From the diary of a writer-publisher: 22

‘Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, holds the flag of a military unit as an officer kisses it, during commemorative event on the occasion of the Russia-Ukraine war one year anniversary in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)’

24 February 2023
A recent study made by a reliable Moscow source indicates that 22% of the Russians polled were fervently in favour of the war on Ukraine, 20% were deeply opposed to it, and the rest (58%) ‘had no feelings either way’. I sighed when I read this, because it is exactly what I would have expected. The bugbear of Russian politics has always been the profound indifference of most Russians to what their government is doing. ‘There is the government, Patrick, and there is us, you see. The two are quite separate. We don’t want anything to do with the government’, was the sort of thing people said to me when I was in Russia (admittedly, under communism, but they no longer said this out of sheer terror). Or as Nadezhda Mandel’shtam put it: ‘In Russia everything always happens at the top. The common people say nothing’ (narod bezmolvstvuet — the last stage direction of Pushkin’s play Boris Godunov, interpolated by a censor, probably the tsar). The narod may well have a pungent, intelligent and meditated opinion about Russian politics and politicians (this was confirmed to me by what I heard when I travelled incognito third class across the steppe from Taganrog towards Donetsk in 1970), but they have absolutely no desire to represent it. Yes, it really does mean that about 60% of the Russian people aren’t interested in democracy. So they do not have it, and have no experience of a true, functioning democracy. Freedom and effective democracy demand responsibility rather than the pursuit of self-gratification, and the former is far too much effort for most Russians. It’s a horrible saying, but true: people get the government they deserve, in the sense of what they have either passively permitted or actively fought for.

4 March
I have just come across the Greek quotation mega biblion, mega kakon (the poet Callimachus, apparently, third century BC). It means ‘A big book is a big mistake’. I love the sound of the Greek word for ‘mistake’, which could be loosely (‘loosely’!) translated as ‘cack-on’. My biography of George Calderon (534 pages) is the finest-looking book I will ever produce, but I shall never again publish one so thick. We simply had to charge £30 for it. Of course, I think it is worth every penny, but despite all the good reviews and laborious marketing we only recently broke even and still have 27% of our stock left to sell. There is no doubt in my mind that £30 is too much for most people to pay for a biography, especially when its subject is not already well known. A thick book is an expensive book. Callimachus was right: ‘a mega-book is a mega-cack-on’…

11 March
Talk of the Devil and… Two days after writing the preceding, I decided I must read Jennifer Homans’ November 2022 biography of the Georgian-Russian ballet master George Balanchine (1904-83), who together with Lincoln Kirstein (‘the money’) founded New York City Ballet and is recognised as the Father of American ballet generally. It is a magnificent Granta hardback, 772 pages long, weighs in at 2.5 lbs, and costs…well, that’s the interesting thing: £36.50 at W.H. Smith first time round, now the RRP is £35, you can get it on Amazon for £27.69, the paperback for £22.50, and Kindle for £15.19. So the hardback started at over £30, but it looks as though someone realised £36.50 was not only a very odd price (perhaps a conversion from U.S. dollars), but a publishing cack-on.

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

It took me five days to read the book, and personally I think it could benefit by being 150 pages shorter (but who am I to talk?). Jennifer Homans is undoubtedly a very brilliant person. In her late teens she trained at Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, observed him in the last years of his life, danced in many of his ballets, then at twenty-six embarked on an academic career that has culminated in her being Scholar in Residence at New York University and the New Yorker’s dance critic. It is not clear how long she researched this blockbuster, but it was ‘over a decade’ (p. 608) and took her to archives all over the world. I think she spent too long informing herself about early influences on Balanchine’s mind (Russian Nietzscheism, Vladimir Soloviev, theosophy etc); the resulting part is too long, superficial and unconvincing. As someone who has been on the inside of American ballet, she is also apt to cover pages and pages with names and ballet politics. But the book is still 75% absorbing, and make no mistake: balletomanes the world over are going to have to own a copy. (I decided I must read it because of the cross-over between Ballets Russes, Michel Fokine and George.) A mega-book, then, but not a mega-publishing-cack-on.

18 March
One of the expressions of George Calderon’s that I am rather fond of (and there are many), occurs in his letter to William Rothenstein of 1 January 1915: ‘I have fallen into a routine of slight occupations’.

The ‘slight occupation’ in my case is to have become practically the literary agent for two poets and two prose translators. Needless to say, I am not a professional literary agent, despite one of the poets having just written to me: ‘let us know how much and we will pay whatever you suggest’! (Definitely not; it would be the thin end of a not-slight occupation wedge.) I just think they are all first-rate and one should assist good art if possible.

What happens is that I suggest who they should submit their work to, or I myself write to the poetry editor/publisher a straight recommendation with corroboration, and the only reason a surprising number of these recommendations have been taken up is that I manifestly have no ‘axe to grind’. A lot of my poems have been published, and I have absolutely no translation ambitions left. Or, as I have put it to one of the translators, ‘I am retired, which is as much as to say dead, and therefore Olympian, or at least not vexatious’.

Frankly, no professional literary agent has ever done anything for me. My theatre agent since 1988, Alexandra Cann, has been wonderful — finding me translation work in theatre and radio, as well as introducing me to eminent theatre people. But, of course, I am not an actor. To discover the excitement and psychodrama (some might say farce) of ‘representation’ for actors, you could not do better than watch the Netflix show Dix pour cent (Call My Agent!, with subtitles). It has ineffable French flavours, but as far as I can see the agency it portrays is the same in its essentials as big acting agencies this side of the Channel. Sam2 (aka James Miles) introduced me to it a few weeks ago, and I just had to invite him to do a guest post about it — which follows in a week’s time.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.