Ancient Cities Of The Heart

Earlier this week I had been thinking about the blog theme and what to write about ancient cities. When I woke from a dream (which I'll relate shortly) I had the phrase "Ancient cities of the heart " in my mind. What a great line. I figured it must be from a poem, possibly by Yeats, and tried for some considerable time to track it down on the interweb, but without success.

The closest I got was 'Deserted cities of the heart ', which is a Jack Bruce/Pete Brown song, the closing track on Cream's third LP 'Wheels Of Fire'. I undertook an archaeological dig into the lyrics and found ambiguities there. I don't know if an official version of the lyrics has ever been printed. Some claim a key line in the chorus goes: "Now my heart drowns in no love's streams", while others contend Bruce sings: "Now my heart's drowned in those lost streets." Whichever it is, the imagery makes me think of Atlantis, the sunken ancient city of legend, particularly as an earlier track 'Those Were The Days ', references the sunken city specifically. More of Atlantis later (plus a musical link so you can listen for yourself).

As for the dream, it was quite vivid and very strange. I was in the Beatles' London townhouse in a big room decorated with brown art deco wallpaper and woven straw matting. John Lennon and George Harrison were there, dressed in Edwardian finery. Harrison was repeatedly swan diving from the top of a bookcase onto cushions on the floor, as I explained to an old girlfriend of mine that Eppy (Brian Epstein) would have arranged all the interior decor. Lennon said the Beatles never had money (like the Queen) and if they wanted anything they would send Mal or Nelly out to get it (that's Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall, their roadies). Harrison complained that McCartney was always bossing them, trying to get them to do the washing up and other "drag chores".

'Indoor Sunset'

The ex-girlfriend was Fanny Copley. She was a history teacher at the school I taught at in north London in the 1970s, a Chelsea supporter for her sins, and the only child of Peter Copley the actor. He had appeared as the jewellery salesman in the Beatles' 1965 movie 'Help!' Maybe the decor was reminiscent of the Copley parents' house in Mile End, I don't know. Lennon said he'd written two books of poetry and stuff, and I told him I'd also published two books of poems. That's when I woke up with the phrase 'Ancient cities of the heart ' in my head. 

Atlantis, then is my ancient city, lost beneath the waves as legend would have it, according to Plato, writing in approximately 360 BC. 

He described its provenance, its being given to the sea god Poseidon, who conceived the race of Atlanteans by having intercourse with a beautiful mortal woman of the island, Cleito. He described the size, shape and geographical features of Atlantis and went on at length to detail its manmade splendours, the temples, palaces, canals, harbours of this island state that became the hub of a great Mediterranean empire. I'll quote at length but don't blame you if you skip quickly through some of the descriptive passages...

"They had such an amount of wealth as was never before possessed by kings and potentates, and is not likely ever to be again, and they were furnished with everything which they could have, both in city and country. For, because of the greatness of their empire, many things were brought to them from foreign countries, and the island itself provided much of what was required by them for the uses of life.

In the first place, they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, mineral as well as metal, and that which is now only a name, and was then something more than a name -- orichalcum -- was dug out of the earth in many parts of the island, and, with the exception of gold, was esteemed the most precious of metals among the men of those days.

There was an abundance of wood for carpenters' work, and sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. Moreover, there were a great number of elephants in the island, and there was provision for animals of every kind, both for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in mountains and on plains, and therefore for the animal which is the largest and most voracious of them.

Also, whatever fragrant things there are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or distilling drops of flowers or fruits, grew and thrived in that land; and again, the cultivated fruit of the earth, both the dry edible fruit and other species of food, which we call by the general name of legumes, and the fruits having a hard rind, affording drinks, and meats, and ointments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which may be used to play with, and are fruits which spoil with keeping--and the pleasant kinds of dessert which console us after dinner, when we are full and tired of eating--all these that sacred island lying beneath the sun brought forth fair and wondrous in infinite abundance.

All these things they received from the earth, and they employed themselves in constructing their temples, and palaces, and harbours, and docks; and they arranged the whole country in the following manner: First of all they bridged over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metropolis, and made a passage into and out of the royal palace; they began to build the palace and then the habitation of the god and of their ancestors. This they continued to ornament in successive generations, every king surpassing the one who came before him to the utmost of his power, until they made the building a marvel to behold for size and for beauty.

And, beginning from the sea, they dug a canal three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet in depth, and fifty stadia in length, which they carried through to the outermost zone, making a passage from the sea up to this, which became a u, and leaving an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find ingress. Moreover, they divided the zones of land which parted the zones of sea, constructing bridges of such a width as would leave a passage for a single trireme to pass out of one into another, and roofed them over; and there was a way underneath for the ships, for the banks of the zones were raised considerably above the water.

Now the largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land which came next of equal breadth; but the next two, as well the zone of water as of land, were two stadia, and the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium only in width. The island in which the palace was situated had a diameter of five stadia.

This, and the zones and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in width, they surrounded by a stone wall, on either side placing towers, and gates on the bridges where the sea passed in. The stone which was used in the work they quarried from underneath the centre island and from underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner side. One kind of stone was white, another black, and a third red; and, as they quarried, they at the same time hollowed out docks double within, having roofs formed out of the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, but in others they put together different stones, which they intermingled for the sake of ornament, to be a natural source of delight.

The entire circuit of the wall which went round the outermost one they covered with a coating of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel flashed with the red light of orichalcum.

The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed in this wise: In the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold; this was the spot in which they originally begat the race of the ten princes, and thither they annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, and performed sacrifices to each of them. Here, too, was Poseidon's own temple, of a stadium in length and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a sort of barbaric splendour.

All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, adorned everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum; all the other parts of the walls and pillars and floor they lined with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold: there was the god himself standing in a chariot--the charioteer of six winged horses--and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them in that day.

Plato (423-348 BC)

There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private individuals. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the ten kings and of their wives; and there were many other great offerings, both of kings and of private individuals, coming both from the city itself and the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar, too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to the rest of the work, and there were palaces in like manner which answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple.

In the next place, they used fountains both of cold and hot springs; these were very abundant, and both kinds wonderfully adapted to use by reason of the sweetness and excellence of their waters. They constructed buildings about them, and planted suitable trees; also cisterns, some open to the heaven, other which they roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths, there were the king's baths, and the baths of private persons, which were kept apart; also separate baths for women, and others again for horses and cattle, and to them they gave as much adornment as was suitable for them.

The water which ran off they carried, some to the grove of Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of wonderful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the soil; the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts which passed over the bridges to the outer circles: and there were many temples built and dedicated to many gods; also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and some set apart for horses, in both of the two islands formed by the zones; and in the centre of the larger of the two there was a race-course of a stadium in width, and in length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses to race in.

Also there were guard-houses at intervals for the body-guard, the more trusted of whom had their duties appointed to them in the lesser zone, which was nearer the Acropolis; while the most trusted of all had houses given them within the citadel, and about the persons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and naval stores, and all things were quite ready for use.

Enough of the plan of the royal palace. Crossing the outer harbours, which were three in number, you would come to a wall which began at the sea and went all round: this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest zone and harbour, and enclosed the whole, meeting at the mouth of the channel toward the sea. The entire area was densely crowded with habitations; and the canal and the largest of the harbours were full of vessels and merchants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices and din of all sorts night and day.

I have described the city and the parts about the ancient palace, and now I must endeavour to describe the nature and arrangement of the rest of the country. The whole country was very lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the country immediately about and surrounding the city was a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which descended toward the sea; it was smooth and even, but of an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand stadia, and going up the country from the sea through the centre of the island two thousand stadia; the whole region of the island lies toward the south, and is sheltered from the north.

The surrounding mountains were celebrated for their number and size and beauty, in which they exceeded all that are now to be seen anywhere; having in them also many wealthy inhabited villages, and rivers and lakes, and meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or tame, and wood of various sorts, abundant for every kind of work.

I will now describe the plain, which had been cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings. It was rectangular, and for the most part straight and oblong; and what it wanted of the straight line followed the line of the circular ditch.

The depth and width and length of this ditch were incredible and gave the impression that such a work, in addition to so many other works, could hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But I must say what I have heard. It was excavated to the depth of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length.

It received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round the plain, and touching the city at various points, was there let off into the sea. From above, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut in the plain, and again let off into the ditch, toward the sea; these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, and by them they brought down the wood from the mountains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into another, and to the city.

Twice in the year they gathered the fruits of the earth--in winter having the benefit of the rains, and in summer introducing the water of the canals. As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had an appointed chief of men who were fit for military service, and the size of the lot was to be a square of ten stadia each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty thousand."

Plato claimed that Atlantis eventually fell from favour with the Gods (Zeus principally) because it aspired too much to greatness and the expansion of its empire. He says it was eventually destroyed by a massive seismic event (earthquake and or volcano) and sank to the bottom of the sea 9,000 years before he wrote his treatise. 

He positioned the mythical island at the western end of the Mediterranean, near the pillars of Hercules, but speculation in the last century or so is that the massive volcanic eruption that blew the eastern Mediterranean Greek island of Santorini apart in the bronze age might have been the real basis of Plato's fictional Atlantis myth.

Santorini today (photographed from the ISS)

A lot of the topography Plato mentioned, in addition to the details of palace and harbour construction, brass-clad walls, naval expertise and religious practices, is very reminiscent of the Minoan civilisation that had flourished not 9,000 but 3,000 years earlier and of Santorini in particular with its crescent shape, concentric ring of islands and mountainous Thera archaeologic site. It is tempting to think that Plato might have drawn on historically-based folklore in constructing his representation of Atlantis.

And now, if you're still with me after such a lengthy post, here for the first time is a poem that is actually titled:

Ancient Cities Of The Heart

They were not steps

I was looking to retrace

through a cobwebbed past

down dusty pathways

partly overgrown

with clinging brambles

into the deceptive dapple

of yesterday's sunlight

under such ancient trees.

But those descending stones

are where I placed an opal ring

upon a sweet girl's finger,

inconstancy not even

a shadow of a thought.

And on that grassy slope beyond

by moonlight pledged my troth

to another, rippling notes

of water music in our ears,

while through that thicket

glimpse the memory 

of a green girl held fast,

our slender limbs entwined,

her emerald eyes.

Heaven sighs.

And within this old house

on this deserted square

passion echoes still.

No need to re-enter there,

nor the red-tiled villa

round the corner

on whose roof I lay

in another lover's arms

beneath the stars

as time wheeled away.

I'd forgotten too the fountain

dry now for many years,

and didn't we laugh 

as we showered

in its rainbow waters.

It's a curious thing

how among the broken glass,

warped frames, shed skins,

the auras of so many 

once loved ghosts

cling on affectionately.

Of course it comes with the usual caveat, that as a newly-written piece, it may be subject to revision on reflection. 

Finally, in an extraordinary act of foolishness/generosity (delete as appropriate), I attach links to two musical bonuses this week. Just click on the song titles to open up the YouTube links. Take your pick from: Atlantis by Donovan and Deserted Cities Of The Heart by Cream. Enjoy.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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An Empty Vessel

I didn't nominate it, but I thought this was a theme rich in promise. Unfortunately, it seems I'm blogging alone this week. Ah well.

The full quote (attributed to our friend Plato) runs thus: "An empty vessel makes the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest babblers."  He was a very clever chap, old Plato, if a trifle supercilious. His aphorism is more commonly rendered in pithier form as "He who knows least speaks loudest" and while it's not a universal truth, I'm sure we all know friends, colleagues, presidents to whom it could be applied with some justification.

However, I'm going to steer clear of addressing issues raised by the second phrase in Plato's maxim - tempting though it would be go on the offensive against the vile bigotry that lay behind this week's atrocity in New Zealand - because I already had an idea in mind suggested by the first part - and it's this: if ever an empty vessel could have been said to resonate loudly in the popular imagination (down through nearly 150 years now), that vessel was the Mary Celeste, found deserted and drifting 500 miles east of the Azores in early December 1872 with no apparent clue as to why the crew had left their ship. None of them was ever heard of again.

The story of the Mary Celeste first gripped me as a schoolboy, as indeed it had gripped Victorian England and America, from where the vessel and its crew had originated. The mystery of a ship in perfect working order deserted seemingly on the spur of the moment for no discernible reason was the stuff that imagination could run away with - and run away it did, spinning a legend as it went.


the Mary Celeste, built in Canada, registered in America

Arthur Conan Doyle, never one to let cold fact get in the way of a hot yarn, wrote a short story about the mystery for Cornhill Magazine in 1884. He portrayed a tidy ship adrift, not a coil of rope or sail out of place, table set for breakfast and the crew entirely missing with no sign of violence or sudden departure - a riddle to be solved. Various newspapers and periodicals speculated on what had happened, disregarding or embellishing the known facts as they saw fit. The enduring legend of the Mary Celeste and its vanished crew was born.

Of course there was a spate of theories, some more plausible than others. Had the ship been boarded by pirates or subject to a mutiny by the crew? There were no signs of violence and nothing had been plundered. Could the crew have all eaten contaminated food (bad flour being the principal culprit), hallucinated and jumped overboard? Again no evidence was found. Had they feared the ship's cargo (1,700 barrels of poisonous 'denatured' alcohol) was about to explode and so abandoned ship? Once more there was no hard evidence to suggest this was the case. Had they been washed overboard by a sudden waterspout? Or abducted by an alien space-ship (a novel idea in the 1880s)? Or plucked from the safety of their craft by a mighty malevolent sea creature? This latter giant squid theory, though of course completely implausible, is my favourite bonkers solution to the enduring mystery of the disappearing crew.

Giant Squid Theory

Here are the hard facts. The Mary Celeste was found by another merchant ship plying the same route from New York to Europe some nine days after the last entry was made in the ship's log. The log itself gave no hint of any problems with the vessel, its cargo or its crew, The ship's company actually consisted of Captain Briggs, his wife and baby daughter and seven "peaceable and first class" sailors. For a reason still to be determined - and perhaps it never will be - the whole contingent appears to have abandoned ship in orderly fashion one morning just off the island of Santa Maria, for the boat's dinghy (which doubled as life-boat) was missing from the deck along with the captain's navigation equipment. In all other respects, the Mary Celeste appeared to be in good trim and was well-provisioned. It was subsequently sailed to Gibraltar where it was the subject of a rigorous examination and a formal salvage hearing. This latter proved inconclusive and the Mary Celeste was released back to its owner to belatedly complete its journey under fresh crew to Genoa in Italy.

Many hundreds of articles, several books and documentary and motion picture films have explored the intriguing phenomenon of this most famous of empty vessels. The riddle of the Mary Celeste endures as the stuff of legend.


Salvaged and Bound For Legend

You knew I wasn't going to leave it there, didn't you? Here, fresh from the imaginarium, is the apocryphal truth about the deserting of the Mary Celeste...

The secret to the riddle lies in treasure and a map that had long been in the possession of the family of Captain Briggs' wife. At one time, the islands of the Azores had been on the bullion run from South America to Europe and Portuguese pirates had regularly operated in the region in the 16th and 17th centuries. Just off the east coast of Santa Maria (the eastern-most island in the chain) lies the tiny islet of Sao Lourenco - check any good seadog map for proof. On this islet there was buried a chest of treasure that the crew of the Mary Celeste aimed to claim as their own. The Captain, his wife and child were planning to start a new life in Europe with their share of the spoils; the rest of the crew had been hand-picked and were to be cut in on the reward. All of this was being accomplished under the innocent cover of a merchant voyage. On the eve of 25th November 1872, a fortnight after sailing from New York,  the vessel anchored offshore from Santa Maria and early the next morning everybody on board (wife and baby included) set out to row the half-mile to the islet of Sao Lourenco armed with treasure map, compass, telescope, spades and provisions for the day. The map was an accurate enough depiction and the hoard of bullion was easy to locate and dig up. Everyone was in high spirits as they loaded the chest into the dinghy and pulled off back towards the Mary Celeste - but no one had reckoned with the fearful Diabdomar (the devil of the sea). Just as the happy crew was nearing the mothership, up from the depths surged the giant avenging squid. In a thrashing minute it had seized the little dinghy, ensnaring all of the occupants in its various tentacles and dragged the whole lot of them down to their unpleasant deaths. The dinghy was matchwood, the treasure was safely settled in the sand fifteen fathoms deep and once the Diabdomar had loosened the Mary Celeste's anchor and set it drifting in deeper water towards Portugal, his duty was done. (The end.)

And that's not all. I leave you with this latest fabrication, a spectacularly tentacular new poem...

Bidding Of The Squid
Written in ancestral ink,
the covenant with bold Bartolomeu
ordains that there must ever be
a mindful devil of the sea,
Diabdomar, to guard
the hard-won treasure stowed
upon this rocky crop of Sao Lourenco
by the buccaneer who set our forebear
free of that mesh of sailors' nets
in which he had been snared.

It is a debt of gratitude,
a duty owed in perpetuity.
Thus constantly
at fifteen fathoms deep
with cold, mistrustful eye,
this watch Diabdomar have kept
nigh on three long centuries.

Perchance our liberator
may return to claim his silver hoard.
If that happens, we devils of the sea
shall surely know and be released;
but in the while
with fearsome beaks, tenacious
tentacles and hearts of ice
we lie low beneath concealing waves,
ready in a trice to foil the perfidy
of any brazen blackguard fool abroad
who dares to try and steal Bartolomeu's reals.

Safe sailing, hearties! Steer clear of squids, S ;-)

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