Interesting piece, Eric.   

... and I must admi total ignorance to Mr. Fawkes until I consulted the ready article in Wikipedia.  I hardly remember high school, so whether I ever learned about him and his conspirators there is moot.

Thank you for making me wander into the mushy grey matter and stir up a few lazy cells.

deLighting in your sharing, Daniel 

You are of course correct Samson. I find most people have little interest in history so I sometimes paraphrase or distill it into something more recognisable. 

King Leopold of Belgium actually considered the Belgian Congo his own personal property. The main character Marlow was an Englishman hired by a Belgian trading company (if I remember correctly). 

The story compares the brutality of 'the highest of Western Civilisation', meaning the European nations like England, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark...who all had holdings in Africa and around the world, with the brutality of the daily lives of the 'savages' of the very lands they colonised. Since England was far and away the greatest of the Western empires I used it as example. 

Glad you caught it. Maybe it will get someone who hasn't read The Heart of Darkness to do so. 

James

The first thing that came to mind when I read this was the Burning Man event held in Nevada. However the content herein and the Burning Man celebration have nothing in common and rather are like opposites. 

I hadn't ever read about the Gunpowder Plot or Guy Fawkes. I suppose it resembles the Boston Tea Party except with a much more direct intent! lol

This is certainly a remake of The Hollow Men by Elliot, and/or a draw on that. I think you did well with this Eric, though I didn't get many of the references on the first couple reads as I didn't knwo the history of Guy Fawkes as stated. 

The point the poem makes I think is spot on. We, America, have become the British Empire, which had become the Roman Empire. The novella 'The Heart of Darkness' addressed how Britain had gone from being a barbaric backwater in the Roman Empire, to treating the people's of Africa as the barbaric backwater of the English Empire. And now America deals with subordinates in much the same brutal way. The film Apocalypse Now was in fact a retelling of The Heart of Darkness with America as the empire. The whole point of The Heart of Darkness was how so-called civilised nations and people are as brutally barbaric as the peoples and nations considered uncivilised and barbaric. 

The Heart of Darkness  by the way was the genesis for T.S. Elliot's The Waste Land as well. The Hollow Men was made up of fragments of The Waste Land that Elliot and Pound had trimmed from it.

I don't think you should toss this Eric. 


James

Hi Dericlee

I'm sorry you feel that this work is a failure.  I think it is worth working on.  I think the idea behind it is an excellent one.

I guess my problem, sitting in a very wet London, is twofold 

Firstly, I see the tradition of Guy Fawkes as a celebration of the continuation of Monarchism (I'm sure that's not the right word but my brain doesn't always work well) over Republicanism, which is what would have happened had the plot been successful. Guy Fawkes was the scapegoat.

Actually this verse highlights that continued scapegoating very well.  A point made very powerfully:

Quote:


I guess the other reason I missed your point was that I didn't sink in that in the "we" you were referring to America.  It should have done.

Do Americans dress enemies in the garb of prior foes?

I probably haven't helped much but I do hope you can get your point across.  It's worth it.

Hi,

I'm not sure if there is confusion here or if I am confused in thinking there is. (!)

In addition to Nas's post, I would add that the plot was religious, anti-monarchial and political. This is because in England in them-there days (as in many areas of the World today) religion = politics.

Throughout the Tudors' and Stuarts' reigns (We are now in the Windsor dynasty) there was a power-struggle betwixt the prods and the RCs for power. Plots were a plenty and executions for treason and plot (actual or perceived) frequent.

England was a RC country before Henry VIII formed the Church of England because he was hacked-off by the Pope's denial of his divorce. From then on the two sides lambasted each other, chopping and changing until, finally, the Civil War was won by Parliamentarians who executed the then King (Charles I). However, his son (Charles II) later returned from exile to take his throne - but it was a throne no longer with absolute power: control had moved to the secular (though protestant in members) Parliament.

Today HM The Queen is head of the Church of England (there is a large American branch of the Anglican church) but she is a constitutional monarch. The CofE is the established church - unlike in the USA where the Founding Fathers deliberately split state and church. Ironically, however, Christianity is very unimportant in the UK, compared to the USA.

Apropos the Gunpowder Plot to explode Parliament: Guy Fawkes was only one of the conspirators but seems to have become the most famous. They were caught and tortured for information than hung, drawn and quartered - the crime High Treason.

We still burn effigies of Fawkes on bonfires on the Fifth of November - though York Grammar school does not. Fawkes was an old boy there and the school refuses to burn old boys, whatever their crimes.

Only in the last few years have we finally begun to lay to rest this historic prod-RC schism - with the power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

ep.

Hi, Nas.

Duly noted and corrected; I went back to check the text and I can only forgive myself (this time)  'cause the syntax was so garbled ya really had to already know what it was saying before reading for it to make a bit of sense!  But yeah...the plot was Papist, not the monarch.  (I might have known that, if I'd remembered my readings after high school.  It's hardly likely that the author of Basilikon Doronwould have been Catholic.  *blush* )

Nice catch, thanks.

The English have a tradition on the fifth of November,where they burn a straw man.  Often it was an effigy of Fawkes.  Later, it was an effigy of the Pope. 

Another part of that celebration is igniting tar barrels and rolling them down the streets.  (No one seems to know why.)

This was originally written for a predominantly English audience...I suppose manners could have suggested I give us poor Yanks a little more background, hmm?


Oh...Guy Fawkes Night is also known as Bonfire Night.

Burning Guy Fawkes


Contented, stifled MotherLanders
staggering through 
Bonfire Night celebration,
do you still burn the straw men, 
the Pope, or old Guy Fawkes?
(Now, there's irony for you!)
Still roll the tar barrels all ablaze?

Is this the way the world ends 
not with a bang 

but a cinder?

We learned so much
at your feet!
Yesterday's friend is today's enemy,
yesterday's enemy we still scorn.
We dress him in a Guy Fawkes mask
and call him a rose by any other name;
does he still stink?

...and now 
we've made the top; 
more reviled than you
in every venue.  Can you
hear the cries?   
"Mistah Kurtz—he dead."

But so are so many others, 
and the roll rises
at the call
and the toll rises
with each fall
as the role descends
into a hell
undreamed
and I wonder, still
do you still rock the house
roll the barrel
toll the bells

burning Guy Fawkes?   





© eric eee