Three for Friday

From book to film and back again I hope you find words to enjoy in this weekend's selection.

You’ll scarcely be surprised to find that this week’s story is a little longer than usual because of course it has to be Melville’s novella Billy Budd, which remained unfinished at his death but is nevertheless complete in that the fates of the three men at the centre of the tale are sealed.

Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Here’s an account of yet another film version of Melville’s novella, which the author, Michael Sragow, concludes is Shakespearean.

Claggart becomes nearly as fascinating and shocking as Iago. What are the roots of his poisonous obsession with Budd, and why does he commit himself to the boy’s downfall by accusing him of being a mutineer? And why is the rational, humane Captain Vere so slow to rein in Claggart? Is it wise for the captain to keep Claggart as master-at-arms until he commits a provable breach of martial law? And is it just for Vere to apply the same law without patience or mercy for Budd? Billy Budd is so engrossing because these questions of ethics and motivation don’t spin out of sea air. They rest on dramatic bedrock: the movie provides a keen understanding of how hierarchy (and tyranny) functioned in the eighteenth century Royal Navy and how the French Revolution threw all of Europe into turmoil.

The article also mentions an early stage version of the original. The abiding fascination the book has exerted on several generations of artists in other media is an object lesson for writers. What Sragow calls “questions of ethics and motivation” never lose their relevance or narrative appeal.

Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd

Coming back to the present, and with a nod to Claire Denis’ Billy Budd movie, Beau Travail, set in Djibouti, here are some poems by Djiboutian writer, Abdourahman Waberi, translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson : Someone Takes Wing

it’s not the big ball of dough
but the pinch of yeast that makes the bread
many are those who find
the sublime in the daily grind
by beginning to grow as they shuffle along their way
 
(From 'Absence' )

Share your thoughts on any or all of the above and on the merits or otherwise of adaptation.