Authors: Helen de Witt
Roemer was interested in the Homeric criticism of Aristarchus, who was head of the Library a little after 180
BC
(the unpleasantness about the tragedies was before his time). Aristarchus had wanted a perfect text of Homer; since an original manuscript did not exist, ruthlessness and cash were not enough: he had to compare copies and spot mistakes. He marked for deletion (athetised) lines he thought did not belong in the text, and was the first to write down his reasoning in commentaries. Nothing by Aristarchus survived. There were marginal notes on the
Iliad
that named no names but were probably third-hand extracts from Aristarchus; there were a few other notes that named names.
Some of the third-hand extracts struck Roemer as brilliant: they were clearly by Aristarchus, who was clearly a genius. Other extracts were too stupid for a genius: clearly by someone else. Whenever someone else was said to have said something brilliant he saw instantly that it was really by Aristarchus, and if any brilliant comments happened to be lying around unclaimed he instantly spotted the unnamed mastermind behind them.
Now it is patently, blatantly obvious that this is insane. If you are going to shuffle all the names around so that one person is always the genius, this means that you have decided not to believe your source whenever it says someone else said something good or the genius said something bad—but the source is your only reason for thinking the genius was a genius in the first place. Anyone who had stopped to think for two seconds would have seen the problem, but Roemer had managed to write an entire scholarly treatise without thinking for two seconds. Having settled on stupidity as the criterion of inauthenticity he went on to discard one stupid remark after another as really by Zenodotus or Aristophanes (no, not the) or misquoted by Didymus, with many sarcastic & gleeful asides on the ineptitude of these imbeciles.
When I first worked out that this was what he was saying I couldn’t believe he could really say it so I read another 50 pages (at a rate of 20 minutes/page, thus adding another 16.66 hours to the total) and he really was saying it. I stared at the page. I closed my eyes.
Say you grow up in the type of place that is excited to be getting its first motel, moving from town to town as one motel is finished and another begun. You are naturally not enthralled by school and achieve a solid B – average. Presently you take Scholastic Aptitude Tests and astound everyone by a degree of scholastic aptitude which places the B – average in an entirely different light. Your teachers take the result as a personal insult. You apply to various colleges, who ask for references, and teachers who have reduced you to speechless torpor write complaining of apathy. You are interviewed on the basis of dazzling scholastic aptitude and you are asked about your interests and you have no interests. You have no extracurricular activities because the extracurricular activity was the Donny Osmond Fan Club. Everyone turns down your application on grounds of apathy.
One day you are lying on a bed in one of the motel rooms. Your mother is having a bad day: she is playing Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude for the 63rd time on the piano in the adjacent room. Your father is having a good day: a member of the Gideon Society has come to suggest placing Bibles in the rooms, and he has been able to state categorically that he is not having that piece of trash in his motel. Each bedside table, he explains, has a copy of Darwin’s
Origin of Species
in the top drawer. In fact it’s a really good day because that very morning one of the guests stole the
Origin of Species
instead of a towel. You stare apathetically at the TV. They are showing A Yank at Oxford.
Suddenly you have an idea.
Surely
Oxford
, you reason, would not hold non-membership of the Donny Osmond Fan Club against you. Surely
Oxford
would not insist on mindless enthusiasm just to prove you can be enthusiastic about
something
. Surely
Oxford
would not accept hearsay as evidence. Surely
Oxford
wouldn’t hold a reference against you without knowing anything about the writer.
Why not apply?
I thought: I could leave Motelland and live among rational beings! I would never be bored again!
I had reckoned without Roemer. I now thought: Maybe it’s my German?
But he really was saying it and I really had spent 46.66 hours reading it. I stared at the page. I stared out across the dome. The space was filled with the soft sound of pages turning. I put my head on my hand.
I had spent 46+ hours on this bizarre piece of logic at a time when I had read not a word of Musil, or Rilke, or Zweig. But I did not have a scholarship to read things that were merely good; I had a scholarship to make a contribution to knowledge. I had squandered 47 hours at a time when people were dying of starvation & children sold into slavery; but I did not have a work permit to do things that were merely worth doing. If I had not needed the work permit I could have dispensed with the scholarship, & if I had gone back to the States I could have dispensed with the work permit, but I did not want to go back to the States.
There is a character in
The Count of Monte Cristo
who digs through solid rock for years and finally gets somewhere: he finds himself in another cell. It was that kind of moment.
I wished I had spent the 47 hours on dialects of the Yemen.
I tried to cheer myself up. I thought: I am in Britain! I can go to a film and catch an ad for Carling Black Label! Because the ads in Britain are the best in the world, and the ads for Carling Black Label were British advertising at its best. I couldn’t think of a film I actually wanted to see but the ad would be brilliant. But I suddenly thought that this was exactly the problem, this was the diabolical thing about life: one minute of a Carling Black Label ad to two hours of Ghostbusters XXXV that you didn’t even want to see in the first place. So I decided not to go to a film, and if only—
I decided against a film. I thought: Let’s go in search of fried chicken.
An American in Britain has sources of solace available nowhere else on earth. One of the marvellous things about the country is the multitudes of fried chicken franchises selling fried chicken from states not known for fried chicken on the other side of the Atlantic. If you’re feeling a little depressed you can turn to Tennessee Fried Chicken, if you’re in black despair an Iowa Fried Chicken will put things in perspective, if life seems worthless and death out of reach you can see if somewhere on the island an Alaska Fried Chicken is frying chicken according to a recipe passed down by the Inuit from time immemorial.
I cycled out the Cowley Road, past a Maryland Fried Chicken, past a Georgia, and all the time I was trying to think of something I could do without a work permit. I came at last to a Kansas Fried Chicken and dismounted.
I was just locking my bike when I thought suddenly:
Rilke was the secretary of Rodin
.
The things I knew about Rilke were these: that he was a poet; that he went to Paris and got a job as secretary to Rodin; and that he saw some paintings by Cézanne in an exhibition at the Grand Palais and went back day after day to stare for hours, because they were like nothing he’d seen.
I knew nothing about how Rilke got this job, so that I was free to imagine that he simply turned up on the doorstep. Why shouldn’t I simply turn up on a doorstep? I could go to London or Paris or Rome and turn up on the doorstep of a painter or sculptor, the type of person who would probably not care about a work permit. I could see things that had just come into the world and stare for hours.
I walked up and down and I tried to think of an artist who might need an assistant.
I walked up and down and I thought that perhaps it would be easier to think of an artist if I were already in London or Paris or Rome.
I did not have a lot of money, so I walked up and down trying to think of a way to get to London or Paris or Rome. At last I went into the Kansas Fried Chicken.
I was just about to order a Kansas Chik’n Bucket when I remembered that I had signed up for dinner in college. My college was famous for its chef, and yet I was tempted to stay where I was, and if only—
I won’t think that. I don’t mean that, but if only—
What difference does it make? What’s done is done.
By coincidence I had signed up to eat in college that night; by coincidence I sat by a former member who was visiting; it was no coincidence that I talked of intellectual monogamy & of work permits since I could think of nothing else, but by coincidence this former member said sympathetically that Balthus had been the secretary of Rilke, by coincidence she was the daughter of a civil servant & so not intimidated by British bureaucracy, & she said that if I could bear the shame of being known to
Why are they fighting?
WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING?
WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING?
Can’t you read what it says?
Of COURSE I can read it but WHY
Well they’re looking for samurai to defend the village from bandits
I know that
but some of them think it’s a waste of time
I know THAT
because the samurai they’ve asked have been insulted by the offer of three meals a day
I KNOW that
and now they’re saying I told you so
I KNOW THAT BUT WHY ARE THEY FIGHTING
I think this may be too hard for you.
NO
Maybe we should wait till you’re older
NO
Just till you’re 6
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
OKOKOKOKOK. OK. OK.
I think he is probably too young but what can I do? Today I read these terrible words in the paper:
In the absence of a benevolent male, the single mother faces an uphill battle in raising her son. It is essential that she provide the boy with male role models—neighbours, or uncles, or friends of the family, to share their interests and hobbies.
This is all very well but Ludo is an uncleless boy, and I don’t happen to know any well-meaning stamp collectors (if I did I would do my best to avoid them). It’s worrying. I once read that Argentine soldiers tied up dissidents and took them up in planes over the sea and threw them out. I thought: well, if L needs a role model let him watch Seven Samurai & he will have 8.
The farmers see a crowd of people. A samurai has gone to the river’s edge to be shaved by a monk
.
A man with a moustache and a sword pushes his way through the crowd and squats scratching his chin. (It’s Toshiro Mifune.)
A handsome, aristocratic young man asks someone what’s happening. A thief is hiding in a barn. He is holding a baby hostage. The samurai has asked for monk’s robes and two rice cakes
.
The samurai puts on his disguise. He feels Mifune watching and turns. His eyes are black in a white face on a black screen. Mifune stares blankly back. The samurai’s eyes are black in a white face. Mifune scratches himself. The samurai turns away. He turns back and looks at Mifune; his eyes are black his face is white. He turns away and goes to the barn
.
Mifune sits on a stump close behind him to watch
.
The samurai tells the thief he has brought food, tosses the rice cakes through the door, and follows
.
The thief runs from the barn and falls down dead
.
The samurai drops the thief’s sword in the dirt
.
The parents of the child rush forward to take it
.
Mifune runs forward brandishing his sword. He jumps up and down on the body
.
The samurai walks off without a backward look
.
type (I had admitted to 100wpm) I could have a work permit & a job.
I was about to say earlier that if I had not read Roemer on the 30th of April 1985 the world would be short a genius; I said that the world without the Infant Terrible would be like the world without Newton & Mozart & Einstein! I have no idea if this is true; I have no way of knowing if this is true. Not every genius is a prodigy & not every prodigy is a genius & at 5 it is too soon to tell. Sidis knew 12 languages at 8, lectured on solid geometry at Harvard at 12, and ended unknown to all but anxious parents of early over-achievers. Cézanne taught himself to paint in his twenties. But Bernini was a prodigy and a genius, and so was Mozart. It’s not impossible. It’s possible.
It’s possible, but is it likely? If L is a Mozart or a Newton people 10 centuries from now will be interested in the fact that he so nearly
Why did he cut off his hair? Why did he change his clothes?
WHY DID HE CUT OFF HIS HAIR? WHY DID HE CHANGE HIS CLOTHES?
WHY DID HE
He had to disguise himself as a priest so the thief wouldn’t be suspicious and kill the child.
Well why couldn’t the priest go?
I think Buddhist priests don’t believe in violence. Besides, the priest might not have been able to disarm the thief. Anyway the thing that matters is that he does it for nothing, and he does it to rescue a child, because we discover later that his greatest regret—