{"id":275667,"date":"2020-11-17T00:23:56","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T05:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=275667"},"modified":"2020-11-17T00:23:56","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T05:23:56","slug":"when-hope-and-history-rhyme-joe-biden-quotes-an-irish-poet-to-inspire-healing-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/11\/17\/when-hope-and-history-rhyme-joe-biden-quotes-an-irish-poet-to-inspire-healing-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"When \u2018hope and history rhyme\u2019: Joe Biden quotes an Irish poet to inspire healing in America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Biden had long adopted this famous Heaney quote as a signature piece. (File photo<\/a>: Joe Biden\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following president-elect Joe Biden\u2019s victory in the United States, a campaign video of him reading Irish poet Seamus Heaney\u2019s<\/a> verse adaptation of an ancient Greek play went viral<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The video features Biden reading the verse over a montage of images both of Biden on the campaign trail and scenes from across the U.S. related to the past divisive and charged year characterized by protests and the pandemic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Biden had long adopted this famous Heaney quote<\/a> as a signature piece. He cited it when he first ran in the 2008 presidential primaries<\/a>, and on occasions when he spoke as vice-president<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The verse is from The Cure at Troy<\/em>, Heaney\u2019s 1990 version of<\/a> Philoctetes<\/em>, the play by Sophocles<\/a> about the Greek hero Philoctetes who, during the Trojan war, suffers from a festering foot caused by a snakebite<\/a>. The chorus in the play, aiming towards social healing, recites the lines that have become part of Biden\u2019s political repertoire.<\/p>\n

In drawing on this verse, Biden implicitly pitched himself as the man poised to mediate healing and defend \u201cthe soul of America<\/a>\u201d after caustic wounding. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump clung to the lyrics of \u201cThe Snake,\u201d a song popularized by soul singer Al Wilson<\/a> and written by Oscar Brown Jr., singer-songwriter and civil rights activist<\/a>. Trump recited the lyrics at numerous rallies as well as this year\u2019s Conservative Political Action Conference<\/a>, prompting criticism from Brown\u2019s daughter, Africa Brown, who told CBC radio that \u201cwhat Donald Trump stands for, and what my father stands for, are in such opposition<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song tells the cautionary story of a woman who nurses a near-frozen snake back to health in her home, only to have the reptile fatally bite her in recovery. Trump appropriated the song as a not-so-subtle dog whistle<\/a> to convey an anti-immigration, xenophobic message to his Republican base.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump reads \u2018The Snake.\u2019<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wounded warrior<\/h2>\n

Heaney conceived of The Cure at Troy<\/em> as a drama about reconciliation, about following one\u2019s conscience but also about setting personal feelings aside for the sake of the common good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the play, Philoctetes, on his way to fight the Trojan War, has been stranded on a desert island for 10 years<\/a>, abandoned by Odysseus, whose crew could not bear the noxious smell of his wound.<\/p>\n

Now, Odysseus returns with Achilles\u2019 son, Neoptolemus, because it has been prophesized that the Greeks will only prevail over Troy through the use of Hercules\u2019 bow and arrow, now in Philoctetes\u2019 possession.<\/p>\n

After Heaney published The Cure at Troy<\/em>, its resonance with the Troubles in Northern Ireland<\/a> was immediately recognized, particularly in its lyrical denouement: after Neoptolemus realizes that Odysseus\u2019 advice to trick Philoctetes out of the bow goes against his conscience, he returns to apologize and reconcile with the wounded warrior.<\/p>\n

Hope on this side of the grave<\/h2>\n

Neoptolemus urges Philoctetes similarly to relinquish his past grievances and return to the Greek army, be healed and help conquer Troy:<\/p>\n

\u201cStop just licking your wounds<\/a>,\u201d urges Neoptolemus, \u201cStart seeing things.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Philoctetes finally agrees. The play\u2019s chorus recites the lines that Biden has returned to:<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory says, Don\u2019t hope<\/a><\/p>\n

On this side of the grave.<\/p>\n

But then, once in a lifetime<\/p>\n

The longed-for tidal wave<\/p>\n

Of justice can rise up<\/p>\n

And hope and history rhyme.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inspired leaders<\/h2>\n

The call to renounce vengeful thoughts embodied a national desire for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, so that when Mary Robinson was elected president of Ireland in 1990, she recited Heaney\u2019s prophetic lines in her inauguration speech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when President Bill Clinton visited Northern Ireland in 1995<\/a> to commemorate the earlier ceasefire announcement that preceded the eventual Good Friday Agreement of 1998<\/a> \u2014 what the BBC called \u201cthe beginning of the end<\/a>\u201d of the conflict \u2014 he also quoted Heaney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton speaks in Northern Ireland in 1995.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Biden also recited the lines of the chorus at his speech accepting the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Significantly, it\u2019s not central characters in this ancient drama who sound this call, but the chorus. The chorus surveys the noble characters and finds them wanting: \u201cShining with self-regard like polished stones<\/a>,\u201d or \u201cLicking their wounds \/ And flashing them around like decorations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden has cannily pitched himself through this campaign as the political chorus: hating the divisiveness, the pettiness, the selfishness sharing the stage with him.<\/p>\n

He calls for healing rather than vengeance, unity rather than division, and portrays himself as the figure that can bring together the \u201cyou and the me,\u201d the \u201cit of it\u201d all. He offers himself, through this poetic invocation, as a part of the healing ritual of a country hobbled by a snakebite, tricked, forsaken and left abandoned for years, wounded and bereft.<\/p>\n

Biden appears to want to pick up Heaney\u2019s call for reconciliation and healing while pitching himself as one among the people.<\/p>\n

\u2018Double-take of feeling\u2019<\/h2>\n

After U.S. media announced that Biden had won Pennsylvania and had enough electoral college votes to become president-elect, the Irish network RT\u00c9 tweeted Biden\u2019s voice reading the lines over a montage of news footage in tribute.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The lines Biden has highlighted propose a hopeful view that renewed relationships are possible in human life. Biden\u2019s chorus invokes the \u201cmiracle self-healing \/ The utter, self-revealing \/ Double-take of feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cdouble-take of feeling\u201d suggests an ability to change one\u2019s mind, to change directions, to forgive and reconcile as aspects of the fundamental changeability of human nature. For Biden, such possibilities animate hopes for \u201cmiracle\u201d of \u201cself-healing\u201d needed in the country he is about to lead. These lines are short and direct iambic trimeter, a rhyme scheme often utilized by that other great poet of Irish politics, W.B. Yeats<\/a>. The triple end-rhyme links them together in the reader\u2019s mind<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is perhaps this layered capacity for empathy and for self-examination, for personal and political change, that would make \u201chope and history rhyme.\u201d\"The<\/p>\n

Mark Libin<\/a>, Associate Professor, Department of English, Theatre, Film & Media, University of Manitoba<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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