007 - Hero
Indeed, where now there stands most ardent abhorrence for anything pertaining to his personage, once the love I so oft profess I bear him was indeed true as steel. But I have said that all love is destined to turn from fair to foul. Not merely between a man and his wife. Rather, too, can the love between two friends be thus rent, or the love between brothers, or the love between a servant and a master. It is of this last that I am most recently acquainted with.
How strangely do the Fates guide our circumstance; when bore him I the most love, I was far from him, but, as I do loathe him now, I am as close to him as I had wished to be once so long ago. Is it this proximity that stokes my hatred? I know not.
When I saw him least, I thought I loved him most. Or perhaps it was because a boy, as once I was, needs heroes, and the General - though he was not yet General then - was there to take place among the ranks of a child’s idols. I saw him first when I was ten and four. Half a lifetime ago, as it is now. I saw him then, yes, but had heard of him and his deeds since I was younger even than that, for my father served with him, and did often speak of his admiration for the Moor. It was my father’s pleasure to recount tales of the battles of which he had partaken, and the men alongside whom he’d fought. Othello was one such man, and one whom he held highest above all.
So by the time I’d taken up arms to fight myself, I had become well versed in his greatness. To learn that I was serving under his command was an honor that I, in all my two seven years, would not surrender for all the world.
In all that time, while my esteem for him was at its most profuse and at its highest mark, he looked upon me none. Distance blurs details, and it is only this that I can account for my blind faithfulness. He was as some god to me, so did I admire him and so from afar did I look on him. How the thought doth sicken me now. I was a hound, but one in a brace of a dozen such like dogs, trailing one master, whom I knew naught towards but unerring loyalty.
But boyish idolatry melts with years. Age doth ruin the eyes in one’s head, as old men are blind, but makes one see better with those eyes that are blurred by youth, those true eyes that see things as they are, which grow sharper by experience. And where once I saw a great and noble lord, now I see a foolish simpleton. Was it merely age that unclouded my sight? I think it not so. There were other incidents that sped on the clearing of my vision, but what matter they? I once idolized him, and now I hate of him. How I came from the first to the second matters little. Has he descended from the excellence he once possessed, or has he in my sight grown lower? Is it he or I who’s suffered the change?
While men have in them the aptitude to be seen as heroes or asses, methinks the fault, whether of worship or of scorn, lies in the eye that looks.
How strangely do the Fates guide our circumstance; when bore him I the most love, I was far from him, but, as I do loathe him now, I am as close to him as I had wished to be once so long ago. Is it this proximity that stokes my hatred? I know not.
When I saw him least, I thought I loved him most. Or perhaps it was because a boy, as once I was, needs heroes, and the General - though he was not yet General then - was there to take place among the ranks of a child’s idols. I saw him first when I was ten and four. Half a lifetime ago, as it is now. I saw him then, yes, but had heard of him and his deeds since I was younger even than that, for my father served with him, and did often speak of his admiration for the Moor. It was my father’s pleasure to recount tales of the battles of which he had partaken, and the men alongside whom he’d fought. Othello was one such man, and one whom he held highest above all.
So by the time I’d taken up arms to fight myself, I had become well versed in his greatness. To learn that I was serving under his command was an honor that I, in all my two seven years, would not surrender for all the world.
In all that time, while my esteem for him was at its most profuse and at its highest mark, he looked upon me none. Distance blurs details, and it is only this that I can account for my blind faithfulness. He was as some god to me, so did I admire him and so from afar did I look on him. How the thought doth sicken me now. I was a hound, but one in a brace of a dozen such like dogs, trailing one master, whom I knew naught towards but unerring loyalty.
But boyish idolatry melts with years. Age doth ruin the eyes in one’s head, as old men are blind, but makes one see better with those eyes that are blurred by youth, those true eyes that see things as they are, which grow sharper by experience. And where once I saw a great and noble lord, now I see a foolish simpleton. Was it merely age that unclouded my sight? I think it not so. There were other incidents that sped on the clearing of my vision, but what matter they? I once idolized him, and now I hate of him. How I came from the first to the second matters little. Has he descended from the excellence he once possessed, or has he in my sight grown lower? Is it he or I who’s suffered the change?
While men have in them the aptitude to be seen as heroes or asses, methinks the fault, whether of worship or of scorn, lies in the eye that looks.