By shots assassinated:
But with a hammer and a knife
Was after that -- translated.
A Spanish acquaintance of mine, during my studies at the University of Natal, Senor Sanguillo Romero told me that he was researching Roy Campbell’s role as Poet during the Twenties and Thirties. He spoke of ‘the tremendous interest in that country for Campbell’s work and life’. Senor Romero, a lecturer in Europe Studies lived in the same road as the famous composer Rodrigo. Joaquin Rodrigo who grew into life in the Spain after the retreat from Empire, from 22 November 1901- 6 July 1998, lived beyond the Hundred Years’ Commemoration of Garcia Lorca’s death in Nineteen-Ninety-Eight.
Local ignorance is a betrayal of Roy Campbell and was evidence of more intrigue. Clearly the Durban High School man was more féted elsewhere than in South Africa. The manner Campbell is treated here in the country of his birth is a tragedy that deserves attention. Patrick Cullinan was also part of this futility, and similarly, was banished and sent into virtual exile. The latter, awarded an Italian medal of literature, translation, and I would add general cultivation, this fine poet (Cullinan) was ignored at his death despite his title Cavilliere in Italy. A week after a poetry reading a letter was forwarded via email that attached itself to an online tribute to Patrick Cullinan. So I was told in this brutal, cursory way of the death of our greatest living Poet in 2011. The newspapers were silent.
In the armada of literary capacity that thrives very uncertainly on these shores, bathing in tepid depths in the early morning sometimes the turtle floats upright. Alan Paton also fell under Campbell’s spell; writing of an enchanting evening in Paris:
“I witnessed a pyrotechnical display in the gloom of Sloane Square, so dazzling that the pale faces of the waitresses seemed to catch alight if not with comprehension, then with admiration and envy that human beings could still explode and crackle in such a dreary world.”
Sydney Good Sir Smith, broadcasting at the time of Campbell’s death in Portugal, hinted at the loss that poetry would feel for long after the giant departed. Smith noted the complicated elan of the scion of the famous Durban Campbell family when he spoke of the burning passions going into Romantic lyricism:
”To remind us in the old ways are still valid and recall us to a manifestation of the spirit that seems to die (but does it really?!) a little more in every generation, as our society gets gradually levelled out. Character and identity make society, Campbell shot through the firmament making a statement.”
Roy Campbell was a Poet great in his ability to mould his life with the seamless capacity of his verse, because his artistic stature itself was above the ordinary, obviously, it infuriated those of lesser talent. Columns have probably been written in the old citadels of Leon about the well gone dry.
I read a History of the Hellenes called ‘Greeks without Columns,’ and the book is recommended for what it says about the commercial spirit, felt by the expanding city of Athens. The creation of the enormous city from small and disparate towns was the death of the arts, since with the loss of Asia Minor; Greek confidence was affected by the crush of History and one of the first victims was the spark of writing. Kindling for the fires of 1922 and Ancient Byzantium was laid desolate; the civilisation scattered like glowering stars.
Writing does decline or fall away in the headlong pursuit of science. In South African Universities in the 1990’s this distinct harrowing of the Arts continues to haunt us to such a great extent. The problems experienced by Roy Campbell in “The Hothouse of the Grocery-den” of Durban are still very prominent in the vapid disregard of the artistic instinct in society. These strong manacles are felt especially among those not ‘bought’ entirely or as in the elaborate world of Spain, nights brilliantly described in the annals of that far-off age; the world before the abyss, carved on the walls of the poetry of Hernandez. South African theatre and poetry (especially in England) faces a chasm and the writing is truly on the wall.
In this era of great commerce but small art, it is refreshing to realise what a renaissance in South African Literature would mean. Many people regard art as outmoded, banal or an anathema. With the collapse of the South African Universities, there is the potential for literature to thrive and even stagnate into a backward, inward-looking populism. We have a plethora of poetry festivals but few great poems with lasting fascination. The idea of a Residencia might look unpopular, because I’ve had more fun reading the speeches of Goebbels in Serbo-Croat than reading the present South African poetry in English!
The essence is that poets should form in superior constellations. In the Nineteen-Twenties, l’ enfant terrible of film, Bunuel and others gathered in bonhomie but with grace, skill and pedagogue methods in their sincere flights of passion. We are but guests in this world, as Aristophanes (circa 448-360 B.C.) said:
“Let each man exercise the art he knows.” The Gentleman of the Hellenes also had this to say: κωμῳδοδιδασκαλίαν εἶναι χαλεπώτατον ἔργον ἁπάντων)*.At least with the recidencia Art and Science stood on the same ground, even perhaps on the same street.
ἡμῶν γὰρ ἄνδρες, κοὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω,
μέμνησθε τοῦθ᾽ ὅτι οὐχὶ τὴν πόλιν λέγω,
ἀλλ᾽ ἀνδράρια μοχθηρά, παρακεκομμένα...
People among us, and I don't mean the polis,
Remember this - I don't mean the polis -
But wicked little men of a counterfeit kind....
Roy Campbell’s famous verse from the Waygoose “South Africa, renowned both far and wide. For politics and little else beside,” seems to echo the sentiment, that genius is formed largely by reason and imagination coupled together in a tempestuous, and artistic embrace.
In Cyprus today the black darts of Banks slide by rule, of strange vagaries ,but what binds man to man is the common smile at the cross-roads. True Art binds in greatness. The Residencia is an idea that draws artists together and does not descend into irrational affectations, incessant writers’ workshops, in machinations where we forget the wonder of just dreaming. In the silence, carved in the landscape, and the features, are thoughts and fears that go on forever.
*“The author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all”.
