Aug 282013
 
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A “Long Time to Hope” or an account of odd and alien sounds on the Isle of Man: you or I raising our profile might equally end in a spell of internment there too. ‘Man’ – an odd name for an island isn’t it? – the island, not quite amusing enough for a snigger, but certainly some sort of odd or alien sound: Manx – even odder isn’t it? – and the island being the preferred place for German speakers to be sent to during the last war, and others who had raised their profiles.

You speak German? Then off you go! No – Italian then? That’ll do just as well. All aboard the jolly steam boat and off to the callipsy isle in the middle of the Irish Sea.

How about a “sonata of primitive sounds”? Ursonate , subtitled as such, was the name of Kurt Schwitter’s work of art – a poem if you like – which he wrote and performed quite regularly during the years of the Weimar Republic. It became quite famous and was even made into a phonograph, raising his profile further so that it brought him to the attention of the ‘super recogniser’ authorities of his time. The Nazis designated it Degenerate Art, and soon enough Schwitters had to leave Germany in a hurry. First to Norway, but then when the Wehrmacht invaded there he took a boat across the North Sea.

Arriving in Edinburgh: Raise your profile please. You speak German? Aha, then off you go to the Isle of Man!

It took over a year for the British art establishment to persuade the ‘super recogniser’ authorities that Schwitters wasn’t a Nazi, and indeed that he was a leading continental artist. Released to the polite drawing rooms of London’s W1, he performed Ursonate there too. Not much appreciated by the polite after-dinner audience. But no sniggering please…

…as I found for myself listening to a recording of Ursonate being endlessly looped in one of the exhibition rooms of Tate Britain earlier this year. No sniggering among any of us few earnest listeners in the room as we stood looking at a white wall on which some of the joined-up letters of the sonata – I hesitate to call them words – had also been transcribed. Listening a short time before moving on wordlessly into the next exhibition room.

However, I was unable to remain quiet on Sunday reading the memoirs of my 95 year old Ur-mama who had come to lunch. Snorts and sniggers! Early in her 20′s during the first years of the war she found work in the Visa department of the USA Immigration Service, but when she raised her profile and started to speak in German to some of the Jewish and other refugees seeking access to the USA to help them satisfy the strict quotas in force at the time, the British ‘super recogniser’ authorities stepped in.

You could end up in the Isle of Man, a friend told her warning her about odd sounds and alien affiliations. So she had an interesting war, and later was employed listening to German naval radio traffic…

…”A long time to hope” – reading the sections of typescripts of my Ur-mama’s life from 1940 to 1946: a painful story of remorse too, she feels compelled to raise her profile again and wants to publish this section, but her children and grandchildren are not so sure that she should do so. I snort some more.