“Rhetoric Relived” – retracing the world’s great speeches at sunrise, episode 1
Posted: April 6th, 2012 | Author: jillfoster | Filed under: Rhetoric Relived, Videoblogging | Tags: Abraham Lincoln, DC, Easter, Gettysburg Address, Good Friday, perspective, Rhetoric Relived, speech history, Videoblogging, Washington | 4 Comments »
A gorgeous sunrise starts this video (that’s fyi if you just have a second vs 3 minutes for the whole screening!)
In the spirit of new beginnings and perspective, Happy Good Friday.
Today started at DC’s Lincoln Memorial for some reflection as the sun peeped up. It was a vibrant moment. That sunrise and this Good Friday have stimulated new views toward Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address for me.
It’s oddly alluring and startling all at once to be struck by a favorite text or speech in a different way (…after perceiving it in a certain light for years).
Have you ever crossed a similar bridge?
That altered perspective happened with one idea in particular with the Gettysburg Address, more fleshed out in the video moments above.
Remember his thought here, with this line?
“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation [our nation] …can long endure.”
His use of the word testing stands out anew here. It’s a strong assertion, truthful in light of the huge civil strife, and also daunting. For whatever reason, I hadn’t fully considered the fact the president could’ve been testing his own certitude for how we would prevail. This is startling, a concept I haven’t consciously digested. Naive though it may be to feel this — I crave a president’s certainty, especially one like Lincoln during this gigantic national pivot!
Grappling with and rethinking the world’s great speeches motivates this new video series “Rhetoric Relived.” Sunrise moments are irreplaceable for refreshed perspective; so it’s my fond hope to keep recording on site at dawn.
Lincoln’s speech is a pillar of oratory strength, with critique of it widely offered in our nation’s robust speech history. His efficiency with ideas, nobility, and sense of reverence has drawn my attention in the past. But for some reason, this Good Friday and living in DC have sparked a renewed take on what he asserted with that line.
Is it obvious he doubts, even slightly, the tenacity of our national life? Maybe! It’s taken me years though (and more coffee!) to really stop and look at his assertion there. It is beautiful, strong, and unnerving still…just thinking our decisions as a country henceforth from Gettysburg just may derail us.
Or hopefully instead our country’s decisions and nation will “have a new birth of freedom…and not perish from the earth.”).
What strikes you in a different light - an exchange with another, a decision, an outcome, or something else?
More from LiveYourTalk:
- a college student from outside the USA and her take on Lincoln’s Gettysburg;
- Speechwriting and the perils of soundbite addiction.
How timely that you would choose these words today. I feel like we are in a way back here. Less is at stake but we are being tested as a nation. Can we get away from the infighting? Can we come together to solve problems? I hope so.
Thanks for this, Jill.
When I try to think of what our nation went through in that time period, standing on a battlefield still wet with blood, still smelling of the fractured bravery bought with so many lives, and wonder what I would say, standing there, I can understand his uncertainty.
And if those lines from the speech were his own honesty bleeding through, I can appreciate him as a human man standing there with evidence of mortality all around him thinking “am I leading one living nation against its dead limb? Two half-alive nations against a rebellious faction? What can put this back together? Is that even possible?”
Because whatever those men thought they were fighting for – country, way of life – they were killed, killing, wounded and being wounded for it. I don’t know what I would do with that reality first hand. I always see it on TV or hear it on the news. I’m very privileged to never have war actually thrust upon me – the one coup I saw in Africa was a bloodless one.
But no one has ever handed me a rifle and said pick a side, or rammed down my door and forced me to chose. Nor have I seen men fall in battle. It had to be so challenging, even for a President.
@Tinu – Thank you for your thoughts here, with such beautiful strength and ache.
For years I thought I empathized with Lincoln’s humanity and what it must have been like to assert clarity of mind when our country was split and bloody. It occurs to me now my empathy was actually a layer of relief for him making difficult decisions (vs evading them). When re-reading that particular passage, it struck like a brick though on how uncertain times were. He must have been understandably uncertain too, with his “testing” words written as they are. I appreciate what he said, like you, but it shakes my mental footing more now more so than ever. Because our nation, to me more so than in past years, is a disunited “union” frequently in philosophical and literal war with feeble patriotism. Futures are bright and not so, all at once.
@Lauree – I hope so too. I’m realizing my frustration increases as a voter. I’m not sure what to do with this frustration, outside of learn more as a citizen and realize what is within one’s control (and not). And that alone can be tricky! Thank you for being here on Good Friday, and for the reflection.