When I read about the current coronavirus outbreak, I look back to the twin crises of 1918, the war and the influenza pandemic, and how people responded then. One of the greatest silent films was the 1921 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse<\/em>, which interpreted the bloodshed of the recent Great War explicitly in those terms. It was a blockbuster. To find a parallel for the film\u2019s cultural and financial impact at the time, we would have to look to the modern analogy of Star Wars<\/em>.<\/p>\n Memories of 1918 utterly shaped the legendary cinema of Weimar Germany, especially its horror films. The great director F. W. Murnau commonly deployed apocalyptic images, and his Faust<\/em> begins with a vision of the four horsemen. Both Nosferatu<\/em> and Faust<\/em> depict catastrophic urban plagues that would immediately have suggested for contemporary audiences the wartime influenza.<\/p>\n Image in public domain<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n The 1918 pandemic struck in two distinct waves. The first appeared in the United States in March, when millions of troops were billeted together in close quarters that proved an ideal incubator for the new illness. Transatlantic troopships proved particularly effective for this purpose. By June, the sickness had reached India and Australia. In the first phase, the old and weak were especially likely to perish, but a second and still more lethal form of influenza arrived in August, and this claimed the young and strong. AIn just one year, from mid-1918 through mid-1919, the Spanish flu pandemic killed at least 50 million, and some estimates put the death toll at twice that. And this occurred at a time when global population was around 1.8 billion, la quarter of what it is today. A third of the world\u2019s population was affected to some degree.<\/p>\n So why was it called Spanish flu? The explanation echoes modern reactions to our latest disease in secretive countries like China and Iran. In 1918, al the combatant powers had tight censorship regimes and would not initially admit that they had a problem. Neutral Spain had no such concerns, and reported cases. As this was the only country publicizing such reports, people around the world assumed that the disease either derived from there, or had some special connection with the country.<\/p>\n The biblical quality of those events was neatly captured in Katherine Anne Porter\u2019s<\/a> classic tale of the disease as it struck Denver. Her novella bore the suitably Revelation-themed title Pale Horse, Pale Rider<\/em><\/a>. (It was actually published in the collection of that name in 1939). Yet again, that inescapable source-book!<\/p>\n Porter\u2019s tale is heavily autobiographical, reflecting her experiences as a journalist in Denver at that time, and how she nearly died from the disease. Many of the best parts of the book describe what she perceives and imagines in her dream-like fevered visions, which were so characteristic of the influenza. I won\u2019t spoil the plot (she, obviously, survived) but the book does such a magnificent job of depicting a city under siege from disease.<\/p>\n The heroine, Miranda, asks her officer friend:<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cI wonder,\u201d said Miranda. \u201cHow did you manage to get an extension of leave?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThey just gave it,\u201d said Adam, \u201cfor no reason. The men are dying like flies out there, anyway. This funny new disease. Simply knocks you into a cocked hat.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt seems to be a plague,\u201d said Miranda, \u201csomething out of the Middle Ages. Did you ever see so many funerals, ever?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cSo it\u2019s really as bad as that?\u201d said Miranda. \u201cIt\u2019s as bad as anything can be,\u201d said Adam, \u201call the theaters and nearly all the shops and restaurants are closed, and the streets have been full of funerals all day and ambulances all night\u2014\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Oh and yes, they also had conspiracy theories back then about the man-made quality of the disease, just as today some blame Chinese experiments in biological warfare. Miranda talks with two fellow reporters:<\/p>\n \u201cThey say,\u201d said Towney, \u201cthat it is really caused by germs brought by a German ship to Boston, a camouflaged ship, naturally, it didn\u2019t come in under its own colors. Isn\u2019t that ridiculous?\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cMaybe it was a submarine,\u201d said Chuck, \u201csneaking in from the bottom of the sea in the dead of night. Now that sounds better.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes, it does,\u201d said Towney; \u201cthey always slip up somewhere in these details . . . and they think the germs were sprayed over the city\u2014 it started in Boston, you know\u2014 and somebody reported seeing a strange, thick, greasy-looking cloud float up out of Boston Harbor and spread slowly all over that end of town. I think it was an old woman who saw it.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cShould have been,\u201d said Chuck. \u201cI read it in a New York newspaper,\u201d said Towney; \u201cso it\u2019s bound to be true.\u201d Chuck and Miranda laughed so loudly at this that Bill stood up and glared at them.<\/em><\/p>\n I do like that last line.<\/p>\n In trying to understand the ongoing catastrophe, Miranda and Adam naturally turn to apocalyptic religion, which as educated and up-to-date young people, they can only access at second hand, through African-American culture and faith. Adam visits her in hospital, where she is floating in and out of consciousness, and indeed has a classic near-death mystical experience. In a lucid moment, she suggests:<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s sing,\u201d said Miranda. \u2018 I know an old spiritual, I can remember some of the words.\u201d She spoke in a natural voice. \u201cI\u2019m fine now.\u201d She began in a hoarse whisper, \u201c \u2018Pale horse, pale rider, done taken my lover away. . .\u2019 Do you know that song?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d said Adam, \u201cI heard Negroes in Texas sing it, in an oil field.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI heard them sing it in a cotton field,\u201d she said; \u201cit\u2019s a good song.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more to it than that,\u201d said Adam, \u201cabout forty verses, the rider done taken away mammy, pappy, brother, sister, the whole family besides the lover-\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBut not the singer, not yet,\u201d said Miranda. \u201cDeath always leaves one singer to mourn. \u2018Death,\u2019 \u201d she sang, \u201c \u2018oh, leave one singer to mourn\u2014\u2019 \u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201c \u2018Pale horse, pale rider,\u2019 \u201d chanted Adam, coming in on the beat, \u2018\u201cdone taken my lover away!\u2019 (I think we\u2019re good, I think we ought to get up an act\u2014).\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Adam and Miranda treat the spiritual as something almost to be parodied, and yet it gets to a truth that they cannot frame in their own minds, and their own cultural vocabulary. God forbid they should treat Revelation seriously! And the closer they get to the song and its message, the more they have to make it a joke: we should get up an act!<\/p>\n Pale Horse Pale Rider<\/em> is a wonderful story, and as I said, it is agonizingly relevant in our time of fears about disease and epidemic. If you don\u2019t know it, do read it \u2013 and the other two novellas in the same collection as well.<\/p>\n Lest I be misunderstood here, I am certainly not comparing the current virus outbreak with the 1918 pandemic: we are a long way from that in terms of scale or potential harm. But it is useful to be reminded that the danger of epidemics still exists, and we need to consider our responses.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With all the unavoidable news right now about disease and epidemics, it\u2019s an obvious temptation to look back to past eras to see how they coped with such things, culturally as well as medically. One consistent impression is how thoroughly our imagery of such events draws on very traditional apocalyptic. As David Wallace-Wells notes in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[608,7],"tags":[2742,6458,6467,6464,4809,6461],"class_list":["post-57267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-african-amerian-religion","category-philip-jenkins","tag-apocalypse","tag-david-wallace-wells","tag-denver","tag-epidemic","tag-influenza","tag-katherine-anne-porter"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/168\/2020\/03\/philflu-1.jpg\")
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