All in a Don's Day

by Mary Beard

  Comments

  The reference to Alf Garnett is well made. I was horrified a couple of years ago to hear a group of people involved in TV light entertainment, in a TV discussion, agreeing emphatically that it would be unthinkable nowadays to have a comedy programme with a character expressing views like Alf Garnett′s. Maybe they were afraid modern audiences wouldn′t grasp it was satire. If so, that′s a sad thought about modern sensibilities. But, in fact, I got the impression they themselves hadn′t grasped it was satire. You need iron in your body, but you also need irony.

  MICHAEL BULLEY

  So as a computer scientist who is interested in history and the Classics, and reads and writes Latin, and even has read some of your books, can I ask why the gratuitous swipe at computer scientists?

  In my experience, the popular image of geeky computer scientist and well-rounded Classicist is a myth. Most computer scientists are avid fans of history and the humanities, which they pursue as a side interest while working with IT in their jobs. Most Classicists OTOH know their field and little else, and their IT expertise goes as far as buying books at Amazon and writing papers in Word.

  TAYLOR

  One of the downsides, surely, of being a university vice-chancellor is that you don′t get to make satirical comments about issues like your lecturers perving on your students. Who cares if it′s satire?

  LUCY

  Rule Number One in Public Rhetoric: NO IRONY!!!

  Tom Lehrer was right, as always: ‘political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Prize.′

  XJY

  Satire is never devoid of ethical undercurrents and often has an instructive purpose. An analogous case: Matthew Parris writes in the Times about 18 months back: ′Let′s decapitate cyclists, they are so naff in their lycra ha ha ha.′ Cyclists who complained were sneered at that they lacked a sense of humour etc. But in a world where real people string wire across cycle paths and think this funny, Parris′s article seemed to me to be as authentic a case of incitement to violence as an author of a legal textbook could wish for. Its satirical intent is no alibi for its consequences. Is not the same logic at work here?

  SW FOSKA

  It certainly is difficult to ′fix the ideology′ of satire and of ironic expression: that′s one of the reasons why people like the VC of the University of Bucks adopt ′defensive irony′ as a way of trying to have their cake and eat it: they hope to find a way to enjoy their ′transgressive′ expressions while disowning responsibility for them. If it′s done well, people tend to find it amusing and witty. But, as Dave already observed, if it′s done badly, as in this case it was, it makes the writer (or speaker) look like a dickhead.

  I mean the last word ironically, of course …

  RICHARD

  Hmmm, nothing on male students and female academics, or indeed on same-sex relationships. There is a PhD in this for someone. But perhaps the best practical solution is for the QAA and their ilk to devise a proper protocol for lecturer–student relationships, with a formal plan for starting and managing each one, clear objectives and external monitoring to ensure consistency in the relationships within and across institutions. (If it happens, you read it here first.)

  RICHARD BARON

  Did Portnoy’s Complaint deserve the ‘Booker Prize’?

  18 October 2009

  When I was a teenager, I took Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint to school in my satchel, in the hope – I think – of having it discovered by some prudish teacher and provoking an argument about freedom of speech and sexual expression (and also to show how hip I was). My mother, I remember, requested it from the local library, for similar – if slightly more grown-up – reasons.

  Until a few weeks ago I couldn’t remember much about it, apart from the description of masturbation with the piece of liver. Presumably that’s what everyone remembers.

  I have, however, recently re-read it. It wasn’t a happy experience. What was the virtue or merit of a 200-and-something page monologue of repetitive, blokeish sexual fantasy, preoccupied with the pleasures and guilt of masturbation (or alternatively with exploitative sex with exploited women … or if not sex, then constipation and other aspects of the ‘lower bodily stratum’, as Bakhtin would have put it)? I wasn’t shocked. In fact, the liver bit was quite coyly done, and the use of a cored apple for the same purpose was a rather underwhelming image. It was the sheer self-indulgence of the book that was so irritating.

  For a moment the horrible thought came to me that this really was what men thought about all the time – that this was a true exposé of ‘what men were like’. If so, I thought it was probably better not to know.

  The reason for putting myself through this literary torture was that I had agreed to be a panellist/judge on the Cheltenham Literary Festival’s Booker event – going back to the novels published in 1969, to give a retrospective Booker prize. In reality, the novels published in 1969 were up for the (second) Booker in 1970. The winner was Bernice Rubens’s The Elected Member. But we were choosing between Portnoy (supported by John Walsh), Graham Greene’s Travels with my Aunt (supported by Kate Adie), Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman (supported by Erica Wagner) and John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman (mine). None of these had been in the running for the original prize. Portnoy was ineligible as Roth is American. Greene had refused to be considered. The Atwood had in 1969 only been published in Canada, so hadn’t really made it on to the radar here. And the Fowles didn’t get anywhere. (The word on the street is that it was totally scuppered by Rebecca West, who was one of the judges.)

  So who won our 40 years on prize?

  First to be eliminated was The Edible Woman. Erica basically pushed her out of the balloon herself, by saying in her opening remarks that she thought it was a good book but not as good as Portnoy. It was Atwood’s very first novel and pretty ragged at the edges. (There is, for example, an extraordinary silly episode where the heroine gets stuck under a bed … this is before she goes off food, in response to the sense that she is being consumed by her fiancé.)

  This left two votes for Roth and one each for Fowles and Greene. Kate put up a good fight for Travels with my Aunt as life-affirming – though on reading this one again, I found Greene’s Catholicism seeping into bits I didn’t want, the racism uncomfortable and the knowing references to (and parodies of) his other novels a bit too self-consciously artful.

  I had decided that French Lieutenant’s Woman was brilliant. I had been assigned it by the management rather than chosen it – and had feared that it wouldn’t be half as good as I remembered from first reading it as a moody adolescent (the other side of the coin from the one who tried to annoy with Portnoy’s Complaint … no problem packing this in the satchel). In fact, it was better. Fowles seemed to me to have pulled off the nearly impossible feat of reflecting radically on the nature of our engagement with the Victorian past, and the nature of the novelist’s task, while still telling a wonderful story.

  However, as neither Kate nor I would give way, Portnoy limped home to victory.

  It wasn’t a popular choice with the audience, who I think ranked it (on a show of hands) on a par with the Atwood. In audience terms, the triumph was probably Kate’s who had taken a good few votes from The French Lieutenant’s Woman by the time of the final ranking. (Damn … how did I manage to lose votes … ? Too bloody academic, I guess.)

  Comments

  I′m with Somerset Maugham on this, who said that the way to treat the ′Book of the Moment′ of his day was not to read the thing for at least three or four years … It was amazing, he said, how many ′must-reads′ turned out to be ′don′t-bothers′ after a lapse of time.

  ANNA

  Being all about sex doesn′t necessarily sink a work – Y Tu Mamá También pulls it off. (But it′s hard.) A maniacal monologue can be a masterpiece – Hamsun′s Hunger. And misogyny can be fascinating: The Kreutzer Sonata. But Roth isn′t in that league. (To give him his due: I didn′t have any tro
uble turning the pages. Portnoy′s Complaint is an easy read.)

  GABRIELLA GRUDER-PONI

  Prof. Beard, You have entirely missed the point of Portnoy′s Complaint.

  It is not about masturbation. It is, instead, a searing look into the Jewish-ethnic-male identity circa 1960s. Any man who′s grown up in an ethnic-immigrant household in America has his entire life story etched out in the pages of that book: the perpetual feelings of inferiority; the smothering embrace of insecure parents; the being torn between Old World morality and New World sexual pleasures; the daily humiliations of not understanding the dominant culture.

  ORS

  Is the title of the book ambiguous? Portnoy complains/Portnoy has a complaint = illness?

  ANTHONY ALCOCK

  I cannot resist praising Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (ZONE BOOKS, 2003) by my colleague Thomas Laqueur, which rightly links concern about masturbation with the development of ideas of credit in the eighteenth century. And DH Lawrence (not a figure I enjoy quoting, though he did pen a splendid poem against the University of Nottingham and its benefactor Mr Boot) argued that masturbation was what defined the middle classes.

  QH FLACK

  Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo: what was Catullus on about?

  25 November 2009

  Lucky Catullus. He has had more publicity in the last 24 hours than in the last 24 years. Whole cohorts of journalists who have never read a word of this first-century BC poet have been puzzling (with the help of Wiki usually) about what the words ‘pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo’ really mean.

  Because these were the words written by city bigwig Mark Lowe in an email to a young woman who had asked him the meaning of ‘diligite inimicos vestros’.

  What it means is quite simple (though a number of family newspapers have refrained from printing a translation without a good few dashes and asterisks): ‘I will ram my cock up your ass and down your throat.’

  Mark Lowe’s defence is that Catullus was being witty. A few journalists have half-sided with him – suggesting that this was meant as a lusty retort to the Latin she wanted him to translate. The passage, which is from St Matthew, says ‘love your enemies’. No, says Catullus, bugger them.

  If anyone had actually read (and thought about) the complete poem – for the offending phrase is the first and last line of Catullus Poem 16 – they would have seen a better joke and a better defence.

  For it’s a poem about an old conundrum: can you deduce a person’s character or behaviour from what they write? Catullus addresses Furius and Aurelius (the ‘queer’ and the ‘faggot’), who have suggested, that because he writes poems about kisses, he might be a little on the effeminate side.

  Not a bit of it, says our poet. You can’t tell a man from his verses. And ‘pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo’ for saying you can. But the joke is (or rather one of the jokes in this complicated little poem) – if you can’t infer from his kiss-y verses that he is effeminate, then neither can you infer from his poetic threats of violent penetration that he is capable of that either.

  Get it?

  That would have been a much better defence for Mr Lowe.

  First rule for undergraduates: always check where the quote actually comes from!

  Comments

  As JN Adams wrote in what, but for the unfortunate overtones, might be called his seminal work, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary, ′Catullus′ “pedicabo ego uos et irrumabo” scarcely indicates a real intention on Catullus′ part, but is verbal aggression.′ Should we take the ′verbal aggression′ as a threat? I don′t think so. The verbal aggression in English for ′pedicabo′ would be ′Bugger you!′, but if you say that, you are not threatening to bugger the other person and, of course, a woman can say it, who would not be physically able to.

  MICHAEL BULLEY

  Without wanting to lower the tone too much, I think the modern English might have finally furnished a fairly exact translation for ′irrumare′: ′to face-fuck′. I′ve certainly overheard it down the pub. The word that is, not the process.

  TOM

  Oh my, I do lead a sheltered life!

  KIRSTY MILLS

  ′Arse-about-face′ is probably the mot juste here.

  SW FOSKA

  I am very impressed. Mark Lowe managed in a swift move to liven up not only the debate on Catullus translation but also an otherwise dead language. He used Latin in daily context, without bothering to offer a translation, assuming that he would be perfectly understood. He must be an inspiration to our students and a shiny example to Classicists. Therefore, I was wondering if we should send him a collective congratulatory letter thanking him for his contribution.

  CONSTANTINA KATSARI

  I′ve just remembered another controversy involving Catullus 16 and I′ve now checked the references. The London Examination Board had prescribed, for the A level Latin exams to be taken in the summer of 1989, a selection of Catullus′s poems, including poems 15, 16 and 25. Then, in March of 1989, the Board, acting on objections whose source was never revealed, declared that those three poems would not form the basis of any of the questions in the literature exam. A sad day.

  MICHAEL BULLEY

  Should the Rosetta Stone go back … where?

  11 December 2009

  What is the best-selling postcard in the British Museum?

  The last time I inquired – admittedly more than a decade ago, but was told that it was the permanent ‘Number 1’ – it was a rather dreary image of the Rosetta Stone. That outsold its major rivals by several thousand. If you are interested, the main postcard rivals were: various views of the Museum itself, the (also Egyptian) bronze ‘Gayer Anderson’ cat (displayed on the card plus or minus a real live tabby cat) and an original drawing of Beatrix Potter’s Flopsy Bunnies.

  There is no doubt that the Rosetta Stone is a major icon of the British Museum – and in fact, its postcard celebrity is backed up by its presence on best-selling umbrellas, duvet covers and mouse mats (remember them?), all especially popular, I am told, in Japan.

  I was once very puzzled about all this. After all, it is a rather uninspiring lump of black basalt, inscribed at the beginning of the second century BC, recording an agreement between the Greek king of Egypt and a group of Egyptian priests, concerned, among other things, with tax breaks for the said priests. It came to London, as spoils of war in the early nineteenth century, captured from the French.

  So why so charismatic?

  Presumably because it was the key to decoding Egyptian hieroglyphs, as the inscription was trilingual – in hieroglyphs, Greek and Egyptian demotic. Whether you think that the key work was done by Thomas Young (British) or Jean-François Champollion (French) depends partly on your national prejudice.

  And now, again, Zahi Hawass (Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt) wants it ‘back’? Does he have a point?

  In my view, no – not at all. And I am not just talking here about the British Museum’s claims to be a centre of world culture, symbolically (at least) owned by the whole world. (The current Director is very fluent and convincing on this subject.) On this Egyptian issue I feel a bit more jingoistic than usual.

  For a start, let’s be honest, if this boring lump of basalt has become an icon, it was because of the linguistic work of either a Brit or a Frenchman. It wasn’t born an icon, it became an icon by a lot of hard academic grind (with huge ‘impact’ if we are going to talk HEFCE – that’s ‘Higher Education Funding Council for England’ – talk). At that time, the state of Egypt did not exist, and ‘Egyptians’ had nothing to do with its decipherment. Sad but true.

  If it should go back anywhere, it should be to France (as it seems pretty clear to me that, national prejudices apart, Champollion was the key figure here).

  But more than that, I find myself suffering from an increasingly severe allergy to Zawi Hawass. He might once have been a good archaeologist, but he has become a nationalist media showman (complete with mad theories about famous ancient
Egyptian graves, and a TV crew, plus a book signing, always at his back). He appears to have a checklist of some icons he wants ‘back’ to Egypt – as if they had been stolen.

  I remember him on the Today programme a few years ago in discussion with some female descendant of Howard Carter (excavator of Tutankhamun). He was in full flow complaining about how the Brits had ripped everything off, when she politely pointed out that actually the whole Tut treasure had been left in Egypt (which did by then exist).

  Today you can go and visit his fiefdom in the Antiquities Service of Egypt. It is truly amazing stuff, and no one is remotely suggesting removing it. But an awful lot in the marvellous Egyptian museum in Cairo is in a truly dreadful conservation state. (Take a look at the Fayum portraits disintegrating there.) Now the truth is that, in a global culture, we should all be paying to preserve this material for all of us, the world over, for the next few centuries. But that can only happen if Hawass stops making a media splash by demanding the Rosetta Stone and stops ignoring the much more exciting treasures crumbling on his watch.

  Comments

  The highlight of my visit to England in the summer of 1971 was the time I got to spend in the British Museum, and second only to the Elgin Marbles was the Rosetta Stone.

  I was a newly graduated Classics major and just back from Italy and Greece, and I was once again in the presence of a piece of antiquity that I had read about since grade school. At the time I found it, no one else was around. It wasn′t enclosed back then, so I double-checked to make sure I was alone, then reached out and touched it. I ran my fingertips over the hieroglyphs, the demotic text and the Greek, then read the Greek aloud, just to myself.

  I went home to America a few days later, happy with that memory.

  AL SCHLAF

  There′s a sarsen stone in our village churchyard; nobody knows its origin, but we are all ready to truckle as soon as somebody comes out of the woodwork demanding its return.