Patriotism and Dorothy Dunnett
Oct. 16th, 2003 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatI wasn’t going to write an entry tonight, but I just finished Dorothy Dunnett’s Game of Kings and the book is playing with my head, the way books often do.
For those who haven’t read Dorothy Dunnett. She is an English historical writer similar to Patrick O’Brien and Bernard Cornwell, except her stories remind me more of Alexander Dumas with their shades of romance and sword-play and density of language. The Game of Kings, Book I of the Lymond Chronicles, takes place in 16th century Scotland of the 1500s. (I’ve never understood why 1500’s are called the 16th century and not the 15th, any more than I understand why 2000 is considered the 21st and not the 20th, but then numbers aren’t my thing. It took my parents forever to explain the whole concept of telling time to me as a child. And percentages? Forget about it. I also tend to flip numbers in my mind – sixes become nines, and musical notes? Same problem. May explain why I can’t remember the names of bands or their type of music unless I’ve listened to them recently. Music and math is interrelated I’m told.) At any rate, the book is about a Scottish Scoundrel who appears for all intents and purposes irredeemable, a complete amoral rogue, then as the book unravels we learn he’s a hero posing as a rogue in an attempt to redeem his good name and protect Scotland from an English conspiracy. The book is a bit like reading a chess-match, with moves and countermoves. And the characters are rich and multi-layered.
It was first published in 1961. Yet it still contains themes and messages that are relevant today. One such message is playing with my head tonight. Like most writers Dunnett conveys her message through the tongue of her lead character, in this case, Lymond.
It is rather long so forgive me for paraphrasing:
“Patriotism like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itselt out of the spiritual market altogether. It is an emotion as well and of course the emotion comes first. A child’s home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbors, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe.”
I wonder about this statement. It says so much about our current foreign policies, even though the statement is about a territorial conflict that happened centuries ago. A conflict that seems hardly important to outside eyes – now that Scotland and England are one country under one sovereign. At the time, they were not, Scotland had it’s own sovereign and was involved with France for protection against the English. I’m no historian – this information is taken mostly from Dunnett’s novel – which I’m told is accurate. Now, I listen to news commentaries about countries at war with countries on their boundaries for reasons ranging from ethnicity to commerce. And in my country – the battle cry for the last year has been “patriotism”. You are either with us or against us! If you aren’t, you aren’t patriotic. I love my country and the people in it, well most of the time, and consider myself patriotic. But I do not believe war solves any thing, except more death and destruction. History shows that in rare circumstances is anything accomplished by sending men and women to kill other men and women for reasons understood mostly by politicians and no one else. So I wonder if there is not some truth to this statement of Dunnett’s? That our tendency to single out people as foes or irredeemable or our enemy merely because of environmental factors is placing a bit too low a price on human life and too high a one on the value of intangible concepts.
As if to answer my query, Dunnett goes on to state through Lymond’s lips:
“Patriotism. It is an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism;loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power – These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave. And whose to say they are wrong? There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?”
I wonder the same now more than a decade after Dunnett wrote this. I wonder why we spend millions of dollars on defense when people are starving, homeless and without healthcare? I know it’s more complex than that, as Dunnett so cleverly states. But I wonder what price peace? When do we stop caring whether someone is a different color, race, creed, religion or nationality? Not that caring is wrong per se…but when it leads to hating, it is. What price tolerance? Maybe too high, methinks. The older I get the more I wonder if world peace just lies forever beyond our grasp. If our own inherent, somewhat competitive, dog eat dog nature prevents it. Perhaps like Cain we are doomed to forever kill our metaphorical brothers, unable to comprehend the simplicity of the phrase turn the other cheek as opposed to the far more damning eye for an eye…?
(Well, now that I've completed Dunnett, I think I'll read Young Miles by Lois MacMaster Bujold)
For those who haven’t read Dorothy Dunnett. She is an English historical writer similar to Patrick O’Brien and Bernard Cornwell, except her stories remind me more of Alexander Dumas with their shades of romance and sword-play and density of language. The Game of Kings, Book I of the Lymond Chronicles, takes place in 16th century Scotland of the 1500s. (I’ve never understood why 1500’s are called the 16th century and not the 15th, any more than I understand why 2000 is considered the 21st and not the 20th, but then numbers aren’t my thing. It took my parents forever to explain the whole concept of telling time to me as a child. And percentages? Forget about it. I also tend to flip numbers in my mind – sixes become nines, and musical notes? Same problem. May explain why I can’t remember the names of bands or their type of music unless I’ve listened to them recently. Music and math is interrelated I’m told.) At any rate, the book is about a Scottish Scoundrel who appears for all intents and purposes irredeemable, a complete amoral rogue, then as the book unravels we learn he’s a hero posing as a rogue in an attempt to redeem his good name and protect Scotland from an English conspiracy. The book is a bit like reading a chess-match, with moves and countermoves. And the characters are rich and multi-layered.
It was first published in 1961. Yet it still contains themes and messages that are relevant today. One such message is playing with my head tonight. Like most writers Dunnett conveys her message through the tongue of her lead character, in this case, Lymond.
It is rather long so forgive me for paraphrasing:
“Patriotism like honesty is a luxury with a very high face value which is quickly pricing itselt out of the spiritual market altogether. It is an emotion as well and of course the emotion comes first. A child’s home and the ways of its life are sacrosanct, perfect, inviolate to the child. Add age; add security; add experience. In time we all admit our relatives and our neighbors, our fellow townsmen and even, perhaps our fellow nationals to the threshold of tolerance. But the man living one inch beyond the boundary is an inveterate foe.”
I wonder about this statement. It says so much about our current foreign policies, even though the statement is about a territorial conflict that happened centuries ago. A conflict that seems hardly important to outside eyes – now that Scotland and England are one country under one sovereign. At the time, they were not, Scotland had it’s own sovereign and was involved with France for protection against the English. I’m no historian – this information is taken mostly from Dunnett’s novel – which I’m told is accurate. Now, I listen to news commentaries about countries at war with countries on their boundaries for reasons ranging from ethnicity to commerce. And in my country – the battle cry for the last year has been “patriotism”. You are either with us or against us! If you aren’t, you aren’t patriotic. I love my country and the people in it, well most of the time, and consider myself patriotic. But I do not believe war solves any thing, except more death and destruction. History shows that in rare circumstances is anything accomplished by sending men and women to kill other men and women for reasons understood mostly by politicians and no one else. So I wonder if there is not some truth to this statement of Dunnett’s? That our tendency to single out people as foes or irredeemable or our enemy merely because of environmental factors is placing a bit too low a price on human life and too high a one on the value of intangible concepts.
As if to answer my query, Dunnett goes on to state through Lymond’s lips:
“Patriotism. It is an opulent word, a mighty key to a royal Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. Patriotism;loyalty; a true conviction that of all the troubled and striving world, the soil of one fathers is noblest and best. A celestial competition for the best breed of man; a vehicle for shedding boredom and exercising surplus power or surplus talents or surplus money; an immature and bigoted intolerance which becomes the coin of barter in the markets of power – These are not patriots but martyrs, dying in cheerful self-interest as the Christians died in the pleasant conviction of grace, leaving their example by chance to brood beneath the water and rise, miraculously, to refresh the centuries. The cry is raised: Our land is glorious under the sun. I have a need to believe it, they say. It is a virtue to believe it; and therefore I shall wring from this unassuming clod a passion and a power and a selflessness that otherwise would be laid unquickened in the grave. And whose to say they are wrong? There are those who will always cleave to the living country, and who with their uprooted imaginations might well make of it an instrument for good. Is it quite beyond us in this land? Is there no one will take up this priceless thing and say, Here is a nation, with such a soul; with such talents; with these failings and this native worth? In what fashion can this one people be brought to live in full vigour and serenity, and who, in their compassion and wisdom, will take it and lead it into the path?”
I wonder the same now more than a decade after Dunnett wrote this. I wonder why we spend millions of dollars on defense when people are starving, homeless and without healthcare? I know it’s more complex than that, as Dunnett so cleverly states. But I wonder what price peace? When do we stop caring whether someone is a different color, race, creed, religion or nationality? Not that caring is wrong per se…but when it leads to hating, it is. What price tolerance? Maybe too high, methinks. The older I get the more I wonder if world peace just lies forever beyond our grasp. If our own inherent, somewhat competitive, dog eat dog nature prevents it. Perhaps like Cain we are doomed to forever kill our metaphorical brothers, unable to comprehend the simplicity of the phrase turn the other cheek as opposed to the far more damning eye for an eye…?
(Well, now that I've completed Dunnett, I think I'll read Young Miles by Lois MacMaster Bujold)
Lymond & politics
Date: 2003-10-17 10:16 am (UTC)There's a book by Donald Kagan called The Origins of War, which examines wars as ancient as the Athens-Sparta city-state conflicts, and more recent wars. Haven't read the whole thing, but one of its points is that nations go to war under a variety of circumstances, many of which have more to do with the perception of their political status than any actual tactical threat. And then, the perception of the conflict itself will be manipulated, by all sides, by outsiders, by historians, etc. So, there's this huge disconnect between the reality of war and the perception of war.
Lymond is in a unique position to comment on these matters because he is both a privileged nobleman and an experienced soldier; a polyglot educated in a foreign land (France) and a landowner with longstanding familial ties to his country. He sees the different issues pulling at each side and then works the problem like a chess master. Yes, he cannot avoid allegiances but he's not naive enough to trust his own side any more than he trusts "the bad guys." And as the series continues, there is less and less a sense of who is a good guy and who is a bad guy, at least on the national level. It gets more and more gray. His opponent in one war becomes a confidant and advisor a few books down the line. His confidant and advisor in another conflict becomes his nemesis in yet another situation.
Anyway, it's great stuff and great fun to analyze. Weirdly enough, although I don't think Joss Whedon has any where near the political acuity that Dunnett had, there are quite a few Dunnett fans who are also Whedon fans. One of the Dunnett lists, the Marzipan Yahoo group spun off a Sunnydale U group for BtVS/AtS discussion. I'll send you the url's if you're interested (but probably a good idea to wait until you've finished the LC series if you don't want to get spoiled).
punkinpuss
Re: Lymond & politics
Date: 2003-10-17 10:34 am (UTC)Thanks for the information. Just from reading the first book, I can see how incredibly grey the world is that Lymond inhabits. In some ways far greyer than the world Whedon has created. For a television series - Whedon has done a good job of making things somewhat complex and morally grey - more so on Angel than Buffy. Buffy got awfully black and white at times. Angel with it's redemption mythos and noir leanings tends to be greyer.
The central character more of an anti-hero than a hero.
When Buffy shows up on Angel in cross-over's she's less heroic and far less sympathetic. In some ways Angel's universe is closer to both our own and to Dunnett's.
I think part of the appeal to many Dunnett fans of Whedon's writings and vice versa is the complex character of Spike, who in some ways is reminiscent of Francis Crawford of Lymond. A seemingly effete character who seems to be one thing on the surface, yet something quite different underneath. The fun is in watching the writers unravel the layers. Grey characters or morally ambiguous characters thrill us, because they are both unpredictable and they often respond to the world in ways that deep inside we wish we could. They explore the darkness in us.
Thanks for the response.