Ian on Sunday

At thirteen, I think it was, I was reading love poetry.

Most of a New Year has passed away. This seems astonishing to me.

“Most things never happen: this one will”.  Poets write more frequently about death than any other subject, except possibly love.

I tell the story of Tony Judt. Tony Judt was a writer on recent world history whom I greatly admired. 

For many years I have been gradually collecting poems written about Guyana or by Guyanese from as early as possible to the present day for the purpose of preparing and publishing an entirely new and comprehensive Anthology of Guyanese Poetry.

My tutor at Cambridge, Professor Nick Hammond, authority on the history of ancient Macedonia and on the life of Alexander the Great, used to coach me on what he called “exercises of the mind.”

Samuel Johnson, that great man of letters and heavyweight of good sense in eighteenth century England, commonly said the people whom we should most beware in the world are those who constantly insist on finding fault, those whose clouds are never lit by silver linings, those who everlastingly “refuse to be pleased.”

Recently I re-read for the umpteenth time one of Derek Walcott’s earlier books, The Star-Apple Kingdom.

At nearly 90 I am not, to say the least, as mobile as I used to be.

There are some things that keep out the darkness that continually threatens in anyone’s life.

The writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.

I have always loved libraries. Nearly 70 years have passed since I went to Cambridge and first visited the Seeley Historical Library near the Senate House.

Again and again and again the words written by the great Russian Alexander Herzen about childhood should come back to haunt and accuse us.

Good poems are instantly recognizable. They startle, shock new life into old ideas, impress on the mind patterns of beauty and truth previously unnoticed.

We live in harrowing times – there is no doubt about that. 

The most famous love poem ever written, with the possible exception of the Song of Solomon, is a poem entitled ‘Ad Pyrrham’ by the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace.

It is extremely important that you pay attention to what today’s column says if you wish to live a longer, healthier, more alert and happier life.

For thirty years Al Creighton has been commenting in the Sunday Stabroek on literature, theatre, dance, music, art and all the arts.

I once read an article about one of the most remarkable men of the 20th Century.

In his great book Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon, in writing about the reign of Titus Pius, commented in passing that history was “little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.”