Great tragedies moves at a slow pace, almost
as if nothing at all will change.
A slowly growing untidiness in the streets,
a slowly growing untidiness of the soul,
a desperation in disguise of fatigue,
a growing unease
looking for relief in entertainment.
High waves breaking with a roaring clash,
so loud that nobody will hear it.
Innumerable misstakes,
a few big ones, but mostly small,
innumerable thefts from the Common
by innumerable thiefs
(and if you say you’re not one of them
you’re either a fool or an impostor!),
men and women seeking petty advantages
in fear of the liberating force of Love,
and the old ones leaving the young behind
without guidance or ideal
– everything secretly adding
to the slowly rising wave.
There are those of us who long for it to come,
the great wave of the decade, of the century,
to triumphantly surf on its sparkling edge
like Gods returning home, shining in the sun,
to take possession of what is theirs.
And all along the river Tiber flows
calmly and without concern through the busy city
– like someone who has seen it once before.
But with tragedy comes heroes
and with great tragedies great heroes
– no tragedy is complete without them!
But who will come this time
nobody knows, not even the hero himself.
Real heroes are unaware of themselves,
they don’t consider themselves as heroes but men,
ordinary men, who do what they must do
since no one else seems to do it.
This is the secret of their strenght,
that they don’t know who they really are
until they stand there in the middle with the burden
of all these gazes, filled with Faith and Hope.
That’s why heroes emerge
so sudden, so unexpected,
before we knew that we needed them,
or in a moment of utter despair,
when the cause seems lost
and even the strongest among us resigns.
Suddenly they stand there before us – glowing
with the courage we all lack
and all long for.
Suddenly everything has changed
because we have!
While the grown-ups are blinded by their cunning self
that prefer social profit
to the soul’s salvation by Thruth,
the children can still see
– and sometimes they point and ask
why the emperor is standing there stark naked.
The child with a heart full of magic stories
and the man with a child’s heart
(he who still remembers all the myths and legends
exiled by Enlightenment to the land of Irrationality)
– those rare creatures that by effortless love
bridge the void between the land of dark mills
and the hero’s quest for fire,
may look beyond themselves and recognize,
may see the sudden glow that surrounds
these seemingly ordinary men,
nothing obviously heroic about them,
definitively nothing godlike or superhuman,
no armour and no weapons, just a man
dressed pretty much like the rest of us,
a clerk perhaps, perhaps a theacher
or somebody working at a construction site
somewhere on the outskirts of town.
But the glow is there all around him,
strange and intangible, but undeniable,
and the child gazes, filled with a sudden joy.
”That’s Hector standing there!”, he says.
”That’s Leonidas, Mom, can’t you see?”
He will not hesitate, he will not surrender,
he stands as were he many, but he’s one.
The mother smiles at her little boy.
He really loves those stories
and talks about them all the time!
But the boy insists with surprising sincerity,
and filled with warmth for her radiant son
she looks in the direction of his tiny finger
(intending to say that it’s not quite polite to point finger at people),
when she sees the man standing there – standing in the glow,
the sudden glow that fills her.
”There are no heroes”, she says to herself.
But the man, he’s standing there – standing there in the glow,
and the glow is everywhere around him – it’s undeniable,
and she is filled with a sudden shiver
that almost makes her loose her balance.
There he stands, smiling at the pointing little boy,
a kind smile, an ordinary man’s kind smile,
and she trembles as if everything had changed
and everything was possible again…
The waves are rising like liberated
Titans, not enraged or hateful like slaves,
but solemn and dignified, rising
with an unstoppable desire to fulfill
their destiny to destroy the world
and create a new one.
How different everything will be
when once they’ve passed, and our memories
take on the resemblance of a dream!
But there will be life, human life,
of one form or another,
I am certain of it,
and the hero’s quest is to bring the fire
across the void, the fire
which is his soul,
which is his belief in Victory.
In ancient Greece every city-state had its own hero,
and the city was said to be founded by him.
As with most myths, there is a hidden truth here
– the nameless ancestor that once united the people
and gave them the name that slowly grew
into history and identity.
The hero’s quest is to accept his destiny
as written in the admiring gaze of little boys,
accept the almost unbearable burden of Hope
of all the men and women
that in him recognizes what they all long for,
and so become the man he truly is.
The hero’s quest is to return
as a legend.
Ps.
Jag har haft en del svårigheter med denna text. Inspirationen kom till mig på engelska, och då får man acceptera det och vara tacksam över att den inte valde ett språk som man behärskar ännu sämre. Fast kanske är det alltid samma sak? Kanske är språket alltid mer eller mindre främmande för den vision eller idé som vill komma till uttryck? Alla korrigeringar och förslag till förbättringar tas hur som helst emot med tacksamhet.
Om skribenten: Jonas Åberg
