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"Man's inhumanity to man" is a line from Robert Burns' 1784 poem "Man was made to Mourn: A Dirge". The line and the poem have since been quoted in relation to the problem of evil, especially referencing wars and genocide.
Synopsis
"Man was made to mourn" is an eleven stanza dirge by Robert Burns first published in 1784.[1][2] The poem was originally intended to be sung to the tune of the song "Peggy Bawn". It is written as if it were being delivered by a wiser old man to a "young stranger" standing in the winter on "the banks of Aire".[2] It includes the stanza:[1]
Many and sharp the num'rous ills
Inwoven with our frame!
More pointed still we make ourselves
Regret, remorse, and shame!
And man, whose heav'n-erected face
The smiles of love adorn, –
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!
Analysis
Burns based the poem on the song "The Age and Life of Man", a ballad that dated to the 17th century. He later said he had heard his mother sing the song.[2]
The scholar Nigel Leask writes that the poem includes "surprisingly contemporary themes," noting its "lament for the harshness and brevity of human life" and direct criticism of "hundreds labour[ing] to support / a haughty lordling's pride." It does not offer these poor hope, emphasizing the negative sentiment that "man was made to mourn." Leask also notes that the poem supports a right to work by criticizing a lord who will not hire a former farmer looking for work.[2]
Burns initially wrote the poem in response to pervasive "economic and social injustices" in society.[3] It was well-received. Scholar Carol McGuirk describes the poem and "Despondency, An Ode" as serving as a touchstone "for later poets in and out of Scotland."[4]: 68 However, in the years since its publication, the poem has been more broadly applied to wars and genocides.[3]
"Man's inhumanity to man"
It is possible that Burns reworded a similar quote from Samuel von Pufendorf who in 1673 wrote, "More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature's causes."[citation needed] In 1798 the English poet William Wordsworth adapted it in his Lines Written in Early Spring.[5]
The line "man's inhumanity to man" has been widely quoted since Burns' poem was first published, in reference to wars, mistreatment of indigenous people and nations, and, according to historian Mark Celinscak, other "acts of extreme violence".[6][7] It is still broadly associated with Burns' poem.[3] Celinscak writes that the phrase has become banal due to "decades of overuse", noting that it was commonly used to describe the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II.[6] The line was cited six times by Martin Luther King Jr. in his autobiography.[4]
References
- ^ a b Robert Burns (2005). "Burns Country". 'Man was made to mourn: A Dirge'. robertburns.org. Retrieved 13 November 2009.
- ^ a b c d Leask, Nigel (24 June 2010). "Pastoral Politics". Robert Burns and Pastoral: Poetry and Improvement in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572618.003.0005.
- ^ a b c Roth, Hans Ingvar (10 September 2018). P. C. Chang and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-8122-9547-4.
- ^ a b McGuirk, Carol (6 October 2015). Reading Robert Burns: Texts, Contexts, Transformations. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-31734-0.
- ^ Dabundo, Laura (15 October 2009). Encyclopedia of Romanticism (Routledge Revivals): Culture in Britain, 1780s-1830s. Routledge. p. 68. ISBN 978-1-135-23235-1.
- ^ a b Celinscak, Mark (1 January 2015). Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp. University of Toronto Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-4426-1570-0.
- ^ Hughey, Michael W. (29 March 2016). New Tribalisms: The Resurgence of Race and Ethnicity. Springer. p. 55. ISBN 978-1-349-26403-2.