...In the title piece of Tell Me a Riddle, I was writing about a revolutionary generation, immigrants in this country whose children grew up here. But I wanted to write about other aspects of their individual lives. Little is written about revolutionaries, let alone Jews who became atheists, "idealists," some people might term them, not "realists." I like to quote William James, who said, "The world can and has been changed by those to whom the ideal and the real are dynamically contiguous." It was their struggle to do this and make needed changes.
There was a period in my parents' lives--it was a period in our country's life--when the ideal and the real were dynamically contiguous. They really felt that the international movement was going to change the world and make it a more just, human place. They were young when they came here, but they'd lived so very, very much.
The world is so different from the world of their youth and the world of my youth. Still, power is primarily held by people of wealth and position. By and large, class interest still rules in our country.
Who are the people who make policy and how do they get there? You may get an elite education, but you don't learn labor history (which means the lives of most of humanity).
There aren't many of my generation left who did make history. I'm going to be eighty-eight.
There is entrenched power, and with few exceptions it has no feeling for the vulnerability and sacredness of human life. And they have the weapons and the power until there is a movement of people, as has happened over and over in the past.
And that's why "These Things Shall Be," that British labor song in "Tell Me a Riddle," is sung still:
These things shall be, a loftier race than e'er the world hath known shall rise with flame of freedom in their souls and light of knowledge in their eyes. They shall be gentle, brave and strong, to spill no drop of blood, but dare all... On sea and fire and air. And every life shall be a song.
I have a lot of hope from young people, too, with that flame of freedom and light of knowledge, as well as from some of the old people, whom I honor a lot. There's the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who fought in Spain, what's left of them, and there's no bitterness, there's no cynicism. They believe, too, as I do, that it's in human beings not to put up with what is harming and depriving. I am a believer, but the U.S. über alles psychology is very strong now and our bombings from the air. I don't want to die leaving the world as it is right now.
You know the old saying, "Whoever degrades another degrades me"? That's Walt Whitman--an American, I'm proud to say.
<http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/olsen/onlineinterviews.htm> -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>