AND ANOTHER THING
We must forgive our enemies, but what about our friends?
PAUL JOHNSON
The attempt by the European Union to tell the Austrians how to vote is an absurd example of our inability to lay the ghost of the second world war. Hitler died more than half a century ago and ought to be treated as history, not current affairs. Bonaparte, who disturbed the peace of Europe far more fundamentally, and for far longer, was put in his historical niche much more quickly even though his family was alive and active and seeking power. There are quite enough nasty dictators in the world already without creating imagi- nary ones. Even if all seven million Austri- ans vote for Herr Haider he will not be in a position to do much harm. The behaviour of Austria in Hitler's day was ignoble, but it is time such things were forgiven.
As it happens, I am collecting material for a little book on forgiveness — of nations by other nations, though more particularly of personal enemies and injuries, It is a topic which directly con- cerns every one of us, for there can be nobody who has not got something to for- give or be forgiven for; usually both. For- giveness, I find, is not something which can be treated in isolation. It has a lot to do with self-respect and the nature of wrongs. It raises such concepts as hatred, anger, revenge, pardon and mercy, justice, retribution and punishment.
There is little doubt that forgiveness is generally (not universally) desirable, but it is hard. It means parting with a grudge, which so easily becomes a precious posses- sion. I often say of the Irish, with their ever- fresh memories of wrongs, 'They prefer a grievance to a remedy.' Yet I am aston- ished, too, at the ability of individual Irish- men and Irishwomen to forgive horrible injuries to their families arising from the Troubles. I think people are more likely to forgive if left to themselves and not preached at one way or another by politi- cians, clergy and journalists. Now that I am studying the subject, I am constantly find- ing instances, in history and among people I talk to, of heroic forbearance. The other day I came across a man who told me he had a bad stammer, but only on the tele- phone. 'How is that, do you think?"0h, I know the reason. It's because my first wife used the phone to announce that she was going to leave me. It came right out of the blue and it was a severe shock.' I asked him if he had forgiven her. There was a long pause, and then he said, 'Yes, I think I have forgiven her. In fact, I'm sure I have.'
That recalls the case of Evelyn Waugh and his first wife, Evelyn Gardner. He was very much in love with her, and her abrupt deci- sion to run off with an acquaintance, John Heygate, turned his world upside-down without warning. He wrote at the time: 'Eve- lyn's defection was preceded by no kind of quarrel or estrangement. So far as I knew we were both serenely happy.' He added, in a letter to Harold Acton, 'Evelyn's family and mine join in asking me to "forgive" her, whatever that may mean . . . I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live, but I am told that this is a common experi- ence.' Waugh was a good hater and, far from forgiving his wife, used her as the archetypal faithless woman in his novels, particularly the heartless Brenda Last in his dark tale A Handful of Dust. Brenda is the cause of one of the most telling frissons in modem litera- ture. Both her worthless lover and her cher- ished only child are called John. She gets the news that 'John' has been killed, assumes it is the lover and is devastated. When told that the dead John is her son she involuntar- ily exclaims, 'Oh, thank God!' But I believe Waugh did forgive his ex-wife in the end. He certainly forgave Heygate, explicitly if grudg- ingly. Many years after the event, Heygate wrote to him expressing contrition and pleading for forgiveness. Waugh sent him a cable: 'OK — EW.' Its brevity belied, I sus- pect, a long struggle between Waugh and his conscience. I would like to hear from read- ers who also find it difficult to forgive.
It is significant that forgiveness, as a pious practice, came comparatively late into the world, a symptom of the creeping upward progress of civilisation. Virtually all ancient legal codes were vengeful. The ancient Greeks tended to treat forgiveness as a sign of a low spirit or weakness. It is curious that the word 'magnanimity' has changed its meaning. Nowadays we might say that someone who had forgiven a great wrong is magnanimous. Originally the term signified, among other things, a man with a spirit to resent injury and avenge it. Even Judaism was in its origins vindictive (anoth- er word whose meaning has changed). Later, in the spirit of the rule of law, it sub- stituted justice for personal revenge. St Paul, in preaching Christianity, was fond of quoting the scriptures: "Vengeance is sweet," saith the Lord, "but vengeance is mine. I will repay." ' The most revolution- ary single element in the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth was his stress on forgiveness. It is one of the ways in which he has most influenced human behaviour. He seems to have seized on a current trend in Judaism and emphasised it. There is a fascinating prayer in the mahzor for Yom Kippur, which reads: 'Even God prays. What is his prayer? May it be My will that My love of compassion overwhelm My demand for strict justice.' Yet there are distinct differ- ences between Christian and Jewish doc- trines of forgiveness. In Christianity, for- giveness in its ideal form is virtually uncon- ditional. Forgiveness, as Kant emphasises, is an exercise in individual autonomy and is entirely voluntary, though most moral rela- tions are quasi-contractual by their nature. In Judaism, by contrast, an individual is not wholly an autonomous moral agent but a member of a covenanted community, and that community has the right to decide when and if a collective wrong inflicted on it may be forgiven.
These are deep waters, Watson, and rightly so. It is proper to hand over to the community the revenge for a serious wrong done to us which it is our instinct to exact. We have come to see that individual revenge is barbarous. As Bacon puts it, `Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior, for it is a prince's part to pardon.' So to forgive is princely, but our willingness to play the prince is condition- al on the community's success in imposing justice. Forgiveness for huge wrongs, such as brutal murder, was easier in the days of capital punishment. If the Moors murder- ers had been hanged, the mothers of the dead children might perhaps by now have forgiven. As it is, each rumour that Myra Hindley is to be released reopens wounds which have never healed and the bitter- ness wells up afresh. The same syndrome will operate in the case of Dr Shipman, for in due course his release, too, will become a matter for debate. But such issues should not dominate a meditation on for- giveness, for most wrongs we suffer in our lives, including the ones that really hurt, are not crimes. As that generous man, Cosimo de' Medici, remarked with some acidity, 'We are told to forgive our ene- mies. But nothing is said about forgiving our friends.'
Previous page
