The soul of a people

If by some chance you've been following my maundering prose and have missed it these several weeks past, I apologize. I was going through one of those phases when the fact that I really don't know anything rose up and bit me. What, then, is the point of blathering away on the internet, a place that makes me think of Yeats' line about the 'bee-loud glade.' Is there anything more to it than the buzzing of bees, an inbred, introspective noise signifying nothing? After all, and here are the big questions, will anything we do or think matter a billion years from now, does anything we think or do matter in another galaxy, or even on our nearest inhabitable planetary neighbor? How about our non-human cohabitors on this earth. Does a Beethoven symphony mean anything to a garden snail?
According to certain shapers of modern opinion it doesn't. This is the lesson humanity has ultimately (wrongly, I think) gleaned from Galileo, a lesson that is expressed very succinctly in the phrase 'dead white males..' Because if there is no significance to the thoughts, beliefs or actions we leave behind, then life consists solely of the me and the now. That's it. But if that's the case why do we humans, all humans, have the nagging compulsion to bequeath a legacy to future generations? Even those who reject the contributions of those nefarious dead white males seem passionately committed to propagating that belief- but not children, who often turn out to be men. Personally, as a future dead white male, I am not so much offended by that bit of spitefulness as saddened by the paltry, dreary mentality that utters it.
Not only do we humans want our achievements to persevere after the death of the body, we also yearn to endow the products of our industry with beauty and grace be it as exalted as the Great Pyramid or as humble as a doily on the back of an easy chair. We are tireless composers of tunes and verses, we polish our cars, we clad our bodies with fashion statements, we populate our northern domiciles with captured tropical plants. The list of things we do to beautify ourselves and our surroundings is endless. And are we the only species that cares about beauty? Peacocks would beg to differ. Without a suitably colourful tail poor bachelor peacock hasn't a ghost of a chance with the discerning peahen. Darwinists twist themselves into pretzels trying vainly to fit such phenomena into their scheme of randomicity and determinism.
Scientists, philosophers and theologians argue endlessly over these issues trying to fit them into some grand scheme of things. I applaud these efforts, but when I need rescuing from the doldrums of insoluble questions I like to turn to music or poetry. Somehow the poets and composers perceive the big picture directly, not without the intellect, but the intellect illuminated by an interior kind of light without which Plato's light of pure reason is a pale and wan little candle sputtering in the dark. Sometimes I think reason operates in much the same way as natural selection. It doesn't create anything new, but it weeds out bad ideas and sorts things out into their proper places.
I've been struggling in the last few years with certain texts, especially the Semitic Bible and the Greek thinkers, both of which have molded our civilization beyond any reckoning. But we of the northern European races had a vital cultural life before the Roman law, legions and road-builders spread the cross and Plato into Gaul and Britain. There is something about the poor remnants of that older heritage which thrills me in ways that the new-fangled stuff doesn't. Introduced to us a mere 2000 years ago, the desert patriarchs and the Aegean poleis in many ways still seem as foreign and alien as ever. Indelible images abound in the few remaining muddled Celtic and Germanic texts which hint at a lost literature of vast proportions. Hard now to fit them with any context, our lives so much different now, and so all the more remarkable how striking those images are, even when translated into a language that didn't even exist when they were current.
Take for example the picture painted in "Pwyll Lord of Dyved" of the King, Pwyll, at a feast. (found in the Welsh Mabinogion) After the meal he decides to get away from the festivities and go for a walk to Gorsedd Arberth (a mound, possibly identified with Glastonbury) where he sits down with his retinue. He is in no way discouraged when he is informed that anyone who sits on the gorsedd will either be badly beaten or he will witness a Wonder. Spared the beating, the Wonder takes the form of a young woman clad in gold silk riding by on the road below. Curious about who this apparition might be, Pwyll orders a lackey to run after her and ask who she is. But although the lady is only traveling at a leisurely trot, and the lackey runs as fast as he can, she recedes further and further into the mist. The next night Pwyll comes back, bringing a lackey with a fast horse. Yet as fast as the lackey rides after her when she reappears, he cannot catch her in spite of her leisurely pace. The next night Pwyll decides to take on the job himself, bringing his fastest horse. And yet as fast as he rides, it is not enough. He cannot catch up with her. As the distance widens, he calls out to her: Lady, for the sake of the man you love the best, stop for me! I will gladly, she replied and it would have been better for your horse if you had asked me that sooner. I am doing my errands and I am glad to see you. I welcome you, said Pwyll, for it seemed to him that the beauty of every woman and girl he had ever seen was as nothing compared to the beauty of Rhiannon.
As the story progresses we become aware that Pwyll has entered another world. It may be he was originally sacrificed, as the prechristian celtic rituals were quite bloodthirsty, if the descriptions of Roman witnesses are to be believed. But I can't help comparing the Welsh vision of the other world with the sad view of Hades as depicted by Homer.
By comparison to the dreaminess of the Welsh stories, the Scandinavian counterparts seem blunter, coarser, more fatalistic. Heroism is a matter of stoic endurance, a defiance of death and suffering, but for all that, life is preferable. Hjalmar and his brother defeated twelve Goths in an island duel, but in the end:

"My armour is split, I have sixteen wounds,
I cannot see, my sight is darkened,
My heart was pierced by Angantyr's sword,
The steel-edge, steeped in venom.

"The farms I posessed were five in all,
But no joy have I known from these,
Bereft of life, I must lie down,
Sword-wounded on Samsey's shore.

The Norse poems are also more concerned with everyday practical matters. In one of Gudrun's songs she is forced by family pressure and international diplomacy to marry Atli the Hun. Gifted with the ability to foresee the tragic outcome, as the daughter of one king and the widow of another she may not escape her duty. On her way from her home she crosses the continent to meet her new husband:

The brave ones mounted the backs of horses,
But the Gaulish women in wagons rode,
Seven days were carried through cold land,
Seven more sailed on the waves,
Rode seven more through mountain country.


(From Norse Poems, as rendered by W.H. Auden and Paul B. Taylor, Faber and Faber, 1983)
There is much in the Norse literature that is vivid and sharp. You can be reading along and then all of a sudden you can see in your mind's eye the scene portrayed as if you had witnessed it yourself. But rarely is there humour, or the imagery of love and beauty one finds in the celtic sources.

'The burial of the poet, dead for love' contains these sentiments: My bright shaped girl, with the brow like the lily, under your web of golden hair, I have loved you with a strong and enduring love... (From a Celtic Miscellany, Penguin Classics, 1971)
Gory scenes of battle are common in these stories, but there always seems to be at least a hint of mirth. A man's end is not so much a matter of inescapable fate as it is of his own foolish actions, and as often as not resembles a pratfall more than anything else. But what I love best about the celtic stories is the irrepressible sense of wonder they all convey. The world, whether this one or the other one, not so easily distinguished from each other, and the boundaries easily traversed, are marvels to be wondered at. Life in either realm has more to it than mere accumulation of goods- though the celts were well-known in the ancient world for their love of gold. In the story called Branwen, daughter of Llyr, Bran a champion of the Isle of the Mighty leads a host to an invasion of Ireland. They win the battle, but Bran, like Achilles before Troy, is fatally wounded in the foot. Homer fails to see the humour and very grimly lectures us on the topic of eternal fame vs a long but ordinary life. Before Bran dies he tells his men to cut off his head, take it to London and bury it facing France. But on the way they may stop for seven years of feasting in Harddlech, "...with the birds of Rhiannon singing for you, and my head will be as good a companion as it ever was. After that you will spend eighty years at Gwales in Penvro, and as long as you do not open the door to the Bristol Channel on the side facing Cornwall you may stay there and the head will not decay." The men do as he instructs but even the bravest warriors will get bored after eighty years of carousing. "One day Heilyn, son of Gwynn said, 'Shame on my beard if I do not open this door to see if what is said about it is true.'" As soon as he did he and all his companions "...became as conscious of every loss they had suffered, of every friend and relative they had lost, of every ill that had ever befallen them, as if it had just happened."
Strange. As I read this passage I'm reminded of the story of Adam and Eve. A door of knowledge instead of a tree of knowledge, but still an act of will that loses them paradise, and sends them down into a world of sorrows. But how much differently it is played out, without the moralizing and the punitiveness.
Of course there are similarities among the literary outputs of these different peoples, the Hebrews, the Hellenes, the Norse, the British, but at the same time there are clear distinctions, and the distinctions are important...vitally important. The misnamed multicultural crowd advocates a flattening of distinctions and would have us believe everyone is the same. But we are not. Multicultural theorists, most of whom are of North European descent, are not lovers of any culture, and in particular seem to hate their own. That's why they are so determined to suppress public symbols like crosses and Christmas trees. They are really statists who want to substitute the state in place of family, country, homeland, history. And what is this state they so assiduously serve? They have turned into an army of mice nibbling away at the store of wealth amassed in the chambers built by their ancestors, not comprehending the damage they do. There is an adage which says if you don't love yourself you can't love anybody else. I'm not sure if that's true when applied to an individual, but when applied to a heritage, I'm certain that if you don't love your own you can't possibly love another's. This is what they have in common with Islamists. But the Islamists are more fully aware that they are on a mission to destroy what they see.
But can the soul of a people really be destroyed? Or maybe it's the genius of place that accounts for the retention of characteristics by a people which predate a massive transformation of culture and language. For instance, the Persians. Islamic, yes, but Semitic definitely not. And how much of that literature we call Celtic originated from a preCeltic substratum in Britain? Very hard to know for sure, or at least to prove in a scientific sense. But when I respond in my heart the way I do to these ancient stories I believe it. My ancestry is American (in the broad sense) for hundreds of years and yet I still think I belong to certain parts of the Old Country in ways I don't belong in the Americas. Highly irrational.