By The Landlord
“Gentleness clears the soul
Love cleans the mind and makes it free.” – David Bowie
“Do not go gentle Into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light” – Dylan Thomas
"Only the gentle are ever really strong." – James Dean
"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength." – Saint Francis de Sales
"Let gentleness my strong enforcement be." – William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
"In a gentle way, you can shake the world." – Mahatma Gandhi
Soothing words to a light touch; hands supporting a baby, or stroking an animal; lifting a fragile glass object; a measured, restrained response to tense moments, rage or violence; the soft caress of a light breeze across the eyelids. These are some of the many kinds of gentleness, variously natural and instinctive, some be learned and practised, generating moments to cherish. And so this week, in what turns out to be the Song Bar’s fourth birthday, an age in human children when they can be mercurially tender and destructive, curious and raging, gentleness is a quality invaluable in our lives, can shape us profoundly. And particularly in the current climate, at a time of barking human madness and division, with the forces of nature, quite inevitably, biting back, we most certainly need it.
Great gentleness: Mahatma Gandhi
Gentleness comes in all forms, and of my most surprising experiences of it occurred during a holiday in southwestern France, visiting the village of Rocamadour in the Lot, famous for its abbey and dramatic gorge setting high above the Dordogne. There, quite by accident, I ended up visiting a nature sanctuary, the Forêt des Singes, and I encountered one of its resident Barbary macaques. I brought a handful of nuts, and instead of running up to snatch them from me, the silvery-haired distant cousin slowly ambled up and sat down just inches away. Staring into my eyes continuously, with a quizzical, almost comical look, eyebrows arching, he slowly took one nut at a time, over a period of about 10 minutes, his eyes luminous pools in study, his fingertip touch on my palm as gentle as a lily.
My friend in the Forêt des Singes, Rocamadour.
And of course, as show above, is the famous case of Koko the gorilla in California, who to a certain level, learned a form sign language, but also had a tender love for cats, adopting a kitten in the 1980s, then was heartbroken when it got run over, but then was given more to care for.
Koko: Kitten carer extraordinaire
Nature is a savage beast at times, but gentleness is its necessary counterpart. As Hermann Hesse put it in his book Siddhartha: “Gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.” This is certainly the paper-scissor-rock equation. While storms may howl, earthquakes destroy, and wars will conquer, it is the gentle touch of generations of mothers, the shaping of water and air over the land, gradual tick-tock of evolution and formation that is the strong, slow, gentle guiding hand of history.
But while we’re still in simian mode, here’s one of many visitors to the Bar to celebrate its birthday. The classic monkey man himself, The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown, tells us: “I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive – I don't care how hard they pretend they are.”
Could the same be said for gravelly voiced Joe Cocker? “In me soul, I'm gentle,” he confirms, cough, cough.
John Keats is here too, coughing a little of course too with his legendary, weak chest. Put-on a face mask, John. “O for the gentleness of old Romance, the simple planning of a minstrel's song!”
What about that ever controversial figure, Morrissey? Gentle to animals, certainly, savage to humans, and clearly towards himself at times with his addiction to hate-ridden controversy. “It's so easy to laugh / It’s so easy to hate /It takes strength to be gentle and kind,” he sang, at the peak of his powers, but does he think it’s over now?
More dry comedy now, by the former brutal Liverpool midfielder, and now forthright football pundit, Graeme Souness. “Both my parents were mild, gentle people,” he insists. Really? Were you adopted? Bullied at school?
Back to the music then, and here’s Nick Cave on the gentle or otherwise style or lyrical content or narrator characters of songs: “The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.”
Nick Cave: purveyor of the variously gentle and violent
That’s an interesting meeting of opposites. Gentle music for tough, turbulent times, or vice versa perhaps. And that’s why music is able to adapt so freely. As Aristotle put it: "Music imitates the passions or states of the soul, such as gentleness, anger, courage, temperance, and their opposites.”
But some people don’t rate gentleness at all. Despite dealing with delicate fabrics and egos, Coco Chanel says: “Gentleness doesn't get work done unless you happen to be a hen laying eggs.”
Meanwhile though, fellow French famous figure Honore de Balzac says: Gentleness in the gait is what simplicity is in the dress. Violent gestures or quick movements inspire involuntary disrespect."
And while we are on that metaphor, here’s the poet George Herbert: "A gentle heart is tied with an easy thread."
More poets and writers are here to add to our own thread:
“The great mind knows the power of gentleness,” says Robert Browning
"A gentle word, a kind look, a good-natured smile can work wonders and accomplish miracles,” says William Hazlitt.
Gentleness is almost always positive move. "In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange,” says Friedrich Nietzsche.
It is knowledge that helps gentleness according to Mark Twain: “Learning softens the heart and breeds gentleness and charity."
A bird in the hand …
"Who can wrestle against Sleep? Yet is that giant very gentleness,” says Martin Farquhar Tupper, the Victorian English writer, and poet. And he’s spot on. Sleep you cannot force, only lure through gentleness.
On a stranger note, here’s Charles Lamb: “Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts,” he reckons. I thought it just made your urine pungent.
And now more about how nature’s gentleness, with the hand of time, brings other changes:
“Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress,” adds Charles Dickens.
But those changes aren’t always progressive. “Time, of course, topples everyone in its path equally- the way that driver beats his old horse until it dies. But the thrashing we receive is one of frightful gentleness. Few of us even realise that we are being beaten,”s ays a more downbeat Haruki Murakami.
There are many, many references to gentleness in Shakespeare, partly perhaps because he also lived in brutal, violent times. He was able to capture all sides of human nature, but clearly realised how powerful the gentler side could be.
“Your gentleness shall force / More than your force move us to gentleness,” he wrote in Love's Labour's Lost, from which this phrase also came: “A light heart lives long.”
“Gentleness! More powerful than Hercules,” wrote Anne 'Ninon' de L'Enclos, the glamorous 17th-century Parisian author and courtesan.
Elizabeth I: sometimes gentle in brutal times?
History proves that it is more often women who bring gentility to our lives to counteract the unsubtle force of manhood. And who better to tell us this than Queen Elizabeth I, who, let us not forget, could also be pretty forceful too. “It has been women who have breathed gentleness and care into the hard progress of humankind.”
Let us hear now from another female figure who bestrode a different stage. Judy Garland, recently played by Rene Zellweger in an Oscar-winning performance, has this to say on the topic, and it’s just as relevant today. “Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, a little more loving, and have a little more empathy, and maybe, next year at this time we'd like each other a little more.”
Much is said about the sheer power of gentleness in the political sphere. “Nothing is stronger than gentleness,” said Abraham Lincoln pertaining to public actions and skills.
“Gentleness is the ability to bear reproaches and slights with moderation, and not to embark on revenge quickly, and not to be easily provoked to anger, but be free from bitterness and contentiousness, having tranquility and stability in the spirit,” adds Aristotle.
Charlie Chaplin made his name as a silent actor, but in the Great Dictator, a black comedy, politically motivated 1940 feature film that sought to subvert the hatred of the fascist, Hitleresque figure he portrayed, he summoned up a sincere, powerful speech on fuelled by the force of the gentler side of human nature, that also has contemporary relevance:
"Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost."
But no figure in human history has channelled the gentle more powerfully than Mahatma Gandhi, so let’s end with some final words from him:
"Harshness is conquered by gentleness, hatred by love, lethargy by zeal and darkness by light."
So then, gentle people, it’s time to turn this topic over to you, as well as to the firm, skilful and of course gentle hand of this week’s guest guru, the wonderful Ravi! Song nominations in comments below, deadline last orders at 11pm UK time on Monday, with playlists published on Wednesday. Start gently, and finish strongly …
Wisdom in gentleness …
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