‘Hostage in Peking’ Sonnet circa 1968 ‘A Vacuum of Hell’

In July 1967, journalist Anthony Grey was imprisoned by the Chinese People’s government for 27 months of solitary confinement endured in the basement of his house whose exterior was daubed with anti-imperialist taunts by the Red Guard. 

 

It was his ‘vacuum of hell’, a torment magnified when he was forbidden possession of his books . . . until he discovered an instruction leaflet in his bathroom cabinet attached by ‘an elastic band round a bottle of T.C.P. [trichlorophenylmethyliodosalicyl] liquid antiseptic  . . . I eagerly absorbed the literary elegance of such phrases as: “Influenza, as a precautionary measure during epidemics, use night and morning as for colds.” And “Mouthwash: use daily diluted with about five parts water after meals.” And “Chilblains, aching feet, athletes foot: freely apply undiluted.” ’

 

Had this discovery been for Grey a sort of Damascene moment, one speculates, an encounter with his lost Rosetta Stone preserved in the bathroom cabinet, so long deprived of such emollient wording in his own cherished tongue, the language of Shakespeare? 

And, therefore, at such a moment in his ‘Forsaken Place’*, did he subconsciously attempt to deconstruct the paucity of those T.C.P. instructions – savouring each phrase in iambic pentameter – to contrive a testament to his hard wrought defiance in our time-honoured Shakespearean Measure? 

 

Did he pummel some sort of sense into those inoffensive words? I rather suspect he did.

 

                    January’s a danger month, Mother,

                    particularly when its germ toxins
                    take hold, with forty-four hurts deep in the
                    membranes of strict preventative routines

                    night and morning, so no foreign body

                    might escape into the system or leave 

                    a feverishness to see multiply 

                    the severe dampness of one’s handkerchief.

                    So extra help is needed that counteracts

                    threats of dirt-embedded skin necrosis

                    or incubated unwanted side effects. 

                    Let Nature ease discomfort . . . if you start this

                    extra internal action early enough

                    you’ll have a real chance of throwing it off.

 

*For further reflections on ‘Lazarine Literature’ and ‘The Forsaken Place’ see:

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2013/11/thought-police-message-from-secret.html 

 

Miss Emily Dickinson Communes with the Great Dictator Mr John Milton . . .

‘Do you ever yearn,’

she was asked,
on a whim,

‘to have been firstborn to
 that Master of the Poem?’

‘Daughter of blind Milton?

Why, it’s true,’
she’d shrugged with the coyest of smiles,
‘for then
I would have intimately known

the Fiend’s bade angels

were verily my own.’ 

Blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost
to his Daughter
by Eugène Delacroix (circa 1826).

Miltonic Homophones Make Mischief.

In emulation of Milton’s daughter, Miss Dickinson transcribed correctly line 344 of Book 1 of Paradise Lost, in countless editions falsely rendered thus:

                             So numberless were those bad Angels seen                                                
                             Hovering on wing under the Cope of Hell

for she recognised, unlike most – if not all – Miltonian scholars, that this dictated masterpiece contains many homophones and bad angels for bade angels is surely an example of the grave pitfalls that lie in wait for orality in versification. 

Even a fair reading of the transcript by Milton’s daughter would not necessarily have singled out the fault, however acute the blind task-master’s ear. And she . . . ? Well, Milton’s daughter – as Emily suspected – may have allowed the error to stand to colour this stern, forbidding, Epic Voice with her own mischievous girlish descant. 

                             Blind Milton: The meaning’s not mistaken, child?
                             Meek Daughter: Bade angels, bade as bidden, Father.

Do you doubt Emily’s insights; those of a preeminent bardic practitioner? Consider Milton’s verses some forty lines earlier, a narrative in which Satan arises from the fiery deep to issue rousing orders, bidding his Fallen Angels in a call to arms.  

On Hell’s. . . 
                             . . . inflamed sea he stood, and called 
                             His legions, Angel forms, who lay entranced . . .
                             Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen . . .
                             . . . Yet to their general’s voice they soon obeyed
                             Innumerable. [In other words, Bade Angels.]

After all, for every Production Line worker (in this case, over 10,000 lines!) there are bound to be a few moments for a little idle diversion.

Empress of Calvary.
Though, it has to be added, anyone who personifies themselves as ‘Empress of Calvary’ is perhaps in an invidious position when presuming to find a bum note in one of Christendom’s authentic God-given masterpieces. Except, maybe, after all, an Empress of Calvary should command Bad Angels, for they would certainly deserve to be at her impious imperious bidding. 

Or is that exactly what Emily meant?

Satan calling up his legions
by William Blake
(tempera and gold, circa 1800 - 1805)

 

 

For Great Dictators: Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Barbara Cartland, Edgar Wallace and Co. . . . see . . .
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2012/09/great-dictators-henry-james-joseph.html

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Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2014)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html