Ian McEwan – The Children Act, Mar 26, 2021

 

First edition, September 2, 2014

In the novel the law confronts profoundly and sincerely held religious beliefs. Fiona Maye is a high-court judge fifty-nine years old.  She is the Duty Judge, who deals with any kind of legal emergency, when somebody needs a rapid decision. The duty lasts for a week at a time.

In the instant case, the boy almost eighteen, needs a blood transfusion to save him, but he is refusing it on religious grounds as he is a Jehovah’s Witness. The hospital can’t proceed against the will of the patient, for it would be tantamount to criminal assault.

Judge Fiona Maye decides to visit the boy to ascertain his state of mind; though unorthodox, the procedure is not without precedent. But this sets off emotional consequences in Adam Henry, the boy, and novel follows the ensuing chain of events arising out of the meeting. Her own childlessness plays into Fiona Maye’s own emotional attachment.

She is compassionate and self-sufficient as a person, very rational as judges ought to be, indifferent to religion but respectful of people’s beliefs. She feels for the boy, and admires his artistic abilities, and his creativity in music and poetry. But like many rational people she is unable to weigh up her own personal problems. She begins to see in the boy the child she never had. The novel is about the boy as much as the judge.

The case turns on the Children Act of 1989, and hence the name.  In its very first clause the Act says:

“When a court determines any question with respect to the upbringing of a child, the child’s welfare shall be the court’s paramount consideration.”

The child’s welfare is central – not the parent’s needs or the parents’ faith.

In an interview Ian McEwan speaks of  a judge by the name of Alan Ward who did preside over a Jehovah’s Witness case. Judge Ward did go and visit the boy who was a ward of the court. Alan Ward went to the boy’s bedside, and they talked about football non-stop. Judge Ward ruled that the hospital could treat against the boy’s will. The boy made a recovery. Later Judge Ward took him to a Manchester United match, and the boy met all his football heroes. Seven or eight years later, the judge learned as a footnote in the papers, that in his twenties the boy got ill again, went to the hospital, and died there, refusing the transfusion. Alan Ward told the story to Ian McEwan while they were waiting for a concert to begin, and McEwan thought what a gift this was – he had actually heard the essence of a short novel – it rarely happens like that.

Poetry Session – Feb 26, 2021

The poetry session of February did not have a special theme, but because the bi-centenary of Keats’ death fell in the same week on Feb 23, two readers dealt with Keats. There were worldwide celebrations of Keats with special readings and plays and a visual tour of the Keats-Shelley House in Rome where the poet died in the arms of his beloved friend, the painter Joseph Severn.

Poems lose a lot in translation. One of them in Bengali by the modernist poet Jibanananda Das was particularly subject to loss as his imagery is soaked in the rural countryside of East Bengal. Robert Lowell observed that poetic translation requires not so much translation per se as the composition of a new poem based upon an original in another language.

The other poem in Hindustani of a colloquial kind, did not suffer as much, as many have an ear for the language in India. But nevertheless a gloss in English has to be provided, according to our rule.

Thommo offered a lyric from a rock song, and why not, since Bob Dylan won the Nobel Literature Prize. Thommo sang it for us and promised a better version for the blog. Certainly many songs have unforgettable lyrics, whether of loss or joy, and need to be kept alive in the popular imagination. But since we recall it along with the music it is difficult to separate the two.

We sampled some living poets, older poets long dead, and even an ancient poet – David who became a King of the Israelites circa 1000 BCE. This brings the matter of translation again, from ancient Hebrew. Many may know the psalms only from the translation available in their own language; we heard its recitation in the 400-year old English of the King James Version that Geetha used.