Thanks, Fred.
I can't think why I used the misleading word 'stoop', unless it's because I felt
about two feet taller than Wilson.
Max
Quoting Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]>:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 4:19 PM
> Subject: memory snap: my john dover wilson
>
>
> >
> > My John Dover Wilson, 1963
> >
> >
> > The pleasure of my company being
> > requested, I stand at attention, shake hands,
> >
> > feeling (fresh out of Auckland)
> > ill at ease in Edinburgh,
> >
> > and stoop to fumbling talk with scholarship's
> > venerable Shakespearean, John
> >
> > Dover Wilson. 'Your research?' he asks.
> > 'Auden', I say. 'But he's alive! and is
> >
> > he any good? You know, for me, poetry
> > still hasn't recovered from the death
> >
> > of young Rupert Brooke.' My moment passes,
> > I am dumb; telling others afterwards,
> >
> > I tend to stumble, saying Keats instead
> > of Brooke. To be English and inwardly
> >
> > assured of all that continuity!
> > From some unlettered countryman's lips
> >
> > (he liked to say) some phrase of Hamlet's might
> > still be heard, pithy, wise, and English.
> >
> > So poets draw on the folk's rich word-hoard.
> > 'You rough-hew them, Oi'll shape the ends.'
> >
> > That's what Wilson on a country walk had heard.
> > Auden and I, what did we have but reading?
> >
> >
> > Max Richards
> >
> >
>
> Max, this is delightful -- absolutely pins down the man and his attitudes,
> but without demeaning him. Only "stoop to" bothers me. To stoop to
> something is to condescend to it, and that's not what your *speaker is
> doing. Why not, "And fumble talk with scholarship's ..." etc.? ----- Glad
> you like my two recent. - Fred
>
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