Memento mori
Memento mori
"This emblema was significantly displayed in a triclinium and is one of the most striking for the clarity of its allegorical representation. The topic is Hellenistic in origin and presents death as the great leveller who cancels out all differences of wealth and class. It is a theme that has come down to our days, as for example in the famous poem ’A livella by the comic actor A. de Curtis (Totò). In fact the composition is surmounted by a level (libella) with a plumb line, the instrument used by masons to get their constructions straight and level. The weight is death (the skull) below which are a butterfly (the soul) and a wheel (fortune).
On each side, suspended from the arms of the level and kept in perfect balance by death, are the symbols of wealth and power on the left (the sceptre and purple) and poverty on the right (the beggar’s scrip and stick). The theme, like the skeletons on the silverware in the treasure of Boscoreale, was intended to remind diners of the fleeting nature of earthly fortunes."
As someone who is from the south of Ireland, living at that time in the occupied 6 six counties, quite familiar with events around the hunger strikes, leading up to 1981 and thereafter, I will not get involved in a matter of opinion, on such a solemn matter. My best summation of the significance and effect of the drama played out at the time, is best described in a poem by WB Yeats, called A Terrible Beauty is Born.
"I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
McCreesh and McIlwee
And McDonnell and Sands
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Bobby Sands MP - 5th May 1981- 66 days
Francis Hughes - 12th May 1981- 59 days
Raymond McCreesh - 21st May 1981- 61 days
Patsy O'Hara - 21st May 1981- 61 days
Joe McDonnell - 8th July 1981- 61 days
Martin Hurson - 13th July 1981- 49 days
Kevin Lynch - 1st August 1981- 71 days
Kieran Doherty - 2nd August 1981- 73 days
Thomas McIlwee - 8th August 1981- 62 days
Mickey Devine - 20th August 1981- 60 days "
Apparently observers who should know better, just 90 miles away in Dublin town and in London, have not grasped the significance of this yet but then that is just one aspect of fascist censorship ignorance. The sacrifices made at that time, in the occupied 6 counties, like the preceding 1916 rising, guarantee the socialist Republic, sooner or later, despite the worst efforts of historical media revisionists and careerist politicians to rewrite history.
These extremely painful events visited on a significant part of the population, like the Irish holocaust, are seared, often unconsciously, so deeply into the non heartless, Irish psyche and DNA, that it is impossible to be ever purged, even if we wanted to. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. The point of overkill by the British in Ireland is passed long ago, with the resulting psychosis on the Irish psyche, along with sacrifices made, to the point, that it is in our DNA and their is little we can do about it, until it is resolved, peace processes or not.
That is what Brendan Behan referred to, when he said most people have a nationality but the Irish and Jews have a psychosis. That is not my opinion, that is a scientific fact, despite or best efforts of our denial to the contrary. The ten Hunger Strikers were just as aware of it as were the leaders of 1916.
Neither the British or their unfree neo-colonial state collaborators, have learned anything from the experience, like Margaret Thatcher, who regarded all of Ireland as still being a British colony. As a result they are destined to keep making the same mistakes over and over, until the lesson is learned. They are still making the same mistake again today, with internment of veteran republican icons like Marian Price and Martin Corey.
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Elegy written in a English Churchyard by Thomas Gray
"They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."
Oration given in an Irish Churchyard by Padraig Pearse
"This emblema was significantly displayed in a triclinium and is one of the most striking for the clarity of its allegorical representation. The topic is Hellenistic in origin and presents death as the great leveller who cancels out all differences of wealth and class. It is a theme that has come down to our days, as for example in the famous poem ’A livella by the comic actor A. de Curtis (Totò). In fact the composition is surmounted by a level (libella) with a plumb line, the instrument used by masons to get their constructions straight and level. The weight is death (the skull) below which are a butterfly (the soul) and a wheel (fortune).
On each side, suspended from the arms of the level and kept in perfect balance by death, are the symbols of wealth and power on the left (the sceptre and purple) and poverty on the right (the beggar’s scrip and stick). The theme, like the skeletons on the silverware in the treasure of Boscoreale, was intended to remind diners of the fleeting nature of earthly fortunes."
As someone who is from the south of Ireland, living at that time in the occupied 6 six counties, quite familiar with events around the hunger strikes, leading up to 1981 and thereafter, I will not get involved in a matter of opinion, on such a solemn matter. My best summation of the significance and effect of the drama played out at the time, is best described in a poem by WB Yeats, called A Terrible Beauty is Born.
"I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
McCreesh and McIlwee
And McDonnell and Sands
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
Bobby Sands MP - 5th May 1981- 66 days
Francis Hughes - 12th May 1981- 59 days
Raymond McCreesh - 21st May 1981- 61 days
Patsy O'Hara - 21st May 1981- 61 days
Joe McDonnell - 8th July 1981- 61 days
Martin Hurson - 13th July 1981- 49 days
Kevin Lynch - 1st August 1981- 71 days
Kieran Doherty - 2nd August 1981- 73 days
Thomas McIlwee - 8th August 1981- 62 days
Mickey Devine - 20th August 1981- 60 days "
Apparently observers who should know better, just 90 miles away in Dublin town and in London, have not grasped the significance of this yet but then that is just one aspect of fascist censorship ignorance. The sacrifices made at that time, in the occupied 6 counties, like the preceding 1916 rising, guarantee the socialist Republic, sooner or later, despite the worst efforts of historical media revisionists and careerist politicians to rewrite history.
These extremely painful events visited on a significant part of the population, like the Irish holocaust, are seared, often unconsciously, so deeply into the non heartless, Irish psyche and DNA, that it is impossible to be ever purged, even if we wanted to. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. The point of overkill by the British in Ireland is passed long ago, with the resulting psychosis on the Irish psyche, along with sacrifices made, to the point, that it is in our DNA and their is little we can do about it, until it is resolved, peace processes or not.
That is what Brendan Behan referred to, when he said most people have a nationality but the Irish and Jews have a psychosis. That is not my opinion, that is a scientific fact, despite or best efforts of our denial to the contrary. The ten Hunger Strikers were just as aware of it as were the leaders of 1916.
Neither the British or their unfree neo-colonial state collaborators, have learned anything from the experience, like Margaret Thatcher, who regarded all of Ireland as still being a British colony. As a result they are destined to keep making the same mistakes over and over, until the lesson is learned. They are still making the same mistake again today, with internment of veteran republican icons like Marian Price and Martin Corey.
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Elegy written in a English Churchyard by Thomas Gray
"They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."
Oration given in an Irish Churchyard by Padraig Pearse
