Wednesday
Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian whose book On Tyranny is essential reading for anyone interested in the rise of authoritarianism, has a great article in the latest Foreign Policy on the necessity of Ukraine resisting Russia. Had Czechoslovakia in 1937 responded to Hitler as Ukraine has responded to Putin—and had it received the kind of military aid that Ukraine is now receiving—Hitler would have been thwarted and World War II averted, Snyder believes. I report on the article here because of Snyder’s literary references.
Snyder straightforwardly sets forth in the first paragraph what is at stake in the Russo-Ukrainian War:
Russia, an aging tyranny, seeks to destroy Ukraine, a defiant democracy. A Ukrainian victory would confirm the principle of self-rule, allow the integration of Europe to proceed, and empower people of goodwill to return reinvigorated to other global challenges. A Russian victory, by contrast, would extend genocidal policies in Ukraine, subordinate Europeans, and render any vision of a geopolitical European Union obsolete. Should Russia continue its illegal blockade of the Black Sea, it could starve Africans and Asians, who depend on Ukrainian grain, precipitating a durable international crisis that will make it all but impossible to deal with common threats such as climate change. A Russian victory would strengthen fascists and other tyrants, as well as nihilists who see politics as nothing more than a spectacle designed by oligarchs to distract ordinary citizens from the destruction of the world. This war, in other words, is about establishing principles for the twenty-first century. It is about policies of mass death and about the meaning of life in politics. It is about the possibility of a democratic future.
To undergird his point, Snyder then turns to the Greek myth where Athena and Poseidon contend to be the patron god of Athens. Snyder turns to the ancient Greeks because (1) the idea of democracy originated in 5th century Athens and (2) Athens once had sea ports in what is modern day Ukraine. For Snyder, the contention between Athena and Poseidon is that between a vision of democracy as “tranquility, a life of thoughtful deliberation and consumption” and a vision of democracy as armed struggle. Although the first is more essential, Snyder says, both are necessary, a point that the story makes clear. First, Athena:
According to the Athenian legend of [democracy’s] origin, the deities Poseidon and Athena offered gifts to the citizens to win the status of patron. Poseidon, the god of the sea, struck the ground with his trident, causing the earth to tremble and saltwater to spring forth. He was offering Athenians the power of the sea and strength in war, but they blanched at the taste of brine. Then Athena planted an olive seed, which sprouted into an olive tree. It offered shade for contemplation, olives for eating, and oil for cooking. Athena’s gift was deemed superior, and the city took her name and patronage.
Athena is not enough, however, as Ukraine knows only too well. The city therefore finds a place for Poseidon as well:
Yet Athens had to win wars to survive. The most famous defense of democracy, the funeral oration of Pericles, is about the harmony of risk and freedom. Poseidon had a point about war: sometimes the trident must be brought down. He was also making a case for interdependence. Prosperity, and sometimes survival, depends on sea trade. How, after all, could a small city-state such as Athens afford to devote its limited soil to olives? Ancient Athenians were nourished by grain brought from the north coast of the Black Sea, grown in the black earth of what is now southern Ukraine.
Snyder proceeds to analyze Putin’s fascism—how it resembles Hitler’s and Mussolini’s—and then draws an interesting analogy (interesting to literature enthusiasts, anyway) between literary criticism and literature. I especially like what he says about literature providing us with a solid foundation from which to act:
The defense of Putin’s regime has been offered by people operating as literary critics, ever disassembling and dissembling. Ukrainian resistance, embodied by President Volodymyr Zelensky, has been more like literature: careful attention to art, no doubt, but for the purpose of articulating values. If all one has is literary criticism, one accepts that everything melts into air and concedes the values that make democratic politics possible. But when one has literature, one experiences a certain solidity, a sense that embodying values is more interesting and more courageous than dismissing or mocking them.
Creation comes before critique and outlasts it; action is better than ridicule. As Pericles put it, “We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands.”
Yes, literature is all about hearts and real life. While I think Snyder may be overly negative about literary criticism—the best lit crit comes from the heart and is grounded in the same values as literature—I get his point. He’s drawing a distinction between the cynical Putin and the grounded Zelensky.
Snyder finds an author who is so grounded in Euripides. The name comes up in a discussion of what it takes to preserve democracy. How Zelensky has stood up to Putin, Snyder says, has been critical:
[D]emocracy demands “earnest struggle,” as the American abolitionist Frederick Douglass said. Ukrainian resistance to what appeared to be overwhelming force reminded the world that democracy is not about accepting the apparent verdict of history. It is about making history; striving toward human values despite the weight of empire, oligarchy, and propaganda; and, in so doing, revealing previously unseen possibilities.
Then comes the mention of Euripides:
On the surface, Zelensky’s simple truth that “the president is here” was meant to undo Russian propaganda, which was claiming that he had fled the city. But the video, shot in the open air as Kyiv was under attack, was also a recovery of the meaning of freedom of speech, which has been forgotten. The Greek playwright Euripides understood that the purpose of freedom of speech was to speak truth to power. The free speaker clarifies a dangerous world not only with what he says but by the risk he takes when he speaks. By saying “the president is here” as the bombs fell and the assassins approached, Zelensky was “living in truth,” in the words of Vaclav Havel…
Snyder doesn’t mention which Euripides plays he has in mind but I can think of several. There’s young and innocent Neoptolemus in Philoctetes, who turns his back on the cynical Odysseus and instead deals with the exiled Greek archer in good faith. There’s Teiresias in The Bacchae, who calls out the tyrant Pentheus for his crazed rejection of Dionysus. And Ion in the play by that name, who questions “how the gods can do things which are crimes for humans and how gods can get away with breaking law, which leads to punishment for humans.” (Many of us are asking this same question about our former president.)
Having made the point that democracies rely on such courageous uses of free speech, Snyder expands upon the idea. Asserting one’s values into the world, he says, is “a pre-condition of self-rule:
After 1991, the nihilism of late communism flowed together with the complacent Western idea that democracy was merely the result of impersonal forces. If it turned out that those forces pushed in different directions, for example, toward oligarchy or empire, what was there then to say? But in the tradition of Euripides or Havel or now Zelensky, it is taken for granted that the larger forces are always against the individual, and that citizenship is realized through the responsibility one takes for words and the risks one takes with deeds. Truth is not with power, but a defense against it. That is why freedom of speech is necessary: not to make excuses, not to conform, but to assert values into the world, because so doing is a precondition of self-rule.
Democracy, Snyder goes on to say, “can be made only by people who want to make it and in the name of values they affirm by taking risks for them.”
The article ends with Snyder circling back to Athena and Poseidon:
Athena and Poseidon can be brought together. Athena, after all, was the goddess not only of justice but of just war. Poseidon had in mind not only violence but commerce. Athenians chose Athena as their patron but then built a fountain for Poseidon in the Acropolis—on the very spot, legend has it, where his trident struck. A victory for Ukraine would vindicate and recombine these values: Athena’s of deliberation and prosperity, Poseidon’s of decisiveness and trade. If Ukraine can win back its south, the sea-lanes that fed the ancient Greeks will be reopened, and the world will be enlightened by the Ukrainian example of risk-taking for self-rule. In the end, the olive tree will need the trident. Peace will only follow victory. The world might get an olive branch, but only if the Ukrainians can fight their way back to the sea
Myths, like stories and plays, retain their power to address reality on multiple levels. One doesn’t have to literally believe in the Olympian gods to see the truths their stories offer us.
