The number of puns is dwarfed by the explosion of opinions, however. Once upon a time, everybody was acknowledged to have the right to one, and it was sacred. Now everybody approaches having infinitely many, and differing opinions are an attempt to viciously abuse them. Facts are only opinions that insidious elitists are trying to enforce.
Pandemics also release in-progress autocrats to further curtail opposition. Hungary's Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, had already been playing every side against the others while he took control of the legislature and judiciary in the country. Now, the legislature has given him emergency powers to rule by personal decree until he feels that the power is no longer necessary. Regarding the present pandemic, he has taken the opportunity of making "fake news" about his handling of the crisis punishable by five years in prison. His government gets to decide what "fake" is. Presumably, future "crises" will expand his period of autocratic control and expand the "fake news" laws.
President Vladimir Putin's puppet Federal Assembly has approved an amendment to the Russian Constitution ending term limits for the office he holds. His puppet Constitutional Court has declared it constitutional. Public demonstrations over the usurpation have been strictly forbidden as a matter of public safety in a time of pandemic. Threaten the public health, and the punishment will be harsh. It would seem to be the Russian government's only social distancing policy to date.
No longer subject to a poorly conceived impeachment, and the focus of the nation turned to death tolls and pandemic experts, the Trump Administration has quietly invoked emergency powers over various intractable policy matters. Environmental laws that proved too hardy to kill with Presidential Orders have been suspended. Oversight provisions over emergency funds have been waved aside with disdain. Inspector Generals who have released reports not perfectly approving of the President have been fired and publicly shamed and/or fired and replaced by toadies. Instead of nominating upper level management of government departments for Congressional review, as required by the US Constitution, the President continues naming temporary managers beholding only to him. Managers in intelligence agencies seem to be being removed and replaced without the Administration informing Congress of the identities of the replacements.
The President's latest maneuver is to refuse to save the US Postal Service from revenue losses due to the Coronavirus. This after he has been widely quoted as saying mail-in ballots heavily favor Democrats. Greater quantities of them, he averred, would guarantee no Republican could ever be elected again.
The pandemic has brought one very public change to the office of President. Hours of free media time featuring Trump as the title character of his own personal reality television show have been commandeered five to seven times per week.
He has become the first sitting President to sue media for "defamation" over political coverage, expecting the many Federal judges he has nominated to find that longstanding Constitutional protections to not apply in his cases. His lawyers (of which he has many, paid out of public funds) are warning smaller local television stations not to air opposition ads deemed "false" in order to "avoid costly and time consuming litigation."
In the midst of all of this, I have spent hours convincing the Internet provider to run an extra wire from the pole in order to serve the expanded accounts in the building without constant outages. Each time I received service, the upstairs neighbor was calling the provider and screaming bloody murder. Where was his Internet? He was sure they were throttling his service in favor of higher paying accounts. He didn't care what it took. That wasn't his concern. He wanted the service they had advertised. The next day a tech would arrive. The neighbor was soon happy as a lark, and my service was out.
When I've had service, I've been hurriedly following information on rescue checks and tax returns before the next outages, checks, tests, exchanges of messages. Marketing and banking have become new adventures requiring service windows for their own research and planning.
In the midst of all of this, I have somehow managed to find the time and focus to write a book review for Eclectica of a translation from the 9th century Chinese poems of Liu Tsung-Yuan. His were treacherous times. Neither the worst nor the best.
Since then one or two social media friends have begun attacking science experts for having over-reacted to the Coronavirus. Their tone makes clear that their opinion is the correct one because they are willing to excoriate any dissenting voices. Don't make them get unpleasant.
With all of this for background, I began casting around for themes for another freelancing in the Internet Age column. For some reason, it seemed important to step back. To get some distance.
I do not know why Eliot's Sacred Wood seemed the better choice. But soon I was downloading the books he was referencing or pulling them off the shelves. I'd yet to read Charles Whibley's introduction to the Tudor Translations series volume of Urquhart's Gargantua and Pantagruel and found it as engaging as had Eliot.
I don't recall precisely what in The Sacred Wood brought up Denham's "Coopers Hill." The critical edition reminded me that I had never fully read the key poems of the genre. Pope's "Windsor Forest" was soon up in one computer window, Samuel Garth's "Claremont" in another. As I was picking my way through the old editions of The British Poets series over which I once had time to linger, I was briefly sidetracked by a biography of Nicholas Rowe excerpted from Johnson's Lives of the Poets.
Finally I ended up returning to Walter Jackson Bate's From Classic to Romance for the third or fourth time as I often promise myself I will. How did the precisely ordered world and couplets of Waller and Pope arrive at the wild emotional tumult of Shelley, the sensuality of Keats? After each reading of Bate's exceptional lectures, I soon realize that I need to go back and track even more precisely.
The US broke away from the British Empire as that transition was underway. Ironically, the Romantic movement found no foothold in the New World until Walt Whitman (and his acolyte Carl Sandburg), from whom subsequent poets mostly took Populism and a burgeoning literature of alternative lifestyles and attendant psychological struggles.
With Eliot, part of us returned to the various classical periods of intellectual and literary history. In the 18th century the classical required strict decorum. (Certain sections of the cities very much excepted. What happened in Covent Garden stayed in Covent Garden.) Eliot took his literary bearings largely from the French Symbolists grafted to the Renaissance and behavioral from the 18th century London professional upper class.
Pope, Garth, Denham, etc., wrote encomiums upon the royalty and nobility of the times. Especially early in their careers. Careers required as much. But already royalty were almost entirely expensive window dressing. The House of Commons and various cabinet secretaries and under-secretaries assured as much. As did the leaders of the business community. National deficits were kept small. Personal fortunes allowed for country houses, professionally designed gardens, a good showing during the London season, a favorable marriage, an education as good as the (male) student chose to make it. Crises were met with equanimity.
I go back from time to time to that century when opinions were considered in poor taste (outside of the coffeehouse, at least). When the weapons were not so horrific or the climate becoming unlivable. When the stakes were something less than millions or even billions of dead if not the end of the human race. There I think only of a well-tied cravat, well-turned couplets, witty repartee, maintaining a proper decorum.
But then they, too, had epidemics. And nothing approaching our astonishing health system.
Oh, well, a Facebook page wants to tell me which character I am from The Golden Girls. After this many times, you'd think they would remember I'm Sophia. Just once I'd like to them to tell me what famous denizen I am from Will's Coffeehouse.
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