Anthony Burgess, In Memoriam

Today, 21 years ago, Anthony Burgess died. Back in 1993, I discovered his writing when I first read A Clockwork Orange, after having discovered a few months before the movie. A few weeks before he died, actually. It was an epiphany for me, as I mentioned before. He quickly became my favorite writer. Some people remember what they were doing when they learned President Kennedy's death. I remember how I learned of his death: on my way to high school, picking up friends, as they were watching the midday news. I had only read one novel of him, and it already affected me deeply. Years later, I had the chance to meet his widow a few months before she died. But I digress. I often blogged about Burgess, but never commemorated his death until tonight. It was about time.

The Italian Connection

Oh how I wish I could be in Manchester sometimes! It would be a nice time for a pilgrimage there. Anyway, the Anthony Burgess Foundation and the Societa Dante Alighieri are exploring these days the connection between my favourite writer (Burgess, not Dante) and Italy. They will, among other things, talk about his friendship with Sophia Loren, who inspired the character of Beatrice Joanna in The Wanting Seed and also one hagiographic article in Homage to Qwert Yuiop. Burgess also lived in Italy for an extensive part of his adult life and  of course married an Italian, Liana, his second wife. And also, incidentally, someone I met personally. So Anthony Burgess had a very special relationship with Italy and Italian culture.

A relationship which in my own life, especially my youth (well, in my twenties), I semi-voluntarily tried to emulate. I made many Italian friends and acquaintances at university and later and tried to learn the language. I am still struggling with the latter, but thankfully I still have Italian friends, with whom I created strong bonds. I cannot visit Italy any time soon and beside I want to know the language more, enough to get by. Until then, a pilgrimage in Manchester at the ABF would calm my longing for Italy.

Liana Macellari Burgess, In Memoriam

A friend of mine reminded me today on Facebook that Liana Macellari Burgess died this day, 3rd of December 2007. She was of course the second wife and the widow of Anthony Burgess. My favourite writer. You can read her obituary in The Guardian here. I had the privilege to meet her during a symposium on her husband a few months before her death, when I was living in Liverpool. An amazing and important moment of my life. I blogged about it here. I cannot add more to it than I already did then. I will only add that I thought a lot about her today and about this meeting, when she spoke to me in French and I tried to speak as much as I could in Italian. And that I can witness that she was a great lady.

Barbaric milk

I had this post in mind since I blogged about tea recently, and earlier on about unpasterised milk. A member of my wife's family, when I mentioned that their national drink was in essence so foreign (perfumed hot water), mentioned that the only thing the Brits added to it was the dash of milk. And it stayed in my head. I love milk, I drink a lot of it, but I love by itself. I wondered if the Brits had not spoiled tea with that dash of milk, in a way barbarised it. It seems significant that China, a very ancient civilisation, maybe the oldest one, has a high number of lactose intolerant people. Putting milk in tea seems almost philistine.

Because there is something primitive, even barbarous and uncivilised, about milk and dairy products in general (and I say this as a milk drinker). It might not seem like it for Westerners nowadays, what with the French cheese tradition and modern pasteurization, but it is one of the most primal drink. Milk is something you give to babies and toddlers, which they usually grow out of when they grow up and reach adulthood. Ancient traditions have milk as a very positive but primitive icon. Even its whiteness emphasises its simplicity. Milk is earthly, bestial, almost untouched by civilisation, even when turned into cream or cheese.

During my years as an undergraduate, in a course on Greek literature, my teacher had told us that Polyphemus being a shepherd and like other Cyclops a cheese eater might have been a sign of his savage nature, especially since he got vanquished by by getting drunk. Cheese was the stuff Barbarians would eat, the Greeks had wine, olive oil, figs, etc. But there are more modern examples: my favourite writer made Alex a milk drinker. You read this text of Liana Burgess about this particular motif in the novel.

The barbaric nature of milk should not make us forget its appeal. I don't care much about health concerns surrounding it, as I strongly (but maybe subjectively) believe in its virtues. Milk is also and more importantly, as Liana pointed out, a sign of purity and innocence.

Burgess en français

Le désoeuvrement ne mène pas nécessairement aux vices, on peut parfois être désoeuvré (comme moi aujourd'hui), mais on peut aussi trouver des trésors. Ainsi, j'ai trouvé aujourd'hui des extraits vidéos d'entrevues d'Anthony Burgess à la télévision française (et une entrevue audio), entrevues la plupart du temps menées par Bernard Pivot (il aimait bien Burgess, semble-t-il). Ce sont seulement des extraits, mais on peut acheter les émissions complètes (c'est bon à savoir pour des jours plus fastes). Il y a en fait une entrevue intégrale, celle-ci, que j'ai écoutée avec fascination. Cela dit, même les extraits, quand on peut l'entendre parler, sont particulièrement intéressants. Le français de Burgess est souvent laborieux, son accent est à couper au couteau, je connais déjà son opinion sur la plupart des sujets abordés, mais c'est tout de même un plaisir. C'est étrange, ses intonations me rappellent parfois un peu celles de sa femme lorsqu'elle m'a parlé français.

Liana Burgess

Liana Burgess died in December 2007, so it's a bit early for an in memoriam, but this is not exactly an in memoriam. It has been a bit more than a year (late July), since I met her for the first and last time at a symposium on her husband, so I thought I would give her a bit of an homage here, mainly the impression I had of her.

So yes, I went to last year's Anthony Burgess symposium, where I had the chance to meet and talk to the widow of the man I admire the most. I didn't speak to her much, I didn't want to look like a suck up or a groupie, although I probably did end up looking like one. She was short and looked very frail, but her eyes were sharp. Burgess admirers like myself owe her a lot, since she fought really hard to get the work of her husband after his death. When I got introduced to her, she talked a good deal to me, told me how much Anthony Burgess loved Canada and Montréal, and how people there were nice to him. I loved that little attention, showing me that she cared about her husband's readership. She also told me all this in French, which she spoke fluently (among many other languages). This was a sweet gesture of respect that I greatly appreciated, speaking in my mother tongue. It was also strange to hear about my favorite writer by his first name "Anthony" (well, not quite his first name as Anthony was the name he took as a writer). Weird, but never really unfamiliar. I never felt distant about Anthony Burgess, I always had the feeling that his environment, his writing and to some extend his life reflected my own universe. Therefore this old lady was quite familiar to me. I had read about her from Anthony Burgess's second volume of autobiography, from the Andrew Biswell's biography (an inspired birthday gift from my wife), I had read all the dedications he made to her in his novels, she was already somebody I knew. In the next few days, I had the chance to see all the things I already had learned about her, see her still sharp spirit, her deep appetite for life (she liked fine food), barely diminished by her old age, her love and admiration for her late husband and his work (she felt in love with his novels first).

Anthony Burgess once wrote in The Pianoplayers the nicest dedication one could ever write to a loved one: "A Liana, che conosce tutta la scala cromatica dell' amore". Probably the most eloquent homage one can ever give a loved one. I feel very priviledged that I have met her, especially since she died shortly afterwards.