Untold Stories by Alan Bennett

Author:Alan Bennett [Alan Bennett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571246892
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 1975-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

2003

1 January. A Christmas card from Eric Korn:

This is the one about Jesus

And his father who constantly sees us

Like CCTV from above

But they call it heavenly love;

And the other a spook or a bird

Or possible merely a Word.

Rejoice! We are ruled thru’ infinity

By this highly dysfunctional Trinity!

10 January. In George Lyttelton’s Commonplace Book it’s recorded that Yeats told Peter Warlock that after being invited to hear ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’ (a solitary man’s expression of longing for still greater solitude) sung by a thousand Boy Scouts he set up a rigid censorship to prevent anything like that ever happening again. This is presumably the origin of Larkin’s remark that before he died he fully expected to hear ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad’ recited by a thousand Girl Guides in the Royal Albert Hall.

12 January. Read Macbeth for maybe the second time in my life (and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it). Much of the language is as opaque as I generally find in Shakespeare but I’m struck by how soon he gets down to business, so that within a scene the play is at full gallop. No messing about with Lady M. either. No sooner does she learn Duncan is going to visit than she decides on the murder. Oddities are Macduff ’s abandonment of wife and family in order, seemingly, to save his own skin, though the scene in which his wife is discussing this with Ross is unbearably tense, the audience knowing she is about to be murdered. The ending is as abrupt as the beginning, with not much in the way of a dying fall from Malcolm, who’s straight away off to Scone for his coronation. Most relevant bit:

… Alas, poor country,

Almost afraid to know itself …

… where violent sorrow seems

A modern ecstasy.

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