Fantastica

Ας πούμε κάτι νέο. Αλλά ποιός ο λόγος να γράψεις κάτι
όταν κάποιος άλλος το έχει πει καλύτερα;
Μία άποψη για τη δύναμη της φαντασίας και την διέξοδο
στα όνειρα από τον Λόρδο Ντάνσανυ.

..The real Ireland is a land of dreams. It is for
the sake of the dream that we send ministers to
Poland and Ruritania, for the sake of the dream
that we have a Minister of External Affairs, and
keep an army. And if we are not looking at the
stars as we walk, or looking for them at broad noon,
we are looking back over our shoulders at what has
gone ages since, and peering back even further
through the mist and the haze of Time, to see
bright and clear in the radiance that shines from
our vivid dreams the kings and the heroes of days
that never were. And that we shall part with last
of all. No nation shall take from us our myths
and our fables ; no man shall prove that our demi
gods did not live: we would as soon give up St.
Patrick as give up the snakes he expelled. And
why? Because St. Patrick was real, and can look
after himself.
But the Irish snakes never lived, and so they
need our support. They need it, and they shall
have it In stone and on parchment and on what
ever craftsmen can ornament, long snakes with
crocodiles jaws make our favorite design.
In England men are proud to protect the weak, but that is
scarcely knightly enough for us: we protect the
non-existent. While an Irishman lives to defend
them no phoenix will die, no leprechaun, no fairy.
And as for our ancient kings and the gods of old
and the demi-gods, to them our allegiance goes out ;
and we are less likely to forsake one of them for
anything modern, than for the discovery of some
still older Irish demi-god.
[...]
What colony has England ever founded like
ours? America she may feebly instance. There is
nothing in that: America was there already, and
her people had merely-to set foot on it, and do a bit
of fighting when they got there, to kill off its rightful
owners. What is that compared to Hy Brasil,
the continent in the Atlantic? That is one of our
colonies. We not only discovered it, but we imagined
it and invented it. If we want another victory
besides the hundreds won by our demi-gods, we
can sing of another tomorrow. And nothing that
historians can record of the deeds of any of you
can equal what our singers will say of ours.

Historians! What can they do? They need
material for their work, and can do nothing with
out it Our singers can glorify us without our doing
anything. And a finer tale they make than
any one of your histories. Let us sit and smoke our
pipes in front of our doors, and let singers tell of
our glories, and we will not envy Napoleon plant
ing his fleur-de-lys on the walls of Troy, or wherever
he did achieve his laborious victories. And in
any case what was he, only a foreigner?
Edward Plunckett, 18th Baron Dunsany, απόσπασμα από το
βιβλίο "My Ireland"