The recent outpouring of comment on Spenser and Ireland (and the U.S.
Cavalry), politics and poetry, has struck me as about the most interesting
thread we've seen on the Spenser list.
Among so many thoughtful and shrewd responses it seems almost invidious to
single out one or two, but the contributions this morning by Grossman and
Willett have really got me thinking, or trying to. The examples of Yeats
and Eliot are a reminder that we have so many fascists and near fascists
among the modernists, whose work we nevertheless admire. Or if we don't,
as Grossman suggests, the reasons are aesthetic, not purely political.
I'm far less settled than most of you seem to be in my thoughts about
Spenser the colonialist. Perhaps this is why Zurcher's comments strike
such a chord with me. I don't understand how to link the ethical behavior
of individuals with the military and diplomatic behavior of nations, either
in the sixteenth century or the twenty-first--let alone whether they can be
linked in the same way for two such different worlds. Are the individuals
in the US military now stationed in Kuwait about to become war
criminals? How about third-tier policy wonks in the State
department? Major contributors to the Republican party? Spineless
Democrats in Congress? Where does anyone's complicity begin or end? Do we
achieve some sort of ethical purity with a candle-light vigil and an e-mail
petition?
Spenser came from a poor family and sought, through the paths that were
open to him, to gain land and status in a social system that awarded full
personhood only to those with land and status. His assignments left blood
on his hands, but to Spenser and most of his contemporaries the military
importance of Ireland was unquestioned: it was the avenue through which a
Spanish invasion would almost certainly be mounted, and therefore a
territory that England saw as essential to its self-defense. (If I've got
this wrong, there are clearly many on the list with the expertise to
correct me.) And in the end, whatever we think Spenser to have been
"complicit" in or "culpable" of, he paid the full price for his place in
the history of colonialism, driven from the land he acquired, his house and
possessions burned, perhaps a child killed, perhaps any number of
manuscripts destroyed. He died at 46 or 47 under conditions of enormous
distress. I would compare him less to Hitler or Custer than to the
citizens of modern Israel, caught in the vice of history and international
politics.
The suffering of the Palestinians today is hard to witness. But I do not
feel quite entitled, from the comfort of my study, to pronounce judgment in
highly moral terms on people who live every day waiting for the next bomb
to go off, wondering whether their children are safe.
David Lee Miller
Department of English 543 Boonesboro Avenue
University of Kentucky Lexington, KY 40508-1953
Lexington, KY 40506-0027
(859) 257-6965 (859) 252-3680
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