Fairy Tales

THE THORNY PATH TO GLORY

THERE’S AN OLD FAIRY tale: “The thorny path to glory about a hunter named Bryde, who earned great honor and worth, but only after long and numerous tribulations and dangers in life.” Many a one of us have probably heard this as a child, maybe read it later as an adult and thought about his own obscure thorny path and “numerous tribulations.” The fairy tale and reality are not far apart, but the fairy tale has its harmonious conclusion here on earth, while reality often postpones it past earthly life into time and eternity.

The history of the world is a magic lantern that shows us in slides on the black background of their time how humanity’s benefactors, the martyrs of science and art, wander the thorny path to glory.

From all times and from all countries these slides appear, each only for a moment, but encompassing a whole life—a lifetime with its struggles and triumphs. Let’s look at, here and there, a few in this band of martyrs, one that won’t end until the earth fades away.

We see a crowded amphitheater. Aristophanes’ The Clouds sends streams of ridicule and merriment over the crowd. Athens’ most remarkable man is being ridiculed in spirit and person from the stage. He who was the people’s shield against the Thirty Tyrants: Socrates. He who saved Alcibiades and Xenophon in the din of battle.¹ He whose spirit rose above antiquity’s Gods. He is present here himself. He has risen from the audience and displays himself so that the laughing Athenians can see if he and the caricature on the stage are similar. He’s standing up there in front of them, lifted high over them all. The succulent, green, poisonous hemlock, not the olive tree, should be Athens’ symbol.

Seven cities claim to be the birthplace of Homer. That is to say, after he was dead! Look at him while he lived—He walks through these places, reciting his verses to support himself. Thoughts about tomorrow have turned his hair grey. He, the greatest seer, is blind and lonely. The sharp thorn rips the poet-king’s coat to pieces. His songs still live, and only through them live antiquity’s gods and heroes.

Picture after picture billow out from the Orient and the Occident, so far from each other in time and place, and yet all on glory’s thorny path, where the thistle doesn’t set bloom until the grave is to be decorated.

Under the palm trees walk camels, richly laden with indigo and other precious treasures. They’re being sent from the country’s ruler to the one whose song is the joy of the people, and who is the glory of his country—He who fled his country because of envy and lies. They have found him. The caravan is approaching the little town where he found refuge. A poor corpse is brought out of the gates and stops the caravan. The dead man is just the one they seek: Firdusi²—his thorny path to glory is ended!

The African with his coarse features, the thick lips and black wooly hair, sits on the marble steps of the palace in Portugal’s capital and begs—It’s Camões’³ faithful slave. Without him and the copper shillings that are thrown to him, his master, the singer of The Lusiads would starve to death. Now an expensive monument covers Camões’ grave.

Yet another picture!

A deathly pale, straggly bearded man is seen behind the iron bars. “I have made a discovery, the greatest in centuries!” he shouts, “and they have imprisoned me here for more than twenty years!” “Who is he?” “A madman,” says the guard. “What people can’t think of! He believes that you can propel yourself with steam!” It’s Salomon de Caus,⁴ the discoverer of steam power, whose suspicious unclear words were misunderstood by Richelieu, and who dies, imprisoned in a madhouse.

Here stands Columbus! He who once was followed by street urchins and mocked because he wanted to discover a new world. He has discovered it. Enthusiasm’s bells ring out at his triumphal return, but the bells of envy soon ring louder. The world explorer, he who lifted his golden America up from the ocean and gave it to his king, is rewarded with iron chains, the ones he wishes placed in his coffin. They bear witness to the world and to the values of his time.

Picture after picture—the thorny path to glory is rich with examples!

He is sitting here in pitch darkness—He who measured the mountains of the moon. He who pushed into space to the planets and stars. He, the great man who heard and saw the spirit in nature, and felt the world turn under him: Galileo. Blind and deaf he sits here in his old age, impaled on the thorn of suffering in the agony of repudiation, undoubtedly not strong enough to lift his foot, the one that once in the pain of his soul—when the word of truth was erased—stamped on the earth when he said “And yet it does move.”

Here stands a woman with a child’s mind, enthusiasm and faith—she carries the banner in front of the battling army, and she brings victory and salvation to her fatherland. Exultation rings—and the fire is lit: Joan of Arc, the witch, is burned. The following century spits on the white lily. Voltaire, the satyr of wit, sings of La Pucelle.

At the assembly in Viborg the Danish aristocracy burns the King’s laws. They flame up and illuminate the times and the lawgiver, and throw the ray of a halo into the dark tower prison where he sits, grey-haired and bent, honing a furrow in the stone table with his finger—He who once was the ruler of three kingdoms. The prince of the people, friend of the citizens and farmers: Christian II. He had a harsh temperament for harsh times. Enemies wrote his story. We should remember the twenty-seven years of prison when we think about his guilt in bloodletting.

A ship is sailing from Denmark. Next to the tall mast stands a man who looks towards Hven⁵ for the last time: Tycho Brahe, who lifted Denmark’s name to the stars and was rewarded for it with insults and injury. He’s traveling to a foreign country. “The sky is everywhere—what more do I need!” are his words as he sails away, our most famous man, honored and free in a foreign land!

“Oh, free! If only from the body’s unbearable pains!” come the sighs down the ages to us. Whose picture? Griffenfeldt,⁶ a Danish Prometheus, chained to the rocky island of Munkholm.

We’re in America by one of the big rivers. A crowd has gathered. A ship is said to be able to sail against wind and weather, to be a power against the elements. Robert Fulton is the man who thinks he can do this. The ship begins its journey—suddenly it stops—the crowd laughs, hoots and whistles. His own father whines along: “Arrogance! Madness! It serves him right! The crazy guy should be locked up!” Then a little nail breaks that had stopped the machine for a moment, the wheels turn, the shovels scoop away the water’s resistance. The ship is moving! The steam shuttle is changing the distance from hours to minutes between the countries of the world.

Humanity! Do you comprehend the bliss in such a minute of consciousness, the spirit’s understanding of its mission? The moment in which all the scratches from glory’s thorny path—even self inflicted—dissolve in knowledge, health, power, and clarity? The moment when disharmony becomes harmony, and people see the revelation of God’s grace, revealed to one man and given by him to all?

The thorny path to glory is then revealed as a halo around the earth. Fortunate he who’s chosen to wander here and, without his own merit, is placed among the bridge builders between humanity and God.

The spirit of history flies on powerful wings through time and shows—accompanying courage, confidence, and thought provoking gentleness—the thorny path to glory in shining pictures on a black background. A path that doesn’t end as in the fairy tale with splendor and joy here on earth, but points past this world into time and eternity.

NOTES

1 Athenian statesman Alcibiades (c.450-404 B.C.) and Greek historian Xenophon (c.430-c.350 B.C.) were both influenced by Socrates.

2 Pseudonym of Persian poet Abu Ol-qasem Mansur (c.935-c.1020), author of the Persian national epic.

3 Luis de Camões (1524-1580), Portuguese poet and author of the epic poem The Lusiads (1572), which describes the opening of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama.

4 French engineer and physicist (1576-1626) credited with the discovery of steam power. The statement that Richelieu had de Caus imprisoned is not true.

5 Small island in the sound between Denmark and Sweden, site of the observatory of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe ( 1546-1601 ) .

6 Danish statesman Peder Schumacher, count Griffenfeldt (1635-1699), was imprisoned in Copenhagen and at Munkholm in the Trondheim fjord.