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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Through a Glass, Darkly (Patton on the Cyclic Nature of War) THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY Poster Comment: At dinner, say, after grandly intoning Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" ("If I should die, think only this of me/There is some corner in a foreign field/That is forever England" [sic]), Georgie [Patton] might offer his fond prediction that he would die in a foreign land, since, as Napoleon said, the boundaries of an empire are marked by the graves of her soldiers. Beatrice [Patton's wife] would nod, the fire in the fireplace would crackle significantly, and the meal would resume as the girls furtively eyed their father in expectation of his next trick. If discussing reincarnation (one of his favorite topics), he would offer up as evidence pertinent bits of The Bhagavad Gita ("For sure is the death of him that is born, and sure the birth of him that is dead"), and his old standby, Revelations 3:12: "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out." To these he added the fifth stanza of Papa's [Patton's father] favorite poem, Wordsworth's "Intimations" ode: "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,/The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,/Hath had elsewhere its setting/And cometh from afar." Clearly, Georgie said, Wordsworth shared his belief in reincarnation. (Patton, The Pattons: A Portrait of an American Family, 198) The best expression of his past lives appears in a lengthy poem written in 1922 . . . .Titled "Through a Glass Darkly," Patton demonstrates a powerful belief in God and alludes to earlier lives, the first of which may have been as a caveman. He even suggests that while Christ was on the cross Perhaps I stabbed our Savior (D'Este, Patton A Genius for War, 324) More stanzas from this poem come from Patton, The Pattons: A Portrait of an American Family (the first and third stanzas reproduced here were quoted in the movie 1970 film Patton, starring George C. Scott): Through the travail of the ages I have sinned and I have suffered So as through a glass and darkly (198-199) This most moving and complex of his poems concludes with the words: So forever in the future (D'Este, Patton A Genius for War, 324) Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 4.
#1. To: Deasy (#0)
Patton was insane. Most great generals are. Stonewall Jackson was insane, too. And many people idealize the military.
Militarism is in our DNA to an extent. You will not find anyone more anti-war than I am and yet, when I was three or four years old, I spent many hours playing with toy soldiers and engaging them with each other in mock battles in my backyard. I grew out of it before I was even 10 years old because, being from a rural Southern area, I began to read about real-(formerly)live young men from my county coming home from Vietnam in body bags on a regular basis. All the miserable criminal Johnson could say is that they were deterring "aggression" and "we seek no wider war." My grandparents knew LBJ personally, but their propaganda didn't work on me. I view those who remain militaristic their entire lives as cases of arrested development. They have remained three or four years old mentally.
#6. To: Sam Houston (#4)
(Edited)
The best part about having kids is rediscovering and sharing wonders and enthusiasms and getting to do all that kid stuff again.
Sam... Broad sweep of the brush. We all remember George Washington, that gentleman served as a General even AFTER he was president.
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