Parthian - Foreword written by Gwyneth Lewis.pdf - Inpress Books

More documents

Recommendations

Info

appearances: ‘They were like yellow swans peering down at a surface of shimmering water. Soon perhaps the tulips would dip their heads through the wooden table…’ Abse’s work possesses a deep wit which doesn’t trivialise its objects, but underlines their seriousness. Many poets, Abse included, are great joke-tellers. It’s as if jokes are an important dress rehearsal for poems. Both rely on timing and defying expectations and their aim is to overturn a clichéd view of the world. The second time I met Abse, at a festival in Vienna, I spent a lot of time laughing. He told a story about a rich American whose wife mistook Dylan Thomas for C.S. Forester and congratulated the Swansea poet on his Hornblower novels. When Thomas pointed out that he hadn’t written them, the American turned to his wife and said, wearily, ‘Wrong again, Emily,’ a phrase which, I have found, has very wide applications in life. This combination of humour and deep seriousness permeates Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve which is a novel about the simultaneous unfolding of innocence and horror in wartime Europe. We follow the lives of ten-year-old Dannie and his best friend Keith as they mature into teenagers in south Wales, facing, for the first time, both love and grief. The young Dannie takes Lydia Pike, his first girlfriend, up to the open fields in Cyncoed and has this poignant conversation: ‘I’m going to kiss you,’ I said. She feebly tried to stop me. After she said: ‘You’re not like other boys. You kiss differently. You don’t make me feel sick when you kiss me.’ I wondered how other boys kissed her and which boys. ‘How do you mean?’ I questioned her. ‘You keep your lips closed when you kiss,’ she whispered. What did she mean? Of course I kept my lips closed. Was there any other way of kissing? This bitter-sweet process is set in the context of the Spanish Civil War and the Holocaust. Indeed, the work as a whole shows how world events have a devastating impact on the seemingly domestic. Born to a Jewish family in Cardiff, Dannie is made politically aware by his brother Leo’s campaigning activities on the Spanish Civil War (Abse’s nonfictional brother Leo was a solicitor and Labour Member of Parliament) and by the family discussions of what was happening on the Continent. Alongside the very local concerns of friendships and family, the narrator imagines the world of continental Europe, 1938, personified in a Polish Jew, Grynszpan, whom his brother Wilfred describes to him (‘not a person… but a condition of history’, says Leo). Grynszpan, entering the German Embassy in Parish with the intention of assassinating the ambassador, notices the carpet, which highlights his powerlessness: ‘the thick, greycoloured luxurious carpet beneath his feet intimidated him… made him conscious of his
own appearance, his own inadequacy… it was as if he walked on cotton wool. The carpet was so thick that it disturbed his balance organs: he walked over like a drunkard, but with no noise.’ This is the textile which he eventually stains with the blood of the German official whom he shoots. This passage works symbolically as well as realistically, and its structure is a kind of proto-poem. As a whole, the novel is a classic account of a friendship between two boys, Dannie and Keith. The sheer animal existence of young children is beautifully evoked. When Dannie goes to Keith’s house for tea – ‘There’ll be bananas and cream, so you can leave as soon as you’ve eaten ’em’ – he’s embarrassed to be caught sniffing the strange smell of other people’s houses. In the park, Dannie is beaten up by an enemy and finds his knees bleeding ‘for the gravel pathway had curiously risen to meet me’. Abse catches exactly the rhythmic speech patterns of children: ‘I like Barry best,’ said Keith. ‘I like Ogmore best,’ I said. ‘I like Porthcawl best,’ said Keith. ‘I like Cold Knap best,’ I said. ‘I like Laverknock best,’ said Keith. ‘I like Southerndown best,’ Keith said. ‘I like Barry best,’ I said. ‘I like Barry best,’ Keith said. ‘Fight you for it,’ I said. Abse writes searingly well about the vulnerability of children to the weaknesses of adults. When Keith and Dannie visit Barry Island on their own for the first time, they have a blissful time until, on the return journey, the man sharing their railway carriage has an epileptic fit in front of them and wets himself. Suddenly the body becomes a frightening entity, with a will of its own. The day is ruined. In another incident, a man in a lane touches Keith in too intimate a manner and Dannie jokes that Keith has the Black Curse. The joke goes tragically wrong when Keith’s mother dies of a stroke and both boys, with the literal-mindedness of children, believe that the curse has been fulfilled. Keith and his father’s grief, as observed by Dannie, is threaded throughout the novel. Indeed, the title of the novel is a quotation from T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, referring to the dust of a loved but disappeared life. Later in the book, both boys go camping to Ogmore. Keith falls in love with Henrietta Gregory, the young wife of a rich man who allows them to camp in the grounds of his house. She’s recovering from a nervous breakdown and, with the casual cruelty of an adult, fails to take seriously Keith’s passion for her. The whole
Page 1: Ash on a Young Man’s Sleeve Forew

Parthian - Foreword written by Gwyneth Lewis.pdf - Inpress Books

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?