David Jones from 'The Fatigue'

David Jones (1895-1974)

Why me?

In this particular case, why is this soldier on duty at The Crucifixion and not that one?

More generally, why did some soldiers sign up for the first world war and find themselves in units sent into action on their first day at the front while others, signing up on the same day, found themselves transferred to garrison duties?

Why me? What impossible string of accidents and co-incidences caused me to be here at that particular place and time?

This extract from ‘The Fatigue’ answer that question. It begins a long way away in a guarded room. Anonymous decision makers make their decisions for reasons that are hidden, influenced by anything from bad wine, a broken heating system or a cold draft. It’s not personal. They didn’t choose you for a reason related to ‘who’ you are. But gradually the results of each decision pick up momentum. There’s an increase in the rhythm as the decisions move inexorably closer to their final unintended target.

It’s the best answer to ‘why me’ that I know.

A Note on Pronunciation

Jones’s writing is characterised by his use of non-English words. With the Anglo-Saxon and Welsh I’m reasonably sure how close i am with the pronunciation but with Latin I have no idea. Jones was at pains to point out that ‘inconspicious’ in this extract was not a misprint for inconspicuous.

‘The Fatigue’ was published in ‘The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments’ (Faber). I’ve used this version and read the last third or so of ‘The Fatigue’ . In the magnificent new edition of ‘The Grail Mass and other works’ (Bloomsbury Academic) what I have read is presented as a self contained section. In this version it ends

Partee-party, halt.
Party-stand fast men detailed-
re-mainder- steady!
Middle watch-to quarters-Dismiss

David Jones' 'The Hunt'.

David Jones (1895-1974) has been described as ‘the forgotten British Modernist’. But he was a genre all to himself, a modernist who loved Malory, a catholic who was fascinated by the Matter of Britain and the symbolism and liturgy of the mass. No one blurred the distinction between poetry and prose, or calls the distinction into account more thoroughly than he did.

'In Parenthesis' is probably unique, certainly my vote for the best book to come out of the first world war, but whether it’s prose, or poetry or poetic prose I don’t know and honestly don’t care.

The Hunt is taken from ‘The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments’. Jones notes, at the end, that is part of an incomplete attempt based the Medieval Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen…a significant part of which tells of the hunting of the great boar Twyrth by all the war bands of the Island led by Arthur.

Ezra Pound's 'Canto II'

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) is possibly both the most influential and the most controversial poet of the twentieth century. Love him or loathe him, there’s a lot to learn from his poetry even if all you want to do is explain why you think it’s terrible. As an adult in any democracy you can make up your own mind about his politics and how it affects his poems and your reading of them.

I’ve read the Cantos through twice. So to say they are unreadable is obviously false. But they contain great swathes of boring, badly written prose; page after page littered with Chinese symbols and/or bits of Greek, and Canto after Canto of tedious attempts at ‘history’. They also contain jaw dropping moments of beauty.

This is the second Canto and it swings. I know no Greek so my pronunciation of Greek words and names is probably inaccurate.

Basil Buntings' 'Villon'

Basil Bunting (1900-1985) is one of the great English poets of the 20th century. Briggflatts, which for many people is the poem that substantiates that claim was written at the end of a long writing life, and tends to overshadow his earlier poems.

Villon is the first of his ‘sonatas’, the name he gave to his longer poems. Published when he was in his mid twenties, it tangles his interest in Villon the medieval poet with his own experiences in gaol as a conscientious objector and his more recent run in with the French police.