What's interesting about poetry and imperialism is not the general
coincidence of empire-building and poetry and song, but how poets lead the
battle cries of their invading armies or dissented. Of course dissenters
would likely be few, since they'd lose their heads or at least be censored.
So what is left is looking not only at how poetry reflects colonialist
attitude but how it participating in creating empires and their ideological
justifications (elevating the savages, obtaining raw materials and labor,
converting them).
In the early years of the Japan's modern empire, taking their cue from the
glorious models of the Great Powers and their Tennysons, poetry became an
influential tool of the state and its patriotic bards. The Chinese and
Koreans are depicted as inferior and uncivilized, the Japanese as polite and
civilized in the Western manner. Instead of Christianity, they would attempt
to force state Shinto on Koreans. Poetry and song in the name of the empire
(teikoku) borrowed French and other marching tunes for strings of classical
poetry mixed with contemporary allusions to the emperor, glorious Japan, its
superiority, etc.
Overall, in the case of Japan during its turn-of-the-century wars with China
and Russia, the impact of empires on poetry was lopsided: lots of
propagandist strutting by even the best of poets. There was more involved
than merely taking over another country: their victories insured they would
not be colonized by any Great Power and would demand the end of
extraterritorial rights for their subjects residing in Japan. And yet the
wars themselves were signs of the "hawks" in government. Later, during the
"development" of Manchuria, some Japanese poets managed to write great
anti-imperialist poems. (See http://interpoetics.virtualave.net/i2/war.htm
if interested.)
dean
======
Subject: Re: Is the Muse an imperialist?
Great empires like Spain 1910-1935, almost every country in Latin America
since c. 1895, France since the Franco-Prussian War, Vienna in the waning
days of the Hapsburg Empire, Weimar Germany. How many exceptions before the
rule appears foolish?
At 07:58 PM 7/24/2000 PDT, you wrote:
>>From: "Chris Hayden" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>>suppose you are speaking of Athnes, Rome, The British Empire--what about
>>societies like Sparta, The Mongols, the Soviet Union?
>>
>
> Yes, there are exceptions and problems of definition. But let's look at
>some of the indisputably great ages of poetry like the ones you mention:
>
> Classical Athens: creation of the Athenian Empire.
>
> Early Hellenistic Greece: aftermath of Alexander's empire-building.
>
> Elizabethan/Jacobean England: beginnings of British Empire
>in Old and New worlds.
>
> Kipling said somewhere (can anyone remember the citation) that poetry
>never flourished but in a race of soldiers. I think there's something to
>that, though I'm not real happy about it.
>
>-
>
>But strength alone though of the Muses born
>Is like a fallen angel: trees uptorn,
>Darkness, and worms, and shrouds, and sepulchres
>Delight it; for it feeds upon the burrs
>And thorns of life; forgetting the great end
>Of poesy, that it should be a friend
>To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.
> -- Keats
>
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>
>
>
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