Culture Show

[Bordesley]

On BBC 2 Now 7PM November 5. Andrew Motion...Bright Star Interview and with Ben Wishaw.

[Malia]

Lucky Brits who get to see this! They won't allow us Americans to view BBC TV programs (most, anyway) because we don't pay the TV tax.

[Bordesley]

Can't you go online tomorrow, and click on BBC i player? Then go to BBC 2 and find the Culture Show. BBC put their progrs on 24 hours after first being aired...

[Malia]

I'll certainly try. I go to BBC.co.uk almost every day and search around for shows. Most of them look like they'll open when I come upon them, but then I'll click and they will tell me the show is not available in my viewing area. The reason, I read on the BBC website, is that I'm not paying for the TV service through taxes the way British folks do, so there are some programs I will be unable to watch.

I'll try looking for it, though! Who knows, they may let me see this one

[BrokenLyre]

I'll also try to see if I can pick up the BBC program. Can't hurt to try.

[Malia]

Just went to the BBC i player website and they tell me that all BBC TV programs are unavailable to me (that they are only available in Britain) but that I can listen to all BBC Radio programs. So, unless the Culture show also has a radio version, we Americans will be unable to view.

Bordesley, can you give those of us unable to see the show a review of what went on?

[Bordesley]

Right then, I’ve watched the item again and written notes as best as possible verbatim: Remember the spoken words is different from the written.

Andrew Motion: Why should people be interested in Keats? Two things really, a life which is more moving than any other I have come across, full of heroism, pathos, damage, magnificence. You name it, it’s all there and then there’s the writing, who writes. One of the great genius’s of English writing. Who writes in a language that’s so gorgeous, so voluptuous and so intensely factual in it’s realization of things, that even though it was written two hundred years or so ago, we read it and feel we are immediately there.

The Andrew Motion reads part of Ode to autumn whilst sitting on a bench in a garden with leaves falling.

Jane Campion: he transformed English poetry in a way, when you read it, it is so sensuous, so gorgeous and the rhythms are so unique that it expands the way you thing in a way.

Then a clip from Bright Star where Fanny quotes A thing of |Beauty is a Joy Forever.

Jane Campion: Bright Star is the story of Keats as he is discovered through Fanny Brawn as she meets him for the first time in 1818 and falls in love with him. And I felt haunted by their love story and I felt, I don’t know it really undid me. I felt touched by the innocence and the tenderness of the story. I felt like it was something I needed in my life

Another clip where Keats and Fanny are on either side of a door.

Jane Campion: I think for people who don’t know Keats…I was actually terrified by poetry and Keats poetry before I began this project and one of the reasons I read Andrew Motion’s biography was…I don’t know to try and get over and perhaps read his poetry in context.

Another clip Ben Wishaw as Keats sitting under a tree.

Ben Wishaw: It was really only after getting the part that I realized what I was undertaking and then I suppose it became more and more daunting. Because you realize it’s impossible to do justice to someone so complex and I think really so graced with a kind of genius.

Clip Under same tree – Ode to a Nightingale.

Jane Campion: Ode to a Nightingale was sort of my favourite poem in the whole world, and that’s so special and unique for me it is so new to me. And always strikes you in a kind of different way. You know it’s based on a real sighting of the Nightingale and then it also describes imaginative thought.

Andrew Motion: I vividly first do remember reading Keats and that’s pretty extraordinary. My English teacher said you should read his letters. So I did. I walked round and round the playing field. It was a wintry cold autumn afternoon and I couldn’t tell whether I was crying because it was so cold or whether I had been so moved because of the letter actually. But I was glad being 16 year old boy and I was glad because I had the excuse of it being a very cold day as well.

Another clip in Bluebell woods.

Ben WishawI think for me the letters are possibly even more fascinating than the poetry. There’s everything in them and expressed in this very, very beautiful language.

Clip: Fanny is reading a letter from Keats.

Ben Wishaw: I remember when we were rehearsing, that I had this moment of discovery. That the intensity of that love was to do with fact that it was really existing in this shadow of death.

Clip: Keats reveals he has coughed blood again.

Ben Wishaw: I can see when you see the end, really you embrace life with a level of hunger and passion, I think.

Andrew Motion reads from a letter (I Think)

Ben Wishaw: I think one of the very sad things about Keats is he thought that he was going to be forgotten.

Andrew Motion: he thought he hadn’t lived long enough to fulfil himself as a poet. That really tore at his heart.

Ben Wishaw: I suppose there’s always something about people who have been cut off in their prime and just being here again brought home to me the fact that he died when he was 25 and I turned 29 last week and thought my goodness.

Jane Campion: when I think back on my life and I think what was I doing at 23 to 25. I was at art school and sort of wrestling with life and Keats had already achieved so much.

Andrew Motion: I published my first book of poems at the same age as when he died and I can remember thinking at the time, because my obsession was already fully formed by then, what would he have done had he lived? Well he does, his DNA goes out in to a lot of very good poets and he’s still around.

PS: My beautiful wife bought The Bibelots – The shorter Poems of John Keats, First edition published in London by Gay & Bird 1900 – for me today. It is bound in Tan leather with ornate art nouveau, absolutely stunning with gilt edged pages.

[Saturn]

I was going to save you all that work by putting it up on youtube but thanks anyway Bordesley.

[Bordesley]

If by dull rhymes our English, must be chain'd. - Stick it on You Tube! Keats wrote the first part, I wrote the latter. Now be honest you couldn't really tell the difference could you?

[Malia]

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Bordesley for taking such pains to transcribe the show It looks as if it was a wonderful program. I would love to see Andrew Motion reading To Autumn while leaves are falling . . . what a great image.

What all three interviewees had to say about Keats strikes me profoundly--they hit the nail on the head when it comes to why people are so attracted to him, even after nearly 200 years. I think Ben Whishaw is correct in that Keats's love and desire (for both his art and his love) were heightened because of the shadow of death. People call To Autumn his most "perfect" and "untroubled"poem, and yet, when you read closely, it is the irony of life that makes it so perfect. In To Autumn, we discover the disturbing fact that Death and Life are intricately linked--and that Beauty cannot exist without them together. Not exactly an "untroubling" thought; but the truth of it *is* Beautiful! To paraphrase Keats, we cannot have the light without the shade--the two are powerfully, painfully and perpetually interconnected.

If you *can* post it on YouTube, Saturn, that would be fabulous!

[Saturn]

Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkmji1Ygvg

[Malia]

Saturn, you and Bordesley have both made my Friday morning! Thanks for the YouTube video--it was fabulous!!
Bordesley's transcription was spot on, too. The bit where he writes that Andrew Motion reads something that Bordesley thinks is from his letters is actually considered a poem of sorts (though may have been considered as dialogue in a potential play--it could be just "random verse")--but it is This Living Hand, which I consider to be one of the most dramatic pieces of poetry Keats produced. It certainly gives a hint at what a fantastic playwright he could have been had he lived. I believe Keats was considering playwrighting as his next "act".

[BrokenLyre]

I have been salivating reading this thread and was bursting at the temples desiring to see this BBC clip.

I am SO THANKFUL to you Bordesley, for writing the script out!! As I read I thought, "Why not put this on YouTube?" and as I kept reading I couldn't believe Saturn could do it! THANK YOU Saturn! You guys are great!


I just saw the YouTube clip and was so happy to see it! I love the fact that they were at Hampstead when they did their interviews. That is spectacular. I want a brighter word than bright and a fairer word than fair, to describe how this felt. Thanks for adding another dimension to the remembrances of Keats.

[Aquarius]

Thanks, Bordesley and Saturn for putting the info and video up. I love that the segment included clips from the film that weren't released before. I also love that the clips are of my favorite parts of the film!

"This Living Hand" is up there among my favorite Keats poems, and Motion does a good job of reciting it. I have yet to read his bio of Keats, and my list of books to read is so long already. One day, I'll get to it (I think).

[Raphael]

Thank you Saturn, and Bordesley – that was lovely. I am in agreement with Jane when she says she needs something like this in her life ( the poems and beauty of this love affair)- I do as well. And when she says at first she was afraid of John’s poems- I certainly was back in 1997/8 when I encountered them on a literature course) designed for university entry) aged 29 ½. I was powerfully struck by his genius and intensity and the philosophies of Truth is Beauty and Negative Capability shook me.

What all three interviewees had to say about Keats strikes me profoundly--they hit the nail on the head when it comes to why people are so attracted to him, even after nearly 200 years.

Yes- what John Keats had to say was so profound it stands the test of time.

I think Ben Whishaw is correct in that Keats's love and desire (for both his art and his love) were heightened because of the shadow of death.

Yes- when one is on “borrowed time” every moment I imagine would take on a greater intesity.

People call To Autumn his most "perfect" and "untroubled"poem, and yet, when you read closely, it is the irony of life that makes it so perfect. In To Autumn, we discover the disturbing fact that Death and Life are intricately linked--and that Beauty cannot exist without them together. Not exactly an "untroubling" thought; but the truth of it *is* Beautiful! To paraphrase Keats, we cannot have the light without the shade--the two are powerfully, painfully and perpetually interconnected.

This I think is one of the if not THE most profound truths of human/physical existence- that life and death are two sides of the same coin, that one is part of the other, that we cannot escape them. It makes one realise that suffering is part of life and that although one can enter the Beautiful and to some extent release suffering by one’s reactions and attitudes towards things one cannot escape it. The acceptance of the paradoxes that govern physical existence is hard to accept, but to me, it is the only way to go forward. So when we encounter beauty- we release into it and be fully present with it( or at least try to!)

I think had John lived longer he would have gone onto even more profound philosphies!