drug and alcohol they’re not anything. But they ARE of impending madness, dangerously dependency, mental health issues and beautiful. They are intelligent, dignified close at hand. Alma Winemiller is relationship struggles. In soap operas and proud, and they are suffering just oppressed by a neurotic sensitivity; and daytime television, the popular like you. He explains in an essay Williams admits, ‘I am as much of an press, or on a walk down any high entitled ‘The Timeless World of the hysteric… as Blanche.’ Madness is the street in an urban environment, you will Play’ that it is time itself that imposes worst threat to the constructed self and be confronted with the horrors and the judgments we make on each other, his characters have to fight for their vulgarity of human ugliness. It’s all of us up against the relentless survival against institutionalisation, real everywhere. pressures of existence. ‘For a couple or imagined. Shannon, Blanche, of hours,’ he says, ‘we may surrender Cathie, Laura, and the Princess are all Those among us who, through ourselves to a world of fiercely living under the shadow of their education, religion, culture or intellect illuminated values in conflict.’ precariously-balanced sanity, and often attempt to civilise ourselves against the only way to cling onto some these corrupting elements of human Tennessee’s themes are re-occurring semblance of it is with the help of nature might be contemptuous, having because they are the things that he drugs or liquor, or both. successfully eradicated such base, himself is in turmoil over. Being undignified traits from our existences. homosexual when it was still socially So many of TW’s characters are It is distasteful watching others’ bestial stigmatised meant he struggled with a dependent on alcohol or narcotics. He urges in public; flagrant and sense of marginalisation and defiance. knows their weaknesses and their unconscious, seemingly unable to help A bullying alcoholic father meant he addictions, because he knows his own. themselves or even recognise their grappled with feelings of shame and In Baby Doll, the sexual need and gaudiness. There’s a blind ignorance fear matched by equally intense fury longing embodied in Archie’s about The Jeremy Kyle Show that is and hatred. Many of his characters frustration are offset by Baby’s sexual present in the host, the audience, and occupy an uncomfortable sexuality: withholding. There’s a scene at the the guests that makes the accidental Shannon and his young girls in Night doctor’s where Archie is prescribed a viewer want to run for the hills. of the Iguana, Blanche and her young sedative. ‘Sedative! What do I need boys, Brick and his sorrow over his with a Sedative???’ He’s outraged by And the reason? Because we’re dead friend, Maggie and her the idea of deadening his desire. TW terrified. Threatened beyond words by humiliation in the face of her husband’s is pre-occupied with addiction and what these people are manifesting in homosexuality, Archie Lee and his prescription. He writes about drugs and their unknowing journeys through jealous torment over his virgin wife, alcohol as a means to deaden pain and existence. Their combined lack of Sebastian and his appetite for young numb desire, fascinated by the awareness and control is horrifying. boys. The list goes on. In The Roman pervasiveness of the need. Because as so-called civilised Spring of Mrs Stone, and through Sissy individuals, we’re supposed not to Goforth, the ‘unsightly’ idea of desire Archie Lee resists prescription, but for recognise them, but somewhere and age co-existing, particularly in how long? Anyone who feels, and is underneath our decency and polished women, is explored. The popular denied, needs help. A lot of people in speech, we recognise them only too response is: how excruciating. That is TW’s plays use drugs, because they well. still true of a contemporary audience. are in pain. One of the most shocking It is only the young that are allowed to examples in his work is Alma Tennessee Williams saves those of us experience or admit desire. But the Winemiller’s addiction to sleeping pills who feel ashamed of our humanity. ageing feel it just as acutely. By in Summer & Smoke. She’s such a Those of us who live in our bodies as granting older women their sexuality, pure and spotless heroine, yet she’s in well as our minds. Those of us who feel TW was being almost as controversial pain over her heart and her desires, we should be better than we are; as publicly admitting his own sexuality. and TW gives her those things AND achieving where we are failing; feeling He was able to inhabit the female spiritual purity. She’s the last person in

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 44 the world you can imagine getting are painfully and commendably aware it. He is interested only in the human involved with prescription drugs and yet of their own failings, without wallowing and the spiritual. Everything else in she does! And TW washes away some in self-pity. between he leaves to other playwrights. of the shame of it! If not all of it! There’s no shame in his world. People are who In 1943, Tennessee wrote to his At the end of Summer & Smoke, Alma they are. mother with gracious concern for his (whose name means soul), speaks this elderly grandmother during an illness. line: ‘I always say that life is such a He understands that a society needs Yet his journals of the same day reveal mysteriously complicated thing that no its drugs to manage its pain, and that a contradictory feeling. He confesses one should really presume to judge and the American Dream and the Western it is ‘shameful that the news about condemn the behaviour of anyone else!’ model for success doesn’t allow for Grand [his grandmother] means so people’s pain. Despite his father’s little… I’ve grown hard… turned into a The doctor’s son, who she is in love alcoholism, there is no reactionary shift crocodile.’ A sense of love towards his with, has spent the first half of the play towards sanctimony. He remains non- family prompted the correspondence, in a sensual degeneracy that has made judgmental. His work is his mantra of but he was able to articulate within the a mockery of Alma’s sensitivity, but a forgiveness. safe space of his journals how shock has brought him to his senses detached and weird he was feeling and he considers himself reformed. He He talks candidly about the fact that he about his life at that moment. The fact explains to Alma that there is more to wrote under the influence of drugs and that he was able to verbalise these a relationship between a man and alcohol, but very gallantly cautions ‘any contradictions demonstrates that he woman than respect, that there’s ‘such young writer… [against] elect[ing] that was quite the opposite of a crocodile. a thing as intimate relations.’ We think way until it is forced upon him, until he that Alma is being put in her place by cannot continue his work without We like to label things; To John; that she is naïve. But she soars resorting to stimulants.’ compartmentalise. We do it with people way over John’s head: ‘Some people too. It helps us feel in control. bring just their bodies. But there are But there’s another theme that runs Tennessee held the mirror up to the some people, there are some women, through the veins of all his work and audience and gently demonstrated the John – who can bring their hearts to it, that’s love. And although he deals a lot naïve fruitlessness of that mission. His also – who can bring their souls to it!’ in the currency of the carnal nature of plays hold contradictions. And the love, the single most powerful element contradictions are the alchemical Later, he says to her: ‘I’ve settled with that unites each play is spirituality. And ingredients of poetry. When we think life on fairly acceptable terms. Isn’t that it’s this spirituality that transforms the all is carnal sensuality, he gives us all a reasonable person can ask for?’ other elements of his drama from spirituality. The merely carnal would He seems to have convinced himself something that, if it ever ran the risk of render him uncouth. The merely he can adhere to that on the long term. being vulgar, prevents it from being so. spiritual would have us falling asleep. And maybe for years, he will; but But the combination of the two forces eventually, his spirit will resurface and Tennessee’s maternal grandfather was an intelligent response. things will get choppy again in his life. an Episcopalian minister, a church with He represents the shifts in moral a pervasively tolerant persuasion, and He pours his soul into his plays, and he position that we all assume, especially his grandparents were a species of expects a lot from an audience in those of us who’ve had our fingers guardian angel in his life. It’s easy to return. By giving his characters this burned as John has. But Alma knows get carried away with the glamour, the visionary intelligence, he transcends it is a false morality. It can’t last. You romance, the tragic faded elegance of the vulgarity of humanity’s ‘acting can repress it, but you can’t quash a Williams’ world, and forget about the without questioning’. In Small Craft strong spirit. She says: ‘He can ask for essential gentleness that beats in the Warnings he sails so close to the wind much more than that. He can ask for heart of his plays. that for some audiences the rawness the coming true of his most improbable is too much. But still the characters are dreams.’ His genius lies in his exquisite ability to sentient enough to force an audience balance the sacred with the profane. to observe what they might rather not. Summer & Smoke is about the moral He recognises the conflicts that make The cast are not permitted to blindly flux within the human struggle, and up the human condition, and accepts stumble through life without Williams, being the intensely spiritual them. He doesn’t pigeonhole his questioning their motivations, so the man that he is, is able to articulate characters. He just sees that they are audience is not permitted to lazily these things by placing poetry in the struggling to be good, but also observe without questioning their mouths of ordinary people. It is so struggling to be authentic, and response either. rarely done – that poetry is spoken and understands that often those two contextualised by actors in a play. But paradigms are in conflict. In Night of the Iguana, Hannah tells it can be done. Shakespeare did it. And Shannon, ‘Nothing human disgusts me Williams does it. He accords in bald Williams deals in broken dreams and unless it’s unkind, violent.’ And of humanity a sense of the sublime. failed aspirations, but his characters course she’s speaking for Williams. possess a chiarascuro kind of success: When an audience thinks they have Because the truth is that if Williams the integrity of their hearts. He him down as a degenerate, he calls hadn’t had his art, he would have celebrates the tender frailty of their bluff, demonstrating that he has BEEN one of the characters in his humanity, not what people have such a heightened sense of humanity plays; in many ways was anyway, but achieved. He captures the human that he stands outside the moral arena. he would have been an even more condition by endowing his characters He isn’t interested in the moral side of tragic one, and he recognised this very with an acute self-consciousness. They things at all. He completely transcends early in his career, and remained true

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 45 to his belief that writing and the theatre or there’s the other kind, that which he him. He couldn’t separate it out, and saved his life. Through his art he wrote called ‘organic,’ or ‘the personal kind after his phenomenally successful out versions of himself again and of writing’. years on Broadway and in Hollywood, again. And he was relentlessly non- he felt an immense sense of failure judgmental. He was always only In an essay, entitled Person to Person, when his popularity waned throughout compassionate, patient and empathic he said ‘…I have never for one moment the 1960s. with his characters. Yet despite his doubted that there are people – tenderness towards them, and towards millions! – to say things to. We come He said he felt that his critics were himself, he wrote and exposed them to each other, gradually, but with constantly trying to cut him down to with all their faults, in all their wanton love…. With love and with honesty, the size, and he said, with touching humility desperation. But Brick and Maggie and embrace is inevitable.’ that ‘what… my size… is, I trust, [is] the Blanche and Val are not victims, and size of an artist who has consistently they never see themselves as such. He doesn’t feel a need to draw a given all that he has to give to his work, They are fired with his spirit, his energy distinction between his life and his with a most peculiar passion.’ and his intelligence. Williams makes no work, saying in his Memoirs: ‘Has any excuses for the characters he writes. of my writing been a “professional He was grieving the loss of his long- He doesn’t try to water them down or matter”? I have always written for standing lover Frank Merlo, and had make them more palatable. On the deeper necessities than the term succumbed to an equally long-standing contrary he is drawn to their failings “professional” implies, and I think this dependency on amphetamines and and the taboo elements of their has sometimes been to the detriment alcohol. natures. If society is rejecting it, he will of my career.’ haul it out and examine it. And he will ‘To know me is not to love me,’ he said. do it precisely because he identifies Tennessee never saw his work in such ‘At best, it is to tolerate me, and of with the pain of it. cut and dry terms. ‘People have said drama critics I would say that tolerance and said and said that my work is too seems now to be just about worn out.’ He simply says: It’s alright to feel. He personal: and I have just as never advocates madness or persistently countered this charge with Yet despite his feelings of failure and degeneracy, but nor does he condemn my assertion that all true work of an alienation from his audiences, he still it. He puts beautiful people in artist must be personal, whether continued to write. Because through vulnerable situations. And he doesn’t directly or obliquely, it must and it does his work he could admit to his own moralise. He’s not writing for sensation, reflect the emotional climates of its failings, he could share them and he’s writing for support. Both to receive creator.’ commiserate with the rest of the world, it and to offer it. It’s a genuine without having to sit down with people exchange. The best there is. Inevitably, some critics and audiences and discuss it face to face. He found couldn’t understand what Williams was that by bringing his failures to the work, There’s no attempt to disguise himself about. He was so much ahead of his he could continue to exist and breathe. in his writing. He occupies his time in his unapologetically personal He wasn’t ashamed of it, he thrived on character’s minds, and he’s right approach that plenty of people were it, and he took great solace in knowing behind them, rooting for them. He unable to accept it. He paved the way that it was touching other people and doesn’t invite an audience to sit back for writers like William Inge, Carson their failings equally strongly. and observe the degeneracy of the McCullers and the confessional poets; human race, he invites them to for the most part he was situated The truth is that he has been a lifeline experience how it feels to love and to outside the mainstream, and he wanted for millions. And when he reflects on hurt. None of what he does is ever at it that way. ‘My place in society… has his life in his Memoirs, the thing that his characters’ expense, and this is been in Bohemia. I love to visit the comes through so strongly is his vital evident in his stage directions. He says other side now and then, but on my sense of being alive. Unlike the plays, of Alma Winemiller’s ‘breathless little social passport Bohemia is indelibly the Memoirs are relentlessly irreverent, laugh’ that it ‘must never be stressed stamped, without regret on my part.’ full of astonishing wit, and most to the point of making her at all importantly, an explosively satisfying ludicrous in a less sympathetic way.’ Of course he made himself vulnerable joie-de-vivre. to criticism this way. And because of He was never a commercially driven the beautiful and sensitive nature of his The Memoirs are unflinchingly honest writer. He only wanted to write plays soul, he could not help but take and he’s beautifully aware of the fact: that he felt came from an integral part criticism much to heart. ‘Is it possible to be a dirty old man in of his soul. He was shocked when your middle thirties? I seem to be giving institutions and organisations he Both Elia Kazan and the actress Estelle that impression. This book is a sort of regarded as authentic betrayed profit- Parsons have talked about the catharsis of puritanical guilt feelings I driven motivations. He defended the ‘nakedness’ that both Tennessee and suppose. “All good art is an personal in writing to the extent that he his work have about them. And he indiscretion”. Well, I can’t assure you didn’t really give much credence to always said of his agent Audrey Wood, that this book will be art, but it is bound anything that wasn’t coming from that ‘I don’t think Audrey ever realised how to be an indiscretion, since it deals with place. subject I was to depression about my work…’ my adult life… Of course, I could Williams was vehement that there are devote this whole book to a discussion two kinds of writing. There’s the sort If audiences misunderstood or to the art of drama, but wouldn’t that be that people do to knock out a script in criticised the work, Williams always felt a bore? It would bore me to extinction Hollywood, which they do for money, it meant they were directly criticising I’m afraid, and it would be a very, very

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 46 short book.’ be electrifyingly actable. He could not write a dull scene . . . Tennessee Williams will live as long as drama itself.’ And there you have it. Williams is the least boring, and most successful failure you’ll ever read. Even his stage directions Like the magician and the poet he is, he has transformed are dripping with sumptuous beauty and throbbing with his failings into masterpieces, and through them offered a gorgeously loaded imagery and description. kind of salvation to the rest of us in the solace of his all-forgiving, compassionate embrace. The dramaturgist Peter Schaffer said of him: ‘He was a born dramatist as few are ever born. Whatever he put on paper, At the end of his memoirs he reflects with fitting modesty: superb or superfluous, glorious or gaudy, could not fail to ‘High station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.’

To the Detriment of Us All: The Untouched Legacy of Arthur Koestler and George Orwell

by Gary Raymond

By August of 1945, Arthur Koestler had already completed Communist, and from existentialist to mystic. His journey, many journeys; indeed, you could say he had lived many in fact, was a search for a pure society, a broad democratic lives. His travails and explorations had taken in vast socialism, a civilisation built upon justice and compassion. geographical extremes, from his native Hungary, to his time Koestler was a significant figure in the intellectual circles of in the Communist Party of Germany where he was a every city he inhabited, an urban, explosive presence vociferous and passionate young intellectual. He had been amidst the pock-marked concrete, low ceilings and smoke- to the North Pole, where he tasted his first dram of fame as filled air of Europe’s coffee houses. He was one of Sartre the sole reporter on the Graf Zeppelin Arctic expedition of and de Beauvoir’s many third wheels; he had travelled 1931, and he had a stint with the French Foreign Legion in Soviet Russia with Langston Hughes, establishing writers’ North Africa – his only route to escape inevitable execution forums in Hughes’ digs in Ashkhabad; he had helped at the hands of the Vichy. He had experienced, first hand, Malraux refine his definition of the intellectual as ‘anti- the most significant political and philosophical movements Manichean’, ‘a man of subtleties, interested in absolute truth in Europe and its edges, from Zionism in Palestine to and in the complexity of things’. Koestler was a fundamental Stalinism in Russia. And in August 1945 his quest for Utopia driving force in almost every significant intellectual political brought him and his later wife, Mamaine, to Wales. Koestler movement of the thirties and forties. and Mamain would spend three years in the cottage of Bwlch Ocyn, a secluded farmhouse that belonged to Clough It is striking then, in his long and intriguing life story, that at Williams-Ellis, the builder of the Italianate coastal town of his intellectual peak, in the aftermath of the sensation that Portmerion, situated just a short drive from the other side was Darkness at Noon, he left the vibrant intellectual culture of the Vale of Ffestiniog. of 1940s London to set up home in a drastically remote cottage in North Wales. But this corner of Wales was Koestler was already famous by this point, not only for his perhaps not quite so remote as might first appear, and novel, Darkness at Noon (1940), (an epochal condemnation Koestler’s motives may not have been quite so abstruse. of Stalinism and the Left’s apologias of it), but also for his reportage, and for the intellectual rigour in his essays such This corner of Wales had its own intellectual circle, and it as ‘The Yogi and the Commissar’. Koestler was a man who was most sympathetic to Koestler’s mindset at the time, or pushed himself to the centre of things, who gorged himself so he thought. Clough Williams-Ellis’ wife, Amabel, for on argument, who enraged friend and foe alike with his instance, was Lytton Strachey’s niece, and a former caustic, uncompromising, fierce, intellectual ideas for communist, like Koestler, and around the Williams-Ellis’ humankind’s progress. His journeys had seen him move swarmed the likes of Rupert Crawshay-Williams, Michael from Zionist to anti-Zionist, from Communist to anti- Polanyi, English PEN president Storm Jameson and, most

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 47 most significantly, Bertrand Russell, who lived just a few of the consequences of his beliefs. Whilst others turned a miles up the road from the Koestler cottage. blind eye to the inherent paradoxical untruth of Stalinism, Koestler was compelled to blow the lid off it. It was But Koestler had another motive for the seclusion, even if everything he was about. As his biographer Michael the seclusion was not an honestly intellectual one. Within Scammell notes, ‘Koestler’s quest for enlightenment was months of moving to Bwlch Ocyn he had lured a like-minded not some arid, abstract sort of search, but a deep instinctual trail-blazer, a political intellectual democratic socialist, who urge… which started early in his life and continued to the was also terminally disillusioned with (and disgusted by) the end of his days.’ The quest, as Scammell goes on to assert institutionalised claptrap of the international comintern. convincingly, ‘was the point.’ George Orwell was perhaps the ally Koestler had been looking for all along. Orwell’s lauding of Darkness at Noon in the New Statesman was to be the first public utterance of the essence of his * own 1984, and the seed of Winston Smith can be seen in the broken, corrupted, ‘empty’ protagonist of Rubashov. It was in reference to Koestler that Orwell famously wrote, Koestler was just thirty-six when the review was written, a ‘Nowadays, over increasing areas of the earth, one is life of astounding drama and variety already behind him. imprisoned not for what one does but for what one is, or, more exactly, for what one is suspected of being’. What In 1945, with the war at its end and Koestler now a member Orwell had witnessed and experienced in Spain during the of the English literati, commonly terrorising Soho with his civil war, the things that had driven him away from the drinking partners Roy Campbell and Dylan Thomas, one established Left, Koestler had experienced at an increased may be forgiven for thinking a time of reflection might have intensity. been on his mind. But Europe had, in many ways, only been saved from the extraordinary awfulness of Hilter’s fascism Koestler had been imprisoned many times by the time he at this point. Totalitarianism, the target of both Koestler and moved to Bwlch Ocyn, and not only by the traditional Orwell, continued to flourish in its grey solemnity, and would enemies of the Left. Koestler was an intellectual warrior not do so in Franco’s Spain until 1977, in Salazaar’s Portugal a martial one, and he had always been petrified of physical until 1968, and Stalin’s Russia long after the Communist harm. Whilst working under accreditation as a foreign despot’s death in 1953. In many ways Orwell’s concerns journalist, trying to cover the Catholic-military uprising in with totalitarianism were both spurred on by Koestler’s work, Spain, he eventually found himself not only on the side and, apart from Koestler, came from a similar place. Orwell, getting beaten, but in the unforgiving and paranoid embrace too, had witnessed the unpleasant reality of imperial rule, of Franco’s forces. It was his time in the prisoner of war albeit as disillusioned voyeur, during his time in Burma, and camp in Seville, under constant threat of execution, which like Koestler, had spent some time as a vagabond in the sculpted his writing into the darkly powerful prose we now cities of Europe. Like Koestler, Orwell had lost his faith in know him for. He also later spent time at the infamous communist socialism in Spain in the thirties when faced with French political prison camp of Le Vernet, and in 1940, the reality of the brutality and in-fighting in the civil war being a person of note and a suspected revolutionary between the factions of the Left. Orwell, hypersensitive to communist, he had been imprisoned in London’s such infractions on the clarity of his ideology, did not need Pentonville almost from the moment he set foot on British imprisonment and torture to turn his stomach or his mind. soil after escaping the Nazi shadow. On each occasion he Koestler might not have done either, but nonetheless Orwell had been charged with no crime. Darkness at Noon was a saw in Koestler the grace of god. Orwell, however, was a culmination of his own traumatic experiences in solitary pragmatist, unlike the quixotic Hungarian, and their personal confinement at the hands of Franco, and his witness to the relationship, inevitable as it was the moment Koestler early days of Stalin’s show trials. settled himself in Britain, was never smooth. Koestler was notoriously difficult company, and Orwell had a reputation Darkness at Noon is a masterpiece; George Steiner said it for cutting to the heart of the matter. But so closely linked was one of the few books that may have ‘changed history’. were the two men in philosophy, and so activistic in nature, Orwell reviewed it in The New Statesman in 1941: it is perhaps surprising that they did not collaborate when in such close proximity, as Koestler had done with the Brilliant as this book is as a novel, and a piece of brilliant leading intellectuals of every city he had made a home in. literature, it is probably most valuable as an But if a joining of forces had not occurred to Orwell, or if it interpretation of the Moscow “confessions” by someone had at least not appealed to him, it had and did to Koestler, with an inner knowledge of totalitarian methods. What and his move to Bwlch Ocyn was the first step in his plan was frightening about these trials was not the fact that to create something from these combined forces. they happened – for obviously such things are necessary in a totalitarian society – but the eagerness Just a month before Koestler and Mamaine took on the of Western intellectuals to justify them. cottage, Orwell had become vice-chairman of the Freedom Defence Committee, a civil liberties group that included Darkness at Noon was cannon fire when the intellectual Bertrand Russell, Koestler’s new neighbour, and other company that Koestler had been used to keeping – Sartre, notaries among its sponsors. The point of the committee Camus, de Beauvoir – were still pontificating through was to oppose the increasingly Communist-dominated candlelight and smoke rings. Not only was the threat of leftist groups in London and on the continent. But soon into prison and torture very real to him – (whilst in Franco’s the life of the committee, Orwell, perhaps sensing the prison in Seville his cell was in close proximity to the aromas he had smelled as rot in Spain, began to feel the execution yard where he could hear the shattering volley focus of the group too narrow, and too in sway to the whims of the firing squad blast out thirty to forty times a day for the of its anarchist chairman, Herbert Read. Koestler heard months he was there) – but he had first-hand experience word of Orwell’s disillusionment with the Committee and

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 48 invited him to Bwlch Ocyn to spend Christmas. It may not professed this, but they ended up prophesying the necessity have been as enticing a proposition for Orwell had Koestler of their own ideas. And it is the most ‘Orwellian’ of all his not already thought ahead. Staying with Koestler and legacies. Koestler, the firebrand, urged Orwell, infested the Mamaine was Mamaine’s sister, Celia, with whom Orwell man with enthusiasm and vigour, to create a template, a had recently met in London and with whom he had fallen in map, for the way out of the suffocating institutional love. Koestler was fully aware of this and suspected that corruptions of our time. The way is through liberty, not Orwell would drop everything to come to the remote and through the ‘admiration’ for ‘totalitarian methods’, as Orwell slate-bleak setting in the hope of wooing Celia, and he did. wrote. But Koestler was only interested in a proposition of his own; the founding of a separate leftist committee that would Koestler was impressed by the verve and accuracy with neither be in thrall to the cliques, skirmishes and myopia of which Orwell had taken up his idea. His plan to lure Orwell either the Communists nor the Anarchists. to Bwlch Ocyn seemed to have worked without a glitch. The next step was to recruit others to the committee, to widen Over the Christmas of 1945, Koestler and Orwell talked at support and make Orwell’s manifesto a palpable centre- length about the foundation of a successor to the League point to a real movement. Unfortunately, enlistment was for the Rights of Man. Their vision of the future was bleak, slow and riddled with counter-arguments. Some felt the coloured by their justified perception that totalitarianism and manifesto was too anti-Russian, others felt it was too despotism were becoming held up by the intelligentsia, abstract in its ideals. Russell, the most important ally on the (especially in Britain, Orwell pointed out), as methodologies list, felt that the world was on the brink of apocalyptic war, worthy of admiration. Orwell believed the situation called and wanted to turn the committee into an opportunity for a for not only political action, but a redefinition of democracy conference to discuss avoidance of global nuclear itself. Koestler knew that to establish the Committee that annihilation. This was Russell’s condition, and Koestler and he wanted – and that Europe needed – he would need both Orwell reluctantly agreed and began to set up the the intellectual involvement of Orwell and the endorsement conference in the Vale of Ffestiniog. It was to be peopled of Bertrand Russell, who was the figurehead and with extremely significant political philosophers, such as undisputed heavyweight of British progressives at that time. Victor Gollancz, Michael Foot, Edmund White, Andre Malraux, Manes Sperber, and the editors of Polemic, a Orwell and Koestler were not men easily adjusted to the leading theoretical journal of the time. The conference, the intimacies of friendship; Orwell was famously stubborn and starting point for the committee, was never to proceed, enforced a strict discipline on himself – and Koestler was however. The reasons are an exemplar of the best and the equally stubborn, and his reputation for being a prickly worst of Koestler. It was his energy that had brought all of character often undersold his pugnaciousness somewhat. these figures together, and it was his temper that pushed But it seems the two, who had been developing a friendship- everything apart. He fell out, in a matter of weeks, with the of-sorts built from mutual admiration for a few years when editors of Polemic, whose collaboration was integral to the both in London, did become close during the few weeks in success of the movement (even if only from an Bwlch Ocyn. But conversation, ushered by Koestler, always administrative point of view), and then fell out with Russell returned to the formation of a committee. Orwell became after insulting his wife during a row over the wording of the as equally enthusiastic as Koestler, and after many days manifesto. Russell’s wife wrote to Koestler later, saying, ‘is and nights debating the state of the Left across Europe, and it really necessary, among people who have the best will in the poisonous influence of Stalinism in progressive the world to like you, to be so combative?’ In truth, as democratic socialism, Orwell agreed to put his full attention Scammell points out in his essential biography of Koestler, into the formation and success of the committee. Back in he and Bertrand Russell were simply too alike to work London, Orwell spent a week writing a fiery manifesto. He together. It was the fulcrum and tragedy of the Orwell- sent it back to Koestler in Bwlch Ocyn. It opened with the Koestler union that it depended entirely on the endorsement assertion that, ‘while liberty without social security is of the third. valueless, it has been forgotten that without liberty there can be no security.’ Orwell was concerned with the very With his plans in tatters, Koestler’s life in the cottage fabric of democracy and the ties between the governing became one of domestic drudgery, bickering with Mamaine, classes and the people over whom they governed. He and and generally feeling ostracised and frustrated. Both Koestler intended to redefine democracy, to reach Koestler and Orwell were drawn through their lives to downward as well as outward, and to oppose the opportunities such as the one that Koestler manipulated ‘infringements against the rights and the dignity of man’. It during that Christmas at Bwlch Ocyn – socialism was the was an attempt at a pure vision that was neither corrupted life-blood of both men, and was the candlelight by which by the evils and grabbing of the Right, nor by the corruptions they wrote books such as Scum of the Earth, Darkness at of the Left, but saw a better world for all through liberty. It Noon, Animal Farm and 1984. Orwell, of course, died was a new direction for politics. tragically young, of tuberculosis; Koestler died in 1983, in a suicide pact with his wife Cynthia, after being diagnosed Orwell has often confused commentators who would like to with terminal cancer. Both men left legacies the outer position him (and often claim him) as a champion of the Left reaches of which stretch so far it is almost difficult to or the Right. But he was never been more clear than in the comprehend. Their respective Great Works changed the manifesto he wrote for Koestler. He was not only neither perception of our modern world. But perhaps their greatest Left nor Right, but the mere suggestion that we should think legacy is in the venture that never took off, the one moment of him (or Koestler) in these terms is wilfully missing the when they joined forces, and through Koestler’s energy and importance of his ideas. As global politics finds ever more rhetoric, and Orwell’s intellectual vigour, they drafted a grim and cynical ways to fail the populations from which it manifesto that signposted a new political causeway; one first grew, the deconstruction of left and right is the only that, to the detriment of the western world, has still yet to viable progressive philosophy. Orwell and Koestler not only be explored.

Wales Arts Review - Anniversary Special 49