The power of the word
There is always something stirring about speeches, especially when they have the soul soar in every possible way. Think of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. It is a simple collection of words and yet it has resonated with generations across the world and time. 'Four score and seven years ago . . .' Who has not recalled these famous opening lines? There was, long before Lincoln, Demosthenes with his 'I have always made common cause with the people'. Demosthenes was an orator, in the way that Pericles was. Oliver Cromwell was slightly different, but when his indignation threw up in 1653 that famous reprimand to parliament, he went into the history books. 'In the name of God, go!' --- and they all scampered off. Puritanism was finally in place.
You get a sense of history as it has generationally been shaped in this admirable collection of famous speeches. Those of you who have heard Martin Luther King Jr's earth-shaking 'I have a dream' address will not likely forget it. It is here, to take you back to an era when Barack Obama was far ahead into the future. The speech promised a rainbow, which was not what Robespierre had in mind when he perorated in 1792 thus: 'Louis must perish because our country must live.' In time, Robespierre too would perish in blood. And blood was what his rival Danton talked of: 'The people have nothing but blood.' In Spain, Francisco Franco caused much blood to flow, but that did not deter the indefatigable Dolores Ibarruri (La Pasionaria) from declaiming, in 1936, 'Fascism shall not pass . . .' In the end, Ibarruri and her friends were defeated, the poet Lorca was murdered, but their convictions have remained.
And conviction is what underscored John Kennedy's 1961 inaugural speech. 'The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,' said he, 'born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.' That was moving. Even more inspirational was Winston Churchill's 'blood, toil, tears and sweat' exhortation to his people. It would in time lead to defeat for the Nazis. Decades later, it would be Nelson Mandela's turn to arm his downtrodden people with his infectious confidence at his trial in 1964: 'It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realized. But my lord, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.' Brave words from a brave soul. One other brave individual was the abolitionist Frederick Douglass who, in 1852, had this to say in his defiance of slavery in America, 'O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm and stern rebuke.'
Words, words, words. That is how Shakespeare's Polonius would put it. And words do leave nations transformed. In our times, V.I. Lenin and Vaclav Havel have made a difference. Even the not so cerebral Ronald Reagan has shaken up a sleeping world, or parts of it. With Gandhi, Disraeli, Jefferson and Gladstone, words simply went into a making of dreams.
Read on. And feel history swirling around you.
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