`The Voice Behind the Voice'

Simultaneously reading Tacitus and Michael Longley for the first time and for no particular reason has set off pleasant sparks of serendipity and convergence. The Roman historian I have avoided for decades largely, I think, because I was so indifferent a student of Latin. Considering what my youthful laziness has cost me in terms of learning and pleasure leaves me paralyzed with shame. Such a waste, I think, then I move on to something remote from what little I loved about conjugating amo.

What steeled my resolution was Clive James’ chapter on Tacitus and random frequent references to him throughout Cultural Amnesia. Of the 106 men and women James considers, only a handful predate the 20th century and the earliest by far is Publius Cornelius Tacitus (ca. A.D. 55-ca. 120). The historian is central to James’ vision and method: “Throughout this book, Tacitus…is the voice behind the voice.” He extols the historian’s “powers of condensed expression,” a quality in prose I value above all others, but which Samuel Johnson held against Tacitus. Here’s what Boswell reports in his Life of Johnson:

“We talked of Tacitus, and I hazarded an opinion, that with all his merit for penetration, shrewdness of judgement, and terseness of expression, he was too compact, too much broken into hints, as it were, and therefore too difficult to be understood. To my great satisfaction Dr. Johnson santioned this opinion. `Tacitus, Sir, seems to me rather to have made notes for an historical work, than to have written a history.’”

Johnson is wrong. I am reading The Histories as translated by W.H. Fyfe and revised by D.S. Levene, in an Oxford University Press paperback. At least in translation, Tacitus’ style is remarkably modern. He writes clearly and without embellishment. When a thought is finished, he stops writing. He spares us preliminaries, wheel-spinning and the ornamentation that serves only to clog sentences and thinking. When writing of Vesparian, he might be writing of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant:

“Vesparian was an indefatigable campaigner. He headed the column, chose the camping-ground, never ceasing by day or night to use strategy and, if need be, the sword to thwart the enemy. He ate what he could get, and dressed almost like a common soldier. Indeed, save for his avarice, he matched the generals of old days.”

Here’s James on Tacitus’ cold-eyed gaze in writing (in Annals) about the killing of Sejanus’ daughter:

“We know now, in retrospect, that even worse things happened in the time of Tacitus than he could realize. But he did face up to the worst thing he knew. Though it took the whole of his art to write it down, his art was not the first thing on his mind: the first thing on his mind was to register the intractable fact of an innocent, unjust death. He could not make the girl immortal. When we say that she has never ceased to speak, we speak metaphorically. She died. In fact, as he tells us, it was even worse. Because virgins were safe from the executioner, she was raped first, so that no laws would be broken. The Nazi execution squads in the east were obeying the law too.”

I chose to read Michael Longley, the Northern Irish poet, because I had read many good things about him and because he often writes about the natural world. He’s good on weeds and birds, and also on children, but seems haunted by the specter of World War I, in which his father fought, and by the Trojan War. Like Tacitus he addresses the endless war that is history. Here’s “In the Iliad,” from the 2000 collection The Weather in Japan:

“When I was left alone with our first-born
She turned in the small hours her hungry face
To my diddy and tried to suck that button.
Her spittle condenses on my grey hairs.

“We wear them like medals for our children
And even in nakedness look overdressed.
In the Iliad spears go through them and,
Later, one’s ripped from Agamemnon’s chest.”

Sejanus’ daughter and Longley’s daughter resonate across centuries. The juxtaposition of children and war is always horrifying, and Longley is a poet of connections and condensed history. From a sonnet titled “Poetry,” here are the final, unspeakably sad lines:

“When Thomas Hardy died his widow gave Blunden
As a memento of many visits to Max Gate
His treasured copy of Edward Thomas’s Poems.”

In the sixties, Longley wrote “Homage to Dr Johnson,” collected in Poems: 1963-1983. Longley is typically compassionate about Johnson, the most compassionate and stoical of men. Here are three of the poems 22 lines:

“There was no place to go but his own head
Where hard luck lodged as in an orphanage
With the desperate and the underfed.”