Myth of Arrival

My friend, yesterday I asked: Where can we take our poetry? Who can we sing for? Where can we go? Who can we be? By that, I suppose, I meant: who is your community? Who do you write for and why?

I also asked us to think beyond socialism. That is, while I believe Brecht has many good ideas, some of his suggestions seem to me a little out dated; they no longer reach the people who need to hear them. So how can we approach people who need to hear this? What new language do we need to use?

I love this section of Brecht's essay Writing the Truth: 5 Difficulties because it addresses my profession, that is, the writer. It demands of me to consider my community and like many acts of kismet, that question has been punting about the blogworld of late. Eduardo C. Corral wrote:

Some bloggers explained how journal publication for them is an extension or byproduct of community. I don't feel any urgency to partake in community by seeking/gaining publication in journals. Crazy, no? And you know why I don't feel this urgency? Blogs! Blogging makes me feel like a member of a community. My blog is a small and silly contribution to a community I care deeply about.

I believe Eduardo speaks for many people when he states that the act of writing in the electronic world makes him feel like part of a community. Humans are social animals and we do all sorts of things to feel like we belong to something. I also feel I am not the person to challenge him, or anyone else, on this notion. One person's Utopia is another's oddity, but it still remains true that it is a Utopia … of sorts. However, in dialog with both Brecht's essay and Neruda's pledge to write for his "simple people," I ask what benefits do you get from maintaining this community? The context of Eduardo's comments is that for some people he knows publishing in journals makes them feel part of something bigger, something connected. And Eduardo is not the only one to put forth this idea. In the December 18, 2005 issue of The New York Times Book Review, Hugo Lindgren reviews two books, Synthetic Worlds by Edward Castronova and Smartbomb by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby. What caught my eye was a paragraph that ran more or less like this:

Castronova's vision [of a world wide online community] has elements of both utopia and dystopia. But mostly he is bullish. Life in these alternative zones may eventually become so fulfilling, he contends, 'that a fairly substantial exodus may loom in the distance.' He means this, really. Like the Irish and Italians who left their native lands in the late 19th century to come to America, gamers could create a genuine human migration, away from the real and into the virtual. What will be real then?

I think this argument, and in effect the whole idea of a blogworld in general, is a superficial one. I am not saying it is not true; yes, as our computers expand and we create more exciting virtual worlds more people with access to computers will be drawn in to spend their time in them. But it is that word right there — access, call it economics, call it liberty — that does not come in conversation. It is like what Brecht writes about, "the writer thinks: I have spoken and those who wish to hear will hear me. In reality he has spoken and those who are able to pay hear him." Like all gated communities, even gated utopias, it is still gated. While I know many middle class Americans who cannot conceive of a world without electronic toys to get them through their day, to link them to a global network, most of the world is not so exuberant. This is where the contradiction comes in; yes, by linking yourself up to an online "village" you are developing something that resembles a community, you might even call it a community and everyone linked to you will agree, but it is a village based on advantage, economics, privilege. If you cannot afford a computer, electricity, the time it takes to surf the Net, you are not part of it. This electronic "village" we are so proud of is only a village as long as everyone can afford it.

Let's take this one step further. You are reading this, I am writing this, we are part of a community … correct? But if I stop blogging for a month, or get struck down tomorrow, or arrested, or have my electricity shut off, will you come looking for me to find what happened? Even people like Eduardo and ruth-e who I am fond of and email back and forth (though I have never met either, or anyone for that matter, in the blogworld); will they get on an airplane and hunt me down? My guess is no; this is not that type of village.¹ Now, the same isn't true for my flesh and blood neighbors who live next door to me. If Homeland Security came knocking on my door they would take a more than passing interest in my fate. Yet I do not write my poems with my neighbors in mind. I blog for the academia or the journals or for some distant nagging voice in my head that tells me poetry must be Difficult to be Deep. Again, Brecht points out: "… the truth cannot merely be written; it must be written for someone, someone who can do something with it." And since I limit my voice by only speaking to those who have computers and the command of English and the time and money to listen, I speak to a very limited segment of the Earth's population.

This isn't to say we should stop blogging, it is to question where you are putting your energy and to ask if you are getting back what you put in? I wonder what Bertolt Brecht would make of this new world? We might assume he'd be caught up in these shiny new toys as much as we are, but he also might point out that the Internet is a capitalist creation, benefiting capitalists at the expense of others. And that just circles around and asks the question once again: "what is your community"? "What is your village?" "Who are we writing for and why?" Brecht writes:

The century-old custom of trade in critical and descriptive writing and the fact that the writer has been relived of concern for the destination of what he has written have caused him to labor under a false impression. He believes that his customer or employer, the middleman, passes on what he has written to everyone. The writer thinks: I have spoken and those who wish to hear will hear me. In reality he has spoken and those who are able to pay hear him. A great deal, though still too little, has been said about his; I merely want to emphasize that “writing for someone” has been transformed into merely “writing.” But the truth cannot merely be written; it must be written for someone, someone who can do something with it. The process of recognizing truth is the same for writers and readers. In order to say good things, one’s hearing must be good and one must hear good things. The truth must be spoke deliberately and listened to deliberately. And for us writers it is important to whom we tell the truth and who tells it to us.

We must tell the truth about evil conditions to those for whom the conditions are worst, and we must also learn the truth from them. We must address not only people who hold certain views, but people who, because of their situation, should hold these views. And the audience is continually changing. Even the hangmen can be addressed when the payment for hanging stops, or when the work becomes too dangerous. The Bavarian peasants were against every kind of revolution, but when the war went on too long and the sons who came home found no room on their farms, it was possible to win them over to revolution.

It is important for the writer to strike the true note of truth. Ordinarily, what we hear is a very gentle, melancholy tone, the tone of people who would not hurt a fly. Hearing this one, the wretched become more wretched. Those who use it may not be foes, but they are certainly not allies. The truth is belligerent; it strikes out not only against falsehood, but against particular people who spread falsehood.

The blogworld, to me, is a lot like Japanese anime; there are huge jumps of logic, poorly dubbed voices, a lot of sexism dressed up as comedy but everyone goes along with the "plot" anyway and says its normal. Let us consider an idea, shall we? In the anime film Key: the Metal Idol, the title character is Tokiko "Key" Mima, a girl robot who longs to be human. One day her dying professor/ grandfather tells her:

… that it is possible for her to become human … all she has to do is to make 30 thousand friends, and that she should do it as soon as possible, before she malfunctions again, and goes into a sleep in which she never can wake up from.

So how does one make 30,000 friends as soon as possible? Easy; Key becomes a rock and roll singer, since through song (poetry) she can reach and befriend a much larger audience than simply going door to door selling Amway. Perhaps you might see where I am trying to go with this? If the audience is continually changing, if the blogworld is a community, a global one at that, if you want 30,000 new friends, what are we doing and what are you saying to help this along?² And I ask again, Where can we take our poetry? Who can we sing for? Where can we go? Who can we be? And I add to that this question: What are you saying that your neighbors can benefit from? What truth are you speaking? Why? If our poetry is to do anything, to address not only people who hold certain views, but people who, because of their situation, should hold these views, what can you give us?

1. And in that it is a very American creation, or Western, or whatever you want to call people who volunteer to interact in a world that gives back very little from the massive amount of energy and time and money it takes to keep it afloat. [back]
2. I make the assumption that we are online together to get our voices and views heard, to get our poetry out and about, to get our ideas and dreams shared … but that is not true for everyone, I understand. [back]

Perhaps I am too placid and young. Perhaps I am too simple and naive but I feel I must be cautious here. Perhaps I need to slow down a little in my approach to Brecht's essay, Writing the Truth: the 5 Difficulties. You see, I am not a socialist and in this section of the essay Brecht assumes that we are all on the same page. Fascism is capitalism unchecked and the cure is socialism. The thing is, I don't know any socialists, real socialists, that is. I know a lot of people claim to be socialists; I went to high school with kids who quoted Marx and Lenin, who wore Che Guevara or Bob Marley t-shirt, talked about "offing the pigs" but they never worked, their parents owned profitable businesses in town, they had unending pocket money and cars and leather jackets and even today they seem to be a lot like the critics Neruda writes about in his, Oda a la crítica. They do not live in the same world I do.

To me, socialism has been left behind in some rosy, utopian world of the 1920s, along with Al Capone and the Wobblies. Perhaps it is because I have seen what socialism did to countries like Armenia, with failed economies and Third World status, or any of the former states of the U.S.S.R. But I again, what do I know? I am not a social scientist, nor a politician. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am simply choosing to see what I want to see. Still, socialism, at least in the form that I understand it, seems to be what my privileged friends rant about when they rant — ai! the evils of capitalism; ai! the evils of the world; ai! the cure. The cure is always socialism … or libertarianism … or some other -ism that will sweep over people like a cyclone. But unlike various small town capitalistic enterprises that seem to work and do not cause massive havoc to the simple people¹ this part of Brecht's essay is the furthest from anything I can use. I am not saying that we should ignore his advice. I am saying that my culture has moved beyond what Brecht is talking about and requires new ways of thinking, new methods of communication. I do not see the 1970s banter of revolution that much political poetry was seeped in as having the same audiences today, for example. Remember, few people read or buy poetry. Few people listen to rhetoric, regardless of which side it comes from. But many, many people I think are in desperate need for knowledge, messages, commutation.

No one wants to feel stupid or be silenced. Why is it that people can quote Let It Be by heart, even if they know no other words of English? Perhaps it is a beautiful tune, but I also think it is because it is simple yet profound message. It argues peace over violence, there is a metaphysical tinge to it, a philosophy. In short it contains many important elements of successful poetry and yet it is neither esoteric, obscure, cryptic. It doesn't use big words to show the cleverness of the poet.² Simple people like it. I like it and I am pretty simple. I write all this because I think that for us (that is myself and anyone reading this, friend) to develop a poetic discourse from what Brecht is writing about, we shall have to think beyond socialism. We shall have to talk in a way that simple people will want to hear. Perhaps you do not write poems for simple people? That is fine too, but who do you write poems for? What is their purpose? Where do they go? I personally do not know who I write for. I am unsure of my audience, my determination, my purpose. In the beginning of each adventure story the main character always says the same thing: "you got the wrong person; really, I can't do the things you think I can" … and then the story goes to show just how wrong our character can be.

Let us read this now. Let us think about Neruda's Oda a la crítica as we do it. Where can we take our poetry? Who can we sing for? Where can we go? Who can we be?

The truth must be spoken with a view to the results it will produce in the sphere of action. As a specimen of a truth from which no results, or the wrong ones, follow, we can cite the widespread view that bad conditions prevail in a number of countries as a result of barbarism. In this view, Fascism is a wave of barbarism which has descended upon some countries with the elemental force of a natural phenomenon.

According to this view, Fascism is a new, third power beside (and above) capitalism and socialism; not only the socialist movement but capitalism as well might have survived without the intervention of Fascism. And so on. This is, of course, a Fascist claim; to accede to it is a capitulation to Fascism. Fascism is a historic phase of capitalism; in this sense it is something new and at the same time old. In Fascist countries capitalism continues to exist, but only in the form of Fascism; and Fascism can be combated as capitalism alone, as the nakedest, most shameless, most oppressive, and most treacherous form of capitalism.

But how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth? What will be the practical results of such truth?

Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.

Outcries against barbarous measures may be effective as long as the listeners believe that such measures are out of the question in their own countries. Certain countries are still able to maintain their property relations by methods that appear less violent than those used in other countries. Democracy still serves in these countries to achieve the results for which violence is needed in others, namely, to guarantee private ownership of the means of production. The private monopoly of factories, mines, and land creates barbarous conditions everywhere, but in some places these conditions do not so forcibly strike the eye. Barbarism strikes the eye only when it happens that monopoly can be protected only by open violence.

Some countries, which do not yet find it necessary to defend their barbarous monopolies by dispensing with the formal guarantees of a constitutional state, as well as with such amenities as art, philosophy, and literature, are particularly eager to listen to visitors who abuse their native lands because those amenities are denied there. They gladly listen because they hope to derive from what they hear advantages in future wars. Shall we say that they have recognized the truth who, for example, loudly demand an unrelenting struggle against Germany “because that country is now the true home of Evil in our day, the partner of hell, the abode of the Antichrist”? We should rather say that these are foolish and dangerous people. For the conclusion to be drawn from this nonsense is that since poison gas and bombs do not pick out the guilty, Germany must be exterminated—the whole country and all its people.

The man who does not know the truth expresses himself in lofty, general, and imprecise terms. He shouts about “the” German, he complains about Evil in general, and whoever hears him cannot make out what to do. Shall he decide not to be a German? Will hell vanish if he himself is good? The silly talk about the barbarism that comes out of barbarism is also of this kind. The source of barbarism is barbarism, and it is combated by culture, which comes from education. All this is put in general terms; it is not meant to be a guide to action and is in reality addressed to no one.

Such vague descriptions point to only a few links in the chain of causes. Their obscurantism conceals the real forces making for disaster. If light be thrown on the matter it promptly appears that disasters are caused by certain men. For we live in a time when the fate of man is determined by men.

Fascism is not a natural disaster which can be understood simply in terms of “human nature.” But even when we are dealing with natural catastrophes, there are ways to portray them which are worthy of human beings because they appeal to man’s fighting spirit.

After a great earthquake that destroyed Yokohama, many American magazines published photographs showing a heap of ruins. And, to be sure, though one might see only ruins at first glance, the eye swiftly discerned, after noting the caption, that a few tall buildings had remained standing. Among the multitudinous descriptions that can be given of an earthquake, those drawn up by construction engineers concerning the shifts in the ground, the force of stresses, the best developed, etc., are of the greatest importance, for they lead to future construction which will withstand earthquakes. If anyone wishes to describe Fascism and war, great disasters which are not natural catastrophes, he must do so in terms of a practical truth. He must show that these disasters are launched by the possessing classes to control the vast numbers of workers who do not own the means of production.

If one wishes successfully to write the truth about evil conditions, one must write it so that its avertible causes can be identified. If the preventable causes can be identified, the evil conditions can be fought.

1. Again, Neruda's choice of words, by which I suppose he means harmonious, common, unsophisticated; the people who are going about their daily lives. How interesting that my thesaurus' selection of the word "common" also includes the word "unpoetical." Again, my culture's assumption that poetry is some how affected, artificial, feigned. Curious. [back]
2. Now, not everyone agrees with the use of poetry or even its purpose. For many writing today poetry is about obscuring what is said, that is, stripping down the meaning to get to the underlining nature of the words. To these poets I say: keep on, my friends, keep on. You might not agree with me but it is like what Rumi said: "it is all praise and it is all good." I do not wish to snub or send away any school of poetics here, only open things up for communication [back]

Apparently I scowl when I think. I have been told this by numerous people. When at rest, when thinking on far away topics, when walking the corridors of my rest home between call lights, I wear a scowl. What a terrible way to present oneself! My aunt Lisa once told me she wears sunglasses outside at all times of day (at least when she lived in Berkeley) because people thought she was angry as well. But I really can't work with an aged population wearing shades, no matter how cool or hip it might seem.

Anger has always been with me, though. Bile, rage, raising hell. I was told by my family they sometimes feared my rages when I was a small child. I do not totally understand that, since I do not recall being angry child; I recall being a daydreamer mostly. But I also know my brother talks of being terrified of me at times growing up, so there must be some truth in this somewhere, even if it does not jive with my memories. Or, more importantly, the memories I want to believe in.

Anger! What a simple word. I wanted to write something profound about uselessness of anger and how poisonous it is. I wanted, that is, until I came upon Tony Milligan's interesting review of Robert A. F. Thurman's interesting little book on the subject of anger, titled simply: Anger (2005). Parts of Thurman's philosophy directly echo certain points Brecht has been making in his essay concerning the Five Difficulties. Like erotica, anger is a wonderfully powerful tool. And like erotica it is one that is seen as highly problematic, as well, in our society. Milligan notes:

One of the most instructive features of the book is the way in which his outline of (one strand of) Buddhist thought on anger reveals it to be substantially in agreement with Seneca. (Someone whose reading of Seneca is a little closer than Thurman's might find interesting similarities here.) Be that as it may, Thurman structures his case against anger around a contrast between resigning to anger and resigning from anger where the former involves the view that you can do nothing about anger and the latter involves the view that anger can (and should) be totally eradicated. Thurman's middle way between them turns out to involve a gradualist attempt to uproot anger rather than a sudden leap out of it …

… Thurman [also] seems to hint at is the possibility of a 'Good hate' which is 'a perfectly healthy attitude' … Thurman does leave enough clues to indicate that something more systematic could be said. (i.e. 'Good hate' is not directed towards persons; it involves self-control rather than the passing on of suffering; it involves some recognition of the constraints upon their agency, their lack of 'real' freedom.)

Good Hate? To have a good hate? What a strange concept. This morning before work I have been working on Neruda's La United Fruit Co. To me, this is a successful poem of "good hate." Question: what makes a angry poem unsuccessful? Answer: one that is no longer a poem. Perhaps it is a haranguing dressed up like a poem? Perhaps. There is no point in beating up your audience. Your audience is not your adversary. People come to you because they are curious or hungry to hear what you have to say. There is a lot of material passed off as poetry that simply turns on itself and its reader. There might have been a message, but the poet has lost any ability to get the audience to hear what s/he has to say. Self-righteousness in verse is a terrible thing. They are, as Brecht puts it: [those] who deal only with the most urgent tasks, who embrace poverty and do not fear rulers, and who nevertheless cannot find the truth … they are full of ancient superstitions, with notorious prejudices that in bygone days were often put into beautiful words. We must be aware of our own prejudices for when we utter them we stop up the ears of our audience. And the one thing everyone should be taught in MFA workshops is simply this: your audience is your friend, treat them well.

Since it is hard to write the truth because truth is everywhere suppressed, it seems to most people to be a question of character whether the truth is written or not written. They believe that courage alone suffices. They forget the second obstacle: the difficulty of finding the truth. It is impossible to assert that the truth is easily ascertained.

First of all we strike trouble in determining what truth is worth the telling. For example, before the eyes of the whole world one great civilized nation after the other falls into barbarism. Moreover, everyone knows that the domestic war which is being waged by the most ghastly methods can at any moment be converted into a foreign war which may well leave our continent a heap of ruins. This, undoubtedly, is one truth, but there are others. Thus, for example, it is not untrue that chairs have seats and that rain falls downward. Many poets write truths of this sort. They are like a painter adorning the walls of a sinking ship with a still life. Our first difficulty does not trouble them and their consciences are clear. Those in power cannot corrupt them, but neither are they disturbed by the cries of the oppressed; they go on painting. The senselessness of their behavior engenders in them a “profound” pessimism which they sell at good prices; yet such pessimism would be more fitting in one who observes these masters and their sales. At the same time it is not easy to realize that their truths are truths about chairs or rain; they usually sound like truths about important things. But on closer examination it is possible to see that they say merely: a chair is a chair; and: no one can prevent the rain from falling down.

They do not discover the truths that are worth writing about. On the other hand, there are some who deal only with the most urgent tasks, who embrace poverty and do not fear rulers, and who nevertheless cannot find the truth. These lack knowledge. They are full of ancient superstitions, with notorious prejudices that in bygone days were often put into beautiful words. The world is too complicated for them; they do not know the facts; they do not perceive relationships. In addition to temperament, knowledge, which can be acquired, and methods, which can be learned, are needed. What is necessary for all writers in this age of perplexity and lightening change is a knowledge of the materialistic dialectic of economy and history. This knowledge can be acquired from books and from practical instruction, if the necessary diligence is applied. Many truths can be discovered in simpler fashion, or at least portions of truths, or facts that lead to the discovery of truths. Method is good in all inquiry, but it is possible to make discoveries without using any method—indeed, even without inquiry. But by such a casual procedure one does not come to the kind of presentation of truth which will enable men to act on the basis of that presentations. People who merely record little facts are not able to arrange the things of the world so that they can be easily controlled. Yet truth has this function alone and no other. Such people cannot cope with the requirement that they write the truth.

"It takes little courage to mutter a general complaint, in a part of the world where complaining is still permitted, about the wickedness of the world and the triumph of barbarism …"

– Bertolt Brecht (1934)

There is a tired, bone weary humor here. I am chuckling, the way you might too when you are too tired and sore from a long day of changing diapers to pay attention to the complaints of others. We all take issue with circumstance; as the old teaching goes, "if the peasants have no bread," Marie Antoinette was supposed to have said, "let them eat cake." It doesn't really matter if she said it or not. It holds true today. Marie Antoinette is alive and well.

I am a certified nurse aide. I work in a nursing home in Lansing, MI. I take care of other people's dying grandparents. There aren't a lot poems written about nurse aides. In fact, Judy Grahn might be the only one to have written about this job, as far as I know. I found this stanza years ago form her A Woman is Talking to Death (1978):

when you are a nurse's aide
someone suddenly notices you
and yells about the patient's bed,
and tears the sheets apart so you
can do it over, and over
while the patient waits
doubled over in her pain
for you to make the bed again
and no one ever looks at you,
only at what you do not do …

It is so true. Though the poem is set when Grahn was in the military, we are still an occupation under siege. There is no job security for us; we can and are fired at will at the whim of an administration that has little contact with what we do, little emotions as to the plight of its staff, save a drunken irritation and a need to meet budget by any means necessary.

We are subject to abuse not only by our residents who can be deranged and violent, but by the families of our residents. Machiavelli might not have known about rest homes when he came up with his blue prints for power, but his ideas are in full effect here. And goddess save me from the adult children of the elderly and all their emotional distress they have not worked out in their own psyches. Guilt? Fear? Shame? Fine, go and see a therapist. Please do not come in here and vent your spleen on us simply because you feel powerless. You see, everyday I meet adults who might be caring and wonderful somewhere else and turn their furor and misery and helplessness upon the care staff that works with their parents. A resident breaks his hip and his son wants him to finally feel what its like to be alive so he refuses to have his father have pain killers of any kind. Nothing but a broken hip on a 90 year old man. This adult child doesn't visit his father save once a month, so he doesn't listen to his father scream all night in pain. But I do. All night long. And the family call the shots, they pay our bills and the customer is always right. For every poster my administration puts up saying we work as a team, I've had good team members fired because a relative has complained about some minor infraction that in other occupations wouldn't even be complaints. There are a million tasks to do and a million ways to get into trouble.

Our job is all about preventing disaster in all its forms. Changing adult diapers? Feeding those who cannot? Bathing and putting people to bed at night? These are all part of our responsibilities, yes. Preventing residents from falling, from hurting themselves, from hurting each other; residents who are out of their minds with pain and fear and there is nothing you can do but be present and try not to get hit too much or cursed at or ground down. For this job pays poorly. It is manual labor; I lift and transfer and strain under those who can no longer bear weight. A recent 2005 poll found 3/4 of all CNAs in Michigan had criminal records of some kind. It is a strange world I have found myself in.

I tell you all this, this world that to me is both strange and frightening and a million miles away from my sonnets and translations and villanelles that you read on this blog because it is very difficult to admit that my friends and coworkers and myself are in such a weak and powerless position, and because it is the truth. Bertolt Brecht wrote: "It is, of course, very hard not to cringe before the powerful, and it is highly advantageous to betray the weak … it also takes courage to tell the truth about oneself, about one's own defeat." It is this idea I am getting at, the idea of speaking the truth of the situation, of speaking of my own disillusionment and failures, but turning the failures into hope. That is why I am chuckling (laughing with rue might require a bit more energy than I have just now); to say what I need to say requires me not to be bone weary. I might not be there just now, the way Grahn was able to voice what needed to be said, but goddess, let me try.

Here is the section on having the courage to write what needs to be told from his Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties

It seems obvious that whoever writes should write the truth in the sense that he ought not to suppress or conceal truth or write something deliberately untrue. He ought not to cringe before the powerful, nor betray the weak. It is, of course, very hard not to cringe before the powerful, and it is highly advantageous to betray the weak. To displease the possessors means to become one of the dispossessed. To renounce payment for work may be the equivalent of giving up the work, and to decline fame when it is offered by the mighty may mean to decline it forever. This takes courage.

Times of extreme oppression are usually times when there is much talk about high and lofty matters. At such times it takes courage to write of low and ignoble matters such as food and shelter for workers; it takes courage when everyone else is ranting about the vital importance of sacrifice. When all sorts of honors are showered upon the peasants it takes courage to speak of machines and good stock feeds which would lighten their honorable labor. When every radio station is blaring that a man without knowledge or education is better than one who has studied, it takes courage to ask: better for whom? When all the talk is of perfect and imperfect races, it takes courage to ask whether it not hunger and ignorance and war that produce deformities.

And it also takes courage to tell the truth about oneself, about one’s own defeat. Many of the persecuted lose their capacity for seeing their own mistakes. It seems to them that the persecution itself is the greatest injustice. The persecutors are wicked simply because they persecute; the persecuted suffer because of their goodness. But this goodness has been beaten, defeated, suppressed; it was therefore a weak goodness, a bad, indefensible, unreliable goodness. For it will not do to grant that goodness must be weak as rain must be wet. It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak.

Naturally, in the struggle with falsehood we must write the truth, and this truth must not be a lofty and ambiguous generality. When it is said of someone, “He spoke the truth,” this implies that some people or many people or least one person said something unlike the truth — a lie or a generality — but he spoke the truth, he said something practical, factual, undeniable, something to the point.

It takes little courage to mutter a general complaint, in a part of the world where complaining is still permitted, about the wickedness of the world and the triumph of barbarism, or to cry boldly that the victory of the human spirit is assured. There are many who pretend that cannons are aimed at them when in reality they are the target merely of opera glasses. They shout their generalized demands to a world of friends and harmless persons. They insist upon a generalized justice for which they have never done anything; they ask for generalized freedom and demand a share of the booty which they have long since enjoyed. They think that truth is only what sounds nice. If truth should prove to be something statistical, dry, or factual, something difficult to find and requiring study, they do not recognize it as truth; it does not intoxicate them. They possess only the external demeanor of truth-tellers. The trouble with them is: they do not know the truth.