From: Germaine Warkentin <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: nations and persons Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 09:38:42 -0500 I've avoided this discussion up to now, but David Lee Miller's thoughtful post has moved me to respond. I've just just come home from Europe (London, Rome) where opposition to the coming war is almost universal, and I live in Canada, where the Prime Minister yesterday announced in parliament that Canada would not be participating. Anyone who wonders about the results of that statement should take a look at a map of North America, and consider the uncomfortable consequences of existing as a modestly prosperous nation of 30,000,000 people on the other side of a very long border from a rich, powerful, and very angry nation of nearly 300,000,000. Canada's relationship with the US is an intricate, almost domestic one, and the daily frustrations are going to be immense; they are already being reported on my radio. If Canadian bacon becomes Freedom Bacon that will be the least of our worries. Early in the Vietnam war an American scholar -- Donald Guss, I think it was -- asked me very tentatively what Canadians were thinking about the US, and I said, as kindly as possible, and keeping the domestic metaphor in mind, that it was like having a drunken uncle. David Lee's post reminds me of something I said -- inspired by who knows what passing faerie -- to the students in my 17thC course in my last year of teaching. They were angrily raising serious questions about all the many tough issues -- women, war, God -- about which they did not agree with the authors they were studying. And all I could say was, "Look about you, and ask what it is you are doing now as a matter of conscience, and with the best motives in the world, that your descendants are going to blame you fiercely for." Sudden silence in the classroom; they had no answer, nor indeed had I. I think the same can be said about Spenser in Ireland. He chose the path he had to choose, in an age when violence was the natural and approved response of an offended party -- whether state or individual -- and he suffered deeply for it. Furthermore, if we are to believe the _View_ and Book V, he thought he was doing what was right. The result is to pose us, continuously, some of the toughest possible questions about the connections between art and human existence. Shuld we then to be asking about the authors that present us with these dilemmas -- Spenser and Milton, Pound and Eliot -- to what extent the dilemma is consciously made visible and reflected upon in their work? We ought to make that demand, at least, of those who seek to shape our imaginations so powerfully. best to all, Germaine. -- *********************************************************************** Germaine Warkentin // English (Emeritus) VC 205, Victoria College (University of Toronto), 73 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto, Ont. M5S 1K7, CANADA [log in to unmask] (fax number on request) ***********************************************************************