Diaries

[Mary Chambers]

Journeying Boy: The diaries of the young Benjamin Britten is interesting, though only covers the period until 1938. It does not always show BB in a favourable light; he appears to have been an arrogant and self-opinionated youngster at times (and I speak as a BB enthusiast.)

Not diaries, but I find the on-going series of his collected letters much more enlightening. (Faber: the latest volume brings us up to 1965.)

He was certainly very opinionated, but that isn't a fault. To me he doesn't come across as arrogant at all. I also think that quite a few of his opinions in his teenage years were very much influenced by Frank Bridge - for instance the low opinion of Adrian Boult. Auden also influenced him hugely in the later part of the diary. Isn't it frustrating that he stopped keeping diaries when he was barely in his mid-twenties?

I do enjoy diaries, and letters, because they give a much clearer impression of a personality and a time than any biography. I believe the last volume of Britten's letters will be published in time for his centenary in 2013. I've been looking forward to 'the next volume' after each was published for so long that I shall feel quite bereft when there isn't a new one to wait for!

[Chris Newman]

I love the Diaries of Hector Berlioz: exciting, witty, informative, intelligent, pompous and often hardly believable but very readable. You might say rather like a nineteenth century and musical Alan Clark.

[french frank]

I love the Diaries of Hector Berlioz: exciting, witty, informative,, intelligent, pompous and often hardly believable but very readable. You might say rather like a nineteenth century and musical Alan Clark.

Yes, I have those too. I loved his description of being chased around a table in the conservatoire library by Cherubini. Is that right? I think it was something to do with him going in through the women's entrance ... Or do I dream?

[vinteuil]

... yes, in my late 50s I find more and more that I am reading the letters, diaries, and journals of writers rather than their 'primary texts'. What is fascinating is that in some cases their private lucubrations make marvellous reading - Gray, Coleridge, Cowper, Byron, Matthew Arnold, Kipling, Virginia Woolf - in other cases their private letters are as boring as boring can be - Pope, Wordsworth...

[vinteuil]

Yes, I have those too. I loved his description of being chased around a table in the conservatoire library by Cherubini. Is that right? I think it was something to do with him going in through the women's entrance ... Or do I dream?

" En me rendant un matin à la bibliothèque, ignorant le décret moral qui venait d’être promulgué, j’entrai, suivant ma coutume, par la porte de la rue Bergère, la porte féminine, et j’allais arriver à la bibliothèque quand un domestique, m’arrêtant au milieu de la cour, voulut me faire sortir pour revenir ensuite au même point en rentrant par la porte masculine. Je trouvai si ridicule cette prétention que j’envoyai paître l’argus en livrée, et je poursuivis mon chemin. Le drôle voulait faire sa cour au nouveau maître en se montrant aussi rigide que lui. Il ne se tint donc pas pour battu, et courut rapporter le fait au directeur. J’étais depuis un quart d’heure absorbé par la lecture d’Alceste, ne songeant plus à cet incident, quand Cherubini, suivi de mon dénonciateur, entra dans la salle de lecture, la figure plus cadavéreuse, les cheveux plus hérissés, les yeux plus méchants et d’un pas plus saccadé que de coutume. Ils firent le tour de la table où étaient accoudés plusieurs lecteurs ; après les avoir tous examinés successivement, le domestique, s’arrêtant devant moi, s’écria : « Le voilà ! » Cherubini était dans une telle colère qu’il demeura un instant sans pouvoir articuler une parole : « Ah ! ah ! ah ! ah ! c’est vous, dit-il enfin, avec son accent italien que sa fureur rendait plus comique, c’est vous qui entrez par la porte, qué, qué, qué zé ne veux pas qu’on passe ! — Monsieur, je ne connaissais pas votre défense, une autre fois je m’y conformerai. — Une autre fois ! une autre fois ! Qué-qué-qué vénez-vous faire ici ? — Vous le voyez, monsieur, j’y viens étudier les partitions de Gluck. — Et qu’est-ce qué, qu’est-ce qué-qué-qué vous regardent les partitions dé Gluck ? et qui vous a permis dé venir à-à-à la bibliothèque ? — Monsieur ! (je commençais à perdre mon sang-froid), les partitions de Gluck sont ce que je connais de plus beau en musique dramatique et je n’ai besoin de la permission de personne pour venir les étudier ici. Depuis dix heures jusqu’à trois la bibliothèque du Conservatoire est ouverte au public, j’ai le droit d’en profiter. — Lé-lé-lé-lé droit ? — Oui, monsieur. — Zé vous défends d’y revenir, moi ! — J’y reviendrai, néanmoins. — Co-comme-comment-comment vous appelez-vous ? » crie-t-il, tremblant de fureur. Et moi pâlissant à mon tour : « Monsieur ! mon nom vous sera peut-être connu quelque jour, mais pour aujourd’hui... vous ne le saurez pas ! — Arrête, a-a-arrête-le, Hottin (le domestique s’appelait ainsi), qué-qué-qué zé lé fasse zeter en prison ! » Ils se mettent alors tous les deux, le maître et le valet, à la grande stupéfaction des assistants, à me poursuivre autour de la table, renversant tabourets et pupitres, sans pouvoir m’atteindre, et je finis par m’enfuir à la course en jetant, avec un éclat de rire, ces mots à mon persécuteur : « Vous n’aurez ni moi ni mon nom, et je reviendrai bientôt ici étudier encore les partitions de Gluck ! »"

[french frank]

Yup, that's the bit ... Cherubini and Berlioz - two terrible men!

[Mandryka]

Thanks for the reference to Backdrops - I don't know it & will try to read it. But what do you mean by its being 'santised'?

And what are you implying by suggesting (on what basis? genuine enquiry) that the Met tore pages from Orton's diary?

I think that one can read the plays without reading the diary and 'get' exactly what Orton's driving at if you have a mind to do so. What do you mean by "in Loot, for instance, it's virtually impossible to find young actors capable of playing Hal and Dennis.". It sounds very profound and/or mysterious but I don't understand why you say it or the basis for it.

In fact I find many of your posts on this Board difficult to 'read'. You are a very awkward person to debate with, because of the almost passive-aggressive nature of your mode of argument.

Could you try just making statements, judgements too if you like, backed by evidence please, pretty please

If you've read KW's Diaries, you don't need to read Back Drops - which is less a real diary than a version of KW's chat show act put into the form of a diary: certain incidents did actually happen but not as described in Back Drops, which attempts to give a spurious 'one year in the life of' account.

Also: the KW represented in Back Drops is very much one for public consumption - no bitchy stories about colleagues, no misanthropy, no confessions of sexual shame and loneliness. Hence: 'sanitised'.

The publication of KW's REAL Diaries upset a lot of people (possibly you included), as it revealed a man who was frequently cruel, sometimes racist, right wing and (self) oppressed. I know at least one person who now refuses to watch KW's films on the basis of what he learned from those diaries. Personally, I liked KW more for having read them, as they showed him to be vulnerable and contradictory: in short, a real person. People who object to his frequent references to 'Negroes' and the 'swamping ' of London with 'coloured' immigrants ignore his donation to anit-apartheid causes 'because I abhor the racist state.'

You probably don't read the Daily Mail, so you will have missed this article, which refers to the fate of the original Orton Diaries:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-Thornton.html

As to the casting of the boys in Loot: Orton was asking a lot of his actors, here - Hal and Dennis are young men (ideally in their late teens, or very early twenties), yet they do not use the kind of language spoken by most young men of their background and to carry off Orton's lines requires a technique well beyond the reach of most young actors. I've never seen the pair played well and I've seen many productions of this play. The other big problem that Orton faced (though it is not such a problem now) was his own requirement that the two boys be believably bisexual ('The boys in Manchester are poor', he wrote of the first 'proper' production, 'Clean as a whistle sexually.You can't imagine them having each other, or Fay, or anyone....'). Though he was apparently pleased with Kenneth Cranham's performance as Hal in the West End production, he was not so enamoured of Simon Ward as Dennis.

Not sure what you mean by my 'passive aggressive' stance, but I hope the above provides interesting back-up to my assertions.

[Mandryka]

Another fascinating literary diary was that kept by John Fowles:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Journals-1-v...824743&sr=8-20


These attracted their share of controversy when published around the time of Fowles's death. Idiotic and obscurantist 'left wing' critics gleefully accused him of anti-semitism, on the basis of certain remarks made about the likes of Tom Maschler, Arnold Wesker and (to a lesser extent) Harold Pinter. All of it nonsense - I've certainly read much worse things that have been written about those three.

I'd recommend Fowles's Journals as a unique account of a struggling writer suddenly encountering major success and having his life gradually poisoned by it. Very little seems to have made J.F. happy....

[amateur51]

If you've read KW's Diaries, you don't need to read Back Drops - which is less a real diary than a version of KW's chat show act put into the form of a diary: certain incidents did actually happen but not as described in Back Drops, which attempts to give a spurious 'one year in the life of' account.

Also: the KW represented in Back Drops is very much one for public consumption - no bitchy stories about colleagues, no misanthropy, no confessions of sexual shame and loneliness. Hence: 'sanitised'.

The publication of KW's REAL Diaries upset a lot of people (possibly you included), as it revealed a man who was frequently cruel, sometimes racist, right wing and (self) oppressed. I know at least one person who now refuses to watch KW's films on the basis of what he learned from those diaries. Personally, I liked KW more for having read them, as they showed him to be vulnerable and contradictory: in short, a real person. People who object to his frequent references to 'Negroes' and the 'swamping ' of London with 'coloured' immigrants ignore his donation to anit-apartheid causes 'because I abhor the racist state.'

You probably don't read the Daily Mail, so you will have missed this article, which refers to the fate of the original Orton Diaries:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-Thornton.html

As to the casting of the boys in Loot: Orton was asking a lot of his actors, here - Hal and Dennis are young men (ideally in their late teens, or very early twenties), yet they do not use the kind of language spoken by most young men of their background and to carry off Orton's lines requires a technique well beyond the reach of most young actors. I've never seen the pair played well and I've seen many productions of this play. The other big problem that Orton faced (though it is not such a problem now) was his own requirement that the two boys be believably bisexual ('The boys in Manchester are poor', he wrote of the first 'proper' production, 'Clean as a whistle sexually.You can't imagine them having each other, or Fay, or anyone....'). Though he was apparently pleased with Kenneth Cranham's performance as Hal in the West End production, he was not so enamoured of Simon Ward as Dennis.

Not sure what you mean by my 'passive aggressive' stance, but I hope the above provides interesting back-up to my assertions.

Many thanks for this very full response, Mandryka.

What I mean by your passive-aggressive stance can be gleaned by contrasting your two messages - one was full of half-references to who knows what, to a Daily Mail article from 2009, to your interesting opinions, scarcely alluded to in your intial piece, about the types of actor that you believe should be cast, why and how the Back Drops version of the diaries (which Back Drops wasn't apparently, we now learn) is in your view 'sanitised' etc. Each great claim required fleshing out, required that someone should ask you for clarification, rather than your offering it up at the first attempt. I know quite a bit about this because I've been accused of doing it by irritated friends in the past

I hope that I have explained it all adequately; your initial post irritated the pants off me but your reply is exemplary. Many thanks

[Richard Tarleton]

Cosima Wagner's Diaries make fascinating reading - I've only read the abridged version edited by Geoffrey Skelton, but it's a good read - she was a remarkable woman. The Wagner household was clearly short on laughs - in those pre-television days, they had to put up with RW reading them entire libretti, or Shakespeare plays, of an evening. But some great insights. The description of Sunday 25 December 1870 is short but moving.