On Coriolanus

I've never seen any of Shakespeare's "Roman" plays in live performance. I've just read through Coriolanus (Penguin edition) for the first time that I remember - I haven't even seen this play on the screen, although I know of at least two film versions, the Ralph Fiennes one being the most recent, and of course the BBC version from the eighties.

So I came to the play with few preconceptions, and I have found it most troubling. I have read some of the introductory material in the Penguin edition and other bits and pieces since reading it, and while it has shed some light on the play for me, I still find Coriolanus a most difficult character to get my head around.

It makes sense to me that this is one of Shakespeare's later plays, as the set-up seems a lot briefer than some of his other works. In fact the whole play seems "short-cutted", the action and the story run hell-for-leather, with very little exposition of a back-story, or time allowed for the audience to take in what's going on. I felt while reading it that I was running down a slope with the danger of falling and tumbling through the story: I'd just got my head into a space of understanding and the plot had moved on, almost before I was ready. It's a play that's almost written in shorthand. Given the pace and structure of the play, I wonder how much of Coriolanus' story was known to the general theatre-goer of the day. I know that his story comes from Plutarch, and so perhaps many of the lawyers and so forth that came to see plays in the playhouses would have been familiar with the general outline.

Whatever the case, Shakespeare's real interest in this story is not the narrative, but the character of Coriolanus and, almost as much, the character of the "mob" and their representatives, the Tribunes. Again via my limited background reading, a lot of what Shakespeare put in here may have been comment on what was for him current events happening in England, and much scholarship has no doubt been done to draw those links. This can be useful to know,  but I'm not sure it's the reason for the extraordinary way Shakespeare takes aim both at patricians, the mob, and politicians.

This is a play where no-one come out well. Coriolanus in some ways seems almost a cardboard-cutout of a character, a warrior sure of his patrician status, with no time for the lower classes. Effective in combat, where to be uncompromising is an advantage, but totally useless in public life, where he finds it impossible to restrain and contain his feelings of revulsion for the ins and outs of dealing with the public: he seems not only unlikeable, but in fact foolish. Yet the public for which he shows such disdain seem to earn his disdain, with Shakespeare portraying them as easily led, fickle, thoughtless and stupid. Their representatives, the Tribunes, are shown as devious, disloyal and self-serving.

The ultimate question that I struggle to answer to my satisfaction about this play is why does Coriolanus do what he does? Why does he run for Consul? One could say that his mother and friends convince him to do so, but he has been set up in the battle scenes as someone who knows his own mind and makes his own decisions, so that explanation doesn't wash. Why, when he is exiled, does he go straight to his mortal enemy Aufidius and join forces with him? He had enough support from patrician Rome to enable him to take his revenge without resorting to that. Why, after rejecting every request for mercy, does he finally succumb to the requests of his mother? When he didn't listen to her when she pleaded with him to be more politic with the masses when running for Consul?

There are many riddles in this play: in many ways Coriolanus is as unknowable as Hamlet. The question may be does he know himself? Certainly in the field of battle he is in a place he knows and controls, but does he know the depth of his soul - if he knows he can't do what is required to be elected Consul, why does he continue, especially knowing what could come of blowing up in front of the plebs in the way he did. While many of Shakespeare's plot devices are transparent ways to further the narrative of his plays, those in Coriolanus seem in some ways to be the most forced. It can be hard for the reader to see why Croriolanus would do what he does. Of course, as I stated earlier, I haven't seen the production live or on screen, so perhaps some of these "problems" are solved within the acting.

For me, the best speeches come from Coriolanus, and the best of those are his scathing denunciations of the common man. Shakespeare, when writing, was a chameleon, able to step into the shoes of a King as easily as those of a tramp, a woman as well as a man, a lover as much as a soldier, but these speeches of Coriolanus have a vituperative power that leads the reader to think they may in fact project a feeling of the author himself. This is dangerous territory and I counsel against it, but who can not be impressed by lines such as the first he speaks in the play -

"...What's the matter, you dissentious rogues,
That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion
Make yourself scabs?
...
Where he should find you lions, finds you hares;
Where foxes, geese. You are no surer, no,
Than is the coal of fire upon the ice
Or hailstone in the sun.
...
He that depends
Upon your favours swims with fins of lead
And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye!"

These are lines written by one who has a sure touch in describing feelings that no doubt still were felt by the aristocracy in the early Seventeenth Century.

We still are no closer to the motivation of Coriolanus however. Is it indeed to win praise from Volumnia his mother, who is certainly portrayed as hard-headed and ambitious for her son, and no less scathing of the Commons than he. She at least has some ability to change her outward activity to fit the mood, and her pleading for Rome is the ultimate abnegation of her nobility, kneeling before her own son. And yet surely she would suspect that Coriolanus' mercy would presage his downfall? Another mystery.

The one thing we can take from the play is that the vices of both Coriolanus, the mob and the Tribunes end up doing none of them any good. If there is a "moral" from this tragedy, it is as much that the mob and politicians need to be more thoughtful about their government as it is that those who desire power should have some humility to go with their talent.

Paul Prescott, in his introduction to the 2005 Penguin edition of the play that I have been reading, writes "At the end of Coriolanus it is unclear whether Martius' death has served any great political or metaphysical purpose." It is certainly that.

Certainly not one of the Bard's greatest plays, but as with nearly all the others a work that one can grapple with for a lifetime.

On re-reading Blood Meridian

I have now read Blood Meridian three times. The first time I read it was before I began to blog about my reading experiences, the second time I reviewed it on my View Over the Bell blog , in 2011. Like all great works of literature, the urge to re-read came around this Christmas, and given I wasn't working, I got through it in about three days.

Again, like all great works of literature, the book has given me something different this time to the last time I read it, and the first. I wrote in 2011 that the major character of the work was Judge Holden. This time around, I'm not so sure. Glanton has loomed larger for me in this reading, as has the Kid. Glanton and the Kid together seem this time around to reflect man's reaction to the works of the Devil. Glanton succumbs to the temptations of the Judge, and falls into depravity, debauchery, greed and lust. The Kid sees through the evil that is the Judge, but fails to destroy him, whether through fear, or a misplaced sense of honour is unclear, but his failure to destroy the evil means that he will succumb to it.

This time around there was also more of a sense of the land as malevolent, and the human actors blundering about with no real purpose, except perhaps war. For war, in all its forms, has an important role in the book, in fact the book itself is perhaps about war - there is an instructive passage about two-thirds through (p. 248 in the 1992 Vintage ed.), spoken by the Judge - "It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awating its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way."

"All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not."

"Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test."

Is the Judge "historical law"? Possibly. So many un-answered questions in this book.

February 20 2016

Four studies in loyalty - what a magnificent book - 100 pages in a sitting and not realising the time going is testimony to that.

Sykes the type of Englishman almost now gone - rich enough to be devoted to study - what do the wealthy do now?

Bahram - devotee of all things English "I am surprised that you are so foolish as to make such a suggestion to a Balliol man." p.79

Robert Byron - taken too early - Keith Douglas the same. The "what might have been" cuts both ways though. All of Byron's writings flawed in some way - flaws that are forgiven by his tragic end. Sykes hits the nail on the head re Oxiana - its problem is pace. I wish I had read this before I tackled it the first time - trick is to read the whole thing slowly.

Byron blind to Shakespeare p. 152 "They are exactly the sorts of plays...that I would expect a grocer to write."

Sykes of course writing about the loyalties of his subjects, but his loyalty to them shines through the pages as well.

Listening to Pictures at an Exhibition - piano version so much more powerful that the Ravel orchestration - Great gate of Kiev played well surpasses the whole orchestra.

Books read: Four studies in loyalty by Christopher Sykes

February 17 2016

Unknown great Australian p.8-9, Evatt essay. "If Evatt hadn't existed, Bob Hawke would probably be teaching school at Carnarvon today. If Evatt hadn't existed, Bill Hayden might still be pounding the beat in Townsville."

Max Harris - where does he fit in Australia's literary world - Ern Malley seems to have finally lost its lustre and strange power, but the protagonists now forgotten - Harris far too precocious in his early days, but these essays show a mellowing, experience.

Still very Harris though - a man of the world and yet focussed on Adelaide, and liable to have a go at any power figure, and bring history down a peg or two.

Amazing that Australia produced or had an effect on so many characters, King O'Malley, Grainger, Flynn, Melba, Ellis....a strange bunch.

Book(s) read: The unknown great Australian by Max Harris

February 15 2016

Wake in fright, p.83 - "The stars, the western stars, so many, so bright, so close, so clean, so clear; splitting the sky in remorseless frigidity; pure stars, unemotional stars; stars in command of the night and themselves; undemanding and unforgiving; excelling in their being and forming God's incontrovertible argument against the charge of error in creating the west."

Reviewing the new book in The Australian Geordie Williamson points out how much Cook hates the countryside - but does he? Grant is not a likeable character at all, and whil the locals are hicks, they are unfailingly friendly toward him. He is the one judging them, not the other way around.

Books read: Wake in fright by Kenneth Cook

February 3 2016

The Hospitallers fell when Christendom was divided - the gap in between the first and second sieges of Rhodes was because Islam was divided.

Rhodes was always going to fall - if we are to make an end of it, what an end we'll make.

Written by a Knight of Malta - why do these institutions still have an attraction - Knights, Freemasons etc. - that innate desire in men (mostly, not women so much) to live in heroic times and do heroic things.

The question of what to read - this book passed over my desk and piqued my interest - the Knights have always been fascinating - this book in some ways a dull recitation of the siege but a book that appeals as easily digestible information.

Leaves me in a reading hollow - where to go now - I have my pile of "read and then donate" books staring at me, but there is no theme there. Does there have to be? The constant battle in my mind over that, pointless I know.


Books read: The two sieges of Rhodes 1480-1522 by Eric Brockman

February 2 2016

The fight for the Holy Land - Knights of St. John - how and when did it become important that the Holy Land was in Christian hands. The Crusade a human construct - people want and need something to believe in and fight for.

The inevitability of conquest once you have an empire - Mehmet could not allow Rhodes to survive and claim to be a great Sultan.

Knights of St. John - fundamentalists? In a way - they could have come to an arrangement with the Sultan and he would have been happy to let them be.

A tragedy for both sides.

The toughness of the men.

Yet another great little narrative history written in the 1960s - no fuss, no bother, no obvious ideological or theoretical barrow to push. I think after a break, these sorts of histories are creeping back, although unfortunately along with other more partisan publications, from either end of the spectrum.

Books read: The two sieges of Rhodes 1480-1522 by Eric Brockman