Smear



You throw the mud away and it sticks. For mud slinging is common on the international stage
And if it's thrown by friends, it becomes more dangerous
and predictably explains the muddy stereotypes, whatever is set up in a way,
the knots, the grips, the vicious asymmetrical influence on the rope of history.

Many are the examples of distorting patterns
that have been stepped on and nurtured in complex syndromes of nations and communities
and formed long ago, in the depths of the ages,
are now being reproduced accurately, on the basis of prejudices built on mud.

For example, there in the old days, after Sappho's death, two hundred years later,
some Ionians, of another society, found it hard to accept freedom   
of women in Aeolian society without being accused of immorality.
Oh, what civility!

And then, much, much later, the Ionian, Roman society
the same muddling tactics towards something alien to its own "custom".
It brings out an Ovid and a Tatian to "translate"
the smoother and more equal action of men for a woman,
a symptom of erotic mania and a sign of homosexuality.

There is no need for other sources and other comments on the easy conclusion
that shows how long that smear has endured to this day,
that the West has imposed the label "Lesbian"
to such an important degree that the true meaning of the word has been diminished
against what? The centuries-old artificial, straightforward mud-slinging, to everyone's surprise.

An example of this is the anti-Byzantine clearly propagandistic stygian smear,
where those very old, distorting, tried and tested stereotypes
were again used to suggest firmly and subliminally
that the entire cultural contribution of Byzantium to humanity, well,
was, ostensibly, the fork, the "instrument" or the chicly accepted erudition of the Greek!

Behind the West's concerns about Byzantine culture
is that perception that it passed off the post-schism ethno-dogmatic differences  
as a compliment against Byzantine women,
such as the two princesses in the West, Maria Argyri and Theophano Skleri.

From the smear against Sappho to that of Byzantium, a thousand years have passed.
Should we hope it won't take another thousand years
for the mankind to overcome such distorting stereotypes  
based on complex syndromes?

About this poem

This poem has an internationological (i.e. rgerding the international relations) substance through historical documentation. It is part of a collection of mine under the general title 'Demythologisations' and refers to the research, through primary sources, on the way East-West relations were formed, the means used and the origins of this East-West distinction, which we are still experiencing today, first at the European level, but by extension - after the colonization of the American continent - worldwide.  

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Written on August 27, 2020

Submitted by dean on January 07, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:01 min read
10

Quick analysis:

Scheme XXAB XXXX CDBB BDXEB EAEXX XFBXX CXEB XXFX
Characters 2,281
Words 398
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4

Anthony Dernellis

Anthony Dernellis is a C(T&T)Eng, PhD and having previously worked as a designer of major projects in Greece and elsewhere, he has been working for over twenty years as a Technical Advisor to the Greek Minister of National Economy/Development with competence for the central coordination of all European Union co-financed major projects in Greece. At the same time, he is an intellectual author of scientific documentary works, monographs and poems, with the aim of providing the reading public with knowledge based on scientific documentation mainly through primary sources. more…

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