Commentary

Gordon Robinson, Contributor

Monday morning quarter-backing (a.k.a. couch captaincy) is a contagious disease against which Jamaicans haven't been vaccinated.

It is a practice, inherently without substance, that can expose more of the practitioner's insecurities than the subject's failings. Two recent offerings in the genre, Carolyn Cooper's 'That Paul Bogle statue' (The Sunday Gleaner, March 28) where invective readily outscored reason, and Louis Moyston's 'Bogle's statue: Beauty and the sublime' (Observer, May 3), wherein confusion reigned supreme, aptly demonstrate this.

In what is left of Cooper's piece after removing the gratuitous and cowardly abuse of Edna Manley, deceased, (and her ilk), her apparent complaint is the statue of Bogle created by Edna Manley "is not, in fact, a true likeness of the national hero" and "diminishes Paul Bogle's stature - both literally and figuratively".

Moyston seems deeply and repeatedly concerned about "contrast" (whatever that is) and complains that the statue contradicts his perception of a suitable monument "one with Bogle and others with their guns and machetes in full flight ... ", and he assumes, with the customary certainty of the formerly oppressed but noveau intellectual elite "that many writers and artistes ... of European ancestry have great difficulty to see through 'our eyes'".

Interpreting art

But no true artist sees anything through any but the artist's own eyes. To see it through "our eyes", we must create the sculptures ourselves. And most artists research their subjects, especially those dead for a century, to form a personal insight before creating.

Sometimes it is hard for the descendants of slaves to appreciate how easy and equally cruel it is to create and propagate stereotypes in reverse from the lofty heights of newly accessible academia, as it was for pro-slavery advocates in the 19th-century UK Parliament to argue that enslaved Africans were lesser human beings who benefited from their bondage, or for so-called fraternities like the Klu Klux Klan to preach racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-communism and anti-semitism, using black stereotypes as propaganda aids.

Edna's side of the story

The following is unapologetically plagiarised. It is a letter written by Edna Manley to her granddaughter, Rachel, on November 19, 1964, and published in Edna Manley: The Diaries (1989). This is Edna's side of the story:

"Now listen, Ra. I took a little trip down to Spring Garden, Stony Gut in St Thomas. I went and sat on the old stone foundation of Bogle's little church. We had to cut our way through the bush. An old lady went with us - her father had been Bogle's great friend - and her son, another old man and an ex-school teacher. It was fairly early and the sun wasn't hot yet and we were very quiet and relaxed - not raising our voices at all. "I said to her, 'When they stole the guns from the courthouse what did they do with them, dear? Did they fire on the soldiers?' And she said, 'Pappy say them didn't use the guns, them didn't know how to load and fire gun.'

"'But what did they take them for?'

"'I don't know, but I know the men of Stony Gut couldn't use gun - maybe they took them to keep the soldiers from using them.'

"'But Bogle carried a cutlass, he killed the custos with a cutlass, all the books say that.'

"'Yes. Bogle him carry a cutlass.'

"'And the men of Stony Gut carried cutlass too?'

"And a look came over her face as if it had all happened two weeks ago and she was still defending the men of Stony Gut. 'I don't know nothing about that - I know them don't carry cutlass - is stick them cut and is stick them carry.'

"'Only Bogle carried a cutlass?'

"'Yes. Bogle carry cutlass - but Bogle a BOLD man.'

"'Which way did they march - from here?'

"'Yes, in the morning the church bell ring and everyone gather and them pray and then them march - but - Bogle, him never come back.'

"The earth was damp and warm under our feet and it was all so quiet and we were sharing it and deeply moved.

"'I think them was going to make a little garden and plant flowers and have a man tend to it - here where the church was - but them don't do anything about it and I would like to see it happen in my time, for my Pappy really love Bogle.'

"'When I go back to Kingston I will try to talk to them.'

"'Yes, but the Kingston people want to do it in Morant Bay where Bogle die, and I think it should be here where him live and was happy - but you will try?'

"And then we rose and climbed through the bush up the steep hillside and as I drove home I remembered 'but Bogle was a BOLD man.'

"You see, darling, I am not sure that as you say he was overrated .... . Even Lord Olivier in his book says that Bogle was the turning point. They could argue with Gordon but no one could deflect Bogle. Perhaps he was a terrible man because he chopped the custos more than once, but he did it himself, and I suppose there are times when it takes a terrible man - history cries out for even a crime of magnitude. He wasn't a Jesus, who turned the other cheek .... . Bogle was no God - he was human and terrible but he flung off the clock of a slave past in a gesture that, though brutal, has also had its impact in a small corner of the world, and watching the faces of the St Thomas people, it still lives on.

"I asked the old lady which she thought was the greater man, Bogle or Garvey - and she paused for a long time - for though she was poor and very old, she was highly intelligent, and then her face lit up and she said: 'They were both great men, but Garvey was a spokesman - but Bogle was a BOLD man.'

"This I thought showed real insight and great loyalty to the past, though one couldn't exactly pinpoint just what the word BOLD signified to her, for she used it several times.

"Think about this, my pet, you with your great imagination, and tell me what does a BOLD man look like?

"Love,

Mardi."

Those who can, do. Those who can't, critique.

Peace and love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Feedback may be sent to columns@gleanerjm.com.