Tony Harrison: Reading the Rolls: An Arse-Verse

Relationship to Classical text Prefaced by quotation in Latin from Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura, (l.823-7), which argues that language, poetry and meaning is composed of different arrangements of sounds and letters, just as the world is made up of different arrangements of elements/particles. Starts with the image of the Pythia as Python: a putrid serpent in the inspiration of poetry. Pytho (meaning ‘to rot’) was an ancient name for Delphi and believed to denote the rotting carcass of the serpent killed there by Apollo. The first section compares poetic inspiration with gas vapours that grate into longing. The second section is biographical, dealing with Harrison’s childhood, shitting and creation of rhyming verse (‘The soul goes with cloacal matters / as much as tragedy with satyrs’). This ‘arse-verse’ seems to be Harrison’s Ars Poetica (note that as in Horace’s Ars Poetica he comments on metre, form, famous literary figures, subjects for poetry, adopts a satyrical tone). Compares work of classical poets (Horace, Philodemus) for reading and lavatory paper and meditates on linguistic and material fragmentation and recombination, especially in Epicurean texts. Cf. Edith Hall’s article, ‘Classics, class and Cloaca: Tony Harrison’s Humane Coprology’ (Arion 15.2, p.83-108), for detailed discussion of this poem and comparisons with Rabelais’ novel Gargantua and Pantagruel. Hall regards this poem as a (rare) example of how Harrison can appeal universality in a way that is neither sexed (biologically) or gendered (culturally), with a ‘distinctive corporeal subject’ belonging to no particular class (ibid. p.105). Compares work of classical poets – Horace' Philodemus, for reading and lavatory paper and meditates on linguistic and material fragmentation and recombination, especially in Epicurean texts.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts ‘If she can’t recite a Sappic ode OK!.....’ and the following text in italics is a loose reworking of lines from an epigram by Philodemus, which is quoted in the Greek a few lines previously. Philodemus’ repeated apostrophising omegas (ω γλουτων, ω κτενος etc.) are extracted from the poem and represented as a string of ω’s on the printed page, which Harrison jokes are like a line of arses in a beauty pageant.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts John Donne’s line ‘O my America’ (Elegy 19: ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’) are presented as equivalent to Philodemus’ apostrophising omegas. Harrison’s own play The Trackers of Oxyrynchus  (1990) anticipates this poem’s development of themes first introduced here, e.g. papyrus remains treated as waste and even as a nappy for Hermes (p.49-50 in the Faber and Faber 1990 edition); here poems ancient and modern are imaged as loo-roll.

Comment A preceding note states that ‘arse-verse’ is a West Yorkshire term denoting a spell on a house to ward off fire. Though true (see N. Bailey, An Universal Etymological English Dictionary. London, 1675) the term actually has Tuscan-Latin origins (certainly not West Yorkshire!). The word can also be used as an adjective, meaning ‘topsy-turvy’ or back-to-front.can also be used as an adjective, meaning ‘topsy-turvy’ or back-to-front.

Note First published in Arion 12 (2004), p.91-99.