When I wrote 'so much grass' yesterday, I was referring to the kind you mow, not the kind you do, although the latter would equally have impeded my blog. Unlike Coleridge, I never wrote better under the influence of anything (except, possibly, unrequited love - creativity, as Freud intuited, sometimes being an expression of sublimated sex). The few surviving fragments of stuff written when stoned, in the days when I wrote when stoned, prove that for me grass was almost entirely consciousness razing.
I'm not sure that Coleridge's Kubla Khan would have benefited from being completed. Its fragmentary nature adds to its perfection, like a sherd from a stained-glass window, or an artist who dies young.
The lines from Kubla Khan, 'Weave a circle round him thrice, and close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honeydew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise', gave rise to the practice of a master at my school of encouraging boys to stand on a chair, around which three chalk lines had been drawn, and recite fragments of poetry. The master was Frank McEachran - 'Kek' - and he called the recitations, 'Spells'. Kek, who had taught and inspired the poet WH Auden and fought in the Spanish Civil War, was the model for Hector in Alan Bennett's recent play, 'The History Boys', although I gather Bennett never met him.
While I remember him well, I was only taught by Kek on a handful of occasions, being too talentless to be in the top english sets - sitting instead in the second division alongside the (now) newspaper columnist and former editor of the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Glover. As well as having more pocket money, Stevie was cleverer and more erudite than me, although, being more angst-ridden, I wrote better poetry.
I do at least still have a signed copy of one of Kek's books, 'Freedom the Only End'. On the flysheet he has written, 'Private faces in public places are wiser and nicer than public faces in private places', which I only now realise is a quote from his protégé Auden.
Saturday, 16 June 2007
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Just came across your reference to Kek. He taught me for 2 years and he taught me all the things I still remember. It was Kek who persuaded me that I wouldn't have been a very good doctor! In my day his job was to try and interest the scientists in the arts.
ReplyDeleteHe inscribed my book of Spells with:
Wwe doctors know a hopless case of...
listen theres a hell of a good universe next door.
lets go.
by another of Kek's favourites. ee cummings.
Al
Al - Lucky you! I think he must have made an indelible impression on anyone he taught. I hope in deflecting your life's course, he did you a service...even bad doctors earn (and bury their mistakes).
ReplyDeleteIt sounds a bit sad even to ask, but what colour were your socks?
I'm deeply grateful to Kek although I was a bit of a handful for him! On my report he once called me a 'lounge-lizard with a Celtic lilt'! My parents were not amused and it was impossible trying to explain to them that it was just Kek and they weren't that amused when I told them I wasn't going to study medicine!
ReplyDeleteI wore all sorts of coloured socks & could walk across the grass, at least until they caught me smoking on top of the Alibin.
Al
Al
Kek inspired me to love language and languages. Having seen The History Boys, I was struck by the resemblance at once, but I did not know it was based on Kek. It figures. Now, to important questions. when is Spells II coming out, and who is assembling it?
ReplyDeleteRobin Rycroft
(rycroft@ub.edu)
Spells 2 is too tall an order: unfillable and of course impossible to ape in any way Kek and his benignity and polyglot erudition. But the principle of the spell is still a good one and in the era of the soundbite even more challenging to assemble. I have often thought of trying but uncharacteristic humility has so far thankfully prevented me. Perhaps in due course, but then it still wouldn't be Kek's spells. His point was that certain words, prose or poetry, carried their greater majesty and enthralling power when spoken aloud, and therein lay the greatest pleasure to be derived from them. Worth a try I think for someone.
ReplyDeleteSimon - I agree. I don't suppose Kek would have laid any claim to the principle of Spells, and I'm sure he'd have approved of a new selection from another mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm certainly not well-read enough. It really needs someone who has kept a 'Commonplace Book' over years, gathering an eclectic collection of pearls. (Does anyone do that anymore? My books are full of marked passages which seemed to resonate at the time...probably depending as much on what I'd been drinking as on any intrinsic merit!).
Perhaps it might be tackled by tapping in to a wider community - a 'Spells' website in which anyone could post passages and lines which captured their interest - constrained by length and steered away from a simple quotations site, of which there are many. That might build the sort of polymath collection from which a new selection of Spells could be drawn. But it would still need editorial management (grouping into categories, etc), and the sort of webmaster skills that I certainly don't have.
There is a second Kek Spells - it was called 'More Spells'
ReplyDeleteAl
I have 2 copies of More Spells, both signed by Kek "Tomorrow for the young, the spells exploding like bombs" - he taught me from 1970-73. I also have a hardback "Cauldron of Spells" which is both books in one with annotation and forward by Lawrence LeQuesne.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - That's based on another Auden quote, from 'Spain'("tomorrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs"). I envy your library.
ReplyDelete"Envy my library"...check out http://www.osclub.org.uk/store/index.cfm for the compendium Cauldron of Spells.
ReplyDeleteI was too young, too shy or both to ask 'Kek' to autograph my copy of Spells so he inscribed inside:
ReplyDelete"He whose face gives out no light will never become a star".
I never became a star but I did stop hiding behind others.
William Blake...I had to look that up. He might equally have written that for me.
DeleteI was in Kek's last ever class (I think they were called Q sets). The last ever spell he got us to wrtite down was:
ReplyDeleteashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection into eternal life.
He seemed well enough that day but was dead the next.
Simon Rowley
That's extraordinary, and rather sad. I didn't realise he had been teaching right to the end.
Delete"Uncle Kek" used to take the Oakies in his advanced level English group out to tea at the Black Cat from time to time because he said that boarding school never gave enough treats. How right he was. I loved his English lessons and at 71 still have and read my "Book of Spells the note book in which we wrote snippets of poetry. I'll never forget "Uncle Kek" or his lessons.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that. Tea at the Black Cat would beat the School Shop, I think.
DeleteOh me too . Someone once asked me why I had so many poetry books.......I have my notebook too!! Just found this blog.... Uncle Kek will be remjembered by so many of us.
ReplyDeleteI wonder who you are.............
Anonymous - Sorry about the delayed reply; I've been neglecting this blog. I was Rod Macleod, and still am, really. But never a proper member of Kek's elite. I think I discovered poetry independently, as a refuge from 'B' Leagues, Benji's, swills and all that jazz.
DeleteAlthough resentful when required by Kek to stand on a chair, as he said, his spells would resound forever more. He visited my Girls High School on Wednesday afternoons - I think especially for the benefit of us scientists - and over the term, took us all for cakes .
ReplyDeleteA most treasured memory
As part of "General Studies" course at my Girls High School, the highlight of Wednesday afternoons was the visit by Kek. At seventeen I was deeply resentful when required to stand on the chair to recite, but fifty years on, those snippets are indeed spells that resound for evermore. I was a reluctant scientist, and those Wednesday insights - along with the cream teas - opened my door to a love of literature.
ReplyDeleteKek seems to have had that inspirational impact on so many; I'll bet he was responsible for the flow of more words from other people's pens than he ever wrote himself.
DeleteI was introduced to Kek's Spells by a boyfriend who'd been taught by him at Shrewsbury and recognise the quotations here - the 'He whose eyes...' and the Kubla Khan piece. So, his influence spread even wider than his immediate pupils... and I think my own love of poetry, and my own teaching, have been influenced by what I heard about Kek!
ReplyDeleteThat's so good to hear - he would have been delighted!
Delete