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| Photo: Gate at Buchenwald |
NOTE: I very often sit and wonder about 'The Human Condition'. My husband who was literally a Genius would tirelessly indulge me when I would broach the subject again and again and again. He was an Atheist and at the time I was not, I still believed in God. I no longer do. The longer I live and the more wanton destruction of 'life', the capacity of man's cruelty that I see & hear of has crushed my ability to believe that a loving god could possibly exist. -But- that's just my opinion and thoughts on the matter. I Read this poem by Goethe today and the first word that popped into my mind was 'incongruent' . I will say no more.
The slogan: Jedem das Seine (literally "to each his own", but figuratively "everyone gets what he deserves”).
ON THE DIVINE
Let man be noble,
Generous and good;
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all the living
Beings we know.
Hail to the unknown
Higher beings
Of our intuition!
Let man resemble them;
Let his example
Teach us to believe in them.
For the realm of nature
Is unfeeling;
The sun sheds its light
Over evil and good
And the moon and the stars
Shine on the criminal
As on the best of us.
The wind and the rivers
The hail and the thunder
Storm on their way
And snatch one victim
After another
As they rush past.
So too does blind fortune
Grope through the crowd, now
Seizing a young boy’s
Curly-haired innocence
And now the bald pate
Of the old and guilty.
As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.
Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.
He alone may
Reward the good
And punish the wicked;
He may heal and save
And usefully bind
All that strays and wanders.
And we revere
The immortals, as if
They were human beings
Who do on a great scale
What little the best of us
Does or endeavors.
Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.
Translation (German to English) by David Luke
1 Comment:
It would seem, for the most part anyway, human animals are having hell living up to their potentiality.
There was a scene in the original star wars movie where Alec Guinness staggers or something at the exact moment a planet was destroyed and when he was asked what was wrong he said he felt millions of beings at their instant of destruction. (not an exact description of the movie but you get the idea.) I think of that scene often...we are living through the murder of a planets worth of beings all the time.
It's all so senseless and unnecessary. We seem to love stupidity and destruction fiercely.
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