Hitler Is Not In Hell (Poem)

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

By Chidi Anthony Opara

 

Humans say

That hell is my home.

“Hitler is in hell”, they say,

Hitler is not in hell.

I dwell in the dwelling

Between heaven and hell.

 

I was prodded to pomposity,

My ego swelled

And exploded,

Its contents soiled society.

I took tutorials

From savages who invaded Africa,

From crooked clergies,

From immoral Imams

And from rogue royalties,

I shared unholy sacrament

With those surrogates of Satan.

 

Daily in my dwelling

I do penance

To cleanse me of uncleanliness.

After remission,

I will hurry to heaven

To dwell with Divinity

And be drenched

With the dewdrops of divine mercy.

 

(Poem presented as social service, all rights reserved)

 

--

Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet and Publisher of PublicInformationProjects

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Eternity continues with the next line: If the devil is not in hell, do you think that maybe he escaped by just paying a fine?

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Mazi,
It is a possibility in fiction, especially, poetry.

CAO.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Dearest Chidi:

Whatever happened with

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

You stand accused of upsetting my Sunday afternoon with the title of your poem.  And the liar wants to justify himself, that “It is a possibility in fiction, especially, poetry” - like fictional paper money (naira) being presented as legal tender or a promissory note.

Your words are clear enough: Hitler you say,

 “is not in hell”

 I hope that I am not deliberately misunderstanding you.

Am I not supposed to be disappointed in you a Biafran exonerating Mr. Hitler, poetically?

You want to spoil our friendship? However, I’m not about to unfriend you here and now – there’s hope for you yet – or is it another case of – as Wordsworth opined,

“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

 But thereof come in the end despondency and madness”

If you can’t create a worse place for that son of a devil then we have to agree that it’s a very unpleasant possibility in your wordy poetry that “Hitler is not in hell”. The question then arises, Where is he then? Do you want to tell us that he is in heaven? Want us to believe   - the blood of Jesus etc. - that he is in Purgatory?

It’s not merely the case of e.g. John Milton saying that “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”

Or is it John Dryden talking about one being “Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell”?

This reminds me of sitting cross legged on the floor in the Imam Ali Mosque in Stockholm many years ago (1988) in a semi-circle around Sheikh Hassan of Iraq, listening to him holding forth on forgiveness. I could not resist whispering in the ear of Ahmad  who was sitting next to me : “So there is/ was a theoretical possibility that Allah (Subhanahu-Wa-Ta'ala) could forgive Saddam ( since Allah (Subhanahu-Wa-Ta'ala) can forgive anything except shirk ?”– Whereupon Ahmad got up and went and sat alone at the far end of the masjid, until Sheikh Hassan’s lecture was over.  After which I approached him to ask why he had separated himself.  He was still visibly very angry when he answered: “If Saddam will not go to hell, then who else in this world could be a candidate for the fire?”Chidi, if only you had been by my side on that occasion you could have told Ahmad, here is Saddam’s supplication:

“Daily in my dwelling

I do penance

To cleanse me of uncleanliness.

After remission,

I will hurry to heaven

To dwell with Divinity

And be drenched

With the dewdrops of divine mercy.”

Here is another of my favourite poets: Yehuda Amichai

Pray for us.

Cornelius

We Sweden

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Mazi,

You have the right to interpret the poem (any poem) the way you choose to and I have the right to write the way I choose to. Unfortunately, you sounded as if I am in poetry to please you.

Ndewo.

 

CAO.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Not to please me o!

I know that you are in poetry

to please yourself only

...

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

To please himself and revel in sedition.  He forgets that sedition is an offence against the very essence of the state and many a poet has paid dearly for it in the past.

Cheers.

IBK

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

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[Samuel Zalanga]

To be human, is to be part of a group. For instance, what is the meaning of the term "social?" According to Max Weber, even if you are alone in your room, thinking  alone, but in the process of that thinking even when alone, you take another human being into consideration as part of your thinking, then you are not yourself alone, and what you are doing is something that is social, by taking others into consideration.

And when you relate this to the French Sociologist,Emile Durkheim, especially, his seminal work on Suicide, one fundamental insight of the book is that even committing suicide is a social event and process. Why? Because even though there are different types of suicides (anomic, altruistic and egoistic), yet all of them can be explained best by the nature of the relationship of the individual to the society or others, whether the other is family, society, or community.

This whole idea of people being individualistic or this or that seems to suggests a not so deep reflection about our humanity. It is much ado about nothing. In terms of how this same logic of reasoning about being individualistic and independent being used to legitimize American capitalism, Professor Stiglitz calls that ERSATZ CAPITALISM, where the cost of the running the capitalist system is shared by all in society, but the gains are privatized by individuals (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?_r=0)

In this respect, many private or individualistic individuals underestimate how their survival, thriving and flourishing is contingent on being part of a society, but they naively assume they are just themselves for themselves.

We only come to understand ourselves as being part of a community (broadly defined). Even people that hate themselves, do so because they come to understand themselves through what Hegel would call "categories of mediation." For instance, if someone says he or she is Fulani, Kanuri, Igbo, Yoruba, Tiv etc. (all Nigerian ethnic groups), all these are categories of mediation that the person  can use to understand himself or herself, but they transcend the individual. Individuals will be born and they will die, but the category of Fulani, Kanuri, Igbo, or Yoruba etc. through which the individual understands himself or herself will continue to exist because they transcend the individual. Such category of mediation will continue to exist even after the person is dead.

 In brief, "categories of mediation" are categories that we have to go through to interpret and understand who we are as part of a larger whole or as human beings, notwithstanding our extravagant sense of individuality. Let that most individualistic human being identifies himself or herself and I will show him or her using insights from the social sciences how his or her so-called individualistic identity is socially and historically constructed and his or her understanding of himself or herself is a product of that i.e., some categories of mediation that transcend him or her. Anything less than that is an illusion, an attempt to persuade us to think that the person just drop from another planet. On the contrary, the person was constructed by a social and historical process if not processes. I know this sounds deflationary for those who think they operate outside history and outside the "social."

On another note, no human society can exist without taking "social responsibility" seriously. In my assessment of what I read a few days ago in this forum, even while away from home, this is exactly what Professor Falola was trying to do when he intervened. You cannot have a thriving community without social responsibility. This is a social fact. People who deny that have a simplistic view of how human society or community is created and how it thrives or flourishes. Is this constraining? Yes. Can it be misused? Yes, but the issue can never be avoid in any serious human or social community. To take social responsibility seriously means we have to understand it is not just about me or you, it is about us. It is "Ubuntu."

  It is true the modernity erodes this way of thinking but any society, not just the U.S. that in the name of modernity ignores social responsibility, will end up undermining itself sooner or later. We should never take seriously those theories that construct a nice picture of the individual who is just self-made. "Leave Elegance" to the tailors. Do not believe an idea simply because it sounds elegant. "Leave elegance to the tailors." This was what Paul Samuel said, while quoting Albert Einstein in the documentary "Trillion Dollar Bet" i.e., the original version produced by NOVA, which is no more available online. It sounds nice to say that I am just for myself or I do things just for myself, but for us in sociology, we consider such statements as not a reflection of sincere and thorough understanding of how society functions. Personally, I will never like to be in that situation because I would be in a risky position of becoming a danger to others, since I am just doing things for myself. In strict theological terms, it is a kind of idolatry where the the self becomes one's idol. Some of us what to deconstruct that self.
 

America is an individualistic culture on the surface but even Alexis de Tocqueville discusses how your freedom is only within certain parameters (that you never set), and when you cross those parameters, even if you do not lose your legal standing or rights in the courts, people in the culture, society, group etc. will punish you and ostracize you, thereby making your life miserable. What then is freedom under this circumstance since the boundaries and parameters are set by others, sometimes others that transcend you, i.e., the categories of mediation we use to understand and agenda the world, understand ourselves and others..

To be human is to be part of a group, and even being eccentric is not that individualistic because if the society does not recognize the category of being eccentric, the person will suffer. Let us just accept in humility that we are social products and without social responsibility, no community will survive, thrive and flourish.

Samuel

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Samuel Zalanga
Department of Anthropology, Sociology & Reconciliation Studies
Bethel University, 3900 Bethel Drive #24
Saint Paul, MN 55112.
Office Phone: 651-638-6023

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

IBK,
Inciting people to rebel against "those surrogates of Satan" whom Hitler took tutorials from, for me is a noble cause. Please take note that the words; "you are in poetry to please only yourself" were Cornelius Hamelberg's.

CAO

[Ibukunolu A Babajide]

Chidi,

You are my brother.  Your euphemism, "those surrogates of Satan" is pregnant with a cancer that may be malignant or benign.  The point I am making is that in January 1970, Satan had its fill of the blood of the innocents.  Your invitation to drink more is wholly irrational and unwise.  Poetic licence has its limits, and when you raise war against the very essence of the state, you invite consequences!

Cheers.

IBK 

_________________________

Ibukunolu Alao Babajide (IBK)

(+2348061276622)
ibk...@gmail.com

[kenneth harrow]

i agree with samuel; i have never liked the reductive claim that africans are communal and americans/westerners are individualistic. i regret having taught that truism for years. but there is still value in pointing out ways that this notion is manifest in cultural representations, self-concepts that appear in writings and visual arts.
that said, i really liked samuel's statements, but feel the need to add one more facet that he, the sociologist, did not attend to. that is the psychoanalytic. specifically, the notion that we come to a consciousness of self, to self-consciousness, to the formation of a sense of self, of ego, only through the return of our regard, our look, our seeing of the world, through the other. not just through the community, as samuel emphasized, but through a specific mediation through the other, and typically the Other, the one who first appears to us as we grow up and cares for us, and so, often (m)other. lacan gets at this through the mirror stage; i get it in freud; i get it in butler, and even in butler's use of nietzsche and hegel etc through the notion of submission to the other, what butler calls assujetissement, subjecting oneself. here she refers specifically to the child subjecting itself to the authority of the parent, to the one who punishes the child, and it is the word "sujet" which is the key, since the subject comes to itself through subjecting itself to the other.
the other half is the child's revolt, but even that is in relationship to the other.
both halves are essentially in the formation of the subject
ken

-- 
kenneth w. harrow 
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

IBK,

Satan drank blood because "those surrogates of Satan" controlled the paraphernalia of violence. In the uprising to come, the gods will fight on the side of the oppressed people.

Thanks all the same for your concern for me, brother.

CAO.

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Chidi,

You say that I -”have the right” - to interpret the poem (any poem) the way I choose to and you have the right to write the way that you choose to. I should hope that this right is not limited to just poetry, or even scripture…

This is not poetry: I can imagine you arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport waving your placard “Hitler is not hell” and being summarily whisked off by some Shin Bet security agents, for interrogation, maybe as an infiltrator. At which point I hope that you don’t tell them what you told me: “Looka here, I am not in poetry to please you!”

Memorable words from IBK also here:  “sedition is an offence against the very essence of the state and many a poet has paid dearly for it in the past.” Perhaps he has in mind from the days of yore, Muhammad's dead poets’ society ?

“Hitler” is now the symbolic name of an unpopular boss or any local dictator (just as Mobutu’s son as minister of information in Zaire was known as “Saddam Hussein”). As a poet, you do have your way with  words:  “savages” who invaded Africa”, “ crooked clergies”,” immoral Imams”, “rogue royalties” ,  even referring to holy missionaries as “surrogates of Satan”etc. Hopefully, a time will not come when you start referring to Brother Buhari as Saddam or Hitler, the only begotten son of Lucifer. We understand how conveniently some people grope in the darkness  to fetch their dark, demonic  symbols, but it’s not just about poetry, even if Adorno, whatever many  million dimensions he may have had in his head, said that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric”

Let me make this clear again:  Without even reading your poem, it’s the title “Hitler is not in hell” that grates -  even if that headline could have been the beginning of a periodic sentence ending with the punchline “he is in a far hotter place”…

Hitler’s Holocaust cannot be trivialised.

What I gather from Samuel Zalanga’s edifying lecture is that we (you and me and all of us) should be sensitive about other people’s feelings, tragedies, - not that as you say to me,

“Unfortunately, you sounded as if I am in poetry to please you.”

Well, Chidi, why do you think I do sonnets to my Better Half?

 No, I do not think that you are in poetry just to please me –and I’m not into the gestalt prayer :

“I do my thing and you do your thing.

 I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

 And you are not in this world to live up to mine.

 You are you, and I am I,

 and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.

 If not, it can't be helped.”

From time to time there have been headlines such as Hitler is alive (not yet in hell)  -the hoary old villain still on earth –if true , causing Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal to go out and bring him to justice…

God willing, we (you and I) will soon be imbibing some fish stew and coconut juice together….

Later.

Cornelius

We Sweden

...

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Mazi,
I stand by what I wrote in the poem "Hitler Is Not In Hell".

CAO.