who will be in this anthology? (idea)
That stylish and handsome Scotsman Andrew Gray (see, more compliments!) posts some of Stalin's poetry.
Someone should put together an anthology of dictators' "literary" work... I'm not sure if there are enough candidates. Maybe widen it to "politicians." The next one that springs to mind is Julius Caesar, but his writing is too widely-circulated to print again. It would also be best to avoid biographies, even if they're good. Any ideas? I remember something John Kerry said about writing a poem on a plane, not that he ever got the chance to be dictator.
(Just because I included that link, I have to include this one too.
Someone should put together an anthology of dictators' "literary" work... I'm not sure if there are enough candidates. Maybe widen it to "politicians." The next one that springs to mind is Julius Caesar, but his writing is too widely-circulated to print again. It would also be best to avoid biographies, even if they're good. Any ideas? I remember something John Kerry said about writing a poem on a plane, not that he ever got the chance to be dictator.
(Just because I included that link, I have to include this one too.
posted by Andrew @ 8:03 PM
10 Comments:
At 8:46 PM,
Anonymous said…
(I'm told that Hitler wrote poetry, as well, during his military service; not remarkable, but apparently not that atrocious. Might try and find some, for a bit of counterpoint.)
There's a selection of other such works referenced here, which also introduced me to the rather wonderful term "dic lit" for the genre as a whole. I reckon anthologising dictators alone gives you enough opportunities, given that lot.
You could probably fill a few shelves by broadening it to politicians. (Actually, you could fill a few shelves just with Churchill, but he's probably a special case as far as literature goes.) There seems to have been a recent small spate of UK ex-politicians writing novels, for example...
At 5:04 PM,
Scott said…
Unfortunately, he might not qualify, but he's got the nationalist-dictator-religious nut thing down pat. I'm referring to the author of "Let the Eagle Soar":
Let the eagle soar,
Like she’s never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore...I also heard a few months ago that the new premier of Turkmenistan had written a poem called "The New Turkmen Spirit." The excerpts I read on CNN were tacky, but I think such an anthology would have to acknowledge that some of these people are goofy-ass hucksters who can't really write.
At 9:00 PM,
Santiago said…
Let us not forget that Saddam Hussein was a novelist, influenced, he said, by Ernest Hemingway's terse prose style... But I actually heard that he ordered a few Iraqi intellectuals to write his novels for him, and that he even ended up killing one of them when he came up with a bad plot.
****
Speaking of Stalin, Pablo Neruda wrote some delightfully wretching love poetry for him after his death.
*****
Ernesto Cardenal is a famous poet, and he served as Minister of Culture under the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 80s.
****
King Solomon composed psalms!
At 9:02 PM,
Santiago said…
oh yeah, Andy, we've discussed this before... "La novela del dictador" is a sort of sub-genre in Latin American literature. But it doesnt sound as cool as dic lit.
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