We re-blog a commentary from April 1952 that came as a European reaction to the Collier’s magazine publication, which we presented on our pages a few days ago.

Homer expressed the rather revolting notion that the wars and ills of mankind are the raw material of poetry and,…
– by Andre Prudhommeaux

When that sensational issue of Collier’s came out on October 27, 1951, in which articles by prominent writers described the course of World War III as if it had already taken place, there was a roar of outrage. Though the issue was titled “The War We Do Not Want,” it seemed to most observers that quite an opposite impression would be conveyed, especially to the peoples of Europe and Asia. There was a general feeling that the magazine had somehow committed an unpardonable offense, though few seemed inclined to judge it in terms other than Realpolitik: it would dishearten Europeans, frighten Asiatics, etc. Here, André Prudhommeaux gives one European’s reaction to the Collier’s episode, not as it affects the strategy of the cold war, but as it involves certain values intrinsic to Western civilization that contemporary journalism appears willing to dispense with. This article is translated from the French by Waldemar Hansen.

Homer expressed the rather revolting notion that the wars and ills of mankind are the raw material of poetry and, consequently, of that poetic pleasure which is the supreme delight of the gods. In this sentiment we detect the first symptoms of that professional deformation which makes journalists greet a juicy crime or an international crisis with joy, and which makes their readers eagerly look forward to blood on the front page.

Still, we must also take into account the cathartic function that art had for Homer, even if he is a little too self-conscious about being the one who, after the event, transmutes massacres into beauty, and human suffering into an enjoyment that, thanks to the poet, is not reserved for the gods. Moreover, there is an extenuating circumstance here, in that the poetic treatment of human misfortune is confined to events that have already happened—and constitutes the revenge taken, after the fact, by intelligence and sensibility on the blind and inscrutable Fate which is a closed book for the gods themselves. Homer does not at all invite men to enjoy the story of future wars; and it is by this token that he remains for us a citizen of our world, a civilized person. For one of the tacit and essential conventions of “civilization” is that the future belongs to nobody, that reality should not be staged in advance: for Nero to burn Rome simply to provide himself with a literary subject seems to us the very symbol of barbarity.
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