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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED (2.39) 13 FEBRUARY 2023
The Stop
Taking its name from the Old English beonet + feld, meaning ‘open land where bent-grass grows,’ Binfield is a small village in the county of Berkshire, England. Though the village today resembles many in modern England - a barber shop and hair salon, Indian restaurant, pub, convenience store, charity shop and post office comprise the majority of the high street - elements of its distant past are still evident. The local church dates mostly from the 15th century1 and contains a 17th century hourglass used to ‘ensure the rector’s sermons were not too long,’ and Binfield FC (the local football2 club) first played in 1892 during the reign of Queen Victoria. At the east end of the village is the Stag and Hounds, Binfield’s ‘most historic inn.’ Dating to the 14th century, the inn was once the ‘exact centre’ of Windsor Forest. Used as a hunting lodge and headquarters of the royal gamekeepers, it was visited by both Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I.3 While all of this is interesting, what caught my eye was the fact that Binfield was the childhood residence of Alexander Pope.4
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a poet and satirist of the English Augustan period5 and a central figure in the Neoclassical movement of the early 18th century. He was the ‘first full-time professional English writer,’ able to support himself on subscription fees for his popular translations of Homer and his edition of Shakespeare’s works. His father, a wealthy linen merchant, retired in the year of his son’s birth - the same year the Protestant William of Orange took the English throne. The Popes were prominent Catholics, and subsequent legal changes forbidding Catholics to ‘hold office, practice their religion, attend public schools, or live within 10 miles of London,’ resulted in the family’s relocation to Binfield when the boy was 12.
Binfield and its idyllic location in Windsor Forest proved an inspirational setting, and during the years he lived there he ‘acquired his life-long taste for natural beauty and for gardening.’ Though his father supplemented his son’s education with private tutors and priests, Pope was largely self-taught. A ‘precocious boy,’ he read Latin, Greek, French and Italian and was an ‘incessant scribbler’ who imitated the poets he read and admired. At 12 he contracted spinal tuberculosis which limited his growth and seriously impaired his health,6 causing both a lifelong suffering from vicious headaches, and a sensitivity to physical and mental pain. Though Pope was able to ride a horse and enjoyed travel, he required daily care throughout adulthood and his inability to engage in most physical activity meant his mind was largely focussed on reading and writing.
Pope’s first ‘striking success’ as a poet was his Essay on Criticism (1711), a ‘virtuosic exposition of literary theory, poetic practice, and moral philosophy’ in which he used ‘themes and ideas from the history of philosophy … [to] illustrate a golden age of culture, describe the fall of that age, and propose a platform to restore it through literary ethics and personal virtues.’ This was followed by The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1717), a mock epic based on an actual incident between two prominent Catholic families in which Robert Lord Petre publicly cut a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor. With ‘supreme tact, delicate fancy, playful wit, and the gentlest satire,’ Pope created an ‘epic in miniature’ from this trivial event: there’s war (the ‘drawing-room war between the sexes’), heroes and heroines (recast as ‘beaux and belles’) and even a journey to the underworld (the ‘Cave of Spleen, emblematic of the devise ill nature of spoiled and hypochondriacal women’). Pope skewered his many literary enemies7 in The Dunciad. His last major work,8 this mock-epic address his ‘concern over the decline of English society.’ Employing the term ‘duncery’ to describe all that was ‘tasteless, dull and degraded in culture and literature,’ Pope satirised politics, society, education and religion - and their contribution to the decline of art and culture.
All three of these works show Pope’s mastery of the heroic couplet,9 and are considered among the finest examples of poetry in the English language. However, the poems associated with his time in Binfield are concerned less with politics and satire than with a youthful interest in natural beauty and love - a ‘temperament’ that presaged the Romantic movement that would emerge at the end of the century. Both The Pastorals (1709)10 and Windsor Forest (1713, though much was written earlier) are filled with ‘visual imagery and descriptive passages of ideally ordered nature’ that would remain with him until his death from oedema and acute asthma just after his 56th birthday.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to a very short (1:22) animated video by the artist Angie Wang. ‘Making Art in America (2020-2021)’ explores the creative process during the pandemic - when the only way the world could be seen was through the window. The artist Sean David Christensen11 described it as ‘a disquieting meditation on creating art in exile/isolation,’ and said he ‘loved how the encroaching shadows harmonised with low, pulsating dread underneath Wang’s immaculate illustrations and muted colour palette.’ At the very least, it’s interesting!
Making Art in America (2020-2021)
The Recommendation
Today’s recommendation is David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). Starring Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper and Laura Dern,12 the film blends psychological horror with film noir to produce one of cinema’s most unsettling films. When college student Jeffrey Beaumont returns home to Lumberton, North Carolina,13 he discovers a severed human ear in an abandoned field. Curious, he teams up with a local detective’s daughter which leads them into a very dark world involving a beautiful lounge singer who may or may not be connected to the case, and a sexually depraved psychopath. It’s disturbing, surreal and brilliant - and while it’s certainly not for everyone, if you like to be challenged it’s worth every minute.
Blue Velvet streams on multiple platforms.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a collection of five great tracks from 1986 - the year of Blue Velvet’s release: ‘Secret Separation’ (The Fixx, 1986), ‘Don’t Want to Know if You are Lonely’ (Hüsker Dü, 1986), ‘Candlelight Song’ (Violent Femmes, 1986), ‘Kiss’ (Prince and The Revolution, 1986) and ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ (The Communards, 1986). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism (2.525):
‘To err is human, to forgive divine.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next stop …
The current structure was built on top of a 7th century church.
AKA soccer.
Who is said to have sat in the window to watch the Maypole dancing on the green outside. The green currently hosts a few picnic tables which are just right for sitting and enjoying a summer evening’s pint.
Binfield is a 20 minute walk from my home and the village’s single crosswalk was where I stopped while road-testing my Yacht Rock playlist (The Bus 1.10). I had no idea of its connection to Pope until year or so ago - which is one of many things I love about living in England: history runs so deep that layers go unnoticed until you ask a question. Sources for today’s Stop include Alexander Pope (British Library), Alexander Pope (Poetry Foundation), Binfield, Binfield, Binfield, and Abrams, M. H., et. al. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Fifth Edition. Volume 1. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1986.
This was the first half of the 18th century, when writers such as Pope and Jonathan Swift consciously emulated Virgil, Ovid, and Horace - the great Roman poets who worked during the reign of Emperor Augustus (27 BCE to 14 CE).
His full-grown height was 4 feet 6 inches (1.4 metres).
His early success made enemies among ‘less talented writers, who were to plague him in pamphlets, verse satires, and squibs in the journals throughout his literary career.’ Pope was attacked for his ‘membership in a religious minority, his physical infirmity, and his exclusion from formal education.’
A fourth, the ethical/philosophical An Essay on Man, was begun in 1733 but never completed. The basic theme of this work concerns his ‘aesthetic and philosophical argument for the existence of order in the world.’
Pope was a master stylist and the heroic couplet - a 10-syllable iambic pentameter rhyming couplet - was his favourite: e.g., ‘True wit is Nature to advantage dressed/What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed’ (An Essay on Criticism 2.297-98). He also produced numerous epigrams which have entered common usage: ‘Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,’ ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’ and ‘Hope springs eternal’ are just three.
Check out the stunning ‘Ode on Solitude,’ written when he was nearly 13: Ode on Solitude.
Check out his website here: Sean David Christensen.
The soundtrack was written by the recently-deceased, frequent Lynch-collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. For more about him, see: Angelo Badalamenti (Encyclopedia.com).
More than likely (because having been there I can’t really think of any other reason), Lumberton was chosen due to its proximity to Wilmington, NC - where the headquarters of the film’s producers - the (now long-bankrupt) De Laurentis Entertainment Group (DEG) - was located.
Of all the movies my wife hates, Blue Velvet is my favorite! Frank Booth is a great villain — he still scares the hell out of me.