Javant Biarujia


SECRET FOOTNOTES FOR GEORGE SEFERIS


1.       story and myth make
           history the ancients well
           understood the cleft
2.       feasts of hunger the
           poet Dionysius
           dined
3.       what good came of it
           Orestes at his fathers
           tomb digging up the past
4.       and if the soul is
           to know a soul it must look
           into a soul
5.       do you know how remote
           “meadows” sound here not counting
           “asphodels”
6.       at the Fall you are
           either flung from the walls or
           slain by Odysseus
7.       no one turns his head
           or hers here to Erebus
           on visiting the dead
8.       so little children light fires
           in the streets and for good measure
           if not luck jump over them


“AMBER”

forever amber along those death valley days
clear your mind of Kant! reaganomics flummoxed
syndrome comparati defectus immunitatis
“Never heard of it! — Just say no, Nancy-boy.”

that two bit b-grade blackballing el Presidente
says who Gorby: tyro thru the pyrrhics with me!
nuntius fulminans: PUPPET OR PEOPLES MAN?
no early bedtime for Bonzo it s the holidays!


TVASHTRI

Dear T—,
Just a quick note after your call last night, reminding me to watch Prospero’s Books on the teev.
     As I said, with the exception of The Draughtsman’s Contract (his first film of note), I have been disappointed by Peter Greenaway’s films. Prospero’s Books was no exception, which was a great pity, for it prefigures elements in Greenaway’s latest film, The Pillow Book, which I was intending to see, hoping it would be the turning of the tide for my appreciation of his work. Now I’m not so sure, and I want to tell you why.
     Unlike Fellini, the master of the bizarre au naturel; unlike Derek Jarman, sensuality par excellence, who also made a version of The Tempest; unlike Fassbinder, whose stylisations create cinematographic poems; unlike Wertmüller, who can generate all manner of wrenching emotions in the viewer; and unlike Pasolini, enfant terrible (Teorema is a masterpiece; Salò, an outrage), Greenaway is dead, dead, dead. (Ken Russell, by the way, is another kettle of fish — no time to examine him here. And then there’s Césaire’s remarkable adaptation, Une tempête, where Prospero stood for colonialism and Caliban, oppressed blacks; again, no time.) Greenaway could never engender the gamut of emotions these film makers I’ve just mentioned do — not to mention Rossellini, Visconti, Antonioni, Almodóvar, Kurosawa — and I haven’t even touched on the French! He suffers what Lawrence Durrell called the “English death”. The characters in his films are gilded corpses — or, in the case of Prospero’s Books, Gielguded corpses. Actually, Jarman spoke to Gielgud about making his version of The Tempest, and Gielgud replied that if he did it, he would want to do it on Bali. What a pity his idea wasn’t taken up. Jarman wanted Gielgud to play all the parts, Miranda, Ariel and Caliban, so much more playful than Greenaway could ever be.
     To use Brian Eno’s jargon, Greenaway is digital, whereas, for instance, Jarman is analogue. Greenaway, like a digital compact disc, is seamless: no distortions, no accidents, no room for extemporisation, no interstices (i.e., no intestines!) All those extras, all those acrobatics, all those repetitions of images and actions, all those grandiose sets, all the superimposed screens, all that saturated color, all that unceasing quasi-classical Muzak and all that relentless soliloquy could not save Prospero’s Books from Greenaway’s deadening to the senses. (Greenaway’s films remind me of the long-winded telephone caller, so preoccupied with himself that he doesn’t notice you have put the receiver down and gone to make yourself a cup of coffee — or do the dishes — or water the garden before coming back in and adding a perfunctory YES, YES, I SEE.) Greenaway does to cinema what Philip Glass does to music: you only need to see/hear one work, and you have the complete oeuvre.
     Greenaway is going the way poor Fellini did — he’ll run out of tricks one day, just as the Italian maestro did in And the Ship Sailed On. He’ll find himself a parody of himself. I said to my lover as we were watching Prospero’s Books, “What this film needs is a dose of French and Saunders.” “You’ve hit the nail on the head,” my lover replied. “Greenaway is completely devoid of humor.” Here, we return to Greenaway’s being digital, meaning even, perfect, seamless, no ups or downs. Greenaway has no range — he’s celluloid Prozac. Jarman puts it this way, about The Draughtsman’s Contract: “[I]t has no shadows, in spite of the murder at the end. It has more than enough elements to appeal to British snobbism — aristocrats, a country house, a pretentious, stagey script, and named actors. It’s the upstairs without the downstairs of independent films.”
     Derek Jarman’s Tempest is far superior to Greenaway’s adaptation, despite having been made on a shoe-string budget. (I wonder, as Jarman is dead, and as he spoke of his ideas so often to Gielgud, whether Greenaway stole any of his [unused] ideas. Of course, that explains it: like all secondhand ideas, it lacks soul.) One of the greatest moments of British cinema history is the finale of Jarman’s Tempest, where Elisabeth Welsh emerges from a cave on the beach and, mingling with the sailors at the marriage party, sings Stormy Weather.
     I know you like Greenaway, so this is important to me. After all, my love of the cinema — as of books — derived from you. (You were the acculturating force in our otherwise barren family.) You won’t have time to respond before going back to India, but perhaps one day you’ll be able to tell me like it is from your perspective.
Ever yours.

PS: I forgot to mention, in my haste, and perhaps out of a sense of decorum, that despite all the nudity in Prospero’s Books, all those flouncing genitals, the film was utterly unerotic, anaphrodisiac; there was no sensuality, no passion, no arousal, whatsoever for the viewer.

for my brother Jim



Javant Biarujia's poetry, essays and translations have appeared in Australia, England, Japan, Canada and the United States. His last collection of poems, Low/Life, was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year award in 2003, while Pointcounterpoint: New & Selected Poems 1983 – 2008 is forthcoming from Salt Publications.

 
 
 
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