did not.
Just occasionally in class, not often but all the more remembered for that, the arguments fell back and the modern parallels
disappeared. What was left was the poetry, the Greek in all its alien difference. One dark Brentwood afternoon, revelling
in the foolish delight that the language of tragedy, like calculus or a crossword, was so unreasonably difficult, I asked
one of our teachers, the most elderly and often the least inspiring, what was the most challenging piece of Greek he knew.
It was cheek as much as anything. I did not care about this man’s opinion very much. We were not generous to our teachers,
certainly not to the occasional ones, not to this man who was eccentric, antique, who rarely had his full complement of pipe,
teeth and books – and sometimes, it seemed, not even his mind. But I feel generous to him now – for this one lesson that I
still remember when so many others have gone.
It was October. It was ‘last period’. Satchels were packed and piled for boarding house or home. There were wet leaves steaming
on hot pipes, a biology experiment. There was the oily smell of paint. Half the classroom, probably half the school, was close
to sleep. The old teacher’s response to my question came in a sudden torrent, the fourth choral ode of
Antigone
, sung in Greek with a whistle as though forced through his false teeth and fetid tobacco. It was a shocking sound, the first
time that the Greek language, the language of Cleopatra and her library, sounded to me as though it had ever been used.
What did it all mean? Eventually I got my answer in English, with stars to mark the absent words, the holes in a text that
no one will ever securely fill.
…
are the shores of the Bosphorus **** and Thracian ***** Salmydessuswhere neighbouring Ares saw with cruel joy the accursed wound blinded against two sons by a wild wife bringing blackness to
eyes seeking vengeance smashed by bloody hands and the sliding needle from the loom
…
The Greek lesson had ceased and Greece had taken its place. This was a rare lesson from the classroom, raw cruelty in the
language of reason.
Altar fires die. Fat no longer burns
…
These were words without rules. A home of philosophy and debate becomes a home of maddened birds, whirling, screaming, prophesying
the worst of things, pecking at the diseased and dead, shitting back poison from unburied bodies.
A wild wife bringing blackness to eyes
.
This way, that way, this way, that way, in and out, in and out, needles and beaks: the fate that faced the oldest Cleopatra
in Cleopatra’s library.
Rue Nebi Danial
This is becoming a book about me. That is not what I intended. Perhaps I can steer it elsewhere, noting that there are many
ways to write a memoir, some we choose, some we are expected to choose, and others that follow their own path.
If I were able I would choose to write about the people who have meant the most to me over my sixty years, so very few people.
If I were to meet expectations I might write about Margaret Thatcher, who made the politics of my own time dramatic for a
while, or about her successors who never did so quite as much; or about
The Times
and the
TLS
which I have edited for so long.
But I have written too many words about those politicians and in those papers. Most have sunk deservedly deep beneath the
library sea. A memoir must be more than a regimented repetition. I could write a memoir of the year 2000, my memorable millennium,
when the doctors said that I was about to die. I could describe the peculiar pancreatic cancer that could not, they said,
be cut away or cured. I could describe the cut that eventually came, the banned drugs that saved me and the sights that they
brought up from my mind. But I have already written much of that and locked most of it away.
There are so many threads in our lives that can be tugged. We are like old bags for wine or shopping. Draw a different string
and the
Just occasionally in class, not often but all the more remembered for that, the arguments fell back and the modern parallels
disappeared. What was left was the poetry, the Greek in all its alien difference. One dark Brentwood afternoon, revelling
in the foolish delight that the language of tragedy, like calculus or a crossword, was so unreasonably difficult, I asked
one of our teachers, the most elderly and often the least inspiring, what was the most challenging piece of Greek he knew.
It was cheek as much as anything. I did not care about this man’s opinion very much. We were not generous to our teachers,
certainly not to the occasional ones, not to this man who was eccentric, antique, who rarely had his full complement of pipe,
teeth and books – and sometimes, it seemed, not even his mind. But I feel generous to him now – for this one lesson that I
still remember when so many others have gone.
It was October. It was ‘last period’. Satchels were packed and piled for boarding house or home. There were wet leaves steaming
on hot pipes, a biology experiment. There was the oily smell of paint. Half the classroom, probably half the school, was close
to sleep. The old teacher’s response to my question came in a sudden torrent, the fourth choral ode of
Antigone
, sung in Greek with a whistle as though forced through his false teeth and fetid tobacco. It was a shocking sound, the first
time that the Greek language, the language of Cleopatra and her library, sounded to me as though it had ever been used.
What did it all mean? Eventually I got my answer in English, with stars to mark the absent words, the holes in a text that
no one will ever securely fill.
…
are the shores of the Bosphorus **** and Thracian ***** Salmydessuswhere neighbouring Ares saw with cruel joy the accursed wound blinded against two sons by a wild wife bringing blackness to
eyes seeking vengeance smashed by bloody hands and the sliding needle from the loom
…
The Greek lesson had ceased and Greece had taken its place. This was a rare lesson from the classroom, raw cruelty in the
language of reason.
Altar fires die. Fat no longer burns
…
These were words without rules. A home of philosophy and debate becomes a home of maddened birds, whirling, screaming, prophesying
the worst of things, pecking at the diseased and dead, shitting back poison from unburied bodies.
A wild wife bringing blackness to eyes
.
This way, that way, this way, that way, in and out, in and out, needles and beaks: the fate that faced the oldest Cleopatra
in Cleopatra’s library.
Rue Nebi Danial
This is becoming a book about me. That is not what I intended. Perhaps I can steer it elsewhere, noting that there are many
ways to write a memoir, some we choose, some we are expected to choose, and others that follow their own path.
If I were able I would choose to write about the people who have meant the most to me over my sixty years, so very few people.
If I were to meet expectations I might write about Margaret Thatcher, who made the politics of my own time dramatic for a
while, or about her successors who never did so quite as much; or about
The Times
and the
TLS
which I have edited for so long.
But I have written too many words about those politicians and in those papers. Most have sunk deservedly deep beneath the
library sea. A memoir must be more than a regimented repetition. I could write a memoir of the year 2000, my memorable millennium,
when the doctors said that I was about to die. I could describe the peculiar pancreatic cancer that could not, they said,
be cut away or cured. I could describe the cut that eventually came, the banned drugs that saved me and the sights that they
brought up from my mind. But I have already written much of that and locked most of it away.
There are so many threads in our lives that can be tugged. We are like old bags for wine or shopping. Draw a different string
and the
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