Though Cowards Flinch

The Independent and the Guardian yesterday attempted to address poetry and the great poets. The Independent, with its great tradition of lots of free booklets and killing trees, decided to promulgate a series of fourteen or fifteen books each dealing with one ‘great’ poet. I think all of them bar one were British – and the vast majority were male.

I thought I would share a poem from which I have always taken meaning. In a few days, maybe a week, it will recur when I write a review of Slavoj Zizek’s recent book, Violence.

Step forward: we hear
That you are a good man.

You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider your personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend.
Are you also a good friend of the good people?

Hear us then: we know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration
of your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.

This poem was written by a German Stalinist apologist called Bertolt Brecht. It is called ‘the Interrogation of the Good.’

Though it was composed in the 20th Century, I’ve always thought that it would be well suited to the chorus of an Athenian Old Comedy; a type of political satire written for performance in front of the Athenian demos, the commons. The themes that the poem deals with dovetail nicely with the themes of Athenian democracy in the period around the last part of the Peloponnesian War.

Wealthy and powerful men in Athens often found themselves the subject of court proceedings brought by their enemies or by men who were jealous of their wealth. They had a choice; they could buy off the accuser (who often only accused them for this purpose – the sykophantai) or they could meet the accuser in court and make a speech to defend themselves.

To defend oneself, a rich Athenian could draw upon that which knit together rich and poor in Athenian society; his performance of liturgies such as paying for a banquet for his fellow demesmen, or paying for the running of a Trireme for one year. Though these had no factual bearing on any case brought, invoking one’s good deeds was an effective defence.

Brecht’s poem goes through the deeds which might have been listed; honouring philoi (friends), bravery, wisdom, plain-speaking and incorruptibility. I doubt that this is what Brecht intended and the list is far from exhaustive. Some important concepts that would have been invoked in any law court speech are absent – but I have always enjoyed the perceived confluence of my two worlds; socialism and Athenian history.

If I were to place it in an extant Athenian play it would be Aristophanes’ Knights - sung by the chorus to the corrupt Paphlagon and the equally corrupt Agorakritos (sausage-seller). In the Knights, each of these figures try to persuade the commons for their own private gain. For our age of party politics, with emphasis on charisma, I think there is an important message here, one relevant to today.

(Hat-tip.)