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Poetry in Britain has a different status altogether. Elections for the Oxford professor of poetry or for the poet laureate are national events. You can even make your bets at the bookmakers. A daily like The Guardian has a poetry section on its website. How many other European (American) newspapers can boast something similar?

The recently elected new poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy got a lot of extra attention because she is the first woman in a long line of male poet laureates starting with Ben Jonson in 1617. There are some big names in this long line: John Dryden, William Wordsworth, Lord Tennyson, Sir John Betjeman, Ted Hughes.
So, when she wrote her first poem in that capacity this ‘event’ got some attention.

And it is a very strong poem, an angry poem. All attention in the UK goes now to the expenses scandal.
The Guardian quoted Judith Palmer, director of the Poetry Society, who said she “had brilliantly put into words that ‘bloody hell’ feeling most people felt every time they listened to the latest detail of the expenses scandal”.

Bloody hell, indeed. Bloody hell in Belgium with its incompetent politicians, bloody hell in Italy with its corrupt Berlusconi, bloody hell in Iran, Myangmar, etc, etc. So, here it is, and please send it around the world:

Politics by Carol Ann Duffy

How it makes of your face a stone
that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,
clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue
an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand
a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh
a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs
hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice
that can throw no six. How it takes the breath
away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,
makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,
of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –
politics – to your education education education; shouts this –
Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your
conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

For some reason Isaiah Berlin has always attracted me. I have a small collection of his works. This biography confirms my liking for this special person.

I stumbled upon this book by accident. Now and then I have a look at Yann Martel’s What is Stephen Harper Reading? to see which books he lately sent to the Canadian Prime Minister. I read about The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror by Michael Ignatieff. This Ignatieff seemed to be a very interesting person. And then I found out that he had written Isaiah Berlin’s biography. I didn’t hesitate a second.

This is the kind of biography I like very much. It is not full of details, it is written with a lot of empathy and a lot of understanding. Berlin has had an eventful life, perhaps not as an active agent, but certainly as a priviliged witness. Born in Riga as the only son in a jewish family, educated in Russian, he lived in Saint Petersburg after the family fled Riga in the First World War. Later they had to flee Saint Petersburg after the Russian revolution. Finally they went to live in England, where the young Isaiah received a splendid education.
He became an Oxford don for All Souls, worked for the Foreign Office in the second World War, founded Wolfson College, and so on.

What I specially like in a biography like this, is that this life gives you another view on historical events. Berlin visited Pasternak and Achmatova in Russia, was as political philosopher an excellent witness of the Cold War, the birth of Israel, and so on. He loved music and had several musicians as intimate friends, like Alfred Brendel. And of course, there is his lifelong search and study of the liberal idea.

More Isaiah Berlin.

¿Qué decir? ¿Cómo empezar? Tal vez con el principio: el primer capítulo. Esta novela comienza muy fuerte con una historia apasionante, impactante. El suicidio de una mujer joven, unos días después de su viaje de bodas, con la pistola de su papá, en el cuarto de baño mientras su padre y unos amigos suyos están almorzando en el comedor al lado. Marías lo describe con todo detalle, aun detalles que no parecen importantes. Es un principio tán fuerte que ya temía que fuera bastante difícil mantener este nivel.

Si hubiera podido mantener el nivel del principio, Corazón tan blanco habría sido una obra maestra, tal vez digno del Premio Nobel. No lo es. Tras esta proeza tuvo que empezar con el relato de la novela, tenía que explicar, dar contexto. Y Javier Marías lo hacía en la misma manera, con mucho detalle, observando. El narrador no actúa, siempre observa. Parece un tío mirón. Y de verdad, hay escenas en las cuales sus personajes parecen a un voyeur. Juan filmando a su amiga desnuda, Custardoy mirando desde la calle a la ventana de su apartamento, Juan mirando desde la calle al apartamento de su amiga Berta, Juan escuchando a escondidas a una pareja en un hotel en La Havana, y por fin Juan escuchando a escondidas la confesión de su padre a su mujer.

Hay una escena divertida: cuando Juan tiene que interpretar entre un adalid español y una adalid británica (parece a Mrs Thatcher). Los altos dignatarios no saben qué decir y el intérprete de vez en cuando les pone frases incitantes en sus bocas y de esta manera les ayuda a conversar. Es una forma de actuar, pero otra vez a escondidas, por la boca de los adalides que no se entienden.

Es claro que Javier Marías quería escribir una novela literaria, pero resulta artificial. Utiliza lo que en inglés se llama a stream of consciousness (un monólogo interior), y Marías conoce muy bien la literatura anglosajona. Ejemplos son Mrs Dalloway de Virginia Woolf o Ulysses de James Joyce.
Pero en estos ejemplos los personajes viven, tienen carácter mientras que aquí siguen siendo personajes de cartón.
La confesión del padre tendría que ser la apoteosis de la novela, pero no lo es. Pensé, por eso ha hecho tantos vagabundeos. Parece que la confesión de su papá no le produce ningún efecto a Juan.
Me resultaba insulsa.