:00:00. > :00:00.to the writer and broadcaster Clive James.
:00:00. > :00:08.We've come out of the studio to meet this week's author.
:00:09. > :00:11.I'm in Cambridge with Clive James, writer, critic, wit and poet, that's
:00:12. > :00:24.And alongside his Collected Poems, he's publishing Gate of Lilacs,
:00:25. > :00:27.which he calls a verse commentary on Proust's great novel Remembrance
:00:28. > :00:33.He says it's a novel about gratitude, for life,
:00:34. > :00:36.love, and art - an attitude he shares with the author as he
:00:37. > :00:57.It still amazes me I ever got interested in him,
:00:58. > :01:04.I like to think I'm quite butch and Proust wasn't that.
:01:05. > :01:08.He is exquisite and I'm not, and there's nothing
:01:09. > :01:30.I think in many ways the novel, Remembrance of Things Past
:01:31. > :01:32.is an essay, trying to bring in his appreciation
:01:33. > :01:41.Of course, he's talking at the moment where the fin
:01:42. > :01:44.de siecle was ending, and the great artistic explosion
:01:45. > :01:47.was beginning, so you're talking about a moment
:01:48. > :01:49.that's affected us all, in terms of our culture,
:01:50. > :01:53.He was that strangest of cultural figures.
:01:54. > :01:59.He was a cultural revolutionary, in fact.
:02:00. > :02:01.Nothing mattered more to him than the richness of the past,
:02:02. > :02:05.but he was preparing the future, as he wrote about it.
:02:06. > :02:08.Now when you look back on him, he's practically a hippie.
:02:09. > :02:18.As everyone knows, you've not been well, you're ill.
:02:19. > :02:21.You know you're ill, you've talked about it a great deal,
:02:22. > :02:23.you are approaching the end of your life.
:02:24. > :02:25.You talk about Proust writing in the full bloom
:02:26. > :02:26.of the hothouse of his dying.
:02:27. > :02:35.Clearly that something you feel very strongly?
:02:36. > :02:37.The big difference between the author -me -
:02:38. > :02:39.and Proust himself is that Proust was always sick.
:02:40. > :02:44.And I found out a lot about life when I got sick,
:02:45. > :02:47.because I never knew what it was like not to be healthy.
:02:48. > :02:51.He was an asthmatic, which is like death happening
:02:52. > :02:59.There wasn't any medical treatment that was going to save him,
:03:00. > :03:04.so his life was lived in the shadow of death, it was a form of death.
:03:05. > :03:08.He knew a lot about the approaching extinction.
:03:09. > :03:11.His book is also about that, about how the prospect of vanishing
:03:12. > :03:13.concentrates your attention on the world.
:03:14. > :03:19.I, of course, have got more interested in that lately.
:03:20. > :03:22.You read the book, all its volumes over quite a long period.
:03:23. > :03:25.RU Sirius when you say you are using it as a way
:03:26. > :03:44.But my message in the poem is, don't bother about that,
:03:45. > :03:47.because what you're hearing off his page is the language
:03:48. > :03:52.I wanted to know what it sounded like in the beginning,
:03:53. > :03:55.and I thought, well, I'll learn French while I'm doing this.
:03:56. > :04:00.It took me 15 years to get through him in French,
:04:01. > :04:03.but I was also reading the English translation as well.
:04:04. > :04:05.And I would recommend to anyone watching this,
:04:06. > :04:14.to start with the English translation, because it's great.
:04:15. > :04:17.Of course, you use this form, as you meditate about the book
:04:18. > :04:20.and talk about it and explore your own reactions, you talk
:04:21. > :04:24.For example, your background with your mother, the death
:04:25. > :04:27.of your father, so you're using it as a kind of grand receptacle
:04:28. > :04:37.Because that relationship with your mother is one that,
:04:38. > :04:44.I suppose it does with all of us, shaped to your life?
:04:45. > :04:47.That was probably one of the connections I really had
:04:48. > :04:51.The book starts with the young Marcel fretting in his bedroom
:04:52. > :04:53.because his mother hasn't climbed the stairs to kiss him.
:04:54. > :04:58.And instead of throwing the book at the wall and never reading it
:04:59. > :05:03.Caring too much about your mother, yes, was my experience.
:05:04. > :05:07.Proust was quite capable of beginning this thing
:05:08. > :05:14.without knowing how he was going to bring it to amend.
:05:15. > :05:22.It all ends in a big party, and everyone in the book
:05:23. > :05:24.sort of gathers there, even when, if you do the maths,
:05:25. > :05:29.People I used to know are dropping off the twig
:05:30. > :05:35.Do you think it all ends with a big party?
:05:36. > :05:38.I think the whole thing was a big party, and you finally realise it,
:05:39. > :05:43.but that's if you're lucky, you've got to be lucky.
:05:44. > :05:46.Your vitality in verse, in this style of verse,
:05:47. > :05:49.seems as great as it was when you arrived here in the early
:05:50. > :05:54.60s and began to write in the way that you did?
:05:55. > :05:59.It's all that is left, and blessedly, since I can
:06:00. > :06:11.It helps me concentrate on the one thing I can do,
:06:12. > :06:17.The day might come when I can't write any more.
:06:18. > :06:19.But the big question is, will I know?
:06:20. > :06:24.How do you know when you are writing badly?
:06:25. > :06:27.You talk at the end of the poem about a safe harbour,
:06:28. > :06:28.a warm harbour, a beautiful harbour...
:06:29. > :06:32.Which is where you come to in the end.
:06:33. > :06:34.I was going to say, it's clearly Sydney
:06:35. > :06:42.I've already said in my will, that's where my ashes
:06:43. > :06:49.should go, they should be scattered on the harbour.
:06:50. > :06:51.I said this blithely, without realising that first
:06:52. > :06:53.of all the ashes would have to get on the plane.
:06:54. > :06:57.Second, the Australian Customs will almost certainly not let them in.
:06:58. > :06:59.Thirdly, there is almost certainly an ordinance against putting
:07:00. > :07:12.You don't look or sound, to me, as a man who's about to die.
:07:13. > :07:20.Because I feel exactly like someone...
:07:21. > :07:24.One of the drawbacks of my condition is I feel quite tired, quite easily.
:07:25. > :07:27.So one always thinks one might not make it to the morning.
:07:28. > :07:34.2010 was my critical year, I almost died that year,
:07:35. > :07:41.But luckily when my leukaemia went into remission it went
:07:42. > :07:43.into remission for long enough for the scientists to
:07:44. > :07:49.Now I have something to stave off the leukaemia.
:07:50. > :07:52.When you wake up each morning, and the light is still coming in...
:07:53. > :08:00.It comes streaming in through those doors.
:08:01. > :08:02.That light, a harsh eastern light, maybe in Cambridge,
:08:03. > :08:07.Yes I do, and then I write something to celebrate.
:08:08. > :08:12.Well I haven't got a schedule or a plan, but there's nothing else
:08:13. > :08:21.I won't be going for a jog tomorrow morning.
:08:22. > :08:24.But you will have a piece of paper or a laptop?
:08:25. > :08:30.I know when a poem is really arriving when it gets me up
:08:31. > :08:35.The problem with the poem, as a former, when it gets
:08:36. > :08:37.into your head, you have to pay attention to it,
:08:38. > :08:39.even today, tomorrow, even if it takes years.
:08:40. > :08:47.And that's the evidence, in the end, that's the essence?
:08:48. > :08:49.You should write only what you must write,
:08:50. > :08:52.That is my only advice to young poets.
:08:53. > :08:59.To the end you remain, fundamentally, a poet?
:09:00. > :09:09.A lot of people claim it who really don't deserve it.
:09:10. > :09:16.I'd like to think I have earned it by now.
:09:17. > :09:17.But I understand those people who think I'm really an entertainer.
:09:18. > :09:20.It's not such a bad thing to be, an entertainer, is it?
:09:21. > :09:37.You can make a long list of people who aren't entertaining.
:09:38. > :09:38.Clive James there. Let's have a look at the weather now with