It can sometimes be quite disturbing, the manner in which a sudden thought can invade one’s brain. I had one such experience sitting down to dinner tonight, and I’m still trying to assimilate it.
My view of the human race can be pretty condemnatory. If I’m walking along a path littered with soft-drink cans and sweet-wrappers, for example, it is not beyond me to affirm that the human race does not deserve the planet, which would be far better off without us. The systematic cruelty and destruction that invariably accompanies war can leave me in despair. I do hang on to the idea that some kind of redemption must be possible, but this is an act of faith rather than reason. There is so little evidence that as a race we merit preservation.
During the current pandemic windows throughout the town feature home-made images of rainbows, echoing the story of Noah’s flood and the saving of both humanity and the rest of nature from destruction. It does appear that a lot of people, in one way or another, are more hopeful about our future than I am in my darkest moods. Consequently it was with a bit of a shock that I faced the following experience.
Assaulted as we are at the moment on every side by stories of the perfidiousness of our political leadership (it is hard to avoid these) I was in a fairly grim mood, despite the fact that I enjoy cooking, and was quite pleased with tonight’s result. As we sat down to dinner my wife put on a CD of Grieg’s music, which included his second Peer Gynt Suite. My attention was absorbed totally by Elisabeth Soderstrom singing “Solveig’s Song”. Entirely out of the blue the question entered my head that, if some angry deity on the verge of visiting its just deserts upon the human race were to hear at that moment such a voice singing such a song, would our fate, otherwise deserved, be averted? As I listened I came to believe this to be the case.
Do the arts really have such redemptive value?