For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  With proto-puritans whose proudest boast,

  Back then as now, was to make doubly sure

  That errant thought not conjure up a coast

  For its Bohemia10 and thereby secure

  Full-scale poetic license.

  There are some

  Of your late essays where the marsh-light lure

  Of wordplay—as, by Johnson’s time,11 they’d come

  To think it—largely frees you from the rules

  Of normal scholarship and lets you drum

  Out syncopated readings where old tools

  Won’t fill the bill since it’s your jazz-inspired

  Prosodic and thematic riffs when school’s

  Out, so to speak, that kept your prose live-wired

  And keeps the circuits humming when we read

  You now. Most likely the same neurons fired

  Each time an agent rang to say they’d need

  A trad-style drummer up to handling things

  When some jazz legend came to town. Then we’d

  Just happen by and think how your prose swings

  The accent phrase to phrase yet always keeps

  In view the cunning denouement that springs

  A shocker such as positively leaps

  To eye (take Armstrong/Fortinbras!12) once sprung

  But, on a first encounter, either sweeps

  All scruples clean aside or seems far-flung,

  Like Shakespeare’s puns to Johnson, way beyond

  What mutual interests and a common tongue

  Required to keep intact the vital bond

  Of civil concord. You had little use

  For suchlike notions, thinking them au fond

  Just means to reinforce or reproduce

  The same old deferential ways of talk

  That education plus a bit of nous

  Should get us over once we’ve learned to chalk

  Up every stage along the post-war road

  As either one step in the lengthy walk

  To social justice, since it breaks the code

  Of class-respect, or else a backward lurch

  Since, like unthinking reverence bestowed

  By rote on classic texts, it makes a church

  Where orthodoxy’s prized at the expense

  Of thought. Let’s call your project not “research”—

  A word you loathed, along with “excellence,”

  “Engagement,” “impact,” “added value,” plus

  “Empower” and “innovate”—but more a sense

  Of what might do best service with least fuss

  To show those culture-rituals up as mere

  “Keep off the classics” notices for us

  “New Accents” types who’d best not interfere

  With matters that lay properly within

  An altogether more exalted sphere

  Of judgment. These include—lest we begin,

  Thus theory-primed, to get ideas above

  Our station—asking why the critics pin

  Transcendent value to the sorts of love-

  Intrigue that leave straight gender-roles intact,

  Or why that preference goes hand-in-glove

  With others, such as choosing who gets backed

  For all the fellowships, or qualifies

  As “research-active” owing to the fact

  Of having come up publication-wise

  With stuff in the right places.

  There are those—

  And were from early on—who say: “You guys,

  The theorists, were the first ones to impose

  This periodic curse, the latest round

  Of research-auditing, since you first chose

  To publish all those theory-books they found

  Offensive, no doubt, but a ready-made

  Excuse for telling everyone they’re bound

  Contractually to keep up the cascade

  Of four-star items or resign themselves

  Either to have some bureaucrat degrade

  Their post to ‘teaching only,’ or stack shelves

  In Tesco.” More than that, the charge-sheet runs

  To saying that the theory-stuff just delves

  A little distance down so we’re the ones,

  Us early converts, who kicked off the whole

  Bad shooting-match by turning round the guns

  Of critical dissent against the sole

  Resource that might just possibly avail

  To dig us theorists out of this deep hole

  We’d dug ourselves. Best reassess our scale

  Of values so as not to let the drive

  For theory-centered projects so assail

  Our judgment that no thoughts of ours survive

  Beyond the stage of critical review

  By some internal censor set to strive

  For maximum research-points with as few

  Hours spent in gaining them as might be spared

  From writing research-grant proposals. You

  Were quick to say, whenever someone aired

  This anti-theory charge, that what they missed

  By such comparisons was just what scared

  Both management and those recidivist

  Upholders of the canon whose real gripe

  With each new book on the “New Accents” list

  Involved their sense that talents of the type

  That went to make good theorists also went

  To make the sorts of literature they’d hype,

  Those canonists, as fit to represent

  The human mind at full creative stretch.

  Yet then it seemed the speculative bent

  Of theory worked, like poetry, to fetch

  Up thoughts, ideas, and images unknown

  To those who gave the standard hostile sketch

  Of its agenda in the standard tone

  Of high disdain. Your writing had a gift

  For skewering those reviewers (all the clone-

  Like Leavisites especially) who’d lift

  Their pen as if reluctantly compelled

  To set you straight, then show themselves adrift

  Or floundering when it came to concepts spelled

  Out as who runs may read in your precise,

  Well-groomed, yet laid-back style that so excelled

  In knowing just what joke might best suffice

  To make the point.

  So really what we need’s

  Not some routine infusion of cut-price

  Arnoldian high seriousness that bleeds

  Away into low posturing as soon

  As tried, but more an attitude that heeds

  Your “Twenty Hamlets” point13: let’s take the tune,

  The basic theme, then run as many riffs

  On it as some jazz vocalist might croon

  Or Shakespeare critic spin against the ifs-

  And-buts platoon of scholars set to wage

  Their old campaign anew through endless tiffs

  In Notes & Queries. Sounding off with sage

  Remarks, like Leavis, on the sorry state

  Of things would get a laugh on Shakespeare’s stage,

  Or catcalls, or be heard at any rate

  As just the kind of talk that malcontents

  Will typically come on and use to bait

  A restive audience. Take their two cents’

  Worth, you’d advise, but see the other side,

  Their comic aspect, since it best prevents

  The sorts of finger-wagging talk you tried

  To show was just as out-of-place when used

  By jazz-authenticists as when applied

  By high-toned Shakespeare critics who accused

  You and your rebel crew of making light

  Those themes that, weighed more carefully, refused

  Such infra-dig recension. Yet despite

  That Brechtian or Bakhtinian readiness

  To thumb your nose14 whenever you ca
ught sight

  Of pious posturing (the TLS

  Once ran a photo of you and referred

  To your coiffure, and maybe style of dress,

  As “a poor man’s Jacques Derrida”) you heard

  Far subtler nuances and finer shades

  Of meaning in some long neglected word

  Than ever struck the not-so-light brigades

  Of Shakespeare savants. They deplored the lèse-

  Majesté of a writing that degrades,

  So they suppose, the solemn offices

  Of scholarship—here taking the same line

  As, long ago, l’Académie Française

  On Shakespeare—yet in truth’s a very mine

  Of senses lost on those with filters set

  To block whatever readings they’d incline

  To count as signs of how absurd things get

  When presentism bids our better part15

  Of judgment screw itself. For then we let

  Anachronistic fancy trump the art

  Of balancing (they say) a due respect

  For what’s been made of Shakespeare’s works by smart

  Interpreters against—lest we neglect

  The scholar-critic’s calling—a robust

  Sense of how texts, like whole careers, are wrecked

  By any too egregious breach of trust

  Between two basic items in the shrewd

  Shakespearean’s credo. These advise: adjust

  To changing times but don’t let that exclude

  Such readings altogether from the fold

  Of civilized consensus among clued-

  Of critic-types who’ve figured just how bold

  To be, or not to be.

  Not in the least

  Your way, that canny ruse to put on hold

  The scope for speculation that increased

  Apace through theory’s liberating zest

  And so make sure their boundary-pushing ceased

  At just the point where commonsense deemed best

  To rein it in. We didn’t know, back then,

  How soon enough you’d stand out from the rest

  As scourge of all like-thinkers, even when

  They thought like you. So, Terry, if I quote

  “We shall not look upon your like again”

  (Predictably, you’d say) as the right note

  To end on, please forgive this weak resort

  To citing just the text you always wrote

  About so well: the gesture sells you short.

  NOTES

  1 Meaning by Hawkes: alludes to Terence Hawkes’s 1992 book Meaning by Shakespeare. This is a typically well-turned title conveying that (1) any meanings we may find in the text are supplied courtesy of Shakespeare, although (2) they are in no way fixed by author’s intent or “original” sense, since (3) we ourselves—readers and audiences—“mean by” the plays whatever we take to be their purport or significance as judged by (what else?) our present-day cultural lights. These were, to say the least, controversial claims and were defended by Terry with incomparable verve and resource.

  2 J. Dover Wilson: For a full-dress treatment of the events, chance encounters, scholarly exchanges, and historical-political context, see Terence Hawkes, “Telmah,” in That Shakespeherian Rag: Essays on a Critical Process (London: Methuen, 1986), 92–119.

  3 to Greg’s critique: The Shakespeare scholar W.W. Greg had published, much to Dover Wilson’s consternation, an article questioning the dramatic coherence of “Hamlet.” See Hawkes, “Telmah,” for the complex of social-political circumstances around Wilson’s reading of this article and its life-changing impact on his subsequent career. My poem gives just the bare bones.

  4 unheimlich: unfamiliar, strange, with echoes of Freud on the uncanny.

  5 that old imperial theme: Readings of Shakespeare—such as G. Wilson Knight’s book of that title—which emphasize the royalist, conservative, or proto-imperialist aspects of the plays rather than the more subversive or suggestively dissident aspects stressed by recent left-wing critics.

  6 Traversi and the like: Derek Traversi is a Shakespeare critic of deeply conservative views (defender of Franco’s regime) who can be read as deploying a transcendental (mystical-religious) interpretation of Shakespeare’s late tragi-comedies in order to disown any political bias while smuggling in all manner of covert ideological baggage.

  7 Graham Hough: Cambridge-based literary critic who provoked a sharp response from Terry for some less than positive comments in the London Review of Books concerning literary theory and, more specifically, the New Accents series. Terry’s letter rose to an expertly judged rhetorical climax but ended with a bit of (let’s say) knockabout demotic phraseology rarely to be found in such contexts.

  8 cultural materialists: Movement in British literary criticism and theory, active from the early 1980s on, which sought to place texts in their historical-political and sociocultural contexts of production and reception, generally (though not so much in Terry’s case) with an emphasis on the former. In some ways a British counterpart to the US New Historicism, albeit less markedly “textualist” in its orientation.

  9 as Leavisites were prone to scoff: Reference to F.R. Leavis, the Cambridge-based critic who had much to say about Shakespeare’s preeminence as an exemplar of “creative-exploratory” language, and who took a strong (some would say dogmatic) line concerning the “great tradition” of English poetry and fiction. He was also known for coming out forcefully against the claims of literary theory in its various, increasingly prominent forms from the US New Criticism down.

  10 a coast / For its Bohemia: Much-debated geographical error (maybe joke) in The Winter’s Tale, which has an account of sailors shipwrecked off Bohemia’s nonexistent coast.

  11 by Johnson’s time: Dr. Johnson notoriously had little time for Shakespeare’s “quibbles”—his puns, ambiguities, multiplied metaphors, etc.—considering them (along with kindred faults in Donne and other metaphysical poets) just signs of an as-yet barbarous or unreformed language. This extreme, even morbid sensitivity to the threat of linguistic misrule went along with Johnson’s typically eighteenth-century horror of its (supposed) social-political equivalent in the mid seventeenth-century English Civil War. Terry did much to make readers aware of these larger cultural investments at stake in such (seemingly) specialist literary-critical debates.

  12 take Armstrong/Fortinbras!: After various en passant allusions to jazz Terry brings his “Hamlet” essay to a half-jesting close by advancing this odd convergence of names as in truth “no coincidence.”

  13 your “Twenty Hamlets” point: One of Terry’s best-known lectures of the 1980s; took the TV cigarillo advert as its launch point for running through twenty sketch-interpretations of the play, thus making his point (see note above) about “meaning by Shakespeare” and the open-ended character of reader-response.

  14 Bakhtinian readiness / To thumb your nose: Reference to Mikhail Bakhtin, the Soviet critic and theorist who wrote extensively about satire, the carnivaleque, and the many-voiced (“polyphonic”) character of novelistic discourse.

  15 when presentism bids our better part: In his later work, Terry took a stronger line on the impossibility (as he saw it) of our ever escaping the interpretative mind-set—the interests, priorities, and ways of reading—imposed by our contemporary cultural milieu. He and I disagreed on this topic of critical presentism and, especially, about its political implications. But his case in its defense was, as always, powerfully and wittily argued with a constant readiness to engage opposing views in a generous and large-minded way. See Terence Hawkes, Shakespeare in the Present (London: Routledge, 2002), and Hawkes and Hugh Grady (eds.), Presentist Shakespeares (London: Routledge, 2006).

  ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS

  Now, as in the Ideas of God there is an infinite number of possible universes, and as only one of them can be actual, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God, which leads Him to decide upon one
rather than another.

  —Gottfried Leibniz, The Monadology (1714)

  For if comparative perfection were sufficient, then in whatever way God had accomplished his work, since there is an infinitude of possible imperfections, it would always have been good in comparison with the less perfect; but a thing is little praiseworthy when it can be praised only in this way.

  —Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics (1686)

  All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

  All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

  The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

  —Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

  Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.

  —J.B.S. Haldane, Possible Worlds

  Each thing’s itself and not another thing.