Do3 - A Thousand Kisses

[Guest]

Oh dear. I'm totally prejudiced against Frederic Raphael because of his execrable, smug, tedious and pretentious Fame and Fortune (I got modded, 'natch, for dubbing it 'Eff and Effing Eff' on the R4 boards) and Final Demands, but he pops up again with this one, scheduled for 10 April.

Expect the airwaves to be turned blue again (yawn?, or will it be genuine Catullus?)...

Programme info.

Russ

[french frank]

With the part of Cicero played by ... Frederic Raphael

This one comes with a lot of baggage to struggle with.

Will there be a special press release about it ...?

[Russ]

Will there be a special press release about it ...?

I've no idea. Is that one of R3's "number of interactive aspects through which Radio 3 facilitates the creation of communities of interest"?

More importantly, what's 'the baggage'?

Russ

[french frank]

I've no idea. Is that one of R3's "number of interactive aspects through which Radio 3 facilitates the creation of communities of interest"?

No, just my suspicion that everything R3 does these days has an eye to whether they can get some good press coverage out of it

More importantly, what's 'the baggage'?

Frederic Raphael?

[french frank]

Hmmm. I take back the bit about baggage in my last post. I realise now that I have conflated Frederic Raphael and Frederick Forsyth (not being particularly well acquainted with either beyond The Glittering Prizes/Day of the Jackal).



So, moving swiftly on ... here's the poem of Catullus referred to in the title of the play:

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, /Let us live, my Lesbia, let us love,
rumoresque senum severiorum /And all the mutterings of severe old men,
omnes unius aestimemus assis! /Let's value them at just one pennyweight!
soles occidere et redire possunt; /Suns can go down and rise again;
nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, /For us, when once our brief light's out,
nox est perpetua una dormienda. /Night must be a never-ending sleep.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum, /Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, /Another thousand, then a second hundred,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum; /Yet another thousand, then a hundred;
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, /Then, when those many thousands are piled up,
conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, /We'll send them flying, so we may not know,
aut ne quis malus invidere possit /Nor any evil man can envy us
cum tantum sciat esse basiorum. /On learning the total of our kisses.

[Eudaimonia]

A straight love story--really? The description on the R3 page looks fairly tame...when I hear "play about Catullus", I automatically think of Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo. Oh well...we'll see!

[french frank]

A straight love story--really?

Well, it does say, 'drawing on a series of love poems at the centre of his oeuvre', so I assumed it was the poem I quoted rather than yours. But who knows?

A staged version has been announced at East Carolina University. It does say, 'Parents are cautioned that this play contains a small amount of mildly obscene language.' But Radio 3 might not stop there, I suppose ...

[Eudaimonia]

Oh, I'm sure you're entirely right...it just struck me as a bit of an odd angle for the author to stress, all things considered. And for what it's worth, the poem I thought of was written as a spectacularly nasty rejoinder to two critics who accused him of being a softie for writing the love poem you quoted...I'm just saying if they gloss over his more complex qualities in the interests of narrating a sappy love story, I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

[french frank]

Oh, I'm sure you're entirely right...

About which poem is referred to - possibly. But Russ's initial comment may also be well founded. The last three Do3s have contained the f-word, btw - Wuthering Heights was the middle one

[Belgrove]

I was looking forward to this but switched off after thirty minutes, finding it overwritten, clumsily constructed, charmlessly arch and undramatic. By contrast the Masters golf was pure theatre.

[french frank]

By contrast the Masters golf was pure theatre.

[DracoM]

Crikey, guys, that was unlistenable to. What is the love affair between R3 and Raphael? it was exactly the same incestious, duplicitous world he ALWAYS writes about, this time with Latin and HIMSELF in a starring role as the wise Cicero. Good Grief! Where was the 'drama'? Self-indulgebnt, self-referring, self-aggrandising pap - in Latin occasionally, but mostly insufferable Hampstead / Highgate.

Like above, I turned off after an hour and watched The Masters.

[Forget It (U2079353)]

Thanks for the warning DracoM,

[DracoM]

Hey, don't take my word! I've been a long time groaner and resister to the Raphael 'magic'. This one just exemplified all that I most dislike in it. Catullus's poetry was OK, it was the Raphael frame I felt suffocated by.

[french frank]

Well, now that I've sorted Frederic Raphael from Frederick Forsyth, I realise I don't have a prejudice against FR because I don't really know much about him.

I'll listen and don't usually give up even when I'm not impressed. But if it's bad and a bore, I do

I gave up after about 56 minutes but wasn't listening the whole time as I went out to get some supper.

Slow, lacking in dramatic action, created no interesting characters. What was it trying to do? It could be quite a good idea to build a play round the poems but it managed to make the poems and the play rather dull. I did quite like the translation of Da mi basia mille &c., though.