Romanticism is good in poetry but can be fatal in real
life. “The lot of the man who sees life
truly and thinks about it romantically is Despair,” says Bernard Shaw [Preface
to Caesar and Cleopatra]. Some of the finest poets in the history of
English literature met their end in the prime of their life. Will Durant argued that they were killed by
their romanticism. Shaw wouldn’t have
disagreed.
Today’s Hindu
newspaper reports that “Sixty years after death, Stalin (is) turning hero for
Russians.” Celebrating the 60th
anniversary of Stalin’s death, “a majority of Russians” expressed the view that
“the Soviet dictator had played a positive role in Soviet history.” The report goes on to say that “The number of
people who called Stalin the most outstanding historical figure jumped from 12
per cent shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union to 36 per cent in 2008.” And now 49% of Russians view Stalin as a
great hero “even though they are aware of millions of innocent people who died
in Stalin’s prisons and labour camps.”
One of the basic tenets of romanticism is: “Distance
lends enchantment to the view.”
Shakespeare set his romantic plays in a far away land and far away time
precisely because of this reason. God
and heaven are placed at a considerable distance from the ordinary mortals not
for any other reason.
Another aspect of romanticism is that it loves to
glorify something or the other. It loves
to create heroes. For Wordsworth the
hero was something as impersonal as the nature which he personalised and
attributed quite many divine qualities to it.
For other romantic poets anything from a nightingale to the west wind
could be a hero.
Now Stalin is a hero for the Russians. Hitler was a hero for some of the Indians in
the recent past. Looking backward toward
some glorious past is another aspect
of romanticism. Some of our countrymen
keep looking back at the Ramrajya. Then
they look forward to some avatars of Hitler to usher in a yug of renewed nationalism...
Wait for the Lok Sabha election campaign to begin and you’ll understand
what I mean.
People forget the real history. This is inevitable amnesia that grips the
romantically oriented. Forgetting the
real history, they create glorified versions of the past. Villains become heroes. Mythical figures acquire divinity. Sentiments leap out of hearts that long for
utopias.
We can forgive the amnesia that comes naturally to the
utopia-craving rank and file. But such
amnesia is not good for leaders. Good
leaders live in the present and face the reality without sentiments. Good leaders find solutions in the present
instead of carrying bricks to fill the cracks in the past.
Let me illustrate this quality of a good leader with
an example from Shaw (the play mentioned above):
Rufio: Now tell
me: if you meet a hungry lion there, you will not punish it for wanting to eat
you?
Caesar [wondering what he is driving at] No.
Rufio: Nor
revenge upon it the blood of those it has already eaten.
Caesar: No.
Rufio: Nor
judge it for its guiltiness.
Caesar: No.
Rufio: What,
then, will you do to save your life from it?
Caesar: [promptly] Kill it, man, without malice, just
as it would kill me.
Deal with the problem at hand without sentiments. Without also resurrecting the ghosts of the
past and, worse, idolising them.
Communism may have much to offer to the Russians, but not Stalin the
Lion.
This is a post I understood better than most of your offerings! Congratulations!:)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I do not have to wait till the elections to understand what you are saying!
RE
Isn't it interesting, Raghuram, that you understand the best what most other readers find it hard to understand? I was a bit of disappointed when this post was ignored by my usual readers. The dashboard shows that this post received the least number of readers!
Deletemükemmel ben çok çok beyendimmm:)))))))))))
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