hammerandanvil

Hammer and anvil

by Bob on March 20, 2007

People and their relationships are very complicated. Or terribly, terribly simplistic.

Most interactions between people are fraught with unseen dynamics, including non-verbal communication of all sorts.

Even in the communication, many words betray the actual underlying sentiments felt and expressed in other subtle ways. Tonality, timbre, phrasing of words if we ignore even body language.

Sometimes one person or the other dominates in a relationship. This is far from ideal in a humanistic sense, but everyday reality. Perhaps it's why many dog owners start looking like their dogs and vice-versa.

In this vein of subtle domination in a relationship, one is reminded of the words of the great poet Goethe who wrote in one of his poems, entitled, in translation, "Another", that one must be either hammer or anvil.

"Du mosst Amboss oder Hammer sein" as Goethe wrote in the vernacular.

This concept was later made into an episode of the brilliant 1967 TV series, The Prisoner. The episode was, of course, titled "Hammer into Anvil".

One wonders whether it is fixed in a human relationship just who will forever be the hammer and who the anvil, or whether it is indeed a malleable set of roles.

Poets and playwrights knew about this, as well as alchemists. Shakespeare especially did.

So we must have Goethe and his entire poem from 1789. Translated from the German.

( http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1287 )

* * *

ANOTHER.

Go! obedient to my call,

Turn to profit thy young days,

Wiser make betimes thy breast

In Fate's balance as it sways,

Seldom is the [rooster] at rest;

Thou must either mount, or fall,

Thou must either rule and win,

Or submissively give in,

Triumph, or else yield to clamour:

Be the anvil or the hammer