804
Choosing Bede for my novel "The Persian
Fire", I might instead have chosen Alcuin, who died today in 804. Initially a Yorvik monk, he became Charlemagne’s chief advisor on
ecclesiastical and educational affairs, and for nearly a decade was abbot of St
Martin de Tours. I see in him an earlier incarnation of the great John
Percival; Siegfried Sassoon clearly saw something similar when he wrote:
AWARENESS OF ALCUIN
At peace in my tall-windowed Wiltshire room,
(Birds overheard from chill March twilight's close)
I read, translated, Alcuin's verse, in whom
A springtide of resurgent learning rose.
Homely and human, numb in feet and fingers,
Alcuin believed in angels; asked their aid;
And still the essence of that asking lingers
In the aureoled invocation which he made
For Charlemagne, his scholar. Alcuin, old,
Loved listening to the nest-near nightingale,
Forgetful of renown that must enfold
His world-known name; remembering pomps that fail.
Alcuin, from temporalities at rest,
Sought grace within him, given from afar;
Noting how sunsets worked around to west;
Watching, at spring's approach, that beckoning star;
And hearing, while one thrush sang through the rain,
Youth, which his soul in Paradise might regain.
Amber pagesAt peace in my tall-windowed Wiltshire room,
(Birds overheard from chill March twilight's close)
I read, translated, Alcuin's verse, in whom
A springtide of resurgent learning rose.
Homely and human, numb in feet and fingers,
Alcuin believed in angels; asked their aid;
And still the essence of that asking lingers
In the aureoled invocation which he made
For Charlemagne, his scholar. Alcuin, old,
Loved listening to the nest-near nightingale,
Forgetful of renown that must enfold
His world-known name; remembering pomps that fail.
Alcuin, from temporalities at rest,
Sought grace within him, given from afar;
Noting how sunsets worked around to west;
Watching, at spring's approach, that beckoning star;
And hearing, while one thrush sang through the rain,
Youth, which his soul in Paradise might regain.
An obscure reference in an old diary tells me that the Chad Mitchell Trio reached Number 99 in the American pop charts today in 1962, with a song called “John Birch Society”. Not a particularly significant achievement, it must be said, and an unlikely title for a song of whatever ranking. But given the date, I wonder if this is Dylan’s “Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues”, with which he caused such a furore on the Ed Sullivan show, or an entirely different song that he heard and satirised? Look out you commies!
The same diary entry also tells me, but with a "why?", that today is the Feast Day (perhaps the death-day?) of Alcuin, Yorvik scholar and Charlemagne's chief adviser, the man to whom the invention of cursive writing is attributed - alas falsely; at least, he may have invented it for English, or Aenglisch as he would have written it, but cursive writing in other languages had been around for nearly two millennia already.
Yes, his death-day, in 804; I finally got around to checking, as per the entry now at the top of this page, though it took me eight years! But believe me, he is well worth following up. Start here.
Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen That Thanh), Vietnamese revolutionary, born today in 1890
Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), Black Muslim leader, born today in 1925
Jose Julian Marti, Cuban author and political activist, leader of the first of Cuba's wars of liberation, killed, today in 1895
T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), the Samson of the Arab revolt, caused the seven pillars to come crashing down on his own head, today in 1935, riding his motorcycle suicidally into the oblivion of the Dorsestshire countryside. Presumably, based on that famous incident of him putting out a match between two fingers (the corporal who watched him do it then tried it himself and burned his fingers), the trick was not minding.
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