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Anne Frank would have been 80 years old today.
Here in the Netherlands, the usual birthday song is not related to Happy Birthday to You. Instead, they sing:
Lang zal je leven
Lang zal je leven
Lang zal je leven in de gloria,
In de gloria.
Long will you live,
Long will you live,
Long will you live in glory
In glory.
She did not, of course, live long. But as the news tonight said, as a voice against anti-Semitism, racism and fascism, she is even now in glory.
Does 'glory' imply fame or heaven there?
It means honored among those of good will, xeger, whether you believe in Heaven or not.
The feel I get is that it was originally religious. But my Dutch dictionary defines "de gloria" only in terms of this song, and my guesses are pretty amateurish.
Any native speakers know?
Xopher @ 2 ...
Ah, nice! It seemed to me that it was likely something along those lines :)
(the 'honoured among those of good will', that is)
Hmm, abi, I could see how you'd read me as a bit harsh there, especially after my reason spasm of bad behavior. xeger seems to have taken that as I meant it though.
Still, let me try again: For a person who is alive, it means that they will be held in affection and respect by all who know them, and accomplish their most spectacular goals. For a person who is dead, it means they are remembered with affection and respect, and with great honor for what they accomplished in life.
In addition, people of good will who believe in Heaven are almost certain to believe that Anne Frank has a place among the blessed.
Do you like that better? It's what I meant.
Xopher @7:
I think that's a good summary of the ambiguity of "gloria", at least as I see it. It's both meanings, the mundane and the religious.
Janet Langhart Cohen has a play, Anne & Emmett, where Anne Frank and Emmett Till meet and talk in a place called Memory. It was supposed to be read at the Holocaust Museum Wednesday.
Marilee: that is both incredibly painful and a token of how sorely needed such reaffirmations still are.
Just think of the books she could have written, had she lived just a few months longer, to be liberated.
For your pleasure, here's a version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTeBi5ZJ8t8
It's a zipper song, that different lyrics can be zipped in as long as they scan. Great idea, great fun.
I've often thought how fortuitous it was that her diary was found and published so soon after the war. She became a symbol of the Holocaust, and so much a part of the mainstream culture of Western Europe and America that her name and story have remained current. Because she will always be remembered at the same age, she has put a young and innocent face on the victims, so that she can't be ignored by later generations the way that, for instance, Elie Wiesel could be ignored as irrevalent by young people who are a quarter his age now.
Gloria does have religious, specifically Christian, undertones. In de Gloria Excelsis Deo and all that. But apart from the birthday song plus the occasional psalm you won't really see it used in Dutch.
Often this song will be song in the third person btw: "Lang zal ze leven", or "Lang zal hij leven"; the standard joke lyrics go "Veel zal ze geven" ("She'll give us much") in the second line and it's traditional not so much to end the song as to let it awkwardly peter out amidst some unnecessary tempo changes, or at least it is in our family...
15, Bruce: I've problems with calling the survival of Anne's diary fortuitous, as it implies it was a matter of luck, rather than hard work and determination on the part of Miep Gies and Otto Frank. The first rescued the family papers from their hiding place, the second made the difficult and courageous decision to publish the diary only two years after he himself returned from the death camps that killed Anne and his other relatives, at a time when nobody really wanted to know much about it.
Re: #17
I think the song should apply to them too.
Martin #16: Gloria does have religious, specifically Christian, undertones.
And yet it also has mythological links to older forms of "holiness", especially though the "memory" aspect. I'm thinking especially of the Greek kleos -- usually translated as "fame", but the etymology leads to not only "clear", but "bright" -- like a star, visible to all. And yes, that was associated with both their worship as heroes, and their afterlife.
It's weird to think of Anne Frank as being only 7 years younger than my Mom, had she lived. Because of the diary, she'll always be a young girl to those know of her.
From Lisa Goldstein's The Red Magician...
They left the camp quickly, without looking back, and began to walk along the road to the train station. The road was hot and dusty and they rested often. Occasionally they passed soldiers on leave or refugees traveling in groups carrying all their possessions between them. No one stopped to look at them, the tall man in the long black coat and the pale young woman in the new town-bought dress and shoes.Kicsi thought that none of this could be real - not the people, or the well-kept houses, or the trees and shrubs flowering by the roadside. Sometimes when she passed a soldier, she marveled that there could be anyone so healthy left in the world.
Did anyone ever do an alt. history where Anne Frank lived, and what sort of changes she might have brought?
[adds the diary to reading list]
Happy birthday Anne. Thank you for writing to us. I'm just sorry we can't write back.
#22: There's Philip Roth's "The Ghost Writer". But she wasn't really Anne.
Angiportus: Twilight Zone magazine published a story wherein Frank escaped Holland before the invasion and went to Hollywood, where she became an actress and starred in The Wizard Of OZ.
There hasn't been a story where she survived the camps. I wonder if she would have published her Diary had she lived.
I should clarify. I haven't heard of a story where she survived the camps.
I remember seeing an Oprah Winfrey episode a few years ago where Elie Weisel toured Auschwitz with her. He swore then that it would be his last time there.
#25 I wonder if she would have published her Diary had she lived.
She would have. There's a part in the diary where she refers to a call on Radio Orange (Dutch underground radio broadcast from England) that the government wanted people who wrote diaries to keep them for publishing after the war.
Anne specifically rewrote sections of her diary after that to make it better suited for publishing.
Sandra Meisel referred to a timeline where the adult Anne Frank won a prize for her writing, in Shaman (previously Dreamrider).
And I know they buried her body with others
Her sister and mother and 500 families
And will she remember me 50 years later
I wished I could save her in some sort of time machine
Know all your enemies
We know who our enemies are
(Context, for those who need it.)
Martin @ 17:
I can understand your problem with the word "fortuitous". What I meant to say was that the world was very lucky that her diary was found and published, not that it happened by random chance. Perhaps "fortunate for the world" would be a better way to say it.
Xoper @ 7:
I'm afraid that there are a fair number of people of good will who believe in Heaven who must, due to their religious training, believe that she is roasting in Hell even as we speak, or will after the Judgement, along with all of my ancestors and most of anyone's.
I'd like to believe that anyone of good will could not believe so, but people who believe in many versions of eternal damnation have spent lives tending the sick, helping the poor, and so on, so I can't give it any credit.
Far from original: religion does a better job making good people monstrous than making bad people good.
Small good out of great evil: Anne's reference to her menstrual period was the first widespread acknowledgement of such in Japan, with the consequence that it (for awhile, at least) became known as 'Anne's Day' and could be discussed.
#31, There are others whose religious training do not preclude Anne Frank from Heaven.
I can't find the exact quote, but iirc it boils down to "Evil done in my name is still the work of the devil, and good done in the name of the devil is still my work".
xeger @ 33 -- Are you thinking of Aslan's conversation with Emeth near the end of The Last Battle?
"Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted."
Joel Polowin @ 34 ...
By the looks of it I'm thinking of something along the lines of Matthew 7:15-23. Definitely New Testament, one way or another (which seems apropos for CS Lewis).
xeger, #33: Mercedes Lackey quotes something similar from the Karsite holy book in her "Mage Storms" trilogy: "Good done in the name of another god is done for me, and evil done in my name is done for the darkest demons in Hell." But an exact Biblical reference would make a fine counter for people who use religious arguments to support evil actions.
I saw Francine Prose speak in May; her current project is a study of the three Anne Frank diaries: the original one, the complete rewrite she did after hearing the broadcast (she took Peter out) and the version her father did for publication (he put Peter back in.) She's convinced that the diary deserves to be taken seriously as a text (or set of texts) -- the book should be interesting.
Speaking of Emmett Till (#10 above):
Police find icon's casket, more empty plots at historic cemetery
# Police know of 30 more cases in which "crime scene is obvious," they say
# Sheriff: Casket from Emmett Till's burial found in garage with "wildlife living inside"
# Police: People finding headstones missing, graves empty or containing wrong body
# Cemetery office manager, three gravediggers charged with felonies
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