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December 16, 2008

Bierce, Technology, Satire and Sarcasm

Ambrose Bierce had a difficult life in many respects, which may have been what gave his written works such a darkly satirical outlook. Best known for his highly sardonic 'The Devil's Dictionary", he was also known for his writings about the U.S. Civil war - both fiction and non-fiction based on his experiences and observations. Thes stories and accounts are singularly graphic in describing the human carnage, desctruction, and senselessness of war.

Bierce also wrote a fair number of horror stories - not much of a stretch considering his war stories. What fewer people know is that he was a persistent poet, writing short verses and epigrams regularly to capture his opinions - and frequently skewering his contemporary poets, authors, politicians, and other public figures.

I've just added 30 selections from one of Bierce's collections, Shapes of Clay, http://theotherpages.org/poems/bierce02.html   which contains a wide range of works, All written with his distictive outlook and "wait for punchline" style. Technology, http://theotherpages.org/poems/bierce02.html#technology  whose title refers to the terminology used in a particular profession, is a good example.

Whle they were written over a century ago while Bierce was living mainly in San Francisco, much of the pieces are highly relevant today amidst our widely opposing political opinions, financial shnanigans, and societal issues. I think Bierce would hold his own against any smug talking head of the present day. The short epigrams in particular are very potent in their critique. The Builder is typical:

A Builder

I SAW the devil--he was working free:
A customs-house he builded by the sea.
"Why do you this?" The devil raised his head;
"Churches and courts I've built enough," he said.

One of Bierce's most characteristic works is Freedom from The Cynic's Work Book, published three years later in 1906 which was one of the earliest poems included in our collection:

Freedom

FREEDOM, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.

She screams whenever monarchs meet,
And parliaments as well,
To bind the chains about her feet
And toll her knell.

And when the sovereign people cast
The votes they cannot spell,
Upon the lung-impested blast
Her clamors swell.

For all to whom the power's given
To sway or to compel,
Among themselves apportion heaven
And give her hell.

Kosciusko (Tadeusz Kościuszko), by the way, a Polish military strategist and general who was instrumental in the American Revolutionary War, 'fell' while battling for Polish independence two decades later. What I did not know unitl recently, was that he survived and battled on through diplomatic means for Polish identity and soverignty. He died in 1817 in Switzerland.

--Steve

I SAW the devil--he was working free:A customs-house he builded by the sea. "Why do you this?" The devil raised his head; "Churches and courts I've built enough," he said. One of Bierce's most characteristic works is Freedom from , published three years later in 1906 which was one of the earliest poems included in our collection:FREEDOM, as every schoolboy knows, Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell; On every wind, indeed, that blows I hear her yell.She screams whenever monarchs meet, And parliaments as well, To bind the chains about her feet And toll her knell.And when the sovereign people cast The votes they cannot spell, Upon the lung-impested blast Her clamors swell.For all to whom the power's given To sway or to compel, Among themselves apportion heaven And give her hell. Kosciusko (Tadeusz Kościuszko), by the way, a Polish military strategist and general who was instrumental in the American Revolutionary War, 'fell' while battling for Polish independence two decades later. What I did not know unitl recently, was that he survived and battled on through diplomatic means for Polish identity and soverignty. He died in 1817 in Switzerland.--Steve

 

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December 14, 2008

Quotations for the week of December 14th, 2008

These are taken from "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien, originally published in 1990. The book is a retelling of his time spent as a U.S. soldier during the war in Vietnam.

Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.

The war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes the remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted...then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.

It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.

To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.

We called the enemy ghosts. "Bad night," we'd say, "the ghosts are out." To get spooked, in the lingo, meant not only to get scared, but to get killed. The countryside itself seemed spooky--shadows and tunnels and incense burning in the dark. The land was haunted.

You don't try to scare people in broad daylight. You wait. Because the darkness squeezes you inside yourself, you get cut off from the outside world, the imagination takes over.

Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you've forgotten the point again.

It's a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn't felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you're afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and share the same blood.

December 04, 2008

Muriel Stuart, Centaurs, and Heliodore

I’ve just updated the index entry for Muriel Stuart, and added her book Cockpit of Idols. Fourteen of the poems are new to the collection. Stuart writes in a variety of forms, on subjects starting with the Great War, then moving on to "sexual politics", and religious and other themes before ending up with a sort of ubi sunt poem for Heliodore. The title poem has several parallels to Christ at Carnival, though the roles are reversed and the main character battles through fatalistic arrogance rather than reveling wanderlust. (The Centaur is a bit more rollicking than our usual content, by the way) This is a heavily edited text based on a very buggy source file from UCLA. Thanks to Ariadne for finding it.

--Steve


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