[Next week, a
new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects
of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age
of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]
On reading and
applying Christopher Columbus in the age of Trump.
I’ve written
about Columbus in a number of posts here, including a
preview of this same course in last January’s Spring semester series. As I
mentioned in that preview post, in American Literature I we read two famous
Columbus letters for the same class discussion: the 1492 one written to Spanish court figure
and Columbus financial backer Luis de Santangel, from the height of the
first voyage’s success; and the 1502 one written to the
Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, from the depths of the fourth
voyage’s failures. Two letters aren’t enough to give a full picture of the man
and his identity and perspective, of course; such is the decision I made when I
created an American Lit I syllabus that includes at least one and often two new
authors for each day, giving us a wide breadth of coverage but no in-depth
focus on any particular author or text. But these two letters nonetheless
capture two significant moments and how Columbus responded to and framed each,
and in so doing they offer two important lenses through which to understand our
new president-elect.
The Santangel
letter doesn’t include the word/phrase “bigly/big league” (not sure how it
could, really, not in 1492 and doubly not in the original Spanish), but it
might as well. Columbus’ writing and perspective in that moment of triumph are consistently
exaggerated, including fake news (he reports on nightingales singing in the new
world trees, when the birds are not to be found in the Americas), a hugely
egotistical over-use of the pronoun “I” (when he’s mostly if not entirely describing
actions taken by his men and crew), and a thoroughgoing dismissal of all those
native peoples who are clearly outside of the imagined new world community he’s
envisioning (“They explored for three days, and found countless small
communities and people, without number, but nothing of importance”). But we don’t
need to read past the first clause of the letter’s first sentence to see
everything we need to know: “Sir, as I know you will be rejoiced at the
glorious success that our Lord has given me in my voyage.” That’s only 100
characters, so it’d easily fit into an example of Trump’s favorite method for
communicating his true perspective, a Tweet. I think we could append a “Bigly!”
to the end of the clause and not lose any of the passage’s spirit.
Ten years later,
we see in the Ferdinand and Isabella letter Columbus’ writing and perspective
when he perceives himself the victim of numerous forces conspiring against him.
There’s no doubt that a lot had gone wrong for Columbus in his latter new world
voyages, from shipwreck to imprisonment, demotions to betrayals. Yet over the
same decade, choices and actions of Columbus’—most notably the enslavement and
destruction of countless native peoples—had left the Americas themselves in far
worse shape than when he had encountered them. Yet although Columbus begins the
letter by writing, “Of Española, Paria, and the other lands, I never think
without weeping,” it soon becomes crystal clear that those tears are due to his
own situation, not that of the lands. “I came to serve at the age of twenty-eight
years,” he writes, “and now I have not a hair on my body that is not gray and
my body is infirm, and whatever remained to me from those years of service has
been spent and taken away from me and sold, and from my brothers, down to my
very coat, without my being heard or seen, to my great dishonor.” A perspective
this self-centered and simplistic is problematic when things go well, but it’s
downright disastrous when they go badly—a lesson from Columbus’ two letters
that we would do well to heed as we move into 2017.
Next preview
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Spring plans you’d highlight or share?
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