#30 – 1984 Week 33: I am Head Prefect and I want things good.

After that I had a suit measured up.

Monday 13 August 1984
226-140

I think I stayed at home all on my own and worked, a bit, and cooked lunch (disgusting) washed up and tidied up. In the evening Simon cycled over and I ran back with him and watched the box a little and listened to Glenn Miller. Then I had to run home, but up his lane it was so dark that I kept stumbling into the hedges.

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Tuesday 14 August
227-139

For this morning I was at home and tried to study Goethe. He is becoming an obsession with me. Such a man! Such a mind! I am meant to do him for Oxbridge but I get so sidetracked on other interesting things that I don't think I am going about it right. I have learnt a poem – Ganymed – off by heart. In the afternoon, Rachael C. phoned, in reply to my postcard and invited me to the cinema. Oh, thank you, Rachael. In the evening I went to a ‘party’ at Jon Thorne’s, which got rather boring, so I left at 11:45.

I have just remembered that in the morning I went into Tonbridge to school with Colin Crickmore, and Kiersa and Tim Mclune, and cleaned up the prefects’ room, the floor especially*. I am Head Prefect and I want things good. After that I had a suit measured up for me.

* As a reader pointed out in a comment, there appears to be lots of cleaning involved in being a prefect, and more if you are head prefect. This was in the middle of the school holidays too!

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Wednesday 15 August
228-138

Another day at home, but in the evening I went out. I went out to the cinema to see “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. No, I didn't. I went to the cinema to go to the cinema. With Rachael and her brother and his friend. The film was amazingly funny and gripping, and caused me to sit on the edge of my seat and grip someone else by the hand. No, it was not the film. I don't believe it. Afterwards we went to the pub and then Rachael drove me home through the fog, late at night. I am happy.

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Thursday 16 August
228-137

Into T. Wells to arrange last things for my trip to France. Met Feralyn and cousin and went and had a coffee at Godkins. Had my hair cut, not too badly, went to library.

Got home to find the rest of the family home from Germany, including my grandmother who has never left Germany in her life. She seems to have coped well and I do so hope she will enjoy it here, otherwise it is embarrassing for us. Wrote several letters. One to Alison. Who’s Alison? One to Rachael. Who’s she? Began to pack.

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Friday 17 August
229-136

I am catching up with this diary. That is why the entries are so short. I shall not take it with me to France because it is too valuable a possession to lose, even though that means copying up afterwards, which takes a lot of time. Today I dossed around. Went for a run with Ethan, Simon came over and I phoned Rachael. Sophie phoned. I seem to be on the phone all day. It is embarrassing. Schoolwork and music practice has been badly neglected. I am wasting my hours and I don't want to go back to school. I need to be told exactly what I have to do. Rachel failed her English A Level and passed R.E. badly. She is not bright. Let that not put me off.

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Saturday 18 August
230-135

I have no idea what I did today. I must have packed. I wrote some letters. In the evening I went to a friend's house in Tonbridge to wait for my train, which left at 10.08. At the station, I was talked to by two drunk kids. On the train, on my own. What do people think of me with a black jacket and red kneck* scarf? Never judge from the outside. You cannot imagine what people are thinking. And there are so many people - so many thoughts. Spent the night on the floor of the boat. No sleep, I don't think. Arrived at Ostende at 5:00.

* Kneck scarf. You know, it’s a special kind of neck scarf that gives you the knack to look cool and all French and nonchalant.

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Sunday 19 August
231-134

Ostende to Brussels, spoke to a German guy. All of a sudden after Brussels, I was incredibly knackered. I was half asleep on the train, got myself a stiff neck. At Strasbourg, I was picked up by Karin Hofmann, who took me back home to Wasselonne. Had lunch which lasted until 5:00-ish. Sausages over wood fire, chicken grilled, wine, coffee, champagne. Ingrid, a lovely girl with long red hair who I met last year came to say hi. Lunch was outside. It is hot. They all think I’m “un beau gosse”, which is nice. Went for a quick plunge in a friend’s pool. Listened to lots of good music. The father is really a great bloke. He is fun, intelligent and appreciates, knows how to listen to music properly. Went to bed to get ready to depart.

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2024: Hang on, this is good. I’ve literally just come off a mountain trekking expedition with four girls, and am about to go on holiday with four French girls to the South of France. But you’ll have to wait, that starts properly next week.

We didn’t actually have a TV at home, which might account for a lot, so watching the box was often at Simon’s - down the valley and up the other side, at least 20 mins’ walk. Simon was one of my really good friends, and not just ‘cos we got to watch TV at his! We’d been at primary school together, and after we went to different secondary schools we stayed friends through Scouts, both enjoying a bit of outdoors. He’s subscribed here, though I appreciate this whole newsletter-diary thing is probably way more annoying to get in your inbox every blooming week than it is to write it, so I don’t have any illusions that y’all are reading even half of this. In fact, Dear Reader, did you know that Substack gives ratings that only the writer can see: 5 stars for people who open a lot; 1 star if you don’t. OK, I admit, from time to time I check it out - in a purely non-judgemental professional manner I must stress. But I now know who my friends are ;-) Let’s try a shout out: Hi Simon, did we really sit in your front room and listen to Glenn Miller? Seriously?

I obviously did have a Goethe Obsession. Bear with me, this is going to go all poetic and literary history. Or skip… I didn’t go as far as dressing in the yellow trousers of one of his most famous characters, the tragic, romantic, adoescent hero, Werther, as some of his readers in the 18th century did in a really unprecedented book-craze, which was somethiing like Beatle-mania. There was also Werther merch: wallpaper, dinner sets and perfume. And the book was banned for around 50 years. This is a good take from the Guardian: “For Goethe, however, his first novel was an attempt to escape a younger, turbulent part of himself.” But I did apparently at the time talk to friends about the ‘Sturm und Drang’ vibe - ‘Storm and Stress’, the German literary movement of the late 18th century that revelled in nature, feeling, and human individualism. And of course it connects into the German Romantic composers of the time, Brahms, Mahler, Strauss, Wagner… I think the media probably still lives in the legacy of the Romantics in its obsession with heros, emotion and grand narrative. Today not so much remains in my memory about Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s actual writing and what he in his different periods is all about. A lawyer, also painter, sculptor, playwright, amateur scientist and meteorologist, and civil servant repsonsible for mines and roads, and then, get this, head of the Saxe-Weimar War Commission, where he participated in the recruitment of mercenaries into the Prussian and British military during the American Revolution - he was one of the world’s greatest writers. Time for a revisit I think.

One particular short poem of his did remain with me and I might come back to that later as I recently set it to music, but for now I’ll share the poem I memorised, Ganymed, written in 1774, the same time as Werther (but published in 1789, artists have to be patient), because the sentiment is definitely something that spoke to me back in ‘84, 210 years after it was written, now 250! Wikipedia has a nice, short analysis (and contrasts it with the rebellious Prometheus in a partner poem).

Here’s the poem in German first, then English translation, which I’ve adapted as my own translation from others out there.

Wie im Morgenglanze
Du rings mich anglühst,
Frühling, Geliebter!
Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne
Sich an mein Herz drängt
Deiner ewigen Wärme
Heilig Gefühl,
Unendliche Schöne!

Daß ich dich fassen möcht'
In diesen Arm!

Ach, an deinem Busen
Lieg' ich, schmachte,
Und deine Blumen, dein Gras
Drängen sich an mein Herz.
Du kühlst den brennenden
Durst meines Busens,
Lieblicher Morgenwind!
Ruft drein die Nachtigall
Liebend nach mir aus dem Nebeltal.
Ich komm', ich komme!
Wohin? Ach, wohin?

Hinauf! Hinauf strebt's.
Es schweben die Wolken
Abwärts, die Wolken
Neigen sich der sehnenden Liebe.
Mir! Mir!
In eurem Schosse
Aufwärts!
Umfangend umfangen!
Aufwärts an deinen Busen,
Alliebender Vater!

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How in the morning shimmer
You glow around me,
Springtime, Beloved!
With a thousand-fold love delight
Of your eternal warmth,
Sacred feeling
Crowds my heart,
Unending beauty!

Would that I could hold you
In this arm!

Oh, on your breast
I lie, and languish,
And your flowers, your grass,
Crowd into my heart
You cool the burning thirst
Of my breast,
Beloved morning wind!
And the nightingale calls
Lovingly to me from the valley of mist.

I come, I am coming!
Where to? Oh, where to?

Upwards! Up it flows.
Floating down, the clouds
Downwards, the clouds
Bend towards longing love.
To me! to me!
In your lap
Upwards!
Embracing and embraced!
Upwards to your bosom,
All-loving Father!

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Well, certainly powerful in emotion. Very centred on himself, in nature. The power of the experience, not an enquiry or rationalisation, pushes him to the divine, who is in or above nature.

Two years later, lying in a field in August in the ecumenical Christian community of Taizé in the hills north of Lyon, I wrote the following.

Life-Giver

I lie on your field
Upon your earth, gazing upwards.
The grass, the flies,
The cows, alive all
With your life.
Your sun, Life-Giver,
Glory unveiled by delicate clouds,
Smiles – what glory!
Idyll made by you.

And yet, to you this, all,
Like stones to us,
Dead.
And mine,
Whose eyes do not shine
Pure, like stars,
Whose hand can wound
And tongue can curse,
Mine is the fearsome task
Of making the mountains sing
And the trees clap their hands
For joy.

Taizé, 1986

Looking back now, I make the connection to Ganymed, though it has a fraction of the emotion. My poem was based on Isaiah 55: “the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” I guess in my poem I’m saying that there is something special about the human being and mind which makes it the only conduit for an expression of praise of the divine, we are all in that sense priests, which is paradoxical because humans are morally flawed. But if the praise does not objectively reside in the rocks and trees but in our heads, then it is maybe just a small step to humanism.

Obviously I’m not saying my poem is as good as Goethe’s ;-) But I hope you like the connection.

Bloody hell, well done if you’ve got this far!

Just time for a quick cinema date with Rachael, with whom I’d been hiking. Crush, or more, happening. Though it’s happening just before I head off to France with those four girls, one of whom, Ingrid, I’m clearly already impressed with. And officially I’m still with Sophie. And who is Alison? The outlook for that crush is not lookng that great. Also, 17 August. Might come back to that date.

You’ll have to wait till next week to see the photos of my travelling-to-France neckscarf look.

I’m also glad to see that I’m not taking the diary to France because it is “too valuable a possession to lose”. I hope you agree.

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