Cynical & Ironic Detachment (was Re: Uh huh...)

Peter Kilander peterk at enteract.com
Tue Mar 2 04:57:58 PST 1999


Thinking about irony in terms of resistance and of Germans made me think of this bit about resistance from a Thom Gunn poem about a German conscript who risked his life to help Jews escape what was in store for them:

I know he had unusual eyes, Whose power no orders could determine, Not to mistake the men he saw, As others did, for gods or vermin.


>Interjection
>
>Herr Bertolt Brecht maintains: a man is a man.
>And that is something anyone can prove.
>But then, Herr Bertolt Brecht also proves
>That one can do as much as one likes with a person.
>Here this evening, a man will be reassembled like a car
>Without losing anything in the process.
>The man will be approached humanely
>He will be requested firmly, wihout vexation
>To accomodate himslf to the course of the world
>And to let his private flesh swim away
>And no matter what he is remodelled into,
>In doing, so no mistake has been made.
>One can, if we do not wath over him,
>also make him ovrenight into a butcher.
>Herr Bertolt Brecht hopes that you will see the ground
>On which you stand disappear like snow under your feet
>And that you will notice about the packer Galy Gay
>That life on earth is dangerous.
>
>(pp. 441-42)"



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