Dr. King statue delivers strong message

“SOONER OR LATER all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said these words, which appear on the pedestal of our own university’s statue of King, in his speech in acceptance of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964.

Our statue, on the north side of the Peace Garden, portrays King facing firmly forward, dressed in what looks to be a judge’s or minister’s robe, and staring with wide, determined eyes to the south.

In his arms he holds a small child, who looks in the same direction, but the child’s eyes are half closed, as though he has just woken up.

Last week I didn’t have very good things to say about our Gandhi statue (lovingly referred to as “the giant head”) because it doesn’t deliver any kind of message.

This week I am glad to talk about the statue of King, which I think delivers a clear and challenging message for all those who desire peace and does so in a satisfyingly artistic fashion.

Now before I get started, I need to point out that there is a temptation in any observer’s interaction with a work of art to simply recognize what it represents and forget about searching for what it means.

Looking at a picture of a giraffe, we might think “It’s a picture of a giraffe” and feel satisfied with ourselves, though we have, in fact, learned nothing other than that our eyes are able to identify shapes.

Sticklike legs + elliptical body + long neck + silly looking head = giraffe. Congratulations: you can now check “blindness” off your list of worries.

Even if we were to see a Picasso-style giraffe where the legs were on top of the body and the mouth was placed above the eyes, our recognition of it as a giraffe would only be part of a slightly more complicated decoding process.

We still have not hit the level of meaning.

To find meaning, we have to look at dynamic qualities of separate components within a work of art.

We need to ask: “What is the statue’s posture? What is it wearing? What is it holding? Where is it looking?”

In essence, we are trying to find out what the statue is doing and only in answering that question can we gain the means to answer the crucial question, “What does it mean?”

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus observed nearly 2,500 years ago that character is fate; that is to say, we are what we do.

This is the central organizing principle of Western art and the Western understanding of self: we are what we do.

So what is the statue of King doing? He holds a child in his arms, he faces squarely forward, and he says, “Sooner or later….”

He is looking forward into his dreamlike vision of the future, the dream of peace.

The child in his arms, still half asleep, looks forward to a future it cannot yet comprehend and we see that soon the burden of the dream and the choice between composing a death march for mankind or a celebratory song of hope will be his.

From 1964, it was only three and a half more years until that terrible burden would be forced onto new shoulders.

Is it a minister’s robe he is wearing? If it is, we see him in his role as a shepherd of men, guiding all peoples forever by his virtuous actions and virtuous words.

His is a message of hope for and audacious faith in the sleepy child he holds in his arms.

He used his words, some of the most eloquent words spoken in the twentieth century, to inspire the oppressed to do great things.

Is it a judge’s robe he is wearing? If it is, we see him in his role as a judge of men, condemning all peoples forever by his virtuous actions and virtuous words.

All who see him and hear his words will know that the burden and responsibility of peace is theirs, that he is a stern, imposing standard for all those who wish to ennoble the hearts of men.

His words live on, some of the most eloquent words spoken in the history of our nation, and they make us feel the sheer weight of a noble idea, the back breaking weight of nobility and we marvel that he stands so straight and tall, and we ask ourselves “Could I bear that weight, too?”

The message is clear, powerful and beautiful. King, minister and judge, bore us in his arms like a father — we endless future generations longing for peace — but he couldn’t last forever, he couldn’t always be here to do it for us.

In the statue, we see who he was, we see what he was doing and we know that sooner or later, we all have to discover a way to live together in peace; it is the difference between life and death.

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