REFERENCE - 3

[thouneedestme]

POETRY :: ERIK
more poetry

Instructions for Crossing the Border
Dan PagisImaginary man, go. Here is your passport

Comments

[thouwishest]

It is hard finding Erik quotes. Wart - the young King Arthur, I mean - and Meryln are both very Charles-ish, but here are some bits of Merlyn lecturing young Arthur about why the Gaels have rebelled against him, and why battles are not fun:

"This is their chance to pay off racial scores, and to have some blood-letting as sport, and to make a bit of money in ransoms. Their turbulence does not cost them anything because they are dressed in armour - and you seem to enjoy it too. But look at the country. Look at the barns burnt, and dead man's legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried, and nobody daring to walk around with gold or ornaments or their clothes. That is chivalry now."

Also, justification for aggression:

"There is one fairly good reason for fighting - and that is, if the other man starts it. You see, wars are a wickedness of a wicked species. They are so wicked that they must not be allowed. When you can be perfectly certain that the other man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty to stop him."

After all, Hemingway said, "Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."

Then again, Hemingway also said, "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime," and "No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one." :/