As the New Year dawns, we all experience the ardent hope of renewal, that feeling that we can embark upon new ventures and climb fresh heights. Much of this hope turns to dust and ashes within a few days as the deadly ties of routine strangle us, but enough survives to warm our blood and to keep alive our ambitious endeavours. We feel we are setting out on a new beginning, heavy with joyous anticipation.
It is part of the human tragedy that these beginnings often fail to reach fruition. On the current political stage, the Arab Spring is a prime example. So much energy and idealism has been poured into this movement in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya; so much brave blood has been shed in Syria and Yemen. The outcome of these very different revolutions remains uncertain; will the old dictatorial forces reassert themselves, will an ugly Islamic fundamentalism fill the gap or will some tentative steps be taken towards a more open and democratic society? We know these nations are on the brink of something but are not sure whether it is a progressive leap forward or a dark abyss. We remember too the exciting hopes of the Prague Spring of 1968, snuffed out mercilessly by the Soviet Bloc’s tanks. Yet we can take much heart from the example of India and Nehru’s great 1947 speech “We made a Tryst with Destiny” delivered a few hours before Independence. He knew it was an historic new chapter for his country and despite the subsequent horrors of sectarian murder at Partition, India has become an admirably free and secular nation.
Renewal in the old Soviet Union, brought on by Gorbachev’s brave policies of Perestroika (restructuring) and Glasnost (openness) eventually led to the mainly peaceful dissolution of the Soviet empire and the ending of the huge anxiety in the West caused by Soviet ambition. Better days for Russia had dawned. Mind you, one man’s dawn is another’s nightmare; here in Greece the group known as Golden Dawn is overtly neo-Nazi and its cowardly toughs occasionally rampage through Athens beating up the unpopular and friendless immigrant community.
The early feeling of joyous anticipation has its parallel in the musical overture and prelude. The overture excites and stimulates us to expect great things of the main work. Sadly the overture is often the best part, just as the hors d’oeuvre is often better than the entrée. Suppe’s operas Poet and Peasant or Light Cavalry have disappeared into the dustiest of archives along with Reznicek’s Donna Diana while most of Rossini’s operas are similarly forgotten. In due course the overture became a self-standing composition and there are no operas to raise their curtains after the joys of the 1812, Academic Festival or Tragic overtures. However, many overtures add lustre to fine operas – Figaro’s muscular overture precedes a heavenly work ending in a glorious reconciliation climax while Wagner’s ravishing preludes to Lohengrin complement one of his finest mythic compositions. The beginning ushers in a great artistic achievement.
For some, young promise and potential are their central achievement. Over a long life, JD Salinger never matched The Catcher in the Rye. Even Wordsworth, the wonderfully lyric young poet of The Prelude, relapsed into middle-aged mediocrity. Jean Sibelius, gloriously prolific up to his 40s, weighed down by honours and pensions from the Finnish state, fell silent completely in 1926 until he died in 1957. In Adonais, Shelley mourns those poets who died young, Keats, Lucan, Sidney and Chatterton – we would have added Shelley himself – “extinct in their refulgent prime” in his memorable phrase. Yet all of the above produced fine work; it is unfair to categorise their lives as promise unfulfilled. At worst we might describe their work as “inchoate” (started but not wholly finished), a word I first encountered in Thomas Wolfe’s rousing 1929 novel Look Homeward, Angel – Wolfe himself dying at an early 38.
Despite all the obstacles, humanity can change and come to triumphant conclusions. The Renaissance broke the shackles of medieval mental restriction: the Enlightenment started to expel superstition and fanaticism from the psyche of educated mankind and substitute rational thought. In politics, the Risorgimento (Re-awakening) created a modern new Italy and we hope the Good Friday Agreements will finally end the long agony of Ireland’s tortured conflicts and bring happiness and security to the whole island.
So let us embark on new ventures, dream new dreams and resolve to be better people. New Year is the moment of renewal. As Macbeth declaims -“Screw our courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail!”
SMD
2.1.12
Copyright Sidney Donald 2012
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