Ubi Sunt?

(Content note: COVID-19 pandemic; immigration; spoilers for the anti-war novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller)

Lately, during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, I often think of the medieval tradition of “Ubi sunt?” poetry. “Ubi sunt” is Latin for “Where are (they?)” It’s a rhetorical question, used to lament the passage of time and the inevitability of death, loss, and change. It’s related to an elegy.

The Poetry Foundation explains: “By posing a series of questions about the fate of the strong, beautiful, or virtuous, these poems meditate on the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death.” I first learned about ubi sunt poetry in college, when we read Beowulf. Examples of the ubi sunt in Beowulf and other Old English poems, from times of upheaval in Anglo-Saxon history, are here.

One of the most famous ubi sunt poems is the medieval French poem “Ballade des dames du temps jadis” by François Villon. Its refrain is “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?” Centuries later, Christina Rosetti translated this as (But) “where are the snows of yesteryear?”

Yossarian, the protagonist of Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, apparently misquotes this line as “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?” It might seem like a non sequitur or a play on words, but it’s really a trauma response, important to the plot and to Yossarian’s character. In the novel, Snowden was a young gunner who died in Yossarian’s plane from horrific, internal wounds that Yossarian couldn’t detect. Yossarian has PTSD symptoms, like flashbacks, repressed and intrusive memories, and survivor’s guilt over Snowden’s death. He blames himself for a death he probably could never have prevented. “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?” laments Snowden’s death, along with all the other war casualties like Snowden. I wrote about Catch-22 here and here.

“Ubi sunt” is a sentence fragment. The object is implied, or the question can be completed in whatever way the poet chooses. Many writers have attempted to explain how they feel in lockdown, while admitting that it’s incommensurable or ineffable to express in writing. “Unprecedented” has already become a cliché. In the Harvard Business Review in March, Scott Berinato called the intense anxiety of this period a form of “anticipatory grief.”

This is a collective experience, but we all experience it differently. I personally think that more publicly grieving and honoring everyone who’s died would seem less disingenuous than constantly praising workers as heroes or companies saying, “We’re here for you.” As a disabled person, I miss many mundane activities, like museums, restaurants, and visiting friends, but these were frequently inaccessible to me anyway. Instead of rushing to “return to normal,” I think we should make changes to make life safer and more accessible to everyone.

A caveat: I don’t think it’s an ubi sunt when people ask politicians, for example, “Where are the tests?” or “Where are the children?” These questions are structured similarly, and they contain a lot of grief. However, they’re literal, urgent questions: about COVID-19 testing and detained migrant children, respectively. Ubi sunt, in contrast, is a rhetorical question. That’s why I think it gets closest to expressing how confusing life is right now. Hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, governments mishandling the pandemic, climate change, and medical racism, ableism, and injustice seem too immense to comprehend. “Ubi sunt” signifies the enormity of these problems because it’s unfinished: half a question.

Where is. . .?

Where are . . .?

Why have they left, and why won’t they return?
Ubi sunt?