SLOUCHING TOWARD BAGHDAD

by

John J. Fisher

Professor Emeritus of English

Goshen College

Not long ago, worrying over the worsening state of the world I recovered a random memory about college math. The course was taught at GC by Dr. H. Harold Hartzler, familiarly referred to as H-Cubed, or Cubie. It’s my recollection that, according to Cubie, if you’re ever stalled on a railroad crossing, don’t worry. Differential calculus will save you. That steam locomotive roaring down the rails is only, by means of an infinite number of shortening linear segments, approaching its limit. It will never quite get there.

Theoretically, this is certainly true. And my memory accordingly allows me to indulge myself in differential denial. Consequently, I can--as the Department of Homeland Security also reassures me‹go about my business unperturbed. Even though war with‹or, at--Iraq, is rushing near the line, it needn’t, theoretically, touch me. In real life, however, as fast as we can we get ourselves off the tracks.

We might also examine a more sympathetically-minded example of what I’m trying to get at. In John Keats’s "Ode to a Grecian Urn" nothing happens, because, in a kind of back-to-the-future scenario, everything has already taken place. On the surface of this ancient urn, a finished work of art frozen in time, are portrayed various snapshots of an idealized pastoral existence, including an enticing one of youthful courtship:

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal . . .

Differentially calculated, that lover, like the locomotive, will never get there either. And yet, in the real world, we know that lovers usually do.

In its final lines, Keats’s urn flatly teaches us that we already know all we need to know, that beauty equals truth, truth, beauty. Period. Nevertheless, one can hope there is more to learn about life than that simple equation alone.

In both our rational and sympathetic modes, we want to learn reality. That kind of education is not easy. We all face tough choices these days, squinting down the track amidst the encircling militaristic gloom. We can passively hang out with the naively hawkish crowd, or withdraw and wash our hands, or, living and learning in the real world, try to stop the train.

One more analogy, found in W. B. Yeats’s poem called "The Second Coming," comes to mind:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I was delighted to hear John Roth, at the recent conference about the Anabaptists’ Schleitheim Confession and the crisis of 9/11, very effectively quote this passage. But there are also the lines that come at the end and complete the poem. For the purpose of my essay, I will include them here:

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Revelation! Apocalypse indeed! Our analogy with the inexorable locomotive seems vindicated. The end is near!

Yet, with Yeats, unlike Cubie and Keats, there is a difference. It is achieved by means of his interrogative, rather than declarative, mode and by his skillfully retarded pace. With a slow-motion, drooping, awkward gait the rough beast, still to be born, slouches. This takes time. The slower the train, the farther from its limit. True, there may be little time. Already loosed, Blood-dimmed Tide and Anarchy are poised to leap. But there also is that vexatious, rocking cradle that continues to stir our conscience. I think that Yeats today offers us an important perspective. He helps us see through our choices to their consequences.

One choice paralyzes us--mesmerized upon the rails, stuck before the static urn. The other is to take a chance with the rough beast. In the present crisis, Americans need to recognize, that means taking a chance with ourselves. "We have met the beast, and . . ." Our slow slouch, clumsy as it is, enables us to get done the important things that just now, as always, need to be done: feed the hungry enemy; visit the orphaned and widowed refugees; testify by word and deed for peaceful alternatives; and, not without good humor, humbly see through the worst-case catastrophe toward a better future, no matter how long the road.

Last week, Robert Musil and David Krieger also encouraged us to take that chance, as will George Lopez next Tuesday and also the campus teach-in planned for later on. There is enough time to slow, maybe stop, the train. There is plenty of perspective, I believe, to go around.

John Fisher, johnjf@goshen.edu, Goshen, IN 46526

Published SFP: 1/03

Archived: 4/28/03