Gonzalo Rojas, the arch enemy of General Pinochet, has died aged 93. The former exile was regarded as the equal of Pablo Neruda among South American poets. His death has been described a “great loss for Chilean literature”.
Charles Nicholl charts the renaissance of Thomas Wyatt, epitomised by Nicola Shulman’s new biography.
Thomas Wyatt was the finest poet at the court of Henry VIII, but this has not always earned him much respect. The early 16th century is generally accounted one of the lowlands of English literature, a period of mediocrity between the pinnacles of Chaucer and Shakespeare. CS Lewis dubbed it the “Drab Age” and said of Wyatt: “When he is bad he is flat or even null, and when he is good he is hardly one of the irresistible poets.” Today his reputation is much higher: we have been alerted to subtleties of mood and meaning beneath his brusque-seeming style, and Nicola Shulman’s trenchant new study takes us further down this line, delving with gusto into the political background of the poems and finding in them “secretive messages” which could not have been expressed openly.
Wyatt was pre-eminently a court poet, writing for a private audience.
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