{"id":46,"date":"2021-12-10T04:11:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-10T04:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/daphne\/?p=46"},"modified":"2021-12-18T21:03:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-18T21:03:45","slug":"verities-and-unities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thanassiscambanis.com\/daphne\/2021\/12\/10\/verities-and-unities\/","title":{"rendered":"Verities and unities"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Parker<\/em><\/p>\n

I have so many things to say about Daphne that I have decided to let Daphne speak for herself. Over the 40 years of our friendship, we exchanged hundreds of letters and emails. I\u2019ve chosen a few excerpts from those letters that represent Daphne\u2019s sensibility, her intellect, her wit, her impeccable prose. Daphne, as you know, was no fan of hagiography, so some of my choices represent her penchant for\u2014 well, let us call it unvarnished opinion.<\/p>\n

Postcard from London, 1995<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, in my room at the George Hotel, in a half moon circle of a square called Cartwright Gardens, near where Leonard and Virginia had their Hogarth Press, I see in all our connection some similar universe of imagination we both responded to miraculously out of words and rhythms, and some kind of common stock of values. America is nothing now but remembered sounds\u2014I mean since developers are the deformed progeny of the explorers\u2014and the clues are the sounds and hammerings of the testimonies on our Puritan pages.<\/p>\n

Letter from Greece, 1998:<\/em><\/p>\n

I went to dinner at the American Academy of Classical Studies. Talking with these mostly academics it seems more and more true they know nothing and make it all up to invent vocabularies as methods to make themselves feel better about their own disagreements. The best clues come in Homer, Aeschylus, etc. but given ignorance of context, that too ends up as a vocabulary, but one more wondrous than mere defense of method. Meanwhile, Michael, the swimming is gorgeous.<\/p>\n

Letter from Chapel Hill, 1996<\/em><\/p>\n

I am definitely willing to shove the idea of Art down somewhere in a pocket you can\u2019t see too well, and consider novels, plays, etc. in terms of their \u201caffect\u201d on people despite my prevailing artistic notion of Art, the Verities and the Unities. I have dedicated myself to them. And just as technology has speeded up things and jittered up the plebian \u201creceivers\u201d (the hoi polloi that will shell out eight bucks for a movie ticket plus another for popcorn) I see that we have to consider these \u201creceivers\u201d or never come out into the light of day.<\/p>\n

Letter from Chapel Hill, 1999<\/em><\/p>\n

Some of the best friendships are those with people who love you for being a little horrible. Most people are too afraid of being steadfastly and uninhibitedly horrible. Even I have tamed my horribleness through life. Bad!<\/p>\n

Postcard From England, 1996. <\/em><\/p>\n

I went to Cezanne exhibit (mobbed, people standing in front of each painting, copying it in sketches, I elbowed them off, because I can\u2019t bear standing\u2014none fell, not even me.) Terrific exhibit though, despite. Then I went to Wales. Wonderful, as I was spoiled by old friends and went squelching through castles, mad-cow fields, bluffs along the Irish sea, village sidewalks, libraries (no squelching there) tidal estuaries\u2026 The fine rain down did rain<\/em>. Ate fabulous meals of boiled vegetables hardly boiled, range chickens from France, teas, tarts, but no meat pies and beer bitters. Plus, before coal fires, cognac.<\/p>\n

Letter from Chapel Hill, 2010<\/em><\/p>\n

I shall write you this letter because it is important to me, in terms of recognitions I have always had of you, so profound a part of my life, and perhaps the same with you.<\/p>\n

Ours is a very deep connection, impossible to achieve unless you and I were compelled by music –both melody and harmony– which requires our synapses to be scouts of rhythm and chords to catch the meanings of those musical scores which can be written down.<\/p>\n

Email from Chapel Hill, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n

I have this conviction about life and death: I believe that word outlives flesh.<\/p>\n

And now I speak to you, dear Daphne: About this conviction you were abundantly right. Daily I treasure our visits\u2014you instructing me to drag the black leather chair as close as possible to your recliner, so that we might tell all, because you wanted to say all and hear<\/em> all, but there was never time for all, and we knew that and yet never gave up on all. And Time, as you taught me to understand it, its verities and unities, will never run out, because in our minds and on your pages, the fine words down do rain.