About Me
- Grady Tripp
- Hospital Information Systems Integration Analyst....whatever that is. Welcome to the rustbelt
Monday, December 14, 2009
Hundert Mann und ein Befehl
Peace on Earth !! Ok, maybe this is not in keeping with the season....or is it? This was a real recruiting poster song in the 60s. I am wondering if it stirs you. Do you feel proud of the man in the uniform and what he is singing? Does it sound like peace or does it sound like "let's go get the bad guys!"? Now, there is another version of this tune.....
I wonder which speaks to your metaphors. Which one sounds like war and which sounds like peace. This is the one that actually points out the senselessness of conflict. Does it feel a little confusing when you listen to both? I will admit, it did to me, but it also made me wonder why and how my senses came to be tuned to a particular frequency.
Ok ok, I will get back to lighter stuff next.
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3 comments:
Puts me in mind of another lyric; this one by Wilfred Owen. I think Owen well understood your frustration at being trapped in metaphor:
Parable of the Old Men and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son…
This man was amazing, wasn't he? Do you remember when you first started reading him? When I think of him I obviously think of WWI and this place. I think we came upon it in Brussels kind of by accident. You were all interested in war planes and they had some of those. The part I remember most is the huge collection of the most grotesque weapons that were used in the early 19th century. Sickening...left an impression. Thanks for the poem....I do like it when someone so skilled can use the ugly metaphor against itself.
I first read Owen as a freshman at BYU, in the History of Civilization course by Wilfred Griggs and Alan Keele that they called "The Pen and the Sword." Really an outstanding class. That was quite a year for me!
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