from Tom Klingenstein

Can Poetry Save a Nation?

By David P. Goldman

David Playing the Harp Before Saul, by Silvestro Legga, c. 1852.

In a globalized world, why should anyone want to be German, French, Spanish, or Hungarian? “None of the above” isn’t a full-credit answer to the question of national identity. This is the great existential question for the West. Nations are the carriers of cultural continuity. Without the hope that future generations will speak our language, remember our struggles, understand our prayers, and continue our labors, we lose our motivation to bring children into the world. There exists a lullaby in Esperanto, but it has never put a baby to sleep. Only national language embedded in a national culture can provide a bridge between past, present, and future.

Poetry plays an irreplaceable role in the enlivenment of the past and the evocation of the future — not just the national classics, but the less pretentious efforts of popular poets. Molière’s bourgeois gentleman was surprised to learn that he had been speaking prose all his life. The precise opposite is the case: Wittingly or not, we cannot help but speak poetry. Every national language inherits unique poetic expressiveness from its particular tradition. The great poets, and even popular poets on occasion, refine and elevate the poetic content of everyday language. That explains why poetry resonates so powerfully: It awakens a dimension of our thought that lies dormant in everyday speech and makes us conscious of our identity.

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