A blog friend recently sent me a passage from a book by the American anthropologist and science writer Loren Eiseley, The Night City. Eiseley describes a visit to the ruins of Leptis Magna in the Libyan desert, where he meditates on time and its passing. 'There should be a kind of pity that comes with time', he writes, 'when one grows truly conscious and looks behind as well as forward, for nothing is more brutal than the man who is not aware he is a shadow. Nothing is more real than the real; and that is why it is well for men to hurt themselves with the past—it is one road to tolerance.' The last two phrases in particular struck me: I think a knowledge of the past is indeed a road to tolerance, and ignorance of it is surely a road to intolerance. Isn't this what we are seeing in today's vicious displays of intolerance by the new breed of unforgiving 'woke' activists? A quarter of a century ago, in The Triumph of Love, Geoffrey Hill wrote of 'these strange children, pitiless in their ignorance and contempt' – and now they're everywhere, dominating every university campus and loudly asserting themselves on the streets of our cities. And they are, I'm sure, massively ignorant of the past – how could they not be if they are accusing the Israelis of genocide? What unfathomable depths of ignorance does that imply? These people's idea of history will no doubt have been formed by the minimal and partial (in both senses) teaching of the subject in schools, where the subject itself is becoming increasingly marginal and the teaching of it is likely to leave a clear impression that our forebears were ethically deplorable and their achievements based on oppression and exploitation, best forgotten and disowned. This can only encourage a rejection of the past and our connection with it, leaving people with no sense of continuity with what came before – and without that sense, that perspective, an entire dimension of our human reality is lost.
Every culture has told stories about its past, either in the form of factual history or, more often, myths and legends. Some knowledge of these stories was considered essential to becoming a fully conscious, fully functioning human. Without that knowledge, what are we? Well, we are beginning to find out, and it is not good...
Zbigniew Herbert was a poet, living in the dangerous present of 20th-century Poland, whose imagination was steeped in the past, in history and the classics. In this poem he shows exactly why the classics matter, why history matters –
Why the Classics
1
in the fourth book of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides tells among other things
the story of his unsuccessful expedition
among long speeches of chiefs
battles sieges plague
dense net of intrigues of diplomatic endeavours
the episode is like a pin
in a forest
the Greek colony Amphipolis
fell into the hands of Brasidos
because Thucydides was late with relief
for this he paid his native city
with lifelong exile
exiles of all times
know what price that is
2
generals of the most recent wars
if a similar affair happens to them
whine on their knees before posterity
praise their heroism and innocence
they accuse their subordinates
envious colleagues
unfavourable winds
Thucydides says only
that he had seven ships
it was winter
and he sailed quickly
3
if art for its subject
will have a broken jar
a small broken soul
with a great self-pity
what will remain after us
will it be lovers' weeping
in a small dirty hotel
when wall-paper dawns
And here he is writing as a Roman in dangerous times, pondering his return to a court not unlike that ruled over by Stalin:
The Return of the Proconsul
I’ve decided to return to the emperor’s court
once more I shall see if it’s possible to live there
I could stay here in this remote province
under the full sweet leaves of sycamores
under the rule of sickly nepotists
when I return I don’t intend to commend myself
I shall applaud in measured portions
smile in ounces frown discreetly
for that they will not give me a golden chain
this iron one will suffice
I’ve decided to return tomorrow or the next day
I cannot live among vineyards nothing here is mine
trees have no roots houses no foundations the rain is glassy flowers smell of wax
a dry cloud rattles against the empty sky
so I shall return tomorrow the next day in any case I shall return
I must come to terms with my face again
with my lower lip so it knows how to check scorn
with my eyes so they remain ideally empty
and with that miserable chin the hare of my face
which trembles when the chief of guards walks in
of one thing I am sure I will not drink wine with him
when he brings his goblet nearer I will lower my eyes
and pretend I’m picking bits of food from between my teeth
besides the emperor likes courage of convictions
to a certain extent to a certain reasonable extent
he is after all a man like everyone
and already tired by all those tricks with poison
he cannot drink his fill incessant chess
this left cup is for Drusus from the right one pretend to sip
then drink only water never lose sight of Tacitus
take a walk in the garden and return when the corpse has been removed
I’ve decided to return to the emperor’s court
I really hope that things will work out somehow
Nige, have you heard the one about the Jews and the golem? Something about bad and spiteful behavior backfiring. Perhaps the woke owe some of their flourishing to the group they are accused of hating. Funny that!
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