Interpretation

Image via tywkiwdbi

This photograph clearly illustrates the feelings of emasculation felt by many soldiers of World War One, as the encroachment of women into traditional male territory quite literally meant that they were no longer 'wearing the trousers' (Hosentragend). The expression on the soldier's face is a mixture of pride and bemusement; something experienced often by troops at the front line as they attempted to come to terms with their role as defenders but also as killers. His pose is carefully arranged, either by himself or the photographer, with bayonet pointing down to pristine black jackboots, most likely in a conscious foreshadowment of the street violence and extreme politics in which many of their comrades were to be embroiled post-1918. The cat - it would be naive to assume that it is by coincidence alone a black cat - is a reference both to fate and to the increasingly fatalistic attitude of the men, as the world they knew was crumbling around them, while the photographer's decision to include the outhouse in the background suggests a subconscious acknowledgement that the world in which they moved at that time, similar to this analysis, was replete with Mist.

On a people's failure to ripen

Not strictly within the aims of this blog but still an interesting quote, and one which returns to the odd idea of geographic determinism (is there an official term for this?) which we saw here. The following is taken from Irish Witchcraft and Demonology (1913 / 1972) by St. John D. Seymour, BD. Quite wonderfully, the whole book is available online.

It is often said that Irishmen succeed best out of Ireland; those qualities they possess, which fail to ripen and come to maturity in the lethargic atmosphere of the Green Isle, where nothings matters very much provided public opinion is not run counter to, become factors of history under the sunshine and storm of countries where more ample scope is given for the full development of pugnacity, industry, or state-craft. At any rate, from the days of Duns Scotus and St.Columbanus down to the present, Irishmen have filled, and still fill, positions of the highest importance in every part of the globe as friends of kings, leaders of armies, or preachers of the Truth - of such every Irishman, be his creed or politics what they may, is justly proud.

You hear that Ireland? It's the weather you've been oppressed by all these years, and nothing else. On the other hand, it's still a more positive view of the Irish than in the first textbook we looked at.