Howard Jacobson's Blog, page 5

It was while I was watching Juliet deliquescing exquisitely into the arms of Romeo at the Albert Hall the other night that I realised what was wrong with the Government’s campaign to promote the teaching of British values. If we are concerned about the inculcation of values inimical to our way of life and habits of mind, the answer is not to replace them with values of our own but to dispense with the promotion of values altogether.

With the World Cup upon us, this seems a good time to raise the matter of Nietzsche’s sending-off during that ill-tempered football match between Greek and German philosophers in the Olympiastadion at the 1972 Monty Python Munich Olympics.

“The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.” So wrote Coleridge in the great 17th chapter of Biographia Literaria that deals with his friend Wordsworth’s argument that the proper diction for poetry consisted in language taken from the mouths of men in real life, under the influence of natural feelings. The language, in Wordsworth’s own words, of men “in low and rustic life... because in that condition our feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity... are more easily comprehended and more durable”. Tosh, said Coleridge. If anything, a country life, where it is not buttressed by education or original sensibility or both, must suffer from insufficient stimulus and is more likely to lead to a hardening and contraction of the mind. The best parts of language are the product of philosophers, not of clowns or shepherds. Clowns or shepherds! – ah, those, reader, were the days.

Travel loosens the mind. Whoever would preserve the strength of his opinions, whether about people or places, is advised to stay at home. Take what has just happened to me as the living proof of this. After 10 days in Athens and Crete – my first visit to either – I am returned in a sort of convictional turmoil, with few of my certitudes intact.

Of the wars we only pretend to fight, the phoniest is the one against celebrities caught off-guard evincing racism. That’s if they really are caught, and if they really are off-guard, and if they really are celebrities.

Saw God last week. Not in a sunset or a rainbow, not on Mount Sinai or Uluru, not in Chartres Cathedral or on Glastonbury Tor, and certainly not on the road to Damascus, where these days one is more likely to encounter the devil. No, I saw God at Tate Modern.

Saw God last week. Not in a sunset or a rainbow, not on Mount Sinai or Uluru, not in Chartres Cathedral or on Glastonbury Tor, and certainly not on the road to Damascus, where these days one is more likely to encounter the devil. No, I saw God at Tate Modern.

Saw God last week. Not in a sunset or a rainbow, not on Mount Sinai or Uluru, not in Chartres Cathedral or on Glastonbury Tor, and certainly not on the road to Damascus, where these days one is more likely to encounter the devil. No, I saw God at Tate Modern.

Saw God last week. Not in a sunset or a rainbow, not on Mount Sinai or Uluru, not in Chartres Cathedral or on Glastonbury Tor, and certainly not on the road to Damascus, where these days one is more likely to encounter the devil. No, I saw God at Tate Modern.

A friend of mine went to the doctor recently, terrified by the sudden appearance of luminescent white spots, like toxic sequins, on his scrotum. After innumerable tests, the doctor wrote to say he had white spots on his scrotum. My friend wondered if the condition had a name. White spots on the scrotum, the doctor told him.