In the ninth stanza of “Mr. Cogito Reads the Newspaper,” Zbigniew Herbert writes:
“they don’t speak to the
imagination
there are too many of them
the numeral zero at the
end
changes them into an
abstraction”
Herbert refers to the
death of 120 soldiers in an unnamed war – by twentieth-century standards, journalistically
insignificant, hardly worth a mention and only below the fold. The translators from
the Polish are John and Bogdana Carpenter (Mr. Cogito, 1993). In her translation
in The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 (2007), Alissa Valles changes one
word:
“they don’t speak to the
imagination
there are too many of them
the numeral zero on the
end
turns them into an
abstraction”
As usual, Herbert writes
with cool irony, never breaking character, refusing the temptation to
sentimentalize or preach. His poem shares journalism’s proclaimed objectivity but
not its trivializing or sentimentality. The poem’s closing lines sound
distinctly – that is, ironically – academic, as though posed as a classroom
assignment. Readers naïve about human nature should be cautious: they might be triggered. The Carpenters’
version:
“a subject for meditation:
the arithmetic of
compassion”
And Valles’:
“a theme for further
reflection:
the arithmetic of
compassion”
The poem this time reminds
me of the grim quip usually attributed to Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy;
a million deaths is a statistic.” I’ve quoted it as such myself. The words fit
our understanding of the man and his thugs. The Quote Investigator is skeptical.
Interestingly, the line has also been (mis-)attributed to Adolf Eichmann.
Robert Conquest attributes a corollary sentiment to Stalin: “Death solves all problems; no man, no
problem.” Again, provenance uncertain. In The Great Terror: Stalin’s Purge
of the Thirties (1968; rev. 1990), Conquest writes: “We get a figure of 20
million dead [directly on Stalin's orders, not counting war dead], which is almost
certainly too low and might require an increase of 50 percent or so.” Few deny that
Stalin, his precursors and successors killed a lot of innocent people. Our
distance from them in time and space makes it easy to reduce their deaths to entries on
a spread sheet, while a murder down the block is a “tragedy”: “the arithmetic of
compassion.”
2 comments:
Because I know virtually nothing about poetry, I've decided to read "A History of English Prosody" by George Saintsbury; 3 volumes; reprint (New York: Russell & Russell, 1961). It's a reprint of the second edition (1923). The first edition was published in 1908. In his Preface, Saintsbury expresses surprise that a second edition would be called for in his lifetime, thus giving him the opportunity to overhaul the text lightly.
Saintsbury (1845-1933) is a favorite of mine, so I'm looking forward to reading and learning. Terry Teachout once remarked that he was "intrigued" by Saintsbury.
Chaplin said something like it in Monsieur Verdoux: "One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow."
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