"Much has
been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not even yet realize
what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make mankind
into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the members would smile
at my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think
that I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of
them will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse — would
be any worse — than to make him into a slave — than it was to enact the
Fugitive Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual
incapacity, of making a distinction without a difference. The one
is just as sensible a proposition as the other.
(…)
The foul slime
stands for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant
flower that springs from it, for the purity and courage which are
immortal.
Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented
flower annually, to charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they
are merely a decaying and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not
complain that they live, but that they do not get buried.
Let the living bury them: even they are good for manure."
Slavery in Massachusetts
by Henry David Thoreau
ThoreauTransforms
His Journal into “Slavery in Massachusetts”
I think the real
lesson Thoreau intended is not his life-style; not even his two-year
prescription for cure. It is his attitude. And of this, as the
Editors of Time remind us, Walt Whitman's portrait is the best: "Thoreau's
lawlessness -- his dissent -- his going his own absolute road let hell blaze
all it chooses". This, I think, has been a distinguishing mark of the
American character, ever present in its folklore, its politics, its classical
and popular art, even in what Americans admire of other cultures -- just watch, if not,
Hallmark's production of Merlin."
Notes on the "Complemental Verse"
by René Pinet (Bahia,
Mexico)
Liberty lies in the
hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court
can even do much to help it.
Learned Hand
Los momentos más terribles de las crisis trágicas y la caída de las víctimas siempre inocentes son aquellos que ponen al descubierto, progresivamente, a un número mayor de personas no sólo las “tonterías” interesadas sino los crímenes con que – como si fueran “tonterías”- se gobierna el mundo.
Comienza entonces una lucha de resultado imprevisible contra quienes pretenden gobernar el mundo con sus “tonterías” criminales.
Thoreau advirtió de ello en la crisis de la esclavitud de su tiempo prolongada en el nuestro.Así lo recuerda también, hoy, Wendell Berry:
Because we have not made our lives to fit
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded,
the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
of what it is that no other place is, and by
your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this
knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth.
It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask
for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land
and your work. Be still and listen to the voices that belong
to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.
Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.
The world is no better than its places. Its places at last
are no better than their people while their people
continue in them. When the people make
dark the light within them, the world darkens.
The light turned into darkness that Dylan shows here
Come here I'll break your lousy head
Our nation must be saved and freed
You've been accused of murder, how do you plead?
This is how I spend my days
I came to bury, not to raise
I'll drink my fill and sleep alone
I play in blood, but not my own
Bob Dylan
https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/pay-blood/
