{The Face against the Window-pane}[30th July 1989]

[Redbook6:176][19890731:2309]{The Face against the Window-pane}[30th July 1989]

.2309

I have been watching Tony Harrison’s* Byline,** a fairly repetitious attack on Muslim and Christian priests via an exploration of ‘blasphemers’ Omar Khayam, Molière, Voltaire, Byron, Rushdie and himself. So far as Christianity is concerned, apart from the historical selectivity of a view which represents Christianity by its attacks on playwrights of two to three centuries ago, and its priests by Ian Paisley*** and his ilk – what comes across most strongly from Harrison’s theme, manner and visage is the essential aridity of a man whose idea of the highest point of the inner life seems to be a glass of wine in an Indian restaurant.**** From what I have seen of his other work, however, I should guess that Harrison has a genuine, if suppressed, fascination with religion, not unmixed with fear. He is a man who, I suspect, condemns himself – for all his repeated assertions that ‘I love this fleeting life….’, and his characterisation of religion as life-denying – always to be on the outside of the essence of life, looking in: the face pressed against the window-pane.#

*[Tony Harrison (born 30 April 1937) is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Leeds and he received his education in Classics from Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. He is one of Britain's foremost verse writers and many of his works have been performed at the Royal National Theatre. He is noted for controversial works such as the poem "V", as well as his versions of dramatic works: from ancient Greek such as the tragedies Oresteia and Lysistrata, from French Molière's The Misanthrope, from Middle English The Mysteries. He is also noted for his outspoken views, particularly those on the Iraq War. In 2015, he was honoured with the David Cohen Prize in recognition for his body of work.]

**[A television programme, presumably]

***[Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside PC (6 April 1926 – 12 September 2014), was a loyalist politician and Protestant religious leader from Northern Ireland. He became a Protestant evangelical minister in 1946 and remained one for the rest of his life. In 1951 he co-founded the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster and was its leader until 2008. Paisley became known for his fiery sermons and regularly preached and protested against Roman Catholicism, ecumenism and homosexuality. He gained a large group of followers who were referred to as Paisleyites. Paisley became involved in Ulster unionist/loyalist politics in the late 1950s. In the mid-late 1960s, he led and instigated loyalist opposition to the Catholic civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. This contributed to the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 1960s, a conflict that would engulf Northern Ireland for the next thirty years. In 1970 he became Member of Parliament for North Antrim and the following year he founded the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which he would lead for almost forty years. In 1979 he became a Member of the European Parliament. Throughout the Troubles, Paisley was seen as a firebrand and the face of hardline unionism. He opposed all attempts to resolve the conflict through power-sharing between unionists and Irish nationalists/republicans, and all attempts to involve the Republic of Ireland in Northern affairs. His efforts helped bring down the Sunningdale Agreement of 1974. He also opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, with less success. His attempts to create a paramilitary movement culminated in Ulster Resistance. Paisley and his party also opposed the Northern Ireland peace process and Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In 2005, Paisley's DUP became the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, displacing the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which had dominated unionist politics since 1905 and had been an instrumental party in the Good Friday Agreement. In 2007, following the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP finally agreed to share power with republican party Sinn Féin. Paisley and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness became First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively in May 2007. He stepped down as First Minister and DUP leader in mid-2008, and left politics in 2011. (Wikipedia)]

****[Classicist…. :) ]

#I like that, although I can’t remember who said it: ‘The face pressed against the window-pane of life….’

[Posted Blogger01012020]