The Reader Online

Today is the 165th Birthday of French poet Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896). Deeply influenced as a teenager by reading Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857), Verlaine went on to become one of the leaders of the Symbolist movement and a key figure in Paris’s vibrantly decadent fin de siècle cultural scene.

‘Clair de lune’ (‘Moonlight’) is from Verlaine’s early collection Fêtes galantes (Gallant Parties, 1869). It is presented here in the original French with a simple English translation below. Any inaccuracy or inelegance is my own. (Note: a “bergamasque”, or “bergamask”, is a rustic dance originating in Bergamo, Italy. Apparently.)

Clair de lune

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Moonlight

Your soul is a select landscape
Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.

All sing in a minor key
Of victorious love and the opportune life,
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
The tall slender fountains among marble statues.

Paul Verlaine, 1869

Reacting against realism and rhetoric, the Symbolists tried instead to evoke a mood, an essence, an Ideal. Just as the Moon takes its light from the Sun, they sought to illuminate seemingly inaccessible subjects indirectly, by creating reflections. Here we have masks and dancing, fantastic disguises, fountains sobbing in ecstasy, moonlight: a swirl of suggestive images that speaks volumes about the human soul without really saying anything. Rather like music, in fact. Both Ravel and Fauré composed pieces based on Verlaine’s poetry, and this poem inspired Claude Debussy to write his own ‘Clair de lune’, the third movement of his Suite bergamasque and the work for which he is now most famous. (A wonderful performance by David Oistrakh and Frida Bauer can be found here. “Sad and beautiful” doesn’t even get close.)

Have a good Monday! Or if you prefer, lundi. Either way, it means the same thing: “Day of the Moon”.

Posted by Mark Till

The tekkie team have worked through more than one night to bring you this latest film… please rate it on You Tube and, if you enjoy, pass it on. Don’t forget you get the very best of Mt Nellist when you enjoy him live so don’t miss his Masterclass in Liverpool on 7th April.

Books on the Broad are organising a one-day event entitled: “The Readers’ Voice: A Meeting for Readers and Readers Groups”.

The full programme of talks, workshops, debates, and other events is led by fifteen expert speakers – including our very own Casi Dylan (Read to Lead Training Manager) -  who not only share a passion for reading, but the desire to bring its benefits to the community. Groups with a reading list or project to share are invited to bring these to the attention of the meeting. For more details, please click here.

The event is to be held at Jesus College, Oxford, on Saturday 4th April 2009. Entry is £20, and includes lunch, refreshments, and access to the full programme.

Tickets can be obtained from the Oxford Playhouse Box Office on 01865 305 305 or www.oxfordtickets.com/ticketsoxford.

Our secret agent recounts the big event:

The Big Sweep

Loitering in Lime Street train station,
With newspaper and white carnation,
I was suddenly aware
Of a lady with pink hair
Approaching in great expectation.

At twenty-past five I duly set off for Lime Street with a newspaper tucked under my arm and a white carnation skewered ludicrously through my coat. Jen and Lee came along to help (and to laugh) and went in ahead of me to reconnoitre the ground and make sure I wasn’t about to be mobbed. I wasn’t. In fact, after loitering without intent for a couple of minutes, I was starting to think the whole thing might be a complete waste of time. But then – to my surprise and relief – a lady with bright pink hair looked very pleased to see me (first time I’ve been able to say that) and dashed over to recite the magic words and claim her prize. Tempting as it was to act dumb at this point, I congratulated her and handed over the books, which we’d tied in a nice gold ribbon, along with a few copies of The Reader magazine. Her name was (and still is) Wendi Surtees-Smith and she was (and probably still is) very, very excited. She’d been waiting since five o’clock, with a friend and small child, and couldn’t believe her luck. Neither could we.

Still, I felt we’d done our bit to celebrate and commemorate, in some small way, America’s greatest writer of detective fiction. And had a good time into the bargain. How many other hopefuls had been waiting and had left disappointed will almost certainly never be known…

But this Chandleresque assignation
Was not such an odd situation.
Quite the opposite, I’d say -
Just an ordinary day
At The Reader Organisation.

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the greatest detective fiction writer of the last century, Raymond Chandler. We’re marking this event by giving away a set of five Chandler hardbacks (reissued by Hamish Hamilton with their original first edition cover art) at 17.30pm in Liverpool Lime Street Station. Click here to find out how you can win.

In Chandler’s books the tough, modern world of twentieth century Los Angeles is channeled through the much older worldview of Philip Marlowe, a detective who laments the upending of a romantic code of honour and courtly love.

Click here to read Chris Routledge’s article ‘Chandler’s Reverse Romances’ in full.

Many thanks to all of you that have voted (or tried to vote) for Joe Cottrell Boyce’s film ‘Glue’ in the Documentary category at the  2nd Babel Gum Online Film Festival, which we brought to your attention back in early February. Unfortunately, there was a technical hitch on the Babelgum website and people trying to vote for ‘Glue’ we’re finding it hard to manage.

It’s fixed and you can do it at the click of a mouse… So please do!!

Watch and vote here.

To mark fifty years since the death of Raymond Chandler we are giving away a special set of five Chandler hardbacks absolutely free! Reissued by Hamish Hamilton with their original first-edition cover art, the books go on sale tomorrow priced £12.99 each.

To claim this wonderful prize you must follow these instructions:

Listen very carefully. We will say this only once. Go to Liverpool Lime Street railway station on Thursday 26th March at 17:30 precisely. One of our undercover agents will be waiting. The agent will be wearing a white carnation and carrying a copy of the Liverpool Daily Post. The merchandise will be given to the first person to make contact with these words: “Excuse me. Do you know who killed the chauffeur?”

Keep your eyes peeled on this blog and our website for more clues over the next twenty-four hours.

Perhaps you’re soon to meet a fair stranger?

Good luck on your mission. This message will not self-destruct.

The BBC are launching Poetry Season: an entire season of content dedicated to literature, and to poetry in particular, starting in Spring 2009. Ranging from television, radio and online features, the series will feature some of the nation’s best-loved poets and celebrities exploring the world of poetry.

The series will be launched by Griff Rhys Jones and his plea for Why Poetry Matters on BBC2, which will also be home to the Lifelines exploration of poetry from Milton to Shakespeare, and a poetry recitation competition for school children in Off By Heart.  BBC4 will also feature A Poet’s Guide to Britain hosted by Owen Sheers, as well as Ian Hislop’s welcoming of the new Poet Laureate.

Both BBC Radio 3 and 4 will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Tennyson, along with another Poetry Slam competition, also on Radio 4. For its online feature, the BBC will be holding a competition to find the Nation’s Favourite Poet, and the Poetry Season website will feature a poetry search engine; enabling site users to find poems fit for any occasion.

Further commissions will be announced at later dates. The season runs in association with the Poetry Society, the Poetry Archive, and National Poetry Day.

Selected by Alison Walters

With the new found spring weather and daffodils bursting forth, we can enjoy Gerard Manley Hopkins’  ‘Spring’:

Spring

NOTHING is so beautiful as spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. — Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

The start of the poem evokes a spirit of optimism that Spring brings. Everything in nature now blooms forth after a cold, hard winter, The alliteration in the first two lines remind me of a spring breeze blowing through the trees and whistling though the grass.

When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush

Just like today, you can just imagine lambs gamboling in the fields and birds twittering away building their nests.

The second verse speaks of beginnings, a fresh start, full of hope. The Garden of Eden and the innocence of youth before it becomes tainted by Original Sin and life experience.

Supper with Andrew Motion, 27th April

Merchant Taylors’ Girl’s School are holding a literary supper on Monday 27th April with Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, as guest speaker. This is probably his last public speaking engaement as his decade of tenure finishes on 1st May.

Drinks reception from 6.30pm, followed by the talk and meal.
Tickets £18; box office 0151 932 2406

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Secret Gardens Exposed by Wallasey Amateur Photographic Society

A photographic record of the secret gardens of Oxton.
28th March – 31st May 2009, Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
Williamson Art Gallery, Slatey Road, Birkenhead, CH43 4UE (0151 625 4177)