We live in a time of peace, having fought countless wars and uniting
not only regions, nation-states but entire planetary systems.
This did not come easy, but we tend to forget the struggles of the
past, regarding pre-23rd century humans as barbaric, war-driven
neanderthalers.. a disgrace to the "homo sapiens".
I am here to change that! We should venerate these people (that's what
they are: people) and keep their tradition alive!
This is a culture column, dedicated to the echoes of the past.. Words
from those that have died long ago, their legacy, and their molecules
are all part of us.
Today, I'd like to focus on the 19th century.. Now: some scribbles of
these backward(?) years!
"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times, it was the age
of wisdom, it was the age of fooisness, it was the epoch of
incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, whe
had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going
to heaven, we were all going direct the other way", so wrote Charles
Dickens in 'A Tale of Two Cities'.
These words are recognized as the most appropriate and 'on the mark'
description of human affairs in the 19th century, and far beyong that.
For most of us, it's exactly how we look at those turbulent and
explosive ages we so desperatly want to forget.
Yet even these words were written as a complaint to the state of
affairs at the time (which was some decades before they were written).
How can we resist such an eloquent description?
Obscurest night involved the sky,
Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I
Wash'd headlong from on board
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating homes forever left.
-- William Cowper, the Cast-away, stanza 1. 1803
Poetic lonelyness, and as applicable to star travel as anything can
ever be.
If you are a science officer, I'd like to challenge you to read the
following poem out loud, the next time you have to run a sensor
analyses on a star;
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.
-- John Keats, 1838
Now tell me you don't still feel your internal romantic stirr! Good,
now get back to your spectral analysis!
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