The Once And Future Hero

The twentieth century was not a great age for heroes. Totalitarianism and mechanized warfare plagued the first half, while free-market triumphalism and petty ethnic squabbling gained ascendancy in the latter. The romanticism of the nineteenth century encouraged a blooming of heroes who merged political, artistic and cultural ideals: among them Italian unification leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, South American liberator Simon Bolívar, man-who-would-be-king Josiah Harlan, Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture and adventurer and renaissance man Sir Richard Francis Burton. Yet the advent of the mass age near the turn of the century - signified by the growth of populism (an appeal to mass approval and popular values for legitimation), communications technology (the radio, telegraph and accompanying collapse of time and distance) and national homogenization (the erosion of regional cultures and dialects through bureaucracy and centralization) - allowed for the emergence of dictators who perverted the romantic ideal by utilizing the above trends for venal self-aggrandizement.

Seeking to be both egalitarian "men of the people" and Nietzschean radical aristocrats (openly among fascists, surreptitiously among communists), the dictators indulged in the worst excesses of both populism and elitism: promoting rabble-rousing mass illusions like class warfare and anti-Semitism while slaughtering and enslaving their subjects in manners that would make the most brutal but at least brutally honest (no need for egalitarianism as an excuse) feudal despot blush. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin cast a permanent shadow over the notion of the transcendent individual, turning in the creative canvas of individual idealism for the supposed tabula rasa of the mass mind; the community-building ideal of national renewal for the community-fragmenting ideal of national purification. The heroic ideal of the romantic age has never fully recovered, being calculated out of existence both by what Thomas Carlyle called the "dismal science" of economics and its postmodern mimetic rival, the dismal theory of academia.

Of course people still looked to heroes after the age of the dictators, but nowadays only populist martyrs in the conscious or unconscious tradition of Christ gain mass approval: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, John F. Kennedy. Although the great dictators were just as much populists as they were elitists, it is elitism that has been poisoned by dictatorial associations: being a populist is still the paradoxical mark of democratic nobility, while to profess a separation and striving beyond common norms and goals is to raise suspicion. The sentiment expressed by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, "Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary— they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be," would now be considered secular blasphemy. Standing out is only appropriate if it is to help others fit in. Modern heroes must be servants of the masses, paragons of humility, their grandeur emerging through their lack of grandeur.

While I believe this too can be a legitimate form of heroism, our culture is suffering by restricting the canon of approved heroes to ecumenical peace marytrs. That the youth who once supported the great dictators still desire heroes of individualist grandeur is exemplified by the rise of rock n' roll and later hip-hop stardom. Legends of popular music are characterized by the mythical character, individual ideals, elite talents (some of the time) and inevitable excesses of romantic heroes, but restricted to the aesthetic domain. Literary rock stars like Hunter S. Thompson and Jack Kerouac apply to this category as well, and comic books represent another aesthetic grasp at lost grand heroism. Beyond the Dionysian youth culture, political figures who display the sort of norm-defying individuality characteristic of romantic heroes are generally bombarded by the media until they conform to the accepted archetypes, while leaders in business are about as inspirational as the billboards they prop up. At least dictators polluted the landscape with monuments to people and ideals rather than high-grade cheese and lingerie.

Is romantic heroism still possible in this age of leveling down? I believe it is, if exceedingly difficult. I have my own personal, highly subjective pantheon of rogue heroes of the modern age. They are often flawed and even ideologically opposed to each other, but they share a unifying concern with merging intellect and action, living life as an art, transcending the tenor of their times to seek a trans-historic vitality. They include: André Malraux, French adventurer, diplomat and writer (called by Raymond Aron, "One third genius, one third false, one third incomprehensible"); Gabriele d'Annunzio, Italian poet and liberator of Fiume (of whom Michael Ledeen wrote, "His search for glory is difficult to understand for those who no longer believe in its existence"); Zog, self-made monarch of Albania (variously called "the last ruler of romance," "an appalling gangster," "the modern Napoleon" and "frankly a cad"); Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russian futurist and aesthetic revolutionary (V. Khlebnikov: "He strikes the blazing match of his wit on the sole of stupidity's shoe"); and Albert Camus, French-Algerian philosopher and resistance fighter. All of these great and in some cases unjustly obscure figures emerged in the period of modernity, perhaps during more creative times than our own but still in the same broader historical era. That is why I refuse to believe modernity has irrevocably killed the romantic hero.

Totalitarian stooges and ressentiment-spewing hypocrites like Che Guevara may appear on t-shirts, but the true warrior-poet-gentleman-bon vivant-scholars do not need the cheap adulation of the masses. Nor do they need the more upscale but still fickle and trend-ridden adulation of academics. Current academia is rather part of the problem, ivory tower isolation being a sign of the intellectual fragmentation so detrimental to the common culture. Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset called the specialist contemptuous of all areas outside his specialty the señorito satisfecho (satisfied little prince). In contrast, the romantic heroes are the ones who bridge the gaps between disciplines and arts, acts and intentions: they think to live, not to achieve tenure. Matthew Arnold wrote that, "Greatness is a spiritual condition worthy to excite love, interest, and admiration; and the outward proof of possessing greatness is that we excite love, interest, and admiration." That this is a spiritual condition is why romantic heroism seems so out of place in today's materialist culture; and why today's culture is so lacking in inspiration. If we are to regain an appreciation for the ineffable, a re-enchantment of everyday living, we must have examples to follow. Miguel de Unamuno knew this when he wrote, "A new man, a genuinely new man, is the renewal of all men, because everyone gains his spirit." That is the role of the once and future hero.