{"id":19,"date":"2007-08-01T03:31:23","date_gmt":"2007-08-01T07:31:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/2007\/08\/01\/labor-histories\/"},"modified":"2011-11-26T23:13:30","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T03:13:30","slug":"labor-histories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/2007\/08\/01\/labor-histories\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor histories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ingmar Bergman, in his introduction to <em>Four Screenplays:<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"fullpost\">There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed \u2014 master builders, artists, laborers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bertolt Brecht, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fritz-hueser-gesellschaft.de\/Brecht-Tombrock\/web\/grafiken\/19.htm\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters&#8217;<\/a> [&#8216;Questions from a Worker who Reads,&#8217; trans. Michael Hamburger]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Who built Thebes of the seven gates?<br \/>\nIn the books you will find the name of kings.<br \/>\nDid the kings haul up the lumps of rock?<br \/>\nAnd Babylon, many times demolished.<br \/>\nWho raised it up so many times? In what houses<br \/>\nOf gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?<br \/>\nWhere, the evening that the Wall of China was finished<br \/>\nDid the masons go? Great Rome<br \/>\nIs full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom<br \/>\nDid the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song,<br \/>\nOnly palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis<br \/>\nThe night the ocean engulfed it<br \/>\nThe drowning still bawled for their slaves.<\/p>\n<p>The young Alexander conquered India.<br \/>\nWas he alone?<br \/>\nCaesar beat the Gauls.<br \/>\nDid he not have even a cook with him?<br \/>\nPhilip of Spain wept when his armada<br \/>\nWent down. Was he the only one to weep?<br \/>\nFrederick the Second won the Seven Years&#8217; War. Who<br \/>\nElse won it?<\/p>\n<p>Every page a victory.<br \/>\nWho cooked the feast for the victors?<br \/>\nEvery ten years a great man.<br \/>\nWho paid the bill?<\/p>\n<p>So many reports.<br \/>\nSo many questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ingmar Bergman, in his introduction to Four Screenplays: There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15971,2150,1825,96],"tags":[109,14086,14085,14088,14090,14087,19804,14089],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artarchitecture","category-labor","category-literature","category-politics","tag-anonymity","tag-bergman","tag-bertolt-brecht","tag-brecht","tag-chartres","tag-ingmar-bergman","tag-labor","tag-toil"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/241"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}