Something New

 NOTICE TO READERS: "REID'S READER" WILL NOW BE TAKING ITS SUMMER BREAK, FROM DECEMBER TO MID-FEBRUARY. SEE YOU THEN.  

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

     “MISBEHAVIOUR & OTHER REVERIES” by John Davidson (Steele Roberts $NZ25);  “A LASH OF LAST WORDS” by Ian Rockel (Steele Roberts $NZ25);  “ENDINGS – POEMS 1984-2023 by Bruce Bisset (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop $NZ30) ; “CHEW THE BRIGHT HYSTERIA – Poems & Paintings” by Rhondda Greig (Quentin Wilson Publishing $NZ35  ) 

John Davidson is an Emeritus Professor of Classics. Many of his interests are related to ancient Greek and Roman tales and literature – but he is definitely not stuck in the past. His poetry often deals with the present moment, embracing ideas about New Zealand’s concern for the environment, about some elements of politics, and sometimes recalling his earlier life in England and travel elsewhere. And there are philosophic moments when he delves into the very nature of humanity. Misbehaviour & Other Reveries is Davidson’s 9^th collection of poetry… and here I have to admit that I have not yet read any other of his previous collections. Misbehaviour & Other Reveries is divided into two parts, the first called Diversions and the second called Yearnings. While the Diversions section has more jocularity and the Yearnings section has more philosophical thoughtfulness, the fact is that there is much overlap between the two sections… but I shall doggedly deal with the two sections separately.

Diversions begins with “Misbehaviour”, a poem about a mischievous cat and the chaos it makes, but the cat is named Troy and its upsetting actions are like those of an Hellenic warrior. Yes of course this is a jocular beginning. Then there is “Deliveries”, Davidson’s anecdote of trying to distribute leaflets around London when he was younger. And “Sunday morning”, a rather dismissive account of a protest in the street. “Oxford market” is again anecdotal – simply viewing the place and the type of people in a particular environment. The same goes for  “The Wallace Collection” with its images of London bustling about outside the well-known  art gallery of classic paintings. From this, one quickly understands that Davidson is a raconteur as well as a landscaper with words, and a genial chap who is trim with the anecdotes. The poem “Betsy” is the quintessence of his enjoyable anecdotes – a poem about an American writer bumping into Davidson at a writers-and-readers gathering, and the kind of awkward conversation that ensues.

Yet along with the anecdotes, there is in this collection a stream of fantasy. The poem “She went to the opera” has a woman raging about how dreadful the performance was and how everything went wrong… but her version of what happened is so over-the-top that it is hard to read it as a truthful account. In other words, it could be a fantasy. Is the poem “Unicorn” a fantasy about a real unicorn? Or is it rather about a toy unicorn left in the rain as seen by adults?  Or… is it any number of things? Davidson does call on his classicist past with the poem “Ulysses”, delving into how often and distorted the ancient hero has been re-constructed by later poets and novelists. But then “Protos heuretes” is an amusing anecdote of a tour guide in Greece saying something that would amuse many New Zealanders [ I won’t spoil the joke by repeating what she said].

Davidson has a keen interest in the visual arts, as seen in “Abstract attraction” which praises the use of black-and-white in painting; and he speaks more of more of art in “Style changes” which deals with the little known American artist Harry Lum. And naturally, having been an academic, he can call out charlatans in academe. One wonders whom he was lampooning in the poem “Wordsmith”, which reads in full “He didn’t have anything to say / but he was clever clever clever. / He spun his web like a busy spider / to snare the earnest, the gullible, / the wannabe intellectual / the culture conquistador. / They all came clamouring - / to be webbed by his pretentiousness.”

And having said all this about the first half of Misbehaviour & Other Reveries, PLEASE let some anthologist include Davidson’s excellent, exuberant “Journey” – a brilliant poem filled with images, lauding not only travel and wandering in all their forms, but lapping up what there is to absorb - culture, friendship, beauty and all the time the awareness that there is more to see and hear. A poem both optimistic and encouraging.

Yearnings is on the whole more sombre. The “Visitation” poems examine the same event, perhaps one fanciful and the other matter-of-fact, but both inspired by a painter. This is possibly Davidson’s most experimental poem. “Maria finale” is a fitting poem for an elderly man to write, in effect being an eulogy for a woman he once knew but who has just died. “A wish called Fonda” gives a very ambiguous account of the actress Jane Fonda, and Davidson’s poem about “Ukraine” is also ambiguous.

Then there are the poems ( inevitable these days) that call out the colonialism of New Zealand. “The invaders” seems to imply [though not clearly] that British acquisition of New Zealand was inferior to the earlier Maori possession. This poem was apparently inspired by two famous poems, one by Alistair Campbell and the other by C. P. Cavafy. There are other brief poems about how this country would be like if the birds took over; but the poem “Parihaka” necessarily looks at the injustice of it. On the conservation side of things, “Roots” reminding us that roots of trees and grasses literally examine the Earth more closely than we human beings do.

And what of Davidson’s interrogations of the human condition? “Lament of the soul” and “Companion” both seem to deal with the idea of the soul or, if you prefer, attempting to understand the purpose of life. “Wiring” implies that intelligence might be handed over to other than us. And “You need help” suggests the eternal malaise of the human condition. As for the shortness of a human life, “Shades” deals swiftly with the ceremonies surrounding death. It reads in full “Shades of white / roses sinking silently / into the depths / of the crematorium. / The casket has disappeared / the last glimpse / of what had once been a life / the austere purity of roses.  Shades of white.”

As you can see from this brief analysis of , Misbehaviour & Other Reveries is a very varied collection. One final comment – there are long explanatory notes at end of book.

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            Ian Rockel is a poet who goes his own way. On this blog I have previously reviewed two of his six collections of poetry, “What Know You, Stars?” [2018 ] and “Earth and Elsewhere” [2022], both of which were prefaced by the actor Ian Mune. Both were concerned with what I can only refer to as cosmic – Ian Rockel is interested in the nature of the universe itself, the stars and the durability of our little planet. This time, there is a preface by the publisher Roger Steele.

            While he can be apocalyptic, Rockel can also be happy… but happy in the sense of deep irony. Take the twelve poems, under the heading “Twelve Favourite or Nearly Cheerful Poems”, that begin “A lash of last words”. All of them say something positive – a beautiful statue of a woman, beautiful old houses near a beach, little children playing with insects, the light of Heaven… but [with the exception of the poem “Arrival”] all these twelve opening poems curdle into sorrow or disappointment. This opening sequence concludes with “Trump”, the poet having a nightmare about the man who is now POTUS. (The poem was certainly written before Trump won the election.) Next section is labelled “World Still There, But Suffers Shift.” Again it is the poetry of irony, but this time harnessed to the possibility of the Earth dying, or at least being somehow degraded. Thus the poem “Storm” concludes “We thank God / for our wisdom / in having constructed / a wood-shed for storms /  such as this, / yet, as black smoke / rolls to Heaven, / we sense displeasure / at our smudging / the atmosphere.” One hand gives and the other takes away.

            The section called “The Day of the Grey Man” begins with a poem of the same name. It works as a protest against conformity. Later there are more tender vistas. God is often evoked [ambiguously] and there is a very comfy poem called “Love by the Hearth” which I  produce here in full: “I have not much else to do / in this last edge of life - / yet your smile / holds me together, / though clouds roll. / What tell the seasons? / You smile them away, / and through the chill, / heat the cottage / with what fell / from an old tree. / Our old cat / purrs in the heat / and shifts / from lap to lap. / We have the children / coming back tomorrow - / what crowded joy.” This not only suggests the poet’s age, but it also suggests stability – as does the later poem “Punchbowl Dreams”, in part about “another day / of being / with a continued joy, / friends and love / and the beauty of life.”

In this collection of poetry, there is much imagery of the night, of birds heard therein, of the wind, of the sun, of the most basic elements of our existence. And sometimes there is the macabre, especially in the poem “Peace”, thus “Last year / the cemetery cracked open / spilling garments and bodies / which rolled down the hill / and rested against our house / which cracked but with glue / stretched to its capability - / and in the softest breeze, / twanging. / But by sundown, the old / ones had been put back / but it is not all as quiet / as we might expect.” But there are also intimations of death (see poem “Going”) and images of the end of the world in various ways.

As I said, Ian Rockel goes his own way – a sort of dialogue with God, with the universe, with the reality of death, with the comforting moments in between… and all in brief, pared-back, lean and short poems.

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            I’ve been to enough pub readings and/or stage performances of poetry to know that often what seems great when spoken can look thin and banal on the printed page. Bruce Bisset may be the exception to this general rule. Endings – Poems 1984-2023 is a collection of Bisset’s work selected by David Eggleton, who also contributes a Foreword. Eggleton recalls that years ago Bisset was “a beret-wearing barfly bard” having a “gruff and bluff, growly and resonant” voice, and whose poems were made for performance. Bisset was a poet of hard knocks . But as Bisset says in his Endword, he himself hasn’t performed for years, but he has kept writing… and nearly all the poems of this volume were written after his performance years. Bisset also insists that poetry must be spoken, and not be obscure. So Endings – Poems 1984-2023 is very accessible.

            Bisset writes in free form. His lines are presented the way a speaker would breathe. But occasionally he bursts into rhyme, especially when writing for children with “the strangest cat (a children’s rhyme)” and in an almost jolly poem “shells”.  There is rhyming in the protest poem “one line from rob”, while “hey mister” is pure doggerel cursing Death itself. And at the end of this collection we are presented with the lyrics of songs Bisset has written… and of course they rhyme.

            Like nearly all poets, Bisset has his preoccupations. He is very earnest about the suppression of Parihaka with the poem “a Taranaki poem”, its sad and best statement being “Te Whiti you were forged too pure to learn / that peaceful protest only succeeds / when you are the same race / when it is backed up by power that can threaten the state / when the world can hear your words.”. He is angry about the removal of a certain railway line and he comments on the war in Gaza in “a familiar tune”, making ironical use of a well-known song. His poem “there’s only one forge left in the country” is ironical, setting out as a Utopia and then undercutting it, perhaps chastising those who think Utopia can be possible.

            But surprisingly, most of what he writes is more personal and intimate. He  writes much about family, children, the bringing up of babies... who in other poems grow up to be teenagers and adults. There are poems about his now-grown-up kids sending him birthday messages. But in “feedback” he says “the young are savage in  / their condemnation / as if experience counts for nothing / as if wisdom is not earned / they bay and bite at the least / provocation / imagining they are the champions / of the world, and none / before them has eyes to see / or mouth to speak.” This develops as a condemnation of know-it-all kids, but understanding that he himself he was once young.

Then there is love, and the difficulty of staying in love [in a poem with no title]. Its first stanza says “last night I tried to write / a love poem for you / but the lines refused to flow / and all I got was a headache. It’s / been with me all day.” And its last stanza says “I’m trying to write a love poem for you / but the love won’t come / and I’ll cry myself to sleep tonight / and you won’t care. / perhaps you don’t deserve it.”  The poem “linda” is addressed to his wife, in which he considers her compassion but laments that the world will never be the perfect place she always hopes for.

Overlapping these ideas, there is what may be Bisset’s dominant idea now. It is his awareness of his old age. In “thoughts while she’s away” has him realising he’s getting older than other performers and the much younger audiences there now are. He’s aware that he’s lost his audience. The poem “come back” says wistfully “There are a time when I / could get equal billing with Sam Hunt / my name on posters at festivals / appear with any of the country’s / top band, and be / well paid for it”. An untitled poem says of old age “I am at best a pallid shadow / a waning moon-faced effigy of / the burning flame of my creation that / I brought so readily to life / when I was… I begin to appreciate / how a zombie must feel; / the flesh moves, shakily, but the spirit / is fled.” . The poem “nirvana” speaks of his growing forgetfulness; while “visiting” deals with ageing and his deceased parents. And “sorting” seems to be an older man’s regret of some of his earlier work. So Bisset is not now the wild, rebellious young public performer he once was, but an ageing man with an ageing man’s perspective. And he’s kept his promise. He writes clearly and colloquially, not baffling us. To repeat myself, it is very accessible.

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Rhondda Greig, a New Zealander who has lived and worked in both Scotland and Japan, is poet and painter; and her collection Chew the Bright Hysteria is garnished with  images of her paintings, all with bright and brash colours, partly representative, partly abstract, but consistently engaging.

Her poems sit lean on the page, lines being brief, including her “The passionate anagram” [more a word game than a poem]. Rhondda Greig is a poet who is very interested in nature but who – on the whole – does not beat the big drum for conservation. Thus in her “Spring Wairarapa”,  “ July Wairarapa”, and two Autumn poems, including one of her very best which says in full “Autumn has sought / asylum from colour festivals / seceded right / after summer’s / too much sun / Spires of fires / are burning down / the valley / cadging charity / for a new season / beyond the outstretched / drought.” She returns to her immediate environment towards the end of this collection with “Living in a landscape” in which she depicts herself as being more at home in the natural environment that surrounds her than in her house. Not that she ignores the hard realities for some people. Her “Supermarket floor cleaner” is a longish poem which is more-or-less in the tone of social reality – it deals with how tedious and difficult such work sometimes is. And naturally there are some unpleasant things in rural areas. There is a poem about catching and killing a magpie.

Far from all this, there are accounts of her travels overseas. “Epithalamium for William and Sarah” is a poem celebrating their wedding but written in terms of skiing and perhaps with tongue in cheek. In Scotland in “Footdee, Aberdeen” she sees dolphins and swans; in “Cromarty” there is an awareness of the golden harvests and the black cattle. One of her best is “Letter from Scotland” where she looks in nearly all directions seeing grey and granite housing. She presents a prose poems chronicling a “Blizzard in Aberdeen”.  “Unst” proves to be a daunting, freezing little place in the Shetland Islands. Then there is the poet-as-tourist. She visits France, having to deal with uncouth people on a bus. She visits a French beach which Katherine Mansfield might have visited. In Spain she sees a woman putting up a memoriam for the dead who were killed by terrorists. Her reaction to visiting the Sistine Chapel is ambiguous.

Her very best satirical poem is “Blue jeans”, which sees American clothes as having conquered the world more than wars and bombs have done. She writes “Forget about bombs, missiles, drones, / sabotage and food sanctions. / Threads have done it / Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss / are the new world presidents in absentia. / We have a concord of bottoms. / A tower of Babel that will / shear at the seams one day / consuming all.”  And nearby there is the prose poem “The swearing poem”, which is literally about that.

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.  

     “URSULE MIROUET” by Honore de Balzac (First published in 1841)

Of all Balzac’s novels, Ursule Mirouet is, in my opinion, one of the most trying for modern readers. In his The Wild Ass’s Skin [La Peau de Chagrin], there is a suggestion of the occult – but that novel is as much fable as hard-headed reality. Balzac wrote some other novels that dabbled in ideas which were then regarded by some as legitimate science – phrenology, palmistry, clairvoyance etc. Ursule Mirouet, however, really does embrace the supernatural as a reality, even if its setting is a mundane small town filled with credible everyday people. Yet despite its oddity, the novel is curiously serene in its effect. This time, goodness and charity win, quite unlike the scoundrels, gossips, criminals, misers and cheats that fill most of Balzac’s novels – though of course there are some reprehensible people in Ursule Mirouet too. It is a tangled tale, so I will have to take some time with a synopsis.

The story takes place between 1829 and 1836, with in the background the second revolution when the Bourbon kings were overthrown and the Bourgeois “Citizen” King Louis Phillipe took over.  

In the country town of Nemours lives Doctor Minoret. He is an atheist, but he does not rock the boat and he gets in well with the parish priest Abbe Chaperon. There are interlocking families – cousins and spouses -  who are part of the Minoret clan… and they know that the young, pious 15-year old Ursule Mirouet has inherited much wealth. (Please note there are many characters called Minoret in this novel.) It is Doctor Minoret who is Ursule Mirouet’s legitimate guardian, as both her parents are dead. Ursule is blessed in having a number of good-hearted people who make her young life nearly idyllic. There is M. de Jorty , formerly a soldier, who tutors Ursule.  M. Bongrand the notary who diligently looks after her books and ledgers. The maidservant La Bougival and the clerk Goupil are always at her service. These people are not after Ursule’s money, unlike some members of the Mirouet clan. They are set before us almost guardian angels.

Dr Minoret had always scoffed at the spiritual life, but on a visit to Paris had an experience which wrought a miraculous conversion. He met Bouvard, a medical acquaintance and devotee of magnetism (“the science of imponderable fluids” – yes, this was believed by many in the early 19^th century) who took him to the humble abode of a Swedenborgian savant. There, a woman in a trance was able to give him a full description of the Nemours house, tell him what the innocent Ursule was doing at that very moment, even look into Ursule’s troubled soul and relate how Ursule was tormented by the beginnings of love for  a man she has only glimpsed. Returning to Nemours, Doctor Minoret is able to verify all the things the old woman had said and he tells everything to the astonished and awestruck Ursule. From this point,  Minoret , the  18 ^th century-style sceptic, begins taking instructions in the faith from the Abbe Chaperon, and becomes a devout churchgoer. Ursule’s frequent prayers seem about to be answered.

            BUT, as in most of Balzac’s novels, there are people in the town who gather together and gossip about Ursule, seeing her as an “artful young minx” - because it is known that the young man Ursule saw fleetingly is an aristocrat, the young Marquis Savinien de Portenduere. The gossips suggest that Ursule is only interested in the Marquis’s aristocracy and wealth. As it happens, the Marquis Savinien was a scapegrace, went to Paris, ate up most of his mother’s meagre inheritance, and gained little help from fellow young aristocrats. Dr. Minoret and his devoted friends bail him out when he is imprisoned for debt. He returns penitent to Nemours….

            A few years go by. The  Marquis’s mother Mme. de Portenduere, an old-style noble whose manners were formed before the first revolution, does not wish her son to marry beneath him, and puts obstacles in the way of Ursule’s love for Savinien, even as their love blossoms. The marriage cannot be. Urged on by Dr Minoret, the impoverished young noble decides to redeem his honour by joining the navy and proving his zeal.

            Meanwhile, in 1830, the Bourbon King Charles X has gone through the folly of appointing the severe Polignac as his prime minister, and the second revolution takes place. In its general chaos, Dr Minoret’s arriviste relatives have profited by gaining power in the local administration of Nemours. In his last years, Dr Minoret, ever pious, devotes much money to improving Ursule’s social graces and attempting to win Mme. de Portenduere’s approval for the true-love marriage. Ursule and Savinien are constant, Savinien proving his worth as a naval officer and gaining promotion. The other village heirs fear such a marriage and fear that Ursule will inherit all the money. Dr Minoret finally dies in 1836, when Ursule is 20. And now the comedy begins.

            In Dr Minoret’s last sickness, Mme. de Portenduere at least referred to Ursule as “my daughter”, but Ursule is still single and the inheritance could be up for grabs. A shady character called Minoret-Levrault has eavesdropped on a death-bed conversation in which Dr. Minoret told Ursule where there was a secret will which would at least give her some of the inheritance, even if he has followed legal precedent, leaving most to the legitimate heirs. Minoret-Levrault finds and burns the secret will and steals some investment bonds. The heirs swarm upon the late doctor’s house, avid for gain. Ursule and her maidservant La Bougival are evicted to poorer quarters. The postmaster and his wife take over the late doctor’s house. Stricken with grief at the death of her protector, Ursule is unable to look after her worldly interests. In much that follows, it is the magistrate Bongrand, the Abbe Chaperon and Savinien who do their best to protect her assets.

            The mere presence of Ursule in the town is a reproach to the bullish Minoret-Levrault’s conscience. He wishes to find ways of driving Ursule out of town. He also wishes to drive the de Portenduere family out of town.

            In a repeated, prophetic dream, Dr. Minoret appears to Ursule and gives her the full secret details of Minoret-Levrault’s deceit. At first Ursule thinks the dreams are just a manifestation of her grief, but at last she consults the Abbe Chaperon. The priest confronts Minoret-Levrault with every detail of his hidden crime – the man’s fears and sweat show a guilty conscience, but there is no legal proof against him. Minoret-Levrault’s reaction is to increase his underhanded efforts to remove Ursule from the town. He uses the deceitful Goupil as his agent. Goupil writes anonymous letters to Mme. de Portenduere, aiming to destroy Ursule’s credit with her. He sets up tricks, such as putting a rope-ladder dangling from Ursule’s window to suggest she has a lover. He even forges a letter in the Abbe Chaperon’s handwriting. Humiliated and slandered, Ursule’s delicate heath sinks. She is apparently dying and the perpetrator  of her misery cannot be traced.

But at this point Goupal falls out with Minoret-Levrault and confesses he wrote the poison letters. Although Savinien punches his nose, the virtuous characters promise to take no action against him, for it is now Minoret-Levrault who must be exposed. To gain satisfaction, Savinien threatens to fight a duel with Minoret-Levrault’s son Desire. But at last Minoret-Levrault confesses the affair to his wife Zelie. She tries to buy Ursule off with a marriage-settlement, but here Ursule asserts herself and refuses. Bongrand, ever acting in Ursule’s interests, is able to uncover proof of the bonds Minoret-Levrault purloined. Meanwhile Dr. Minoret again appears to Ursule in a dream, this time warning that something dreadful will befall Minoret-Levrault’s son Desire if the postmaster does not atone for his crime. The Abbe Chaperon conveys this to the postmaster, who simply continues to jeer.

Savinien does not fight his duel with Desire, but Desire is mortally wounded in a coaching accident and dies. The postmaster’s wife Zelie goes mad [and dies in an asylum some years later]. Minoret-Levrault, penitent, restores what he has stolen… and becomes the most pious churchwarden. The various estates out of which she has been swindled are restored to Mme. de Portenduere. And Ursule marries Savinien.

Now I beg you – PLEASE DON’T SHOUT AT ME!! I have just related to you a novel in which clairvoyance and prophetic dreams are turning points and of course you are very sceptic about such things – and so am I. Indeed you are probably annoyed that I have even synopsised Ursule Mirouet . But bear with me and see how much merit there is to this tale.

This is a novel of the 1840s, shifting between romanticism and social realism, and easily criticised as such. Melodrama there certainly is, what with the three prophetic dreams and Dr. Minoret’s conversion on the strength of clairvoyance. Then there is the chaste and pure love of Ursule and Savinien, the burning of the will, and Ursule’s sympathetic sickness when much if the world seems to have turned against her. One could criticise, too, the “legless angel” aspect of Ursule. She is essentially a passive protagonist – things happen to her. Yet there is a surprising energy to the narrative and (despite the convolutions of the second half of the novel) and a surprising  serenity to the story. This may be partly a function of the fact that, for once, Balzac shows virtuous characters (Dr. Minoret, Bongrand, Abbe Chaperon) who are capable of taking executive action and worldly-wise enough to defend themselves – Ursule’s “good uncles” for a charmed circle. And is the “happy ending” seems glib, please remember that vice is not wholly defeated. After all, the conflict is only over a part of Minoret’s inheritance – most of it goes to his legitimate, grasping heirs.  The self-interest of the rapacious town circle is not glossed away… and please remember that, more the any other writer of his century, Balzac was aware of the power of money.

Balzac-the-occultist probably saw the religious aspect of the story as paramount. This creates great problems for us in the early 21^st century. Balzac’s religion is that of a worldly man who wants to pay a debt to piety, recognises there is something important in religious devotion, yet can only understand religion by means of “science” – which in his time included phrenology, palmistry, clairvoyance etc. Hence his embracing Swedenborgianism in which thoughts and visions become refined physical substances. Nevertheless, I am quite prepared to accept the conversion of Dr. Minoret, even if not for the reasons Balzac gives. This character is really an epitaph for the gentlemanly 18^th. century scepticism and rationalism, realising in old age (and under the influence of sympathetic friends) that mere rational benevolence is not enough. This strikes me as credible… even if the clairvoyance and prophetic dreams are not. Note, by the way, that Ursule Mirouet has the same name as Dr. Minoret’s deceased wife. His double function as “father” and “spiritual guide” should not be overlooked.

Socially, this is one of Balzac’s key statements. Despite admiring at least some aristocrats, he often depicts them (like Mme. de Portenduere) as incapable of looking after their own interests or adjusting to post-revolution social reality. On the one hand, the revolution of 1830 appears to have released self-interested rascals to positions of power; rogues without the coherence of a traditional code. This is symbolised in this novel by the rapacious Minoret heirs taking over Nemours in 1830, and it is significant that as they rush for the late doctor’s legacy, Balzac says they “scattered like beads unthreaded from the rosary”. Balzac’s ideals seem to be the priest like Abbe Chaperon, pious but very capable of looking after himself; the benevolent man-of-the-world Dr. Minoret; and the more humble people like those who educate Ursule and protect her.

Is this Balzac’s best novel? Certainly not. But in the wicked and corrupt world that he most often depicts, he for once gives virtue an outing.

Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him. 

                                                    IS HISTORY A MYTH?

            A few years ago I went through a phase of studying books about Roman history and especially the history of the Roman conquest of Britannia - including the way the Romans dominated Britannia for about four centuries. I read many books on this subject, but I was  struck by two books. The first was Roman Britain by I. A. Richmond.  It was Volume 1 of The Pelican [i.e Penguin] History of England, first published in 1955. The second was An Imperial Possession – Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC – AD 409 by David Mattingly, first published in 2006 as part of Penguin’s updating of its history of England. Both Richmond and Mattingly were professional historians, erudite and expert in their field. Mattingly’s book was published 50 years after Richmond’s book, and inevitably Mattingly’s book had some information that Richmond did not have. In 50 years, archaeologists had turned up things, previously unknown, related to Roman Britannia; and therefore Mattingly wrote a different narrative from Richmond’s. Even so, both gave a sound primer in Roman Britain and both were genuinely informative.

            But there was one thing that really struck me. Every so often, each historian had a certain bias. Richmond every so often would depict Romans as an advanced civilisation which improved the less-civilised Britons and made them less barbarous. And Mattingly would every so often depict the Romans as imperialist conquerors who attempted to Romanise what was already a viable civilisation –  Mattingly’s very title An Imperial Possession tells us so.

            What caused this difference between the work of two capable historians? Simply the fact that times had moved on between 1955 and 2006. In 1955, Richmond could still think that Britain was a model for the nations; that Britain still had a large empire, even if it was crumbling; that Latin was still taught in the superior schools; and that many monuments in England were [and still are] modelled on Roman sculpture. But in 2006, Mattingly was living in an environment where de-colonialisation had happened and was still happening. As one by one former colonies became independent nations, imperialism and colonisation became dirty words.  Here were two different interpretations of the same historical reality. And the fact is that every history book has always been influenced by the environments in which historians wrote.

So does this mean that history is a sort of malleable fable – or even a myth? Not exactly. There are such things as the hard facts of history. When this plague broke out. When war broke out. When a certain battle was fought. When a certain king or emperor reigned. When democracies rose and fell. When particular laws were created. etc. etc. etc. Such things can be verified in many ways. But even the most astute and honest historians – the ones who do not write for propaganda purposes – will know that they are writing for a certain audience in a certain era.

            There is also what I would call “necessary myths”, that is, things that we know are not historically true but that are useful for the peace of a nation. Take the Treaty of Waitangi. It was, so we are told, a binding agreement between the King of England and the Rangatira [Maori chiefs] of Aotearoa. The Rangatira signed the treaty and this was the foundational document of our country. It is an interesting tale… but not entirely true. First, very many  Rangatira in the southern part of the North Island never signed the treaty and never wanted to. Second, Deputy Governor Hobson was afraid that the French might claim the South Island for their own. Hobson therefore took only a few signings in the South Island and then proclaimed “by discovery” that the South Island belonged to England. So in reality, the Treaty of Waitangi was, at best, a very flawed and incomplete treaty. Then there is the fact that a few years after the signing of the Treaty at Waitangi, there was the “Northern War”. Many of the northern tribes who had signed the treaty were now disappointed by the outcome of the treaty, and angered that the "capital" had been moved to Auckland. So they waged war on the colonisers. When a treaty turns into war then, by long understanding, the treaty is made null and void. And the fact is that through the rest of the 19^th century and well into the 20^th century, the Treaty of Waitangi was ignored by the judiciary. Famously – or notoriously – in 1877 Chief Justice James Prendergast ruled that the Treaty at Waitangi was “a simple nullity”. For this statement Prendergast has, in recent years, been vilified and condemned; but like it or not, Prendergast was simply saying what was the norm in New Zealand laws at the time. Of course Governors-General would visit the Waitangi grounds and say nice things about the treaty, but really the treaty had no legal status.

It has only been in the last fifty years or so that the Treaty of Waitangi has once again gained judicial status. A Maori renaissance made legislators consider the ideas of the treaty and write them into law… but this often meant laws that were not apparent in the original treaty and were therefore said to be in “the spirit of the treaty”. What this means is that we are not now honouring the original treaty, but we are honouring what recent lawyers and politicians have devised.

At this point you might think I am belittling the whole working of the Waitangi Tribunal. Not at all. I think the rulings that have been made are to the good. To see Maori culture now flourishing, to see the Maori language once again being widely spoken, to see compensations for those whose land was taken from them – these are all good things. But let us not pretend that all this comes from the Treaty of Waitangi. The treaty is a “necessary myth”,  giving a unifying sense of national pride. But let’s not pretend that it’s built on history.

 

Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“THE SECRET LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE” by Nathalie A. Cabrol (Published by Simon & Schuster. Marketed in New Zealand by HarperCollins, $NZ30). ;  “NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT – The Misadventures of a Kiwi Soldier” by Dario Nustrini (Published by HarperCollins, $NZ39.99)

Let me make a very obvious statement. I am not a scientist of any sort, and I would be totally lost if I were to attempt reading a genuine scientific treatise. For one thing, I would be floored by the necessary terms and jargon that science requires. But this does not mean that I am completely ignorant of scientific developments, scientific discoveries and for that matter scientific controversies. How do I know such things? Not by academic treatises, but by reading good popularisation written by scientists. In this matter “popularisation” does not mean “dumbing down”. It means good information passed on by scientists to lay people like me (and let’s ignore the fact that there are – alas – bogus non-scientific writers who produce unscientific clap-trap – see my think-piece on this blog U.F.O.s and My Tin-Foil Hat).  

Sub-titled “An Astrobiologist’s Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life” The Secret Life of the Universe is the work of a genuine scientist. Nathalie A. Cabrol is an astrobiologist – that is, an astronomer who specialises in seeking signs of life in our solar system and beyond. This does not necessarily mean searching for intelligent life. It means searching for any form of life beyond planet Earth – even if that means tiny, microscopic building-blocks of life. And of course there is also the quest for water beyond planet Earth. Inevitably, Cabrol uses some scientific jargon – which slowed me down in some of my reading – but not so impenetrable as to miss their meaning. Read slowly and carefully.

In her opening Chapters, Cabrol introduces us to exoplanets – meaning planets moving around suns far beyond our solar system. They have been detected by the most modern telescopes and radio telescopes. Astronomers have so far discovered at least 3,800 stars with planets circling about them in our galaxy. This leads her to discuss how vast our galaxy alone is, and how planets were formed and how they will probably die. One theory on how Earth was formed, embraced by many astronomers, is the Theian theory. This is the idea that another huge planet, now dubbed Theia, crashed against the embryonic Earth creating the Moon and its tilt. This was mere thousands of millions of years ago. But, more to the point of the search for life in the universe, the crashing of two planets could mean how the earliest building blocks of life were passed on from one planet to another. In fact, there are many theories about how life is passed from one planet to another. One is the Panspermia theory which says that dust was scattered about the universe, seeding minute elements that could develop over eons and become minute forms of life. But this doesn’t tell us where minute life came from. Another theory sees life beginning with biochemistry; not to mention the idea that life began in the hot springs in the deep sea.

However Cabrol lays down some universal laws about life, telling us that thanks to recent astronomical work “…the elementary compounds that make the life we know, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur… are common in the universe. It is no accident that we are made of them… Organic molecules and volatiles are found at the surface of Mars, in the geysers of Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus, in the atmosphere of Triton, in Triton’s stratosphere and on comets…. Much further away still, nearly two hundred types of prebiotic complex organic molecules were detected in interstellar clouds near the centre of our galaxy. They included the kinds that could play a role in forming amino acids – the building blocks of the life we know. Granted that organic molecules are not life, but they are the elemental building blocks life uses for its carbon and hydrogen backbone, and they are everywhere.” [Chapter 1, Pg. 14] She also makes it clear that “When it comes to the environments in which life could have originated, we can only test various hypotheses to the best of our current abilities: warm, cold, acidic, alkaline, and anywhere in between, and see how the chemistry works out. But there, too, a transition from prebiotic chemistry to life appears possible in more than just one scenario, as demonstrated by the various theories.” [Chapter 2, Pg. 42]

Having set down these universal facts, in the following five chapters Cabrol proceeds to take us through the possibility of life on planets and their moons in our solar system. Mercury, nearest to the sun, is brushed aside. Being closest to the sun, Mercury is essentially scorched and cooked by the sun – an arid rock where even the most microscopic life is improbable. Cabrol turns to the “solar habitable zone”, meaning warmed by our sun enough to nurture life, but not so cold as to be inhabitable. In the habitable zone are Venus, Earth and Mars. Obviously Earth is teeming with life, so no more need be said. Venus is shrouded in steam and clouds. 96% of Venus’s atmosphere is carbon-dioxide, which does not encourage life. Possibly vestiges of life might once have existed on Venus. But we have to remember that slowly, over millions of years, the sun expands; and in this long process the growing heat would have destroyed such life as there might have been on Venus. Also discouraging Venusian life are Venus’s winds, which constantly run at 360 kilometres per hour. Incidentally, Venus spins in the different direction from most planets.

So we are taken to a more likely planet – Mars. Smaller than both Venus and Earth, Mars was once regarded as most likely to bear life – perhaps intelligent life. There were tales about canals on Mars etc. But a few sweeps around the small planet by Viking 1 and 2 in 1975 definitively destroyed such fantasies. The country that takes greatest interest in Mars is now China. Mars could have once been habitable as there were organic molecules there – but Mars lost its atmosphere. There may have been water on the surface of Mars 100 million years ago and there still is volcanic activity on Mars. There are on Mars mudstones [mud petrified] that suggest that eons ago there were lakes in the planet. Referring to NASA’s Viking explorations of Mars, Cabrol remarks:  “It gave us the first in-depth view of the history of a planet where everything looked incredibly familiar: ancient channels and dry lake beds, polar caps, dune fields, volcanoes, and lava flows now frozen in time. There is no need to invent new words to describe Mars. Its landscapes are very Earth like and yet so different, a red planet with blue sunsets, where rovers have sunken their wheels in the dirt for the past couple of decades now.”   [Chapter 4, Pg. 67] Further she notes of Mars: “Despite hostile conditions on the surface today, all data converge to show that Mars is on the high-priority list of worlds where life could have developed and survived over time. The new findings encourage us to think we are on the right path.” [Chapter 4, Pg. 86] It is quite feasible that Mars in its formation sent dust to Earth, in effect one factor seeding Earth.

So much for Venus, Earth and Mars, the three planets in the habitable zone.

Turning to the [apparently] largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter is essentially a bubble of gas – not a planet where there is firm ground and therefore not a place where life could develop. But Jupiter is surrounded by many moons, and it is they which Cabrol examines in detail. She remarks “Earth is only one of many ocean worlds in our solar system.” Jupiter’s moon Juno is covered in ice [NOT H2o], with possibly water deep under its crust [water is not one of the building-blocks of life, but it is needed to nurture life]. Possibly Jupiter’s small moon Ganymede carries water, but it is most likely to be found in the moon Europa.

The planet Saturn has not been examined as closely as its largest moon Titan. Titan  has been examined by NASA’s Huygens probe in 2005, which forced its way through Titan’s thick atmosphere and landed, despite the moon’s very strong winds. Later the Cassini voyage circled around Titan and examined it in detail: “Cassini completed over one hundred close flybys of the giant moon, mapped its surface, and continued to make detailed studies of the atmosphere. The detection of large gravity tides seemed to confirm the presence of a layer of liquid water underneath an icy crust, kilometres below the lakes and seas of methane sitting on the surface.”  [Chapter 6, Pg. 118] But does this mean water as we know it? Triton has some forbidding aspects – nor least that it revolves so slowly that each of its seasons takes 17 years. There will be more searches for prebiotic signals in future landings but as yet there is there is no evidence of signs of life. As for other objects in our solar system, the dwarf planet Ceres [in the asteroid belt] appears to carry water, Pluto’s moon Charon carries water and possibly that there is water underneath the surface of our Moon.

At which point you will reasonably ask why a book about finding life should be so concerned with water. Remember that over millions of years, the sun will expand and swallow planet by planet. Our Earth is in the habitable zone now, but it won’t be habitable forever. Our [very distant] descendants will find Earth becoming hotter and hotter. Could it be [and this is only speculation] that our descendants will then seek out moons in our solar system to which they can move … and they will need water. Science fiction? Maybe, but reasonable.

Having dealt with our puny little solar system, in her last five chapters Cabrol turns to the bigger picture of our galaxy and whether there are any signs of life therein. Astronomers are now able to detect distant suns which, in the way they “wobble”, reveal that they have planets circling around them. It is possible that there are between 20-trillion to 80-trillion planets in our galaxy alone, the odds therefore being that life must exist far from our solar system. AI systems are able to detect not only stars with planets, but stars very many light-years away. The gas giants we know [like Jupiter] may have small rock cores carrying a form of life… but we do not know. Nevertheless Cabrol says “The laws of physics and chemistry are universal and the building blocks of life on Earth are abundant and common, and though they might not be exactly the same elsewhere, the odds suggest that many more analogue blueprints of the process of life could exist in the universe, in the same way synonyms provide different means to convey the same information in grammar. Now we just have to figure out ways to test this hypothesis and see how it may help us to search for life beyond our planet.” [Chapter 12, Pg.249]

Remembering that some suns are well on the way to dying and other suns are newly bred, it is possible that there are not only signs of life but there may be ancient  civilisations in our vast galaxy with whom we have not yet connected… but of course this is only [reasonable] speculation. In the meantime, the SETI project has now for over six decades been attempting to detect extra-terrestrial techno-signatures; and there are many discussions among astrobiologists about what sort of extra-terrestrials might be interested in us… but so far nobody has met an extra-terrestrial. In her very last chapter, Cabrol deals with the possibility that the whole universe teams with life, but not intelligent life. In her epilogue, she discusses the decline of Earth in its pollution and constant loss of species… and pessimistically, she says that it is very unlikely we human beings will ever find an alternate home.

In putting together this synopsis, I have grossly simplified Nathalie A. Cabrol’s complex theses, and I admit that I found it harder to understand her ideas once I got into the last five chapters. That is why I wrote comparatively little of those chapters. For all that, The Secret Life of the Universe is an enlightening book and certainly one that reminds us of our status in the order of things.

  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.  *.    *

 

And in the immortal words of Monty Python, now for something completely different. Nothing Significant to Report, subtitled “The Misadventures of a Kiwi Soldier” is Dario Nustrini memoirs of six years in the New Zealand army before he resigned and was honourably discharged. He joined when he was 19 and was discharged when he was 25. Most of those six years were taken up with training.

            As it begins, Nothing Significant to Report is almost a breezy, rollicking tale, but eventually moves into darker things. Dario Nustrini (his name came from his Italian forebears) divides his tale into four sections.

First there is “Basic Training” at Waiouru, which involves getting used to being messed about, first by corporals then by NCO’s. There are such things as almost having to wear the wrong sized uniform; marching, marching and more marching; the inevitable incompetent barracks fool who always does everything wrongly; beginning to fumble with rifles before getting used to them; route marches and other necessities. Dario Nustrini is attracted to the signals corps. All this is told in humorous tone – yarns about doing things wrongly, cracking jokes and of course swearing as often as possible. Rough Kiwi jokers in short, with laughing camaraderie.

Then there is “Corps Training and Beyond” down south at Linton and Burnham Camp, which at least has a bar where young soldiers can booze in their off hours. Nustrini becomes an Electronic Warfare Operator [meaning signals] and now has the onerous task of carrying around heavy equipment in marches and field manoeuvres. There is much training in mountains and bush in the South Island and tales of twerps who have to be shown how signals work. And then there are lectures on wars going on elsewhere… especially Afghanistan.

“Fun and Games” (of course the title is ironical) deals with his being sent to various allied countries, including Canada for a while, to understand more about signals. His craft is honed in New Zealand, including having to know how to set up a site for sending and receiving signals, with camouflage and other cover. There is one tale of him and his team being ordered, at night, to penetrate the Auckland Zoo without being detected – a tale that ends in laughter. On brief leave there are [largely] harmless capers about picking up girls. And there are further exercises with the Australian Army in Exercise Listening Redback. Both Australia and New Zealand are readying to join the U.S.A. and U.K. to fight in Iraq.

And so to “Around the World”, which happens to be the shortest section of Nothing Significant to Report. In Iraq, Nustrini is mainly together with the Aussies and the Yanks. Naturally there are the discomforts of active military life, with barely sanitary barracks and of course much danger. There are many fire-fights. He has respect for the Iraqi soldiers who are fighting against the terrorist ISIS, but he gradually becomes disillusioned with army life. After just this one “deployment”, when he returns to New Zealand he resigns, is discharged and leaves the army.

While much of Nothing Significant to Report is written tongue-in-cheek and making light of army life, its humour is only fitful. Nustrini’s admiration for his comrades is real, but the comedy is sometimes strained and slowly falls away. Still, the life in barracks seems painfully real.

 

Something Old

 Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.

"UNE TENEBREUSE AFFAIRE” [“A Murky Business”] by Honore de Balzac ( first published in 1841as a “scene from the political life” in Balzac’s “Human Comedy”). Sometimes translated as “A Gondreville Mystery”.

            As you will know from my review of Honore de Balzac’s The Chouans, I am now working my way through other of Balzac’s novels which I have previously neglected. With Une Tenebreuse Affaire, Balzac, by now fully involved in penning novels set in his own era, reverted to writing in this novel about [partly fictious] events which would have happened when Balzac was a baby. The novel takes place between 1803 and 1806. Napoleon is on the point of becoming emperor and building up his empire, but [as in Les Chouans] there are émigrés , still pining for the Ancien Regime, who are returning to France and plotting against Napoleon. The aristocratic woman Laurence de Cinq-Cynge is shielding four young émigrés. Two of these émigrés are her cousins, Paul-Marie and Marie-Paul Semeuse (who happen to be identical twins and who are both in love with Laurence). The other two are Robert and Adrien d’Hauteserre. The émigré Semeuse twins have been deprived of their chateau and estate by one of Napoleon’s senators, Malin. The police agent Corentin [who figured in Les Chouans], together with his assistant Peyrade, is trying to track down the unwanted émigrés. Largely thanks to the cleverness of Michu the bailiff, the aristocrats evade arrest. At which point Napoleon issues an amnesty for the émigrés, so long as they keep the peace.

            But the story resumes two years later. The police agent Corentin takes revenge for having been outwitted. Malin, the senator, is kidnapped by assailants who resemble Michu and the four émigrés who are supported by Laurence de Cinq-Cynge. They are arrested and tried and (particularly because Corentin has tricked Michu’s wife into implicating her husband) they are found guilty, despite the excellent defence prepared by their lawyers. Poor Miche is executed. But Laurence de Cinq-Cynge, thanks in part to the good offices of Talleyrand [the famous diplomat who was able to go along with any regime that happened to be ruling] she is able to visit Napoleon in person on the eve of the battle of Jena, and she begs for clemency. The four aristocrats have their prison sentences commuted to service in Napoleon’s army… and we are told that three of them die in various of Napoleon’s battles. The fourth, Adrien d’Hauteserre, survives and marries Laurence de Cinq-Cynge, and they live to see the Restoration when, after Napoleon fell, the monarchy returned.

            This novel is, however, in part a detective story. Who really kidnapped Malin, if it wasn’t the four émigrés? It turns out that it was disguised ruffians who worked for the Imperial (Napoleonic) Police and who had been organised by Corentin himself. We learn that, in the giddy political  manoeuvering of the time, Malin – who lived through the July Monarchy as the Comte de Gondreville – was up to his neck in a plot, contrived by Fouche, Sieyes, Talleyrand and Carnot [all historical figures], who wanted to restore the republic, rather than the monarchy, should Napoleon’s campaigns fail. Though the novel as a whole is largely fictional, the kidnapping of Malin was loosely based on a real case.

            If you are not au fait with French history, the synopsis of this novel I have given is very dry and misses the fact that much of this [relatively brief] novel is also romantic. Once again, as in Les Chouans, Balzac appears to have been influenced by Walter Scott.  Indeed in his papers he paid Scott the direct tribute of claiming that the character of Laurence de Cinq-Cynge was based on Diana Vernon, the strong-willed heroine of Scott’s novel Rob Roy. Naturally this novel has its melodramatic qualities – notably the secret vault in the forest, under a monastery ruins, in which Michu hides the émigrés, and where later Corentin has Malin imprisoned. There is also the romantic contrivance of selfless, idealistic identical twins both in love with the heroine. Nevertheless, despite the laborious time it takes before the main characters are introduced, Une Tenebreuse Affaire is sharper and more-to-the-point than Les Chouans. There is a comparatively tight structure in the outwitting of Corentin, the kidnapping and the particularly dramatic trial – with a satisfying denouement in Laurence de Cinq-Cynge’s quest for clemency and the result.

            Regarding the political implications of the novel, it is again more enlightening than Les Chouans. “Will you be sensible henceforward? Do you realise what the French Empire is to be?” Napoleon asks Laurence de Cinq-Cynge rhetorically when she seeks him out at Jena. Being “sensible” is the essential theme, for the novel shows how old-school aristocrats, no matter how noble and how much admired by Balzac, they have to come to terms with the fact that the old regime is over and the nouveau-riche are in the saddle. Malin, former Themidorean and possessor of an émigré’s estate, is the archetype of nouveau-riche (despised by Laurence de Cinq-Cynge and her cousins, despite the fact that Malin gave generous testimony for them). Laurence de Cinq-Cynge initially idealised Charlotte Corday – the young woman who assassinated the extremist revolutionary Marat – and hated Napoleon. But she has to swallow all her noble pride. Even so, she continues to hate the Restoration and the July Monarchy because she sees that it is the “trimmers” who prosper in that and any other regime after the revolution.

            Balzac himself appears to be on the side of the “trimmers” – people like the older  d’Hauteserres and the old Marquis who would rather let their aristocratic privileges go than being involved in a sort of civil war.  They must conform to Napoleon. Perhaps this is why, in his pragmatic way, Balzac puts in some favourable words for the likes of Fouche and Talleyrand  - arch-trimmers both. In a long aside on the administration of justice under Napoleon, Balzac also suggests that a trial should be interrogation by professionals rather than having emotion-swayed juries.

            The historical moment caught by this novel is one in which Napoleon is menaced both from the “right” (aristocratic plots) and by the “left” (republicans), yet the conspiracies are so contradictory that they never succeed. Presumably, had Balzac been so inclined, he could have written a novel about an unreconstructed republican learning to be “sensible”.

            While Une Tenebreuse Affaire is widely read in France, it is not regarded as one of Balzac’s greatest works and it is less read outside France