A Date With... John Keats
| 25th October 2000 It would show an unhealthy favouritism towards certain random points in the calendar year to stress too strongly the grand significance of this week. It would be akin to declaring a particularly fine cox apple the only fruit worth eating this millennium. However, I feel myself drawn to the hallowe'en period like a moth brandishing an unlit cigarette to a flame. This is quite simply the time of the year when genius is born. Set aside for a moment National Disarmament Week. Ignore too, if you will, the celebration of the New International Version of the Bible (and read the King James Bible on Bibliomania instead). Stand back and gaze aghast at the improbable number of mavericks and literary greats who began wailing at their parents this week sometime in the past. We begin on 25th October. On this day in 1343, Geoffrey Chaucer - author of the incomparable Canterbury Tales and patron saint of the rum tale - was born. So important is Chaucer in the development of the English language that six centuries after his death people who have no idea what he was saying still quote him. In this extract, he goes some way towards explaining why Middle English is so hard to read even though Modern English is founded upon it: "Ye knowe eke that in forme of speche is chaunge Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so." (Troilus and Criseyde) That is to say: in a few years time everything you say will sound like nonsense. Quite, Geoffrey. Given that few greater storytellers have existed and that Chaucer is England's first truly great and popular poet, we will totally disdain those he shares his birthday with. Begone Johann Strauss and Pablo Picasso. Of far more interest should be Aphra Behn, the first woman in Britain to earn her living through writing. She was born in 1640 and observed that "Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret" (Four O'Clock). The list of literary greats goes on. On the 27th October (the day in 1726 when Swift's Gulliver's Travels was first published), it can be no coincidence that it is both the Feast of the Lord of Misrule and also Dylan Thomas's birthday. Evelyn Waugh, born (surely not insignificantly) on the following day, said of Thomas,"He's exactly what I would have been if I had not been a Catholic". Then again, Waugh also said to Nancy Mitford that "You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I were not a Catholic". Not much a compliment after all. Of little significance is the fact that Waugh shares his birthday with the date of the first ever Corn Husking Contest in 311 A.D. Of no significance whatsoever is the fact that Nancy Mitford set her sublimely funny novel The Pursuit of Love in Swinbrook, Oxfordshire ('Alconleigh' in the book) which is where the CEO of Bibliomania lives. 29th October was the birthday of James Boswell, whose career seemingly revolved wholly around Dr Samuel Johnson (author of Rasselas and various poets' lives). As his biographer, Boswell followed Johnson even to the not unsurprisingly barely charted outer reaches of Scotland's Western Isles. Those of you familiar with The Simpsons will be aware of the unique bond between Monty Burns and his dogsbody Smithers. The relationship between Johnson and Boswell was not dissimilar. Surely, though, it wasn't necessary for both of the writers to chart their adventure in Scotland's barren islands. Their accounts differ, though, in certain crucial respects as the following extremely spurious extracts demonstrate: Dr. Johnson: "I notice the absence of churches on these cruel precipices and the sorry lack of an economic system to bring me grape and grain. This is so unlike London, and yet offers me a fine contrast that I will now expound at great length, humbled with malnutrition and the hide of my waning donkey and feeding only on Bozzy's meagre wit. My only desire is suitably grandiose: I want to go home." Boswell: "The Doctor's hair was looking particularly ruffled and exciting today, not unlike the waifs of long grass on Inch. Looking over the rocks to the West, their sublime bodies crouched hard against the furious sea I am reminded that the Doctor is using my head as an armrest. Will continue journal later and tell you how I contracted gonorrhea again." Macaulay called Boswell's fawning devotion for Johnson "Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration". Boswell's own wife had this to say when the somewhat ungainly Johnson came for dinner, "I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear". Steady on there, dear! On October 30th we could choose to ignore the birthday of Ezra Pound. Lying down flat on his face, Pound could easily be mistaken for the fine line between genius and insanity. His verse all too often skips over the line with unnerving ease buy he scores "nul points" for his anti-Semitism and fascism. Just celebrate the birthday of Harold Pinter or Henry Winkler ("The Fonz") instead. This week is most notable, though, for containing all of John Keats' birthdays. Clearly, he intended to receive his fair share of presents in his short and troubled life. As such he celebrated his birthday on both the 29th and 30th of October (and probably at other times of the year when the muse took him - who can tell with these poetic types). What is certain is that Keats kept enough bees in his |
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