Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Gratitude is nice but the poems that do change governments and people's lives for the better can't only do gratitude. Anger is needed too. Accountability is important.

Some people treat the oppressive government as weather. Something you don't have any control over and therefore - no responsibility for. Others treat it as their responsibility. And these people are NOT grateful, when injustice is done in their names.

Compare https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48501/the-envoy-of-mr...

    let your sister Scorn not leave you
    for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
    they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
    the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography

    and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
    to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn

Guess which country remains totalitarian.

Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed both poems but remain partial to Brodsky's- probably a matter of taste and preference.

However, your conclusion (or at least the way I interpreted it) that the essence that drove the writing of Herbert's poem was also responsible for Polish political outcomes and Russia's current state seems a bit far-fetched and reductionist. And Brodsky's poem and quotes in the article do not imply a lack of courage/defiance to me. On the contrary, I read his poem to mean that despite being steadfast in your views, have room for gratitude.

It's a simplification, obviously. But I do think there's a cultural factor in how society approaches the government and suffering in general that strongly influences what kind of government keeps developing in that society.

When you talk about politics with Russians - they always talk about it like it's a force of nature. Like the only choice is fatalistic acceptance.

I agree with you on that point. This fatalistic attitude is also often mentioned when discussing how the Indian subcontinent remained colonized for so long. I do not know enough about Polish history to be able to compare their cultural stock to that of the 'East'.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com