And all the old Gods have faded: this was a turning ago, and as this turning ends again the Gods of the age will become rotten and dank. And the name Lesbia will again refer to an island.
GROW weary if you will, let me be sad.
Use no more speech now;
Let the silence spread gold hair above us,
Fold on delicate fold.
Use no more speech;
You had the ivory of my life to carve.…And Picus of Mirandola is dead;
And all the gods they dreamed and fabled of,
Hermes, and Thoth and Bêl are rotten now,
Rotten and dank.And through it all I see your pale Greek face;
Tenderness
Makes me eager as a little child to love you,
You morsel left half-cold on Cæsar’s plate.Richard Aldington, 1913
I will add this: we could do with more silence and care, and less shouting and rights. For the poets overstate their status. They are the fools: they sing us their songs, and they are the clowns. John Wright has this correctly sorted.
Most poets would benefit for a time working in the soup kitchen.
Would that Robert Heinlein could rise from his grave, and with a scabby, undead but talented hand grasp this prideful weasel by the throat and explain the following in the breathy whisper stinking of the fumes from hell:
Markus Dohle, you dolt. We are in the clown business. Our job is to make the customer smile, or laugh, or on rare occasion, ponder some new thought, but only if it entertains him. We are not his teacher, his father confessor, his mother or his guru. We are his servant, the fool the king keeps by his throne to kick. In a free market, the customer is king.
We are competing for his beer money. He could buy a computer game, a comic book, a pack of songs or a pack of smokes instead with the money we ask him to plunk down on the barrel head for books about space marines in power armor or men from Mars named Smith.
If the customer wanted us to do social engineering, they would have voted for us for alderman. If they wanted us to lead a crusade, they would have written a letter to the Pope.
They want us to sing a song, say a poem, tell a love story, tell a tall tale of adventure, make dark days bright, boring days memorable, and to remind them of what the world really should be.
It is a godlike task, not to be taken lightly. But that is the whole task.
Shut up and publish books. If honest love of honest craftsmanship is not enough to make you love your work, them go pass out soup to the poor in a soup kitchen.
The last turning but one died in the charnel house that was the long war, from 1914 to 1990. And we are fools to think that the twentyfive years of peace we have had after that, and the Gods of this age, will last longer than the Edwardian ones did.
John Wright has it down pat. If Heinlein’s resurection ghoul could arise and ‘grasp this prideful weasel by the throat’ he would probably refer it to the French word for entertainment – ‘divertissement’ [to divert] and then perhaps point him in the direction of Jacques Ellul and his prophetic [and ignored] observational work, ‘Propaganda. The Formation of Mens Attitudes’.
We have a choice..’as it was in the days of Noah so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark,..
or ….For there our captors demanded of us songs, And our tormentors mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” How can we sing the LORD’S song In a foreign land?
Tomorrow they bury my friend and faithful servant of the Christ. He suffered much and wasn’t healed at the eleventh hour, despite his prayers healing many others. I doubt he would want it now. He has a new song and a long time to sing it in his real home.
Hit it Phil!
Yeah. We lost someone over the weekend and work is in grief down here. Prayers for the family.
And I want my good old fashioned fun back. Some people, like John Wright, still make such books.