"The Islander"
- Mar 18, 2018
- 3 min read
We’ve travelled from parts unknown to Rome, dived straight into the Enlightenment, sailed across to the Americas, stood by the British Empire as it rose and then promptly witnessed its fall. All for what? To understand that we revel in each other’s company? Or that we enjoy asserting power over others?
Perhaps we can ask Shakespeare and those who wrote in his image of The Tempest. Some, like Aimé Césaire, write for racial equality, others, like Suniti Namjoshi, for gender equality, and many, like Francisco Retamar use their skills to promote local recolonization in the postcolonial world. And yet, perhaps the most interesting rendition in my eyes comes from a Finnish symphonic metal band called Nightwish.
While I am not sure of the muse of Marco Hietala, the singer and songwriter of "The Islander," the vivid imagery of “An old man by a seashore at the end of day” on a “Tempest-tossed island,” invokes an image of Prospero, old and lost in his exile–once a powerful duke of many and now a king of a deserted kingdom. The regret in the song mingles with a sense of peace, the desolate sensation of loss latches onto a warmth of lingering hope. Altogether, the song inspires an image of empire from the perspective of a colonizer after losing his holdings.
The song invokes Rudyard Kipling’s ideas from the “White Man’s Burden,” as the albatross flies in front of the old man’s eyes as an image of those sacrificed return from the grave. The albatross alludes to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written and published near the end of the Age of Enlightenment, giving reference to the peak of Western imperialism and to thinkers such as Rousseau and Kant, invoking the western tradition of civilization. If the albatross thereby translates into a symbol for the ex-colonies, then the line, “He sets the sails one last time saying farewell to the world” represents the end of western empire in places, like India, that saw their independence just in this part century.
Our understanding from the Inca civilization speaks to the contrary, for when one empire falls, another takes its place. The people of the Andes lived under Inca rule, then Spanish, until finally developing their own leadership and culture accumulated from those colonizers who clashed with the locals. But the song addresses this conflict too, talking about the “seabed far below, Grass still in his feet and a smile beneath his brow” as even the death of one into a seabed follows the life of another in the green earth.
And yet, perhaps like Kipling in his poem and like J.M. Coetzee in his novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, this song does not simply reflect upon the death of an old and meddling empire but warns of the follies of those civilizations that follow. The chorus of the song: “This is for long-forgotten light at the end of the world, Horizon’s crying the tears he left behind long ago” provides a picture of a history forgotten, and beyond the horizon therefore lies a future interchangeable with the past, thus invoking Coetzee’s Magistrate’s idea of a “cyclical time” of the world.
Although, the song does indicate that all is not lost, for even that empire exiled for its crimes “lightens the beacon…Showing the way, lighting hope in their hearts,” negating the poor connotation empire has adapted in recent years and indicating that despite all the atrocities empires, like what the United States did to Native Americans and Africans during Manifest Destiny, some benefits do come out of empire–even if the only benefit is to learn not to do what they did.
And thus, over the last two quarters I have learned about empire beyond “empire and its ruins” or “good” and “evil.” I have seen empire as an extension of the human need for interaction and ruins no longer as a form of death, but of rebirth, as Thomas Cole did in his painting series. I have considered that an empire is not necessarily good or evil, but rather a tool of the people who reside within it. Ultimately, I have learned that preconceived notions are subject to change with new knowledge and I cannot wait to see what the next quarter has in store for me.
Comments