Life & Wisdom Quote by Charles Olson

Olson’s line has the snap of a verdict: today’s “heroes” don’t fall from grace so much as slide back into what they were built from in the first place - imitation. The phrasing matters. “Retreat” carries military shame, a withdrawal under pressure, but Olson doesn’t grant the dignity of defeat. These figures aren’t overwhelmed by a stronger enemy; they’re exposed by time. The present moves on, and the heroic pose can’t keep up.

The sting is in “anyhow.” It shrugs off the possibility that authenticity was ever on the table. Olson, a poet obsessed with “stance” and presence (his Projective Verse is basically a manifesto against inherited, secondhand forms), is taking aim at cultural leadership as performance: a copy of prior myths, prior rhetoric, prior greatness, dressed up as immediacy. Heroism here is not brave action but a costume the moment rents.

Contextually, this comes from a mid-century American scene drowning in mass media, institutional authority, and postwar myth-making - the era when public figures became images, and images became politics. Olson’s subtext is that modern acclaim rewards the reproducible. The “heroes of the present” are products of a culture that confuses recognizability with significance, and when the spotlight shifts, they don’t transform; they revert to type. The line works because it refuses consolation: it’s not a warning about corruption. It’s a diagnosis of origins.