Lost History – How the classics consoled Robert F Kennedy

On 4 April 1968, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) was informed that civil rights leader Martin Luther King had been shot. Despite advice from his aides and local police, he decided to go ahead with a largely African-American campaigning event in Indiana that very night. The audience had not yet been told that a white man had murdered their hero, and the police were unsure if they could keep an enraged mob that size at bay. RFK insisted on attending and quickly scribbled his speech on a piece of paper in the car to the meeting. Today, it is deemed his single greatest speech.

After asking the bereaved crowd to remember that his brother, John F. Kennedy, had also been murdered by a white man and pleading for peace and a recollection of King’s teachings, RFK quoted his favourite poet, the Athenian Tragedian, Aeschylus – “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” The combination of classical citation, effusiveness and sincerity precluded any prospect of violence and gently pacified the lachrymose legion of King followers, but RFK’s love of the classics did much more for him than merely win affection from the electorate. 

RFK was the second youngest son in a family of high achievers. The British press often emphasises the competitive atmosphere in the Johnson household that resulted in a Prime Minister, a cabinet minister, a nationally recognised journalist and a TV personality. Still, the Kennedys were a league above the Johnsons in their determination to surpass their peers and dramatically achieve. Their prodigious work ethic, immense wealth, natural intelligence and rigorous educations made high attainment inevitable. Their notorious father, Joe, knew that a famous surname would not suffice. Only talent tempered by tireless effort would ensure success. Robert was no exception to the ambitious creed of the Kennedys. Like his siblings, he believed that their privilege obliged him to pay back the society that had afforded his family so many advantages. 

It was always Joe Sr’s plan that one of his boys would go for the presidency, and Robert being one of the youngest, was expected to support his brother through the travails of that trying venture. Most of RFK’s emotional and professional life was therefore spent guarding the reputation of his older brother, John. Robert served as campaign manager for his big brother when John ran for the Democratic nomination against Lyndon B. Johnson. Subsequently, he was controversially appointed Attorney General when John became President.

Choruses of critics unanimously sang “nepotism” as he entered office, but their displays of indignation were soon muted by the young Kennedy’s energy and engagement. In that role, he watched his brother endure the scandal of the Bay of Pigs and emerge triumphant from the Cuban missile crisis, among other egregious, testing and era-defining events. When the President was shot in Dallas in 1963, the focus of RFK’s existence vanished, and he privately descended into a mournful malaise of deep depression.

According to Kennedy biographers, RFK was gifted a copy of American classicist Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way by a grieving Jackie Kennedy while on holiday in Antigua. Apparently, RFK didn’t leave his room once until the entirety of the tome had been devoured. It was Edith Hamilton’s translation of Aeschylus that he quoted in Indiana. Hamilton’s translations of tragedies laid extra emphasis on the experience of injured individuals by concentrating on “poetically transmuted” sorrow that resonates personally and isn’t primarily appreciated intellectually. Her highly Americanised translations went so far as to turn the “gods” into “God” to engross her monotheistically inclined readership more effectively. 

Before his brother’s death, RFK was not a keen reader of the classics. Jackie, whose worldliness and intellectual curiosity encompassed rococo art criticism as well as Hellenic drama, realised the solace that RFK could gain from a perusal of the master poets and playwright of ancient times. 

The true tragedy of Robert Kennedy, in his eyes, was not the loss of a brother but that he survived (a common enough feeling for those left behind after the death of somebody close). “It should have been me,” he reportedly said to aides on several occasions. In the midst of grief, an immersion in the classical tragedies can have an absolving and cathartic effect. The poetry of those plays doesn’t only express the hopelessness of a broken heart; it also inspires and enthuses by eloquently illustrating the redeemability of every person alive. 

As his own presidential prospects began to develop, RFK cited the classics more regularly. Quotes like; “life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens’ and ‘tam[ing] the savageness of man and mak[ing] gentle the life of this world” became his mantras. Had he lived longer and won the presidency, doubtless, a line or two of Aeschylus’s would have made it to the last draft of his inaugural address. 

The story of the Kennedys has often been compared to a Greek tragedy. Sudden, premature and dramatic deaths abound. Robert lived a life that thematically resembled the literature he loved, and by doing so, he found that literature had the power to make his life easier to live.