Tony Harrison: Poet of Radical Classicism

249 Pages·2021·2.194 MB·English

by  Edith Hall

Tony Harrison
i
Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing
Series Editor: Laura Jansen
Each book in this groundbreaking new series considers the infl uence of antiquity
on a single writer from the twentieth century. From Woolf to Walcott and Fellini
to Foucault, the modalities and texture of this modern encounter with antiquity
are explored in the works of authors recognized for their global impact on
modern fi ction, poetry, art, philosophy, and socio- politics.

A distinctive feature of twentieth- century writing is the tendency to break with
tradition and embrace the new sensibilities of the time. Yet the period continues to
maintain a fl uid dialogue with the Graeco-Roman past, drawing on its rich cultural
legacy and thought, even within the most radical movements that ostentatiously
questioned and rejected that past. Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century
Writing approaches this dialogue from two interrelated perspectives: it asks how
modern authors’ appeal to the classical past opens up new readings of their oeuvres
and contexts, and it considers how this process in turn renders new insights into
the classical world. Th is two- way perspective off ers dynamic and interdisciplinary
discussions for readers of Classics and modern literary tradition.
Fellini’s Eternal Rome, Alessandro Carrera
Virginia Woolf’s Greek Tragedy, Nancy Worman
James Joyce and Classical Modernism, Leah Culligan Flack

Editorial Board
Prof. Richard Armstrong (University of Houston)
Prof. Francisco Barrenechea (University of Maryland)
Prof. Shane Butler (Johns Hopkins University)
Prof. Paul A. Cartledge (University of Cambridge)
Prof. Moira Fradinger (Yale University)
Prof. Francisco Garc í a Jurado (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Prof. Barbara Goff (University of Reading)
Prof. Simon Goldhill (University of Cambridge)
Dr. Constanze Gü thenke (University of Oxford)
Prof. Edith Hall (King’s College London)
Prof. Judith Hallett (University of Maryland)
Dr. George Kazantzidis (University of Patras)
Prof. Andrew Laird (Brown University)
Prof. Vassilis Lambropoulos (University of Michigan)
Prof. Charles Martindale (University of Bristol/University of York)
Dr. Pantelis Michelakis (University of Bristol)
Prof. Neville Morley (University of Exeter)
Prof. James Porter (University of California, Berkeley)
Prof. Phiroze Vasunia (University College London)
ii
Tony Harrison

Poet of Radical Classicism
Edith Hall
iii
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are
trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2021

Copyright © Edith Hall 2021

Edith Hall has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work.

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vi–vii constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Cover design: Terry Woodley
Cover image © English poet and stage writer Tony Harrison on the South Bank,
London, 1990. (Photo by Gemma Levine/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or
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Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites
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have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hall, Edith, 1959– author.
Title: Tony Harrison : poet of radical classicism / Edith Hall.
Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Series: Classical receptions in
twentieth-century writing | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “This is the fi rst book-length
study of the classicism of Tony Harrison, one of the most important contemporary poets in England and
the world. It argues that his unique and politically radical classicism is inextricable from his core notion
that poetry should be a public property in which communal problems are shared and crystallised, and
that the poet has a responsibility to speak in a public voice about collective and political concerns.
Enriched by Edith Hall’s longstanding friendship with Harrison and involvement with his most recent
drama, inspired by Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris, it also asserts that his greatest innovations in both form
and style have been direct results of his intense engagements with individual works of ancient literature
and his belief that the ancient Greek poetic imagination was inherently radical. Tony Harrison’s large body
of work, for which he has won several major and international prizes, and which features on the UK
National Curriculum, ranges widely across long and short poems, plays, translations and fi lm poems.
Having studied Classics at Grammar School and University and having translated ancient poets from
Aeschylus to Martial and Palladas, Harrison has been immersed in the myths, history, literary forms and
authorial voices of Mediterranean antiquity for his entire working life and his classical interests are
refl ected in every poetic genre he has essayed, from epigrams and sonnets to original stage plays,
translations of Greek drama and Racine, to his experimental and harrowing fi lm poems, where he has
pioneered the welding of tightly cut video materials to tightly phrased verse forms. This volume explores
the full breadth of his oeuvre, offering an insightful new perspective on a writer who has played an
important part in shaping our contemporary literary landscape”– Provided by publisher.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2020034885 (print) | LCCN 2020034886 (ebook) | ISBN 9781474299336 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781474299343 (eBook) | ISBN 9781474299350 (ePDF)
Subjects: LCSH: Harrison, Tony, 1937–Criticism and interpretation. | Classicism in literature.
Classifi cation: LCC PR6058.A6943 Z64 2021 (print) | LCC PR6058.A6943 (ebook) | DDC 821/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034885
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034886

ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-9933-6
ePDF: 978-1-4742-9935-0
eBook: 978-1-4742-9934-3

Series: Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing

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and sign up for our newsletters.
iv
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Timeline of Tony Harrison’s Classics-Informed Works viii
Series’ Editor Preface xi
1 ‘Models of eloquence’: Radical Classicism 1
2 ‘Stone bodies’: Statuary and Classicism in Th e Loiners (1970) and
Palladas (1975) 19
3 ‘Frontiers of appetite’: P haedra Britannica (1975) 35
4 ‘Shaggermemnon’: Aeschylus’ O resteia and Continuous (1981) 59
5 ‘All the versuses of life’: ‘ v. ’ and Medea: A Sex-War Opera (1985) 79
6 ‘Bookworm excreta’: Th e Trackers of Oxyrhynchus (1988)
and Other Plays and Poems 97
7 ‘End to end in technicolour’: P rometheus (1998) and Other Films 123
8 ‘Witnessed horror’: F ram (2008) and Harrison’s Euripides 147
9 ‘Surviving the slopes of Parnassus’: ‘Polygons’ (2015)
and Other Poems 167
Notes 179
Bibliography 199
Index 213
v
Acknowledgements
Conversations with many people have gone into the making of this book. I am
particularly grateful to Barrie Rutter, Yana Sistovari, Emma Harding, Oliver
Taplin, Fiona Macintosh, Henry Stead, Paul Cartledge, David Braund, Jane
Harrison, Dinah Wood, the attendees at a seminar organised by graduates at
King’s College London in early March 2020 and my former PhD students Matt
Shipton, Helen Eastman, Caroline Latham and Lottie Parkyn. I learned much
from correspondence and sharing ideas and work with C é cile Marshall, Blake
Morrison, Giovanni Greco, Christine Regan, Sandie Byrne, Rachel Bower, Hallie
and Toph Marshall, Lorna Hardwick, Richard Eyre, Antony Rowland, Claire
Armitstead, Jo Balmer, Lee Hall, Simon Armitage, Melvyn Bragg, Andy
Burnham, Jasper Britton, Jacob Blakesley, Oswyn and Penny Murray, Lawrence
Evans, Jimmy Walters, John Kittmer, Margaret Silver, Joan Winterkorn, Robert
Crawford, Emily Pillinger-Avlamis, William Fitzgerald and Peter Parsons. Sarah
Prescott, a Harrison specialist at the Brotherton Library, and the exceptionally
friendly staff at the Premier Inn in Leeds in diff erent ways made my week in the
archives in September 2019 a delight; Dan Orrells and the Arts and Humanities
Faculty at King’s College London made it possible for me to fund that trip. Faber
& Faber kindly gave permission to quote from Harrison’s published works, and
the Brotherton Library at Leeds University gave me permission to quote from
his Notebooks, which he produced while working on each of his texts. Peter
Symes enabled me to study all of Tony Harrison’s fi lm-poems. Lily Mac Mahon
at Bloomsbury and Laura Jansen, the series editor, have been wonderfully
supportive, and Juliet Gardner a kind and meticulous copy-editor. Merv
Honeywood at Refi neCatch has been his usual friendly, prompt and professional
self. I have revelled for many years now in the friendship of Sian Th omas as well
as Tony Harrison himself; Tony’s many typewritten postcards and gift s of
amusing classics-related ephemera have made their way, in a subterranean
fashion, into the argument everywhere. Th is was a Covid-19 lockdown book
only made possible by the endless good humour and companionship of Richard,
Sarah and Georgie Poynder. I heartily thank each and every one of the people
vi
Acknowledgements vii
named here. I am grateful to Taylor and Francis Ltd. For permission to reproduce
as Chapter 2 a version of my article ‘Statuary and classicism in Tony Harrison’s
Th e Loiners and beyond’ from English Studies 99:1 (2018) 77–91 (reprinted
by permission of Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group,
www.tandfonline.com), and to Nicholas Poburko, editor of Arion , for permission
to reproduce parts of ‘Tony Harrison’s P rometheus: a view from the Left ’, Arion
10.1 (2002) 129–40 and ‘Classics, class and Cloacina: Tony Harrison’s humane
coprology’, A rion 15.2 (2007) 83–108 in Chapters 7 and 6 respectively.
Timeline of Tony Harrison’s
Classics-Informed Works

Date Title Genre/Medium Classical Source(s)
1964 Aikin Mata Stage adaptation Aristophanes’ L ysistrata
1969 ‘Newcastle is Peru’ Published poem Numerous classical allusions
1970 Th e Loiners Published poetry Numerous classical allusions
1975 Phaedra Britannica Stage adaptation Phaedra-Hippolytus plays by
Euripides, Seneca and Racine
1975 Palladas: Poems Published Palladas’ epigrams
translation
1978 From the School of Published poetry Numerous classical allusions
Eloquence and (the fi rst of several
Other Poems editions)
1981 Continuous: 50 Published poetry Numerous classical allusions
Sonnets from Th e (the second of
School of Eloquence several editions)
1981 Th e Oresteia Translation for Aeschylus’ O resteia
stage
1981 U. S. Martial Published Martial’s Epigrams
translation
1984–5 Th e Common Stage work . . . Lysistrata and Euripides’
Chorus adapting . . . Trojan Women
1985 ‘v.’ Published poem Numerous classical allusions
1985 Medea: A Sex-War Opera libretto Many M edea plays
Opera
1990 Th e Trackers of Stage play with Sophocles’ T rackers fragments
Oxyrhynchus embedded
translation
1991 ‘A Cold Coming’ Published poem Numerous classical allusions
1992 Th e Gaze of the Film poem Numerous classical allusions
Gorgon especially to the Iliad
1994 A Maybe Day in Film poem Athenian setting and
Kazakhstan numerous classical allusions
viii
Timeline of Tony Harrison’s Classics-Informed Works ix
1995 Th e Kaisers of Stage play with Marcus Aurelius and many
Carnuntum embedded classical other classical authors
texts
1995 Th e Labourers of Stage play with Phrynichos’ tragic fragments
Herakles embedded
translations
1998 Prometheus Film poem Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound
2000 Laureate’s Block Published poetry Numerous classical allusions
2000 Metamorpheus Film poem Numerous classical texts
about Orpheus
2005 Under the Clock Published poetry Numerous classical allusions
2005 Hecuba Translation for Euripides’ H ecuba
stage
2008 Fram Stage play with Euripides’ plays
numerous classical
allusions starring
Gilbert Murray
2013 ‘Black Sea Published poem Classical content throughout
Aphrodite’
2015 ‘Polygons’ Long published Classical allusions
poem everywhere. About Delphi
2017 Iphigenia in Radio play with Iphigenia in Tauris by
Crimea embedded Euripides
translation
2017 Inky Digit of Edited prose essays Many discussions of Classics
Defi ance