[Consider this a companion
piece to the prior offering Recreational
Reading as A Laboratory for Honor.]
Warrior cultures from time immemorial have what may be a curious, to our modern
eye, intimacy with poetry.
Our spare and laconic Spartans may have been averse to physical comforts considering
them wasteful wallowing yet…they considered poetry as part and parcel of good
martial development.
We must never forget that “Homer’s” The Illiad and The Odyssey and other like poetic epics are collections of
tales that were meant to be recited, told, sung, and pondered.
Poetry to our Spartans was not just fireside entertainment or academic gloss
to give a false sheen of bookish smarts.
It was chosen carefully, composed with an eye on utility, recited and
memorized to inculcate principles, ethics, and core attributes.
It was used as a yardstick for the young to aspire to, a signpost for the
brave to follow, a bolster for the temporarily weakened, a salve for those in straits.
It was a manly pursuit. The sense of the word “manly” here is “strength-pursuit”
open to all ages and both sexes.
Poetry was common coin. Much was known by heart, that is, memorialized
literally by memorization. What better way to inculcate aspired values and to
call forth comfort in strife than to “know” what you need to know and not have
to go look it up on a parchment, in a book, or on a smartphone?
I have opened with the Spartans, simply because they detested needless study
of the trivial and yet they valued poetry which many of us now would rank with
the trivial. The attitude of, “I’m not in school anymore, who needs it?”
We can carry this poetic esteem forward to other warrior cultures. The
Vikings valued their skalds, the Kshatriyas esteemed the recitations of
the Mahabharata and other Hindu epics, the warring clans of the Arabian sands have an astonishingly
vast history of poetic esteem. The guslars of the Balkans, the nith
of the Inuit, the flyting of Anglo-Celt culture, tekwar’i of the
Plains Indians, and…well, I could go on.
Poetry, not merely read, not merely recited, but known, that is,
memorized. The memorization made it “owned” within the skulls of the “knower.”
The ballads and songs of the plainsmen, the repeated references to
frontier “rowdies” knowing their Shakespeare, their Homer, and sundry other poets
sometimes better than travelling players. [There are more than a few humorous accounts
of professional players being rushed off the stage for getting the lines wrong.
And scores of references to these “unlearned” men reciting entire plays along
with the players.]
Dan Gioia, a poet himself and former head of The National Endowment for
the Arts, reports of his growing up in early Los Angeles and his Mexican father
a former vaquero and all of his vaquero friends having a seemingly endless supply
of verse ready on their lips.
So, what happened?
When did we modern warriors become, well, so inarticulate?
Mr. Gioia offers a possible answer.
When we took poetry out of the hands of the common folk and made it part
of school. Made the writing of it a literary trick where the more one couched
obscure references the “better it was.”
His hypothesis likely has some truth to it.
As does perhaps our penchant for memorizing not much of anything anymore.
After all, who needs to memorize anything when we can call up anything we
need to know with a few keystrokes, or a command to Alexa?
And that is just the thing the Spartans, the
Vikings, all of the warrior cultures warned against.
When we no longer know in our marrow bones what it is we aspire to.
When it is merely some words on a page sitting in a book or on a screen
somewhere, this is not knowledge, not yet.
It is awareness of resources. That’s all.
Resources that we may have to go looking for when they are needed.
Anathema to a Warrior. A Warrior wants all his tools at hand. Whether it
be a ready and able body. An active and alert mind. A sharp and strong blade.
Or a code of conduct and light in the dark valleys we will encounter.
Old school warriors embraced heartening verse.
By my estimation there is just as much wisdom in that effort as there is
in the physical efforts we take pains with.
OPPORTUNITY by Edward Rowland Sill
THIS I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:--
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.
A craven hung along the battle's edge,
And thought, "Had I a sword of keener steel--
That blue blade that the king's son bears, -- but this
Blunt thing--!" he snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle shout
Lifted afresh he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.
Wanna be an Old School Warrior who strides this
planet in Modern Times?
Comments
Post a Comment