Talent transcended
MICHAEL
Salzburg
The thought occurred — again — the other night. as Simon 'von' Rattle carried his mighty Berliners through the greatest performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony I have ever heard, or will ever hear, that people speak all too glibly of that precious quality, genius. And no professional body is more guilty than the confederacy of sports scribes, many of whom appear to bear witness to some blessed act at least once a week.
'A touch of genius', 'a stroke of genius', 'behold a genius'. 'the work of a genius', or, simply, 'Genius!' I don't know about you, but that kind of talk makes me feel almost physically sick. Anybody who has been in the presence of true genius knows what piffle it is, and dangerous piffle to boot. It devalues the currency of language, and inflates the possession of mere talent (which is nothing to sniff at) to unsustainable heights.
It is difficult to make a case for genius existing in any sphere of human activity as trivial as sport, and I shall make no effort to do so. In a lifetime of watching sportsmen and women I have been tempted to use that word only twice, with regard to Garry Sobers (a West Indian cricketer, mlud) and George Best. But then I think of Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven, and Rattle conducting Mahler, and blush for shame. Such men exist in a different world, where the tributaries of mind and spirit come together to form a teeming river of feeling.
Is this being hard on the rampant goalscorer, the booming server, the batsman of filigree poise, the single putter? Certainly not. Some of them have remarkable gifts, and they are capable of giving great pleasure, but genius goes beyond that. Put simply — and this is not a simple matter — it has something to do with transformation; of living, as Blake wrote, in 'eternity's sunrise'. Anybody who has stood before a Rembrandt self-portrait or a Chardin stilllife, and has looked, really looked, knows the strength of that feeling. It links us to all that is past, and all that will come.
Rattle isn't a great conductor because he waves a wand in an arresting manner: his 'stick technique' is nothing special. He is great because, for an hour and a quarter, he can persuade 100 musicians to express some primaeval feeling too deep for words, and, in doing so, to unloosen the bonds of time and space for an audience of 2,000 people.
Sport has its place (thank goodness). It can bring people together — not always, it must be said, in a spirit of amity — and it can bring joy to many lives. It may even contribute to a sense of communal or national well-being, though that is not necessarily a benign consequence of success on the field. Imagine the pleasure many people will feel if England's rugby players win the World Cup later this year in Australia.
Perhaps the best story of how sport can liberate the personality came from Neville Cardus, the writer on music and cricket. Standing at Maine Road one afternoon, watching Manchester City in the days when they had a decent team, he was astonished to hear a spectator say, on seeing Peter Doherty make a wonderful pass, 'Finesse!' As Cardus wrote later, that man would never have used such an unlikely word on any other occasion.
But genius? Come now! Tiger Woods, Sachin Tendulkar, Zinedine Zidane, Pete Sampras, Jonny Wilkinson — they're all jolly good, ra ra. but leave it there and lend an ear to Mr Blake. Do not 'bend to yourself a joy'. Life, always, is so much more mysterious.
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