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Friday 11 March 2011

F. T. Prince: Soldiers Bathing


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Battle scene: Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1504, pen and ink on paper (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)



  The sea at evening moves across the sand.
  Under a reddening sky I watch the freedom of a band
  Of soldiers who belong to me. Stripped bare
  For bathing in the sea, they shout and run in the warm air;
  Their flesh worn by the trade of war, revives
  And my mind towards the meaning of it strives.

  All's pathos now. The body that was gross,
  Rank, ravenous, disgusting in the act or in repose,
  All fever, filth and sweat, its bestial strength
  And bestial decay, by pain and labour grows at length
  Fragile and luminous. 'Poor bare forked animal,'
  Conscious of his desires and needs and flesh that rise and fall,
  Stands in the soft air, tasting after toil
  The sweetness of his nakedness: letting the sea-waves coil
  Their frothy tongues about his feet, forgets
  His hatred of the war, its terrible pressure that begets
  A machinery of death and slavery,
  Each being a slave and making slaves of others: finds that he
  Remembers his old freedom in a game
  Mocking himself, and comically mimics fear and shame.

  He plays with death and animality;
  And reading in the shadows of his pallid flesh, I see
  The idea of Michelangelo's cartoon
  Of soldiers bathing, breaking off before they were half done
  At some sortie of the enemy, an episode
  Of the Pisan wars with Florence. I remember how he showed
  Their muscular limbs that clamber from the water,
  And heads that turn across the shoulder, eager for the slaughter,
  Forgetful of their bodies that are bare,
  And hot to buckle on and use the weapons lying there.
  –- And I think too of the theme another found
  When, shadowing men's bodies on a sinister red ground
  Another Florentine, Pollaiuolo,
  Painted a naked battle: warriors, straddled, hacked the foe,
  Dug their bare toes into the ground and slew
  The brother-naked man who lay between their feet and drew
  His lips back from his teeth in a grimace.

  They were Italians who knew war's sorrow and disgrace
  And showed the thing suspended, stripped: a theme
  Born out of the experience of war's horrible extreme
  Beneath a sky where even the air flows
  With lacrimae Christi. For that rage, that bitterness, those blows,
  That hatred of the slain, what could they be
  But indirectly or directly a commentary
  On the Crucifixion? And the picture burns
  With indignation and pity and despair by turns,
  Because it is the obverse of the scene
  Where Christ hangs murdered, stripped, upon the Cross. I mean,
  That is the explanation of its rage.

  And we too have our bitterness and pity that engage
  Blood, spirit, in this war. But night begins,
  Night of the mind: who nowadays is conscious of our sins?
  Though every human deed concerns our blood,
  And even we must know, what nobody has understood,
  That some great love is over all we do,
  And that is what has driven us to this fury, for so few
  Can suffer all the terror of that love:
  The terror of that love has set us spinning in this groove
  Greased with our blood.

  ................................These dry themselves and dress,
  Combing their hair, forget the fear and shame of nakedness.
  Because to love is frightening we prefer
  The freedom of our crimes. Yet, as I drink the dusky air,
  I feel a strange delight that fills me full,
  Strange gratitude, as if evil itself were beautiful,
  And kiss the wound in thought, while in the west
  I watch a streak of red that might have issued from Christ's breast.



F.T. Prince: Soldiers Bathing, from Soldiers Bathing, 1954




File:Battle of cascina4.jpg
 
Study for the Battle of Cascina: Michelangelo Buonarroti, between 1505 and 1506, chalk and silver rod on paper (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am very glad to have read Soldiers Bathing and imagine I will be returning to it soon and probably frequently. Reading it in the company of the Michelangelos is very moving.

TC said...

Curtis,

So pleased you like this piece, it's a classic.

Prince was a fine scholar and poet, perhaps too little known (as is sometimes the case when quality is accompanied by modesty).

This 2003 Guardian obit gets the feel of the poem, and the poet.

Frank Templeton Prince: 1912-2003.

Tom Raworth said...

Tom..... I'll stick this here in case anyone is interested. One of the reasons Frank Prince faded from general sight is that all his papers were left to the University (Southampton) where he taught (I assume when he retired in the late 1970s); and they were under embargo for 30 years. They've been freed since February, so I expect some new interest in his work. Along with that there is this

conference in September
.

TC said...

Thanks Tom.

I've been a great fan of Prince since pre-embargo days.