Where despair is to be found
Nov. 15th, 2010 05:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fpbI have been reading an excellent HP fanfic called Marissa and the Wizards, by one JC Collier, set in Brazil and featuring a local HP-derived wizarding culture. It has a very good set of ideas and I recommend it. However, , there is one idea in it of which I strongly disapprove, which strikes me as a journalistic cliche' that runs contrary to everything I have experienced of people.
The idea is the association of slums and poverty with despair. Collier places a whole nest of Dementors in the slums of Sao Paulo, preying on street children and drifters, because their lives are so very open to despair and hopelessness. That is exactly wrong; it is what a well-off person would feel if they suddenly found themselves in tha situation. But it is not the way the poor of the third world experience their poverty. As I said elsewhere (http://fpb.livejournal.com/53770.html), The most cheerful, unconquerably happy songs in the world come from the poor, from the excluded, from the wretched of the Earth. Think of the life the Russian peasants led, then think of the fighting happiness of their dances. And it is not in order to “escape” the reality of their poverty. Of course, there is that too, although it has a less mean and cowardly meaning than the formulation allows: when the poor come together, they come together to party, to enjoy each other’s company – in festivals, in marriages, in parties of every kind, to enjoy life for its and each other’s sake. So many of them are young, near enough the time of love or of having children and watching them grow, full of energy and joy and hope. But it is more: it is that nine days out of ten, the reality of the life of the poor is not in despair, but in struggle, hard work, achievement, success. It is university professors from Harvard or Tubingen who find life a weariness or suspect it may not be worth living; the real poor are too close to life to find it anything but worth having – after all, the next day might win me the girl of my dreams, bring my brother bring the job that allows us to pay the bill and buy that TV set, or let our father get the building sub-sub-subcontract that will finally give him the money to marry our sister as she ought. Life is a series of battles, each of which can carry its triumph or find its defeat explained in a sad, yet beautiful song. So the other man married your girl? There is a sad song about lost love to help you make sense of your horrible loss; and meanwhile there is always another day, another hope, another job to be done – and the big bright sun above us, and the sea before us.
So where is real despair to be found? Where could Dementors really feed and feast, in nests of many at a time, without stint? Let us let G.K. Chesterton tell us of what he had seen among the richest of the rich in what was then the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
The Aristocrat
The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.
O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word.
And if you don't fancy parties with the super-rich, how about conversations with the super-clever? In professorial rooms such as Peter Singer's you may easily find all the despair a Dementor needs. But you would never find a Peter Singer in the slums of Jakarta or Sao Paulo.
The idea is the association of slums and poverty with despair. Collier places a whole nest of Dementors in the slums of Sao Paulo, preying on street children and drifters, because their lives are so very open to despair and hopelessness. That is exactly wrong; it is what a well-off person would feel if they suddenly found themselves in tha situation. But it is not the way the poor of the third world experience their poverty. As I said elsewhere (http://fpb.livejournal.com/53770.html), The most cheerful, unconquerably happy songs in the world come from the poor, from the excluded, from the wretched of the Earth. Think of the life the Russian peasants led, then think of the fighting happiness of their dances. And it is not in order to “escape” the reality of their poverty. Of course, there is that too, although it has a less mean and cowardly meaning than the formulation allows: when the poor come together, they come together to party, to enjoy each other’s company – in festivals, in marriages, in parties of every kind, to enjoy life for its and each other’s sake. So many of them are young, near enough the time of love or of having children and watching them grow, full of energy and joy and hope. But it is more: it is that nine days out of ten, the reality of the life of the poor is not in despair, but in struggle, hard work, achievement, success. It is university professors from Harvard or Tubingen who find life a weariness or suspect it may not be worth living; the real poor are too close to life to find it anything but worth having – after all, the next day might win me the girl of my dreams, bring my brother bring the job that allows us to pay the bill and buy that TV set, or let our father get the building sub-sub-subcontract that will finally give him the money to marry our sister as she ought. Life is a series of battles, each of which can carry its triumph or find its defeat explained in a sad, yet beautiful song. So the other man married your girl? There is a sad song about lost love to help you make sense of your horrible loss; and meanwhile there is always another day, another hope, another job to be done – and the big bright sun above us, and the sea before us.
So where is real despair to be found? Where could Dementors really feed and feast, in nests of many at a time, without stint? Let us let G.K. Chesterton tell us of what he had seen among the richest of the rich in what was then the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
The Aristocrat
The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;
But the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't brag himself.
O blind your eyes and break your heart and hack your hand away,
And lose your love and shave your head; but do not go to stay
At the little place in What'sitsname where folks are rich and clever;
The golden and the goodly house, where things grow worse for ever;
There are things you need not know of, though you live and die in vain,
There are souls more sick of pleasure than you are sick of pain;
There is a game of April Fool that's played behind its door,
Where the fool remains for ever and the April comes no more,
Where the splendour of the daylight grows drearier than the dark,
And life droops like a vulture that once was such a lark:
And that is the Blue Devil that once was the Blue Bird;
For the Devil is a gentleman, and doesn't keep his word.
And if you don't fancy parties with the super-rich, how about conversations with the super-clever? In professorial rooms such as Peter Singer's you may easily find all the despair a Dementor needs. But you would never find a Peter Singer in the slums of Jakarta or Sao Paulo.
