Dead Good

In 1966 and 1967 I was gainfully employed, working as a manual recoster for what was then known as The Scottish Widows' Fund and Life Assurance Society.

I don't know if there's any relevance but one day I went out and bought an LP (on the RCA Victrola label - God, I sound old) entitled Isle Of The Dead. This featured a haunting and hypnotic symphonic poem by Rachmaninov, inspired by a painting by Arnold Boecklin.

Before buying the record I knew nothing about the music but I suspect a lugubrious streak in me was drawn to the dramatic black-and-red cover illustration (not by Boecklin) which seemed to suggest a skull, a cross and blood.

I grew to like the music very much and many years later I produced a kind of science fiction story called The Isle Of The Dead (published in CHAPMAN, 54).

With the music still I mind, I wrote a poem called Words For An Unknown Adagio. An early version of this was published in 2000, and a revised version will be in my forthcoming Greenwich Exchange collection.

And at the end of March, as I was in Berlin, I finally got to see the 1883 Boecklin painting, The Isle Of The Dead. It was smaller than I had imagined but, as I had expected, wonderfully gloomy - unless you happen to enjoy boat trips with pale, hooded figures.

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