Photo: Martin Luther King’s speech in Washington. National Park Service / Flickr , CC BY
Santiago de Navascués Martínez , University of Navarra
Long before microphones, television or podcasts existed, the human voice already ignited passions in the audience. We will never know what Alexander the Great said to stop the mutiny of his troops in Opis, around 324 BCE, but something in his words must have moved the hearts of that tired and resentful army to stop his bloodlust.
Nor do we know the words of Hernán Cortés when he decided to burn the ships – in fact, he sank them – to enter the vast domains of the Aztec Empire with a tiny army of 400 men . Once again, that harangue must have convinced the soldiers to commit hopeless folly: cutting off all means of escape to enter the realm of the unknown.
We may be surprised to find that most of the speeches given in human history have been lost forever. Like the ships in Mexico, the voices of the past no longer exist. But, precisely because most of history ‘s discourses have disappeared, great literature has been able to speculate with them.
The undisputed master in this field was William Shakespeare , author of some of the most famous speeches ever given. We imagine, for example, Mark Antony saying a prayer before the bloodied body of Julius Caesar , a master class in irony and how rhetoric can be used to say one thing, but imply something very different without naming it. Despite the apparent solemnity of the speech, Mark Antony suggests that Brutus’s intentions were not so honorable, nor Caesar was so ambitious, and someone had to take over.
TO BOOST THE MORALE OF THE TROOPS
Other speeches, such as that of Henry V at the Battle of Azincourt, have gone down in history for the inspiring force of their images. Shakespeare imagines the English army suddenly cornered by the French as they flee towards the English Channel. In an inspired speech, King Henry manages to raise the morale of the troops by baptizing all the men willing to die in battle as “blood brothers” , leading them with their imagination to the day when, once back in England, they can count their exploits to their children and grandchildren, proudly showing their wounds.
But it’s not all literature: when Abraham Lincoln took the floor to speak at Gettysburg , more than 50,000 soldiers lay in graves in the national cemetery just yards from the dais. That cold month of December 1863, Lincoln had the enormous task of summarizing the lessons of the Civil War, and he did it in just two or three minutes, with ten sentences and in less than 300 words.
Most likely, few heard its content: without microphones and with so few words, those in attendance were probably unaware of what they had just witnessed. Lincoln left for posterity one of the best definitions of democracy: “The government of the people, by the people and for the people . ” However, it took a long time before the speech became famous, with the printing and reprinting of those lines.
For speeches to have an immediate effect on an entire country, it would be necessary to wait for the invention of radio. On October 30, 1938, Orson Welles decided to test radio listeners with an experiment that would cause panic and stupor: he began to recount in real time an invasion of Martians on planet Earth. The speech produced a mass hysteria in the listeners that lasted a few hours, long enough to discover that it was a joke and show the world the power of modern mass media.
In reality, the hysteria provoked by Welles ‘ speech had a very real correlation: a month earlier, Hitler had signed an agreement with France, Italy and the United Kingdom by which Germany incorporated a substantial part of Czechoslovakia. Thus, when two years later the Germans expelled the last Franco-British battalions at Dunkirk, Winston Churchill had to defend the indefensible . In a series of memorable speeches, the Prime Minister offered the public an uncertain future – “ save blood, toil, tears and sweat ” – but also “the most glorious hour” of the British Empire. Few speeches have so crudely presented a tragedy; and few had such an impact to inspire heroism in the darkest hour.
EVERYTHING CHANGES WITH THE BIRTH OF TELEVISION
With the era of television, the rules of the game changed again. Now the speakers not only had to be masters of rhetoric, but also captivate the audience with an overwhelming smile and mastery of non-verbal language.
The first presidential debates broadcast on television showed the world the summit duel of two titans of oratory: John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon . The first would go down in history as one of the most charismatic presidents in history thanks to the impact of his speeches on television. Many remember the slogan from his inaugural address – “Ask not what your country can do for you; asks what you can do for your country” – an impression that contrasts sharply with the harsh expression that the president adopted during the Cuban missile crisis, warning the Soviets that “aggressive behavior, if allowed to continues unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war.”
Today, we know that Kennedy was serious , and that luckily the crisis was stopped at the last moment. There was a noble, sometimes even reckless, frankness in his words that was surpassed only by a contemporary: Martin Luther King Jr.
If anything makes the civil rights hero memorable, it is that speech given in Washington on August 28, 1963: “ I have a dream . ” In just over six minutes, King recounted the beauty and tragedy of his country. Like Lincoln, he believed the “sleeping giants” of the Constitution would awaken: the equality and liberty of all humans.
Few speeches are as timeless as this one. Like all great orators, Luther King knew how to convey an emotion that crossed boundaries that went far beyond skin color. That speech was given for the men and women of his time, but also for ours.
Shakespeare could not hear Mark Antony , but we can hear Kennedy or Luther King . In this world of instantaneous rhythms, filled with immediacy, returning to these speeches – so slow and paused many times – can return us, even for a few minutes, to a calmer and, perhaps, more reflective world.
Santiago de Navascués Martínez , Assistant Professor of Contemporary History, University of Navarra
This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original .
April 13, 2024
