Sometimes honest observers take a too idealistic view of the past.

I’ve recently read George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) set in 1829-1832. The financial sector in England was nearly as corrupt then as in today’s USA. Society and public opinion nearly as stupid and parochial as the US media. At this time, the Triangular Trade in human slaves was just coming to an end. In fairness to England, they were among the first to outlaw slavery in modern times (1834) and even allotted a fleet to the west coast of Africa to hinder the slave trade. Yet the expropriation of the natives continued apace, in both the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America. Simultaneously India was despoiled by the British, as they prepared for the Opium Wars to cripple China (1839-1842, 1856-1860).

Tonight I just happened to read a bit of Percy Shelley, “Song to the Men of England” (1839). Here’s the most moving stanzas:

Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?...

The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.

The American militiaman and worker effectively lives today as Englishmen did 185 years ago. Not Percy Shelley, not Juan Cole, not Philip Weiss, not Richard Medhurst, not Bernhard Horstmann, not Ron Unz and certainly not Alec Kinnear have been able to put a stop to it. Those who would enslave, expropriate and war carry on making the human condition worse as quickly as technology will enable it and the laws allow them.

The ubiquity of evil in the past does not excuse us from fighting evil where we find it in the present. In recent times, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden did manage to put a small dent in evil doing by exposing it to light. Collateral damage will never as effective a euphemism (Assange), while conspiracy theory has become conspiracy reality (Snowden), thanks to their efforts.

Fortunately in German, there’s a much better song than “Happy Birthday”. It’s called “How Wonderful that You were Born” (“Wie schön dass du geboren bist”) by Rolf Zuckowski. We’ve just done a video for our sons’ aunt’s 60th birthday. For that video, I made an English translation as I couldn’t find a good one online. Here is my translation:

Heute kann es regnen,
stürmen oder schneien,
denn du strahlst ja selber
wie der Sonnenschein.
Heut ist dein Geburtstag,
darum feiern wir,
alle deine Freunde
freuen sich mit dir

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
wir gratulieren dir, Geburtstagskind!

Unsere guten Wünsche
haben ihren Grund:

bitte bleib noch lange
glücklich und gesund.
Dich so froh zu sehen,
ist was uns gefällt,
Tränen gibt es schon
genug auf dieser Welt.

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
wir gratulieren dir, Geburtstagskind!

Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch,
das ist ganz egal,
Dein Geburtstag kommt im Jahr
doch nur einmal.
Darum lass uns feiern,
dass die Schwarte kracht,
heute wird getanzt,
gesungen und gelacht.

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
wir gratulieren dir, Geburtstagskind!

Come rain, snow or storm
no matter, you shine
like rays from the sun
It's your Birthday
today all your friends
will celebrate with you.



How wonderful that you were born,
we would so miss you otherwise,
How wonderful that we are together,
Contratulations, Birthday child {boy/girl}


Our best Wishes
are most serious

Stay long healthy 
and happy. Seeing your
happiness is what we like.
There's tears enough
in this world.


How wonderful that you were born,
we would so miss you otherwise,
How wonderful that we are together,
Contratulations, Birthday {child/boy/girl}


Monday, Tuesday, **Wednesday**
it's all the same
It's your birthday only once
each year. Let us celebrate
until the dawn breaks,
this day we'll dance
and sing and laugh


How wonderful that you were born,
we would so miss you otherwise,
How wonderful that we are together,
Contratulations, Birthday child {boy/girl}

There’s a lot of work to be done on meter and rhyme still to make a finished song, but the language of this translation offers some of the dignity, simplicity and elegance of Zuckowski’s original. Zuckowski is still alive (long may he still thrive) and is considered Germany’s most successful recording artist. Hence “Wie schön dass du geboren bist” should still be under copyright for public performance or recording.

Image of Rolf Zuckowski with the Elbkinderlandchor in 2015 copyright Frank Schwichtenberg and licensed under the GFDL.

How can I see inside Japanese existence or the mysteries of the Russian soul, or feel Filipino sense of complacent helplessness and anger (their entire stock of able, active men, and those men’s women and children, wiped out by E. Otis and J. Smith in just a few years).

I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States,

Resonance

Images will no longer do. Too banal. Talking images mean something, yes, the movies, but the penetrating step is in words. To make us feel again the pulse of a mind. Dostoevsky’s frenzied existentialist criminals or Tolstoi’s high-minded princes and naive debutantes. To wake one morning to the crimp of fresh snow, the smell of chocolate and strawberries from last night’s ball floods in. Meeting someone who matters, touching eternity’s companion soul, rare and wonderful bliss.

We only really love twice. Some not once, only feel sordid longing, a burning in the crotch, primitive like a fox’s blood hunger for the hens, an urge to the vixen. Explain to them the choral radiance of a shared night sky, invokes embarrassment or a snicker of contempt.

Better they say an afternoon of ball and beers, or a lean drive through the hood, or for the materialist, a test ride in the latest Lexala luxury car. Beautiful, inanimate, an auto can neither talk back, demand emotions or complain.

Asian Postcript

The Japanese were allowed dominion in Korea, if the Nips promised to keep their snouts out of American business in the Philippines, a deal to suit all imperialists.

The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog…

There’s no forest left in the Philipines. Bare as a friar’s head, Spanish protectorate forgotten, no talk from them of democracy or freedom while the jungle thrived. Seoul too has its subway photos, part of the developed world. Urban rapid transit comes now to Manila. Progress.

. . . .

Photo Credit: Hong Kong Subway Photo by Horatio Tan.