#Poetry for the afternoon.
I've been coming back to this poem a lot lately. The key word here is "first": its prescience, and the dread in it.
It was published in 1968 - so, still in the throes of modern globalizing media, but a long way off from where we are now.
And yet...
Humans don't change much, do we?
We whip ourselves and others up sometimes just to remember that we all still bleed, and that this *matters*.
What a thing it is, to have the courage to be kind while we've all gone mad.
The sentiment also shows up earlier in a poem Auden wrote for Sept 1, 1939. These are its closing strophes - note the ache to connect across the world in the shadow of war.
We humans never change. That is often our shame - and sometimes our strength.
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*NB: Auden would later change the "or" here to an "and" - a reminder that our imperative to love one another isn't meant as a bargain to escape our times: only, to live in them more fully, while we can.
It's 1984 that I dread more … The jackboot endlessly stomping on a human face …
I'm a cynical Huxleyian - who needs the state to jackboot you, when we have plenty who will eagerly take up their drug of choice, and jackboot themselves?
(The sillies have worn off, methinks.)
Thesis confirmed. 😂
@MLClark "What a thing it is, to have the courage to be kind while we've all gone mad."
I'm binge-watching the three Planet of the Apes movies in the Caesar trilogy to prep for "Kingdom" sometime in the next few days ... Your quote is basically the theme of all the films.
@MLClark
That really hits hard, thinking how similar we are still to previous generations, even with our new technologies. And how *connections*--ourselves with ourselves--is still so essential.