What has become of radicalism?

“The poor are set to labour – for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage – no: for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of one hundredth part of society.  -Shelley

 

It is remarkable that radicals like Shelley who wrote nearly two hundred years ago, still sound radical today. The vulnerable are still everywhere the victims of the powerful, the majority continue to labor under atrocious conditions for little money while the rich and powerful work less under better conditions for a great deal more money. Political debates rage but the primary political parties differ little in their basic paradigm and few are ready to make any genuine changes that will raise average people up to a tolerable level. The great radicals of the late 18^th and early 19^th century, like Paine, Godwin, Thelwall, Holcroft, William Blake, etc., are even radical by today’s standards. How little progress we have made.

 

Poetic Relief

By way of relief from my last posting and from the general state of things which has been less than ideal, I return to the world of poetry. And let's face it, we could all use a little (or a lot) more poetry in our lives. 

My dad was born in tenement buildings in Errol Street in central London. The buildings were sponsored by George Peabody, a philanthropist who had buildings constructed all over London for the working poor. The other day I was using Google street view and I could look at the actual building where my dad was born. And as I was virtually driving around my dad's neighbourhood in London, I went by Bunhill Fields grave yard which you can just see a small portion of on Google. Then it occurred to me that this is the site where William Blake is buried. It is not known for certain the location of his grave but there is a marker that was put in later to honor this great poet. And a perfect place to see it is one of my favorite web sites called Poet's Graves. http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/index.html This is a great site that I recommend

because you can find all sorts of interesting facts and photos. It seems morbid at first 

thought but it really is kind of comforting to see that there are others out there who

also honor the great voices of poetic language. Its nice to know one is not entirely alone

in a rather harsh world. Take a quick look at the grave of your favorite poet and

remember the great power of language and love.

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert -

That from heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art

-Shelley

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci was one of the unlikely heroes of twentieth century. Though I object to his overly Stalinistic activism, he never waivered in his own intellectual explorations which make his letters and notebooks a testament to innovative political analysis and thought. During eleven years of incarceration by the Italian government he developed interesting critiques of power and hierarchy that make him much more than a simple Marxist. And he held on through his years of prison writing and though I don’t always agree with him, his determination is a great inspiration. One of the things for which Gramsci is famous for is his often quoted dictum “I have pessimism of the intellect, but optimism of the will.” I would love to say that I live up to this important tenet but I confess that I almost always fall short. Though, in my early years, I was even blessed with an optimism of the intellect, that faded sometime in my twenties, and I have maintained an optimism of the will whenever I have been able, I feel that my life has been a gradual deterioration of optimism, and I am struck by Nietzsche’s words that honesty “leads to nausea and suicide.” (Honesty, that is, with oneself about the terrible realities of our condition) Sometimes I am not sure how much longer I can hold it together and when I laugh it is only diabolically in the face of a certain hopelessness. Unfortunately, (again quoting Nietzsche) “there are no experiences other than moral ones” and the more one knows this the more clear it is that the centre will not hold. I long to be a cartoon character like Bugs Bunny, adequately cynical but irreverently full of my own sense of pleasure. But if I am a cartoon character I can only be Ignatz the mouse in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, senselessly throwing bricks in a surreal world that I cannot understand. 

Poor pale pitiable form 

That I follow in a storm

Iron tears & groans of lead 

Bind around my akeing head 

Mock on Mock on Voltaire Rousseau

Mock on Mock on! tis all in vain! 

You throw the sand against the wind 

And the wind blows it back again

                                -William Blake

I am no more than the Ghost of a Flea. Good luck to all.