Mazeppa & Sons
In his "Little Red Book," the Chairman (and I don't mean Sinatra) wrote:
"There is an ancient Chinese fable called 'The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains.' It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. With great determination, he led his sons in digging up these mountains hoe in hand. Another greybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, 'How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up these two huge mountains.' The Foolish Old Man replied, 'When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?' Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs."
The Chairman went on to say that "two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism, the other is feudalism." I wonder what are our mountains (as Americans, as Citizens of the World); what are their number? Where ought we to begin to dig?
I am reminded of Hart Crane's complaint in a letter to Waldo Frank (1926): "If only America were half as worthy today to be spoken of as Whitman spoke of it fifty years ago there might be something for me to say." We are now 80 years beyond Crane's complaint. Is America half as worthy of Whitman as it was then?
This month, bewildered by the casual fashion with which the potential "nuking" of Iran is bandied about in the news media, and by how that callousness, that strange hollowness seems to have filtered down into everyday conversations overheard at the bus stop, in the cafes, on the street, I decided to keep what I call a "war diary." I will be drawing from that journal as I develop this blog.
"There is an ancient Chinese fable called 'The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains.' It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the way. With great determination, he led his sons in digging up these mountains hoe in hand. Another greybeard, known as the Wise Old Man, saw them and said derisively, 'How silly of you to do this! It is quite impossible for you few to dig up these two huge mountains.' The Foolish Old Man replied, 'When I die, my sons will carry on; when they die, there will be my grandsons, and so on to infinity. High as they are, the mountains cannot grow any higher and with every bit we dig, they will be that much lower. Why can't we clear them away?' Having refuted the Wise Old Man's wrong view, he went on digging every day, unshaken in his conviction. God was moved by this, and he sent down two angels, who carried the mountains away on their backs."
The Chairman went on to say that "two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people. One is imperialism, the other is feudalism." I wonder what are our mountains (as Americans, as Citizens of the World); what are their number? Where ought we to begin to dig?
I am reminded of Hart Crane's complaint in a letter to Waldo Frank (1926): "If only America were half as worthy today to be spoken of as Whitman spoke of it fifty years ago there might be something for me to say." We are now 80 years beyond Crane's complaint. Is America half as worthy of Whitman as it was then?
This month, bewildered by the casual fashion with which the potential "nuking" of Iran is bandied about in the news media, and by how that callousness, that strange hollowness seems to have filtered down into everyday conversations overheard at the bus stop, in the cafes, on the street, I decided to keep what I call a "war diary." I will be drawing from that journal as I develop this blog.
posted by Sidi Hamid Benengeli | 4:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home