From Russia with love
Strange, but I haven't seen that movie for a long while now. Perhaps it's because I've been depressed about the country eversince Putin took over from Jeltsin. Yes, that's a very long wile ago but in my deep core of being I haven't changed much. I'm still more or less the same person, I think. Been bitten my nose off a few times since, mind you. Living isn't for the faint-hearted. Still, I try to survive. That's the way it goes with survivors. Nixon back then too warned us for the state Russia is in right now. We need to take into account that it's a serious country with an authoritarian ruler. That last part could lead to yet another lazy joke from any good standup comedian, but please, lets take them seriously. Likewise, I would say, for the spokesmen and spokeswomen of said extremist regimes. If you don't mind, I'll count Israel's government run by its current prime minister with those. Yes, a certain Mr. Levy leaves a bad taste in my mouth each time I see him on the screen or hear from him on any other medium. No, I'm not all using humor here, because the guy as such is of no consequence. He's only the face of things going wrong in Gaza right now. The face that will be in, let along on the cover of books recounting the terrible events envolding right now and there in yet another century to come. No, I don't believe it's really the end of this world. However, we need to take heed. Please, remember that W.B. Yeats poem The Second Coming. I loved how Sam Waterston recounted it in the movie Nixon. Death is indeed a sickly odor coming from what looked once beautiful, but we need to take it seriously. So, the point to this is: wake up, you people who are the best, please do not ever lack conviction!
The Second Coming (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre 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.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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?
NB The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War. While the various manuscript revisions of the poem refer to the Renaissance, French Revolutions, the Irish rebellion, and those of Germany and of Russia, Richard Ellman and Harold Bloom suggest the text refers to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Bloom argues that Yeats takes the side of the counter-revolutionaries and the poem suggests that reaction to the revolution would come too late.
The Second Coming (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre 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.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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?
NB The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War. While the various manuscript revisions of the poem refer to the Renaissance, French Revolutions, the Irish rebellion, and those of Germany and of Russia, Richard Ellman and Harold Bloom suggest the text refers to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Bloom argues that Yeats takes the side of the counter-revolutionaries and the poem suggests that reaction to the revolution would come too late.
