By emphasizing that all heroes are flawed - of course, everyone is flawed - our society flatters itself that heroes are no better than the rest of us. The point of heroism, of course, is not that the hero is withour flaws, but that he rises above them.
Bryan comments: On Heroes.
Bryan comments: On Heroes.
Bertolt Brecht, that cheeky little wealthy communist, had the last, and admirably succinct, word on heroes: Unhappy the land that needs them.
ReplyDeleteThen every land is unhappy, Roger. And there are heroes and there are heroes. I particularly admire the quite Conradian heroes who strive to do their under circumstances that are unpropitious.
ReplyDelete"Then every land is unhappy." Actually, I think that is Brecht's point.
ReplyDeleteIn Intellectuals, which is an unsympathetic look at the eponymous genus, Paul John says that all of the figures discussed therein had some redeeming qualities, except, so far as he could tell, Brecht.
ReplyDeleteI do not of course agree. I think we need heroes and ought to aspire to be heroes. Since we are likely to fail at that aspiration, it helps us to keep a sense of proportion about ourselves.
Brecht was a shit. On that we can all agree. And in that he had plenty of artistic company. (For some people, of course, the great failing was that he was a MARXIST shit.) And I hold with George Orwell that we have a right to expect decency, even of a poet -- but we should realize that in many cases we are we are unlikely to get it. Whether being a shit has any bearing on his comment on heroes is debatable, but in any case its meaning may have something to do with the slipperiness of the German word "unglücklich" -- unhappy/unlucky and variations in between, depending -- but frankly I'm unwilling, or "unwillig," to pursue it further. Except to admit that, having fled Germany immediately after Hitler's taking power, Brecht's vision of heroes may have been affected by seeing his native land raise so many false ones. I don't really think that is the case, but no one views in a vacuum.
ReplyDelete