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

[Peter Kilander]

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)"