In Victorian Britain, Benjamin Disraeli was the ultimate politician. He
was grave; he was witty and he knew of the many ways in which men
conducted themselves on earth. And that was a powerful reason why his was
also a compelling presence in literature. Politics was his domain and so
was the world of fiction he shaped through his novels. But that is not
what you can say about Woodrow Wilson. He was no novelist or poet, but he
was an academic who added to the glory of Princeton University in the way
scholars do. And then he was catapulted to the presidency of the United
States, in which position he meant to carve an influential niche for his
country through giving a framework to the League of Nations. Congress
became an impediment for him. Wilson would die an unhappy man, his
presidency not remembered for much in terms of achievement. Now, if you
think back on the dissidence Vaclav Havel symbolised in communist
Czechoslovakia, you will have cause to wonder why a man instrumental in
causing the velvet revolution in his country through his plays and his
ruminations on literature was unable to prevent its break-up. Havel,
starting off as president of Czechoslovakia, soon found himself president
of one half of the country people had begun referring to as the Czech
Republic. Slovakia had decided to go its own way.
If you have had cause to let your mind dwell on the intellectual lurking
in Dag Hammarskjoeld, you will feel the depths which defined his views of
life and beyond. Markings remains emblematic of the Hammarskjoeld
approach to human experience. And in Mao Zedong was a near perfect
balance achieved between the poet and the revolutionary. The Chinese
leader was moved by the setting sun and by rising mountains. The contours
of the land coursed through his soul. It was geography he would shake up
decisively. When he stood at Tienanmen in October 1949 to proclaim the
coming of a communist people's republic, it was poetry he found reflected
in the gleam of the distant moon, climbing into the sky ever so magically
and with verve.