"Until a drape of calmness furled around the earth..."

October 4, 2021 4:58 PM

Armando Iannucci wrote an epic poem about COVID-19.

"I have written a mock epic. Epics are, by definition, very long but “mock” permits brevity. It’s a poem in the style of those daunting but rather wonderful depictions of love and loss and the battle between good and evil: The Iliad, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. The last of those works I spent three years studying for a PhD that I never quite managed to complete. There’s an unconscious connection: my title Pandemonium was a word invented by Milton and first used in Paradise Lost to describe the home of Satan and his fellow fallen angels. Maybe writing Pandemonium is my closure?

“Mock” may imply comedy, but I knew when I was writing it that the last thing I wanted to mock or make amusing was what people endured. Instead, it’s a rather fast and furious distillation of my mixed emotional response to the past year and a half, including, I suppose, all the anger and confusion I felt at our leaders’ catastrophic handling of the first eight months or so of the pandemic. I didn’t want to write a polemic, though; more an expression of bewilderment and regret."

posted by youarenothere (12 comments total)

Say, heaving Muse, what catalogue of restraints

This is like Callope working at the CDC thumbing through existent plans of health and chastity.

In league with Illuminati lizards.
you had me until the image of killer cockroaches from Damnation Alley once again remind me that the center cannot hold much sand.

I like part 7.
posted by clavdivs at 5:22 PM on October 4, 2021

That's as amazing and beautiful as of all of Shakespeare that I don't quite follow but love its syntax.

Though "BoJo," heh.
posted by bendy at 6:01 PM on October 4, 2021

Armando Iannucci? Fuck me.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:08 PM on October 4, 2021

"Where G is for George, " cracked me up. Shakespeare's Richard III opens with a prophecy about 'G' - George, who else? - murdering the king's children. The king throws George into prison and signs his death warrant, leaving their youngest brother (Richard, Duke of Gloucester) at large for the rest of the play. It's never George.

This is going on my Christmas list.
posted by mersen at 7:15 PM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

Could this man be cooler?
posted by Keith Talent at 8:35 PM on October 4, 2021

If you can see them, the broadcast versions of The Armando Iannucci Shows are on 4 streaming for their 20th anniversary - they have the original music, which is vastly better than the sort-of-soundalikes they licenced for DVD. I'm not at all surprised he has the chops for epic poetry, he's always been able to infuse short phrases with a peculiarly silly elegance.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:34 PM on October 4, 2021 [2 favorites]

I had no real use for epic poetry before this but I'm converted. So much more exciting when it's monsters we know rather than some random Grendel.
posted by trig at 10:12 PM on October 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

We’ve found it - the most Guardian piece possible.
posted by thedaniel at 2:06 AM on October 5, 2021 [4 favorites]

I'm not at all surprised he has the chops for epic poetry

"Iannucci got a First in English and stayed on to do a PhD on religious language in Milton's Paradise Lost. [...] The tipping point came when he realised the first lines of Paradise Lost had the same rhythm as the Flintstones' theme tune: "Of Man's first disobedience, And the fruit of that forbidden tree." (BBC, 2009)
posted by robself at 5:16 AM on October 5, 2021 [10 favorites]

Let the brass horns parp
At tales of hard-won vict’ry!

Viz. magazine, represent!
posted by chavenet at 6:55 AM on October 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

The tipping point came when he realised the first lines of Paradise Lost had the same rhythm as the Flintstones' theme tune:

🎵Of Man's
First dis'be-dience
and the fruit of that forbidden tree...🎵

Hmm.
posted by lumensimus at 10:43 PM on October 5, 2021

of MAN'S first
DIS o-BE-dience
AND the FRUIT of THAT for-BID-den TREE
posted by rory at 1:43 AM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]