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Hate - it really is all the rage these days

Howard Jacobson
Saturday 06 July 2002 00:00 BST
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In Bristol with an hour or so to kill the other day, I happened upon Queen Square, recently restored to some of its Georgian glory by the removal of the dual carriageway that, in coarser times, Bristol Transport had thought to run through it. Perhaps they knew that before it was Queen Square it had been a rubbish dump, and so were acting as true conservationists. But all's well that ends well, as they say. Except that something, or someone, in Queen Square, isn't remotely well.

In the middle of the Square sits an equestrian statue of William III, sculpted by Rysbrack. Widely regarded as the finest statue of a king on a horse made by any sculptor working in 18th-century England, it is, as you would expect of Rysbrack, classical in conception, pyramidal in composition, judicious in choice of materials and, as these things go, only marginally pompous. The King rides stirrupless and carries what looks to be a roll of wallpaper but is probably an early draft of the Treaty of Utrecht. Carved into the pediment of the statue is the artist's name, and above that, in graffito, is – or was the other day – a shockingly naked expression of unhappiness: "My name is Maureer. I hate you and all you stand for."

Come upon a statement of this sort unexpectedly, in a quiet place, and it is as though you have been hit from behind. Is that the idea – to start a process that will end in us, too, learning how to hate?

How long did I linger there, pondering the significance of this, measuring its hurt, fathoming its reasoning? Reader, how long is a ball of string?

The first thing I wanted to understand was why Maureer thought it important we know his or her name. Does it help to get your name, as well as your hatred, off your chest? And was I reading Maureer for Maureen? Type Maureer into the internet and it thinks the same, correcting you in that sniffy internet way – "Do you mean Maureen?" (One of modern life's great frustrations, that the internet can talk to you as though you are a moron, but short of typing "I hate you and all you stand for" into your computer and then smashing it, you have no effective redress.)

Anyway, Maureer and not Maureen it definitely was, the hand chillingly steady, inscribing the second "r" identically to the first. Not a Christian name I recognise, though some are surnamed Maureer. There's a Monsieur Maureer, for example, working on chaos theory in the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and a Christian Maureer who plays jazz saxophone in Austria, and a JM Maureer who is co-author (with Pugh and Pringle) of The Impact of Wort Nitrogen Limitation on Yeast Fermentation Performance and Diacetyl, but none of these is associated with Bristol as far as I have been able to ascertain, nor would you think that any of them has reason to hate unseasonably, though it's always possible JM Maureer wishes his work on worts sells better than it does.

Perhaps more important than who Maureer is, who Maureer hates. "You and all you stand for." Could that be William III himself? Netherlandish by birth and temperament, victor in the Battle of the Boyne, William III must have made many enemies of a non-Protestant persuasion. Is Maureer a Dutch-detesting Irish Catholic? And a homophobe to boot, since rumours have always abounded – none of them substantiated, but then hatred needs no substantiation – of William's having indulged a taste for footsoldiers no less than for mistresses of the more conventional sort. A xenophobic anti-militaristic Catholic homophobe who loathes all lowlander Protestants and opposes adultery – is this Maureer?

Or is the sculptor Rysbrack the object of his displeasure? Rysbrack beat his rival Scheemakers to the commission and this may rankle still with Scheemakers' descendants, of whom Maureer Scheemakers could easily be one. And then there are the relatives of Van Oost, the flower-painter, who actually made the sculpture, though Rysbrack won all the plaudits for the design. Or, failing that, Maureer's hatred could simply be aesthetical. "I hate you and all you stand for." That's to say classical sculpture, judicious choice of materials, pyramidal composition and the whole lickspittle business of dressing royal personages up as Roman emperors.

So much to hate, once you start. Queen Square itself is no monument to human goodness, having housed the slave-traders who made Bristol rich. Were your ancestors shackled and sold for two and sixpence, Maureer? And so is it us you hate – us post-colonialists who go on obscurely enjoying the fruits of a heinous trade, accepting our culpability in one quarter only to recidivate in another? Little museums and monuments all over Bristol, commemorating slavery, adding to the total of the town's attractions – here the river where the slavers sailed, there the mansions where the slavers caroused, nice places, when the sun shines, to sit and have a heritage cappuccino.

So much to hate, once you start. And no one telling you it's not a smart idea, not good for you, not good for your heart, never mind the hearts of those you hate and all they stand for. And must it be "all" they stand for that you hate, Maureer? Wouldn't just some of what they stand for suffice?

On an almshouse wall, close to Queen Square, I read a returned seaman's poem. "Freed from all storms, the tempest and the rage/ Of billows, here we spend our age." Freed from rage. It seems a novel thought today, that we should welcome quiet, and not rage against whatever dares to rage at us. A blessed thing, quiet. Wherein to read, compose the mind, listen to Schubert, maybe recall the words of those who once advised we learn, for our own sakes, to love our enemies.

But Maureer's storms carry the day. Maybe he is a human bomb in waiting. Why not: he who is unhappy has no choice but to hate, and he who hates has no choice but to kill – violence is ineluctable – isn't that our mantra now?

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