What about Edmund Spenser? Does he & his vile ideology - which purpose his poetry served - deserve a place among poets? Not saying he necessarily doesn't.
Then again this is a pretty vile example of Heidegger's thinking:
"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of poison gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."
Although no, that wasn't Heidegger but the Greatest Briton of them all & Nobel Prize laureate Winston Churchill in relation to resistance by the Arab and Kurdish people of Iraq to the British occupation in 1920 Them benevolent Brits just can't keep away from the place.
It would be interesting if we started taking a closer look at Western intellectuals in relation to their stance regarding their sick and vicious governments. For example in relation to the Indian Mutiny again to British occupation of a foreign country, Charles Dickens reaction to the Indian Mutiny, wrote “I would do my utmost to exterminate the [Indian] Race” and “with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution…blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth.”
Or Charles Kingsley on witnessing the genocidal famine in Ireland he wrote in mid 19th century:
"I am daunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along the hundred miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our fault [that people were forbidden education, destitute and starving to death while foodstuffs were being removed to Britain]. I believe that there are not only many more of them than of old, but that they are happier, better & more comfortably fed & lodged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours."
In 1859, Kingsley was made chaplain to Queen Victoria. From 1860 to 1869 he was professor of modern history at Cambridge and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. His book The Water Babies is a story for children written to inspire love and reverence of Nature.
What about Edmund Spenser? Does he & his vile ideology - which purpose his poetry served - deserve a place among poets? Not saying he necessarily doesn't.
ReplyDeleteThen again this is a pretty vile example of Heidegger's thinking:
ReplyDelete"I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of poison gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes."
Although no, that wasn't Heidegger but the Greatest Briton of them all & Nobel Prize laureate Winston Churchill in relation to resistance by the Arab and Kurdish people of Iraq to the British occupation in 1920 Them benevolent Brits just can't keep away from the place.
It would be interesting if we started taking a closer look at Western intellectuals in relation to their stance regarding their sick and vicious governments. For example in relation to the Indian Mutiny again to British occupation of a foreign country, Charles Dickens reaction to the Indian Mutiny, wrote “I would do my utmost to exterminate the [Indian] Race” and “with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution…blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth.”
Or Charles Kingsley on witnessing the genocidal famine in Ireland he wrote in mid 19th century:
"I am daunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along the hundred miles of horrible country. I don't believe they are our fault [that people were forbidden education, destitute and starving to death while foodstuffs were being removed to Britain]. I believe that there are not only many more of them than of old, but that they are happier, better & more comfortably fed & lodged under our rule than they ever were. But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours."
In 1859, Kingsley was made chaplain to Queen Victoria. From 1860 to 1869 he was professor of modern history at Cambridge and in 1873 was appointed canon of Westminster. His book The Water Babies is a story for children written to inspire love and reverence of Nature.