Talk:Stephen Vincent Benét

The topic here is "Stephen Vincent Benét"

Benet died in 1943. His poems reflect his thoughts about his own times. For example, his 1935 poem "Litany for Dictatorships" was inspired by by Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Illustrating his page with images from late 20th-century horrors in inappropriate. If those quotes are used on a more general article such as War, Oppression, Starvation, etc. I would have no quarrel with the images. What do others think? HouseOfChange (talk) 23:00, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The article is "Stephen Vincent Benét" — this project collects quotes by him and others on MANY diverse topics. The actual topics of any statements he or anyone else has ever made in all of human history which are most quote-worthy are those which are eternally relevant to any sentient beings of sufficiently advanced intelligence and wisdom to care about many diverse aspects and applications of aspects of Reality and Awareness, Life and Love beyond the very narrow and shallow confines of selfish, ethnocentric, partisan, parochial, racist, dictatorial or otherwise extremely bigoted forms of animosity, aggression, intolerance and apathies towards many of the diverse and splendorous forms of Awareness, Life and Love which exist within Reality.

"Litany for Dictatorships" is a powerful expression against the impulses of those who would foolishly ignore, acquiesce or even approve those attitudes and actions which in various ways support and promote diverse forms of foul dictatorship, oppression, and suppression of human diversity and expression. The Cambridge Dictionary states that a litany is "a long list of unpleasant things, especially things that are repeated." It is quite apt that his powerful statement against oppressions be accompanied by powerful images indicating, evoking and providing examples of those all too enduring tendencies, attitudes and practices of which he speaks.

I can accept and assert the proper rights of people to engage in a great deal of adversarial, partisan or even extremely prejudiced and bigoted bickerings and complaints which can arise anywhere diverse views are presented, permitted, promoted or opposed in various ways, but I am much more innately averse and generally opposed to supporting or promoting the quite aggressively active suppression of expressions of diverse and notable views, statements, and imagery. I myself certainly have much preferred generally welcome and pleasing subjects and imagery, and in the course of my decades of activity here I believe that such has characterized the vast majority of what I myself have contributed to this project, but I certainly do not seek to exclude images of various concentration and internment camps of prisoners of various governments, when such things are precisely what an author is referring to, even though the images might not be contemporary to his own time.

Though I still have not returned to anything close to the activity I maintained for many years here, and certainly have not found time to get involved in various disputes which have been increasing lately, I have somewhat noted in recent months the distinct patterns of editing and ranges of targeting pages and statements and ideas by the editor who removed these images. I assert that these aptly depicted oppressions of Jews by Nazis, which by your stated criteria you seem to be able to find appropriate as contemporary and thus could be comfortable with, though the remover clearly was not, and muslims by US forces in Iraq, though one of these remained, which seemed acceptable to him, though apparently not currently to you. Other than that he seemed comfortable only with retaining an image from a Stalinist gulag, but not any Nazi death camps.

If one looks at the edit history of this page it is clear that I have been nearly the only substantial contributor to this page since I created it in 2006, and that I added the images now in dispute in 2007, and they have not been judged inappropriate in the 17 years they have existed on the page. There sudden and quite apparently hostilely aggressive removal today struck me as something it was quite proper to revert.

There is MUCH more I am prompted to say, but I was just about to attend to some tasks when I came across this query, and have to attend to at least some of them soon, though apparently a few other things might delay my leaving right now. I expect I will address some of these issues further within the next week or so. I will for now simply assert that I believe the images that had been on the page for over 17 years are quite appropriate, and hope that you and others can be persuaded of that within coming days. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 01:13, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Your hard work and many contributions to the project deserve respect and gratitude, which I sincerely feel. Nevertheless, I still disagree that Abu Ghraib images are appropriate to THIS article. If you want to put those quotes with those exact images into some article that is not about a specific person who died in 1943, go right ahead. Since we continue to disagree, we need to have other uninvolved editors consider the images and the arguments. HouseOfChange (talk) 04:54, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, as a wise man once said, "not every bad thing is the same as every other bad thing." Benet's "Dictatorship" poem is about the evils of a dictatorship that spies on, oppresses, imprisons, tortures, corrupts, etc. own citizens. Atom bombs, Hitler's camps, and Abu Ghraib are horrifying images of terrible things but do not, particularly, illustrate the evils invoked by Benet. Wikiquote is not WP:CENSORED, but piling up viscerally shocking and off-topic images distracts here from the topic which is quotes from Stephen Vincent Benet. The 2020 article as last edited by Kalki includes three images of atom bombs exploding, three images of Hitler's concentration camps, and three images from Abu Ghraib. Surely there is room for some improvement to this article? HouseOfChange (talk) 19:24, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Like much of the greatest tragic works of literature the major theme of his statements are indications of "man's inhumanity to man" for various reasons and rationalizations under various guises and disguises, and though the severities might be exampled by those dictatorships which oppress "their own citizens" severely, these same dictatorships ALSO, each and every one of those you mentioned actually INVADED other nations, to oppress populations whose humanity and human worth they, at best, found "inconvenient" to acknowledge, and in the worst cases actively sought to persecute and DESTROY. "Man's inhumanity to man" is certainly a broad TOPIC of these quotes, and not merely minutely peculiar aspects of the regimes which inspired them.

You state that these are "viscerally shocking" images, which is certainly true, but I reject your assertions that they are "off-topic" or distract "from the topic which is quotes from Stephen Vincent Benet" — they are EMPHASIZING the past and PRESENT relevance and importance of his statements and these quotes used to caption them. That being said, I must vigorously emphasize that I do NOT accept your repeated and in my opinion quite fallacious PREMISE that these images are "off-topic" because their relevance might not be immediately apparent to those unfamiliar with the context relating to some of the stories and statements of Benét, or what they are actually referring to, or in some cases might be able to perceive such relevance, but simply for various reasons might prefer not to have attentions drawn the ideas presented, or their quite clear manifestation in such images as may be presented. "Atom bombs" and "Hitler's camps" DEFINITELY do illustrate and exemplify the evils of which he speaks — in one case the acts of precisely the particular regimes you concede to have inspired his statements, and in the case of "Atom bombs", though the story "By the Waters of Babylon" (1937) is said to have been inspired by the bombing of Guernica, the descriptions of the widespread devastation and persistent dangers of traveling to those areas, and deadliness of materials within them is generally accepted to accurately describe much of the potential aftermath of a nuclear holocaust, and though the Manhattan Project did not produce the atomic bombs until 1945, there were for many years a general speculation among some familiar with the potentials of nuclear energies of their potential uses in such bombs.

I once again must be leaving, but have few fixed schedules, and have delayed doing so for now. I will likely be gone soon for at least a couple of hours, but expect that addressing this topic and perhaps a few others will probably continue to some extent into the next week. So it goes… ⨀∴☥☮♥∵ॐ …Blessings. ~ ♞☤☮♌︎Kalki ⚚⚓︎⊙☳☶⚡ 23:53, 30 November 2024 (UTC) + tweaks

Man's inhumanity to man is indeed a big theme. Consider WQ articles for William Shakespeare, Siegfried Sassoon, Eugène Ionesco, Dylan Thomas, Pablo Picasso -- all of these use images in an appropriate way to focus on the topic of the article rather than to distract from it. I believe this article would be improved by keeping a focus on Stephen Vincent Benet. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:59, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Concerning atom bomb, concentration camp, and Abu Ghraib images: I would be content to see ONE image of each (not three atom bombs, 3 concentration camps, and 3 Abu Ghraibs) illustrating quotes here, in order to meet Kalki's strong feeling that these images show the timelessness of Benet's message. HouseOfChange (talk) 20:42, 3 December 2024 (UTC) Update, and I today re-inserted one of the three concentration camp images to illustrate Kalki's point that it is the kind of thing eventually done by Nazi dictatorship. The article also still has one Abu Ghraib image and several atom bombs exploding, I hope this can be a consensus solution to the disagreement. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:45, 9 December 2024 (UTC)