Hirsch, Edward : And Who Will Look upon Our Testimony

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	AIDS, Catastrophe, Death and Dying, Epidemics, History of Medicine, Infectious Disease, Scapegoating, Society, Suffering
Summary	For those considering a comprehensive overview of plague in Medieval Europe, Hirsch’s long poem is extremely useful. Comprised of thirty-five stanzas, it provides an historical account of devastation associated with the onset of plague in Venice in 1347. An inventory of behavioral responses to catastrophic disease illustrates that responses to AIDS frequently mimic irrational behaviors associated with earlier epidemics. There are references to hysteria, scapegoating, flagellants, illness symptoms, escape, desperate cures, and religious fervor.
Commentary	Related works of interest are Thucydides, The Peloponnesian Wars; Albert Camus, The Plague (see this database); Peter Barnes, 0003 (see this database), and Ingmar Bergman’s film, "The Seventh Seal."
Source	The Night Parade
Publisher	Knopf
Edition	1989
Place Published	New York
Annotated by	Nixon, Lois LaCivita
Date of Entry	11/11/94