Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (31 page)

The young professor said, “No, I mean no harm to the law of gravitation, but for my part, I can go without it.”

“What do you mean, go without it?”

He said, “I can tell you about that afterward.”

The world is not a rectilinear world: It is a curvilinear world. The heavenly bodies go in curves because that is the natural way for them to go, and so the whole Newtonian universe crumpled up and was succeeded by the Einstein universe. Here in England, he is a wonderful man.

This man is not challenging the fact of science; he is challenging the action of science. Not only is he challenging the action of science, but the action of science has surrendered to his challenge.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for the toast? I drink to the greatest of our contemporaries, Einstein.

Known to his loyal Indian followers as the Mahatma (variously translated as “Great Soul” or “Teacher”), Mohandas K. Gandhi spent his lifetime perfecting the techniques of nonviolence and “fasts unto death” to achieve political goals. In 1948, however, he was shot to death by a Hindu extremist who held him responsible for the 1947 partition of India into the nations of India and Pakistan, a partition that Gandhi himself had fought without success.

In the aftermath of Gandhi’s assassination, Jawaharlal Nehru, the
prime minister of India, stood before the Constituent Assembly in New Delhi to offer a stirring tribute to the dead leader, who had been his lifelong friend. Although their vision of India was not the same—the Mahatma hoped for an agrarian society, Nehru for an industrial nation—the two were united in opposition to British rule.

Nehru’s eulogy for Gandhi, delivered on February 2, 1948, makes extended use of poetic language (“A glory has departed”) and repetition (“All we know is that there was a glory and that it is no more; all we know is that for the moment there is darkness”). In describing the sadness that pervades India at Gandhi’s passing, Nehru acknowledges the widespread feeling of loss and honestly admits, “I do not know when we shall be able to get rid of it.” He does, however, offer the consolation of Gandhi’s enlightenment; throughout the eulogy, in fact, he stresses the imagery of light and darkness to illuminate the loss of “this man of divine fire.”

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…A GLORY HAS
departed and the sun that warmed and brightened our lives has set, and we shiver in the cold and dark. Yet he would not have us feel this way. After all, that glory that we saw for all these years, that man with the divine fire, changed us also—and such as we are, we have been molded by him during these years; and out of that divine fire many of us also took a small spark which strengthened and made us work to some extent on the lines that he fashioned. And so if we praise him, our words seem rather small, and if we praise him, to some extent we also praise ourselves. Great men and eminent men have monuments in bronze and marble set up for them, but this man of divine fire managed in his lifetime to become enshrined in millions and millions of hearts so that all of us became somewhat of the stuff that he was made of, though to an infinitely lesser degree. He spread out in this way all over India, not in palaces only, or in select places or in assemblies, but in every hamlet and hut of the lowly and those who suffer. He lives in the hearts of millions and he will live for immemorial ages.

What, then, can we say about him except to feel humble on this occasion? To praise him we are not worthy—to praise him whom we could not follow adequately and sufficiently. It is almost doing him an injustice just to pass him by with words when he demanded work and labor and sacrifice from us; in a large measure he made this country, during the last thirty years or more, attain to heights of sacrifice which in that particular domain have never been equaled elsewhere. He succeeded in that. Yet ultimately things happened which no doubt made him suffer
tremendously, though his tender face never lost its smile and he never spoke a harsh word to anyone. Yet, he must have suffered—suffered for the failing of this generation whom he had trained, suffered because we went away from the path that he had shown us. And ultimately the hand of a child of his—for he, after all, is as much a child of his as any other Indian—the hand of a child of his struck him down.

Long ages afterwards history will judge of this period that we have passed through. It will judge of the successes and the failures—we are too near it to be proper judges and to understand what has happened and what has not happened. All we know is that there was a glory and that it is no more; all we know is that for the moment there is darkness, not so dark certainly, because when we look into our hearts we still find the living flame which he lighted there. And if those living flames exist, there will not be darkness in this land, and we shall be able, with our effort, remembering him and following his path, to illumine this land again, small as we are, but still with the fire that he instilled into us.

He was perhaps the greatest symbol of the India of the past, and may I say, of the India of the future, that we could have had. We stand on this perilous edge of the present, between that past and the future to be, and we face all manner of perils. And the greatest peril is sometimes the lack of faith which comes to us, the sense of frustration that comes to us, the sinking of the heart and of the spirit that comes to us when we see ideals go overboard, when we see the great things that we talked about somehow pass into empty words, and life taking a different course. Yet, I do believe that perhaps this period will pass soon enough.

He has gone, and all over India there is a feeling of having been left desolate and forlorn. All of us sense that feeling, and I do not know when we shall be able to get rid of it. And yet together with that feeling there is also a feeling of proud thankfulness that it has been given to us of this generation to be associated with this mighty person. In ages to come, centuries and maybe millennia after us, people will think of this generation when this man of God trod on earth, and will think of us who, however small, could also follow his path and tread the holy ground where his feet had been. Let us be worthy of him.

Less than a month before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy spoke at Amherst College, in Massachusetts, on October 27, 1963, to praise American poet Robert Frost. The poet, a striking figure with windblown hair at the inauguration of our thirty-fifth president, had died in January 1963, and the tribute that Kennedy paid him became a memorable statement on the value of the arts in American society. Quotations from the president’s speech, in fact, may be found carved in his Washington memorial, the Kennedy Center.

President Kennedy’s speech for this formal occasion emphasized poetry (“he knew the midnight as well as the high noon”) and balance (“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers”). He freely cited Frost’s poetry, and he also quoted poet Archibald MacLeish, who attended the ceremony honoring Frost.

Particularly effective is Kennedy’s use of a favored construction of speechwriters. His anaphora in beginning a series of sentences with “I look forward” dates back at least to 1876, in the repeated “I see a world” clauses that were used by Robert Green Ingersoll.

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…THIS DAY, DEVOTED
to the memory of Robert Frost, offers an opportunity for reflection which is prized by politicians as well as by others and even by poets. For Robert Frost was one of the granite figures of our time in America. He was supremely two things—an artist and an American.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

In America our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments. But today this college and country honors a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit; not to our political beliefs but to our insight; not to our self-esteem but to our self-comprehension.

In honoring Robert Frost, we therefore can pay honor to the deepest sources of our national strength. That strength takes many forms, and the most obvious forms are not always the most significant.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation’s greatness. But the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested.

For they determine whether we use power or power uses us. Our national strength matters; but the spirit which informs and controls our strength matters just as much. This was the special significance of Robert Frost.

He brought an unsparing instinct for reality to bear on the platitudes and pieties of society. His sense of the human tragedy fortified him against self-deception and easy consolation.

“I have been,” he wrote, “one acquainted with the night.”

And because he knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair.

At bottom he held a deep faith in the spirit of man. And it’s hardly an accident that Robert Frost coupled poetry and power. For he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.

The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, “a lover’s quarrel with the world.” In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role.

If Robert Frost was much honored during his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths.

Yet in retrospect we see how the artist’s fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life. If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their
concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential.

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, “There is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style.”

In free society, art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the sphere of polemics and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul.

It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society—in it—the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may.

In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man—“the fate of having nothing to look backward to with pride and nothing to look forward to with hope.”

I look forward to a great future for America—a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our national environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.

I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.

And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.

And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

Robert Frost was often skeptical about projects for human improvement. Yet I do not think he would disdain this hope.

As he wrote during the uncertain days of the Second War:

Because of Mr. Frost’s life and work, because of the life and work of this college, our hold on this planet has increased.

While campaigning in Indianapolis for the Democratic nomination for president, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was told of the assassination on April 4, 1968, of the nation’s preeminent black leader, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. The senator, scheduled to speak to a black audience that night, was warned by police that the crowd would be furious and might be dangerous; however, with a shield of personal courage and the memory of the loss of his own brother to an assassin’s bullet, he went and broke the news to the crowd.