Modernity as Dislocation

“Modernity cannot be identified with any particular technological or social breakthrough. Rather, it is a subjective condition, a feeling or an intuition that we are in some profound sense different from the people who lived before us. Modern life, which we tend to think of as an accelerating series of gains in knowledge, wealth, and power over nature, is predicated on a loss: the loss of contact with the past. Depending on your point of view, this can be seen as either a disinheritance or an emancipation; much of modern politics is determined by which side you take on this question. But it is always disorienting.”

“If we are looking for the real origins of the modern world, then we have to look for the moment when that world was literally disoriented — stripped of its sense of direction. Heliocentrism, the doctrine that the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa, … was immediately experienced as a profound dislocation…. Modernity is a vertigo that began in the Sixteenth Century and shows no sign of letting up.”

Source: “What Makes You So Sure?” by Adam Kirsch: published in the September 5 (2016) issue of The New Yorker magazine as a review of Anthony Gottlieb’s The Dream of Enlightenment. Pg. 71.

Applause for the Second Chance

Many who go through a religious “conversion” experience often come out the other end being a bit over-zealous in their commitment to proselytizing. In their eagerness they tend to be both boring and irritating. Imagine the delight, then, of finding an old story about a man who made the journey into “faith” and never became irksome even as he remained committed to “the cause.”

The tale in question is T. Crofton Croker’s “The Banshee of the MacCarthys,” available as part of William Butler Yeats’ 1888 collection of accounts by Irish storytellers about encounters between Irish peasantry and not only “the fairy people,” but other occult-adjacent beings such as ghosts and witches.

The greatest pat of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry is devoted to fairies, those supernatural beings whose origin story identifies them as either fallen angels (who were “not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost”) or ancient earth deities — the Tuatha De Danan — whose worship dwindled with the arrival of Roman Catholicism, leaving them much diminished.

An appealing aspect of the book is its openness to the great diversity of fairy folk both in appearance and behavior. Irish tales speak not only of human-appearing fairies that snatch children, abduct women, and enslave men with enchantment, but also of leprechauns, pooka, and banshees. It is this latter type of fairy, the banshee, that is obviously at the center of Croker’s “The Banshee of the MacCarthys.”

The banshee in this story deserves consideration, but that won’t be the focus of this blog post. Let’s save that contemplation for Grandfather Hu Reviews blog, and focus here on the chief human protagonist Charles MacCarthy, the 24-year-old nobleman who in 1749 died and returned from the dead with a wild story and an even wilder change of personality.

Worth considering up front is Charles’ financial status as a member of the upper middle class, his standing being a rung or two below his high-born companions from the upper crust of Irish society. The youthful noble sons seem to have at worst tolerated Charles enough to include him in their nightly escapades in the local pubs, at least temporarily overlooking his somewhat inferior financial status.

The MacCarthy family was not filthy rich, but neither were they poor. They had servants in their household and enough property to keep a large number of “peasants” engaged. Charles even had a foster brother, a childhood playmate whose destiny was to become the servant of his “young master.”

But their wealth, property, and lineage were not to be compared to that of the young heirs apparent that Charles considered his best friends and drinking buddies.

The narrator of this story[i] forthrightly expresses the assumption that these friends of Charles, these members of the Irish nobility whose “fortunes were larger than his own,” were somehow expected to behave like rich brats. Because they were wealthy, these inheritors of family fortunes had “dispositions to pleasure” that fell under far fewer restrictions than what the regular working-class bloke could expect. These privileged pals provided poor Charles both “an incentive and an apology” to enact his own “irregularities” in their company.

The narrator says that if the “recording angel of the law” kept a ledger of misdeeds for every man and woman, when it came to these wealthy young nobles the angel “dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever!”  It seems that the sons of unimaginable wealth and power can get away with shit that would bankrupt the rest of us.

In the embrace of these protected companions, Charles spiraled into a whirlpool of “reckless profligacy … a rapid career of vice.” But human bodies have their limits, and even the best of livers is bound to give way after too much booze and too little sleep. Fever, coma, and death would mean the end of Charles’ nightly revels. The only son of what was once “a very numerous family” dies abed at home, his wealthy friends nowhere to be found among the peasant women keeping vigil.[ii]

Of course, one might ask about justice in a world where the “less-than-rich” fellow gets sick while his “more-than-rich” buddies apparently go unscathed healthwise. The rich stay healthy while the sick stay poor, right? (And the Grammy for best lyric switch goes to … U2.)

In the pre-dawn hours of his 25^th birthday, Charles died. The women of the vigil settled into quietude while Mother Ann MacCarthy prayed fervently in the adjoining room for the salvation of her only son. Soon enough her devotions were “disturbed by an unusual noise” coming from the mourners gathered around the body. “First there was a low murmur, then all was silent … and then a loud cry of terror burst from all.”

The mourners fled in a panicked scramble when the dead man came back to life. Struggling through the fleeing vigil-keepers, Mrs. MacCarthy came to her son’s room to find Charles sitting up on the bed, “looking vacantly around, like one risen from the grave.” Indeed, the dim candlelight gave “an unearthy horror to his whole aspect.”

“Speak!” the frightened mother says to her son. “Are you alive?”

Yes, he was alive.

With as much voice as his parched throat would allow, Charles eagerly recounts an encounter with God. Like most of us who might rush to write down the details of a dream before it is erased by waking consciousness, Charles rushes out his story of meeting God “while the excitement of returning life is upon me.”

The young man rasps out to his mother the experience of finding himself being judged, of standing before God on the verge of receiving the Divine thumbs down and getting shipped off  to an eternity of punishment.

Mere moments before being tossed through the trapdoor to Hell, however, Charles catches the eye of the saintly protector of the MacCarthy clan. He begs the Holy patron to intercede on his behalf for a second chance to prove his spiritual worth. The patron saint goes into action, throwing himself at the feet of God and pleading to give Charles another opportunity to prove his himself.

God concedes, and gives Charles three more years of life for a do-over, an opportunity for repentance and redemption. At the end of three full years, on his 27^th birthday, Charles would die again and once more stand before God for another accounting of his life.

Here is where the story becomes most eye catching.

If this were a non-fictional account, Charle’s story might be described as what we today call a “Near Death Experience,” an event that modern science typically dismisses as the neuronal firings of a dying brain.

Indeed, just as those among us today whose heated claims of post-mortem “consciousness” are doused with cold medical incredulity and the barely suppressed titters of the “there there, I’m sure you saw something” shoulder patters, Charles’ story of Divine Judgement is likewise met with overwhelming skepticism.

Even Charles’ mother is reluctant to indulge him: “His mother, though … somewhat disposed to give credit to supernatural visitations, yet hesitated whether or not she should believe” what her son was telling her. Her tendency was to think the young man was “still under the influence of delirium.”

Charles recognizes her doubt: “Do not stare incredulously on me,” he tells her. “I saw — I remember. It is fixed here; printed on my brain in characters indelible; but it passeth human language. What I can describe I will.”

Charles remains convinced of the reality of the otherworldly occurrence, so much so that long after awakening at his own wake, he “persisted in his account of the vision, as he had first related it.”

Over time, however, he grows reluctant to speak with others about the Courtroom of God.

Why is that?

Perhaps the people around him started to view his story too lightly, turning it into something of a party anecdote bandied about for the entertainment of newcomers?

Charles eventually “evaded every endeavor to draw from him a distinct opinion on the subject of the supposed prediction” of his impending expiration date, “but among his own family it was well known that he still firmly believed it.”

It didn’t help that after his return from the dead Charles looked better than ever, healthier and hardier than before. How could someone so filled with vitality die on his 27^th birthday?

A Game Changer
And returning now to the opening observation of this contemplation, it is worth noting how the experience affected Charles’ personality and guided his subsequent interactions with his former drinking buddies. The narrator states clearly that Charles’ otherworldly experience “had an obvious and decided influence on his habits and conduct.”

Notably, Charles did not “altogether abandon the society of his former associates, for his temper was not soured by his reformation.” And while he still spent time with them, from then on he “never joined in their excesses.”

Did he try to persuade his friends away from carousing?

Sure. Charles “often endeavored to reclaim them,” but apparently never obnoxiously so. He did not display the arrogant conviction of the newly convicted and converted. His “pious exertions” were limited to Charles being “religious without ostentation, and temperate without austerity.” His life during his three-year probation proved that “vice may be exchanged for virtue, without the loss of respectability, popularity, or happiness.” 

There were moments of morosity and fear, of course. As he drew closer to his 27^th birthday, Charles increasingly betrayed moments of somber worry, “a seriousness and abstractedness of demeanor” that “grew upon him” with every passing day. His friends rallied to distract him from these emotional shadows, and “for the most part his manner exhibited the same animation and cheerfulness for which he had always been remarkable.”

Kudos to Charles for still knowing how to live after learning what it is to die. He continued his social engagements, met with his friends, maintained his responsibilities, and strove to do good for the world around him while enhancing his relationship with the Church.

Charles did not descend into the Zone of Arrogance by becoming a fundamentalist or a crusading zealot.

Sure, he sometimes grew gloomy, but that’s OK. It is to be expected that his awareness of time’s passing combined with a newfound appreciation of being alive would combine toward moments of melancholy. And surely those times within the shadow of sadness were worsened by his observation that his friends, people he genuinely cared for, did not share with him such an appreciation for the brevity and beauty of being alive.

Turning this contemplation inward, I recall my own encounter with a potentially life-threatening illness. The experience changed me physically, psychologically, and spiritually. After any such an illness, even with the life-saving gift of medical intervention, one ought naturally to achieve an appreciation of how short our human lives really are. No longer can we blindly assume a lifespan of nine decades or more, nor even seven. We have known real danger, and understand that life can escape us far more easily than we want it to.

Every moment of being alive is precious.

Sadly, few are willing to recognize this. Reminders of our natural mortality makes them uncomfortable. If ever I spoke to my closest friend about the brevity of our days on earth and the rapidly decreasing number of days before our own dying, I would find myself dismissed with a friendly — but nervous — pat on the shoulder and the inevitable “there there, don’t talk like that” response.

Friends mean well, bless them.

Of course, given the terror that goes with it, I doubt anybody would wish upon their loved ones the experience of an alarming medical prognosis as a way of expanding anyone’s appreciation for life. Even many years after recovery, an undercurrent of anxiety can on occasion prevent the attainment of restful slumber.

Better that we learn to appreciate the value of being alive through the study of Philosophy, or the reading of fiction, of stories like this one about Charles MacCarthy, whose temporary resurrection allowed him three full years of knowing exactly how dear is each breath, each morsel of food, each word of greeting, and each note of birdsong.

Yes, life is wonderful.

There there.

The Banshee After All
A couple of days before his 27^th birthday, Charles is felled by a stray bullet, a victim of the gunshot intended not for him but for his friend James Ryan whose wedding he was attending. The pistol had been fired by a former lover of Ryan who never recovered from having been set aside for the woman who would soon become Mrs. Ryan. The jilted lady had descended into a “moody, melancholy state” for months after the separation. She was seeking a terrible revenge against “the destroyer of her innocence and happiness.”

She ended up killing Charles, instead.

Though she had inflicted only a minor injury upon Charles, the gunshot eventually brought the robust young man down through infection. As he lay on his deathbed the woman who shot him tried desperately to gain admittance into his room, but her path was blocked by those who guarded the MacCarthy home. Struggling against her captors, she pleaded for Charles to forgive her. In almost the same breath she would deny responsibility, crying aloud: “James Ryan, ‘twas you killed him, and not I …”.

Did Charles hear her plea? If he had heard her, would he have had anything to forgive her for, seeing her rather as a vehicle of Divine will?

From his deathbed Charles spoke “with courage and confidence” of his impending departure.  He displayed a calm, “even cheerful” resignation to his fate, and told his mother that he “wished to devote the last hours of his existence to uninterrupted prayer and meditation.”

When the sun shining upon his 27^th birthday gave way to the dark of evening, Charles’ soul moved on “to render its last account to its Creator.”

But what about the titular banshee attached to the MacCarthy family?

What follows in the second half of this story is actually quite spellbinding, specifically the portrayal of a banshee that seems to make a special contribution to the way we (those of us who are basically unfamiliar with Irish folklore and mythology) think of the iconic banshee.

If you want to read about the unique features of the titular fairy figure in “The Banshee of the MacCarthys,” you’ll find the second part of this interrogation at the Grandfather Hu Reviews site, specifically the “What about the Banshee?” post.

Graphic:
Seated Youth by 1917  Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Open Access, National Gallery of Art

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[i] The second half of this tale is delivered in a series of letters written by Charles’ mother and her best friend who is also a distant cousin of Charles.

 

[ii] Who exactly were the vigil-keepers? The narrator notes that a crowd had gathered outside the MacCarthy home on the day of the doctor’s arrival, when his verdict would be that the ailing, comatose young man would not likely recover. Gathering on the front lawn, crowding around the door, and peeking into the windows are the “tenants, fosterers, and poor relations of the family.” Among them are “others attracted by affection, or by that interest which partakes of curiosity, but is something more, and which collects the lower ranks round a house where a human being is in his passage to another world.” When the doctor’s verdict was delivered, the numerous women “uttered a shrill cry, which having been sustained for about half a minute, fell suddenly into a full, loud, continued, and discordant but plaintive wailing.” Among their voices was the “deep sounds of a man’s voice, sometimes in deep sobs, sometimes in more distinct exclamations of sorrow.” This was the wailing of Charles’ foster brother, his personal servant.

  

History Refutes Authoritarian Assumptions

A 30-year old report in the Utne Reader (1994) caught my attention and filled me with gratitude. The article — titled “First Discipline, Then Democracy” — opened with a focus on the words of former Singapore powerhouse Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015), quoting a 1993 speech he presented in the Philippines when he said: “The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.” The quote shifts into one from a Singaporean diplomat who wrote in 1993 that “good government may well require, among other things, detention without trial … curbs on press freedoms … and draconian laws to break the power of entrenched interests.”

This way of thinking that basically claimed democracy is ideologically impossible for Asian nations came to be known as “The Singapore School.” At heart, the political philosophy endorsed by Lee and others stated that the majority of Asian nations, at least those influenced by Chinese and Islamic cultures, were dominated by a traditional culture that viewed the “interests of society” as more important than ideals such as “individual rights” and the inviolable rule of law. In these Asian societies, public order naturally arises from an unquestioning acceptance of authority and an overriding commitment to family — with the Confucian extension of filiality to the patriarch being expanded to include the official ruler of the state.  

Proponents of this way of thinking argued that economic success was linked directly to discipline: without order there can be no progress. The “four tigers” of the time were pointed at as living proof that authoritarianism and financial success are inextricably entwined. Western advocates of human rights were chided as “arrogant” for challenging this centuries-old cultural assumption, and derided as uncaring for advancing social theories that could potentially impoverish citizens whose only wealth would become their freedom to complain while their children went hungry.

The writer of the Utne Reader piece, Kevin J. Kelley, noted that many scholars throughout Asia had long been arguing that “this great distinction between a libertarian West and an authoritarian East is overly simplistic and at least partially false.”

Here comes the gratitude: Three decades later, the ideals advanced by Lee Kuan Yew and his fellow authoritarians have been proven less viable as liberal democratic principles and economic prosperity today walk arm-in-arm throughout much of Asia. Islamic-majority states such as Indonesia and Malaysia appear to have moved beyond the ethnic crises that were used to justify strongarm leadership, and are today considered economically stable, if not “robust.” Even Singapore seems to have molted somewhat and grown a new coat of liberal sensibility.

While Korea and Thailand remain reasonably constant in terms of economic growth, both states have also over the past few years experienced serious political disturbances that could have clawed away the health of their democratic bodies. Is it the economy unsettling the political, or vice versa?

The Philippines, on the other hand, has been on the rise both economically (albeit cautiously) and democratically.

As the world’s fourth largest economy, Japan’s GDP continues upward despite ongoing stumbles and crawls. Politically the nation remains solidly democratic, with opposition parties recently demonstrating growth and challenging the historically dominant ruling party that is itself struggling to transform itself.

And then there’s Taiwan. Why bother stating the obvious?

It is true that the island faces future crises, both economically and politically. But at the moment Taiwan remains a vibrant democracy, so much so that it can be raised up as the most vibrant evidence that it is the advocates of “the Singapore School” who are arrogant and uncaring. Taiwan peacefully transitioned from a blood-drenched history of authoritarianism into a brilliantly shining democracy in which diversity, justice, and respect are revered as guiding social -civic principles.

The Asian experience seems to be proof that democratic principles and economic growth are allies. This modern encounter with liberalism and prosperity across the region suggests that it was the Singapore School of sociopolitical theory, with its argument that traditional Asian cultures are incapable of changing for the better, which was indeed the most arrogant philosophical approach.  

Unfortunately, old notions of authoritarianism never entirely go away. Today it is China (PRC) that raises the ideological banner of progress as an outcome of authoritarian control. What the Chinese Communist Party advanced with the slogan “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” is now being touted as “smart authoritarianism.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s principle of “the democratic dictatorship” and the past decades of China’s economic growth have empowered the global distribution of “smart authoritarianism.” Most ominously, this updated version of the old idea that authoritarianism breeds prosperity is finding more and more adherents among the citizens of nations that were once bastions of liberal democracy around the world. From the United States to India, the notion that only a strongman can march us into the future has become increasingly acceptable.

But are we marching forward or backward?

The Inheritance of Ephemerality

The shelves in my apartment are overly stuffed with books, most of which were purchased over the past two decades. But interspersed among these many hundreds of texts are a precious few that have trailed after me throughout my life, following me as I traversed both time and space, decades and oceans. One of the most precious of these old friends is American Murder Ballads, a study by Olive Woolley Burt of the category of traditional folksongs that I must have purchased at a second hand bookstore sometime in the late 1980s when I was deeply involved with a local folk music society.

My paperback copy of Burt’s book was printed in 1964, just a few years after I was born. Basically, the book and I are both of the late-Boomer Generation: released into a society on the verge of tremendous cultural upheaval.

Burt’s book, which I have sitting before me as I write this, became important to me as the only printed work I have come across that deals with a topic which has intrigued me since early childhood. (Note: American Murder Ballads is not the “only” book on the subject of Murder Ballads, but it is so far the only physical copy that I own.)

You see, I was not even 10 years old when I became aware that the pop music scene — normally the territory of boundless cheerfulness — could also create somber and melancholic songs about Death — and still get airplay and attention! That revelation came to me through the radio and the turntable.

Interspersed with the majority of songs focused on romance — the endless variations of the eternal “I Love Her but She Doesn’t Love Me!” theme — the local New York City radio stations also gave us melodramatic songs about loved ones who have died. It’s very likely that anyone of my generation will automatically recall those tragic songs of lovers lost to motor vehicle crashes, with “Teen Angel,” “Tell Laura I Love Her,” and of course “Leader of the Pack.” 

But there were also more subtle melancholic compositions about death brought about by illness, with titles like “Honey” (Bobby Goldsboro), “Seasons in the Sun” (Terry Jacks), and “Memories of Love” (Chicago) remaining most prominent in my memory alongside the more lighthearted contemplation of the afterlife “And When I Die” as performed most successfully by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears (written by Laura Nyro and first recorded by Peter, Paul and Mary).

As an adult I would two contemporary folk songs that focus entirely on the end of life: “Long Ride Home” by Patty Griffin, and “Fancy Funeral” by Lucinda Williams. Both songs are worth checking out. I also highly recommend “My Death” from the classic Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Alongside these emotional works were songs that addressed the violence of the times, from the American war against Vietnam to the assassinations of Civil Rights leaders and the deaths brought about by overall inequality.

American aggression in Vietnam spawned songs on both side of the controversial war, with the nationalistic “Ballad of the Green Berets” memorializing veterans who lost their lives in war. But as hostilities intensified along with the number of young American soldiers killed during the presidency of Richard Nixon, a much larger body of works were recorded that referenced battlefield casualties in order to create powerful anti-war songs. This category included the ironic songs “Sky Pilot” (Eric Burdon and the Animals) and “Lucky Man” (Emerson, Lake & Palmer). Other lyric works referred more directly to the death of American soldiers but failed to gain much airplay, such as “The Unknown Soldier” (The Doors), “The Grave” (Don McLean), and much later “Goodnight Saigon” (Billy Joel).

There were also songs that addressed the victims of social inequality and those who died in the Civil Rights Movement, such as “Abraham, Martin, and John” (especially the combination “sound montage” of “What the World Needs Now/Abraham, Martin, and John” by radio host Tom Clay), “Ohio” (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), “Alabama” (Neil Young), and “In the Ghetto” (Elvis Presley).

And then there were songs that continued the folk music tradition of songs about historical accidents or incidents, such as “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (Gordon Lightfoot), “The Night Chicago Died” about a fictional gangland shooting that was inspired by the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre (Paper Lace), “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” (Harry Chapin) about an actual trailer truck crash in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the obviously titled “Dance Band on the Titanic” (also by Harry Chapin). It would be remiss not to include mention of songs about apocalyptic crises: “Miami 2017” (Billy Joel), “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” (R.E.M.), and the dueling versions of dystopia and utopia from The Talking Heads in “Life During Wartime” and “Nothing but Flowers.”

As a child, however, a handful of the most impressionable songs came to me via the turntable, and it was these that first introduced me to the category of “the murder ballad.” For this I can thank the folk music trio Peter, Paul, and Mary. They gave me “accessible” versions of murder ballads such as “Pretty Polly,” “Polly Vaughn,” and “Lily of the West.”

Hearing and being drawn to these songs as an adolescent made me more aware of and open to the appeal of musical works that highlighted the presence of death and frailty as part of the human experience. But this fascination still flummoxes me because, you see, I had no personal reason to be taken aback or surprised by the reality of our mortality. Death was always part of my understanding of Life, the prize at the bottom of the box. It still is.

Perhaps the big shock and draw (pardon the pun) was the realization that music could be the medium through which this message is told. The airwaves of my childhood were dominated by cheerful songs, even when those same songs were moaning about a broken heart and the impossibility of mending it. The pleasure must have been in the contrast, the dark splotches on the otherwise brightly colored canvas.

Gimme Shelter?

As an adolescent I had never been sheltered from the presence and possibility of death being visited upon our loved ones or ourselves. You see, the grandparents who raised me and my siblings never tried to shield us from the reality of death.

Their generation had known the world differently. They knew Death as a cosmic force, a divinity with its own presence and will. They respected it, even as they dreaded it.

They were Eastern European immigrants in America who had been born in the late 1800s and experienced firsthand the anguish of being a colonized people caught between the martial ambitions of powerful nation states. They had survived wars.

They were also, as devout Catholics, inheritors of a spiritual system still deeply infused with traditions that were far older than the Roman Church. The Christian prayers they whispered and the rites they performed were unconsciously palimpsestic and attended to more than one metaphysical perspective.

It was their “traditional” worldview that cradled my psyche’s development from infancy to early adulthood. They had been my primary guardians, having taken my elder siblings and me into their home after my parents divorced and my mother was forced into a furious struggle of survival at a time when there were practically no structures to support a single mother.

The reflection I am engaging in here allows me to see that there was very little in my adolescent experience that would encourage me to look through rose-tinted glasses and pretend that death was not always a part of life. It was there in my family. It was there in the society.

It was there.

We were what today would be called the “working class poor.” This meant we were capable of getting through each season thanks to the financial cleverness of my grandparents. (It helped that we had a large vegetable garden, my grandmother knew how to budget, and my grandfather was a carpenter capable of repairing anything — an innate talent passed on to my older brother who could perform the miracle of resurrection upon dead motor vehicles). My mother labored seven days a week at her full-time and two part-time jobs, while we children hustled however we could to bring in spare change until we turned 16 and were legally allowed part-time employment in retail and service jobs.  

But I’m traversing well-trodden territory, rehashing memories rich with the gripes and regrets that I’ve so often sprinkled into my blog posts. Sorry about that. My thoughts tended in this direction because I cannot separate the spiritual (and cultural) experiences from the larger socioeconomic ones. You see, while my guardian grandparents never tried to protect me from the awareness of death as an ever-present potentiality, neither did the local community we grew up within.

Ours was a wonderfully diverse neighborhood just a short bus ride from Manhattan. We were a neighborhood in constant change and undergoing great economic and demographic turbulences — even as the stormy Sixties reigned all around us at a national-cultural level. The streets we roamed and roared through as children did nothing to shelter us from the reality of death or the awareness that larger histories were unfolding far above our lowly streets.

In my Roman Catholic household (and this was probably true for all of those families headed by European immigrants from other Catholic-majority states such as Italy, Ireland, Hungary, and Poland) children were expected to accompany their elders to wakes and funerals. We had to be there, and we had to “pay our respects” to whoever was in the open casket, even when we had no idea who the “dearly departed” were.

Sometimes in our teenaged years we actually did know the departed.  They were childhood friends who died of drug overdoses or automobile accidents.

And then there were the ones who went somewhere and never came back.

My earliest recollection of someone disappearing is the high school classmate of one of my much-older brothers, a young man who went overseas to serve in Vietnam and never returned. I was constantly fascinated by the chest of personal belongings he had stored in our garage, his private cache of items that he didn’t even want his parents to have access to. For as long as it remained in our garage that box would stay locked. I never knew what had become of that secret trove of a disappeared man’s treasure.

Another box was part of my childhood: the large cedar “hope chest” that belonged to my mother.  

This coffin-shaped box stays in my memory not because it held the naphthalene-scented blankets that would keep us warm through cold winter months, but because beneath the quilts and comforters was another kind of comfort, something my mother simply called “the 22.”

To this day I have no idea who was the actual owner of the .22-caliber hunting rifle, or how it had come to be secreted beneath the linens. But I somehow always remember my mother’s urgent mid-afternoon phone call from work when she asked me to tell my grandmother to disinter the gun from beneath the blankets. That was the day the frighteningly violent ’67 Newark riots turned once-quiet city streets into a warzone, and it was all happening just a few blocks from our home. Slightly more than a decade later I would pass those burnt-out buildings on my way to college and shudder at the violence that unfurled wings of fire that day and left behind crumbling, empty husks where once had been apartment homes filled with life.

Not long after the riots and their overflow of rage had burned out — leaving 26 dead and over 700 people injured — I remember accompanying my grandmother to the final mass held in an old church building situated at the edge of this battleground between despair and oppression. The once-impressive stained glass windows of the sacred place had been shattered, and the walls outside were latticed with graffiti. The church building was scheduled to be deconsecrated. That was another kind of death.

My grandmother was one of a handful of seniors from “the old country” who had come to join the gray-haired priest in bidding farewell to the only place where these transplanted souls had worshipped in the language of their motherland. She would never attend a Sunday mass again.

My brothers and I, the American born, would spend our Sunday mornings at prayer in a much newer church building that served a different parish, one untouched by the furies of impoverishment and inequality. We spoke to the angels, the saints, and the tripartite deity in English.

We were just children.

And though we were unaware of it at this, the age of our ignorance, we were certainly not growing up within an age of innocence. The world was shifting around us, and we were — all of us — caught up in the turmoil. The instability had begun long before my generation was born.

I was too young to understand why the adults whispered about the Jewish mother in the corner apartment whose husband paid me to walk their family dog when their only son went away to college. I knew firsthand that the woman was “crazy.” She was barely able to overcome her terror when she had to crack open the door to let her son’s large dog slip free so I could catch and leash him. On occasions I heard her screaming in terror though she was alone in her rooms.

And then I told my friends. We’d chortle, too young to understand the meanness behind our laughter. Our merriment was the manifestation of the barbarism all children betray when burning ants with magnifying glasses or pouring salt on slugs. We didn’t quite know why the adults scolded us for our private mockery and told us that “the poor woman” still bore on her forearm the tattooed numbers of her nightmare. But the adults never explained the meaning of those numbers. Perhaps the memory of the Second World War was still too fresh and painful for them, with the revelations that accompanied post-war “liberation” being too cold, too personally terrifying, for them to speak of to their children.

Only decades later would I remember this important detail, how the grownups spoke in hushed words about the woman’s tattoos and the numbers that signified a history so unimaginably horrible that even those who had actually come through the flames of war still couldn’t speak forthrightly about it.

We were only children, but ancient death was always among us. And despite our ignorance and immaturity, surely our unconscious minds must have sensed upon our shoulders the inherited burden of modern human history, a garland of skulls and warfare.

So, again, why was it such a surprise to me as a child when death showed up in the music we listened to?

The commercial media that catered to the late-Boomer generation born in the late Fifties and early Sixties fed us a steady diet of cultural sugar. Perhaps that is why the infrequent dollops of bitterness within this recipe of sweet amusement seemed all the more noticeable, their darkness more starkly visible against the backdrop of bright candied treats that commercial radio and television upon our plates for daily consumption.

My childhood in the late Fifties/Sixties was awash in “entertainment.” For a closer look at the “ear candy” that we consumed so much of, check out the “Bubble Gum Bereavements: Part One” post at the Grandfather Hu blog. That post and this one are part of a larger project looking at Murder Ballads that is slowly unfolding as part of the Wyrd Words column at the online magazine The Antonym, starting with a look at the darkness woven into childhood lullabies. This post is designed to accompany an earlier writing titled "Sugary Sweet Entertainments" posted at Grandfather Hu's "Hu Reads Horror" blog.

Graphic: Painting by Edmund Dulac illustrating "Stories from Hans Christian Anderson," available within the Public Domain at Gutenberg.org.

Language as Resistance in Literature

Today my mind wanders back to the topic of “resistance” in literature. Indeed, I’ve just finished a look at the subject as I summarized the ideas that spoke most strongly to me after my reading of Barbara Harlow’s Resistance Literature, an academic study of “a body of writing largely ignored in the West.”

 Harlow's 1987 book looks at the role of literature — especially poetry and the prison memoir — in “Third World” liberation movements during the late days of European colonialism. What I have shaved off that summary post at the Grandfather Hu blog is shared here, in this Voce Della Volpe blog. It is a brief look at the topic of “language” as a weapon in the hands of the oppressor.

What are the “representative aspects” of resistance literature?

At the top of the list is “language.” Harlow argues that the writer’s choice of the language is itself “a political statement.” In this Voce Della Volpe post, I’ll focus on the idea of “language” as a strategy for oppression. 

This is actually a topic close to my heart, as I recall stories told by my grandmother who grew up as a minority subject of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. My grandmother could speak and read Hungarian, which was the language of her schooling. But she also spoke of the punishment she and her classmates received when the teachers caught them their native tongue. They were forced to kneel on the point of a triangular piece of wood until their knees bled. Whippings for repeat violators were not unusual.

This memory of my grandmother’s stories remained with me as I heard stories from Taiwanese friends who shared their own memories of being chastised, often with corporal punishment, for speaking their mother tongue in the classroom.

Language loss and linguistic repression are powerful implements in the colonial toolbox. The history of colonization in Taiwan offers a fascinating and frightening example of how conquerors understand the power of language as both a force of oppression and resistance. 

In the early years of imperial Japan’s occupation of the island (1894 to 1945) the local “Taiwanese” dialect and aboriginal languages were allowed as the languages of the non-official realm, while Mandarin was strictly forbidden. That situation was completely, albeit gradually, flipped when the island was ceded to the control of the Nationalist Party from China. With the Nationalists in full power, the many indigenous languages, the Chinese Hakka language, and the majority Taiwanese language were prohibited in classrooms, the media, and trade. 

Mandarin came to be associated with “loyalty,” and Taiwanese was shunted aside as a signifier of lower social and cultural status until the late 1980s when the full authority of the authoritarian regime started to fade. Even so, the result of the decades-long oppression of linguistic expression was a highly successful endeavor of the colonizing regimes, resulting in the endangerment of some tribal languages and the reduction in the number of Taiwanese-language speakers, even in those regions where the majority population once was dominated by non-“mainlander” communities.

Linguistic colonization continues today in many nations, in part through language and educational policies, as is suggested by what some see as a decrease in the number of Cantonese speakers throughout Guangdong Province, the regional birthplace of this beautiful and complex language. Though the cause of this oppression may just as likely be the flattening effects of the electronic media. It may even be the demands of a capitalist economy that play a role in cutting the hard crust of regional accents from the bread of a national language, a concern expressed by some in the United Kingdom. In the United States the dominance of the media has inarguably affected the way English is, like, you know, like, you know, spoken? Oh Valley Girl, what have you done to English?

In terms of literary production, polyphony is an important aspect of resistance writing. I cannot help but think of Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of “heteroglossia” as a quality of resistance writing, with different speech patterns standing as challenges to the “historical record” of officialdom while representing the continuing presence of the marginalized. Polyphony in the resistance text reveals social and political dimensions, as well as the psychological depths of the protagonists engaged in these struggles. 

One of the living examples of the use of language as an obvious form of resistance is Gabino Iglesias, whose novels include entire passages of untranslated Spanish as well as accents that identify protagonists’ cultural and class backgrounds. Iglesias’ first book, Zero Saints, is an ideal example of Harlow’s observation that resistance narratives “may be positively or healthily challenging” to readers who are unfamiliar with texts that ask of them a larger degree of “awareness.” The predominance of Spanish in Zero Saints challenges the idea of English as the “American language,” while the protagonists and the narrative serve as “resistance” to the major political climate that has given rise to the horrors of human trafficking and economic inequality.

Language can be such an important part of a literary text, providing not only an element of resistance but of reality as well.

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*Artwork: “Roots and Wings” by Patti Durr, as found at the Whitman Works Company art gallery blog. Used without permission, so please undo my error by visiting their website and checking out the beautiful and relevant artworks displayed and discussed on their blog.

Words Can Make a Difference

 

An inspiring article about neoliberal French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy appeared in this morning’s New York Times newspaper (2023 March 1).

Did you say Inspiring? Yes. I actually used that adjective — and more shockingly I’m applying it to the philosopher’s words.

I know, I know. It is downright frightening that I could be lulled into admiration for anything said by or about a proponent of near-fascist ideals, but there it is. The report is an introduction to a new documentary film that Lévy has recently made about the Russian colonization of Ukraine: Slava Ukraini (Glory to Ukraine).

The inspirational arguments I’m drawing from this report — a combination of news, review, and analysis — come not from any of the millionaire philosopher’s particular sociological views (such as the gratingly sexist and anti-environmentalist arguments he’s expressed), but from his larger sense of “liberation,” “resistance,” and “relevance.”

Specifically, I’m drawn to Lévy’s notion of “tikkun olam,” the idea that Jews have a responsibility to “repair the world” through good deeds.

The Hebrew term — “mipnei tikkun ha-olam” — is derived from a Medieval mystical tradition that sought to separate the sinister and the sacred in the world by bringing people together for the contemplative performance of religious acts.

Lévy’s 1977 book Barbarism With a Human Face is credited with the popularization of the idea of “tikkun olam,” spreading it beyond the liberal Judaic community where it is at the heart of progressive social action programs that strive to improve the world through tzedakah (charitable giving) and gemilut hasadim (acts of kindness).

The ideals of “tikkun olam” appeal to me, especially as I learn to struggle against my mind’s addiction to the wicked brew of nihilistic cynicism and academic detachment.

The greatest inspiration I glean from this Times report of Lévy’s career is his notion that words can be powerful weapons of resistance and liberation. And while the philosopher endorses the power of words as expressed in philosophical argument offered in the textual and audiovisual media, I see in this the idea that Art has strengths that extend far beyond aesthetic and entertainment values. Art can change the world, influencing human activity toward good or evil.

The controversial philosopher claims his original muse was his father, André Lévy, an Algerian refugee whose teenaged engagement as a resistance fighter in Spain and France during the Second World War gave stimulus to the young Bernard-Henri’s idea of going to wartime Sarajevo in the early 1990s to make a documentary film about the genocide of Bosniak Muslims. The film Bosna! was released in 1994.

Lévy said his belief in the power of individuals to wake up the world was cemented during the time he spent filming, observing, and talking to people in Sarajevo. “Bosnia showed me that ideas matter, words can make a difference, decision makers can be convinced and that individuals can be a grain of sand that blocks the machinery.” (NYT)

 

I couldn't help but be delighted by the beauty of these tribal engagements with reality.

• An Australian aboriginal creation story says the universe was sung into being. 
  
  
• Papua New Guinean tribes believe there is no separation between the physical realm and the world of spirit. That's perhaps why plants and animals also hold divine powers.
  
  
• A pygmy tribe in Africa uses song and dance to thank the forest.
  
  
• Southern African bushmen shamans use a dance ceremony to enter the spirit realm. This spirit realm is a world that exerts great power upon our corporeal reality.