I get incredibly tense at a certain stage of writing philosophy, usually near the beginning of composition, when I have a vague sense of what I want to say but am not sure how to say it or, when I start to find an expression for the idea, I am diverted into a different direction, which shows itself only under those conditions, and I see that this is really the way to go and the earlier thoughts have to be abandoned, even though they brought me to this place I needed to be all along. It's a tension within the body that goes with spasms of mental pain that don't allow you to sit still for more than a few moments, so that you have to pace around the room, and sometimes the pain seems so intense that one feels one must abandon the task and take up fishing or knitting, or anything ... and yet there is a process that is in place and you have no choice but to submit to it and endure... until you have the draft. God, what a fuss he makes.

power cut

No light, no electricity, the bread half-baked, no computer, no radio, no television, darkness, flickering of the stove and grey moonlight through the windows, and silence as the brief candle goes out, then the hail storm, then silence again, silence and darkness, one's thoughts compose themselves in the unaccustomed leisure and absence of distraction, the circle of firelight in the surrounding darkness, the primal image, what is beyond is feared, what is caught in the light of the embers known, familiar, comfortable in the ancient sense making us strong, fortifying.

Failure of Speaking

Foolishly I start to weep
—the sound of the nocturnes

downstairs, vigorous melancholy,
the piano’s tender agitations

impressed upon the flesh, the body
of feeling—of loss—this house

and its solitary occupant
one spirit of listening melody:

forgotten associations, recalling love
—oh how I love you

And, in an identical house, the pain
of the piano interrupted

by the telephone, the caught breath
and dismay of silence:

what power subjects me,
why can I not speak

the passionate, simple words, or raise
my eyes to meet an answer in your gaze

or reach to the hand you rest upon your knee
—how I do love thee


He could not easily in public utter
whole sentences, his staff watched

and willed words into being
to catch his darting eye

above the podium, enough to stutter
phrases that do not entirely lie.

Rash, inarticulate, ruthless king,
fluent, compliant client, master

now of that strutting martial walk
into the Rose Garden, whose ardent talk,
the catch in the voice, the stifled sigh,
those crafted hesitations, bring
a boyish charm to ethical disaster.

It could have been sex or drugs or drink
or, equally, abstention from them,

but he confronted the difficulties
of any mortal man, found the spiritual use

of the mirror in the bathroom:
shock of the flecked and stricken face

as the basin emptied, the first
salutary greeting from his saviour,

but, refreshed by this cooling water,
he demanded a quick return

from his venture, accompanied now by aides
and heavy security, even the press corps,

into the inner life, no way, this, for a hero
to handle the pursuit of monsters

when the lonely path through the forest
is absolutely de rigueur—oh my love,


forgive my easy proneness to tears,
the startled emotion in the forest

from buried scenes of desire,
or call it love, the relentless

Chopin surges with it, pauses
with recollection of loss, glances

and glimmers in the mind, your face
in the piano’s nervous hesitations

half visible, mirror of my desire,
not yet for flesh (what did Plato know)

but for the holy silence that still
envelops you, and now departs

from me, false sightings
in the station concourse crowd

ah, slender black figure of light,
mourning is my karma, inwardness—love,

the (secret) will for another’s happiness.

Only, I wish—hope—against my own resolve
that moral necessity could dissolve,

submit, then, broken-sandaled, to the role
of mute erastes, possessed—of neither flesh nor soul:
—but, her image, surely, in my heart, shows

the goddess, the glory her face and eyes disclose?
No—it shows you in the aspect of desire

as our bare nature, formed in need,
in our hunger for what we lack—not greed

to have—but to be in love and beauty’s fire.


Ah, that light-footed gaiety of flesh
and supple spirit as she goes
all eager to her lover, my careful pose
of careless distance slips as we pass
uneasily on the stairs, reproach

unperceived, swiftly took its chance,
makes its point and leaves
its poison in a moment’s glance.


I am summoned forward, to present myself
at the tribunal, where a sad judge

leads us through the evidence, I myself
am juror and defendant, my case

and yours reversed, I must feel
the fire of your old desire, endure

the frown of wary withdrawal
unresponsive eromenos,

unfeeling hand caught by yours,
that committed but rejected gesture

and my sentence is: to offer now
in grief, the glad, generous welcome

as we visit and parade the infant
in your study, the quiet courtesies

of afternoon tea, scent of lavender
as we move to the patio, smiling,

as he repeats some ancient anecdote
carefully maintains the flow of conversation
to hold back the flood of his desolation.

Forgive me, that I never said farewell.

Too busy to blog

Things have calmed down and I'm free to think again, outside the parameters of established tasks. I have watched the late November sun, the early December sun, rise late in the South Eastern sky and pass low over the length of the loch. People shudder at the supposed absence of daylight up here but there is mysterious light before sunrise and after sunset and in the twilight skies are big and dramatic, even when they are heavy with rain.

I was in Edinburgh recently, en route down to Bakewell, and found a fine, lively book on Goethe by John Armstrong. I remember reading Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers when I was still at school and being transported by the passionate nature mysticism, which I noticed then much more than the love life, noticed because it gave me a language for the experience of the gorge and the valley, the rushing stream, the rocks, the giant beeches, the wind. This was at the time when I was becoming aware of his lyrical poetry through hearing the Schubert settings. Many years later I was struck by the notion of Entsagung, renunciation, the moment one knows that one has to deny an impulse that before one felt was a proper means of self-expression, so that one grows, but not in the direction one anticipated, or according to any prior and favoured conception of growth.

Armstrong is good and eloquent on these things associated with Bildung, with growth towards maturity as a human being, and this all sits well with the recent turn towards philosophy as a way of life. It is particularly pertinent to my own thinking about the nuances of the term 'world'. Armstrong is surely right to credit Goethe with the question, how should we live in an imperfect world? as the correct development of the bare question, how should we live? And it is good to see him connect this with scepticism about the natural goodness one associates with Rousseau. So the real question should be, how should we live, given that we are flawed beings in a flawed world?

I must find my old copy of Goethe's Italian Journey. There's a wonderful sighting of the young Emma Hamilton dancing on a table in skimpy dress and tambourine in a Roman salon (or was it in Naples, there's a great painting of this in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, outside which gallery as a child I used to send out my green toy yacht into the boating lake as water cascaded from the mouth of some energetic Greek god. She was the mistress, wasn't she, and then the wife? of the elderly British Ambassador. Interesting to read Goethe's observations. Strange that we don't seem to have a reciprocal word for mistress, as in husband and wife: mistress and ...? what does this show us?

Rather drifting away ... The collection of eighteen essays is now with the publisher, probably to be called Philosophers and God: Religion, Life and Reason. Quite tough to write an introduction against the clock. I'm rather weary of all the God stuff, but have to write a paper for the RIP series in February, which I'm calling 'Spirituality for the godless'. I'm wary rather than weary of the term 'spirituality' but it's a good starting off point to take us into the subjectivity of the moral life, indeed into the questions implicit in the Goethe life.