The Little Zionist

Even though Christmas is now over, Amazon have still not delivered the present that I most wanted. It is T. S. Eliot himself reading the Wasteland on CD, and I need it because I have no means of getting my taped versions (of Alec Guinness’ doing the same) onto my ipod.
I used to love this poem. I knew practically the whole thing word for word. I read Dante, Conrad, Chrétien de Troyes and bits of my Bible solely because I thought they’d give me a better understanding of this poem, which I convinced myself was the most important and interesting thing I could ever possibly read. I developed a naïve idea of its transcendental qualities and read about the transcendental and literature and art.
Now I sit around reading about the Iranians’ latest anti-Israel comments, or how we should be dealing with terrorism, or where we went wrong dealing with all our Arab immigrants. I never thought I would have any interest in any of this real world stuff. I am slightly shocked that I believe there is a point in, for example, trying to give the Arabs a bit of liberal democracy*. I’ve always been disgusted with politics and have completely avoided it. Now I’ve become convinced that there is a moral imperative to defend certain values. Perhaps I have simply transferred my naïve affection from Eliot to Israel, which I think embodies those values, and provides an admirable model of liberal democracy – a better model than ours and America’s at least. I suppose I’ll come to understand better as I learn more about the country, and about Jewish history and things. There does seem something special about Israel; I only know a little about it so far, but it seems to have achieved amazing things against the odds. Maybe it just looks good surrounded by all those Arab states.

*See above…