Tuesday, May 20: "Smart lad, to slip betimes away/From fields where glory does not stay. . . Now you will not swell the rout/Of lads that wore their honors out..."
In these last weeks of school, where none of them are paying much attention anyway, I, at least, have been enjoying "To An Athlete Dying Young." There are so many examples of "runners (or actors, politicians, writers, artists, musicians) whom renown outran/and the name died before the man (woman)." Who remembers that the old withered person in the nursing home was once the Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt of their day, but has long been forgotten?
According to Housman, a person who dies young at the peak of fame, will be forever remembered as the fresh, youthful star full of promise who was cut off in his/her prime. His poem suggests that it's better to quit while you're ahead and die young. Naturally, who doesn't think of Princess Diana or the Kennedy's in this context? In a Dorian Grayish sort of way, the portraits of Jack or Bobby look younger every year to the aging people who still remember them.
The books about them just won't seem to quit, as if there's anything new to be said after all these years. Yet someone must be perpetually interested; books about "dead athletes" like the Kennedys are always best-sellers. Dead athletes become heroes who are forever frozen in time and hold a renowned place in the public's mind and curiosity, just as Housman said.
A few years ago, I read an interesting article in the SMN, in which a World War II veteran recalled a near-death experience during the war: he had evacuated a crashing plane, but his parachute didn't open. He soared down through the sky, knowing that this was it; he was going to die, but somehow at the last minute before he hit the ground, something absorbed his fall, I don't remember exactly, he might have landed in a haystack (just like in some corny cartoon) or in a tree, or something, but he'd lived to tell about it. The event had been forty-some years earlier. Now, the article mentioned as an afterthought, the man was currently dying of lung cancer. This story powerfully emphasized how he had lived against all odds during WWII, only to die of cancer now. Although this seems so banally obvious, this entertaining story, somehow, sent the message in a vivid and memorable way: he lived, only to die. But now he would die as an old man, probably forgotten as the brave war hero he once was, other than the occasional Veteran's Day interview in the local paper.
Ted Kennedy, the only Kennedy brother of four to reach old age, had some close calls during his youth: a plane crash and the accident at Chappaquidick. Unlike the other three brothers, who died young and violently without fulfilling their promise, Ted has served the country for 46 years. By having stayed alive long enough, his failings, all the warts and flaws, have become much more public than any secrets of the other martyred brothers and the handsome late nephew. Would Jack or Bobby or JFK Jr. have eventually divorced, had they lived? Would they have been caught having affairs? Would any alcoholic problems have been revealed?
Yet, contrary to what Housman would have predicted, Ted has not faded into oblivion; at 76, he is still renowned by an adoring public. Since the brain tumor diagnosis, he has received immeasurable outpourings of concern from far and wide.
Along with "Athlete", I like to teach Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" because the two are such a good contrasting pair. Today in class, I played an audio of "Do Not Go Gentle" and asked the students to compare the messages of the two poems---not that the students were all that interested, but I enjoyed it. Thomas' message suggests that every moment of a person's time alive, yes even right into old age, is important and should be held onto. "Old age should burn and rave at the close of day;/Rage, rage against the dying of the light." This poem's attitude is a better fit for the last Kennedy than Housman's.
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