Sir Basil and Ezra Pound

Sir Basil and Ezra Pound

There was a certain Sir Basil Zaharoff, born Zenos Metevsky (1850-1928), who was a munitions magnate with interests in oil, international banking and several newspapers. Zaharoff started off by selling arms for Nordenfeldt and eventually took control of the company and merged with Maxim, who had invented the machine gun. Then in 1913 he took over Vickers-Amstrong, the largest munitions company in Europe, and also held controlling shares in the German company Krupp, which specialised in barbed wire, which would prove extremely useful, as it was needed for in the construction of prison camps. Shortly after the First World War he expanded into South America; this short stanza from Ezra Pound’s Canto XXXVIII bears witness to Zaharoff’s activities there:

 

Don’t buy until you get ours.

And he went over the boarder

And he said to the other side:

The other side has more munitions. Don’t buy

Until you get ours.

And Akers made a large profit and imported gold into England.

 

Metevsky, now well known as Basil Zaharhoff, was finally arrested on fraud charges, as he had embezzled huge sums of money from companies in which he held the controlling shares; not unlike our modern day Bernie Madoff. Zaharhoff, being more imaginative, managed to escape, and is reputed to have been sitting in a Wiener Café watching his own funeral after his body had been removed from the back door of the Garbola Prison in Athens that had meant to be holding him. At the time he owned the controlling shares in Humbers, a pseudonym for Vickers, the German based arms company.

With another clip from Pound, this time from Canto XVIII, we will hear from one Mr. Giddings, salesman for Humbers:

 

“Peace! Pieyce!!” said Mr. Giddings,

“Universal? Not while yew got tew billions ov money,”

Said Mr. Giddings, “invested in the man-u-facture

“Of war machinery…”

The charismatic Sir Basil well preceded the time of the post World War II arms build-up, and the courageous, yet ultimately ineffectual warning of American president Dwight D. Eisenhower, when he made his famous State of the Union address proclaiming the inherent dangers of an unrestrained “military industrial complex” that would view war as far too profitable to be left in the hands of politicians let alone the voting public. 

On the eve of the Great War, Zaharhoff was an Englishman in England, and was awarded the Knight Grand Cross, while when in France he was a Frenchman and was raised to be Grand Officier of the Legion d’Honneur. He changed his name and even ended up with an aristocratic title. He changed his religion and was awarded the Order of Jesus Christ of Portugal. The Allied Forces were deeply indebted to the man who had used his immense banking network, together with his vast arms manufacturing empire that stretched across Europe, to facilitate the war effort.

While his newspapers beat the war-drums across all of Europe and the Americas, “EVIL HUN ON THE RISE”, his armaments manufacturing companies were working around the clock to get the world ready for a war that he would personally, together with J. P. Morgan and a handful of others, help finance. It was of no significance that Kaiser Wilhelm II neared desperation in his numerous attempts (including a personal visit to England wearing his British officer’s uniform as a sign of respect) to persuade his grandmother, Queen Victoria, not to go to war with Germany. But the die had been cast as the PM and his cabinet ministers had convinced the Her Majesty that the Empire needed the war to sustain its economic hegemony in Europe, as well as around the world.

After the war Zaharoff moved into the lucrative oil business, and partnering up with British Shell and US Standard Oil, formed joint ventures with the American investment houses Kuhn-Lohb and J.P. Morgan. At the end of his life he bought the Casino of Monte Carlo and married a Bourbon princess.  Rising from a modest start as a simple money-changer in his hometown of Salonika, to become one of the most influential men of his time, Sir Basil remains a monument to the unbounded success of a man who could deftly work ‘credit based’ capital creation, together with the fractional reserve system, and tie them into the most lucrative business opportunities of the age.

The international bankers and investment brokers of today seem all too grey and painfully dull compared to Sir Basil and the men of his generation. The Rothschilds, collectively more powerful than Sir Basil, may have bankrupted European aristocracy, and impoverished a continent, but then they did give back numerous art museums and opera houses. I suppose with all that wealth one needs some culture and entertainment. Who knows, maybe Bernie will make a daring escape. The one thing I admire about him is that with the huge sum of fifty-something billion USDs he did not put it back into derivative products and stocks. He knew better. Bernie Madoff bought real estate, gold reserves, luxury yachts and priceless works of art.

All these years later we can still hear the strong cadence of Ezra Pound as his poem echoes across that immense divide between the oligarchs of today and the rest of the world’s population. From the powerful Usury Canto, XLV:

“With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting,

that design may cover their face”.

 

“...with usura, sin against nature,

is thy bread ever more of stale rags

is thy bread dry as paper,

with no mountain wheat, no strong flour

with usura the line grows thick

with usura is no clear demarcation

and no man can find site for his dwelling”.

 

“Usura rusteth the chisel

It rusteth the craft and the craftman

It gnaweth the thread in the loom”.

 

“Usura slayeth the child in the womb

It stayeth the young man’s courting

It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth

between young bride and her bridegroom

                        CONTRA NATURAM”

 

Robert Luongo teaches Shakespeare and Rhetoric at Dallas College in Cape Town, established in 2005 as a college of leadership under the aegis of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi.

 

The Tip of the Iceberg By Robert Luongo

Events took place in Iceland earlier this year that directly put the country‎'s citizenry in direct opposition to their elected officials in regards to the liability incurred for the failure of the Icelandic Bank. In the aftermath, it is most exigent that the story, conspicuously dropped from the designated headlines of what is newsworthy, and therefore presented to the general public, be re-opened. The citizens of that country created a referendum by acquiring the requisite number of signatures, which was then voted upon by them. By an overwhelming majority vote they have prohibited their government to bailout the Icelandic Bank in order to repay the people or associations (many of which were local councils in the UK, such as the Norwich City Council) who had invested large sums in high yield 'financial products' on offer at various Icelandic financial institutions.

 

One of these products involved investment in derivatives on the futures markets for fish, something in abundance in the waters around Iceland, which were first monetised then securitised, while not yet caught but, arguably, an available asset - swimming about in the North Atlantic.

 

Why should the Icelandic citizens have to pay? They do not own the bank, as it is like most banks, a privately owned company; nor did they tell the investors to put their savings in them. This places the government in a terrible bind as they cannot possibly obey both 'the will of the people´ and the demands of the international financial establishment. While the people have clearly spoken, government is unable to hear. Will little Iceland be added to the Axis of Evil? Jeremy Paxton has made statements on British television indicating that the people of Iceland are violating the peace and security of British citizens. So much for a free and independent media!

 

What took place at the Icelandic Bank was certainly not an anomaly and as we are all aware has been replicated in nearly every major bank around the world. In addition to the wildly lucrative derivatives market, were the practices that precipitated the collapse of the sub-prime housing market in the US, as well as the failure of the home equity market based upon inflated 'values' against which endless new loans were made, pumping more and more new money into the market at the expense of the existing currency already in circulation.

 

That the system of usury-capitalism has collapsed upon itself cannot be viewed as a shock, as it has visibly been spiralling out of control for decades. What can be seen as shocking is that a perfidious world media is so obdurate in its attempt to persuade us not only that it can be, but that it is being patched-up as we speak.

 

 

There is, clear across the world, a total failure of the political class who are no more than mannequins dressed up as people in power. Ideological differences fade away with communist China as the number one supplier of the capitalist world's supermarkets, and the Arab leaders of what is referred to as the 'Oil Rich Gulf States' rush like lemmings head-long over the cliff of disaster as they continue to follow those they so obsequiously strive to imitate. Dubai World, much to the delight of the banking fraternity, needed to be rescued from the very brink of bankruptcy. The political class, in actuality, have no power, as has been made abundantly clear by their servile adherence to the dictates of financial institutions. This is the world we live in today.

 

But what about little Iceland, now overshadowed and all but forgotten as Greece takes centre stage, to be followed, we are told, by Portugal and most likely Spain?

 

Let's back-up a little before seeing if we can pick up the thread of Iceland's current malaise. According to Gudn Adalsteinsson, managing director of Kaupthing Treasury Department in Reykjavik, Shares in HBOS and Barclays plummeted in value following the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank in New York. This prompted many investors, many of which were other banks, to move their funds to the banks of Iceland, believing that they could, for the moment, avert disaster.

As of January 2010 there are literally hundreds of cases lodged in Iceland's high court on the legality of forced liability for the collapse of the 'old Icelandic banks'. Meanwhile, droves of British taxpayers are up in arms insisting that the money lost in the Icelandic banks be reimbursed to the British Government that had to step in to cover the losses of British banks that were left exposed by the failure of the banks in Iceland that now will have to be covered by the UK taxpayers. Meanwhile the 'new' Icelandic banks, nearly entirely owned by European banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and several of Germany's largest banks are, according to a July report, faced with yet another looming crisis. 

Financial authorities in Reykjavik have been scrambling for the past two weeks to work out the implications of a landmark Supreme Court judgment outlawing car loans indexed to foreign exchange rates.

Gunnar Andersen, director of the Financial Supervisory Authority, told the Financial Times that Icelandic banks faced "deep trouble" if the verdict was applied to all forms of consumer and corporate credit linked to foreign currencies. The court decision has been described as one of the most important events in Iceland since the 2008 bank crash, potentially reducing the repayment burden on thousands of households holding foreign-indexed debt while threatening the financial system with renewed turmoil.

The court ruled that car loans paid out and collected in Icelandic krónur but indexed to foreign currencies violated laws designed to protect borrowers from exchange rate risks.

Recalling that we began with a massively supported referendum vote by the Icelandic electorate, its first national referendum since 1944, in the attempt to block their government from subjecting the people of Iceland to the burden of debt incurred by private banks, only to discover that the voice of the people fell onto deaf ears, now their judiciary is attempting to make a stand against the oligarchs of world banking.

What is now abundantly clear is that the system of modern liberal democracy was put in place to serve the requirements of the financial sector. Both have failed, both are disgraced.

Since the current disaster emanated from the epicentre of the failed New York investment houses, it is appropriate to go back to that nation's founding 'framers' of what is referred to as the world's greatest democracy.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.  Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." 

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."  (Thomas Jefferson)

Needless to say, Jefferson's warnings could not be heeded, as the very premise upon which US constitutional law was founded opened the door, whether wittingly or unwittingly, to what became the inevitable outcome: that the banks would take over. This is a case for the prosecution that can never go to trial, and while the turmoil we are witnessing is exceedingly alarming, it may very well be only the tip of the iceberg.

Robert Luongo is a lecturer of Shakespeare & Rhetoric at Dallas College in Cape Town. He is the author of The Gold Thread – Ezra Pound's Principles of Good Government & Sound Money (1995) and The Power Template – Shakespeare's Political Plays, scheduled for release in January 2011.

Radical Muslim Leader has Bohemian Past

The 20 February 2010 edition of the Telegraph, and their on-line version, telegraph.co.uk, both ran an article entitled: Radical Muslim leader has past in swinging London. According to the Telegraph, the author and playwright Ian Dallas, who in the 1960s was purported to have been part of the hip London scene, had since become a “Radical Muslim” going by the name of Abdalqadir as-Sufi, and was now “The leader of an extreme Muslim group”. As someone with firsthand knowledge, who has known Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi for forty years, I would like to take some of the most salient points raised in the Telegraph article as a springboard to offer the public a more balanced and informative introduction to a most fascinating and politically significant contemporary figure.

Ian Dallas is more accurately of the 1950s generation, as he was born in Ayr Scotland in 1930. He had already achieved both recognition and success as a playwright and author prior to the 1960s. He did once tell me that he had, as a young man, driven through the streets of Paris in a Rolls Royce, with Edith Piaf.

As the Telegraph mentions, Ian Dallas did, indeed, know Edith Piaf as well as Eric Clapton, to whom he did, in fact, give a copy of the beautiful love story, Layla and Majnun. However, this was nothing to do with Eric’s love affair with Pattie Boyd (the wife of Eric’s best friend, George Harrison) but rather, the terrible tragedy connected to the death of Eric’s son. The metaphorical tale tells of the all-consuming longing of a youth named Majnun (a word whose literal Arabic meaning is one possessed) for the love of his life, Layla (night in Arabic) who, in the coded language of the Sufis, stands for Allah as the Beloved.

As I only met Ian Dallas (or Shaykh Abdalqadir, as I have long been accustomed to refer to him) in 1970, I did not meet all of these people, although George Harrison would send over his driver with a large hamper of ‘goodies’ from Fortnum & Mason at the start of the New Year. I sat with Shaykh Abdalqadir when his friend from university, the celebrated psychiatrist R.D. Laing came by to meet him. Laing had just returned from India where he had gone with his wife to meet a guru. His wife had stayed on and moved in with the ‘spiritual master’. Needless to say, Ronald was very upset, and as I recall, not too impressed with Eastern Mysticism.

I was also present when Shaykh Abdalqadir had invited Fritjof Capra, the rising star in the world of nuclear physics, over for tea. The Shaykh’s wife, Zulaikha, had baked a plate of millefeuille. Capra had possibly just published The Tao of Physics. Over tea he explained his latest idea, which he called the ‘boot-strap theory’. Science was not my strong point, so all I can recall is that the image of the loops commonly used to pull on a certain kind of boot, were somehow being offered as a metaphor to convey his basic idea of how ‘matter came into existence’. Shaykh Abdalqadir listened very carefully, and here I remind you that he was, and still is, the most brilliant mind in Europe. He then said, “I think I’ve got it, except for the exact point at which the entire plate of French pastries disappeared and matter came into being.” Naturally, Capra was mortified, as he had not till that moment, realised he had eaten the entire plate of millefeuille. I too was most disappointed! Nevertheless, I do remember, as if it were only yesterday, the realisation from this episode that self-knowledge is over and above all other sciences. Dr. Capra is undoubtedly a brilliant physicist and this incident is in no sense intended to infer otherwise.

There are countless anecdotes, from Ian Dallas giving Bob Dylan his first copy of Rimbaud’s poems, to the wonderful story that appears in his Collected Works of how he had an acute attack of appendicitis while visiting friends on Martha’s Vineyard, and had to be rushed to hospital. He tells of a large warm-hearted nurse with a shining black face, who said one day, while he was sitting-up reading, “My grandfather caught Moby-Dick!” The nurse then told him that a very kind lady had come every day and sat in the room while he rested, and then left the books for him to read. The woman was Lillian Hellman, the American dramatist whose works include the hugely popular Little Foxes (1939), and was married to the famous writer, Dashiell Hammett, whose stories were at the centre of the Film Noir movement in Hollywood.

As is recounted in Ian Dallas - Collected Works, Hellman and Hammett were both ruthlessly persecuted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Witch Hunts. Mr Dallas quotes the entire speech made by Lillian to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. I will never forget the impact it made on me after reading this speech to realise that this same great woman had sat everyday at the bedside of a young intellectual called Ian Dallas who, in the fullness of time, I would also meet and come to know and admire as Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi.

Returning to the Telegraph article, it goes out of its way to reveal that Shaykh Abdalqadir’s teachings are said to include the claim that, “movies and football degrade the proletariat.” I am pleased to confirm, for the record, that Shaykh Abdalqadir is an aficionado of cinema and possesses a vast DVD film collection. He recently sent over to my house a copy of the French film ‘A Prophet’ directed by Jacque Audiard. He considers it one of the best films recently made. I can also confirm, as the Telegraph states, that he did, as Ian Dallas, act in Fellini’s 8 ½, but far more interesting is the fact that he re-wrote the ending of the film, the wondrous ‘dance of life’, which ends the film. The version we all know today is, of course, Fellini’s ending; he took it and made it his. The ending opens the way - after the total failure of a film director to fulfil the expectations imposed upon him - to give up and surrender, even his greatness. That is where the film ends, but it is also, in truth, where the real story begins.

As for football, it is true that he dislikes it, together with the increasingly unsavoury tendencies from which it has become inseparable. He is rather an avid rugby fan and is almost a fanatic when it comes to cricket, especially five-day test matches. He sees in the game of cricket a means by which young men can develop good character. He does attend, from time to time, at Newlands cricket ground in Cape Town, a match in order to enjoy the game in the company of his choosing.

The Telegraph also makes mention of one of his plays acted in by Albert Finney, and another starring the late Sir Alan Bates. All this is true, but what about comments in the paper that he is a, “radical Muslim leader” and also, “the leader of an extremist Muslim group”? Putting aside his “bohemian past”, as it was referred to, what about his radical change and his espousal of an extreme interpretation of Islam? The quantity of evidence to the contrary contained in Shaykh Abdalqadir’s writings, both published and non-published, is so vast that, like the Telegraph, I too shall have to be extremely selective in my choice of observations. However, contrary to the Telegraph, whose sparse and tenuous claims seem to be dictated by negative bias and cheap sensationalism, my own primary concern will be to avoid over-burdening the reader with the sheer weight of bona fide material available to me. Before I continue, I should also, for the sake of clarity, remind the reader that Shaykh Abdalqadir continues, on occasion, to write under his Scottish family name of Ian Dallas.

There is The Book Of Strangers, published in 1972, a novel that is about the search for knowledge and the awakening to Islam told in the form of a semi-autobiographical parable (Pantheon Books). There is Letter To An African Muslim (1981), which helped inspire a whole generation of South Africans to enter Islam at a time when apartheid still restricted the options available to most blacks. Shaykh Abdalqadir was the only white European who could freely walk the streets of Soweto, although the Apartheid regime banned both him and his book.

There is Root Islamic Education, first published in Norwich in 1982 and re-released in 1993, in London. This text is based firmly on the soundest and irrefutable classical Islamic texts that have come down to the Muslims throughout the centuries. There is the Technique of the Coup de Banque, published in Spain in 2000, which takes as its thematic corollaries Machiavelli’s Renaissance classic Il Principe (The Prince) and Curzio Malpararte’s 1931 masterwork Technique Du Coup D’État. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this article to give an adequate appraisal of the invaluable contributions these books have made in furthering the understanding of their respective subject matters. However, Technique of the Coup de Banque is one with which I have had a special connection.

Travelling from his base in the Scottish Highlands, Shaykh Abdalqadir made an extended visit to Cape Town in early 2001. I had already moved from Scotland to Cape Town a few months prior to this in anticipation of what we all hoped would lead to his permanent move to the city. Whilst there, he had the opportunity to overhear a conversation in a local bookstore between two young men, both of whom were University of Cape Town students. One was relating that he had heard that there was a Shaykh visiting from Europe who sounded very interesting, and that he hoped somehow to meet him. Hence, with the refined courtesy and habitual discretion which have long distinguished him, Shaykh Abdalqadir approached the student and prudently ventured, “I believe you wanted to meet me.” The next day the young man, extremely gregarious and outgoing by nature, came to have morning coffee at the house the Shaykh was renting.

Shaykh Abdalqadir did, in fact, return to the Highlands but it had become clear that a move was imminent. Therefore, in preparation for this I was asked by our local Muslim Community leader, Orhan Wadvalla, to start an evening class based on Technique of the Coup de Bank. The UCT student he had met in the bookshop, and several of his friends, some Muslims and some not, were invited to come along to a weekly reading, which was held at my small cottage in Newlands. These sessions were dynamic and exciting and soon increased to twice a week. As I did not yet have any bookcases we were surrounded by stacks of books; reading, discussing and drinking espressos, while I rummaged around for Plato’s Republic or whatever other text the Shaykh may have indicated, that I knew to be somewhere in my ‘library’, and on we went!

A few months later Shaykh Abdalqadir moved to Cape Town and I had by then assembled a good group of young guys, the one non-Muslim had become Muslim, and some basic ground work had been done to prepare these dynamic men to sit with and benefit from the Shaykh’s generosity. They were all healthy young men, interested in what most young people their age are interested in, but they had also acquired an appetite for real knowledge, and whatever you really want out of life, you’ll get!

From that first group new ones have come. Most of those men are now married and have started families of their own. All of them, without exception, are more advanced on the path to knowledge than myself, but I was privileged to have, by the Generosity of Allah, the opportunity to play a part in this phase of their education. The one last thing I want to mention about this particular text is that everything that Shaykh Abdalqadir spoke of has come to pass. The financial crisis of 2008-2009, which continues to worsen into 2010 as I write, was laid bare in his brilliant exposition. With rare exceptions, only a few have listened, certainly not the so-called leaders of the Muslim World. Nevertheless, the number of those taking notice of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi continues to grow day by day.

There is the Ian Dallas book, Time of the Bedouin (2006) - on the politics of power, and also his latest publication Political Renewal (2009) which by juxtaposition in one volume of two exceptionally penetrating essays, produces a devastating historical survey of the relentless degeneration that has characterised the British political class and its social and constitutional apparatus over the last century and more: The End of the Political Class by Ian Dallas and Hilaire Belloc’s The House of Commons and Monarchy (1920).

There is the series of four books by Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi, that were all composed from lectures given in a Cape Town mosque: The Book of Tawhid [Unity of Allah] 2004, The Book of Hubb [Love of the Divine] 2007, The Book of ‘Amal [Behaviour] 2008 and finally The Book of Safar [Travel] 2008. Imagine one of those Hollywood post-apocalyptic fantasies; the world has been all but totally destroyed, and you, say a young black man, happens to rescue a copy of the Qur’an from a heap of burning rubble, and then after many a close call, you produce an act of heroism that saves the life of a pretty blond headed girl on the point of despair, whose only worldly possessions happen to be these four slim texts. It turns out that this incredible encounter contains all that is needed as the basis for recovery of civilised human society; an interesting gene pool and ready access to Divine guidance and useful knowledge. They are simple yet utterly profound texts that, based upon the love and knowledge of our Prophet Muhammad, Allah grant him blessings and peace, can, with the Qur’an, be all you would need to start anew.

There are more books and countless anecdotes and taped discourses. When I am fortunate to be invited to his house for lunch, he often, while waiting eagerly for the meal to be announced, recites whole passages from Shakespeare, or the opening of Elliot’s The Waste Land or W. H. Auden or W. B. Yeats, replete with an Irish accent. He has a library of some several thousand books, some in English, French and Arabic, an extensive collection of classical music CDs, and I have already mentioned his film collection. He is mostly surrounded by men who are all the very brightest young people you could ever wish to meet. The Shaykh is the master. Most of all, he has guided a whole generation to knowledge of Allah and a deep understanding of the practice of Islam. To sit in his company is an honour and you learn things even without realising it.

Robert Luongo, Lecturer in Shakespeare & Rhetoric at Dallas College in Cape Town

An Improper Bostonian

It has been pointed out to me by several people that A Boston Brahmin in New Mexico, an article I wrote for my blog in May, left them wanting to hear more, what happened next.  The story does indeed continue, although this is not the moment for me to tell it. Suffice it to say that I continued on to California and that while travelling west I met a young fellow about my age heading east. He gave me the address of a person who he described as his teacher, the playwright and poet, Daniel Moore, who is today better known as Daniel Abdalhayy Moore.  I did reach California and went to the address in Berkeley. Daniel, who some years earlier had formed a radical ‘street theatre’ called the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company, invited me to stay as his guest... It must have been early June 1970 and still a few months prior to my 21^st birthday.

In the meantime, while sitting in a café in Tangiers, the highly accomplished playwright (he had already several BBC productions to his credit) and author, Ian Dallas, had read in the Rolling Stone about this unusual theatre troupe whose plays were a bizarre mixture of Anti-Viet Nam protest and Tibetan Buddhism. He made the firm intention that should his new screenplay be accepted by one of the Hollywood studios, he would visit these people.

Within a month of my arrival in Berkeley a telegram arrived from Mr Dallas, who was then in Los Angeles, saying that he would very much like to pay Daniel and his theatre group a visit. Using the phone number that had been included with the message, Daniel keenly welcomed him to come. You could say that I was only there by chance, as I had no connection to the other people living in the house.

I do recall Daniel being asked if his theatre was still performing, to which he answered that it wasn’t. He told Mr Dallas that he was presently reading the works of Rumi. I was sitting by the phone while this conversation was taking place, so I saw Daniel put his hand over the phone and say: “He says that he knows everything about Rumi.”

I had begun to feel that I had stayed with these strange people, actors and musicians, long enough, so was about to leave. I had just seen Fellini’s Satyricon at the cinema and was ready to distance myself from the macabre company of the Eastern mystics who inhabited this large Victorian house. Nevertheless, I decided to hold on another week to meet this stranger.

It was a memorable first encounter and the source of many an amusing anecdote, as I was the driver on the day Daniel and I went to the San Francisco Bus Terminal to collect his guest. Our vehicle was the infamous ‘animal car’ (a mobile art project by an Berkeley art student) that was a 1955 Chevy covered in animal fur and without any seats, but instead contained large cushions covered in Indian fabric for the passengers to sit upon. As the driver, I sat on a raised mushroom so that I could at least see the road ahead of me. Even so, there was no way I was going to spot what was coming around the next corner.

Firstly, considering that I was the one person who wasn’t actually meant to be there, I soon embraced Islam by this stranger’s hand. Secondly, I remain indebted to him for everything I have learnt, one way or another, over the intervening forty years as a student of a man I consider the greatest intellect of this age. Of course, some of you will know that our stranger, the celebrated writer, Ian Dallas, is better known today as Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi.

Well, there‘s the story I started off by saying I wasn’t going to tell. I must conclude that the Islam we were taught was that of the sound teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.  I did not join a Sufi group. My culture is that of Western Civilization and my love of literature and classical music is part of my cultural heritage. My religion is Islam.

Robert Luongo

 

Pablo's Portrait by Luqman Nieto

Luqman Nieto is a second year student at Dallas College in Cape Town. He was born in Seville Spain and acquired his early education at the Medrassa Mawlana Muhammad Wasany in Majorca. When he completed his studies in Majorca he had achieved the qualification of Hafiz, having recorded the entire Qur’an to memory by heart. Interspersed with his studies he and all the boys attending the medrassa practiced archery, horseback riding and swimming and sailing in the summer months. At the age of nineteen Luqman moved to Cape Town, quickly improved his English and in 2009 entered Dallas College. I am very proud to present this short story by an outstanding student.

 

The following short story is a dramatization based upon an anecdote that Ernst Jünger, the celebrated German soldier and poet, who served as an officer in both World Wars, told to Julien Hervier and was recorded in Hervier’s book The Details of Time, Conversations with Ernst Jünger.  Jünger was the only high ranking German officer known to have been complicit in the failed attempt on Hitler’s life who was not executed by the Führer. He remains the most highly decorated soldier in all of German history. Jünger refused to be subjugated to the de-nazification process imposed by the Americans after the war, as he insisted that while he fought to defend his country, he never joined nor was he part of the Nazi Party. Jünger died at the age of 103 and is the author of numerous books, essays and articles that were published during his lifetime. His highly acclaimed Storm of Steel is considered: ‘One of the most striking accounts of the First World War’ (Richard Holms, Evening Standard). 

 

Robert Luongo, Dallas College lecturer of Shakespeare & Rhetoric

 

 

I

t was a clear and fresh morning of winter. The sun had finally come to pay us a visit after a long absence. The streets of Paris smelled like a shirt that had just been washed and hung in the sun. Nadia was walking with her light and gentle pace, almost trotting like a young colt that has been locked up for too long and finally re-discovers the pleasures of running in freedom. I could hardly keep up without looking too ridiculous behind her.

 

I met Nadia a morning like this one in Saint Germain des Prés. While I was having a shot of espresso in the Café Fleurs, she was drawing in an artist’s sketchbook, a small detail of a beautiful corner. With precise and short movements, acquired by her impeccable Russian classical technique, Nadia was capturing the essence of that corner in that precise moment. But I did not know her name yet. All I knew was that while she was observing the corner and capturing the moment I was observing her and becoming her captive.

 

After the first espresso I asked for a second one, and after the second for a third. I did not want to disturb the girl who was drawing but I could not leave without saying anything to her. By the time of the fourth espresso it had become a matter of proving to myself that I could do it. Not that I had bad luck with women, actually I would say that it was rather good, they found me awkwardly handsome and rather charming - even though I never thought I was any of those things - but there was something in that girl, which was terribly challenging. Later on I would come to know her name was Nadia. She looked like a Russian princess, with long brown hair, big green eyes and marble-like sculpted features. She was not particularly pretty, as her mouth was a little big and so were her eyes, and her nose a little small, but everything put together had a special enchantment.

 

She was wrapped in a distant air, perhaps a bit cold, like the fresh breeze that was blowing through the terrace of the Café de Fleurs that sunny morning of winter. But what attracted me more than anything were her hands; the long thin fingers with a darkish colour at their tips, which revealed to me that what she was doing was not merely a casual moment of inspiration but a profession. The bones which revealed themselves through the skin and the light blue veins were all in perfect balance. Her hands were like the violins in a complex piece of classical music, the accents of the melody that was her face, and all accompanied by a perfect atonal harmony that was her body.  If Prokofiev were to see her he would have composed the most beautiful yet dissonant piano concerto.

 

Suddenly she closed her notebook, organized her pencils in a small leather case and stood up. She took a long breath and I contained mine. She turned, looked around and her glance favoured me before she walked straight to the table where I was.

 

Before I could even realise what was happening, she was sitting in front of me and had ordered a coffee. All of that distant look had completely disappeared and gave place to a warm friendly smile. I was shocked. The kind of shock that happens when something you imagine doing suddenly dislodges from the realm of imaginations to the realm of reality, and you have to face it.

 

Nadia arrived a couple of years ago in Paris. She came from a bourgeois family of Moscow where she had learnt the art of painting miniatures. Her mother was part of the old aristocracy and her father a successful business man. By 1920, following the Russian Revolution, her mother foresaw the worsening of things in Russia, and so decided to send her daughter to Paris where Nadia could continue developing her talent as a painter under the careful supervision of a very good friend of her mother.

 

Nadia talked and I listened. She seemed like someone who had been alone for a long time and suddenly found someone with whom she could talk. From time to time she would stop and ask me a few things - which I answered as quickly and as short as possible - before carrying on as if what I had said did not really matter. I was delighted.

 

When I started to know her better after that first encounter, I learnt that she was like that; she would remain in silence immersed in her thoughts and would hardly speak for what seemed an eternity, and then she would emerge out of that world of hers and talk as if there was not enough time to say everything she wanted to say. Every period of silence resulted in some master piece of painting and after every period of talking I would have the most beautiful and profound lines to put in the mouth of the heroine of my latest piece of writing.

 

Once I asked her why she choose my table and why she sat with me that day at the café. She answered: “When I finished my painting that day and I stood up I felt like someone who had been travelling alone for a long time and when he gets back to the place from where he left he needs someone who will listen to all his stories of the journey. I looked around and the only face I saw that I could trust was yours. So I went to your table and I talked to you”.

 

When I finished my fifth espresso and she her first one we left the Café de Fleurs and I walked her home. Her pace that day was the same light and gentle trot that moved her through the streets of Paris that warm winter morning.

 

We were going to see a well known painter who was spending some time in Paris. Nadia knew him from, as she said, a random casual meeting arranged by destiny. She was painting a view of a popular café in the city, where the ordinary people usually sit, with a vivid detailed surrealism, and he passed by. He stood behind her for a long time while she did not notice it, for when she painted she was habitually unaware of what was going on around her except for that which she was painting. He admired her work, especially her amazing technique and her eye for detail. When he knew that she was from Russia he invited her to help him with a work he was doing for Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. His name was Picasso.

 

When we arrived at Picasso’s house in the street of the Grands-Augustines she knocked at the door. Olga, Picasso’s wife, opened for us and Nadia, after introducing me, began a lively conversation with Olga in Russian. Olga was a ballet dancer that Picasso met while working for Diaghilev and she and Picasso got married in 1918.

 

A little child of about six years old came running and passed by my side without noticing me. When he saw Nadia he ran to her and she received him with open arms speaking to him in Russian with a mellow voice. He laughed and begun to talk mixing words from French, Russian and Spanish with such ease that I would have assumed it to be only one language.

 

Pablo, the son of Picasso and Olga, pulled Nadia without leaving her hand to the studio where his father was working. Nadia looked at me and told me with her eyes to follow them. From what I could understand, Pablo was saying his father had just finished a portrait of him and Pablo wanted Nadia to see it.

 

The four of us went into Picasso’s studio. The studio was a large square room with two big windows facing the street at one end of the room. The windows had no curtains and the light of the sun entered through them illuminating the whole room. Picasso was facing the wall opposite the windows with the easel in front of him and all his paints, brushes and pencils on the side. There were paintings leaning against the four walls of the room, some were finished and others were unfinished, revealing the intentions of the painter and how they developed and changed through the process of painting.

 

Picasso was a man in his forties of normal height and constitution with small piercing eyes. Under his apron, which had so many spots of paint that the original colour was un-recognizable, he was wearing an elegant shirt and a tie. He greeted Nadia kindly and Nadia introduced me to him. Picasso looked at me with the eyes of someone who is used to seeing the true essence of the world around him and who is then able to capture that essence in paint. And then he smiled at me and his eyes seemed to change colour, from a dark brown to a light sand one, like the earth when it is dry and has a light brown colour and then it rains and the brown becomes dark, but in reverse.

 

Nadia and Picasso talked about the portrait of his son while the living subject of it was running around trying to capture everyone’s attention. He probably felt that he was more important than his fake copy. Nadia and Picasso commented on the details of the painting talking about the strokes of the painter and the chromatic scale of colours he had used. For anyone who, like me, did not paint, it was almost as if they were speaking another language, Chinese for example. Soon my attention was captured by the rest of the paintings leaning against the walls, and then by Pablo himself, who was happy to finally have seized someone’s attention and was doing his best not to lose it.

 

Olga had gone out of the studio and her voice came to us calling Pablo. Pablo left the studio and Nadia, who suddenly felt a rush to ask Olga for the meaning of some Russian word in French, followed the child. Without really wanting to, because his presence overwhelmed me a little, I found my self alone with Picasso.

 

Picasso came closer to me. I was looking at the portrait trying to find something to say that would not reveal my almost complete ignorance of the subject when he looked at me and smiled. Sensing my predicament he said: “Don’t worry, I actually don’t like it”.

 

Picasso went to the painting and lifted it off the easel. With the painting in his hands he turned to me and said: “This painting would have a certain effect, but that effect would be exactly the same one, in the metaphysical meaning of it, if I would wrap it in paper and abandon it in a corner. It would be exactly the same as if ten thousand people would have admired it”.

 

Picasso put the painting on the easel again and went to join his wife, son and Nadia in the kitchen where Olga had prepared some coffee.

 

I stayed there, looking at the portrait of little Pablo, thinking about the casual tone of the words that Picasso had just uttered, rendering them even more shocking to me, until Nadia’s voice dragged me out of my state and rushed me to the kitchen before the coffee could get cold.

The Power Template

Introduction

The Power Template

Shakespeare’s Political Plays

In 2004 a small private college was established in Cape Town South Africa. It was to be a college of leadership, a place where young people of all races who had a sufficient capacity and desire to want to excel, to take on responsibility to make a new kind of world, could come to be educated. It was not for those vast masses that only see education as a means for getting a job.  The syllabus was based upon contemporary as well as classical geo-political studies, history – from Roman history through to the end of the 20^th century, bio-politics – the study of key people whose lives had an impact on their time and place in the world, then languages, and lastly fencing to cultivate noble character. It was a paideia for the 21^st century designed to produce new men. The founder of the college was Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir  as-Sufi, whose Scottish family name of Dallas became the name of this place of  learning, unique in this time, yet seeking continuity in the historical model of the great  Mogul and Ottoman centres of higher education.

At the inception of Dallas College I was invited to teach Shakespeare & Rhetoric, an area of world literature in which I was excited about furthering my knowledge.  I was informed that the focus was to be Shakespeare’s History and Roman Plays. These plays, more so than all the others, but not exclusively so, are his political plays. I was introduced to a handful of books that I promptly ordered and which soon arrived in South Africa. There was the Essential Shakespeare Handbook, which became our basic text-book. The others were Frank Kermode’s The Age of Shakespeare and his Language of Shakespeare. There was an excellent biography by René Weis and W.H. Auden’s Lectures on Shakespeare that was derived from a lecture series he gave in Greenwich Village in 1946-47, that I was thrilled with. Then there was Jonathan Bate’s The Genius of Shakespeare and more recently his newest book, Soul of the Age, simply the best book I have ever read on Shakespeare. It is a masterpiece and I am convinced that Bate is today the preeminent Shakespearian scholar. As I continued with my lectures new books were added, many of which I will mention in the course of this study.

There are two unequivocal characteristics to this or any study of Shakespeare’s plays. The first is that you are exposed to the highest expression of the English language. It delights and excites the mind in a way that once you have tasted it your hunger only grows as you discover more of this living, pulsating language that is the very means through which meanings are communicated and shared by human beings.  With extraordinary wit and a generosity of humour and humanity, Shakespeare has written characters that are as much alive today as they were four hundred years ago when he wrote them. The second characteristic, more specific to the actual plays that are covered within this book, is that they transmit an understanding of the dynamics of human politics:  the play for power, position and influence that has been an unfolding drama as far back as history has been recorded.

What occurs in my lectures, and is replicated in the text that is presented here, is my attempt to awaken a curiosity and concern not only about the age of Shakespeare, which holds a very important place in our world view, but also the age we live in now. There are, therefore, numerous excursions as we move from 14^th or 15^th century England to the exigency of the early 20^th century negotiations that preceded the outbreak of the First World War. We move quite freely from Prince Hal in Henry IV Part I and II (who, portrayed as a profligate prince who neglected his duties at Court, emerged through a series of life experiences that were the means by which his character was forged into the heroic Henry V) – and then on over to King Hasan II of Morocco who in his youth was dubbed by the French press as ‘The Playboy Prince’. King Hasan was under a constant barrage of attack, from both within his own inner circle as much as from outside forces, to sell off his country’s vast mineral wealth. Not unlike Hal, the king matured and was steeled into a sober and astute ruler who held fast the reins of leadership and preserved his country from the rapacious greed of disloyal subjects and foreign invaders.

There are digressions and forays into a multitude of current political affairs that find scope within Shakespeare’s vast landscape which serves as a setting for the machinations of human politics that drive the action of world events.

From English history to ancient Rome, we have the backdrop that allowed Shakespeare to portray the whole world within that Wooden ‘O’, the original Globe Theatre. It is, therefore, my intention through this exploration of Shakespeare’s political plays to make sense of the world I find myself in, and in doing so to make sense of myself within it. That that should also be awakened in others is my aim in this work.

 

Robert Luongo 

 

 

A Boston Brahmin In New Mexico

A Boston Brahmin In New Mexico

It was in the early spring of the summer of 1970 that I made my third trans-continental crossing of the United States, originating in Boston and, as they would say in bygone days, “go west young man”. My first trip was in 67’ as I hitch-hiked 3000 miles from the East Coast to the Pacific Ocean. By 1970 I had become a rather seasoned traveller along life’s highways, and this particular journey had an even more specific intention attached to it.

The preceding year, while I was living in Cambridge Massachusetts, where I kept a small studio apartment in the garret of a large Victorian at the bottom of Plympton Street near Harvard Square, I had become aware of a woman living in New Mexico who, as both an artist and story-teller, had established a puppet theatre in collaboration with the Pueblo Indians who lived in her area. That area was that stretch of territory between Albuquerque, Santa Fe and up to Taos.

As best as I can recall it was in an issue of the Tulane Drama Review or TDR as it was generally known, that I read the story of Elsie Thetford who lived in Abiquiu New Mexico and who had founded this unique theatre. The article spoke of her unusual work as well her life among the Pueblo Indians, both of which fascinated me.

Before proceeding, it is necessary to back up yet another year to 1968 when I was living in New Haven Connecticut and had become friends with a Yale Drama School student, Jim Metzner, where I had the opportunity to develop a growing interest in various forms of theatre. Besides participating in an original play written by Jim that was performed in a local coffee house over some few weekends, I also got a small part in a Yale University production that was put on by the Yale Repertory Theatre, a professional theatre company, and included a number of drama students and at least one non-student. The play was Euripides’ Bacchae, and the wild chorus was nearly all students, with my friend Jim making a memorable impression as one of the devotees of Dionysus. My bit part was that of a Roman soldier who represented law and order, and the antithesis to rights of the god. I must admit, although it was never my intention, that I rather stole the show on opening night and had to be forcibly removed from the stage. Prior to the curtain going up I did ingest a certain substance that had the overwhelming effect of awakening that Dionysian spirit in me. Somewhere in the middle of a fierce stand-off between the followers of Dionysus and the Roman Guard I removed my clothing, except of course, my excellent Roman helmet and upright stanchion that I had adorned with a flower given to me by a most lovely girl who was a member of the bacchanal. Needless to say that was my last performance at Yale and the end of my acting career. A couple of members of the New Haven Police, who for some mysterious reason were in attendance, did not, fortunately, press formal charges, although the actor who played the lead, endlessly stating how he had appeared so many times On as well as Off Broadway, was driven to fury!

But now it is one year later and I am back living in Cambridge, which would have been in late 1969, and having made contact with Ms. Thetford by writing her a letter, was to my delight invited to come and visit her if I should ever be passing by that way. And so it was that in the early spring of 1970, with a cold New England winter behind me that I set out on my odyssey. 

At some point I moved off the Interstate highway and began my way along smaller back roads, having more than once stopped to ask anyone who I saw if they could direct me to the Thetford Place. It was late afternoon but the sun was still high up in the huge New Mexico sky. I stood in front of a ‘rammed earth’ house, known as tapia in Spanish, but most commonly as pisé de terre. The front door of this modest home was wide open and only a weather beaten screen door  was in place to keep the various crawling or slithering creatures that were everywhere to be found, from coming right on in. I called out: “Hello there”, and was in very short order standing in front of an elderly woman (she was in fact 87) who said; “You must be Robert.”

Elsie Thetford was born in 1883 into an old Boston Brahmin family and in 1901, at the age of 18 was presented into society at a Newport Rhode Island summer ball. Her family were friends of the famous Newport artist John La Farge, who married Margaret Mason Perry, from the even more famous family of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, born in Kingston Rhode Island, and his most renowned younger brother, Commodore Mathew Calbraith Perry of Newport, who, in 1853, sailed into Tokyo Bay and negotiated the first US - Japanese trade agreement. In Boston Elsie’s parents were occasional guest at the home of Isabella Stewart Gardner in the Fenway,  that is when Isabella was not in her lovely house in Venice - that I did visit many years later and was actually let in by saying Robert Luongo from Boston. [That visit I made to Venice is another story altogether and concerns Henry James, who in his youth lived in Newport , and later in life was a frequent guest at the Stewart Gardner’s Palazzo Barbaro just off the Grand Canal.] Ms. Gardner, 1840-1924, is most remembered as one of the most prodigious American art collectors and, of course, by John Singer Sargent’s famous portrait of her.

And there I was, being welcomed into this charming home in the middle of the New Mexico scrub land of cacti and rattlesnakes, and the biggest sky you have ever seen. “Well how do you do Robert?” is what she said as she showed me into her modest parlour. There was an original Georgia O’Keeffe on the wall, which had been, she said, a gift, in exchange for a particular puppet Georgia loved, and seeing as they were friends and nearly neighbours, neighbours, that is, according to the American south-west where distances are thought of in a far different way.

Mid way between Abiquiu and Taos was a very small town called San Cristobal Taos where in the early 1920’s D. H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda spent, on two separate occasions separated by a return trip to England, a couple of years at a small homestead now known as the D.H. Lawrence Ranch. As an exchange for a Lawrence manuscript the house was deeded to Frieda and was the only property either of them ever owned. Elsie and her husband - I’ve not mentioned him yet - were once invited to meet the English couple and Elsie told me how Lawrence was then not very well and was ostensibly in New Mexico to rest and, as always, write. As he was tubercular the dry heat of summer was hoped to be beneficial.

Elsie was married in Boston in 1905 to a civil engineer and land surveyor from a prominent New England family. The territory of New Mexico, Arizona and most of Texas was pretty much unchartered Indian land and the US Government was offering a job to someone who would go there and map the area as well as build storm water drains and aqueducts to combat the raging waters from flash-flooding that could come on so quickly that a dry gulch one minute was a terrifying torrent capable of carrying away anything, from a large vehicle to cattle, in it’s rapids. And so a year or two after the couple married they set off for New Mexico where Elsie and her husband, with the help of local Pueblo Indians, built their home. In 1914 Europe was at war and in 1917 Lieutenant Thetford sailed for England as part of the US war effort to combat the ‘Evil Hun’ as Germany was referred to in the American press, quite possibly originating in any one of the many William Randolph Hearst newspapers. That I don’t really know for sure.

Elsie had been a widow now for quite some years and while she could have gone ‘back east’ decided to stay on in Abiquiu after her husband passed away. I stayed only two days, sleeping on a day bed in a small guest room. Elsie cooked for us and had no regular help, except if there were serious storms and then she said men from the Pueblo would check on her and make sure she was alright. We talked and also walked. Our walks are the most memorable things for me. Elsie carried a walking stick which, due to her age, I assumed was a needed support. As we moved along across the scrub land with cacti and sagebrush scattered out as far as you could see, with the San Cristobal Mountains rising up in the distance in the most vivid purple colour, I heard a sound I had only ever heard about. There was before us a rattler, about four foot long, and Elsie and I just stopped. She proceeded to put the walking stick out in front of her as far as her arm could reach. Faster than you can imagine, that deadly rattlesnake wrapped itself around the stick. With a strong movement of her arm Elsie flung the snake some several feet off to the side. She carried on walking and continued what she had been saying prior to our visitor coming up upon us. She smiled her wry smile, for she knew that this city boy had never seen that before.

The next morning after breakfast I thanked my host so much for her kindness and how easily she trusted me and welcomed me into her home, never once taking exception to this twenty year old fellow wearing his hair long, carrying only a knap-sack from the Army & Navy Store in which there was nothing but a copy of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, James Joyce’s Ulysses and a comb I’d bought at the Five and Dime.

            Robert Luongo

 

Death of the Poet By Mikhail Lermontov

A poem written in honour of the great Russian writer Pushkin

By Mikhail Lermontov

Death of the Poet

 

 

 

Revenge, the Emperor, revenge!

I will fall at your feet:

Be just and punish the murderer,

That his sentence in the next century

Heralded to offspring your right court,

And that the villains will see example in it.

 

 

The Poet's dead! - a slave to honor -

He fell, by rumor slandered,

Lead in his breast and thirsting for revenge,

Hanging his proud head!...

The Poet's soul could not endure

Petty insult's disgrace.

Against society he rose,

Alone, as always...and was slain!

Slain!...What use is weeping now,

The futile chorus of empty praise

Excuses mumbled full of pathos?

Fate has pronounced its sentence!

Was it not you who spitefully

Rebuffed his free, courageous gift

And for your own amusement fanned

The nearly dying flame?

Well now, enjoy yourselves...he couldn't

Endure the final torture:

Quenched is the marvelous light of genius,

Withered is the triumphal wreath.

 

Cold-bloodedly his murderer

Took aim...there was no chance of flight:

His empty heart beat evenly,

The pistol steady in his hand.

No wonder...from far away

The will of fate sent him to us

Like hundreds of his fellow vagrants

In search of luck and rank;

With impudence he mocked and scorned

The tongue and mores of this strange land;

He could not spare our glory,

Nor in that bloody moment know

"gainst what he'd raised his hand!...

 

He's slain - and taken by the grave

Like that unknown, but happy bard,

Victim of jealousy wild,

Of whom he sang with wondrous power,

Struck down, like him, by an unyielding hand.

 

Why did he quit the blissful peace of simple fellowship

To enter this society, so envious and stifling

To hearts of free and fiery passion?

Why did he give his hand to worthless slanderers,

How could he have believed their hollow words

And kindness, he, who'd ever understood his fellow man?...

 

 And they removed his wreath, and set upon his head

A crown of thorns entwined in laurel:

           The hidden spines were cruel

           And pierced his noble brow;

Poisoned were his final moments

By sly insinuations of mockers ignorant,

And thus he died - for vengeance vainly thirsting

Secretly vexed by false hopes deceived.

           The wondrous singing's ceased,

           T'will never sound again.

           His refuge, gloomy and small,

           His lips forever sealed.

          

_____

And you, the offspring arrogant

Of fathers known for malice,

Crushing with slavish heels the ruins

Of clans aggrieved by fortune's game!

You, greedy hordes around the throne,

Killers of Freedom, Genius and Glory!

     You hide beneath the canopy of law

     Fall silent  -  truth and justice before you...

But justice also comes from God, corruption's friends!

     The judge most terrible awaits you:

     He's hardened to the clink of gold,

He knows your future thoughts and deeds.

Then will you turn in vain to lies:

     They will no longer help.

And your black blood won't wash away

     The poet's sacred blood!

 

1837

 

 

 

 

 

The following notes are provided by Karim Filiakov, a first year student at Dallas College in Cape Town South Africa. The notes were originally in Russian and were translated by Karim into English.

 

This poem is a response to the tragic death of Pushkin who died Jan. 29, 1837. Lermontov was sick when he heard about the fatal duel. Lermontov learned of the last days of Pushkin’s from his doctor N.F. Arendt, who visited wounded poet.      (Karim Filiakov, Cape Town, 2010)

 

 

In this poem Lermontov expresses his outrage at the Russian aristocracy because of their attitude towards Pushkin and also in regards to his death. Pushkin's death was not accidental, but was a consequence of the relationship between himself and the Court.  According to contemporaries, Tsar Nikolay I received a copy of the poem. Lermontov and his friend – a writer and ethnographer, Svyatoslav Afanasievich Rayevski(1808-1876), who actively participated in the spreading of the poem, was arrested and prosecuted. In March, according to the sentence, Lermontov was sent to join a military regiment in the Caucasus.

 

Revenge, the Emperor, revenge! - The epigraph to the poem is taken from the tragedy of the French writer Jean de Rotrou (1609-1650) "Venceslas" (1648) and was modified by A.A. Gendre, a Russian playwright and translator.

 

The Poet's dead! - a slave to honor... - The phrase "slave of honor" was borrowed from the dedication to Pushkin's poem "The Prisoner of the Caucasus".

 

Cold-bloodedly his murderer took aim... - The killer of Pushkin was Georges d'Anthes(1812-1895), Lieutenant of the Cavalry Regiment (from 1834). He was adopted by Netherlands Envoy Baron L. Hecker, who, among other things, introduced Dantes to the salons at Court frequented by the Russian aristocracy. The persecution of the poet, which ended with the duel, was organized by this aristocracy. After the duel with Pushkin, Dantes was exiled to France.

 

...from far away тhe will of fate sent him to us, like hundreds of his fellow vagrants, in search of luck and rank... - Dantes arrives in St. Petersburg in 1833 after the War in the Vendee.

 

- like that unknown, but happy bard, Victim of jealousy wild... - a reminder about Vladimir Lensky from the Pushkin's novel "Eugene Onegin".

 

And you, the offspring arrogant of fathers known for malice... - This line and the ones that follow it were written later - in response to the words of those who justified the murder of the poet.