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r-j-dent · 5 years

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Palmistry by Christopher Ringrose - a review by R J Dent

Palmistry is the art of characterization and the foretelling of the future through the study of the palm of the hand. Christopher Ringrose’s 51-page volume of elegant poems named after this esoteric art is, like most enduring poetry, more concerned with the present and the past than it is with the future.

In Palmistry, Ringrose not only shows us his anthropological academic background, as is evident in his poems preoccupied with his personal mythology such as ‘To Jill’, ‘I Wanted You’ and ‘A Winter Sunday with the Children Aged Three and Five’, but also his gentler lyricism, as in ‘Modern Magi’. The collection also highlights his matter-of-fact, farmer-like bluntness, as in Ullswater in February’ and ‘A Farm in East Yorkshire, 1955’ and 'The September Hare’. The hare is a creature which is ‘Startled into leggy motion’ because ‘It knew we were coming/for some time’. Ringrose describes how the hare ‘waited for the right moment… then pushed those long brown limbs… and took off’. The poem is saturated with a palpable sense of the hare’s fear of man.

Sometimes a macabre and critical spirit haunts this latest collection of poems written by an Englishman who now lives in Australia. Australia has been a great source of inspiration for the poet, “I found it quite creative coming here,” he says. “Everything’s new.” The last point is particularly pertinent because Ringrose effortlessly adopts Australian English as the voice for some of the poems in Palmistry. One such poem is ‘Terra Nullius’:

They’re wiping Bondi clean.

The tractor hauls its silver rollers

up and down at dawn

from Icebergs to the rocks

flipping cartons, cups and single

thongs into its orange box.

A daily scrub…

In ‘Terra Nullius’, the local, the specific and the particular all serve as metaphors for national and international historical, racial, political and cultural issues. To his credit, Ringrose handles these incendiary themes and this controversial subject delicately and carefully in a poem that is deceptively simple and unadorned.

Palmistry is Chris Ringrose’s first published poetry collection and beneath an appreciation of life’s variety and restless beauty there is a keen awareness of decay, fear and disintegration. Although it is never imitative, sometimes Ringrose’s poetic voice sounds like an amalgamation of Robert Frost, Les Murray and Ted Hughes. The poems in Palmistry are bleak, intense, but always beautiful.

The publisher’s blurb for Palmistry reads:

Christopher Ringrose’s elegant and sophisticated verse explores mysteries, joys, experiences as they unfurl over decades. These are gentle, explorative, contemplative, but always surprising poems which repay reading and re-reading. Palmistry is the record of life which no one ever predicts.

Product details:

Title: Palmistry

Author: Christopher Ringrose

Publisher: In Case of Emergency Press

Pages: 51

Publication Date: February 2019

Formats: Paperback and ebook (Kindle)

Available from:

https://www.amazon.in/Palmistry-ICOE-Press-Chapbooks-2018-ebook/dp/B07PCKWN9F

And for more of Chris Ringrose’s poetry, go to: www.cringrose.com

Palmistry by Christopher Ringrose

A review by R J Dent

http://www.rjdent.com/

#Palmistry #Chris Ringrose #ICOE Press #review #poetry #rjdent #www.rjdent.com

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anastpaul · 6 years

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‘Song of the soul that is glad to know God by faith’ 14 December – The Memorial of St John of the Cross (1542-1591) Doctor of the Church

There have been a number of translations into English of the works of St John of the Cross. One of the translations which has been considered one of the best is that by the Anglo-South African convert poet Roy Campbell (2 October 1901 – 22 April 1957).

In October 2009, Roger Scruton wrote about Roy Campbell in his article “A Dark Horse” published in The American Spectator. He was hated by the English “left establishment” especially because of his position on The Spanish Civil War.

The Wikipedia entry says of Roy Campbell that he “was considered by T. S. Eliot, Edith Sitwell and Dylan Thomas to have been one of the best poets of the period between the First and Second World wars but he is seldom found in anthologies today.”

Campbell’s translations of the poetry by St John of the Cross were lavishly praised by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges

For more about Campbell`s work, R J Dent has published an essay on Roy Campbell and his work entitled: Violence and exquisite beauty – the aesthetics of Roy Campbell.

Here is a poem of St John of the Cross with the translations by the late Roy Campbell.

‘Song of the soul that is glad to know God by faith’

How well I know that fountain’s rushing flow Although by night

Its deathless spring is hidden. Even so Full well I guess from whence its source flow Though it be night.

Its origin (since it has none) none knows: But that all origin from it arose Although by night.

I know there is no other thing so fair And earth and heaven drink refreshment there Although by night.

Full well I know the depth no man can sound And that no ford to cross it can be found Though it be night

Its clarity unclouded still shall be: Out of it comes the light by which we see Though it be night.

Flush with its banks the stream so proudly swells; I know it waters nations, heavens, and hells Though it be night.

The current that is nourished by this source I know to be omnipotent in force Although by night.

After the beatification of St John of the Cross on 25 January 1675, the Carmelite convent of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios near Seville commissioned this life-sized statue from the young Sevillian sculptor, Francisco Antonio Gijón, then only 21. The figure of the saint holds a quill pen in his right hand and, in the left, a book with a model of a mountain surmounted by a cross, which refers to his mystic commentary, “The Ascent of Mount Carmel.”

Francisco Antonio Gijón (1653–c. 1721) and unknown painter (possibly Domingo Mejías) Saint John of the Cross c 1675 Painted and gilded wood 168 cm (66 1/8 in.)

(via AnaStpaul – Breathing Catholic)

#songofthesoulthatisgldtoknowgodbyfaith #stjohnofthecrosspoem #mypic #catholic #december14stjohnofthecross #stjohnofthecross #catholicism #catholicpoetry

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Robert M. Kaplan, Doctors, disease and James Joyce, 37 Aus Family Physician 669 (2008)

The Irish author James Joyce is regarded as the greatest modernist writer of his time. His works, notably The Dead, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – are intensely autobiographic including meticulous descriptions of illness and states of health1 – no surprise in view of Joyce’s medical history and hypochondria. The Dead revolves around the tragic love of a doomed tubercular youth. Ulysses has a graphic description of Mary Joyce’s death, a funeral and a birth; Stephen Dedalus, the character based on Joyce, attends a drinking session with medical students at the lying-in hospital just as Joyce had done as a student; references to syphilis, alcoholism and other illnesses abound.2

Joyce’s medical problems had a considerable influence on his life and therefore his writings. In particular, his eye problems, anxiety symptoms, alcohol abuse, and final illness deserve comment.

Joyce was one of at least 14 children, but a number were stillborn or died shortly after birth. Later a brother and sister died from typhoid. Illness and family problems weighed heavily on him. His daughter Lucia developed hebephrenic schizophrenia. After several remissions, Lucia was permanently hospitalised.

In the convivial, bibulous atmosphere of Dublin, so well portrayed in the drinking scenes in Ulysses, Joyce took to alcohol with enthusiasm. His consorting with prostitutes resulted in several episodes of venereal disease. Joyce always feared syphilis.3

During his time in Paris, Joyce’s routine revolved around the café, where he observed the world and met friends. A food faddist, he did not like red meat or red wine but made up for this drinking white wine, which he likened to electricity. His daily consumption was often several bottles, consumed until the early hours of the morning – much to his wife Nora’s disgust. He did not cope well with alcohol.4 A friend observed that drink went to his legs, rather than his head, with the result that he became ataxic. As he was so light, it was easy for friends to carry him home.

Joyce suffered badly from dental caries and had a number of teeth extracted in 1922 and 1923. The rest were extracted later, to be replaced by a set of full dentures. The pleasing appearance of a full set of white teeth was remarked on in Ulysses, as was poor dentition and bad breath in others.5

Joyce developed iritis and had frequent episodes with conjunctivitis, glaucoma, episcleritis, synechia and cataracts. Attacks left him writhing on the floor, needing opiates for relief. Various treatments, including cocaine injections and leeches, were tried. Joyce first saw Dr Louis Borsch, then Dr Albert Vogt in Zurich. He frequently postponed appointments and consulted other doctors at will. In 1932, Vogt told him there was partial atrophy of the retina and optic nerve of the right eye.

Joyce had a series of operations in different countries over the next 2 decades, becoming ‘an international eyesore, holder of the world amateur record for eye operations’. His fear of operations was intense and he would seek any excuse to delay a procedure. By the end of his life, his right eye was practically useless and there was 10% vision in the left eye.

In 1927, Joyce received arsenic and phosphorus injections for his eye problems. He complained for years about mysterious stomach pains,6 attributed to lack of food, stress, alcohol and ‘colitis’. His friends assumed his thin, bird-like appearance was due to drinking. Joyce’s physician, Dr Thérése Bertrand-Fontaine believed the pains were psychosomatic, arising from ‘disequilibrium of the sympathetic nerve’. Encouraged by her opinion, Joyce was profusely grateful, saying ‘Doctors are the nearest to saints on earth’.

Syphilis – ‘the great imitator’ – can cause urethritis, iritis, conjunctivitis, arthritis and, occasionally, peptic ulcers. Dr JB Lyons, an authority on Joyce’s medical problems, did not believe that he had syphilis.7 Joyce had an episode described as rheumatic fever in Trieste following a night spent in the gutter after drinking. Aching joints were prominent among his litany of complaints. His bent-over posture, said to resemble a question mark, occurs with ankylosing spondylitis. A more likely explanation for Joyce’s eye and joint problems is a seronegative arthritis8 such as Reiter syndrome.9

In 1940, war returned to Europe and the Joyce family fled to Zurich. Shortly after a duodenal ulcer ruptured, peritonitis developed and he had an emergency laparotomy. He woke up after the operation but had a relapse and died.10

A Doctor’s Eye

Joyce combined great psychological insight with acute observational skills. In Ulysses, a novel about one day in the lives of three Dublin characters, (Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and his wife, Marian or Molly Bloom), Joyce gives one of the great literary descriptions of grief:

‘Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes’.

Bodily functions are described in detail. Sitting on a rock at Sandymount Beach, Stephen Dedalus picks his nose while trying to parse lines of poetry. Mr Bloom reads the paper on the toilet and struggles to control a fart after eating a cheese sandwich with a glass of burgundy. Lying in bed, Molly Bloom starts menstruating and has to use the chamber pot. There are vivid descriptions of sex acts, reflecting Joyce’s determination to show every aspect of human life without restraint.

Literature, Illness, and Medicine

In all field of medicine, the realisation that a narrow, technology based organic focus – the medical model – is insufficiently comprehensive.11 Doctors are looking to philosophy, anthropology, sociology and other disciplines to answer the question: ‘What is it like to be human?’ Nowhere else is this so well demonstrated as in literature. There are crucial links between stories and human understanding of illness. There is a growing recognition that literature has much to teach medicine. One need only look at the works of Conan Doyle, Chekhov, Maughan, Tolstoy – and anything by Kafka. Books such as The Magic Mountain, The Bell Jar and Darkness Visible: a Memoir of Madness are recommended in medical courses to give doctors an insight into the role of illness in the life of the person.12,13

James Joyce was hypochondriacal, superstitious and phobic, especially for dogs, thunder, lightning, violence and water. His restrained and shy manner could have been due to social phobia. His fear of dogs was the reason he carried an ashplant walking stick in public. He refused to travel to America, despite numerous invitations, for fear that the ship would sink. His reluctance to wash (‘All Ireland is washed by the Gulf stream’) was probably a personal quirk.14 Joyce was not a good patient. His noncompliance and doctor shopping must have played a significant role in his morbidity. In his attitude to illness, Joyce was variously obstinate, self destructive, noncompliant or in denial; alternately, he was dependent, prone to rationalise and accept alternative explanations. In short, he was utterly human.

Joyce’s work is rich in narrative, illustrating the human condition. In understanding his work, it is important to see how illness affected the life of this very autobiographical and all too human writer. In early adulthood, he was devastated by his mother’s death from cancer. He drank excessively and could be an extremely difficult person. For a large part of his life, he had severe eye problems and was close to blindness.

To cope, he drank more, used denial, refused to follow medical advice and changed doctors in the hope of finding a magical cure. Driven to desperation by his daughter’s psychotic illness, he believed he could save her by the sheer power of his love. Yet he never stopped writing and continued to produce literature of the highest order.15

In Joyce’s books, there is all of life, and much of illness. Joyce’s works not only provide superb illness narratives, they indicate how the experience of illness in the author influences the literary content. In writing them, Joyce gave completely of himself and left us a heritage that will stand as long as novels are read.

References

Beck IA. The medical odyssey’s of James Joyce. R I Med J 1986;69:517–22.

Lyons JB. Anatomy in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Practitioner 1972;374–9.

Hall V, Waisbren BA. Syphilis as a major theme of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Arch Intern Med 1980;140:963–5.

Davies SG. James Joyce: A portrait of the artist. London: Abacus, 1975, p. 89.

Martinez H. James Joyce’s Ulysses and dentistry. Bull Hist Dent 1985;33:1–6.

Baron JH. Byron’s appetites, James Joyce’s gut, and Melba’s meals and m ́esalliances. BMJ 1997;315:1697–703.

Lyons JB. James Joyce’s miltonic affliction. Irish J Med Sc 1968;1:157–65.

Quin D. James Joyce: seronegative arthropathy or syphilis? Journal of the History of Medicine 1991;46:86–8.

Paton A. James Joyce – a case history. BMJ 1975;636–7.

Carter R. James Joyce [1882–1941]: medical history, final illness and death. World J Surg 1996;20:720–4.

Greenhalgh T, Russell J, Swinglehurst D. Narrative methods in quality improvement research. Qual Saf Health Care 2005;14:443–9.

Greenhalgh T, Hurwitz B. Narrative based medicine: why study narrative? BMJ 1999;318:48–50.

Charon R, Trautmann Banks J, Connelly JE, et al. Literature and medicine: contributions to clinical practice. Ann Intern Med 1995;122:599–606.

Kaplan R. Madness and James Joyce. Australas Psychiatry 2002;10:172–6.

Kaplan RM. Bloomsday 100: the making of a literary legend. Australas Psychiatry

#james joyce #medicine and culture #disease #syphilis #literature #ulysses #medicine #sickness

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