Beautiful words and one of the few reflections on Holocaust Remembrance Day that I read this year. I'm awed by the wisdom and clarity in these sentences, "If ceremonies of remembrance are to have any value for peace, they must be able to hold these many jarring realities all at the same time. People must be able to mourn their loss without traumatizing future generations and turning them into permanent victims, the stuff of aggressive nationalism and the seed of genocide."
If we continue to live down here during the winter months, you'll have to come and visit, Rachael! This beautiful place inspires much thinking! Thank you for reading and your kind words.
I am currently re-reading 'Tragic Sense of Life' by Miguel de Unamuno. "... I am convinced that we should solve many things if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs, which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joined together in beweeping them and crying aloud to the heavens and calling upon God... the chiefest sanctity of a temple is that is a place to which men go to weep in common. A 'miserere' sung in common by a multitude tormented by destiny has as much value as a philosophy... Yes, we must learn to weep! Perhaps that is the supreme wisdom..."
Beautiful words and one of the few reflections on Holocaust Remembrance Day that I read this year. I'm awed by the wisdom and clarity in these sentences, "If ceremonies of remembrance are to have any value for peace, they must be able to hold these many jarring realities all at the same time. People must be able to mourn their loss without traumatizing future generations and turning them into permanent victims, the stuff of aggressive nationalism and the seed of genocide."
If we continue to live down here during the winter months, you'll have to come and visit, Rachael! This beautiful place inspires much thinking! Thank you for reading and your kind words.
Such gorgeous and vivid reflections Julie. I was very moved reading this and could picture each scene in my head, and feel its emotion. Thank you.
Thank you, Chris. This monument never ceases to provoke reflections, which I suppose makes it successful. I walk by it each day.
I am currently re-reading 'Tragic Sense of Life' by Miguel de Unamuno. "... I am convinced that we should solve many things if we all went out into the streets and uncovered our griefs, which perhaps would prove to be but one sole common grief, and joined together in beweeping them and crying aloud to the heavens and calling upon God... the chiefest sanctity of a temple is that is a place to which men go to weep in common. A 'miserere' sung in common by a multitude tormented by destiny has as much value as a philosophy... Yes, we must learn to weep! Perhaps that is the supreme wisdom..."
Unamuno has gone down onto my reading list! As long as this common grief gives way to the universal and not against other groups, I agree with you.
Yes, indeed, Mankind; Humanity. All together.
I recommend the edition I am reading (or I can lend it to you): Dover, 1954 (a republication of Macmillan, 1921); translator: J.E. Crawford Flitch.
I'll send a small poem to you about 'Tears'.