A Sense of Doubt blog post #2095 - Hope and History Rhyme - a president who reads poetry
Well, a demerit for using the word "further" in the video and the image above when the Heaney poem uses the correct word "farther."
But still, this video is a beautiful campaign advertisement. It's a beautiful part of Heaney's long poem. It's a great sign of hope for all the things Biden will be as president that Trump is not. And the least of is not that Biden is a reader of all sorts of things, including poetry. It may not be the most of these merits, but it's surely important to me, as I detailed in this post arguing that presidents MUST and SHOULD read.
And Trump does not.
Unless it's a photo op and the book is upside down.
A Sense of Doubt blog post #2023 - Presidents should read; Trump doesn'tBut more than reading, we need action.
Covid-19 cases are spiking nationwide. Deaths are rising. Some STATES have no ICU beds available. We're in a bad way. The pandemic is going back into exponential growth. It's going to get bad and fast.
And the "president" (Trump) is hiding in his bedroom and rage tweeting.
So useless. It's a good thing we fired him. Too bad we have to wait so long to have him truly removed from "power."
We need a man of action, integrity, and character. We elected that man. Too bad he cannot take over the Oval Office today.
#JoeBiden #Joe2020 #BidenForPresident
The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney | Joe Biden for President 2020
67,709 views•Oct 29, 2020
Joe Biden - 633K subscribers
"History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme."
- Seamus Heaney
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes is a verse adaptation by Seamus Heaney of Sophocles' play Philoctetes. It was first published in 1991.[1] The story comes from one of the myths relating to the Trojan War. It is dedicated in memory of poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald.[2]
Premise
The story takes place in the closing days of the Trojan War. Before the play begins, the Greek archer Philoctetes has been abandoned on the island of Lemnos by his fellows because of a foul-smelling wound on his foot, and his agonised cries. The play opens with verses from the Chorus and the arrival of Odysseus and Neoptolemus to the shore of Lemnos. Their mission is to devise a plan to obtain the mighty bow of Philoctetes, without which, it has been foretold, they cannot win the Trojan War.
Themes
At the beginning of the play, the protagonist Philoctetes has been abandoned on an island with a wound that will not heal. His suffering and exposure to the elements have made him animal-like, a quality he shares with other outcasts in Heaney's work, such as Sweeney.[3]
Narratives relating to the Trojan War had attracted Heaney and other Irish poets, sometimes for its resonance with the Northern Ireland conflict. Heaney also reworked The Testament of Cresseid, and had drawn on the Oresteia of Aeschylus for his sequence of poems "Mycenae Lookout".[4]
Heaney's version is well known for its lines:
The passage was quoted by Bill Clinton in his remarks to the community in Derry in 1995 during the Northern Ireland Peace Process.[5] Joe Biden has also frequently quoted the passage,[6] including in his presidential acceptance speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention[7] and at the memorial service for Sean Collier, a campus police officer who was killed in the line of duty during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.[8] In the opening chorus of the play, Heaney's translation emphasizes the role of poetry as "the voice of reality and justice"[9] in expressing "terrible events".[10]
At the time of its composition, Heaney saw themes of the Philoctetes as consonant with the contemporary political situation in South Africa, as the apartheid regime fell and Nelson Mandela was released from prison without a full-scale war. Heaney described Mandela's return as a similar overcoming of betrayal and a display of "the generosity of his coming back and helping with the city—helping the polis to get together again."[11]
Seamus Heaney -- From "The Cure at Troy"
Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured
History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.
Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.
It means once in a lifetime
That justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2011.12 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1959 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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