[lit-ideas] Re: Fighting men and those who value them
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 11:18:45 -0600
Fighting men and those who value themLH:
>> There will always be people, artists and others, who say war is awful and no
>> one ought to fight one, but if that view predominates in any nation or
>> society, its doom is not far off.<<
Some people just can't handle the truth. It's a crying shame.
>> I don’t want to hit Athens too hard in this regard because they could have
>> won or at least achieved a stalemate had they not follow Pericles strategy
>> of overcrowding Athens with farmers and thus causing a plague which wiped
>> out a quarter of their population, including, probably, a quarter of their
>> fighting men.<<
Farmers are the worst.
>>The Spartans knew the value of fighting men.<<
And that's precisely why they lost in the historical context -- you must know
the value of fighting women, and how to fight them if maledom is to succeed.
>> The Spartans believed them and didn’t attack Athens again until they got
>> these men back – just why the Athenians gave them back I haven’t read yet.<<
Oh, way to go, Lawrence. Get us all excited and lose your erection -- thanks,
guy.
Mike Geary
Memphis
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 9:44 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Fighting men and those who value them
JL writes:
“Problem, Helm, is that war also provokes dudes like Wystan Hugh Auden who
during a war will write AGAINST a war (¨The War Requiem¨) and while the Astors
and the Vanderbilts will not applaud its performance at the Carnegie, the
Leftist intelligentsia gathered around Columbia (or is it Colombia, I never
know).”
“But in my note I quoted: Nevertheless, in the midst of such killing and
calamity, Aristophanes staged his masterpiece antiwar comedy Lysistrata (411),
followed by Thesmophoriazusae – fantasy plays in which women take state policy
and the courts into their own hands.”
Thus Aristophanes wrote against a war during a war. When I wrote of the great
works of art written during or about wars I was including antiwar pieces like
Lysistrata.
I took you to be thinking that I meant only pro-war great art when you wrote
“Problem, Helm,” but perhaps you meant anti-war art was a problem for a given
nation’s war efforts. Hanson hasn’t written about that as far as I have read
but it seems logical that would be the case, that is, that antiwar art would
hamper a war effort. The Athenians were the most cultured city state of Greece
and for a variety of reasons their war waging abilities had deteriorated as
their culture became more widespread. They enjoyed the arts and their luxuries
and far preferred them to getting ready for war. Thus, not only were the
Spartans better fighters than the Athenians but so were the Boeotians.
Athenians seemed to have equipment and men enough, but they lacked the will (or
better, they lacked adequate will) to defeat the Spartans or Boeotians. They
had actually won one of the two biggest ground battles (Delium) during the
Peloponnesian war but then a small group of cavalry came up over a hill and the
Athenians imagined that a new army was coming against them; so they ran away.
They won and then ran away. The troops they defeated then turned around and
came after them, slaughtering as they went.
Any nation can draft young men and tell them to go off and fight, but if these
young men have no courage, no will to fight, then that nation is in trouble.
Some (I emphasize “some” and do not say “all”) men in any viable nation must
have the courage and be willing to fight wars. There will always be people,
artists and others, who say war is awful and no one ought to fight one, but if
that view predominates in any nation or society, its doom is not far off. Now
by “doom” I don’t mean utter destruction; although that has happened and could
happen again. It at the very least means becoming something like a Satrapy.
Huge numbers of nations became like satrapies during the cold War, either
willingly (Western Nations) or unwillingly (Eastern-block nations).
I don’t want to hit Athens too hard in this regard because they could have won
or at least achieved a stalemate had they not follow Pericles strategy of
overcrowding Athens with farmers and thus causing a plague which wiped out a
quarter of their population, including, probably, a quarter of their fighting
men. The plague took the heart out of people who otherwise might have been
more enthusiastic about fighting the Spartan-led coalition. Surely the gods
must be against us if they sent a plague, some thought. Others thought the
Spartans put something in the water.
The Spartans knew the value of fighting men. On one occasion, the Athenians
captured something like 120 Spartan hoplites and took them to Athens. They
told the Spartans that the next time Athens was attacked the Athenians would
execute those hoplites. The Spartans believed them and didn’t attack Athens
again until they got these men back – just why the Athenians gave them back I
haven’t read yet.
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2008 9:03 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Et in Arcadia ego
In his interesting post, L. K. Helm writes (¨The arts and the Peloponnesian
War"):
"Someone I read recently (I don't think it was Hanson) wrote, in
effect, that more great works of literature were written in and about war
than in and about peace. I believe it was with that understanding that
Fukuyama didn't end his title with The End of History, but added The Last
Man. Nietzsche's "Last Man" lives during a time of perpetual peace and
creates no great works of art - or anything else. It is during some form of
aggressive affirmation rather than passive acceptance that the great works
are created - so Nietzsche and Fukuyama would have argued, and they may have
been influenced in this to some extent by their study of the Peloponnesian
War."
We´ve discussed this with Geary and Ritchie. Indeed, when it comes to the Great
War, and even the Phoney War, it´s the songs that made them memorable (from
"There´s a long long trail" -- pre-Great War but stupid and meaningless unless
re-analysed in bellic(ose) terms to ¨"Blue birds flying the White Cliffs of
Dover", which must have escaped from the cage of an American submarine on the
English channel, as the bird is inexistent in England (as a species -- and the
song is only a future congintent, ¨There´ll be blue birds flying¨, not that
they are.
I could write miles about war and songs and war and art -- indeed the Japanese
have the martial arts (tae kwon do) but McCreery, who´s going Japanese with a
straight face (not irony intended) must know about the proper Missouri terms
for that.
Problem, Helm, is that war also provokes dudes like Wystan Hugh Auden who
during a war will write AGAINST a war (¨The War Requiem¨) and while the Astors
and the Vanderbilts will not applaud its performance at the Carnegie, the
Leftist intelligentsia gathered around Columbia (or is it Colombia, I never
know).
With the Greeks we have to be careful. After all, it´s the Herodotian ¨Persian
War¨, which predated the Peloponnesian (not to mention -- then why do? -- the
semi-mythical Troy) which united the Greeks, but other than the magnificent
full length statuary in the round of Leonidas at Thermopylae, nothing much
remains in terms of artistic heritage.
When it comes to Athens, we have to be careful in distiguishing different uses
of art of the propagandistic type pro war. It´s odd that we see statues of
athletes rather than warriors. True, Polykleitus´s KANON is the Spear-Bearer
(Doruphoros) but there´s no doubt that no war was meant by the predecessor,
Myron´s Diskobolos.
With Hellenism all art went to the dogs, so it´s good to keep, as Helm does,
the focus on the classical art and not necessarily Athenian.
I think we can leave Nietzsche aside (of course unless you enjoy his
writings!). Ares was the god of war before the Peloponnesian, before the
Persian, and before the Trojan war, so the religious and war-mongering
associations of the art-instinct in the only civilisation worth studying its
history, there were indeed NO PEACE TIMES worth even talking about.
What disturbs me a bit is William Blake RICHMOND. He is not a well known
Victorian painter, who spent two years in the Peloponnesian peninsula when it
wasn´t precisely fashionable, and yet his claim to fame is this statue which he
kept in his studio and called "An Arcadian Shepherd". Having been through Argos
and Sparta and Olympia, he decided that what he loved best -- and sometimes I
agree -- about Pelopponesian art is the ability and the freedom that gives to
utter, naked on a sunny day,
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
J. L. Speranza
(Vacationing on Villa Speranza)
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