“Chanson d’automne” (“Autumn Song”)
Autumn Song
By Paul Verlaine – 1844-1896
Translated by Arthur Symons
When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long
Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.
And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.
Chanson d’automne
By Paul Verlaine – 1844-1896
Les saglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;
Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
About the Poem:
“Chanson d’automne” (“Autumn Song”) is a poem by Paul Verlaine (1844–1896), one of the best known in the French language. It is included in Verlaine’s first collection, Poèmes saturniens, published in 1866 (see 1866 in poetry). The poem forms part of the “Paysages tristes” (“Sad landscapes”) section of the collection.
In World War II lines from the poem were used to send messages from Special Operations Executive (SOE) to the French Resistance about the timing of the forthcoming Invasion of Normandy. In preparation for Operation Overlord, the BBC’s Radio Londres had signaled to the French Resistance with the opening lines of “Chanson d’Automne” were to indicate the start of D-Day operations under the command of the Special Operations Executive. The first three lines of the poem, “Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l’automne” (“Long sobs of autumn violins”), would mean that Operation Overlord was to start within two weeks. These lines were broadcast on June 1, 1944. The next set of lines, “Blessent mon coeur / d’une langueur / monotone” (“wound my heart with a monotonous languor”), meant that it would start within 48 hours and that the resistance should begin sabotage operations, especially on the French railroad system; these lines were broadcast on June 5 at 23:15.
In 1940, Charles Trenet made changes to the words of the poem in order to change it into a song. There has been speculation that it was the popularity of his version that led to the use of the poem by SOE.
The Importance of Empathy
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:36-40
The 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator George McGovern, once said, “Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction ‘Love the neighbor as thyself.’” Empathy is woven throughout the Bible. Virtually every instruction God offers regarding the way we are to treat others begins with empathy. Empathy is becoming increasingly derided in the United States as being a characteristic of the weak, especially in the years since one of the most empathetic presidents in history was replaced by a man who has no empathy for anyone or anything. President Barack Obama is quoted as saying, “Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.”
First Peter 3:8 tells us, “Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love of the brethren, a tender heart and a humble mind.” The “tender heart and a humble mind” that Peter refers to in this passage is the mind of Christ, which is what all Christians aspire to have. But Peter’s call for unity among believers cannot be answered without empathy and understanding. To be one with other people, we must develop a deep understanding of:
- who they are
- how they became that person
- what they know
- how they learned it
- what they hold dear
- why they hold it dear
- how they feel
- why they feel that way.
According to Peter, oneness is created by treating one another with compassion, love, tenderness, and courtesy—four qualities that lie at the heart of empathy. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “Humans aren’t as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were ‘reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.’” A training of empathy is what Christianity is all about.
If we are empathetic, we can begin to understand others’ joys and sufferings, and we can either rejoice with their joys or comfort them in their sadness. Romans 12:15 commands us to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” Those who rejoice usually do so because good things are happening in their lives. If we are not careful, other people’s rejoicing can trigger feelings of competition or jealousy. The urge to “top” others with stories of our own successes—or to wallow in envy because we don’t have as much to rejoice over—can be hard to resist. Those who weep usually do so because they have suffered a devastating loss or misfortune. That can create some messy emotional landscapes. It’s nearly impossible to tread into the lives of hurting people without getting our hands dirty and pulled down into their despair. The urge to stay out of the mess—to send our thoughts and prayers from a safe distance—can be hard to resist. But that’s not what empathy is, and that’s not what God calls us to. Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.
John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the Bible, and it shows Christ’s empathy more succinctly than anywhere else in the Bible. The verse simply says, “Jesus wept.” This verse occurs in John’s narrative of the death of Lazarus of Bethany, a follower of Jesus. Lazarus’s sisters—Mary and Martha—sent word to Jesus of their brother’s illness and impending death, but Jesus arrived four days after Lazarus died. Jesus, after talking to the grieving sisters and seeing Lazarus’s friends weeping, was deeply troubled and moved. After asking where Lazarus had been laid, and being invited to come see, Jesus wept. He then went to the tomb and told the people to remove the stone covering it, prayed aloud to his Father, and ordered Lazarus to come out, resuscitated.
Jesus knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. So technically speaking, He knew there was no reason for Lazarus’ loved ones to mourn. He knew that in a matter of minutes, their tears would turn to joy. So Jesus would have been excused for dismissing their grief over something that would prove to be temporary. Yet Jesus didn’t dismiss Lazarus’ mourners’ grief. He didn’t try to talk them out of their grief. He didn’t rebuke them for their lack of faith. Jesus saw people who were hurting, and it made Him hurt, too. He empathized so strongly with those who were mourning that He wept. Jesus showed us there is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, and a grace in forgiveness. Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau asked, “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” Jesus had looked into the eyes of the family and friends of Lazarus, and he felt their pain.
The book of Hebrews presents Jesus as a defense attorney of sorts. He represents His followers before God, the Judge. While Satan, the prosecuting attorney, levels charges against us, demanding that God punish our sins, Jesus contradicts his accusations by reminding God that His (Jesus’) blood covers our offenses. Hebrews 4:15 states, “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” What makes Jesus an especially effective Counselor and Defender is His experience on earth. He expertly represents us before God because He empathizes with us. He knows what it is to be tempted and weak. He understands us because He experienced what we experience and endured what we endure. The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, once said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view,” which is what God did by sending Jesus to live as a human on earth. When asked about how he would choose judges, Barack Obama responded, “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.” God meets these criteria as our heavenly judge because he sent Jesus to live amongst humanity. Jesus and his followers understand that empathy and compassion make our world better.
When we look for leadership, I believe the most important quality is empathy. Oprah Winfrey summed this up with, “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” With the dueling town halls Thursday night, we saw two opposing events that diverged dramatically in tone. In the words of Savannah Guthrie, Trump’s town hall was like your “crazy uncle” who rages about anyone different from him and has no empathy. In contrast, Biden’s town hall was compared to “watching an episode of Mister Rodgers Neighborhood,” by Mercedes Schlapp, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, in a tweet. She also misspelled the late Fred Rogers’ last name. By the way, social media was quick to fire back at Schlapp for her attempt to insult Biden via the beloved children’s television host who famously promoted messages of kindness, patience, and friendship. Biden showed empathy for Americans while one guy described “watching Trump was like watching an episode of Twin Peaks.”
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Republicans have shown again and again that they lack empathy for the average American. During this week’s Senate confirmation hearings for SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Kamala Harris pointed out the lack of empathy by Republicans for the American people:
…while tens of millions of Americans are struggling to pay their bills, the Senate should be prioritizing coronavirus relief and providing financial support to those families. The American people need to have help, to make rent or their mortgage payment. Senate Republicans have made it crystal clear that rushing a Supreme Court nomination is more important than helping and supporting the American people who are suffering from a deadly pandemic and a devastating economic crisis. Their priorities are not the American people’s priorities, but for the moment, Senate Republicans hold the majority in the Senate and determine the schedule, so here we are.
On November 3, 2020, we have the chance to elect empathetic leaders. Since January 20, 2017, we have struggled as a country because our leadership in the presidency and the Senate had no empathy. It’s time for empathy to reenter politics in the United States. Make sure that you vote and VOTE BLUE.
A Polarized America
In the last 30 years, Americans have become increasingly divided over politics. The gap between the policies endorsed by the Republican and Democratic Parties is growing, as is the animosity between people who identify with different parties. Partisan politics first came to a head in the election of 1800. The First Party System of the United States featured the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party (also called “Jeffersonian Republican”). The Federalist Party grew from the national network of Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, who favored a strong united central government, close ties to Britain, a centralized banking system, and close links between the government and men of wealth. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who strongly opposed Hamilton’s agenda, founded the Democratic-Republican Party. The Jeffersonians came to power in 1800, and the Federalists were too elitist to compete effectively. The Federalists survived in the Northeast, but their refusal to support the War of 1812 verged on secession and was a devastating blow when the war ended well. The Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe (1816–1824) marked the end of the First Party System and a brief period in which partisanship was minimal.
There is not an Era of Good Feelings today. Donald Trump has made sure of that. He has polarized this nation more than ever. The Republican Party, which can be traced back to the Federalists, and Democrats, whose origins are in the Democratic-Republican Party, are more divided along ideological lines – and partisan antipathy is more profound and more extensive – than at any point in the last three decades. It could be the most polarized the United States has ever been except for the Civil War. These trends manifest in myriad ways, both in politics and in everyday life. Partisan animosity has increased considerably since the beginning of the Clinton presidency in 1992. In each party, the political polarization has more than doubled since the “Republican Revolution” of 1994. Most of these intense partisans believe the opposing party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being.”
We have been so ingrained to think about polarization: black and white, Republican or Democrat, Christian and Atheist, gay and straight, etc. Politics like sexuality is a spectrum, but when people in a political party are afraid of having their ability to compromise and come to a mutually agreed solution becomes a weapon against them, we become so polarized that we can’t see the truth of what needs to be done. Republicans couldn’t even vote for the impeachment of a president who clearly committed treason, bribery, and election fraud because they were too scared of that the president and voters would turn on them. They simply couldn’t do the right thing for this country because of political affiliation. Joe Biden said last night in the ABC town hall that the political parties in America need to come together and not be afraid of retribution from the president. He talked about getting people together and working out solutions instead of temper tantrums and stalled legislation. The polarization of American politics is nothing new.
If we look back at the contentious election of 1800, we see that the Federalist incumbent John Adams ran against the rising Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson. The extremely partisan and outright nasty campaign failed to provide a clear winner because of a constitutional quirk. Presidential electors were required to vote for two people for the offices of president and vice-president. The individual receiving the highest number of votes would become president. Unfortunately, Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr both received an equal number of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives voted to break the tie. When Adams’s Federalists attempted to keep Jefferson from the presidency, Adams set the stage for the first critical constitutional crisis of the new American federal republic. However, rationality prevailed, and the first peaceful transition of political power between opposing parties in U.S. history occurred. The election had far-reaching significance and resulted in the 12th Amendment. Jefferson appreciated the momentous change, and his inaugural address called for reconciliation by declaring that, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
However, before Jefferson was inaugurated, there was a lot of uncertainty and political divide. On January 25, 1800, there occurred an impressive exchange on Washington politics. Abigail Adams, the president’s wife, and one of the contenders for John Adam’s replacement offered their impressions of a partisan in a “curious conversation” over supper that night. The give-and-take was frank and unrestrained. Jefferson said he avoided attending the House of Representatives, writing, “I am sure there are persons there who would take a pleasure in saying something, purposely to affront me.” He complained and worried about a partisan Congress, adding that he found “more candor and liberality upon one side than there is upon the other.” Abigail Adams was equally candid, noting prophetically, “Some are mere Brutes, others are Gentlemen— but party Spirit, is a blind spirit.”
The problems with parties are now the worst it has ever been as opponents deride politicians for even attempting to compromise. Today’s increase in partisanship in the U.S. also has significant harmful effects. Most importantly, polarization and partisan conflict lead to inaction, as “my way or the highway,” ideologically rigid mentalities lower the probability of achieving the compromise that should be at the heart of legislative functioning. We saw this “destroy the village in order to save it” mentality with the shutdown of the U.S. government, which has occurred five times since 1990. Partisans on both sides increasingly see institutions in the U.S. not as beneficial and necessary but as part of an effort by the other side to gain advantage and to perpetuate its power and philosophical positions. Liberals and Democrats today, for example, have lower trust in “traditional” family and religious institutions. They question the problems of the current economic system that intensifies inequality in the United States. Republicans have lower trust in the scientific process, higher education, the mass media, and the role of the government. These skeptical views of institutions and social structures skew us toward distrust, anger, and internal infighting — not actionable efforts to fix problems and address threats.
A healthy skepticism of the way things operate in society is often warranted. But our society must continue to function, and that functioning requires an underlying agreement in the legitimacy of societal institutions. This is particularly true today when there are increasing external threats to our society and way of life from all sides, ranging from rogue states to terrorists to changes in weather and climate patterns to shifting world economies and massively unstable populations. At some point, the United States must balance the partisan conflicts resulting from differences in views of the world with a broader agreement on how we, as a society, adapt to external threats and achieve societal objectives. What will it take to do that? Presumably, we need leaders who don’t focus as much on taking advantage of and stoking partisan differences as they do looking at the larger picture. That’s a difficult challenge, but one to which the American public may well be quite receptive. Bipartisan cooperation is a perspective that Joe Biden has long advocated.
While it is usually easier to criticize than to make efforts to agree on solutions, we are going to need more emphasis on cooperation in the years ahead if our society is to thrive and survive. If Donald Trump is elected for another four years, the divide may be so great when he leaves the White House that it can never be salvaged. We are at a crossroads. I hope that Joe Biden can heal the wounds of partisan politics, but I do not doubt that Donald Trump will widen the divide and the work to destroy our most sacred institutions of democracy. Nikki commented yesterday, “I’m so tired of thinking about Trump every day! And worrying worrying worrying. His Supreme Court pick is horrendous for gay rights and women’s rights. Exhausting.” I couldn’t agree more. I think we will have a collective case of PTSD by the time Trump leaves the Oval Office. We just have to hope there is an United States to salvage when he finally leaves office.
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