"Der Friede besiegt den Krieg"
I'm following the war largely on the web (from the Agonist to Warblogs: cc) and radio, primarily the excellent BBC World Service. Print's not getting much of a look in or look at as life's too short for reading yesterday's speculation tomorrow. TV? Not much, really, as it's only worth turning on once or twice a day — you know, the same images being discussed by the same talking heads.
However, while watching N24 yesterday I did see a short report on a peace demo that took place on Saturday in, I think, Nuremberg. The day was cold, the small crowd looked bedraggled, and just I was in the course of switching off my attention the banner caught my eye. Two rather grim anti-war activists, on whom anything as delicate as irony would be lost, were carrying a standard that bore the legend "Der Friede besiegt den Krieg" (peace conquers war).
Now where had I seen this axiom before? Racking the photographic memory didn't produce results. So I made a cup of tea, and then, eureka, I had it. Pnin. Professor Timofey Pnin, Vladimir Nabokov's comic-tragic 1957 creation, flees Leninized Russia, escapes from France and spends an academic career at Waindell College, where his struggles with the American language are the stuff of legend.
Every second Tuesday Pnin drags himself along to the college's New Hall where Christopher and Louise Starr present a programme of music and movies:
"The second part of the programme consisted of an impressive Soviet documentary film, made in the late forties. It was supposed to contain not a jot of propaganda, to be all sheer art, merrymaking, and the euphoria of proud toil. Handsome, unkempt girls marched in immemorial Spring Festival with snatches of old Russian ballads such as 'Ruki proch ot Korei', 'Bas les mains devant la Cor', 'La paz vincera a la guerra', 'Der Friede besiegt den Krieg'. A flying ambulance was shown crossing a snowy range in Tajikistan. Kirghiz actors visited a sanatorium for coalminers among palm trees and staged there a spontaneous performance. In a mountain pasture somewhere in legendary Ossetia, a herdsman reported by portable radio to the local Republic's Ministry of Agriculture on the birth of a lamb. The Moscow Metro shimmered, with its columns and statues, and six would-be travellers seated on three marble benches. A factory worker's family spent a quiet evening at home, all dressed up, in a parlour choked with ornamental plants, under a great silk lampshade. Eight thousand soccer fans watched a match between Torpedo and Dynamo. Eight thousand citizens at Moscow's Electrical Equipment Plant unanimously nominated Stalin candidate from the Stalin Election District of Moscow. The latest Zim passenger model started out with the factory worker's family and a few other people for a picnic in the country. And then — "
Der Friede besiegt den Krieg. Thank God for Nabokov. Laughter is the best anti-idiot antidote at times.
Diarist of the day: Cecil King, 7 April 1968"The most important news since I last wrote has been the assassination of Martin Luther King at Memphis and the consequent rioting all over the United States, notably in Washington. The Negro problem was going to be a nightmare this summer anyway, but this murder makes a desperate situation even more so. Part of the attraction of the riots is the looting, which seems to be almost unrestrained. I always thought that when rioting breaks out, looters must be shot. Otherwise the situation will get entirely out of hand. [Lyndon] Johnson has made all the right gestures but it is exceedingly difficult to see any end to the tension, let alone the violence which seems to be in some way part of the American way of life."
