Under the tropical

The tropical summer has entered London without knocking. Bad manners. Not even the climate is a gentleman in this country.

**
I have learned with surprise that Theodor Herzl, the man who led to Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel, was quite probably carried that far in his enterprise by the encouragement and influence of William Hechler, a protestant Christian, a gentile. A lover of the Bible, he saw the fulfillment of its prophecies in it: "thus, said the Lord God, Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standerd to the people: and they shall bring thy sonnes in their armes: and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders" (Is 49, 22). Herzl was impressed by him and regarded him as a prophet. Hechler died in 1931, after giving warnings of times of harshness coming on for the Jews. He had managed to redeem a little the lives of people escaping the pogroms in Russian in the late 19th century by establishing two settlements in Palestine... There is a large disadvantage for this young generation of us, and it is being so ignorant, so ignorant... .

**

Probably you've heard about this soccer match between Barcelona and Bilbao, played yesterday night in Madrid, the final of the Spanish Cup. The controversy comes from the certainty (following the precedence two years ago, when the same teams found themselves playing the final), that 30, 40 or 60 thousand supporters -generally speaking, the whole stadium- would boo the National Spanish Anthem. And so they did, blowing to the full exhaustion of their capacity. The whistling was to be deafened by one measure of cowardice and another of illegality: by increasing the level of decibels to the point of hazard on one side, and by suggesting a short, very short version of the Anthem. The latter I don't understand: the Royal Decree 1560/1997 of October 1997 establishes that the short version of the Anthem -the one and only short version- is to be played in sport events or when the Prince chairs it, instead of the King; the version is composed of 4 bars, the 4 bars of the Anthem, but without repetition. Nevertheless, at this point this argument of enforcing a Royal Decree is kind of... joyful.

Against the theories that conceal order into chaos and turn the passion of the masses in law of divine right, one must remark that nationalistic groups have encouraged people to do so. The infamous placards Catalonia is not Spain more than once arrived in the trunks of official cars. Just like that, openly. Out of the clear contradiction of having human tribes competing for a title bestowed by a country that they, at least, despise, added on top of the humiliation for the King Himself, who is to hand down the Cup, a single politician, a woman, dared to suggest the obvious: that the match could not be taken place. A second one, another woman, supported it by pointing out that, of course, it does not make any sense. The first added a further argument:  such an act against the National Symbols is a criminal offense according to the Spanish Constitution and the Criminal Law. But alas! The sky full opened upon her head and exhaled its full blaze of fury and rage. Not even her own party backed her up. And there it is when you say: we all might be crazy. What a country, God Almighty!

**

Spain is different and has the habit of being stupid, unfortunately, quite often. In the case of National Anthems, however, the Spanish case is one of the few right ones. The National Anthem of Spain has no lyrics, but this is not because some inextricable force acting on the obscure spirit of that Nation, but just because it was composed as a march, an old march, that makes one of the oldest Anthems. One of the theories is that Frederick of Prussia gave it as a present to his niece Maria Amalia of Saxony, who married Charles the Seventh of Naples, the would-be King Carlos III of Spain, in 1738. It became a custom to play the march in events attended by the King and, this way, consuetudinis magna vis est, was sanctioned as the National Anthem. Is there any room for anything more democratic?

Quite honestly, it is good the Anthem has no lyrics. Anthems should have no lyrics. One only have to take a look at the words of modern Anthems -played in "non-political" events (i.e. sports) and in scenarios dedicated to the Brotherhood of Man and the Myth of the Global Peace (i.e. Olympics)- to hold his head and jerk off running away and away. After the fallen of the Iron Curtain, the beautiful hymn of the ex-USSR was replaced in Russia by a Glinka's composition, Patrioticheskaya Pesnya, with no words, which only lasted until Vladimir Putin restored the USSR anthem on the grounds of not inspiring the Russian athletes.

Despite a wonderful music, the lyrics of this hymn are unsettling. More than unsettling, utterly horrible and cruel is La Marseillaise, straight out of Jacobinism, the radical stage of the French Revolution (1792). The mobs sing:


Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur...
Abeuve nos sillons! 


"Let us march, let us march! May impure blood water our fields"... . The reference to war and the ordeal of blood (as old as the Exodus) repeats frequently. The bellicose air of most of the Anthems is just a unpleasant fact. "As armas, as armas! Sobre a terra e sobre o mar", screams out even the Portuguese. It looks like every people on Earth extend destruction to what it is most cherished to them in the hour of darkness. In Spain, even the beloved Els Segadors for the Catalan independentist -"strike with the sickle!"- and the Hymn of the II Spanish Republic -so praised and mythologized by the Western left- call to arms, to win or to die, quite unmercifully. In South America, the Anthem of Mexico (Bocanegra, 1853) and the Cuban La Bayamesa (1869) are particularly aggresive, and that of Bolivia (Sanjines, 1845) even sets a threat in precious Spanish:


Si extranjero poder algun dia
sojuzgar a Bolivia intentare,
a destino fatal se prepare.
Que amenaza a soberbio invasor
que los hijos del grande Bolivar
han ya mil y mil veces jurado
morir antes que ver humillado
de la patria el augusto pendon.

Only a few, like the Anthems of Panama and El Salavador, quite tired of tragedies and the destruction of death, talk about peace. The poetic construction of the latter one, curiously composed by a General (1879), is great:

Y en seguir esta linea se aferra,
dedicando su esfuerzo tenaz,
en hacer cruda guerra a la guerra:
su ventura se encuentra en la paz.

Most of the National Anthems seems to come out after periods of revolution or war and crisis of auto-definition. They are political productions in search for a national identity. It is mad to look in there for the Global union of Mankind. Anthems, like Nations, are like cats: they purr happily when being at ease but hide their claws ready to tear as soon as they are panicked out. The Anthems of Italy and Germany speaks of Union, it is true, but of a very restricted and exclusive union -just within borders- and pretty much so does the English in singing God save the Queen, the symbol of an unbreakable unity. I like much better, though, Jerusalem: lyrics of Blake in music of Parry.

In 1814, at a time when Spain had just beat the yoke of Napoleon and given birth to a Constitution on the name of individual freedom and national sovereignty, an amateur young man wrote the lyrics that would become the words of the US National Anthem after the witnessing of a war bombing. The lyrics are significant and proves to me, once more, the miraculous combination that has led the Americans to be the references of our current World: the recognition of evil and the determination to stand up, over and over again, till the end of times, like free, self-exposed individuals.

O say, can you see by the dawn's early sky
(...)
O'er the ramparts we watched (...)
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air (...)
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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