Lord Palmerston and the Art of Power
Tuwhiri is launching my latest book of verse on 31 October - The Loss of Madness - a tribute to Hölderlin, which is a collection of 31 villanelles, illustrated by London Review caricaturist and Cambridge don, Dan Sperrin. I have just inscribed a purchased copy with a quote from Pindar's Second Olympian Ode -
Hymns that rule the lyre
what god, what hero, what man shall we celebrate ?
Extraordinary women and men have governed the nations of the UK. They do not do so anymore. Hölderlin was a schizophrenic it would seem, a supporter of the Mainz Republic before it was firebombed out of existence in 1793. His poetry has a sweep a power and comprehension that is like a strong equinoctial gale. He is Coleridge for intellectual range and Keats for the intimacy of persons, places and things. His is the greatest harvest of all lyric Romantic poets. The Mainz Republic was founded by one who had been with Cook to New Zealand, Georg Forster. I use this book to scope a republic for Aotearoa New Zealand in a way respectful to what the Crown has been in my country these two hundred years.
Lord Palmerston wielded the prerogative of the Crown at Britain's apogee. I have been working on his private papers at Southampton, the British Library and at the National Archives, Kew. Let us consider him as the subject of Pindar's lines, and see what it takes to forge an Art of Power, let us front up to its horrors and successes, to the question of technique. As highly sexed as Boris Johnson, why was Johnson inconsequential, and Palmerston of such consequence ? I offer the following characteristics of Palmerstonian power below -
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