When Kurt Vonnegut said, "It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in," in a recent interview, he appears to be refering to Dulce et Decorum Est, a famous poem from the First World War about a soldier dying from a gas attack. Vonnegut's meaning was over the heads of many people, myself included, and his words are being taken out of context. Here is the poem:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
The last line: "The old Lie: It is sweet and honorable to die for your country." I'm sorry for having doubted you, Mr. Vonnegut.
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Comments (1)
No. The last line says, "Sweet and proper it is to die for your fathers."
Wilfred Owen and Vonnegut both knew the lie was two-fold. The Latin translation had been twisted when turned into school-boy English. "Patria" (fathers, forebears) was expressed as "country" in the service of nationalism. Any attentive Latin student, as Owen and Vonnegut were, knows the difference. That was the first half of the old lie. Denying language. It is sweet and honorable to die for your fathers, yes. But not for your country. The second lie was to equate the state with being a good father. If the nation-state is father surrogate, it is a foster parent, an abusive and a bad one.
Posted by MarcLord | July 20, 2007 5:04 AM