Not the Examination Schools!
The position of
Professor of Poetry of Oxford is a curious one.
The Professor is elected, not appointed, by all alumni and current
academics of the University, and thus close to my heart, like most things
democratic. The duties consist of giving
a one hour lecture each term (that makes three each year), and delivering the
Creweian Oration, which offers formal thanks to benefactors of the University,
every other year. Not onerous, one
should think. But when listening to the
lectures of Geoffrey Hill, the current incumbant, one gets the distinct
impression that he has expanded more effort in preparing this one hour a term
lecture than most other speakers on an entire year’s worth of teaching. I try never to miss one of his lectures. I attended one today, and shall attempt to
convey my impression for those of you who were unable to come.
The lectures are given
in the Examination Schools in the High Street.
The schools are held in scant regard by many an undergraduate, since it
is here were examinations are held, and these can be quite nasty. However, the building is quite beautiful, a
marble-floored, oak-panelled Victorian structure, and the lecture room were the
Poetry Lectures are held is large, with a high domed ceiling and splendid
acustics.
Imagine then you
are sitting in the audience, composed, it seems, of one third current students,
one third old age pensioners, and one third in between those two. You arrived early, to ensure a seat. You wait for twenty minutes, then an old man,
looking half scrat half holy fool, shuffles in, aided by a stick and one of his
devoted fans. The hair on his head and
beard become a little wilder and shaggier each time. He arrives at the podium, sits down, and
waits until it is exactly 17:30. Then he
starts his lecture, without preliminaries, he jumps right in and if you don’t
pay close attention you will be lost almost immediately.
You must not
imagine that the professor reads us excerpts from his poetry! Instead he gives a learned exegesis of the subject
chosen for that day’s lecture, ranging far and wide, across the centuries and
styles. He quotes and discusses authors
from antiquity with the same ease as Elizabethan poets or his 20th century
colleagues, and moves across the times and topics so quickly that if one’s attention
lapses for just a moment one has lost the thread, for Geoffrey will have moved into
another age and on to another line of thought.
Geoffrey Hill is
not just a wordsmith, but a word-silversmith, capable of the finest, precisest,
aptest, chasing of words and phrases. He
uses words one only ever reads, but never hears pronounced. And not just one or two of them, haphazardly strewn
like jewels into otherwise common sentences!
One gets the impression that this old man, whose outer appearance, one
suspects, is part and parcel of the image created by a consummate showman, has
an inexhaustable hoard of wonderfully recondite words to draw upon. Words which he coveted, hunted down, and
stored away, for an occasion just like this lecture. And now, in front of an enthralled and
fascinated audience, he pulls forth these words, hoarded throughout a lifetime,
and lovingly presents them in his carefully crafted sentences. I listen to these words, and phrases, and sentences,
and gorge myself like a literary glutton on this never ending stream of
luscious language.
As the professor
weaves his spell I decend into an ancient dream, where I walk the streets of
Periclean Athens or Ciceronian Rome or Medieval Oxford, when oratory and
rhetoric were taught and people took pleisure in the beauty of the spoken
word. For this is how Geoffrey Hill
sounds, to me, like an orator of old. None
of his words are free-loaders, every single one of them has been chosen for an
exactly specified purpose, and although he uses many words, not a single one is
superfluous. ‘Carefully crafted’ is the
best way to describe his lectures, and every sentence within it. That is why it takes him so long to prepare
these lectures. He takes them very
seriously, and afterwards seems quite exhausted, even drained. For his delivery is equal to his writing, and
well worth listening to. Generally I
prefer to read than to listen, but with Geoffrey Hill it is the reverse. It is a very great pleasure to listen to his
lectures, because the sound of his voice, the method of his delivery, the
preciseness of his language, and indeed the power of his arguments, all combine
to give a perfect listening experience.
If I have a criticism,
it is that his language is so beautiful that it distracts from his arguments. In this he reminds me of Thoreau. I get so seduced by the language that I fail to
attend to the logic of what is being said!
But I dare say this is a failing one must forgive a Poet.
Do listen to his
lectures on the internet if you can spare an hour sometime. Find a comfortable spot where you will not be
distracted, perhaps with a drink at your elbow, and go to the Oxford University
website (see link below) where his lectures can be accessed. You will be in for a rare treat!
And just to put
you in the mood, I attach a few more nice photos from Oxford. I did not take them today, but the weather was
just like in the photos, and Oxford was very beautiful as I walked to the Examination
Schools. The photos show the Bodleyan and surrounds, but sadly not the Examination Schools.
