Carmilla Burns Raglan

Book Read This Week: Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (Robert Burns), Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu) 5/10, The Destruction of Lord Raglan: A Tragedy of the Crimean War (Christopher Hibbert) 7/10

It is slightly tricky to fit poetry into the current format of the blog; I find I tend to dip into the collections I have, more or less at random, and I rarely read a whole book of poetry end to end. I've therefore decided to write about poets when I feel like it, rather than when I finish one of their books. As it is Burns night, and I am sat in front of my computer digesting a meal of haggis, tatties and neeps whilst nursing a glass of scotch, Robert Burns seems an appropriate poet to kick off this (occasional) series.

I enjoy Burns' poetry; he has a gift for striking imagery, and much like Kipling, he knows how to coin a cliche. The sheer economy of his verse is also brilliant; the description of the farmer's wife in Tam O'Shanter, waiting at home "Gathering her brows like gathering storm/ Nursing her wrath to keep it warm." compresses a wealth of characterisation into just two lines. I can almost see the woman, waiting by the fire for her ne'er-do-well husband to crawl back from the pub, seething anger barely under control.

The other quality the Burns possesses in spades, that is sadly lacking in many poets is a sense of humour; any man willing to submit his tax return in verse ("The Inventory: In Answer to a Mandate by the Surveyor of Taxes") certainly knows how to have a laugh (although I would like to know whether, as one would expect, this submission led to a punitive audit by the Inland Revenue). I'm certain that plenty of his poems contain subtle satirical barbs at prominent figures in 18th Century Scotland, but I don't know enough about the period to understand them (an unfortunate inevitability if one chooses to write verse about current events).

I also remain convinced that some (if not all) of his poems and songs were double entendres  (if not single entendres) when he wrote them; I can accept that in some cases language has moved on, in unfortunate directions for traditional songs (see: Cock Up Your Beaver, a song where it's quite difficult to read the title with a straight face, let alone the rest), but in others (What Is A Lassie To Do With An Auld Man?) I'm fairly sure that even in the 18th Century the meaning was obvious. So: Robert Burns, we salute you!

Carmilla is, of course, the first ever lesbian vampire novel, but that is just about the only interesting thing about it. Being Victorian (and, indeed, predating Dracula), there's lots of sighing and swooning and gazing with longing, but not much actually happens. One gets the feeling that when it was originally written, before vampires entered the popular consciousness, the idea of a nocturnal predator that caused virtuous (and they are always virtuous) christian (again, always christian) young ladies to develop anaemia and waste away was novel and unsettling. Now, it's a little bit passe. That's not to say I think the vampire as a literary device is outdated (all sparkling to the contrary), but rather that their use in Carmilla is poor.

The vampire story, when done well, develops a terror that depends upon two factors for its effect; temptation and intelligence. Temptation because, really, who doesn't want to live forever? The vampire is seductive, and beautiful and charming and they can make you just like them; all it will cost you is the sight of the sun. And your immortal soul. Intelligence because, unlike other traditional monsters, vampires can think. Vampires can plan. Humans have a lot of experience killing things that are stronger, faster, tougher than us. Killing something that's smarter than you, that's a whole other ballgame. Augustus Caesar was one of (if not the) smartest men who ever lived. At the age of 19, he could run rings round every other politician in Rome. At 36 he made himself sole master of the entire Roman empire. Give him another 2,000 years of experience and cunning, and how could you ever hope to defeat him? That is how a vampire story should be done.

My final book, The Destruction of Lord Raglan, is an attempt to excuse the massive incompetence which characterised the British military during the Crimean War. This is perhaps best exemplified by the process by which a commander was chosen:

"War has been declared! Who shall be our general?"
"We have the Duke of Wellington, the best general in the world!"
"Erm... he's been dead five years sir."
"Crap. Who do we have?"
"A man who was stood near the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo, and another man also named after an item of clothing."
"Close enough."

Hibbert's thesis is that the failings of the British war effort were not entirely Raglan's fault (probably true) and that Raglan was a very pleasant man, and extremely well meaning (probably also true). Unfortunately, this doesn't absolve Raglan of responsibility for the disasters into which his army fell, especially not when many of those disasters arose from excessive politeness on Raglan's part (a very British fatal flaw). The main message I took from the book was that the Crimean War, with it's mud, blood and gross incompetence, was pretty much a dry run for the First World War, although, in a reverse of Marx's famous dictum, the first time was the farce and the second time was the tragedy.