Pope's Letters

I have just finished reading a large selection of Alexander Pope's letters in a lovely little hardback published by OUP forty or fifty years ago. It's strange, when you love a poet, to read his letters and find them so uninspiring, so sugar-coated – even petty-minded at times. No grand ideas discussed, no spark, no real depth of humanity, only polite conversation, literary chit-chat and whining about poor health.

Perhaps Pope saved all his best thoughts for his poems and didn't give too much importance to letter-writing. Or perhaps he didn't have much to say in prose, as he led a fairly uneventful life and rarely left his Twickenham house.

The only interesting letters for me were the ones he wrote to Jonathan Swift and John Gay, not so much because of what he said in them but because they cast some light on his friendship with these two authors.

As I was returning this book, I spotted Martin Amis's Money on display, so I grabbed it and it's going to be my next read.

AG

Chaucer's House of Fame versus Pope's Temple of Fame

Chris Lauer, our Chaucer translator (I would use the word "adapter" if it didn't sound like a connecting device), has recently sent me a few more of his wonderful translations from the great English poet. Among these, The House of Fame, a curious early work in three books in the tradition of the medieval dream visions. Some people say it's intended to be a sort of parody of the Divine Comedy – I didn't read it that way. What The House of Fame reminded me of, more than anything else, was a terza-rima poem by Petrarch, The Triumphs, a poem he wrote in a failed attempt to compete with Dante on his own ground. Chris's adaptation in modern English of The House of Fame is, as usual, superb – lively, witty and very close to the spirit of the original.

I was curious to see how Chaucer's poem compared to Alexander Pope's own version, The Temple of Fame, one of his earliest works (I call it a work, not a translation, as imitation was a form of art in Pope's time). The Temple of Fame strips most of the Chaucerian beginning and gets straight to the vision of the Temple of Fame, which only appears in the last book of Chaucer's poem. It is weird to see the same story recounted by two very great poets using two different languages and verse forms.

I must admit that, for once, Pope's heroic couplet didn't live up to my expectations. It felt too polished and constrained – it never came across as having the assurance of an original work. Perhaps there was a mismatch between language and theme – something I don't feel when I read his translation of the Iliad – perhaps it was its lack of humour that didn't work for me. The result was that it took me almost as long to read Pope's 524 lines as Chaucer's 2,000-odd lines.

Now on to the Book of the Duchess . . .

AG

Art of Sinking in Poetry - The Observer

Delighted to see the excellent review of Pope's The Art of Sinking in Poetry in the Observer on Sunday. For the second time in a row, they got the publisher wrong . . . the trouble is that Oneworld Classics and Oxford World Classics are not that far from each other, and they are both abbreviated OWC.

Never mind. As you know, it's one of my pet projects (see here for an old post about this book), and I hope to see more reviews of it soon.

AG

A Belinsky moment. . .

I think I mentioned, in one of my previous blogs, that I spent five years translating the Rape of the Lock into Italian rhyming couplets. What I may have not mentioned is that around ten years ago, when I finished my translation, I sent it to two Italian publishers, the only ones who I believed could do a good job with it, Mondadori (the publisher of my other translations) and Adelphi, a literary house I have always admired for their uncompromising taste.

Mondadori sent me a very nice letter, saying that they liked my translation but didn't think that there was a market for a new edition of The Rape of the Lock (I can well understand them: they are a very big concern, and they'd struggle to find a mainstream market for it). Adelphi also loved my translation, but could not find a way to make this project happen at the time.

Then I recently had lunch with Adelphi's publisher in London, and my translation of Pope was brought up again – imagine – after ten long years. I was asked to revise the translation and resubmit, because there was a chance that it could now be published. I sent it by courier, and the following day I got a call on my mobile to say that they really love my translation and there's every chance it may be published by Adelphi.

Now, why did I say this? It's because it reminded me of a Dostoevsky anecdote. After he finished writing Poor People (a book I published at Hesperus, incidentally), Dostoevsky gave a manuscript copy to his friend Dmitri Grigorovich, who in turn brought it to the poet Nikolai Nekrasov. They read Dostoevsky’s manuscript aloud, and were so overwhelmed that, although it was close to 4:00 am, they went straight to Dostoevsky to congratulate him. Later that day, Nekrasov brought Poor People to one of the leading critics of the day, Vissarion Belinsky. “A new Gogol has appeared!” Nekrasov announced – to which Belinsky replied, “With you, Gogols spring up like mushrooms!” But Belinsky soon communicated his own enthusiasm to Dostoevsky: “Do you realize what it is that you have written?” In his Diary of a Writer, Dostoevsky remembered this as the happiest moment of his life.

Obviously I am no Dostoevsky, and this is only a translation – but this was my Belinsky moment, and it goes to show how publishing is still able, even in our unromantic digital age, to create such moments of pure bliss in a man's life.

AG

The Art of Sinking in Literature

This is a title asking to be written.

After yet another inspiring Thursday evening at the Calder Bookshop – tonight’s fare was a reading from Graham Greene’s most famous novels, introduced by a tired-looking but anecdotal John Calder – I had dinner with Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder.

We had a long chat about the pitiful state of contemporary British literature. He argues that most people interested in ideas are emigrating to the visual arts or conceptual art, and that the celebrated writers of the day are the most mediocre and boring scribblers we’ve had for decades. We tried to think of one or two literary titles that made it into the top-ten or even top-fifty charts in the last twenty or thirty years. He couldn’t think of any book – neither could I.

I then told him I am currently editing this extraordinary book by Alexander Pope – another of my favourite authors – called Peri Bathous, or The Art of Sinking in Poetry. Pope, with his friends Arbuthnot, Gay, Parnell and Swift, created a literary group, nicknamed the Scriblerus Club, with the intent of ridiculing “all the false tastes in learning”. The Club left behind a number of co-operative works, mostly satires, the most important of which – which I published at Hesperus a few years ago – is The Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, a hilarious account of the life and works of a pretentious scholar.

I am not even half way through the editing of Peri Bathous, but I have already found a number of passages that are as true and applicable today as they were almost three hundred years ago, when Pope wrote them. I will give you three examples below, hoping that this will whet your appetite and you will want to read the whole thing when we publish the book next month.

“We come now to prove that there is an art of sinking in poetry. Is there not an architecture of vaults and cellars as well as of lofty domes and pyramids? Is there not as much skill and labour in making of dykes as in raising of mounts? Is there not an art of diving as well as of flying? And will any sober practitioner affirm that a diving engine is not of singular use in making him long-winded, assisting his sight and furnishing him with other ingenious means of keeping underwater?”

“It is affirmed by Quintilian that the same genius which made Germanicus so great a general would with equal application have made him an excellent heroic poet. In like manner, reasoning from the affinity there appears between arts and sciences, I doubt not but an active catcher of butterflies, a careful and fanciful pattern-drawer, an industrious collector of shells, a laborious and tuneful bagpiper or a diligent breeder of tame rabbits might severally excel in their respective parts of the bathos.”

“The physician, by the study and inspection of urine and ordure, approves himself in the science; and in like sort should our author accustom and exercise his imagination upon the dregs of nature. This will render his thoughts truly and fundamentally low, and carry him many fathoms beyond mediocrity.”

AG