tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post2933695036023368310..comments2023-11-22T09:11:01.567+00:00Comments on George Szirtes: Apropos of inauguration speeches: the inner libraryGeorge Shttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-55020409719183126292009-01-26T11:09:00.000+00:002009-01-26T11:09:00.000+00:00Without hope we would be like worker ants, living ...Without hope we would be like worker ants, living and dying for the moment. I don't want to be like that. Obama's words were meaningful in that he wanted to do what we would all like to do. He has the power, hopefully, to fulfill some of our hopes.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-23572643612788555162009-01-26T10:12:00.000+00:002009-01-26T10:12:00.000+00:00Centrist, Be not downhearted. 'Hope' is a universa...Centrist, <BR/>Be not downhearted. 'Hope' is a universal value in and of itself. And surely we should praise it. <BR/>I am reminded of the young Welsh girl, I think she was called Mary Jones, who translated the English Bible into the Welsh language, so that she and the kept-in-the-dark-downtrodden North Walians could understand the book and 'Hope' for better times. 'Hope' kept them going. And now in America Obama is doing the same. <BR/>Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Without hope we are all sunk. Hope, hope, hope! Consider that Poe's shipwreck idea might be wrong.Gwil Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305768121713053837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-48408369467189932732009-01-26T03:44:00.000+00:002009-01-26T03:44:00.000+00:00It's not despair I have tried to convey in my comm...It's not despair I have tried to convey in my comment. I try to stay away from irrelevant emotions, as much as I can (being a very emotional person, it's a tough challenge!). I was thinking of Poe's short story "Descent into the maelstrom", in which the narrator succeeds in saving himself only after he has stopped clinging to the hope (and to the wreckage) that somehow something will happen to change his doom. Only when he becomes fully aware of what it might take to survive that descent does he succeed. <BR/><BR/>I was much struck by Tadeusz Borowski's expostulation against hope as affirming Poe's wisdom. <BR/><BR/>And anyway, when people look at Obama and say he gives them hope for change, I can't help but thinking that what some hope for is really something that can be very harmful to others. So what's the point of praising hope as if it were a universal value in and of itself?The Contentious Centristhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07370528817706233156noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-5500122325500775192009-01-25T16:47:00.000+00:002009-01-25T16:47:00.000+00:00I thought my view of the world was dark, Noga, but...I thought my view of the world was dark, Noga, but you make me seem like a ray of sunshine. And even if it is dark, I guess, you may as well whistle in it. What's wrong with music? <BR/><BR/>I can't see that lack of hope would have been any use to those parts of my family that died in you-know-what (entire mother's side, half father's side). Lack of hope means giving in. Like all the virtues - faith, hope and charity, said St Paul - it cuts both ways, but I have never been without it. You can have too much of faith, as we all know. By charity he meant <I>caritas</I> of course, what we think of as love - and, I suspect, more have died and suffered as a result of love than of hope. But I wouldn't be without it. Nor quite without the other two either.<BR/><BR/>I think of the Berlin Wall, the end of the terrible violence in Ireland. I think of the passing of Mao and Pol Pot, the end of Franco and Salazar and the various South American and Greek Colonels, and while none of these have reached - because nothing can - the 'and they all lived happily ever after' stage, they are all, undoubtedly better.<BR/><BR/>As regards the situation of Israel, which, I guess, is the focus of your despair, I too despair, and yet even here, as with Ireland, I think it is possible for people - for enough people at least - to grow tired and start talking. What else, after all, is there?<BR/><BR/>I don't suppose anti-Semitism will go. Suspicion and envy and the tribal desire to find scapegoats are pretty permanent in the human condition, but I still don't think Britain is an anti-Semitic country. The masses themselves (shall we call them that?) lack any great animus toward anything. To some people this seems a vice, like lethargy, accidie, sloth or indifference. Coming at it from Central Europe I think I could make a case for it as a virtue compounded of tolerance, diffidence, and low blood pressure.George Shttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08889600788146987089noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-42942809899105241552009-01-25T16:02:00.000+00:002009-01-25T16:02:00.000+00:00I liked Obama's speech and tried to be buoyed by i...I liked Obama's speech and tried to be buoyed by it, but I couldn't help feeling that the forcefulness of some parts of it ("We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.") was a presidential equivalent of whistling in the dark. <BR/><BR/>Just as I tend to regard political pity as a fountainhead for cruelty, I see hope as a narcotic meant to deaden people's perceptions to a nightmarish world. <BR/><BR/>What is the function of hope in a nightmare universe?<BR/><BR/>"It is hope that makes people walk apathetically into the gas chamber, makes them shrink back from uprising ... Hope that tears apart family bonds, makes mothers reject their children, makes women sell themselves for a piece of bread and turns men into killers. Hope makes them fight for each day of life, for maybe the next day will bring liberation ... We did not learn to renounce hope, and that is why we died in the gas."<BR/><BR/>This was said by Tadeusz Borowski, a Polish Auschwitz susvivor who put an end to his life six years after liberation.The Contentious Centristhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07370528817706233156noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4638619958588096610.post-32211473472659652792009-01-25T14:49:00.000+00:002009-01-25T14:49:00.000+00:00I am full of hope. And that is something I would n...I am full of hope. And that is something I would not dare say if I'd been watching McCain, my friends, and his one-heartbeat-away friend from the land of ice and snow (oh, and oil of course).<BR/>The USA has made the U-turn. It now remains to restart the engine.<BR/>YES THEY CAN, dammit!Gwil Whttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03305768121713053837noreply@blogger.com