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0:52

Hello, I'm Thomas Jones, host of the

0:54

LRB Podcast. This year on our Close

0:56

Readings Podcast, there are two bonus series.

0:59

One is with Irina de Mitrescu and

1:01

Mary Wellesley, exploring medieval humor. The other,

1:03

with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford, is

1:05

on political poems. You can

1:08

listen to Seamus and Mark's first episode

1:10

on Andrew Marvell's Horation Ode Upon Cromwell's

1:12

Return from Ireland, right here. Or

1:14

go straight over to the LRB Close Readings

1:17

Podcast, where you'll be able to listen to

1:19

the full series as it's released through the

1:21

year, along with Irina and Mary's full series

1:23

and free extracts from all our subscriber-only series.

1:27

Just search for LRB Close Readings in

1:29

your podcast app, or find links in

1:31

the description. Welcome

1:33

to this new LRB Close

1:35

Readings series about political poems.

1:38

We have a new format for our new series. In

1:40

these conversations, we'll be taking each time

1:43

a single poem, one

1:45

which has been understood and

1:47

admired, or perhaps criticized, for

1:49

its politics, or for

1:51

its particular engagement with contemporary

1:53

political history. And as

1:55

ever, we shall be enlightened and informed by

1:57

pieces to be found in the rich gallery.

2:00

gathering of essays and reviews that make up

2:02

the archive of the London Review of Books.

2:05

My name is Seamus Perry and I teach English

2:07

Literature at Bayville College in Oxford and

2:09

I'm talking to Mark Ford,

2:12

poet, critic and professor of English

2:14

at University College, London. And

2:16

the poem we've chosen for our

2:19

first conversation in this series is

2:21

Andrew Marvell's Horatio Nod, which

2:24

is, as Frank Camode says in

2:27

a piece he contributes to the London Review

2:29

of Books, a text

2:31

that it's possible to think of the greatest

2:33

political poem in the language, Mark.

2:35

So we're starting at the top. Yes,

2:38

and it's political in all senses of

2:40

the word, isn't it? I mean the

2:43

full title, Horatio Nod Upon Cromwell's Return

2:45

from Ireland, gives us the moment

2:47

in history. It was written

2:49

in summer, probably

2:52

June of 1650 and

2:54

King Charles had been executed in January

2:57

of the previous year, 1649, and Cromwell

2:59

later in 1649 had gone to Ireland

3:01

and subdued the

3:05

Irish, I mean

3:07

massacred, really disastrously

3:10

violent campaign. And

3:12

the poem actually talks about the kind of his battles

3:14

against the Irish and somewhat implausively

3:17

has the Irish admiring

3:19

Cromwell and commending him for his victory over

3:21

them. And Cromwell returns

3:23

in May 30th, I think it

3:25

is, from Ireland to England and

3:28

is within a couple of years

3:30

has become a sort of de facto king. So

3:32

the kind of turbulence which Marvell lived through, he

3:34

was 29 when he wrote it and over the

3:38

next 20 years the turbulence is

3:40

just unbelievable. This poem is

3:42

a political poem but it's interesting

3:45

in that it doesn't make much impact

3:47

on the politics of the time

3:49

because it was unpublished. It may

3:51

have been circulated in manuscript to

3:54

a few choice readers but there's

3:56

no certainty that it was and

3:58

when Marvell's collected poems or his

4:00

posthumous volumes came out in 1681. It

4:03

was the time of the restoration and the

4:05

publisher excited at the last moment. So it's

4:07

only in a couple of copies does it

4:10

exist in the 1681. So

4:12

it's not until 1776, kind

4:14

of the year of the American war

4:17

of independence that this poem is

4:20

published properly. So it doesn't intervene

4:22

in the politics of the time,

4:24

but it registers them with a

4:26

kind of subtlety and a delicacy

4:29

and an intriguing ambiguity, which makes

4:31

it both about politics, but also

4:33

political, because no one can agree

4:35

the extent to which Marvell is

4:37

celebrating the arrival of Cromwell or

4:41

deploring the death of Charles, or both at

4:43

the same time. Yes. So

4:45

that's the thing I suppose we'll probably concentrate

4:47

on, isn't it? Which is that the poem

4:50

has a, has a radical kind of

4:52

ambiguity about it, which obviously commode admired

4:54

and liked. We should

4:56

say maybe one or two things additionally

4:59

about the context to it. Cromwell's

5:02

campaign in Ireland was brutal. The

5:05

person that Marvell is welcoming back

5:08

is someone who led an extraordinarily

5:10

bloody campaign in Ireland,

5:12

which effectively had the

5:14

ideology of a crusade, because

5:17

it was not only against Irish

5:19

people who were being rebellious against a new

5:21

regime, it was also against Catholics who,

5:24

you know, Cromwell

5:26

thought were of heretics. So it

5:28

had that whole kind of crusading kind of violence

5:31

about it. And I suppose the other thing that

5:33

we ought to, we ought to mention

5:36

is that what's going to happen next

5:38

is Cromwell's going to invade Scotland. Yes.

5:41

It's a crisis poem. I mean, it is an absolute

5:43

crisis poem in every

5:45

way. Probably the greatest crisis that the English

5:49

has suffered in terms of its own

5:51

internal conflicts, undoubtedly the

5:53

case. And in terms of the religious aspect, it

5:56

is an intriguing paradox, sort of slightly gestured

5:58

towards in the poem, that Cromwell's Cromwell, whose

6:00

notion of Cromwell as being divinely

6:03

elected as somehow being God's chosen

6:05

instrument to affect this change

6:08

and to abolish what had been

6:10

some centuries of monarchy as they

6:12

thought forever, was also someone who

6:14

Marvell worried might not allow the

6:16

amount of religious freedom to which

6:18

Marvell was committed. And I think

6:20

there's one piece in which Blair

6:22

Warden is quoted as saying the

6:24

language of the poem is almost

6:26

bipolar, that it can be read on two

6:31

levels at once and it's impossible to

6:33

adjudicate between the two. But I think

6:35

that's probably the point of the language

6:37

in that Marvell is recovering a sense

6:39

of privacy and individual subjectivity and a

6:41

sense of autonomy for the reader of

6:44

the poem and for himself in the

6:46

process of writing the poem as these

6:48

two really kind of determined power blocks,

6:52

the royalists who were still adhering to the royalist

6:54

cause and the

6:56

Cromwell's new interregnum

6:59

Puritan vision of England,

7:02

couldn't kind of collide together or

7:04

coexist together. And the poem

7:06

allows us to kind of juggle between them in

7:08

a way which is analogous to the, I think

7:11

that's the way we respond to news so much

7:13

these days, political news. You think

7:15

on the one hand this, on the other

7:17

hand that. And this poem superbly captures that

7:19

sense of ambivalence and uncertainty. But at least

7:21

it does so in a manner that allows

7:23

us to feel we're having our own thoughts

7:26

and we're not being invaded by

7:28

ideologies which we feel resistant to.

7:31

Yes. What Blair

7:33

Worden says in his LRP piece

7:35

are bitterly divided

7:37

feelings about the

7:40

whole paradox of a

7:42

Cromwellian kingship which

7:45

Worden thinks Marvell spots on the

7:47

horizon. And perhaps that's something that

7:49

we might come back to later

7:52

on in our conversation. One

7:55

last detail I suppose about

7:57

the context of the poem. It's

8:00

very difficult to date, lots and lots of Marvell's

8:02

poems. The date of this one seems

8:05

less problematic because of

8:07

the occasion that prompts it. And

8:09

by this time, Marvell is absolutely part

8:11

of the household of Fairfax,

8:14

who had been head of

8:16

the Republican army. But

8:18

when the Scottish invasion happens, he

8:21

steps down because he doesn't think the Scottish

8:23

invasion is justified any more than he thinks

8:25

that the trial and execution

8:27

of the king was quite the right thing to

8:29

do. And so Cromwell then steps in.

8:31

And the important thing about Fairfax, from my

8:33

point of view, is that Marvell is part

8:36

of the Fairfax household. He's the tutor to

8:38

Fairfax's daughter. And

8:41

Fairfax is an extraordinarily interesting figure, isn't he?

8:43

Because he's part of the new model army.

8:46

He's the leader of it until Cromwell takes

8:48

over. But he's also part of the group

8:51

of MPs that welcome Charles II back

8:53

into England when the restoration happens in

8:55

1660. So if you

8:57

wanted someone who absolutely kind of encapsulated

9:00

or embodied all the complexities and contradictions

9:02

of mid-17th century English politics, Fairfax is

9:04

the man. And Marvell is his laureate.

9:06

And of course, the poems he writes

9:09

about Appleson House are poems of rural

9:11

retreat often, that they have a kind

9:13

of pastoral element to them. They're saturated

9:15

in politics, of course, but

9:17

that they are set in kind of

9:20

rural idyllic retreats. And the first lines

9:22

of his poem say this is exactly

9:24

what the Marvell must

9:26

now give up, that the crisis of

9:28

the time means the forward youth that

9:30

would appear must now forsake his

9:33

muses dear, nor in the shadows

9:35

sing his numbers languishing. It is

9:37

time to leave the books in

9:40

dust and oil the unused armour's

9:42

rust removing from the wall the

9:44

corslet of the hall. So

9:46

he's, I mean, he's paradoxically writing a poem

9:49

about saying you shouldn't write poems in a

9:51

story. And you should be a

9:54

man of action. And of course, it's difficult

9:56

for someone of Marvell's Unbelievably

9:58

sophisticated. The last of mind

10:01

to commit to any particular action, I'm

10:03

a that he is a brilliantly indecisive

10:05

poet in the ways in which someone

10:07

like Ts Eliot commended Nineteen Twenty One

10:09

and you can see that Marvellous Some

10:11

ways is a a prefigure of proof

10:13

fraud in his ability to see all

10:15

sides of a topic or not to

10:18

decide between them. but he's saying that

10:20

this for would use who would appear

10:22

you make some kind of name for

10:24

himself and model did the calmer a

10:26

politician whose Mp for how thought for

10:28

the Met for many decades. I'm. Though

10:30

he was notoriously blows to speak, he

10:32

didn't enjoy public speaking. So the sense

10:34

in which we a public man and

10:37

white your public poem or his own

10:39

sides of his privacy and I think

10:41

the pope in some ways does embody

10:43

he's a private ways of making sense

10:45

of what's happening at the time is

10:47

dramatizing these opening lines that he should

10:49

come forward and not a. And.

10:53

As as I was reading, that languishing

10:55

has a sort of royalist connotations that

10:57

the all the old and and this

11:00

is where the Horatian bet is also

11:02

got a Royalist connotations. The idea of

11:04

this of rural retreat which one would

11:07

enjoy and Horatian mode under a just

11:09

ruler, a king of some kind. These

11:11

are the things that must be abandoned

11:14

and you must become a warrior some

11:16

kind and take down your armor and

11:18

somehow contribute to the cause is take

11:21

down the armor. That's. Been decorating your

11:23

whole way and the kinds of i'm

11:25

i'm gonna' curatorial way and and put

11:27

it on my news it in in

11:30

in in some more active way. Yes,

11:32

it's interesting. There's there's to opening stances

11:34

that you've just created because there is

11:37

clearly an analogy being put forward by

11:39

most marvell between the for would use

11:41

that he's thriving that and Cromwell because

11:43

the third verse begins so restless Cromwell

11:46

could not cease in the glorious ounce

11:48

of peace. And this introduces something which

11:50

I'm sure we'll be talking about. Through

11:53

our our conversation about his poems

11:55

which is the way that a

11:57

lot of the key words that

11:59

are apparently epithets praise actually also

12:01

have an odd kind of ambiguity

12:03

which implies something pejorative or morally

12:05

dubious about them. And the second

12:07

word of the poem already contains

12:09

that Doesn't it forward mean forward

12:11

could mean urgent an ambitious but

12:13

it could equally mean something a

12:15

little bit more morally critical couldn't

12:18

enter could mean pushy can be

12:20

overly ambitious and that kind of

12:22

as of double speak as well

12:24

as as play wasn't says new

12:26

quoted a moment care this whole

12:28

can of bipolarity. it's about. Some

12:30

of that the key epithets him in

12:32

this been the sperm that's a submission

12:34

the very beginning yes yes and is

12:36

embodied in the pipes form as well,

12:38

which has these kind of a ought

12:40

to syllabic couplets and eight syllable couplets

12:43

followed by six syllable couplets to see

12:45

soaring is going on all the time

12:47

On the one hand, this on the

12:49

other hand, that and word like inglorious

12:51

in inglorious arts of peace while in

12:53

a you're bound to think about all

12:55

the arts piecing to reassess of he

12:57

says it has lead to military glory

12:59

and is that the only kind of

13:01

glory one valid. So every word has

13:04

a kind of bizarre underneath it settings

13:06

that something or of odd is going

13:08

on. With all that, this can be

13:10

taken different ways, and I think this

13:12

applies to all the Roman illusions that

13:14

go on. His wells is given the

13:16

Horatio node, but Caesar and Hannibal are

13:18

invoked and dumb comedies compared to Hannibal

13:20

one, and that's a fairly divisive thing

13:22

to do. this. Hannibal didn't conquer husky,

13:25

didn't conquer the Romans. So I think.

13:27

Marvel. On the one hand

13:29

seems to be celebrating com wells possible

13:32

invasion of Europe. Were saying that this

13:34

this of revolution which is happened in

13:36

England can then be exported to Italy

13:38

and to France but whether or not

13:41

marvell actually think that's a good thing

13:43

is something we just com to adjudicate

13:45

on. I think yes Perhaps before moving

13:47

onto the time we should say a

13:50

word about Horace under Horatian which clearly

13:52

mother was flagging and his title and

13:54

ahora seems to be a kind of

13:56

parallel Somerville doesn't. he because Horace

14:00

was a Republican, but

14:03

comes round to accepting and indeed

14:05

celebrating the rule of Augustus as

14:08

an emperor. And that

14:10

is very roughly the trajectory

14:12

of Marvell's own life,

14:14

isn't it? So as a

14:17

very young man, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, she

14:19

publishes a poem which is a version of one

14:21

of Horace's Odes that celebrates Charles

14:23

I as our Caesar. And

14:28

in this poem, Horace Odes that

14:30

we're talking about today, he seems to be revisiting

14:32

that and then in this very

14:35

complicated, emotionally rather nuanced way that

14:37

we're, and ideologically nuanced way that

14:39

we're talking about, seems to be

14:41

reworking that Latin parallel, that Roman

14:44

parallel. Yes, and there's another Italian

14:47

writer whose pertinent that's Machiavelli and Marvell

14:49

was attacked as a Machiavellian

14:52

style figure and Machiavelli talked about

14:54

the new prints, the old print-ettes

14:56

and Cromwell would be this kind

14:58

of new prints and Machiavelli was

15:00

sort of again a double-sided figure.

15:03

And I suppose in terms of the historical

15:05

or political view of this poem, and I think this

15:08

is something that may come up in the course, to

15:10

what extent it somehow is going

15:12

along with the inevitable force of history. That

15:15

there's a very, very, very

15:17

plangent account, a moving account

15:19

of Charles's death, but is

15:21

Marvell saying that the

15:23

forces of history have somehow outdated Charles the

15:25

First and that he is a kind of

15:28

an east feet and a gracious person

15:31

but is somehow doomed by the forces

15:33

of history which are moving in a

15:35

different direction and those forces are determined

15:38

by some kind of divine power. But

15:40

is that divine power and

15:42

Cromwell is the vehicle or the means

15:45

for that divine power to fulfil its

15:47

mission, but that is

15:49

also a kind of fairly distressing

15:52

series of events unfold from that.

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get started. Let's

16:49

look at the way that Cromwell is

16:51

represented in his first appearances in the

16:53

poem. He's a kind of Superman, isn't

16:56

he? He's someone who

16:58

has a kind of power

17:00

which is partly the force of nature,

17:02

but partly even more than that. He's

17:04

kind of like a sort of supernatural,

17:06

isn't he? Through

17:08

adventurous war, urge it his

17:11

active star, which

17:13

is one of these wonderful

17:16

ambiguities that we've mentioned already.

17:19

Does that mean that his active star,

17:21

that's to say his destiny urges

17:23

him through adventurous war? Or

17:25

is it Cromwell that's doing the urging?

17:27

In which case it turns him into

17:29

this extraordinary figure that actually dictates

17:32

or determines the

17:34

course of Providence. And then

17:36

later, the next stanza, like the

17:39

three-forked lightning, first breaking the clouds

17:41

where it was nursed, to

17:43

burrow his own side, his fiery

17:45

way divide. This is

17:47

associating Cromwell with

17:50

a kind of satanic imagery,

17:52

isn't it, of fireiness and forcefulness?

17:55

Yes, it Reminds one

17:57

of Satan, Paradise Lost. Marvell

18:00

will close friends and Marvell

18:02

introduced a Paradise Lost. So

18:04

I think from well is

18:07

a figure whom he. To.

18:10

Some extent in the state and Fifty

18:12

Speed Com to support. and he was.

18:14

He was did have a position as

18:16

a kind of a set secretary with

18:18

within the Com wells government, but a

18:20

lot of violence is associated with Chrome.

18:22

Well, as you said, the Irish campaign

18:24

was particularly violent and. This

18:27

is also the forces of imperialism beginning

18:29

to expand to expand and and. And

18:33

the connection with the Roman Empire was it

18:35

compares him and sees his head. It lasted

18:37

through his laurels blast that seems to be.

18:40

Associating. Is

18:42

Citizens had There is Charles is No.

18:44

Charles has right Does a little contest

18:46

in the poem about who's most like

18:48

see as is Charles or as a

18:51

crumb While and they're like different aspects

18:53

of Caesar on pay him in this

18:55

is the Sea so he's assassinate Yes,

18:57

as at and that this is the

18:59

inevitability. Aspects of the pipes tease madness

19:01

to resist or blame the force of

19:03

angry heavens flame. Yes, I'm savings on

19:05

one level You can read that is

19:07

saying this is the inevitable processes of

19:09

historical. Progress the other hand, you

19:11

could see this almost an inverted

19:13

commas that there's no way that

19:15

somebody who could could possibly resist

19:17

this could all get in trouble

19:19

if they do. Absolutely Yes. Exactly.

19:22

So there is an appeal to

19:24

historical inevitability. Isn't as a as

19:26

a twentieth century person in the

19:28

masses tradition might say, offering the

19:30

seventeenth century like. Milton

19:32

A might appeal to necessity. But

19:35

that is as as Milton says

19:37

to tyrants Please Society the tyrants

19:40

plea. So there's a very, very

19:42

murky kind of ambiguous moral. Who

19:45

world of these different terms of these

19:48

different references on our inhabiting isn't? that?

19:50

Cromwell. is described as someone who

19:52

from his private gardens where he

19:55

lived reserved and all steer as

19:57

if is highest plot to plant

19:59

the bergamot which I gather was a

20:01

particularly delicious kind of pair, could

20:04

by industrious valour climb to ruin

20:06

the great work of time. And

20:09

that's fascinating, isn't it, within the context of

20:11

Marvell's own poetry, because the private

20:13

garden is, of course, exactly what he celebrates

20:16

himself in one of his greatest poems, The

20:18

Garden, which is probably written within a few

20:21

months or a few years of the

20:24

Horatian Ode. And the opening

20:26

of The Garden, how vainly men themselves

20:28

amaze to win the palm, the

20:30

oak, or bays. You know,

20:32

this kind of worldly ambition

20:35

is vain. It's

20:37

pointless. And yet that's exactly what he's saying.

20:40

Cromwell is so good for having turned his back

20:42

on to the world of the

20:44

garden. Yes, and it seems, and this is,

20:47

I guess, to show our listeners that we're

20:49

up on kind of historicist readings of the

20:51

poem, that Bergamot was actually associated with royalism.

20:54

I did not know that. Yes, it

20:56

was considered to be the pair of

20:58

kings. So when Cromwell

21:01

is leaving his Bergamot, again, there may be

21:03

some kind of irony in which a royalist

21:06

fruit is being implanted in Cromwell's garden,

21:08

which may suggest his own regal

21:10

ambitions. So the

21:13

kind of multivalence of the ironies, which

21:16

kind of make every single

21:18

phrase of this poem so

21:21

kind of calculating and intriguing and

21:23

difficult to parse, doesn't impede its

21:26

great forward drive. It's

21:28

a terrific narrative poem, as

21:30

well as an extremely sophisticated poem about

21:33

the politics of language and the politics

21:35

of the particular crisis which it is

21:38

describing. But we do get this

21:40

kind of multifaceted portrait of Cromwell.

21:43

And we get this, I mean, one of

21:46

the most moving passages, I think, in all

21:48

literature is the death of Charles, who's

21:52

presented as on a stage. And

21:54

it's interesting to think that how

21:56

often the death, executions of kings

21:58

have been represented on the Elizabethan

22:01

and Jacobean stages in the decades

22:03

preceding the Civil War. That was

22:05

what nearly all tragedies ended up

22:07

with, the death of a king.

22:09

But Charles is

22:11

presented as embracing

22:14

his death as a

22:16

superbly composed and moving

22:18

and dignified actor. He's

22:21

chased to the Isle of Wight and

22:23

Carisbrooke. And this is seen

22:25

as Cromwell's own devious

22:28

plot has trapped Charles

22:31

into his web or net, I think

22:33

is the word that the poem uses.

22:35

He wove a net of such a

22:38

scope that Charles himself might chase to

22:40

Carisbrooke's narrow case. And

22:42

then Charles is brought to London

22:45

and executed that thence the

22:47

royal actor born the tragic

22:49

scaffold might adorn while round

22:51

the armoured bands did clap

22:53

their bloody hands. He nothing

22:56

common did all mean upon

22:58

that memorable scene that with

23:00

his keener eye the axe's edge

23:02

did try nor call the gods

23:04

with vulgar spite to vindicate his

23:07

helpless right but bowed his comely

23:09

head down as upon a bed.

23:13

Yes. So I mean

23:15

the admiration for Cromwell

23:17

in the poem is as

23:19

we've been saying is extraordinarily

23:21

nuanced and edged. But

23:23

it would seem to me at least, thinking

23:25

about the stances you've just read out

23:28

there, that the more humanly scaled feelings

23:30

in the poem, I mean not the

23:32

feelings about the Superman, but the more

23:34

humanly scaled feelings are absolutely on Charles's

23:36

side. This could be a

23:39

little royalist poem embedded within what

23:41

is attempting to be a republican

23:43

poem. Absolutely. I suppose

23:45

the counter argument would be that

23:47

by giving Charles his due, one

23:50

somehow moves on from royalism, that somehow

23:52

this is the equivalent to the ways

23:55

in which someone like Cooper laments the

23:57

last of the Mahicans, they're doomed to

23:59

die. give them a glowing

24:01

and glorious tragic end and then let's

24:03

move on with the republican future. I

24:06

suppose that would be the republican argument

24:08

that you get in the

24:10

work of critics such as David Norbrook who writes

24:12

a brilliant piece

24:14

in the LRB about Marvell who's a

24:17

wonderfully astute explicator of Marvell but does

24:19

see him as in this poem committing

24:21

himself to republicanism. It's for him a

24:23

kind of transition poem from

24:26

royalism to republicanism or

24:29

lukewarm royalism to lukewarm

24:31

republicanism. Nothing common did or mean

24:34

is interesting isn't it? It's one of

24:36

these poems that is so attentive to

24:39

the different spins of individual words isn't it?

24:41

And a little bit later on we

24:43

hear that Cromwell has to the

24:46

common feat presented Ireland as

24:48

a kind of gift or a kind of act of

24:53

generosity. So the

24:55

fact that Charles didn't do something common

24:57

might in its own ambivalent way be a

24:59

sign that he wasn't quite on

25:01

the right side because being in tune with

25:03

the common actually was a sign that you

25:06

were properly republican I suppose. Yes it

25:08

is an aristocrat versus kind of bourgeois

25:10

poem and this is what's happening in

25:12

this in this particular age. I

25:15

love the sort of pun you get with

25:17

his keener eye did the acts his age

25:19

did try which is somewhere where you can

25:21

see the kind of metaphysical aspects of kind

25:23

of Marvell's readings in Don and Herbert and

25:25

so on that kind of witty conceit but

25:28

he's doing it for a real person at a

25:30

real time in a real place and

25:33

it's something absolutely

25:35

magnificent about it

25:37

and I think this must have caught Eliot's eye

25:39

who writes a wonderful essay on Marvell in 1921

25:42

and who in Little

25:45

Giddings celebrates the royalist

25:47

cause or laments the defeat of the royalist

25:49

cause and Charles so

25:51

Charles becomes in this in

25:53

this these lines a kind of martyr the

25:55

kind of martyr of the who would live

25:58

on through the century. Yes and also Keener

26:00

than whom? I mean presumably Keener than everyone

26:02

else who's there. I mean he's he

26:05

knows what's going on, he knows the significance of what's

26:07

happening here. Oh I think it was Keener than the

26:09

axe's edge. OK, another ambiguity you

26:11

might say. Keener than even the axe he's

26:13

about to chop his head off is his

26:15

eye. And there's

26:17

this peculiar conceit that follows, derived

26:20

from an episode in

26:22

Livy, whereby the head found when the

26:24

Romans are building the capital first time

26:26

signifies a good fortune, they find a

26:28

head. But it's not a bleeding head

26:30

in Livy, that's transposed by Marvell. No,

26:32

a bleeding is Marvell's invention,

26:35

absolutely. So that's the

26:37

brilliant set piece, execution scene in

26:40

the middle, where he imagines

26:42

again by another ambiguity the

26:44

people with bloody hands around

26:46

the scaffold clapping. I

26:49

think as a historical detail they were clapping to drown

26:51

out what the king was trying to say as

26:53

his death oration. But

26:55

by the grace

26:58

of the theatrical metaphors

27:00

that Marvell is using, it turns

27:02

into applause for what the king is doing, which

27:06

is a lovely, wonderful touch. But then as

27:08

we get into the later stanzas, we turn

27:11

to very recent politics, don't

27:13

we? Not

27:17

the execution of Charles, but much more recent

27:19

politics, which is the Irish

27:21

and what Cromwell has done there.

27:24

And now the Irish are ashamed

27:26

to see themselves in one year

27:28

tamed. So much one man

27:30

can do that does

27:32

both act and know. So

27:35

he's developing a kind of great man

27:37

theory of politics, isn't he here? It's

27:39

almost like a sort of proto Thomas

27:42

Carlyle hero worship. And Cromwell

27:44

was one of Carlyle's heroes.

27:46

That kind of notion of

27:49

how politics works and where it comes from. It

27:51

doesn't come from ideas. It doesn't come from a

27:54

political settlements of a consensual or a

27:56

greed kind. It comes from a great

27:59

man doing something. Yes, and this

28:01

is the historical consciousness of the poem

28:03

in action, because Charles had invaded Ireland

28:06

himself in the 1630s disastrously. So

28:09

Cromwell gets the job done. One

28:12

of the few things that Charles and Parliament agree about

28:14

is that you should invade Ireland. Cromwell

28:17

gets the job done, but to

28:19

get the job done does require

28:22

brutality. And I think one

28:24

of the strengths of it as a political

28:26

poem is its refusal to gloss the gaspiness

28:29

of what's going on. It

28:31

may be making use of the genre

28:34

of the panegyric, which is

28:36

celebrating someone, but it inverts it

28:38

in a very clever and subversive

28:40

way. One wondered what Cromwell would

28:42

have made of it, because Marvell

28:44

did write some subsequent panegyrics for

28:46

Cromwell, which went down quite well,

28:48

as I understand it. And they

28:50

seem completely unambivalent. They seem absolutely

28:52

just praising Stalin. So

28:55

the fact that this was unpublished

28:57

and is some ways is unpublishable,

28:59

one might imagine, that it would

29:01

not satisfy any of the

29:03

parties involved, is

29:05

in some ways an aspect of what

29:07

poetry can do. Poetry can create this

29:10

reserved plot, to use the poem's

29:13

own terms, in which one's own doubts,

29:15

dilemmas, emotions, anxieties, contradictions can

29:18

be acted out or written

29:20

out in a way which

29:24

I wouldn't say uplifting exactly, but

29:26

in a sense does justice to

29:28

the complexity of the situation, resisting

29:30

propaganda, although it makes use of

29:32

many propaganda terms. And clever, historicist

29:34

critics have picked up all the

29:37

phrases from pamphlets, which Marvell has

29:39

incorporated into the poem and re-embedded

29:41

it in its kind of historical

29:43

moment and in the writing of

29:45

the moment, which was mainly the

29:47

writing of ephemeral pamphlets. And

29:49

Marvell himself wrote quite a few of them. Yes,

29:52

and the sort of animal

29:54

violence, the almost Ted Hughes-like violence

29:57

involved here is perfectly captured in

29:59

the film. isn't it, in the extended metaphor

30:02

of the falcon. So when the falcon

30:04

high falls heavy from the sky, she,

30:06

this is a brilliant little

30:08

prince, this is having killed, no

30:11

more to search, but on the next green

30:13

bow to perch, where when he first does

30:16

lure the falconer has her shore. And the

30:18

falconer there is, I don't know, the people

30:20

or House of Commons or something like that,

30:23

and it has somehow managed to bring back the

30:25

the falcon who has killed. And then another classical,

30:33

and you've mentioned this already,

30:36

Caesar, he longed a gall, so of

30:38

course Caesar was famous for conquering Gaul

30:40

and contributing it to the Roman Empire,

30:43

to Italy and Hannibal. And as you say, that

30:45

is a very odd illusion,

30:48

because it's true that Hannibal

30:50

successfully invades Italy and occupies the southern

30:52

parts of Italy for quite a long

30:54

time. But in the end he's driven out and he's defeated.

30:57

And Caesar of course also is

30:59

an ambivalent figure, because it's true he

31:01

conquers Gaul, but then he comes back to

31:03

Rome, he creates a civil war and he

31:05

turns himself into a permanent... That's plot. A

31:08

dictator, and the fear that Cromwell

31:10

will become that. It's worth pointing out

31:12

that Horace fought at Philippi and then

31:14

goes over to Augustus, so the sense

31:16

of the flip-flopping in the title is

31:22

also within the illusions which which

31:24

Marvell sort of brilliantly yeah configures

31:27

into this. And the

31:29

ending I find sort

31:31

of distressing in its relentless

31:34

sense of how historical inevitability

31:37

involves violence. Am I reading that right,

31:39

do you think? I think so. I

31:41

mean I suppose the counter voice is the

31:43

odd quality

31:46

of pity or sympathy that emerges in

31:48

just a couple of the stanzas towards

31:50

the end for the Scots who are

31:52

going to get this next, or the

31:54

Picts, as he calls them. The

31:56

Picts no shelter now shall find within

31:59

his party colour. of mind, happy

32:02

if in the tufted break the

32:04

English hunter him mistake nor

32:07

lay his hounds in near

32:09

the Caledonian deer. So

32:11

he's imagining the Scots who haven't

32:13

been invaded yet and Fairfax has

32:15

refused to invade them as

32:17

the head of the army because he doesn't think that

32:19

England has been provoked enough to do so. Cromwell has

32:22

absolutely no compunction about that. He's going to get in

32:24

there and beat them all up as much as he

32:26

can. And Marvell

32:28

is imagining them as creatures

32:30

hiding from a pack of hounds.

32:35

The English hunter is also very, very striking

32:37

because I think for anyone of Marvell's

32:41

readership, the hunter as a kind

32:43

of mythological figure would have brought up the idea

32:45

of Nimrod from the Old Testament

32:47

who was a great leader but becomes

32:50

a terrible tyrant. So it's

32:52

another, it's like that Caesar illusion isn't

32:54

it? It's an illusion which is at

32:56

once glorifying but also has a kind

32:58

of undercurrent of real

33:00

moral reservation. Yes. And

33:03

the sense that Cromwell

33:06

becomes a bit like Talos

33:08

in Spencer's poems, this kind of iron

33:11

fist, I think it's really brilliantly

33:13

caught in the line which has the longest

33:15

word in the poem in it. But

33:18

thou the wars and fortunes

33:20

sun march indefatigably on. But

33:23

indefatigably in this

33:26

very short line seems so kind

33:28

of relentless and in

33:30

some ways deplorable, impossible to escape

33:33

that there is some remorseless,

33:35

relentless force coming on and

33:37

for the last effect still keep

33:40

thy sword erect. It's

33:43

in dispute whether he means it as a kind

33:45

of sword as a cross or the sword as

33:47

that to smite his enemies. But

33:50

certainly it becomes smiting in the

33:52

last stanza besides the force it

33:54

has to fright the spirits of

33:56

the shady night, the

33:58

same arts, the did gain a power

34:01

must it maintain. I think

34:05

there is an illusion in the in the spirits of

34:07

the shady night to Virgil in book six down

34:09

in the underworld although it's also possibly

34:12

a kind of Christian notion of that

34:14

the cross will fright

34:17

the spirits away but

34:19

that last couplet seems to me to

34:21

sum up a political savvy

34:23

poem poetry through the ages that

34:25

there is it's unillusioned the same

34:28

art that did gain a power

34:30

must it maintain that there is

34:32

no utopian afterlife that you don't

34:34

win these battles and afterwards everyone

34:37

is is happily

34:39

living in their rural retreats that

34:41

there's a sense of anti utopianism

34:44

you could say in in the

34:46

poem and a kind of in terms of its relation

34:49

to English history almost a nostalgia for

34:51

what has been lost and the

34:53

brave new world well it's here

34:55

it's inevitable but one has to steal

34:58

one's nerves to cope with it

35:01

yeah it's that the arts of war and the arts

35:03

of peace are actually the same arts it's

35:06

it's a real kind of realpolitik kind

35:08

of realization like that and

35:10

then thought arts become propaganda almost and

35:13

as Elliot says in the great

35:15

essay that you refer to earlier you

35:18

have a wonderful lyric grace in

35:20

Marvell but underneath it there's something

35:22

really tough something which is absolutely

35:25

alive to you know the

35:27

unforgiving truths of what politics is

35:29

actually like absolutely thank

35:32

you mark next time

35:34

we'll be discussing another

35:37

poem which you might claim as the

35:39

greatest political poem of the language perhaps

35:41

or the second greatest which

35:43

is double H. Ordon's 1937 poem about

35:45

the Spanish Civil War called Spain

35:49

we're taking a lot of the poems in this

35:51

series from the favor book of political verse

35:53

which was edited by Tom Paulin out of print

35:55

now but you may be able to find

35:57

a secondhand copy it has

35:59

a very stimulating introduction by Tom and

36:01

receives an equally stimulating review by

36:03

David Norbrook in the LRB which

36:06

provoked an extensive series of

36:08

letters and we may refer to some of

36:10

that debate during the series So

36:12

it's worth taking a look at we'll put

36:14

a link to that in the description You'll

36:18

be able to listen to the rest of Seamus

36:20

and Mark series on the LRB's closed readings podcasts

36:22

throughout this year along with extracts

36:24

from all our close readings subscriber series

36:27

and Mary Wellesley and Irina Dometrescu's new

36:29

series on medieval humor Just

36:31

search for LRB close readings in your

36:33

podcast app or find links in the

36:35

description He

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