Impressions and Revelations

Today I went to the Impressionist Interiors exhibition at the National Gallery, running until 10 August 2008. It is a small exhibition, intimate, as its subject suggest but it loses nothing for this. When we think of the impressionists it is true to say that we are very used to exteriors, plein air techniques, effects of light on water, Waterloo Bridge by Monet, or the façade of Rouen cathedral. We do not immediately think of interiors, which is why this is a welcome opportunity to reflect. The exhibition is well curated, it is small (only 44 works), judiciously selected. Startling and strange is Gaughin's Interior of the Painter's House, rue Carcel; and the Morisot portraits are just marvellous, delicate and telling and sophisticated. While in the NGI, I took a quick whizz around the Revelation exhibition in the Print Gallery and it was excellent (runs until 28 September 2008). On display are twenty-nine commissioned works from the Graphic Studio alongside some other pieces in the print collection. It is small, possible to take in in a quick visit and well worth it. One of my favourites is Brian Lalor's Glendalough print.

With printing on the brain, I headed across town to the Chester Beatty Library to see Rembrandt: Etchings from the Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam. I was not disappointed. Rembrandt's prints have always fascinated me, and again this is one of those small and intimate exhibitions with not many pieces. This is just as well because once you start to look at them you get completely lost in the impossible lines and could spend the whole day there. Highlights include the famous Hundred Guilder Print, depicting Christ in a gesture of benediction, indicating to a woman and child to come forward. It is a dramatic composition, complex and rich. The figures on the left are brightly illuminated, over-illuminated really, and apparently it has been suggested that this part of the print was unfinished. However, Rembrandt sold the print as it is, so if it wasn't finished, he was happy with it. The title refers to the price of the print when it went on the market originally: it was highly prized by collectors immediately and apparently Rembrandt had to pay 100 guilders to buy a copy back. Fascinating too in this exhibition are all the prints that were subsequently tinkered with and 'improved', as well as the very interesting print work of Capt. William Baillie (1723-1810). Go.

Braund on the Aeneid on iTunes

I am listening to the fascinating lectures given by Susanna Braund on Virgil's Aeneid at Stanford and now available on iTunes U. The first is an introduction to the course and epic poetry, the rest then proceed through the poem in three-book blocks. I like the way that it is a real class in action, so you hear students asking questions, and she's interacting with them, trying to remember the dates of the publication of books, welcoming (very) late students into the class. She's a super scholar, and I've just seen (though not yet read) her Latin Literature (Routledge, 2001), and I intend to read it. I think that it will be a good introduction and it will certainly be an appropriate piece on a medieval reading list. Her recent translation of Juvenal and Persius for the Loeb Classical Library is very good, and I'm dying to see her new edition of Seneca's De clementia (OUP, 2008).

By the way, I just picked up a copy of Miriam Griffin's Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Clarendon Press, 1992 [1976]) in the Oxfam bookshop on Parliament Street (Dublin) and cannot wait to read it (and for the criminal price of €6 too, I almost felt guilty...). I checked out a couple of JRS and CP reviews and enjoyed their snippiness, calling her "Ms Griffin", when the book was based on a doctoral dissertation, and suggesting that she's a bit emotional. Men unused to women in the academy, I suspect.

I'm next going to read Sebastian Barry's new novel, The Secret Scripture and will post shortly on it.

Stephen Medcalf (ed), The Later Middle Ages (London, 1981)

When I was in Cambridge last week I picked up a couple of rather things, all for under five of these English pounds. The first was David Bevington's 1975 Houghton Mifflin anthology Medieval Drama; the second, wonderfully, was the 1983 third edition of Beryl Smalley's The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. These are both marvellous and I'm heartily happy to have them. The third was something I'd been keeping a casual eye out for lately and was surprised and happy to see it: Stephen Medcalf (ed), The Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1981). I am now happy to read it. I saw a good many references to it in the Hoccleve criticism, but this is not a book that gets cited much outside this criticism and I am very puzzled as to why. Then I got curious about him and did a bit of online snooping, only to discover that he died last September. And his obituaries have all been extraordinary: in the Guardian, by Josipovici, his colleague at Sussex; in the Independant, the Telegraph, the Times, and the Church Times. The descriptions of the chaos in which he lived are memorable and I particularly enjoyed his response to the question, could he find any volume in his library, "Within a foot or two". Gabriel Josipovici writes:

He would not have lasted long in the present academic climate, which is the poorer for turning its back on people like Medcalf and Dyson and a whole host of Oxbridge teachers of an earlier generation, who felt that what they were there for was to teach, to impart to their students the values they themselves had learned from their teachers and from the authors they admired.

There is far too much truth in these words, and the things that are being allowed to happen in the academy make me sad, sad for all that is being lost. I am, then, coming to the book with a slightly different dispositio, reading it as a memorial and knowing, in a small way, some of the things that made Medcalf tick. The volume makes sense in a slightly different way now, I think, than it did to its reviewers (Lois Ebin in Spec 58 [1983], 509-511; M.G.A. Vale, English Historical Review 99 [1984], 418-419).

The volume is collaborative, comprising five individually-authored chapters. The first, by Medcalf, is entitled 'On reading books from a half-alien culture', pp. 1-55; the second, by Marjorie Reeves and Stephen Medcalf, 'The ideal, the real and the quest for perfection', pp. 56-107; the third, by Medcalf, 'Inner and outer', pp. 108-171; the fourth, by Nicola Coldstream, 'Art and architecture in the late Middle Ages', pp. 172-224; and finally, the fifth, by David Starkey, 'The age of the household: politics, society and the arts c. 1350-c. 1550', pp. 225-290. An epilogue, by Mecalf, entitled 'From Troilus to Troilus' (pp. 291-305) closes the book. The final two chapters are very interesting, and extremely good introductions to the architectural history of the period, and the chapter on the household is fascinating - my reading nicely segueing with publication of Elliot Kendall's new study, Lordship and Literature: John Gower and the Politics of the Great Household. Medcalf's contributions are extremely good, I think. There is something of a mind wrestling about them, of a tough thinking through big big ideas. It's a broad-brush stroke study, so I can see how critics might want more micro detail. But I think that the zoomed out view is very compelling, and there are many points where it is clear that the water is running very deep. And then there are the startling little details, which I hope will give you a sense of the way that tiny details can get picked up across a wide wide range of reading and be brought together. Medcalf is comparing Hoccleve's Prologue to the Regiment of Princes and Wordsworth's 'Resolution and Independence' and 'The Leechgatherer':

"The poems have the same seven-line stanza, rhyming ababbcc (rhyme royal), except that Wordsworth lengthens the last line each stanza by two syllables. So, although Hoccleve's poem was not printed till after Wordsworth's death, the coincidences seem great enough to suggest that Wordsworth had seen one of the manuscripts, possibly that in his own college of St John's, Cambridge, attracted perhaps by reading in Warton's History of English Poetry about the portrait of Chaucer, and moved by the theme he puts in his poem of 'Mighty poets in their misery dead'. If so, Hoccleve's poem would have given form to an incident that certainly happened to Wordsworth" (p. 136).

Jed Rubenfeld, The Interpretation of Murder (Headline, 2006)

Jed Rubenfeld's The Interpretation of Murder made a bit of a splash here by getting itself chosen by Richard and Judy as the best read of the year, and last year it was read as the book of the week on BBC Radio4. I took the long road to Cambridge and back yesterday and spent the eight hours on the bus reading this.

The story runs two parallel storylines, one centring on Freud's 1909 visit to the USA, and the other, the murder of a young woman in a bizarre S&M scenario in an expensive block of apartments in a posh part of New York City. When a second girl is attacked and survives, Freud and the circle of psychoanalysts around him become involved to help the girl recover her memory and identify the killer.

There is a good deal of atmospheric description of the social scene in New York City, and the first half of the book sets up the mystery rather well, I think. The problem is that as the novel draws to a close there is considerable difficulty in wrapping things up. I think that what has happened is that one layer of story has been laid upon another, all individually good ideas, but it ends up too layered and tying it all together becomes unwieldy. I see what Rubenfeld was trying to do and it is ambitious. The way that so much turns on the very simple detail of the monogram impression on the dead girl's neck, left there by the murderer, might have worked had it not gone through so many unnecessary twists, and when that details is 'explained' at the end, I'm afraid that it leaves you a little at a loss. Again, the idea that the killer is someone you never expected is certainly a satisfying part of a good crime novel. However, the way that this killer's motives are set within the context of psychoanalysis leaves one a little cold, almost unconvinced.

All the Freud and Jung stuff is quite interesting, the tension and rivalry between them. There's also the very enjoyable hint that Jung might be the murderer, not one you're supposed to take very seriously, but it's a bit of a giggle. And Freud and Jung occupy a position that is slightly off centre in the book. So the analysis, the investigating, the direct contact with the murder and the amnesiac witness, are all done by Dr Younger and Det. Littlemore. I think this might have rendered the presence of Freud greater had it been handled better, but as it is, they remained characters badly in need of more fleshing out.

Having said all of this, I did keep reading, and the weaknesses of the book only become apparent in the final 40 or 50 pages. Bring it on holidays. You'll enjoy it.

MS Chig. L. V. 176

Book buying has been proceeding apace over the last month or so. Was very lucky to pick up Dobson's Origins of the Ancrene Wisse and his edition of MS Cotton Cleopatra C. vi; paid too much for a pb of Spearing's Medieval Dream-Poetry (CUP, 1976), but it is very hard to find. And I keep finding nice things in Oxfam these days on Chaucer, such as Fisher's The Importance of Chaucer, Rowe's Through Nature to Eternity, and also a lovely little paperback of Ruggiers' translation of Barbi's Life of Dante.

What I am particularly pleased with, however, is the last two acquisitions. The first is Oskar Hecker's Boccaccio-Funde, and important early (1902) treatment of Boccaccio's manuscripts and the so-called parva libreria. It was a great price too, obviously someone did not love it. Much work has been done since, of course, and there are many points at which this study has been superseded. But it is surprising how often it is necessary to return to it. The second purchase was the surprise find: Il codice Chigiano L. V. 176 autografo di Giovanni Boccaccio, intro. Domenico de Robertis, Codices e Vaticanis Selecti, 37 (Rome; Florence: Alinari, 1975). Now I have seen this around, but usually for a large number of Euros. This required only forty-five of them, and it is in super condition.

This manuscript is very important. It contains: Boccaccio's Vita di Dante;* Dante's Vita nova; Cavalcanti's Donna me prega with Dino del Garbo's commentary; Boccaccio's Ytalie iam certus honos; fifteen of Dante's lyric poems; Petrarch's Canzoniere (the so-called 'forma Chigi'). De Robertis explains rather lucidly, in his introduction, that this manuscript is almost certainly to be linked with another in the Chigiano library, MS L. VI. 213. This manuscript contains Boccaccio's Breve raccoglimento of the Commedia and a copy of the Commedia itself. As de Robertis says of all of this: 'L'integrazione di Dante con Petrarca è dunque la vera novità della silloge boccaccesca' (p. 28). Much is not known about how or indeed why the manuscript was taken apart and rebound, but it might well have been Boccaccio himself. The Cavalcanti with del Garbo commentary looks like it belongs, chronologically, to a slightly different period in the history of the manuscript, and it has been suggested that it was a late addition by Boccaccio (this part is, too, in Boccaccio's hand). The Cavalcanti section occupies a part of the manuscript that has been thought to have originally comprised the Commedia. A recent and very interesting treatment of this manuscript is to be found in Martin George Eisner, 'Boccaccio Between Dante and Petrarch: The Chigiano Codex, Terza Rima Trilogy, and the Shaping of Italian Literary History' (unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2005), esp. chapter two. I very much hope this study is published since it deserves a wider audience.


*The image is a manuscript now in the Biblioteca Provinciale di Foggia, with the following online catalogue entry:

DELLA ORIGINE VITA ET COSTUMI DEL CLARISSIMO POETA DANTE ALDIGHIERI DI FIRENZE E DELLE OPERE DA LUI COMPOSTE.

Cart.; mm. sec. XV (1475); mm. 145 x 220; ce. 29, ciascuna di 26 linee; numer. originale; scrittura umanistica; iniziali in rosso ed azzurro; ril. recente; dorso in pelle, con lettere e fregi in oro e n. di collocazione 139.

Prov.: Nicola Zingarelli, 1936.

A c. 29: «Qui finisce della origine vita et costumi et studii di dante aldighieri poeta clarissimo et delle opere composte dallui fatta da giovanni bocchacci addi XXIII di luglio ore XV MCCCCLXXV» sul verso del foglio di guardia anteriore note autografe a matita di Nicola Zingarelli: «Ms with text different from the first printed edition» e «Da questo ms. deve provenire direttamente il Laurenziano PI. LXV, n. 41, che ha lo stesso n. d'ordine che qui si vede da c. 16; invece il Magl. II, IV, 20, che è strettamente affine ad essi, non può derivare dal Laurenziano, come si afferma da Macrì Leone e da Rostagno, nè dal presente; questo ms. è il più antico della famiglia, come dimostra la grafia. N. Z.»

(Sub)Standard Medievalists

Some silly girl called Charlotte (above) wrote a silly article for something called the Weekly Standard about Kalamazoo. Evidently the standards are falling. No, not those at the Zoo, rather those at the Weekly Standard. She's got quite a little rant going here and it is pretty much directed at everyone. I particularly enjoyed:

I'm told that the dances of today are no match in noise and lasciviousness for those of the mid-1990s, when flocks of leather-clad gays took to the floor to celebrate their academic coming-out in a congress session on "Queer Iberia." Still, I spent two hours there nursing a beer and mesmerized by the bobbing fauxhawks, the shaking bare flesh (and plenty of it), the hip-hopper in the Blondie T-shirt, the fellow in the full kilt and sporran who had been wandering through the congress as though in search of the set for Brigadoon, the nose-rings, the Birkenstocks, the Pashtun caps, the bare feet of the learned professors of the Middle Ages and their grad-student acolytes.

Nevermind the homophobia, the bitterness, the pinched tut-tutting: I am shocked and APPALLED that she nursed a beer for TWO HOURS. I'm sorry but she's certainly like no medievalist I've ever met. This completely unacceptable and quite irresponsible attitude to alcohol leaves me, well, frankly in need of a drink. For responses with long and funny comments, see this and this.

Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia: The Moment Art Changed Forever (Tate Modern, 2008)

I realize as a write this that the exhibition is now, in fact, over. Never mind. I got to this exhibition on Saturday and it was very enjoyable. The artist I did not know was Picabia, and his work was fascinating and extremely good. I particularly enjoyed the late stuff, when he was being accused of turning his back on Modernism. Actually, I found it rather stimulating, and doing quite a lot with his modernist credentials.

The Duchamp urinal was on show, which looks like it does in a photo. The very interesting Bride Stripped Bare by Her Batchelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915-1923 was on display and a photo certainly does not do this justice. Duchamp became fascinated with working on glass and this is very much one of the big works of this phase. It is now too delicate to travel and has been reconstructed. So it is a reconstruction that we all stand around adoring. Very interesting phenomenon, and not the only example of such reconstructions in the exhibition. The urinal, for example, was originally exhibited in 1917, and the original object is now lost. This is a reconstruction made in 1964 with the artist's approval. It makes you think a lot about concepts of originality, and in many ways it is so in keeping with the spirit of modernism, the self-confidence in the joke, the tearing down of the old institutions. And yet we flock to see this stuff. Just like all the other 'more' institutional art. And it is funny how it does not seem to matter very much. The aura of authenticity does not seem to have anything to do with the message. I suppose that it is the flux of this that makes me uncomfortable, the sense of fleetingness and perhaps, too, of lightness. Not leggierezza, in the Calvino sense (or indeed in the Liszt sense). More that it doesn't matter. Maybe, that it really doesn't matter. That's an abyss I'm not ready to approach yet.

Next on the list in London is Cranach at the Royal Academy, so I'll blog on that when I get to it.

Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, ed & comm. Rosanna Bettarini (Turin, 2005)

Rosanna Bettarini's marvellous commented edition of the Canzoniere has just become mine! Mwha mwha. I've wanted this for a good while but just bit the bullet last month. It is beautiful. I remember reading Boitani's review of it in Il Sole 24 Ore, back when it came out, and I decided to buy it because volumes in this series, the Nuova raccolta di classici italiani annotati go out of print rather quickly and then become impossible to find (a good example is Gorni's edition of the Vita nova, or De Robertis' edition of Cavalcanti's Rime). This commentary is extraordinarily rich, with an enormous bibliography. It also has a short introduction (Bettarini has published a monograph on Petrarch). She writes beautifully in this introduction about the study of Petrarch being a study of books, the books he wrote, collected, annotated:

Cosí la poco scrivibile storia di Petrarca è essenzialmente una storia di libri, strappati alla fuga temporis: quelli suoi, che crescono intrecciati e che vengono avanti l'uno dopo l'altro «in tam parva vite area» (Fam. XIX 16, 5), coltivati come giardini, ortulos e libellos del pari piantati con le sue mani (Fam. XI 12, 11), tutti, con avvolgente metafora, bisognosi dell'assiduità del buon coltivatore: «nec coluisse semel sufficit, sed semper insistere oportet qui singularem aliquem vel agri vel animi fructum cupit» (Fam. XIII 12, 7-8, del 1352); di quei libri che il peregrinus ubique porta sempre con sé, per terra, per mare e sul monte Ventoso, come le Confessioni di sant'Agostino, che sono la rivelazione (paolina) dell'acutezza degli occhi interiori, occhi del cuore o invisibiles oculi («Tunc vero montem satis vidisse contentus, in me ipsum interiores oculos reflexi», Fam. IV 1, 29, in particolare sintonia con le agostiniane Enarrationes in Psalmos, XLI 2) e dell'autoanalisi, sostenente i motivi del Secretum e ancor piú del Canzoniere, in quel misto di umbra montis e di umbra mortis che è la cifra della grande canzone di nostalgia Di pensier in pensier (CXXIX); di quei libri fisicamente non cercati in gioventú, le rime di Dante, la Commedia, come testimoniato in una famosa lettera al Boccaccio (Fam. XXI 15), sui quali grava un eccesso di memoria e un igienico distacco, comprovante che non c'è niente di piú filiale e amorevole che uccidere il padre; di quei libri perduti e riconquistati, decorati con ogni possibile segno di tenerezza, come il Virgilio Ambrosiano allestito dal padre ser Petracco, «michi subreptus» nel 1326 e «deinde restitutus» nel 1338 apud Avinionem (sottoscrizione autografa del foglio di guardia del codice Ambr. A 79 inf.), reso splendido e commovente da una miniatura di Simone Martini (su progetto iconofrafico dello stesso Petrarca) e dalla nota che registra la data di morte di molti amici, dell'unica amata (Avignone 6 aprile 1348), e poi, volando il tempo, del figlio Giovanni (1361); di quei vecchissimi volumi scovati nelle Biblioteche («inque bibliothecam ... velut in arcem fugio», Fam. XIX 16, 20), come le lettere di Cicerone ad Attico, a Bruto e al fratello Quinto (Capitolar di Verona, tarda primavera del 1345), che stanno a fondamento delle Familiares (appunto ciceronianamente Rerum familiarum libri), ma con l'impertinente novità di rivolgersi non a uno solo, come anche Seneca a Lucilio, ma a innumerevoli amici, moltiplicando se stesso nell'immagine di molti, selezionati «non sine suspirio» in quel rituale falò di carte che è descritto in testa alla raccolta: «omnis generis sparsa poemata seu familiares epystolas ... Vulcano corrigendas tradidi» (Fam. I 1, 9), sulla scorta di Ovidio che nei Tristia affida al fuoco la correzione del passato: «Multa quidem scripsi, sed, quae vitiosa putavi, | emendaturus ignibus ipse dedi» (IV X 61-62)' (Introduzione, pp. xii-xiii).

I was then reminded of A.C. de la Mare's remark about Petrarch's manuscripts: 'Over the years Petrarch must have acquired several hundred manuscripts and, to judge only from those so far identified, his collection must have been one of the largest and most important in private hands at any time before or since' (The Handwriting of Italian Humanists, Vol. 1, fasc. 1 [Oxford: Printed at the University Press for the Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, 1973], p. 5). There is something about this that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

I enjoyed too the nod to E.H. Wilkins, the amicus transatlanticus, and wondered about how condescending that tag is. I know that Bettarini is simply following how he was recorded in the Petrarch Society, I know that she is repeating it out of great and evident respect, and I know too that Wilkins considered it a great honour. And it was. But it is funny how the Italians are very territorial about their medieval literature, and more precisely about its criticism. I was trying to think whether you'd get an Irish scholar praising Richard Ellmann as an amicus transatlanticus for his Joyce criticism. I'm not at all sure you would.

Bettarini's commentary is magisterial and I am deeply glad every time I open its pages and get lost in it.

Doing The OED

I promised I'd blog the photo taken today on our visit to the Oxford English Dictionary. I was crouching so the Shorter OED display could be seen. All in all I think a very enjoyable visit.

Thios i Lar an Ghleanna

Nuala O'Faolain (1942-2008)

On Saturday, Nuala O'Faolain died. I've only just seen it as I looked this morning through the Irish Times online. Right now I am listening to her stunningly poignant interview with Marion Finucane, broadcast on April 12. Her talking about her room, saying goodbye to it, her books, her curtains, will break your heart in two. It has mine.

Read obits here here here & here. Then read Are You Somebody? (New Island Books, 1996).

For the rest of today I'm going to listen to Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin, and then to Thíos i Lár an Ghleanna, the words of which I leave you with:

Thíos i lár an ghleanna, tráthnóna beag aréir
Agus a' drúcht 'na dheora geala 'na luí ar bharr an fhéir,
'Sea casadh domhsa an ainnir ab áille gnúis 'gus pearsa,
'Sí a sheol mo stuaim 'un seachráin, tráthnóna beag aréir.

Agus a Rí, nár lách ár n-ealaín 'gabháil síos an gleann aréir,
Ag éalú fríd an chanach agus ciúnas ins an spéir,
Órú, a rún mo chléibh, nár mhilis ár súgradh croí 's nár ghairid,
Agus a Rí na glóire gile, tabhair ar ais an oíche aréir.

Do chiabhfholt fáinneach frasach, do mhalaí bhán', do dhéad,
Do chaolchoim álainn mhaiseach agus glórthaí caoin' do bhéil,
Do bhráid mar chlúmh na heala, do shúil mar réalt' na maidine
'Gus faraor gur dhual dúinn scaradh, tráthnóna beag aréir.

Dá bhfaighinnse arís cead pilleadh 'gus labhairt le stór mo chléibh,
Nó dá bhfaighinnse buaidh ar an chinniúint, char mhiste liom fán tsaol,
Shiúlfainn leat fríd chanach, fríd mhéilte ar chiumhais na mara,
'Gus dúiche Dé dá gcaillfinn, go bpógfainnse do bhéal.

CJ Sansom, Revelation (London: Macmillan, 2008)

CJ Sansom has a doctorate in history from the University of Birmingham and is making jolly good use of it. He writes historical crime fiction. His detective is a lawyer called Matthew Shardlake who is working during the reign of Henry VIII. Revelation has just been published, the fourth in his a series of mysteries featuring the hunchback sleuth. I really enjoy this series and find these novels rather gripping. The plots are extremely good and Sansom sets up his stories within the wonderfully claustrophobic reign of Henry, where each wife is being beheaded one by one, and allegiances are shifting constantly. This creates a dynamic of mistrust and disquiet throughout that serves constantly to keep the tension levels high.

Revelation is the longest of the novels in the Shardlake series. In this novel Sansom is doing something a little different in that it is a crime with a distinctly modern edge. An old and trusted friend of Shardlake is horrifically murdered right at the heart of Lincoln's Inn. His widow asks Shardlake to help and he presents himself at the inquest to find out what happened. When the inquest is hushed up with indecent haste, it becomes obvious that greater powers are at work and he is duly brought before Cranmer who tells him that it appears not to be an isolated murder. Shardlake and Barak are taken into the confidence of the Archbishop. Their nervousness revolves around the king's recent interest in the widow Lady Latimer, Catherine Parr. These murders have a reformist edge and might be intended to throw an unfavourable light on her followers. But how can this be? The murders escalate quickly and a pattern begins to develop. It seems, in sum, that a serial killer is on the loose and he is constantly a step ahead of their every move. Can they act quickly enough to stop the escalation, and how can this be kept from the king. Not only is the novel fascinating for the usual historical, contextual detail, but they way that Shardlake and Dr Malton try to get inside the mind of the killer is also wonderful. They are proto-profilers, on the one hand trying to understand the killer and on the other trying to help a young man who has become paralyzed with guilt and remorse and in danger of getting himself burned at the stake for unauthorized preaching. Can they bring him round in time?

Dissolution (2003) is the first in the series of Shardlake mysteries. We are introduced to a hunchback lawyer who has been charged with a delicate matter. Thomas Cromwell is attempting to get the monasteries to accept the King as head of the church. Most are complying, but the political connections some of the monasteries have are, too, posing problems. So when the monastery of Scarnsee, on the Sussex coast proves difficult, a commissioner is dispatched to put some pressure on the abbot. Things begin to go very wrong when the commissioner ends up murdered, actually, beheaded, and the high altar has been desecrated with a sacrificed rooster. Cromwell needs to know what's going on, who killed the commissioner, and most importantly, he needs the abbot to sign papers relinquishing the monastery. So far so good. Shouldn't be too difficult to find out who did this. It is, after all, a closed-room mystery, more or less. And there aren't that many monks. But Shardlake gets a fright when people start to die around him, and he looks himself to be a target. With pressure mounting from Cromwell and a killer getting closer and closer to killing him, Shardlake desperately does not know who to trust.

Dark Fire (2004) is the second in the series and sees Shardlake return after having been left in peace for three years. A strange case comes to his attention. A young woman has been accused of murdering her young cousin, throwing him down a well. She has refused to say anything, and will soon be put under peine forte et dure in order to confess, to innocence or otherwise. But there's something odd about her silence that puzzles Matthew. The case is hopeless. She will die under the torture and the case will amount to nothing. Until, that is, Cromwell intervenes. He needs Matthew, known for his acumen and discretion, to investigate something. And he has put pressure on the judge to give him ten days grace to do so. The book proceeds, then, with the two stories running parallel (a common thread through Sansom's plotlines). Cromwell has been given to believe that some ancient formula for dark fire has been rediscovered in the cellar of St Bart's in London. He has even been given a demonstration of how it works. And he's convinced. Finding himself increasingly out of favour with the king, he sees this as his chance to become a trusted member of the inner circle again. Shardlake's mission is to find out how progress goes on Dark Fire and to get ready for the demonstration before the king the following week. Straightforward enough. Except, the very first people they interview, the makers of this dark fire, have been brutally murdered just moments before they arrive. And Shardlake, along with Cromwell's assistant Barak, must find out whether there is any substance to the claims for Dark Fire and just who is behind these brutal murders? The brutality of the killings, and the fact that Shardlake himself gets closer and closer to becoming his next victim, keeps the pace up, and all the while political chaos is gradually unfolding. Cromwell's grip is giving way and his impending downfall provides a brilliant backdrop for the denouement.

Sovereign (2006) is the third in the Shardlake series. The action is set in the Autumn of 1541 and the Progress to the North, culminating in the submission of the rebels in York. Shardlake has been entrusted with a secret mission to keep an eye on a prisoner with sensitive information. He must be kept alive long enough for questioning in the Tower and what information he has must be extracted from him (without killing him). When a glazier has a fall and makes some enigmatic remarks to Shardlake just before he dies, things begin rapidly to get out of control. The murders become more numerous and the King is ever approaching York. Can he work fast enough to find out what is going on and get to the bottom of these killings, and how does this prisoner fit in to the puzzle? This, combined with the intense interest in the snippets of information from the highest men in the realm all leads one to feel that there might be a lot more than is at first evident. A mysterious package of documents containing astonishing information is at the heart of the matter. Can he recover these cursed documents, and worst of all, what will happen if he ever finds out what is really in them? Sovereign is marvellous for the way it sets up some very implausible claims at the beginning of the novel that gradually become less and less so, until the truth is so shocking and the consequences so terrible, perhaps it is better to know nothing. A nice problem for a lawyer.

I've greatly enjoyed reading these novels and highly recommend them.

More Medieval Madness

So my friend Kate and I went to Bennett & Kerr today and once we got in the door we began to resemble Mr Nicholson(above). There are just so many goodies in this place that I cannot begin to tell you about. When the printed catalogue arrived it had me foaming at the mouth. Very few of the books I wanted were actually there, which was disappointing but probably a jolly good thing. Neither of us knew exactly the road, but Kate's excellent friend, Mr Sat Nav, knew the way and gently guided us all the way. We were warmly welcomed by Marion, who made us tea and let us wander around like crazy feral children. Every now and then there'd be a gasp and the sound of another book being thrown greedily onto the 'maybe' pile. This was duly transformed into the 'must have' pile. I was delighted with my haul. Curry's Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences; Boitani's Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame; Coopland's edition of Philippe de Mézières' Epistre au Roi Richart; E.G. Stanley's Continuations and Beginnings. Overall, a very good morning's work. Kate picked up some marvellous things, valuable and interesting stuff. But I shan't say more about hers. It might be mistaken for envy.

Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press

Watch the first episode of Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press aired on BBC 4 on Monday 14 April and now available on the new iPlayer service. It's a lot of fun.

The one wot didn't get away

At last. Mine. Mwha mwha. Gorni's edition of the Vita nova. The 'Wants' section of Abebooks really does work. The email telling me a copy was available came first thing in the morning and I couldn't get my credit card out fast enough. This is really very scarce and I am delighted to have it. The book is what the Italians delightfully call intonso, meaning the pages are uncut. The bookseller's description might have been interpreted as saying that this was a fault with the publishers, on a par with the small tear on the cover. But I didn't care. I was so afraid that it would get here I said nothing until it arrived and it now sits on my desk. I also ordered a copy of Luciano Rossi's edition of the by Guinizzelli, Nuova raccolta di classici italiani annotati, 17 (Einaudi, 2002 [ISBN: 8806152696]). Very happy to have this too. My next big(ish) purchase will be Rosanna Bettarini's splendid two-volume edition of Petrarch's Canzoniere, Nuova raccolta di classici italian annotati, 21 (Einaudi, 2005).

Now running around making final arrangements for our Light conference tomorrow and Saturday. Looking forward to it, or I would if I could sit for a minute.

Poetry Now 2008

Over the past few days I've been going out to Dun Laoghaire to the Poetry Now 2008 Festival. It has been very worthwhile. And old and good friend was curator this year so I was going as both a moral supporter but also a bog standard member of the public, interested in the readings. On Thursday, Belinda McKeon gave a wonderful introductory lecture, 'Poem Springing', and discussed the idea of readings, citing Larkin's suspicions of readings. It was about poetry and diversity, the work of the ear and the work of the eye. [On the Poetry Ireland website, on the calendar of events, they've listed Belinda as reading her poem 'Springing', which I thought was a rather poetic misreading for her introduction 'Poem Springing'].

I got to several readings. Bernard O'Donoghue, Antonella Anedda, and Jamie McKendrick. It was such a pleasure. O'Donoghue is one of my favourite poets writing at the moment. He writes so beautifully about leaving home, about Ireland, about an Ireland of the 1950s that I recognize in veins of my own childhood, and in my own returns home. He helps me make sense of that and teaches me so much about the things I know so well they are a mystery. Anedda's work I did not know but found myself delighted to know it, and she was well served in the beautiful translations of the wonderful Jamie McKendrick. McKendrick occupies a space of happy Italian memories for me and to hear him read again made me think a lot about that time.

Later that evening, CD Wright and Seamus Heaney read. Wright's work, again (I say red-faced), I did not know and found it difficult and interesting and I enjoyed the hard work of it. Heaney was what he always is in readings: memorable, beautiful, modest, extraordinary. He read some new stuff, which was marvellous to hear.

On Saturday, I got to the final reading of the evening, Henri Cole, Mimi Khalvati, and George Szirtes. Again, this was an introduction to the work of Cole and Khalvati, but I shall certainly be reading more. And Szirtes read with that Central European urbanity that his poetry so beautifully expresses, the sadness of an exile.

Undoubtedly one of the highlights for me was meeting Alice Lyons, the poet and visual artist who was responsible for the fantastic Staircase Project in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim. We'd been introduced as neighbours, and a moment's puzzlement led to a spark of mutual recognition where I was identified as "Miglior Acque"! That's a first. It was a beautiful evening and I am glad of it.

Thank you Belinda for putting together a fantastic festival, and thanks to the poetry, for being so good.

In Bruges, dir. & written by Martin McDonagh (2007)

I don't think that I ever want to meet Martin McDonagh. I don't want to meet him because I do not want to know what a man like that is really like. A genius. An extraordinary playwright, who turns his hand to making a short film, and wins an Oscar, and who turns his hand to his first feature and comes up with In Bruges. It is not easy to take all of that in.

In Bruges is quite simply a marvellous film. I went with no expectations; I'd read no reviews, and heard one good report from a friend. I knew that Colin Farrell was in it, which slightly put me off, given the silly public profile he has. And then he goes and pulls of a performance that was sensitive and wonderful.

Two hit-men, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) hide it out in Bruges after a botched job that has resulted in the death of a child, an innocent bystander. They are to await instructions from the boss, Harry (Ralph Fiennes), but neither have any idea why they've been sent. Eventually, Harry telephones Ken and orders that Ray be killed, for killing the child. "You can't go 'round killing children, it's that simple", he says later in the film. But Ray has already hit rock bottom, and just as Ken is about to shoot him, he sees Ray lift a gun to his head. He stops him just in time, Ray sees Ken with the gun, and realizes that a hit has been ordered on him. They sit and talk it out. This is one of the very powerful scenes in the film, where Ray explains that he cannot go on living with himself for the death of the child. He breaks down, crumbles really, and it's quite something to see how Farrell controls it. Ken wants to give Ray another chance, a chance to make things right, to do something good and so lets him go. He then rings Harry to say that the job has not been done, and gets himself washed and dressed awaiting the furious, murderous, psychotic Harry to come and kill him. The way that Ken resigns to Harry is heartbreaking and I think that Gleeson does it beautifully.

There are several more twists and turns, and I won't go any further because they are rather enjoyable. That's what's so interesting about this film. There's a huge element of caper about it: Harry says to the hotel owner, as he and Ray, armed, are confronting eachother: "This is the shootout!". That kind of funny, meta-fictional, postmodern cleverness is nodded at, but not allowed to overpower. He's actually just telling her what they're doing, not making a comment on the characters' fictional self-awareness. It's something that postmodern never is, sincere. The film is shot in the beautiful city of Bruges, and the setting is a huge part of the story. Ray hates it, Ken loves it, and Harry has sent them there because of a childhood visit he remembers with nostalgia. The city is almost another character. McDonagh has taken the quiet anonymity of Belgium, more precisely its best preserved medieval city, as this wonderful, unnoticed, ancient place. Ray, narrating at the beginning, says that he didn't even know where Bruges was, there's a pause as the audience asks themselves the same, and then he says: "It's in Belgium". Harry's wife has the same question before he leaves, "Where is Bruges anyway?".

I suppose that is what the film is about, places we don't go, or places we don't notice anymore. Ancient places. Like the extraordinary scene where Ray and Ken walk around the art gallery enjoying the torturous hellish Bosch and those images of death handing a note to a man, his time is up. The literalness of their lives, shooting people for money, is given this deeper texture through the allegorical figures in the paintings and they are faced with deep questions of justice, innocence and guilt. We are not being asked to judge the two as hitmen, since we're assured that most of the people they kill are bad, or have killed themselves. Even the priest has done something. But the innocence life of the boy can never be brought back, the injustice, the sin of it is somehow absolute, irrevocable. And Harry orders the hit on Ray not because he's dangerous to him, but out of honour. Ray killed an innocent boy and so must die. Ken knows that he must sacrifice his life to give Ray a chance, and it is his love for Harry and his sense of honour that moves Harry and prevents him from killing Ken. And then Harry, the most furious man in the film, perhaps turns out the be the most honourable man in it.

Ancient, beautiful, unnoticed places: honour, justice, innocence, guilt. Like Bruges.

English as a Foreign Language, or I Can't Live Anymore

The Space Between Words: Further Thoughts on Garage

Last Friday Garage was released in the UK, with a premier at the Curzon Soho and a Question & Answer session with Lenny Abrahamson, Mark O'Halloran and Anne-Marie Duff. I went down for it and was looking forward to seeing the film again. The questions afterwards were interesting to compare with what had been asked in the Dublin Q&A session I went to. It also provided the opportunity to hear Mark, Lenny, and Ann-Marie Duff talk about their own experiences with the characters. While the Irish audience was concerned and responded to the death of the small town, the English audience was far more struck by the language of the fim, its rhythms and cadences. I think that was an interesting thing to see and confirms in my mind that its spareness and its linguistic purity makes it universal. This idea of linguistic purity, of a spareness that highlights the simplest of words as being the most profound was something that struck me upon a second viewing. Josie has a way of internalizing the language of others that is just fascinating. And his way of saying 'Now' was noted at the Q&A. It is a very Irish thing. It can mean, 'I agree', or 'I don't agree', or a host of other possibilities somewhere in between. The way that Josie's language can fill with significance, however, renders that now into something more elevated. It seems to create a temporality around him where a past and a future have collapsed into a continuous present of observation and reaction. His friendship with David is wonderfully expressed in a scene in which Josie comments on the colour of the sky and David looks up, agrees, and describes it as 'beautiful'. Later, in the bar, Josie asks the barman did he see the evening sky, and is told that there was no time to be looking out at the sky. Josie says that it was beautiful. The lyric sensibilities of the barman do not stretch to sharing the moment and so Josie simply shares it with us. David has given him a vocabulary to describe what he had already noticed. Josie, who is training David in, showing him how to run the garage, is being trained by David in how to describe the world around him.

There's much more to say. The physicality of Josie struck me again, and the way in which this adds to his reality, to his thereness, his facticity, if that makes sense. His face is as expressive as a stream in which each character watches both himself and a reflection of the world pass by. Everyone sees themselves, or a fleeting image of themselves, in Josie. His otherness is us.

Go to see this film. You will not be sorry.

Meet Jo Bach

Experts have reconstructed the face of Bach from his bones, according to a recent Reuters report. The Scottish forensic anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson did the work, and he's rather interesting looking, really. Very expressive. Though it does look a little like he's listening to a beginner play one of his cello suites!
Interesting how we often desire to have a likeness, to search for a good likeness of the face, for our heroes. (See the recent attempts to reconstruct the face of Dante, for example)

Ernesto Illy (1925-2008)

Ernesto Illy, the grandfather of coffee, died earlier this month. He combined a scientific rigour to the development and making of good coffee with a flair for style. A PhD in chemistry, experience on the road selling coffee, Ernesto became managing director of Illy in 1956, the company his father had founded in 1933.

From the Times obit:

'For him, the water temperature should be between 90C and 95C and the coffee the sand-sized grinds of exactly 50 beans roasted at 220C, with 25ml to 30ml of espresso then extracted from it under 9 atmospheres of pressure. The temperature of the coffee to be sipped must be between 80C and 85C, and Illy even designed the shape of a cup for the ideal taste. Milk and sugar he regarded as contaminants.'

Other obits can be read here & here & here.

Dante and the Church & Dante and His Literary Precursors, Four Courts, 2007

My prive scilence over the past few weeks has been due to a hectic HT, but I thought I'd better send a flare up just so that you know I'm alive. Things have been busy here this term, both teaching and getting to interesting lectures. Caroline Bynum Walker gave a lecture at Schools last evening entitled "Visual Matter: Christian Materiality in the Later Middle Ages". Fascinating stuff. Last week Derek Pearsall came to talk about the C-Text of Piers Plowman, a new edition of which will appear with Exeter UP next year. Greatly anticipated.

In other news: I just picked up s/h copies of these two collections of essays, each originally comprising lectures delivered at the Annual Dante Lecture Series at University College Dublin. This lecture series is the main outlet for Dante research in Ireland and its organizers and participants, as well as the UCD Foundation for Italian Studies, are all much to be commended. Both of these collections merit attention. I'm still making my way through them, but I greatly enjoyed George Holmes' 'Dante and the Franciscans' (pp. 25-38) and Alexander Murray's 'Purgatory and the Spatial Imagination' (pp. 61-92), a very fascinating and broad account. I am next going to read Catherine Keen's 'Fathers of Lies: (Mis)readings of Clerical and Civic Duty in Inferno XXIII' (pp. 173-207).

The other volume on Dante's literary precursors has twelve essays. Again, I'm still making my way through it, but have already greatly enjoyed A. Teresa Hankey's 'Dante and Statius' (pp. 37-50, though I'm unconvinced) and Peter Hainsworth's excellent 'Dante and Monte Andrea' (pp. 153-177, and I am convinced). Next will be Claire E. Honess, 'Dante and Political Poetry in the Vernacular' (pp. 117-151).

I guess the appearance to two volumes at once must have to do with the RAE last year. One curiosity (as opposed to a criticism): The Dante and the Church convention for citing the Commedia is Petrocchi's edition, but in Dante and His Literary Precursors, it is to Sanguineti's new edition. I'd love to know if there were any philological reasons for the discrepancy. Also it uses Gorni's Vita nova, and De Robertis' Rime, but in the SISMEL edition of 2005 rather than the 2002 Edizione Nazionale published by Le Lettere, while the Church volume simply refers to the Ricciardi Opere minori for everything except the Commedia. So between the two volumes, we're getting everything, I suppose.

A McGonigle Watch at Appleby's

I recently became interested in the work of the McGonigle brothers, Irish watchmakers. I get e-mail updates, and they recently let us know that they had left a watch into Appleby's in Dublin for viewing. Since I had never seen one in the flesh, I thought I'd go in to have a look. There are two, including a beautiful platinum model. They are just beautiful, incredibly poised in design and with a really dynamic face. They feel really modern actually, and quite edgy. This is all the more remarkable considering that they are so traditional, crafted with painstaking attention to detail. They make, I believe, about four watches a year. Money would be vulgar to talk about considering the kind of watch we're talking about. It's a work of art. That's all. If you're interested I really recommend a visit to see this marvellous watch.

I should also say that the chap who looked after me there, and I did not catch his name, but I should have thought he's an Appleby, was extremely helpful and courteous and spoke with care and in detail about the watches. I greatly enjoyed the visit, and was given good reason to trust them.

Call for Papers: Light: Aspects and Approaches

Another wot got away

I thought I nearly had it. A tad over-priced, but I was willing. Postage cost a disgrace, but that's the way of it. And then a message, the bookseller regrets that this book is not in place: it may have been sold to a customer who walked in off the street, or the seller's database has not been updated. So that's that. I know it will come up again; it'll be in the window of a charity shop, or I'll find it online again and I'll be that person who walked in of the street and gets it in time. Patience with books leads to good collections.

It was Guglielmo Gorni's edition of the Vita nova for the 'Nuova Raccolta di classici italiani annotati', published by Einaudi, in 1996 (ISBN: 8806132253). I must admit I find myself convinced by his renumbering of the chapters. Numerology is always a tricky one to argue, because it's so flexible and can be made to perform incredible acrobatics for you that just work somehow, but the patterns around the number 9 are very stimulating and compelling. See too his article ''Paragrafi' e titolo della «Vita Nova»', Studi di filologia italiana, 53 (1995), 203-222 for an account. There's something very economical about his argument and his critique of Barbi's assertion that the divisions are inconsistent in the extant manuscripts is powerful. (Cf. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta, 'From Manuscript to Print: The Case of Dante's Vita Nuova', in Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies, ed. by Theodore J. Cachey, William and Katherine Devers Series in Dante Studies, 1 [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995], pp. 83-114, for another view, of considerably more shaky philological foundation).

But I cannot complain. Lately I've been finding some lovely things here and there. Kenelm Foster's The Two Dantes (London, 1977), in lovely condition, and a very good pb of his Petrarch (Edinburgh, 1984). The former I found before a visit to Cambridge last week. I took it as a good omen for my journey, and it was indeed a good omen. While in Cambridge I found a lovely copy of Gordon's The Double Sorrow of Troilus (Oxford, 1970), and Barron's Trawthe and Treason: The Sin of Gawain Reconsidered (Manchester, 1980).

Francesco Petrarca, De insigni obedientia et fide uxoria, ed. Albanese (1998)

This gorgeous little facsimile of Florence, Bibl. Riccardiana, MS 991, prepared by the excellent Gabriella Albanese was published in 1998 by Edizioni dell'Orso (Alessandria); she is also responsible for writing an introduction. It appears to be out of print now, but I shall certainly keep my eyes open for it as I'd love to own a copy. The manuscript is rather unusual in that it comprises just 22 ff of Petrarch's Latin translation of Dec X. 10, the story of Gualtieri and his patient wife Griselda. Very few single volume 'monographs' of the work exist, being much more frequently compiled with other material into a miscellany. Its format is unusual, 18 cm X 12.5 cm, written in a humanist script that is light and spacious.

"L'elegante mise en page del testo, infatti, vergato in scrittura umanistica, a piena pagina, con uno specchio di scrittura arioso, di gusto classico, il formato decisamente moderno e 'petrarchesco' di «libretto da mano» ne fanno un maneggevole libro di lettura, scritto al contempo con eleganza e chiarezza, che ripete da vicino teoria e prassi della riforma del libro voluta e imposta da Petrarca negli ambienti delle più avanzate avanguardie umanistiche" (p. 39).

Perhaps most interesting is its unfinished iconographic programme, with blank spaces at key scenes. Albanese includes an analysis of these empty scenes and a comparison with other illuminated manuscripts with pictorial representations of these very moments in the text. This is a fascinating study and a fascinating manuscript and both are worth looking at carefully.

Theory of Everything

Apparently, a surfer named Garrett Lisi has just discovered the Theory of Everything. And central to it is E8, a very complex group of symmetries that if written out in tiny print would cover the size of Manhattan. Needless to say, I have not got the foggiest idea what any of this is about. I just think the picture is pretty.

But even more exciting, apparently, is that they've just figured out how to plug in an enormous blender in Switzerland called the Large Hadron Collider, and they can now actually test this guy's theory of everything. Isn't that amazing? Testing a theory of everything. I don't even know what that means, never mind what it might answer. But if you look at the picture you go a little dizzy after a while.

Renaissance Siena: Art for a City; National Gallery London, until 13 Jan

The National Gallery recently restored a triptych panel by the so-called Master of the Story of Griselda of the sequence for which he has become famous. The curator was so struck by its quality that he decided to put together a larger exhibition entitled Renaissance Siena: Art for a City, and the result is an extremely enjoyable collection of work. Siena was often considered the second city in Tuscany in terms of power and influence after Florence, and there is no doubt at all that this secondary position is reflected in the quality of the art it produced. But in a way that is what made this exhibition so enjoyable. You are seeing how a relatively normal Italian Renaissance city got on with creating its saints, its iconography, establishing its authority in artistic terms with the best artists it could grow at home and import from elsewhere.


What I went to the exhibition to see was those recently-restored panels detailing the Griselda story and it was certainly worth it for that. The panels are thought to have been produced for a double wedding in the Spanocchi family and would have decorated the nuptial bedchamber. It would seem that they were placed in a row as they are all lit from the left. The first panel details Gualtieri out hunting and seeing Griselda (left background, and left middle ground). He goes to Griselda father to ask permission for her hand in marriage (right background), takes her outside, has her stripped naked (left foreground), and then marries her in her sumptuous bridal clothes (centre).


The second panel details Gualtieri's supposed killing of their two children (left background), his seeking a divorce (under the left arch), showing her the forged papal bull giving him permission to divorce her (under the central arch) and her scandalous disrobing (under right arch). She goes home in her camicia, or undergarment, to her father who is waiting for her.


The third panel details the wedding banquet. Gualtieri has asked Griselda to return to the castle and prepare the household for his impending wedding (left background). She agrees and welcomes the wedding guests, including the supposed bride and her brother (far background). Under the far right arch Griselda speaks to Gualtieri, explaining that he should not test his new wife like he did another (i.e. her). Under the far left arch Gualtieri reveals that is was all a test, a test that she has passed, and he embraces her (rather awkwardly). The central two panels details the restoration of order and Gualtieri and Griselda's re-marriage and happily-ever-after moment.

These are fascinating panels, not just for the very interesting representation of marriage, such as is discussed by Christiane Klapische-Zuber in "The Griselda Complex", but also the marriage iconography being used in such a specific nuptial context (see Baskins on Italian cassoni etc). Also, the artist has clearly created a very uneven composition, where there is much skipping and jumping between scenes, where one is often unsure what is happening, where clothes and headgear must be read in order to understand who's who. These are such vital concerns in the story that it represents an interesting example of a rich textual background informing the visual tradition. The animals playing on the floor in the final panel provide a wonderful marginal commentary to the story too, with chained monkeys and bears and such looking at various characters. One wonders at the central panel and its use of a forged papal bull in the context of often delicate relations with Rome. The bull is the central point in the panel, the vanishing point, clearly indicating that it is upon this authority that Gualtieri acts. As the central panel it balances the two others, provides their centre of gravity, or their fulcrum. Interesting too is the theory that the final panel was produced first, in time for the wedding, and that he others were added later. In the Spanocchi house, then, the resolution came first, and the problems were represented later. Given that the wall would have been prepared to receive the panels in advance, a bride might well have had a sense of foreboding at the two empty panels waiting for a story, explaining how Griselda ended up like that. I am troubled too by the awkwardness of Griselda's embrace of Gualtieri in the final panel. It speaks volumes in a scene in which she says nothing.

Go to see this exhibition.

Guillermo Martínez, The Oxford Murders (Abacus, 2005)

This novel is Martínez's first to be translated into English and is the winner of the Planeta Prize in Spain. Last year they filmed some of it here in Oxford and I thought I'd give it a read and see what the fuss was about. Only now I get around to it, having picked up a cheap copy at the Oxfam booksale on Saturday morning. The story revolves around an Argentinian post-doctoral student who arrives in Oxford to work with a famous maths don. He lodges with a little old lady who gets murdered and whose murder appears to be one in a series that follows a mathematical logic. Can they identify the series and predict the next murder or will the killer be too clever for them?

The maths is quite interesting, the plots has been competently sketched, apart from a clunky ending, but the characterization and writing is terrible. And I mean, really terrible. It might be a question of something being lost in translation, but the characters all lack any depth or interest. I know that often these kinds of books will rely on plot and conceit to carry them, so we're supposed to think that the maths makes up for the lack of characters. Oxford is supposed to be a wonderful setting, but unfortunately it's all a little heavy-handed, with lots of silly mistakes like porters emptying bins in dons' rooms in Merton. It felt far too like what Dan Brown did for Rome with Angels and Demons. And if the maths were done in a more clever way, he might have pulled it off. But unfortunately it is all pretty straightforward, and the maths doesn't come out of it in any mysterious way, as it should have. It seems liked a missed opportunity, and I'm afraid to say that I recommend that The Oxford Murders be your missed opportunity.

Garage, 2007; dir. Lenny Abrahamson, written by Mark O'Halloran

Last Thursday I got a chance to see Lenny Abrahamson and Mark O'Halloran's new film Garage. [Thank you Margaret!] Based on what I have already said about Adam and Paul and Prosperity, I suppose it is going to be pretty obvious that I am an admirer of the work this collaboration has been producing. With Garage I think we move into something rather more serious, not just in terms of subject-matter, but also in terms of art. There is a beautiful pace to the film, a rigorous slowness of the surrounding landscape that is part of the characters and their lives.

The story is simple. Josie works in a garage, looking after the few passing customers and waiting for business to pick up. He is treated like the village idiot, though often it is clear he is perfectly self-conscious. When his boss suggests that he work longer hours, he sends the son of his new girlfriend to work with Josie. The two strike up a friendship and Josie and the young man sit talking about nothing in particular, drinking cans and looking out at the closing evening. The rest of the film is tragic and heartbreaking, moving inexorably to a terrible end; I can't reveal more of the story without spoiling it.

There is a great great delicacy to the performances, and Pat Short is simply astonishing. His Josie is wonderfully played, physically vivid, and emotionally charged. It will be impossible to consider him 'just' a comic actor from now on. The filming is wonderful, mixing lush green countryside with harsh fluorescent internal lights. The desolation of the small town almost becomes a part of you at the end of the film. And its silence overcomes you. It is too desperate for expression, for tears.

It would be condescending to those involved to praise this film as a great new Irish film. This is a great and beautiful film. It was an enriching experience to see it.

Fifth International Dante Seminar

On Thursday and Friday I went to the Fifth International Dante Seminar entitled Dante Etico e lirico. There were some fascinating papers delivered, with highlights being a stunning contribution by Robin Kirkpatrick and George Corbett on the use of Dante in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, and another being the marvellously erudite and rich contribution of Claudia Villa on the eclogues, Par 22 and Giovanni del Virgilio. Lots of famous people there, the usual putting faces to names.

Very happy also to have learned about the Leeds Centre for Dante Studies, which looks very interesting and dynamic. There is also a podcast, the first of which deals with key moments in Inferno 1.1-3. It is very good and worth listening to.

100 Words and Pictures That Define Time

This is Jonathan Harris, a sickeningly talented young web artist who has developed all sorts of fascinating web-based concepts, seeking to explore and understand the human world through the artifacts people leave behind on the Web. It's nice kind of variation on the idea of found art.

One of his websites is the beautiful 10X10, which takes the top 100 words being used in cyberspace during any one hour. It creates its own kind of narrative, at once isolated and beautiful, yet completely fleeting and plugged in to what we're hearing. It generates its own logic of strangeness while remaining oddly familiar. I think it's a brilliant idea; it makes you look at the world differently. It's marvellous.

Prosperity, dir. Lenny Abrahamson, written by Mark O'Halloran (RTE Television, 2007)

The past two weeks have seen the first two episodes of RTE's new drama Prosperity, directed and written by the highly talented Abrahamson and O'Halloran and being aired on Monday nights at 21.30 BST on RTE Network 2. They have also been made available by RTE online, along with lots of other info on the series as well as the scripts. Those without access to Network 2 are strongly urged to watch it online. The quality of this drama is uncharacteristic of RTE and it surely represents a high-water mark for the season, and for future Irish-made drama. The series explores they way that the new-found prosperity experienced in Ireland has not brought everyone with it. Many of the scenes serve to reinforce this: the boys walk across their crumbling estate with the skyline crowded with cranes, testifying to the building boom that has not reached their own high-rise flats. Stacey hangs around a shopping centre full of people buying things she cannot afford.

Each episode is someone's story: the first, Stacey's Story; the second, Gavin's. Stories are the heart of this drama, not plots. Stacey is beautifully rendered as a young mother passing each day with her baby wandering the streets and hanging around the Jervis St shopping centre, dealing with problems that might not even occur to some: finding a place to change the baby; finding a way to charge her mobile telephone after losing her charger; trying to be alone with her on-off boyfriend and father of the child.

Gavin is a young boy who wants a new toy and cannot afford it. He and his friend Conor play truant from school and spend the day trying to find a few euro to make up what he has saved and buy the toy. The boys meet a young mother and try to sell her the beer they have stolen. Instead they barter a can for three cigarettes and sit looking at the rabbit that Gavin has stolen from a neighbour's back yard. The story follows the boys as they make their way through the day, a day that culminates with a confrontation with the friend of one of Gavin's neighbours and an absolutely stunning and shocking final scene.

The stories run in parallel, and in each episode you will see a reprise from an earlier episode, so they weave in and out of each other, a bit like the dynamic of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Trois Couleurs. There are some stunning shots, like the beautiful portrait of Gavin looking at his father with a strong sunlight behind his face. Anyone familiar with Abrahamson and O'Halloran's Adam and Paul will recognize many echoes in this episode and there's much more to say about the way that O'Halloran has chosen to explore the themes of innocence and child-like language in both of these works.

Something very very special is happening in Prosperity.

Ian Sansom, The Mobile Library: The Case of the Missing Books (Harper, 2005)

The Mobile Library is the first in a series featuring “one of literature’s most unlikely detectives”, Israel Armstrong, a Jewish vegetarian sensitive type who arrives in a small Northern Irish village to take up a position that just might make his CV look passable. Everything that can go wrong does to wrong in his first twenty-four hours. Not least of his problems is that the books have gone missing, and in order to get out of his contract, he must find them.

Sansom is a very smart writer and there are many laugh-out-loud moments in the book. I like the twist of a Jew trying to navigate all the religious and political sensitivities in the North. I like the way this detective is an outsider. I like some of the characters in the book.

But I’m not sure that it is a sincere book. And sure, perhaps it is not meant to be. (I can just hear the cavils now about sincerity...but not to sound too much like one of Sansom's characters, you'll know it when you see it). It is a book that just screams something like “Postmodernity can be fun kids”, and I have at least three problems with such a statement. There are some genuine moments, certainly, but my overall impression was an unsettling sense of being manipulated by cleverness rather than invited to share in the playfulness.

Carlo Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance (Verso, 2002)

In these nine reflections on the idea of distance and historical inquiry, Carlo Ginzburg, the noted historian and intellectual makes his way through a variety of fascinating topics from diverse fields with great ease and coolness. The concept of distance is examined from several perspectives. In in the first essay, entitled 'Making It Strange: The Prehistory of a Literary Device', he opens by discussing Viktor Shklovsky's Theory of Prose and his definition of art as a means of experiencing the process of creativity. The artifact itself is quite unimportant. From here he takes us on a wonderful journey from Proust, Marcus Aurelius, Antonio de Guevara (who?), Montaigne, La Bruyère, Tolstoy and many more as he examines the idea of ostranienie or de-familiarization. This gives some idea of the range that Ginzburg provides in his meditations. This only works when the author has complete control over his argument and over his material, and both happily coincide in this book.

A long chapter on 'Myth: Distance and Deceit' takes us from Plato to the Nazis without time for breath in between; another on 'Representation: The Word, The Idea, The Thing' opens with a fascinating discussion of funerary practices in the late middle ages and the use of effigies of the dead and examines the idea of an oscillation between representation as substitute and as mimetic evocation. One of the most facscinating meditations, Chapter 4, 'Ecce: On the Scriptural Roots of Christian Devoational Imagery' opens with a marvellously stimulating discussion of the role of Old Testament (and prophetic) citations in the Gospels, and wonders if it is useful to use the term testimonia to describe these citation strings. His conclusion is that it is the citations that generate the narrative and not the other way around.

Further chapters are: 'Idols and Likenesses: A Passage in Origen and its Vicissitudes'; 'Style: Inclusion and Exclusion'; 'Distance and Perspective: Two Metaphors'; 'To Kill a Chinese Mandarin: The Moral Implications of Distance'; 'Pope Wojtyla's Slip'.

I look forward to keeping this book closeby and returning to it and ruminating further on the many fascinating things Ginzburg has to say. I recommend it.