Historical Revisionism

From The Boston Globe, "History rehabilitates the tyrants of old", by H.D.S. Greenway.

October 24, 2003

UNTIL THE TYRANTS of the 20th century came along, they were the most efficient, cold-blooded, feared, and destructive conquerors the world had ever known. They were the Mongol horsemen from the steppes of Central Asia, whose hordes under the leadership of Genghis Khan built a 13th-century empire by mass slaughter -- burning cities and terrifying half a dozen civilizations from Russia to the East China Sea. Genghis Khan's grandson, Hulagu, leveled Baghdad, and Iraqis have invoked his name ever since to brand their enemies, including the Americans.

It is said that you could smell their stench downwind before you could see their dust or hear the thunder of their horses signaling onrushing death. It is said that they could stay in the saddle for days, living on mare's milk or the blood of their own horses if necessary. According to a contemporary Persian account they were covered with lice "which looked like sesame growing on bad soil." It is also said that they could ride 70 miles a day and fire their steel-tipped arrows 200 yards with deadly accuracy at full gallop.

They swept all before them -- the armies of the emperor of China, Russians on the banks of the Dnieper, and the storied Khanates of Central Asia. And if surrender was not immediate, all were slaughtered.

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Grr

We just had a fire alarm. At 9:30 pm. Just as I was getting undressed to go to the shower.

The only good thing about it is that it's the only chance you have to see everyone on the floor at the same time.

[ESSAY] Marxist Theory in Literature

My intellectual formation in anthropology played a critical role in my intellectual formation, demonstrating to me (among other things) the reality of cultural materialism. To me, it is nonsensical to insist that culturally generally, and literature specifically, exist autonomously from the material realities of a culture. The literature of nineteenth century Europe, for instance, could never have been written but for the emergence of a complex industrial society that pulverized traditional barriers to general intercourse such as region and language, and allowed memes of secularism and liberalism to propagate; Flaubert could write a realistic and naturalistic Madame Bovary in mid-nineteenth century France, but even in mid-eighteenth century France a putative Flaubert, without any way to make a realistic Emma in a self-contained conservative peasantry, would have been stymied.

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Some Petrarch

Rime 134

Petrarch's Original

Prose Translation

Pace non trovo e non ò da far guerra, e tomo e spero, et ardo e son un ghiaccio e volo sopra 'l cielo e giaccio in terra e nulla stringo e tutto 'l mondon abbraccio. Tal m'à in pregion, che non m'apre né serra, né per suo mi riten né scioglie il laccio, e non m'ancide Amore e non mi sferra, né mi vuol vivo né me trae d'impaccio. Veggio sensza occhi e non o lingua e grido, e bramo di perir e cheggio aita, et ò in odio me stesso ed amo altrui. Pascomi di dolor, piagendo rido, egualmente mi spiaco morte e vita: in questo stato son, Donna, per vui.

I find no peace and have no strength to make war, and I fear and hope, I burn and am ice, and I fly above the heavens and lie upon the ground, and I grasp nothing and all the world I embrace. One has me in prison, who neither opens nor locks the door for me, and either keeps me as hers nor unties the bonds, and Love neither kills me nor frees me from my chains, and neither wants me alive nor rescues me from trouble. I see without eyes, I have no tongue and I cry out, I yearn to perish and I beg for help, I hate myself and love another. I feed on pain and laugh while weeping, death and life equally displease me: in this state am I, Lady, because of you.