At university I had a brilliant friend. He was delightful company. Everyone
spoke highly of him. His academic work was outstanding. Yet he was no dull
swot. He threw himself into editing the student rag, persuaded me to write,
and was unstintingly generous with his support. Without him, I would
probably not have entered the inky trade that has shaped my life in so many
weird and sometimes wonderful ways.
My friend was clearly “destined for great things”. Except that he wasn't.
Running along a beach in a storm he was struck by lightning. The shock of
his death numbed us. But numbness eventually eases. Life goes on. Nobody is
irreplaceable. What remains, however - especially when a person dies young -
is the most frustrating of legacies: the legacy of “what might have been”.
These memories came back last week after Anthony Minghella's death. I met him
once, so can't claim him as a friend in the normal sense. But I nevertheless
felt, as I do about many creative geniuses, living and dead, that he
enriched my life like a close friend. I would still feel that if he had done
nothing else except conceive that astonishing moment in The English Patient
when a rapturous Juliette Binoche is sent soaring into the roof of a Tuscan
church, flare in hand, to throw a sudden, incandescent light on Piero della
Francesca's gorgeous frescoes. To me, that one wordless scene says more
about the capacity of love, beauty and art to infuse the spirit and ravish
the senses than a million textbooks ever could.
That it also symbolises the meaning of the film - redemption glimpsed in a
swirling murk of despair, guilt and imminent mortality, only increases its
emotive power. Minghella was certainly a virtuoso director, but also a
profound explorer of the human condition. So of course his own death has
unleashed a welter of speculation about “what might have been”. Only 54, he
could easily have directed six more masterpieces.
But equally, he could have peaked. I don't write that callously, but only as a
statement of a possibility. Some geniuses sustain their energies and
inspiration for decades. Others dazzle then fizzle. To cite just one obvious
example, if Orson Welles had died at 27, after Citizen Kane, we would have
been left wondering what heights he might have attained next, rather than
pondering the dispiriting succession of half-baked flops that did follow in
the subsequent four decades.
Would Mozart have produced twice as many great symphonies and operas had he
lived to 70 instead of 35? Would Wilfred Owen have gone on writing
heartbreaking poetry, had he not been killed at 25 in the last weeks of the
First World War? If so, what would have fuelled his indignation?
If James Dean had lived to 84, rather than 24, would he ever have made another
film as good as Rebel Without a Cause? Would Christopher Marlowe, killed in
a pub brawl at 29, have gone on to write better plays than his upstart
contemporary, William Shakespeare? And would Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison,
Kurt Cobain or Jimi Hendrix have achieved their cult status had they lived
to a ripe old age? The Homeric phrase “those whom the gods love die young”
is taken to imply that the gods jealously snatch away the best talent for
their own edification. But it could easily mean that the gods preserve the
reputation of those they love by sparing them a long, depressing decline.
Whether they die young or old, however, artists are assured of immortality.
The work lives on. What, though, of ordinary folk? What consolation for a
young woman with cancer, or the parents of a child killed in an accident?
The flower has been plucked before the bud has opened. That seems arbitrary,
cruel, bereft of any redeeming aspect.
Well, perhaps. But in this context I was struck by the Archbishop of
Canterbury's Easter sermon. For once, a man with a genius for wrapping
interesting ideas in prose so opaque that it defies penetration managed to
say something clear and startling. He said that death is inevitable. You may
think this is rather old news. But his point is that modern Man is so
besotted with the acquisition of material things that he forgets, until too
late, that “night must fall on everything we value or understand or hope
for”.
I'd go further. Because of huge medical advances I think we now feel we have a
“right” to 80 years or more of a good life. We feel cheated if we don't get
it, or outraged on behalf of people such as Minghella who are “snatched
before their time”. We don't celebrate what is wonderful in short lives; we
get fixated on what seems to be missing. We think of those existences as
incomplete - like a novel missing its last chapters.
But that's nonsense. Once death arrives, the book is finished. The notion that
we can tidy up or even control our own exit is a very modern fallacy. Our
ancestors knew better. They treated death as an unwelcome visitor who often
knocked at the most inconvenient time. So they were always prepared. They
“lived each day as if 'twere the last”.
That's a motto to which we would be wise to return. We don't know how long we
have. That fragility is disconcerting, but it should also be energising.
Want to do good in the world? Do good today, rather than putting it off till
you “have more time”. Want to create something beautiful? Create it now.
Want to mend bridges with an old foe? Mend them this instant, while both of
you are able to totter over them together. Want to tell someone you love
them? Seize the moment. It may not come again.
Minghella seized his moment - truly, madly, deeply. He created films so
poignant and so honest that his contribution to humanity's treasure-trove of
wisdom is beyond dispute. That's enough. If you lament what might have been,
you belittle what was. For, as he showed us when he hoisted Juliette Binoche
up to those frescoes, it takes but a single transcendental moment to affirm
the whole joy of human existence.
All you need is a little imagination
Did Shakespeare get around more than we thought? As The Times reported
yesterday, two Italian academics claim in a new book that Shakespeare must
have visited Venice in person - such is the depth of local knowledge that he
deploys in The Merchant of Venice and the numerous other plays that he set
in Italy.
The notion of Shakespeare as cultural tourist is fascinating - did he fly
EasyBard? But I think the academics may be hugely underestimating the power
of a first-rate creative imagination to conjure a convincing verbal picture
of a location from the tiniest scraps of information.
Remember the great Broadway songwriter Yip Harburg's classic evocation of
April in Paris (“ ... Chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees
... ”)? It's said that he tossed off that immortal ditty in a New York diner
on a rainy morning in late November, while desperately scanning travel
brochures of Paris - a city he had never visited, in April or any other
month.
Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that the resourceful Harburg never went
somewhere over the rainbow to research his other great hit lyric, either.
Uncommonly quiet
Since my rant last week against the compulsory fingerprinting of passengers at
Terminal 5 in Heathrow, I've received scores of e-mails, letters and phone
calls in support from teachers, lawyers, civil servants, students, business
people, even the odd bishop - in fact, from people in every walk of life,
except one. To the best of my knowledge, not a single leading politician in
any party has voiced even a modicum of concern about this monstrous
imposition on British citizens, travelling in their own country, inflicted
by BAA, a foreign-owned private company. Good to know that our civil
liberties are in such safe hands, isn't it?
I loved your article - thank you :)
Neha, London,
The current decline of religion in Britain & much of the West is due to 3 main factors:-
1) The Enlightenment's false belief that there is a conflict between reason & genuine science, and true religion.
2) The current belief, as Richard Morrison says, that we will all live to a ripe old age, and any consideration of 'the four last things' can be left until our dotage.
3) The distraction provided by a multitude of consumer goods (as the Archbishop says), which likewise make us forget 'the four last things'
Thus many people have no sense of any need, or possibility, for life as a spiritual journey. Others, sensing the need, often believe in any New Age nonsense.
Dave, Wrexham,
I agree, I thought the article was very well put and was rather touching.
Jason, London,
I thought the article re Seize the Day was excellent and so much in line with how I feel What right have we to a long life without any problems or disease along the way or at the end
Hazel Powe, Bristol, UK