Remembering John Milton (1608-1674)
As a dog returneth to its vomit
So a fool returneth to his folly. (Proverbs 26:11)
The dog is turned to its vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in her mire. (2 Peter 2:22)
Dear friends and colleagues
Yes, I know it isn’t the first Tuesday of the month, but I need to say something.
How would John Milton have responded to the election result last week here in the Philippines: Bong Bong Marcos, the son of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos being returned on a supposed landslide? He would have responded, I suspect, much as he responded to those who wished to bring back the monarchy after the execution of the tyrant Charles I and the setting up of the republic; much as he responded to the eventual return and coronation of the charming but corrupt Charles II – with writings including the biblical image of a dog returning to its vomit and a sow wallowing in its own shit.
To what extent the election was jeopardised by rigged election machines, vote stuffing and vote buying is not yet clear, and will probably never be known. What is certain is that there has been a sustained and extensive campaign on social media of disinformation and personal abuse. All this has been reported, as you no doubt know, on the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and the Economist.
What next?
Will press freedom be attacked even more relentlessly than by the Duterte regime?
Will Academic freedom be diminished?
How will artists respond? Will they start to self-censor as artists in Singapore do?
I will do my best to report on what happens.
“He left London and… died in obscurity.”
I thought where I live now (Barangay Ibabao, Cuenca, Batangas Province) was obscure. But now I learn that where I came from is also obscure.
I inherited from my mother a watercolour portrait of her best friend made by the artist Edith Lawrence probably made in the forties or early fifties. The quote above (Clifford S. Ackley, British Prints from the Machine age 1914-1939, Thames and Hudson, 2008, p. 206) refers to Claude Flight, the life partner of Edith Lawrence (they never married). Early in the second world war they left London and moved to Donhead St. Andrew, Wiltshire, the village in which I grew up. They had a cottage in the wonderfully named Pig’s Trough Lane.
Given the internet and jet airliners Donhead St Andrew in the 1940s and 1950s was probably more cut off and obscure than Ibabao is now. One measure of how global the world we live in has become.
Speak again in June
Tony