[Being a review of ‘FIRELIGHT CRUMBLED’ : Tomas Lurgsy and the Bulgarian Farm Poets Movement: An Experiment in Poetical Criticism, by J T Marsden]
The warning sign is neon-lit; the alarm bells ringing like a thousand wind-chimes on a windy day. A rough ride is guaranteed: all bets off. Unless ‘rough ride’ is considered a compliment, in which case I shall gladly retrieve the word and put it safely back in my pocket. For I am not in the habit of handing out compliments, especially to books as silly as this.
Hark: the forewarning of things to come from the pen of J T Marsden. For only in the second paragraph he writes these words: ‘I gave up pulling sensation’s tail in my twenties. The thrill of making the academic world squeal like pigs has long since lost its attraction for me. My bottom drawer of review slips has plenty enough ‘polemical’s for the meantime…’
A gesture of maturity is the most immature thing one could ask for a writer to indulge in. As I read these words, I glimpse an imprint of the author’s smile as he wrote them. ‘Pulling sensation’s tail’: this is where the grin burns brightest. ‘I am not sensational’ are the words of a born and bred sensationalist. ‘I don’t care about what the academic world thinks’: the lonesome cry of one who cares about nothing more. It is because Marsden knows that they will squeal that he allows himself to say that it doesn’t matter if they don’t. As for the drawer of ‘polemical’s, all I can say is that I never gave him one. And never shall. For as it stands, there is no less thrilling, and no more lumbering a critic than Mr J T Marsden. He could bore the ears of a brown bear, if only the bear could bear him (which one doubts he could, bears having a relatively low pain threshold in the face of stale literary criticism).
Marsden’s ‘introduction’ is, in fact, no more than a rushed catalogue of excuses. Plodding through the possible approaches a critic might take to his subject, he makes a show of explaining why it is that he has shunned the most obvious. But his explanations are lacking. For instance, he eschews the cynical approach on the account that it is a story in which he is ‘not especially interested’. What kind of an answer is this? If this flippant sentiment reveals anything, it is that the engineer of its maddening fuzziness owns a toolbox full of unfastened screws. For ‘not interested’ perhaps we should actually be reading ‘not capable’. For this is surely what all of this bunkum is really about. Marsden’s ‘scattershot approach’, with its almost cunning lack of respect for conventional structures and methodologies, is no more than the handiwork of a man who simply cannot be bothered to think about what he is doing. Consider this wonderful sentence:
‘Unarmed with the armour of conventional structure, I entered the timeless sphere of the pure text.’
With due respect, I have in the past been personally criticised for throwing myself headfirst into a treacherous mire of tangled language. But for all the spirit of gracious repentance, it would not befit me to ignore the wrong in others. And for all that I have written in the past, I cannot think that I have ever scaled the inverted heights of this consummately asinine expression. What, pray, does it mean? This ‘timeless sphere of the text’ sounds heavenly, I’ll admit, but heaven knows it cannot exist – and if it does, what the hell makes Marsden suppose that he is ferreting about there in person, sans armour? For if text was ever pure (and it never was) the merest touch of such a clumsy critic would immediately tarnish its glow. And yet, funnily enough, though I remain eternally under-confident as to what exactly is going on in this sentence, there might yet be a glimmer of unconscious truth in it. As it happens, Marsden the critic does indeed resemble a man without armour. The problem is: where he thinks that this is a good thing, I contend that it is quite the opposite. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Marsden buzzing about naked in the ‘timeless sphere of the pure text’ is as much an image of dignity as an inebriate old man stumbling about naked in Times Square, New York.
For proof that Marsden is aware of his own apparent frailties, despite his gregariously gung-ho introduction, we need look no further than the second paragraph of Part One. Carefully slotted into prose that is otherwise bristling with self-righteousness, we find the little phrase ‘it would seem’. I have no initial problem with this phrase. Literature is full of things that ‘seem’ to be so, and it is undoubtedly the role of the critic to maintain an atmosphere of ‘seeming’ – to admit, when necessary, that the ground beneath our feet is no more solid than the ice atop a winter pond. What bothers me is that, despite his acceptance of the concept of ‘seeming’ Marsden is always extremely reluctant to look beyond the solitary solution. Everything he sees ‘seems’ to point to one thing. But surely, if it only ‘seems’, then it is yet uncertain that it is. If one is to believe in ‘seeming’ one must cast away one’s beliefs in basic resolutions. This is not something that Marsden does. Almost without exception he interprets each line according to a single idea. When he does encounter other ideas (dealing, for instance, with the wealth of interpretations surrounding the poem ‘The Pig and Poetry’) his attitude is merely to refute them in light of his own enlightened theories. A ‘scattershot’ approach? On the contrary, a highly predictable one.
One of the main reasons that I take issue with this particular point is that I personally know of other ways in which these same lines of poetry can be read. I don’t necessarily believe that my ways are any more ‘right’ than Marsden’s, but I do think that they ‘seem’ just as plausible. A brief discussion of the first four lines of Lurgsy’s poetry upon which Marsden lowers his yellowed critical teeth will prove my point.
Like Maso’s mud
drawn from the throat’s pit
The Adriatic Swamp
washed through feet
According to Marsden, ‘Maso’ is a character from a Hungarian fairytale. I could not deny this. Maso is indeed a character from a Hungarian fairytale: a character who did, indeed, vomit a substance that might have been mud. Furthermore, I will happily concede that this Maso would indeed ‘seem’ to relate to the first two lines of Lurgsy’s poem. But it is also worth pointing out the existence of another Maso, who might also ‘seem’ to relate to the same poem. This Maso is Maso Masakitz, a close friend of Tomas Lurgsy’s. Masakitz owned land that backed onto Lurgsy’s farm and regularly sold him manure, as Lurgy’s surprisingly well-kept financial accounts have proved. This manure, I contend, might otherwise be thought of as mud; its character confused in the process of translation (the Bulgarian words for ‘mud’ and ‘manure’ being remarkably similar). I sense the reader’s eyebrows primed for ready elevation – and rightly so. The whole business of ‘translation’ in regards to the BFPM has not yet been broached. And yet it is the most essential issue; one which Marsden is arrogant enough to ignore at every given opportunity. For this is the truth: not once does this woolly-headed buffoon grapple with the fact that these poems were originally written in Bulgarian. He treats every word as if it were the original, rather than – as we must accept – a cheap imitation. If this fellow is armour-less, then he is also brainless. To overlook the business of translation when analysing foreign poetry is akin to overlooking the business of breathing when deep sea diving.
Where Marsden’s reading of ‘Maso’s mud’ fits in well with his concept of the BFPM as a primarily academic movement, my reading brings it back down to earth, revealing a possible resonance with contemporary concerns or practicalities (i.e.: the source of one’s manure). And you may see that I am as able as my enemy to plough forward onto lines three and four without sliding off the road of reason. Again, I am not entirely opposed to Marsden’s belief that ‘The Adriactic Swamp/washed through feet’ might be referring to the work of the novelist Andrey Makakorov, even despite my knowledge of the ‘coincidence’ of Marsden’s present involvement with that particular Russian writer (he is current writing a biography of Makakorov; a commission he accepted before beginning work on this book). However, I wish once more to present another way of looking at these lines: a welcome alternative, designed to accompany rather than directly oppose the first. Again, the significant figure is Lurgsy’s friend Maso Masakitz – hardly surprising, after all, that the same man should dominate the same four lines of poetry. As I have noted, Masakitz made money selling large quantities of manure, which he personally collected from various sources, where we must suppose said dung was ‘washed through feet’. Having collected the droppings, it is well documented that Masakitz took it home in buckets and stored it in a disused well, or ‘pit’ outside his house. This same house was described by Willem Drövka in a letter to a Danish prostitute as being ‘shaped like a throat’ – a result of Masakitz’s very personal reaction to the tenets of modern architecture. Here we see the meaning of ‘drawn from the throat’s pit’. As for the appearance of ‘The Adriatic Swamp’, I would suggest that this might well be a new idea, introduced by the poet without reference to any exterior text or contemporary actuality. If it relates to anything, it might be to Lurgsy’s ambivalent and sometime tempestuous relationship with the Adriatic, which he describes elsewhere as being ‘a shimmering diamond’ and yet ‘a rotten cesspool’. Needless to say, my offer of this alternative reading does not come with the requirement that you should accept it in its totality, nor that any kind of acceptance counts as allegiance towards me as a critic. You may accept my word concerning Masakitz, but side with Marsden over Makakarov. I at least have the grace to allow you to take the decision yourself.
To deconstruct every line of Marsden’s work would be tiresome. The task would also steal time from my pockets. Furthermore, I have no inclination towards strategic disagreement. Though presently involved in a criticism of Marsden’s work, it befits me not to get overexcited by the meanness of my assignment, to inhale the vapours of attack and become intoxicated, unable to resist each additional insult. Quite simply – I will not disagree for the sake of it. I will even go so far as to say that I suspect many of Marsden’s comments that follow in reference to Ivan Basiuk and bees might actually be creating a positively accurate buzz. Although I must draw attention, in passing, to his use of the phrase ‘a colony of bees’. The last time I cared to look, the collective term was ‘bee hive’. Otherwise, he is right to focus on the origins of the comparison between the insect and the boiled sweet – and most probably correct to surmise that Lurgsy was guilty of that most heinous crime: learning from one of one’s disciples.
We move on, yet, and once again I find myself subject to respiratory problems originating from the heady exhaust of shoddy criticism. I refer now to Marsden’s attitude regarding Ludomir Birovnik’s noble poem ‘The Pig and Poetry’. Why oh why is he is so keen to dismiss the prevalent interpretation? For all that I support writers casting their nets into uncertain waters (and you know that I do) I cannot help but see something of the self-indulgent and self-conscious about Marsden’s cloth-headed attempt to disagree with what has been commonly accepted for some years now. ‘It would not seem to be in Birovnik’s character to veil his emotions so’ he argues, going on to cite ‘Rabbit Run’ as an example of the poet’s otherwise directly confrontational manner. This is a great misunderstanding. In the latter poem, Birovnik’s anger is directed firstly against rabbits: an enemy which few men would have cause to fear. For all their capability as breeders and adversaries of soil, the rabbits of history have rarely sought retribution against angry poets. The second enemy in this poem (the start of which can be found elsewhere in Marsden’s study) is the eponymous ‘Farmer from Varna’ – who we know to be a small balding man, with the muscles of a muskrat. In ‘The Pig and Poetry’ however, in which he very definitely does confront issues relating to problems with Tomas Lurgsy’s personality, there is clear reason to veil his emotions. When Lurgsy (six foot four and capable of holding aloft a small tractor) was a student, a close female friend once criticised the shade of a shirt that he was wearing. It took eighteen people to calm him down. This is only one of many stories recounting Lurgsy’s swift-footed temperament. In other cases, it took as many as twenty-four people to hold him back (though some of those people may have been less strong than the previous eighteen).
What this tells us, though, is that the consequences of openly arguing with Lurgsy were not pleasant, even for a man such as Birovnik, who by all accounts was no coward. We forget, perhaps, of the hold that Lurgsy had over his fellow Bulgarian Farm Poets. Marsden describes him as an ‘engine’ and ‘catalyst’ – we might also add ‘pimp’, albeit employed in a metaphorical sense. For Lurgsy strictly controlled the movements made by Drövka, Birovnik, Basiuk and Pingot. According to one critic, he opened their mail, buttered their toast and chose their wardrobe. The only thing that we can be sure that he didn’t do, at least not on a regular basis, is read their poetry – though one might argue that Birovnik’s complaint is rendered ineffectual by the fact that he toned down the poem just in case the man who never read it actually did.
Allow me to conclude by returning to Marsden’s introduction, wherein his evident faults are subtly scattered like ashes within a series of nonsensical sentences. Contemplating the difficulties of literary criticism, the man muses: ‘The greatest challenge is movement: proceeding from one point to another without one’s critical trousers falling down’. We see what he means. He desires that his prose might flow, as does a river, a strea:, the ocean. But his anxiety in this area has clearly taken control of other intellectual faculties. Movement within criticism is indeed a challenge. But the greatest challenge? Surely the greatest challenge is to be understood? And to be understood, what say one’s readers deserve a little more than four lines of a poem at a time, before being whisked off to another place entirely, simply for the sake of ‘movement’? For just as the poems of the BFPM must be understood, by English readers, as forms altered by translation, so too must they be contemplated – as poems ought to be – in their entirety. To chop verse into so many bits smacks of the knacker’s yard, where the bones and flesh of noble beasts are processed into a range of ignoble and beastly products – unfit for human consumption. I repeat: movement is a challenge, but to be understood: that is a much greater challenge. Understand?
Review by Georgy Riecke
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