By The Landlord
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” –Abraham Lincoln
“Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty.” – Thomas Aquinas
“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” – Graham Greene, Brighton Rock
“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.” – Susan Sontag
“Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.” – John Gay
“Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.” – William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
“The quality of mercy is not strain'd.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” – Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“I can't believe the things I'm seeing
I wonder 'bout some things I've heard
Everybody's crying mercy
When they don't know the meaning of the word
A bad enough situation
It's sure enough getting worse
Everybody's crying justice
Just as long as it's business first.” – Mose Allison
It feels a strangely old-fashioned word, a theme in many stories long before, but first appearing in the English language in the Middle Ages, from the Anglo-French merci (meaning thank you), related to kindness, compassion, and grace, usually granted by someone in a position of strength or power towards the weaker and vulnerable who are in turn at their mercy, whether in a legal position by a judge or leader passing sentence, in a religious context, a military position, or anyone in a superior position able to act accordingly in a social or ethical situation.
Mercy has always been sought, and always been needed, but arguably has never been more relevant, and never more absent in the current merciless zeitgeist. There's an appalling, ruthless complete absence of it perpetrated in Gaza, for example, or on the borders of Ukraine, and whether as foreign or domestic policy, it’s really dissolving altogether under the latest administration in the United States of America.
And while the Orange One continues to poke his short, fat, ignorant, aggressive fingers in all the wrong places, now with backfiring tariffs for the benefit of absolutely no one at all (other than chief disruptor Vladimir Putin), it's oddly topical that the word mercy, as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Mose Allison all describe, also derives from the Latin merced-, and merces, meaning "price paid, wages", as well as merc-, and merxi, meaning merchandise. Mercy, contrary to blunt expectations, is a commercial necessity. In the world of business, acts of mercy may at first seem irrelevant, but they are not, because the wealthier party must always be realistic, even if not acting generously. I'm no economist, but it doesn't take an expert to understand that in any deal, you can't just take, you need to give, in order to receive something in return, so that all can benefit.
It's equally obvious that the slashing of international aid budgets is not a saving, but a general undermining of the world’s safety and stability, one that will ultimately lead to an even greater long-term cost. There's evidence of this everywhere. The aid agency Mercy Corps, for example, highlights the harm has loss of many international programmes due to Trump policy cuts.
In a broader context, American human rights lawyer and social activist Bryan Stevenson writes in his book, Just Mercy: “The power of just mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving. It’s when mercy is least expected that it’s most potent—strong enough to break the cycle of victimisation and victimhood, retribution and suffering. It has the power to heal the psychic harm and injuries that lead to aggression and violence, abuse of power, mass incarceration.”
Mercy, dispensed with wisdom, benefits everyone. But how might it be expressed in song? With idioms or stories, it might call, or even beg for it, it might portray those who need it, or dispense it, even those angels of mercy who do so in extreme ways, or show none at all. It's a subject that summons powerful emotions, tingles a human sense of justice and injustice.
For inspiration, so as not to tread on any potential nominations, here instead are some literary and cinematic examples. The Victorian London of Charles Dickens is one of poverty, cruelty and inequality, but also therefore also one in which rare acts of mercy are always heartwarmingly powerful. In A Christmas Carol, the ruthless, merciless Ebeneezer Scrooge's perspective is haunted and transformed by his ghostly visions towards an act of kindness towards his employee and family. From David Copperfield and Oliver Twist, which both follow the trials and tribulations of young orphans in poverty, and other novels including Little Dorrit are also filled with acts of kindness by strangers. In Oliver Twist:
"Without strong affection, and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is mercy, and whose great attribute is benevolence to all things that breathe, true happiness can never be attained.”
But as for A Christmas Carol, my favourite version is the 1951 film starring Alastair Sim, who along alongside many other great performers, brings his superbly comical acting face to express a full transformation from cruelty and fear to the laughing lightness of man who learns all about needing, and dispensing, mercy...
Perhaps mercy was in the post-war zeitgeist, arguably, at least in Europe, a period of recovery, reform, and healing, as in the same year, came Diary of a Country Priest by Robert Bresson, adapted from Georges Bernanos’ tale of a hidden, heartbroken village priest suffering in secret for the callous souls in his charge, but striving for mercy and kindness:
Another landmark is the special Academy Award-winning Maurice Cloche’s Monsieur Vincent (1947), inspired 17th-century priest and philanthropic social reformer St. Vincent de Paul, played by Pierre Fresnay, who heroically faces down all the challenges of charity in a world of poverty, slavery and a village gripped by the fear of plague.
But to complete a French origin trio, Victor Hugo’s 1862 Les Misérables, one of the great novels, again from the 19th century, and recreated in many forms including a long-running musical, was rather wonderfully recreated by Richard Boleslawski in (1935). It includes characters such as Jean Valjean (Frederic March), transformed by the mercy offered him by Bishop Myriel (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), as well as the character of Javert (Charles Laughton) an oddly courageous, principled police inspector committed to fairness and law and order in a world torn apart by revolution.
Over in the States, and during the Great Depression era, Charlie Chaplin’s forte was portraying the downtrodden facing hardship, but also encountering precious kindness. The Kid, with him as the Tramp befriending a child is one great example, but perhaps his masterpiece is City Lights (1931), in which he experiences all sorts cleverly choreographed adventures, all at the whim of an alcoholic millionaire veering between kindness and cruelty, as well as in his classic Tramp persona, also falling for a flower girl.
A much later film, but set in Victorian England, is David Lynch’s 1980 groundbreaking, heart-wrenching The Elephant Man, about the plight of real-life Joseph Merrick, here portrayed as John (by John Hurt) who suffered a extreme, horribly disfiguring congenital disease to the body and the face. Ending up in a freak show and experiencing countless acts of cruelty, he is rescued by Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) in a series of powerful, touching scenes. Seeking rest and escape, ultimately Merrick decides to show himself the ultimate act of mercy too
Many great black-and-white feature films, but here’s a bit of colour, and with a fantastic theme track, also set in poverty, this time in South African townships, is Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi (2005), adapted from a book and screenplay written South African novelist and playwright Athol Fugard, following an aggressive, angry young gangster (Presley Chweneyagae) who finds his own form of uncompromisingly compassion and mercy, when he encounters a helpless baby …
A cruel, merciless world it may be much of the time, in the past, present and future, but like plants pushing up through the concrete, mercy somehow always finds its way. We began with Shakespeare’s words describing how it “droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven”, in that speech protest by Portia to Shylock, and so let’s end therefore with that dramatic Bladerunner scene and speech with dying Replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who, also in the pouring rain, chooses to show mercy to his ruthless assassin Deckard (Harrison Ford) with a timelessly moving monologue on life’s meaning.
So then, it’s time to mercifully stop this introduction and turn to your song choices. But who will show some mercy and pick the playlists? It’s the marvellous MussoliniHeadkick! Deadline is 11pm on Monday UK time, for playlists published next week.
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