Faust Feast, Oxford

"In the basement beneath the rolling Quad of Trinity College, a scholar is preparing to offer the devil his soul in exchange for absolute power".

A major festival of Faust related plays, concerts and films take place now in Oxford. Few places could be better posed for true Faustian atmosphere - gargoyles, medieval colleges, cobbled alleyways and above all, ancient libraries, filled with arcane and ancient wisdom. And, one might add, Faust-like scholars buried in books. But some of the "nerds" that have haunted these halls have gone on to unimaginable things and often they don't have to sell their souls. Tim Berners-Lee, for example, who created the World Wide Web, who was at Queen's.

Two versions of Christopher Marlowe's Faust. One by Creation Theatre Company takes place in Blackwell's Bookshop, next to the Quad at Trinity. Imagine, the reality of a bookshop famed for its erudiite stoock, but actors wandering about. Very apt. "Ile burne my bookes!"

Another staging of Marlowe's Faust runs from 9th to 13th February in Corpus Christi College auditorium. Arthur Kincaid directs and acts as Faustus. A true town and gown production, half students, half normal locals. Interesting too, that these productions will use slightly different editions of Marlowe as well as different settings.

Goethe's Faust gets a much welcomed outing from 24th to 26th February in Queen's College Chapel with the Eglesfield Players. A modern translation, staged in a chapel, with a chorus in the cast, the production will "bring all the dramatic (and comic) potential without losing sight of its academic and religious debate" and its resemblance to Oxford life over the ages.

George Lord Byron's epic Manfred gets a reading by professional actors in New College Chapel on March 27.  Manfred of course inspired Schumann, but it's not a piece that lends itself easily to the stage, so hearing it read by people who know drama should be a good experience.

There's so much Faust-inspired music it's hard to imagine it in one concert - Mahler, Busoni, Berlioz, Gounod etc. So see what they do on 5th March at Corpus Christi. The films are Istvan Szabo's Mephisto based on the novel of Klaus Mann and Faustus a ten-minute art piece shot in Merton Chapel.  They're not showing F W Murnau's classic film Faust, but you can watch that on this site  in FULL DOWNLOAD. For more information contact the Oxford Faust Festival on email oxfordfaustfestival@gmail.com. Prices are low, and the Films are free but this is such an adventurous project, it's worth making an effort to participate.

Death of the German Emperor - McGonagall

So spake William Topaz McGonagall, never one not to enjoy a funeral, turning his flinty gaze upon Berlin, and the Begrabnis of the Kaiser.

"YE sons of Germany, your noble Emperor William now is dead.
Who oft great armies to battle hath led;
He was a man beloved by his subjects all,
Because he never tried them to enthral."

"Twas in the year of 1888, and on March the 16th day,
That the peaceful William's remains were conveyed away
To the royal mausoleum of Charlottenburg, their last resting-place,
The God-fearing man that never did his country disgrace."

T"he funeral service was conducted in the cathedral by the court chaplain, Dr. Kogel,
Which touched the hearts of his hearers, as from his lips it fell....

"Then there was a solemn pause as the kings and princes took their places,
Whilst the hot tears are trickling down their faces,
And the mourners from shedding tears couldn't refrain;
And in respect of the good man, above the gateway glared a bituminous flame."

"And as the people gazed on the weird-like scene, their silence was profound;
And the shopkeepers closed their shops, and hotel-keepers closed in the doorways,
And with torchlight and gaslight, Berlin for once was all ablaze.
The authorities of Berlin in honour of the Emperor considered it no sin,
To decorate with crape the beautiful city of Berlin;
Therefore Berlin I declare was a city of crape,
Because few buildings crape decoration did escape."

Read the whole sorry tale here and more on the Bard

The Portuguese Nun - Eugène Green

Reactions to The Portuguese Nun (Eugène Green, 2010) say as much about the viewer as the film does. It's fantastic, but at first everything seems to be wrong.

Julie, a French actress (Leonor Baldaque), arrives in Lisbon to shoot a movie, but no-one else has arrived. A tram moves through the city's vertiginously steep cobbled streets. Houses are perched at strange angles, but you're lulled, for Lisbon really is like that. Then you realize something's not right. The streets are completely deserted.  When other people appear they stare directly at the camera, making uncomfortable eye contact. Actors don't do that, nor ordinary folk. Movement is unnaturally stilted, shots held long after they should move on. Then you realize that it's deliberate. You're being nudged into an alternative reality where time and logic don't apply.

Every encounter is extraordinary. A stranger is about to kill himself and changes his mind on meeting Julie. His apartment's lit by candle. Then as mysteriously as he came, he disappears from the story. Julie meets a six-year old boy, Vasco, in a largo (small open square). In a disco, she's picked up by a man whom she decides is the reincarnation of Dom Alfonso, a gay king. Even stranger he agrees. In a streetside chapel a young nun prays in ecstasy, sleeping only between Matins and Lauds.  By now your antenna for logic should be vibrating extreme alarm. Something's definitely very odd..

Then it dawns on you that the movie is like a dream, where things move in slow motion, where every word carries portent, and every incident is pregnant with meaning though it's not rational or followed through. Dreams are like that. Logic is irelevant but they feel intuitively right. Eventually Julie confronts the mystery nun in the chapel. (Julie's playing a nun in the movie, and filming it in the same place). "I am laying a siege on God" says the nun. She prays contemplating ectasy in the full faith that God's mysteries will reveal themselves in their own way even if we don't notice. The original nun Julie's acting about lived in a time when convents were so dissolute that people stopped believing and Portugal was "for once, in the avant garde". So says the nun! Ironically, this is one small detail that's true, woven into the narrative blurring the joins between reality and fantasy.

The dialogue between Julie and the nun in the chapel is utterly surreal, yet, as in the most wonderful dreams, it feels like profound revelation, though it doesn't make logical sense. Yet for Julie, it's a turning point,  and she realizes that the point of life is to do good for others. She adopts Vasco. which might work in a movie but isn't nearly so simple in real life. Julie's clear, unsettling stare and heavy brows remind me of baroque Madonnas - or the children who saw the Virgin at Fatima. There is nothing logical in what they saw, but their miracle - or dream - has still managed to inspire.many, whether or not it's objectively "true".

Then you start to wonder what else there is in this dream fugue where simple things carry such weight? Why does Julie speak fluent Portuguese although her Portuguese mother died when she was a child? How can a child like Vasco exist without papers? And who are the film crew anyway, they're all speaking Portuguese, not French. We know that Eugène Green the director doubles as the film director Eugene Verde,  But who is Eugène Green?. There's a film called The Not So Great Eugène Green but he's not involved in it. The main site with info is called "Little white lies". The man himself doesn't leave much of a paper trail.  The Telegraph critic states outright that he doesn't know Green's work. The Observer critic claims to,  so perhaps  he might explain. Is there a bigger story here than meets the eye?  Is  Eugène Green as mysterious as Julie?. He's fascinating, anyway as he's created an audaciously imaginative movie that will utterly confound those who take things too literally.

"Life is too important to be taken seriously". Humour often disguises wisdom. Then the hints make sense. "I don't like French films" says the hotel clerk, "Too intellectual". This is a French film, yet the key is not to be intellectual but to drift into its gentle, unpretentious good humour. Dreams fall apart when you're too self conscious, but then you lose their magic.  That's why I loved The Portuguese Nun (currently screening at the ICA). In its quirky, understated way it's sending up the whole idea of art as a conscious process, and telling us, perhaps, to stay cool and absorb without always having to be "right". And as for Eugène Green? He reminds me strongly of Fernando Pessoa, whose surname simply means "person". Pessoa created multiple identities who each wrote in individual, distinct styles. Truly amazing personality and work.  Surreal, baroque, Kafka with warmth, wit and colour. Pessoa is a lot like Lisbon itself, operating on many different levels of time and place at once. Hence the film's loving vistas of narrow cobbled streets and dizzying angles, the tower of Belém, and the idea of a nun from the past (based on a novel) and a movie about a movie being made about her. Devious puzzles! Pessoa lives! Get the DVD when it comes out and enjoy it with a bottle of tinto.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"Water, water, everywhere/Nor any drop to drink". The lines have been used so often it's become a joke, but they come from Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the classic goth horror poem. Please read THIS article here.

"Ahead of its time , a tale of dark obsession", writes Duncan Wu. "There is something deeply primitive about the itinerant sea-dog in the poem. What could be more so than a man who commits a thoughtless act only to be punished for it eternally? “'With my crossbow/I shot the albatross,' he says, giving no explanation. How often do we commit thoughtless acts we later regret? Coleridge’s insight is that sometimes we can neither know nor explain why we behave as we do. We act and then suffer the consequences. "

See what I mean? Excellent, evocative writing. I was so fired up I looked up the South Bank staging which is on tonight and Sunday. Alas, these days the South Bank site is worse than ever but finally I found out that it's an adaptation with music, props, cars and kids. Probably a lot of fun but I'm put off by someone's comment that those who don't go should be "despised". So I won't go. But Wu's article mentions a new biography of Coleridge. Is it William Christie's Samuel Taylor Coleridge : a Literary Life (2009)? If Duncan Wu writes about that, I'd love to read it.

Turkeys for Enid Blyton

Readers in the US, enjoy a good holiday! The values of Thanksgiving are good, lots to be grateful for.

Brits have Enid Blyton. Last week a reader told me about his defining Blyton moment. It was a story about a Cub Scout doing "bob a job", which is when small boys do good deeds for minimal returns.

In this story (details vague after 50 years) a woman asks a kid to clear her huge shed of garbage. "If you do it right I'll give you extra treats". So the kid clears the shed which, as anyone who's ever done such things, is no small task. So the kid did his best and asked for the treats. "Ha Ha!" said the mean woman, "You don't get the treats because I hid them under the rubbish you didn't clear!" Some will admire that, but my friend, aged 9, was disgusted. One person's "clever" is to others sick, devious, manipulative. So this reader asked "What would Richmal Crompton do?"

Richmal Crompton composed stories like puzzles. William's mother's doing a fund raiser for the local church. William, being a scruffy little punk, doesn't do parish parties, so he wanders off. He meets a frazzled looking man who has missed his train, and there's not another til late afternoon. "Come to the village fair" says William, though the man is clearly a very posh London sophisticate. "At least I'll get tea" says the man. So the unlikely pair repair to the shabby village hall.

Some time before, William had done bob a job for someone who exploited child labour, and cleared what he could of her pile of rubbish. The woman reneged on her promise of goodies but let William keep an odd looking urn which caught his eye. "It's utter rubbish!" said the woman, sneering. Proudly William bestowed the urn on his mother. "It's not my thing," said mother, "but it might make someone else happy. Let's put it in the jumble sale so it might raise something for charity."

Strange posh man, bored witless at the provincial village fair looks at the jumble stall. Suddenly he shrieks "An Etruscan urn!!!" The posh man turned out to be a Sotheby's dealer. The hideous urn William found in the trash sold for enough to do all the charity the village needed and more besides. "Crikes!!" said William, content with a bag of sweets.

So check out Richmal Crompton and her William books. AND CHECK OUT STEPHEN HOUGH here on Thanksgiving in its widest sense : take a few minutes out to warch the videohe's included. My gift to you.

Enid Blyton vs Dr Seuss

It's some Enid Blyton anniversary and that means a big marketing push, which is fair enough, people need to make a living, it's churlish to pretend otherwise. Enid Blyton, or Enig Blyter as John Lennon called her in an early book of poems, is the most popular British author, which makes her important. But what does that say?

A friend of mine was brought up with warm fuzzy memories of Noddy, one of Blyton's best known characters, but moved to the US while still young and was cut off from the Blyton mystique. As an adult, she returned and to her delight found a first edition of the first Noddy book. Then she read it. Nostalgic dreams shattered forever. Noddy is a naked boy who falls off the back of a truck full of small naked boys who are being transported somewhere unknown. He sits at the side of the road, crying, when an elderly man dressed as a garden gnome picks him up. The old man is known as "Big Ears". Freudian, huh ? Old man and naked boy walk off hand in hand. Then a policeman comes along, and as you'd expect stops and asks what's happening. "I'm taking him to live in my house to be my boy". "That's OK then". Yes, well....

By this stage my friend was heartsick, knowing she could never share this with her kids. Then she came to the chapter where an industrial slum is inhabited by golliwogs. Golliwogs weren't originally racist though the world in which they were invented was. But Blyton's use of golliwogs differs from relatively benign things like the badges that came with Robertson's jam who, like Barbie dolls "did" things like play golf (middle class aspiration) and so on. Blyton's golliwogs were clearly a comment on the "new Britain" of the late 40's and early 50's when the frst big wave of Caribbean and Indian immigrants came and settled in places like Slough, not far from Blyton's home in the lush (all white middle class) Home Counties. Immigrants are poor, and have to make their way in society, but Blyton has them as gutless chancers. Blyton's golliwogs were so obviously offensive that they were removed a few years later.

Cleaning up Blyton is just as offensive because it creates the image that she represents something pure and innocent, an idyll of Britishness that far-right political parties like the BNP can hold up as a shining example of what might have been. The Blyton thing is founded on fallacy.

Even outside Noddy, there's something nasty lurking behind green hedges. The Secret Seven and the Famous Five spend all their time hunting down criminals. This isn't innocent. Normal, decent people don't sniff out evil in all things. In Blyton's world, criminals are easily identified because they're outsiders - gypsies, strangers, anyone who doesn't conform. Why bother to do the detective bit ? Simply lynch someone who doesn't fit in.

It's bizarre that so many novelists think kids should fixate on solving "crimes". What does that say about their psyches and the psyches of their readers? Blyton doesn't do much altruism, kindness and gentleness of spirit, the things that really make a difference in this world. Perhaps they're so far beyond her, she couldn't understand. The Salem Witchhunters talked Christianity but didn't know what it meant.

About the only positive role model Blyton creates is George, the girl who thinks and acts like a boy, the first transgender icon in juvenile literature. A gay friend once told me that George gave him hope that there were alternatives to gender stereotypes.

Now they''re re branding Blyton, and new editions are coming out and a book by a relative. Even her nephew, Carey Blyton, is being promoted, though his connection to his famous aunt wasn't that close. Carey Blyton's music isn't obscure. Of the hundreds of minor British composers, he was relatively successful. Ten years ago, when Carey was still alive, Ian Partridge recorded some of his songs, which I eagerly listened to. I tried hard but they were so bland. I tried the chamber music too, but got nowhere. That said, he's still better than some of the obscurities I've studied in my time, but great composer he is not. Some of his fans admire him because he wasn't "politically correct". Often political correctness goes too far but there are reasons for not celebrating regression.

The antithesis to Enid Blyton is Richmal Crompton. Crompton was a liberated, single woman who started writing in the 1920's. She created a character called William, an irrepressible rebel who didn't conform to anything. A truly free spirit, his adventures satirized the society he lived in - his Edwardian parents, his teachers and the Bright Young Things of the 20's. William deals with Nazis and Mussolini, and with Establishment prudes and bullies, like the Brains Trust. One of the stories satirizes Wagner and extremist Wagnerites. Another develops William's reaction to the phrase "Es war einmal".

William befriends tramps and hobos, typical figures of the Depression, stealing food for them and sometimes finding that they weren't always quite the soulmates he thought they were. But the fact is, he doesn't assume evil in everyone. Richmal Crompton is everything Enid Blyton isn't.

You'll have to track down Crompton's original William books, as they were cleaned up in the 1960's to fit genteel taste, in response to the Blyton market. There's a whole world of social change in William books. His parents gradually lose their servants, and come in contact with the modern age and war. William's enemy is a spoiled little girl whose parents are pretentious new rich, who think greed rules society. "I'll sthcream and I'll sthcream!" is the little girl's ultimate threat when she's thwarted. Power by hysteria, not reason.

I was lucky because I inherited a collection of first edition William books. Some of the ideas were way over my head because Crompton didn't dumb down. But kids are smart enough to find out about stuff they don't know. Which is how I found out about the British Brains Trust and the whole world of Establishment certainty. Thanks to my great uncle, I was inoculated early to think like William. The whole "More William" book (1923) is online HERE.

On the other hand, thank God for Dr Seuss ! Like Crompton, he didn't create a fantasy childworld, but dealt with real life thru child-level images. Some of the Dr Seuss books are for adults, and deal with things like nuclear war, but kids relate to them too. But the real beauty of Dr Seuss is that he writes about genuine goodness and purity, not fraudulent innocence.

Horton the elephant hatches the egg a lazy bird abandons. He sits on it through storms and disasters, when all around him say, give up. But when the baby bird is born, he's rewarded by love. Books teach kids about life. Better they should learn from Horton than from most of Enid Blyton.