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Poems read aloud, beautifully The post “Campo dei Fiori” by Czesław Miłosz appeared first on The American Scholar.

Since he was a little boy my middle son has been a serial enthusiast. Back then it was rocks, carnivorous plants, Dmitri Mendeleev and the periodic table, coins, electronics – one focus of interest after another. He wasn’t fickle or easily distracted by the next shiny thing. Rather, he is blessed to find the world filled with interesting things, and it would be a shame to neglect any of them. Guy Davenport might have been writing about Michael in his introductory note to The Hunter Gracchus (1996): “I am not writing for scholars or fellow critics, but for people who like to read, to look at pictures, and to know things.”  In our most recent telephone conversation, the topic was the Byzantine general Belisarius (c. 505-565 A.D.), who served under Emperor Justinian I. Belisarius reconquered much of the territory formerly part of the Western Roman Empire, including North Africa, that had been lost less than a century earlier to the barbarians. Belisarius is judged a military tactician of genius, rivalling Alexander and Julius Caeser. Michael is a first lieutenant, a cyber officer, in the Marine Corps, so the appeal is obvious. What we know of Belisarius’ life is a mingling of history, rumor and legend. Edward Gibbon’s account in Chap. 41 of his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire makes compelling reading. Here he describes the defeat of the Moors in 535:   “The formidable strength and artful conduct of Belisarius secured the neutrality of the Moorish princes, whose vanity aspired to receive in the emperor's name the ensigns of their regal dignity. They were astonished by the rapid event, and trembled in the presence of their conqueror. But his approaching departure soon relieved the apprehensions of a savage and superstitious people. . . . and when the Roman general hoisted sail in the port of Carthage, he heard the cries and almost beheld the flames of the desolated province. Yet he persisted in his resolution; and leaving only a part of his guards to reinforce the feeble garrisons, he entrusted the command of Africa to the eunuch Solomon, who proved himself not unworthy to be the successor of Belisarius.”   For amateur readers and non-scholars, history can be frustrating. How do we sift myth from reality when original sources are scarce and authorities disagree? Who do we trust? And what of those with no historical rigor who settle for complacent legend and contented ignorance? Maryann Corbett considers such things in her poem “Late Night Thoughts While Watching the History Channel” (which a friend of mine always calls the "Hitler Channel"):   “Is it by God’s mercy   that children are born not knowing   the long reach of old pain?   “That the five-year-old, led by the hand   past the graffiti, cannot fathom   his mother’s tightening grip,   “or why, when a box of nails   clatters to the tile like gunfire,   his father’s face contorts?   “So slow is the knitting of reasons,   the small mind’s patching of meaning from such ravel   “as a cousin’s offhand story,   or a yellowed clipping whose old news   flutters from a bottom drawer,   “or some bloodless snippet of history   dully intoned as you doze off, in the recliner—   “so slow that only now, in my seventh decade,   do I turn from these sepia stills,   this baritone voiceover, chanting   the pain of immigrant forebears,   my thought impaled on a memory:   “my twelve-year-old self, weeping   on Sundays fifty years ago   when my father drove us to mass   but stood outside, puffing his Chesterfields,   “doing what his father had done,   and his father’s father before him,   wordless to tell me why.”   History is more than academic. It overlaps the personal. We all dwell in history, even Americans. Not long before his death, my brother learned that our mother’s side of the family – the names are Hayes, McBride, Hendrickson – was once Roman Catholic. How did he learn this? Why hadn’t we known this before? What caused the severance? With his death, what he learned sinks again into the gloom. “The small mind’s patching of meaning from such ravel.”

An army of activists The post Helina Metaferia appeared first on The American Scholar.

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