However much I protest that I live in Castelldefels, Aunt Bet is convinced that I live in Terrassa.
This is not unreasonable as I had to pretend that I lived in Terrassa so that I could get a flat in Castelldefels. Spanish law will not allow you to live in Spain until you can prove that you live in Spain, but you can’t prove that until you can prove that you can. So to speak.
But the fact remains that, for over a year now, I have been living in Castelldefels. So communications from Aunt Bet are delayed until a member of the family in Terrassa comes down to the sea side, clutching a letter addressed in very familiar hand.
This morning as I was driving Carmen to one of the local supermarkets to get the ingredients for a fideuá she produced a letter from her handbag and gave it to me.
As only one person (ahem!) writes to me in Terrassa (where I don’t live) I knew who it was from, as well as Carmen adding as she passed it over, “Tu tia!”
The letter obviously contained a ‘little extra’ and I opened it as we walked from the underground car park towards the escalator to take us to the supermarket. I only mention the surroundings to give a sense of place and context.
The little enclosure was a tiny edition of ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ which would be a charming gift in its own right, but this edition was given to my father in Rhodesia during the war and it was and remained one of his favourite poems throughout his life.
In an instant the underground car park in Catalonia was transformed in a subtle way with an overlay of sudden past knowledge and present emotion. There are quatrains in that poem that I know as well as my father because he repeated them so often that it was impossible not to pick them up. They came back to me as I walked towards the shopping centre, but as they replayed in my memory they were combined with another voice and another time.
It was a strange experience neither sad nor glad but rather comfortingly wistful. I suppose the little book worked in the way that an icon is supposed to operate; by concentrating attention towards the person rather than highlighting the object itself and giving a false value to a mere relic.
I think in some ways that the poem touched certain elements in the philosophy of my father. He had a sensitive appreciation of beauty, but his sensibility was nearer to the pantheism of Wordsworth than the self indulgence of an aesthete like Pater. Nature could move him like nothing else and the more Romantic the aspect the better. I remember discussing perfect houses with him once and his ideal was a cantilevered glass walled structure jutting our over rocks on which the sea constantly crashed!
The first quatrain of the Rubáiyát (in the First Edition, naturally) was often quoted:
This is not unreasonable as I had to pretend that I lived in Terrassa so that I could get a flat in Castelldefels. Spanish law will not allow you to live in Spain until you can prove that you live in Spain, but you can’t prove that until you can prove that you can. So to speak.
But the fact remains that, for over a year now, I have been living in Castelldefels. So communications from Aunt Bet are delayed until a member of the family in Terrassa comes down to the sea side, clutching a letter addressed in very familiar hand.
This morning as I was driving Carmen to one of the local supermarkets to get the ingredients for a fideuá she produced a letter from her handbag and gave it to me.
As only one person (ahem!) writes to me in Terrassa (where I don’t live) I knew who it was from, as well as Carmen adding as she passed it over, “Tu tia!”
The letter obviously contained a ‘little extra’ and I opened it as we walked from the underground car park towards the escalator to take us to the supermarket. I only mention the surroundings to give a sense of place and context.
The little enclosure was a tiny edition of ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ which would be a charming gift in its own right, but this edition was given to my father in Rhodesia during the war and it was and remained one of his favourite poems throughout his life.
In an instant the underground car park in Catalonia was transformed in a subtle way with an overlay of sudden past knowledge and present emotion. There are quatrains in that poem that I know as well as my father because he repeated them so often that it was impossible not to pick them up. They came back to me as I walked towards the shopping centre, but as they replayed in my memory they were combined with another voice and another time.
It was a strange experience neither sad nor glad but rather comfortingly wistful. I suppose the little book worked in the way that an icon is supposed to operate; by concentrating attention towards the person rather than highlighting the object itself and giving a false value to a mere relic.
I think in some ways that the poem touched certain elements in the philosophy of my father. He had a sensitive appreciation of beauty, but his sensibility was nearer to the pantheism of Wordsworth than the self indulgence of an aesthete like Pater. Nature could move him like nothing else and the more Romantic the aspect the better. I remember discussing perfect houses with him once and his ideal was a cantilevered glass walled structure jutting our over rocks on which the sea constantly crashed!
The first quatrain of the Rubáiyát (in the First Edition, naturally) was often quoted:
Awake! For Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultán’s Turret in a Noose of Light.
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultán’s Turret in a Noose of Light.
He particularly liked the image of a ‘Noose of Light’ and I remember his taking time to explain it to me. He delighted in the power of words – whatever combative charm I have, I have from him! – and cared about how they were used. His reading shaped his world and shaped the language he was able to use to describe and discover it. That, I think, is his greatest gift to me - apart of course from life!
His favourite quatrain, often spoken humorously, but I think with an edge of belief, was number XXIII:
His favourite quatrain, often spoken humorously, but I think with an edge of belief, was number XXIII:
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and – sans End!
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and – sans End!
My father’s view, which I have come to share, was nearer to existentialism than anything else. He saw nothing beyond this life and therefore not to make the most of the life that we had was, ipso facto, illogical.
Although widely read in English Literature he came to regard novels and imaginative writing as something of an indulgence and was much more interested in history and biography, in what he refered to as ‘the real.’ I know that there is a whole discussion about the degree of ‘reality’ in biography and history, but for my father I think that the non-fiction category fitted nicely into his sense of utility derived from the combination of Benthamism and critical humanism that dictated his approach to life. He was by no means a wishy-washy socialist and often sympathised with that quotation from ‘Waiting for Godot’ that “People are bloody ignorant apes.”
Although widely read in English Literature he came to regard novels and imaginative writing as something of an indulgence and was much more interested in history and biography, in what he refered to as ‘the real.’ I know that there is a whole discussion about the degree of ‘reality’ in biography and history, but for my father I think that the non-fiction category fitted nicely into his sense of utility derived from the combination of Benthamism and critical humanism that dictated his approach to life. He was by no means a wishy-washy socialist and often sympathised with that quotation from ‘Waiting for Godot’ that “People are bloody ignorant apes.”
Added to all this Aunt Bet had added a small photograph which she attached to the inside front cover. This shows my father aged 5 in the garden of my great-grandparents in Merthyr Vale clutching a cat in front of some railings. He looks as though he is wearing some sort of knitted construction with a rounded collar with dark trim. He is smiling, but I am not sure that I would entirely trust that expression – it is certainly not one of childish innocence!
The photo from Merthyr Vale is from 1924 and the little book from Rhodesia is from 1944 and now I am writing this in 2008 in Catalonia. 84 years contained in a very powerful little book.
Thanks, Aunt Bet!
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