Tell me about a complicated man. Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met. Or tell me instead about an unexpected prime-minister, the first born in the 20th century, and how he came to be and how long he stayed. Or Muse, tell me of a third man, linked by tenuous segue, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, and tell me what he said and what he wore and what became of him.
Introductions are for wimps and so we start in media res, in the middle of things, with the middle of those three men, and if you are a careful scholar of British political trivia you will already know I’m talking about Alec Douglas Home who was born in 1903 and was for a year between 1963 and 1964 prime-minister between the retirement of Harold Macmillan and the first election won by Harold Wilson (the sixties clearly being one of those eras in which Britain suffered from a name shortage – the most famous probably being the period when England had fourteen consecutive monarchs all called Edward, Henry or Richard.) Douglas Home is unexpected for two reasons in addition to not being called Harold – the first is that his surname is spelled Home and pronounced Hume; the second is that he was not only the first born in the 20th century but the last to have been prime-minister from the House of Lords, beginning his tenure as Earl of Home. His big success seems to have been modernising the method used by the Conservative party to choose a leader, and if you don’t think that’s much I can only say that he wasn’t in charge for long.
The usual format when beginning a story in media res is to fill in the gaps via flashbacks and therefore we flash back to Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey with which we started, the Odyssey being one of the most famous stories that begin in media res (given the age of the poem we might say that Homer invented the device – although, of course, we don’t know how common it was in oral storytelling). Those of you who share my passion for metre will have noted her decision to adopt an iambic pentameter which she says is the natural English equivalent of Homer’s dactylic hexameter. “Tell me about a complicated man” is the translation of “andra moi ennepe, mousa, polytropon, hos malla polla” – the first has five iambs – unstressed, stressed and the second has five dactyls followed by a spondee. A dactyl is long, short, short and a spondee is two long syllables (this isn’t Homer playing with the form, as Shakespeare did so often when I last spoke to you about iambic pentameter, but simply the way that a line of dactylic hexameter is traditionally ended). The interesting word here from a translator’s point of view is polytropon which means “man of many turns” and the question is whether this means devious or wandering, both being true contextually. It’s a question with no right answer – a feature of translation that delights me – and Emily Wilson, as you will remember, goes for complicated (also true in context).
We now get to the point – and if introductions are for wimps then maybe this approach is the wimpiest of all because it makes two thirds of your story into an introduction, just told back to front. That’s a debate for another day, the assembly not taken, if you will – right now I’m stepping from the first British Prime Minister to the first American President born in the 20th Century, and if you had never heard of Alec Douglas Home then you might still be in luck because John Fitzgerald Kennedy is rather better known. His election caused quite a stir at the beginning of the 1960s: he was young, attractive (in a way that had never seemed important before the days of televisual campaigning), and inspiring. To see an example of that last point we turn to his inaugural address – the speech each President gives on the day they take over after their election. It’s a big occasion, but since it’s in Washington DC in January often a cold one. Up until Kennedy the tradition had been for fully formal dress including top hats and despite challenging a lot of ideas of how things had been in the past (Kennedy was the first Catholic president as well as the youngest), he duly showed up in a black top hat and delivered a speech of hope: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” Welcome, as the poet says, to the sixties.
The poet at the inauguration was Robert Frost whose greatest hits include The Road Not Taken and Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I, however, have shifted register and bring you a line from musical theatre, from Hairspray. If you’re not familiar with the piece then I commend it to you – there’s a film version with John Travolta and Alison Janney whilst you wait for the opportunity to see it live. As you’d expect, the film version is an adaptation of the stage musical but in an excellent twist, the musical is an adaptation of an earlier film. Whichever version you see, it will be set in Baltimore in 1962 and deal uncompromisingly with issues of racial integration and body image whilst knocking out a series of belting songs, lyrics by Scott Wittman, including Welcome to the Sixties with the line “Welcome to the rhythm of a brand new day, Take your old fashioned fears and just throw them away, You should add some colour and a fresh new ‘do ‘cause it’s time for a star who looks just like you.”
I digress – back to JFK and his new generation with their colour and their fresh new ‘dos, but before I get to the message he was offering I need to add some nuance – JFK, like Odysseus was complicated – I’ll leave you to decide whether he was buffeted by the winds of the time or simply devious, hypocritical. Before his inauguration he had a big showbiz party with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Gene Kelly, Sidney Poitier and a host of others who you may never have heard of but who were big stars at the time – every generation throws a hero up the pop charts, right? One big star who wasn’t there, who was, in fact, asked to stay away was Sammy Davis Jr, a well known singer, actor, comedian, friend of Sinatra and supporter of the Democrats. He wasn’t asked to stay away for being black – Sidney Poitier and Ella Fitzgerald were both black as were many of the other stars invited. He was asked to stay away because he was married to a white woman and mixed-race relationships were taboo – a key theme within Hairspray. It doesn’t sound complicated now, but it looked that way at the time.
Kennedy’s speech ends with a call to arms, a message to the new generation exhorting them to make something good of this new decade. He says “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”
I find that a powerful idea – one of hope and agency – of not looking to those who came before to provide for you but of looking at the world as an opportunity and looking for opportunities to shape it to be the world you want it to be. It’s also a challenge in two ways – firstly to take responsibility, to recognise your own genius, your own privilege and act on it; second to act unselfishly, it’s not what you can do for yourself, but what you can do for your country. It’s time for a star who looks just like you.
I share that line this morning because it’s a challenge I want to make to you – too often recently there have been students in your year group being selfish, self-centred, minimalist, trying to break rules because they think they can get away with it or because they don’t care if they get caught. Obviously I disapprove, but my point is not to have a go at those who have been caught, it’s to encourage us all to think differently. We’re not a school that does rules very well – if everyone here followed the rules and policies but did nothing more then we’d have a pretty poor show. We’re a school that operates on the Kennedy idiom – that assumes that each one of us in this room begins the day thinking about what they can do for the school rather than what they can get out of it. When this works it really works – there is only one person in the school who is you but there are 650 that aren’t (counting the Year 13s who I will concede are not really pulling their weight at the moment), and if each one of those is doing what they can for the community then you are going to get a lot more out of it than you would if each one just tried to do what was in their own interests. About 650 times as much.
The rules we have are there just in case you’re not sure what the best thing to do is, but honestly I think that most of the time you do know – and the areas where it’s unclear (should I join the maths study group or the physics one) the rules aren’t even much help (and actually it doesn’t matter so long as you join one and give as much to your classmates as you get from them). There’s a rule of improv comedy that says you should never just say “Yes” or “No” and I was going to build this assembly around that until I remembered that I was quite bad at improv and that bad improv is toe-curlingly embarrassing and decided to save you all but it’s still a point I want to make. You don’t say “Yes,” you say “Yes, and” and you don’t say “No,” you say “No, but”. I think that our rules fit inside that idiom as well as the Kennedy one – they are basic minima, not expectations and if the rules say you should do X then you should do X and something else – if they say you can’t do Y then you shouldn’t do Y but should find some other way to do something for the community.
So, how do we end a story begun in media res and concluding with a call to improv? With the fates of those three men, maybe? Odysseus got back to Ithaka, Douglas Home served another decade on the Conservative front bench and JFK was shot in Dallas on November 22nd 1963, but that’s not poetic so let’s have some echoes, quotes from Homer, Frost, Kennedy and Wittman
Tell me of the twisty-turny man, O Muse – tell me of how he wandered.
I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence, two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less travelled by.
Let the world go forth from this time and place that the torch has been passed to a new generation
The future’s got a million roads for you to choose but you’ll walk a little taller in some high-heeled shoes
My fellow Harris Westminster scholars – ask not what your community can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
Footnotes:
1. The Odyssey (linked to Cavafy's remarkable poem) comes up in Scrubs and Look Deeper
2. Kennedy, Gorman and Donne has more about Kennedy's inauguration
3. The assembly that talks about iambic pentameter with illustrations from Shakespeare is This Above All
4. The hero that gets thrown up the pop charts is referenced in Builders and Giants
5. Robert Frost is a favourite - The Road Not Taken comes up in Two Roads Diverged whilst Stopping by Woods appears in Musical Inspirations and Tradition