A dark foreshadowing

To the Editor,

Greg Curnoe, Map of North America, 1972

It is difficult not to feel despair over recent events. The ur-text of the American Republic holds out the Enlightenment promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, notions drawn from the much earlier 18th-century work of the philosopher John Locke. Perhaps, in a kind of dark foreshadowing, that same year — 1776 — saw the publication of the first volume of Edward Gibbon’s six-volume work, “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” An image that of late has been in my mind is Canadian artist Greg Curnoe’s 1972 India ink on paper drawing, “Map of North America,” in which the United States is entirely eliminated, leaving only Canada and Mexico. As Samuel Beckett has one of his characters say, “Something is taking its course.” 

Allan Irving
Swarthmore