tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-339325872024-03-13T19:47:04.336-07:00Advanced American Literatureheisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-29351726033436368222007-05-30T08:02:00.000-07:002007-05-30T09:10:34.587-07:00What we're doing with those Beat Poets...Next week, yes, the first full week of June, the week of graduation for the zombified bucketheads we call seniors, we are going to have our first of two poetry slams. Those of you who don't know what that is, strap in, turn on, listen up, don your berets, groom your goatees, have your bongos at the ready, and step into the groove... Also, you might want to check Wikipedia's bit on Poetry Slams. It's actually pretty good.<br /><br />Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of next week are dedicated to Slamming the Beats. (100 points)<br /><br />This is why you have chosen Beat Poets and are looking into their works.<br />For the slam, you must learn and PERFORM one poem by your Beat Poet.<br />Performances should be from memory (depending on the length of the poem)<br />Performances may include musical accompaniment.<br />Performances may include dance or other movement.<br />Performances may include others.<br />Performances may include props.<br />Performances will NOT be censored, so those of you who aren't into the dark underbelly of American Counterculture of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s or don't have parental consent will be somewhere else, doing something else during this time.<br /><br />Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the following week (the last week of school) are dedicated to Slamming the Originals.<br /><br />For the slam, you must learn and PERFORM one poem by you! (200 points)<br />Poems should reflect on the evolution (or the de-evolution, if you'd rather) of American culture in some way.<br />Performances should be from memory (depending on the length of the poem)<br />Performances may include musical accompaniment.<br />Performances may include dance or other movement.<br />Performances may include others.<br />Performances may include props.<br />Performances will NOT be censored, so those of you who aren't into the dark underbelly of the NOW or don't have parental consent will be somewhere else, doing something else during this time.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-42831112867307028612007-04-18T07:29:00.000-07:002007-04-18T08:10:38.473-07:00Modernist Assignment OptionsHere is an outline of your options for your upcoming assignment on the modern poetry. We will talk about these options at some length on Thursday, at which point we will discuss some dos and don'ts, deadlines, expectation, etc. <br /><br />Option 1: Close Reading of ONE Poem: Writen Response (900-1000 words)<br /><br />Option 2: Close Reading of ONE Poem: Spoken Response (20 minute lecture)<br /><br />Option 3: Comparative Analysis Between TWO POEMS BY THE SAME POET: Written Response (900-1000 words)<br /><br />Option 4: Comparative Analysis Between TWO POEMS BY THE SAME POET: Spoken Response (20 minute lecture)<br /><br />Option 5: Comparative Analysis Between TWO POEMS BY DIFFERENT POETS: Written Response (900-1000 words)<br /><br />Option 6: Comparative Analysis Between TWO POEMS BY DIFFERENT POETS: Spoken Response (20 minute lecture)<br /><br />Option 7: Comparative Analysis Between ONE POEM AND ONE PIECE OF MODERN ART: Written Response (900-1000 words)<br /><br />Option 8: Comparative Analysis Between ONE POEM AND ONE PIECE OF MODERN ART: Spoken Response (20 minute lecture)<br /><br />Option 9: Emulative Analysis of ONE POEM: Written Response (400-500 words, not including emulation)<br /><br />Option 10: Emulative Analysis of ONE POEM: Spoken Response (Recital and 10 minute lecture)heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-12794298312428065652007-04-16T08:15:00.000-07:002007-04-16T08:40:27.655-07:00MODERNISM: THE ASSIGNMENTS!!!Hello again!<br /><br />DUE TODAY, APRIL 16TH, EMANCIPATION DAY!!!<br />Hopefully you have already chosen a poet from the list below that strikes you in some meaningful way, as that was ASSIGNMENT 1. <br /><br />DUE TUESDAY, APRIL 17TH, TAX DAY!!!<br />ASSIGNMENT 2: Consider which of the "leanings and tendencies" of Modernism your poet's work is most representative of. You can focus on as many or as few of these as you see fit. This is why we started with "The Wasteland"... so that you would have some exposure to all of them before now.<br /><br />DUE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18TH<br />ASSIGNMENT 3: Choose either one longer work or two shorter works that you feel are emblamatic of your poet's style and are ideal exemplars of your poet's use of those "leanings and tendencies" you've already chosen to explore.<br /><br />DUE THURSDAY, APRIL 19TH<br />ASSIGNMENT 4: Decide how you intend to expose the rest of us to your findings and ideas. There are lots of options here, the details of which will be forthcoming shortly. <br /><br />DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 20TH<br />ASSIGNMENT 5: Develop a thoughtful, sophisticated, ORIGINAL thesis from your findings that you intend to prove and support in ASSIGNMENT 7, DUE NEXT WEEK!!!<br /><br />DUE MONDAY, APRIL 23RD<br />ASSIGNMENT 6: Be prepared to respond to the questions you've been given about your book (either SAR or GG).heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-19182633139307307772007-04-04T08:21:00.000-07:002007-04-30T08:21:24.966-07:00Questions for HemingwayESSAY PROMPTS AND RESPONSE THESE FOR THE SUN ALSO RISES. <br /><br />PROMPT 1: Discuss the cultural, religious, and ethnic distinctions that pervade the conversations between Jake, Cohn, and Bill. How might these impact their relationships with one another? RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. The cultural, religious and ethinic differences between Jake, Cohn, and Bill do effect how they Interact with eachother.<br /><br />PROMPT 2: Discuss how men and women see, value, and use one another in the text. How does this impact your understanding of these characters and the cultures from which they come? <br />RESPONSE THESES: <br />1. The characters use one another for casual pleasure and nothing lasting. In the novel, there is an abundance of casual sex and frivoluse flirtin, like a giant game they are all playing with eachother. Brett, who is the permiscuase love maker in the book, is constantly seducing her friends, and the results are somewhat devastating to their group.<br />2. Men and women use, value, and see one another in The Sun Also Rises in many different ways. Jake and Brett have a weird relationship due to her slutty ways, and his loss of manhood.<br />3. Well I assume most men and women’s values are to honesty, trust, love, and happyness. Clearly the values of these men in this Novel are brutal and unclear.<br />4. In the novel The Sun Also Rises men and women use echother as objects to get what they want.<br />5. The men an women in The Sun Also Rises see eachother completely differently. There is onle one woman developed in the story and she is valued by men as a prized jewel, yet the way she treats men displays their value at slim to none. This implies that men from this Modernist artist culture idolize women, and the women use men to keep their self-esteem above the water line.<br /><br /><br />PROMPT 3: Discuss the differences in how our characters view the material world and the emotional world. How do they blur these distinctions? How do they keep them separate? <br />RESPONSE THESES: <br />1. The way our characters view these two worlds varies according to curcomstance and Religious/Ethnic background. The more pragmatic and cynical characters cut a very wide distinction Between the two, whereas those characters prone to a more Romantic and/or dreamy nature tend to mix the two together and show a distinct lack of ability when it comes to decerning which is affecting themselves at a particular time.<br />2. The characters are quite laid back and jobs do not appose me as stressors. It seems fishing is more important.<br />3. To the chacters in The Sun Also Rises, their material world and emotional world are constantly united. It’s almost impossible for any of them to do one thing regarding one world without the other world being drawn into it.<br /><br />PROMPT 4: Compare Jake and Cohn. How does the fact that Jake went to war and Cohn did not make them different from each other? What qualities do they share with the rest of their acquaintances? Is it safe to call them both outsiders?<br /><br />RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Jake and Cohn both have led different lives, but somehow met and are friend now. Jake was a war veteran who lost more out of the war than he gained. Robert Cohn was a boxer, but did not like boxing. Cohn wasn’t treated equally or very nicely at the college he boxed at, Princeton. Along with the people they interact with they both get along with them differently.<br />2. Jake and Cohn disagree on many things but go about pursuing the same overall goal. However, their methods vary immensely, as their pasts influence how they act.<br />3. Jake and Cohn are very different characters, they both act differently and share a different view on how thing are and how things shoud be and happen.<br />4. Jake and Cohn are two very separate people in the novel who join up and become friends. It’s somewhat an obligated friendship, one that they know probably won’t last very long but they are willing to see where the friendship leads them. Their lives are very different, the only thing in which they have in common is that they like to play tennis. That’s where they met and began their friendship,<br />5. Jake and Cohn I belive are very much outsiders. Both of them seem to not fit in with the rest of the group. And givein the fact that Jake has gone to war and Cohn has not makes the two of them very different.<br />6. Jake and Cohn are in a very similar situation in society. They both have some odd underlying problem that sets them apart from the rest of their friends.<br /><br />PROMPT 5: Bill tells Jake that “[s]ex explains it all.” To what extent is Bill’s statement true of the novel The Sun Also Rises? RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Bills statement though little more than a drunken whimsy at feirst cglance, is I Beilieve, the BackBone of this intire story. It is sex, love, and arder which lead the characters on theire different states of Being thought their gerney. Indeed it is Jacks lack of the nessesary Equipment to Preform this act which Allows him to Become Somwhat of A detached observer through which we may view And Analize how sex Affects the Behavior of his friends.<br />2. Sex plays a big role in the book, because it is the main factor in all the relationships. Jake cant have sex with Brett so their true love can’t really be anything. Romero is a young, hot boy so Brett is physically attracted to him.<br />3. Sex is the most prevalent theme in the novel The Sun Also Rises. Sex is what brings the characters together, and in some cases, what tears them apart.<br />4. Throughout The Sun Also Rises the quote “[s]ex explains it all” is used. One example is how Brett relates to it. Also it mixes with all of the mens emotions.<br />5. Bill tells jake that sex explains it all. This is very much true for the whole book. Sex is a re-occuring theme in the novel. Some characters in the novel take advantage of people, some manipulate others to get their way.<br />6. JAKE AND BRETT ARE EMOTIONALLY MORE THEN FRIENDS; PHYSICALLY IS A DIFFERENT STORY. BOTH HAVE DEEP FEELINGS FOR ONE ANOTHER BUT WHEN JAKE RECEIVED HIS WAR WOUND HE WAS, FROM THEN ON, UNABLE TO FULFILL A SEXUAL DESIRE BRETT HAD. IT SEEMS, AT TIMES, THAT BRETT EARN’S FOR JAKE AND ONLY WANTS HIM BUT IS UNWILLING TO COMMIT. “OUR LIPS WERE TIGHT TOGETHER AND THEN SHE TURNED AWAY AND PRESSED AGAINST THE CORNER OF THE SEAT… ‘DON’T TOUCH ME,’ SHE SAID.” WITHOUT HIS ABILITY TO HAVE SEX SHE CANNOT EVEN KISS HIM. NOT ONLY DOES THIS LOWER HIS SELF ESTEEM, BUT, IT ENABLES HIM FROM HAVING A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PERSON HE LOVES THE MOST.<br />7. In the novel, The Sun Also Rises Bill is almost right when he tells jake “sex explains it all.” Bill, like many others, possibly is unaware that a certain extent of Jakes manhood was lost during the war.<br />8. Bill’s statement, “sex explains it all” is quite relevant to the situation that jake finds himself in this novel. Many parts in the novel make reference to the fact that Jake was wounded in the war, and lost both of his testicles. It is possible that this is why Brett has an off-on relationship with him. Perhaps she is only willing to stay committed to him because he is incapable of having sex. So she may like him, but she seems more keen on what she can get out of him. If she truly wasn’t a shallow person, she would probably be marrying Jake rather than Mike.<br /><br />PROMPT 6: Discuss the characterization of Lady Brett Ashley. Is she a sympathetic character? Is she a positive female role model? Does she treat her male friends cruelly? <br />RESPONSE THESES: <br />1. Lady Ashly has the least depth of all the characters in The Sun Also Rises, she is as shallow as a wash bin and just about as complex. She characterizes the selfish stooped and flertasheous pleasure driven, responsibility deprived part of our society. Her only life goal is self fulfillment, her lifes meaning is to seek attention frome others. Whenever things seem not to be going her way, our when her actions lead her astray, she behaves like a small spoiled child and seeks solace frome her male friend Jake, she expects him to bow to her evry whim but refuses to except his true love, because true love is beyond her understanding and is thus an unknown quantity, and as such it terrifies her.<br />2. Lady Brett Ashley symbolizes the undisciplined, spoiled aspects of society. Everything she embodies is for the worse in the novel. She takes advantage of all her counterparts and proves her upbringing was very unsuccessful.<br />3. Throughout the novel you see two sides of Lady Brett Ashley. The first is that she actually cares about the people around her and want to be a good person. The second side is her using everyone around her to benefit herself. Each of these sides goes along with what other character she is with during a particular moment.<br />4. Lady Brett Ashley is a tart. She goes after men and has sex with them and then they provide for her. She actually is the most unsympathic character in the whole story. She uses men then discards them once they are of no use to her. She is a spider, trapping men in her web and traps them there. As Cohn says she is Circe, who turns men into swine. By turning them into lower creatures, she uses them and then kills them at the opportune moment.<br />5. Lady Brett is not a sympathetic character. All of h friends are talking about all the things there going through and she is like “I don’t care, lets drink.” Lady Brett is also not a very good role model for anyone because she acts uncaring to people and she drinks a lot.<br />6. Lady Brett Ashley has her own ideas and for the most part, does what she desires. She yearns for Jake, while he does the same, but knows that she could never be happy with him. She is a very independent woman that many women strive to be like her, but she also has some problems of her own.<br />7. Brett is not a very positive female role model. She likes two different guys, sleeps with them and uses bad language. In chapter seven-teen, the reader realizes that Brett is a slut. She was in many relationships at the same time. She slept with Jake, Cohn, and bullfighters. You realize that Brett isn’t an inoscent character.<br />8. I believe Brett is a tramp and a horrible positive role model. She is a role model for bad behavior and scandalous actions. That is all.<br />9. Jake, Mike, Cohn, Bill and Romero are all men that lady Brett Ashley plays around with. She does not have very good communication with any of them so it makes things very complicated between all the men. Throughout the book she is with several different men, she gives them all reasons to believe they are important.<br />10. Lady Brett Ashley is compassionate when things are beyond what she can control. Brett has slept with almost every main character of the book and takes it upon herself to make them feel better, mostly with the consuption of wine. Lady Brett Ashley is to mary Michael at the same point in time she runs off with Pedro Romero and Cohn. Brett drinks as much as the men if not more, and smokes cigars and cigarettes, not typical of women in the 1920’s.<br />11. Lady Brett Ashley is a beautiful women that men are instently attracted to. Her present are always welcomed.<br />12. Lady Brett Ashley, a character in The Sun Also Rises, is not a sympathetic character, nor a positive female role model. From what we see of her in the novel, you get the idea that she does what she wants in terms of what would be best for her. When I say “best,” though, that means “what will be most benefitial/fun” for her at the time.<br />13. There is one woman in the novel The Sun Also Rises that is worth mentioning. The main characters consist of all men, and the woman is formally known as lady Brett Ashley and her treatment of the people (men) around her shows the romanticism and selfishness that make up her character.<br />14. HEMINGWAY WRITES IN HIS OWN, INDIVIDUAL WAY. HE CARRIES ON CONVERSATIONS OF WHICH IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW YOU WONT KNOW WHO IS TALKINGOR WHAT ABOUT. NOT ONLY IS HIS WRITING UNIQUE, HIS CHARACTERS ARE INTERESTING AS WELL. ONE OF WHICH, LADY BRETT ASHLEY, SEEMS TO ALWAYS STEAL THE ATTENTION; EXPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO MEN.<br />15. Lady Brett Ashley is one of the most emotionally confused characters in the whole book. She falls in “love” with Mike then has an affair with Cohn in San Sebastion whil in the mean time is crushing on Jake.<br />16. Lady Brett Ashley is a very independent woman and she can’t make a commitment. She leads any boy on but only truly loves Jake, whom she can’t love.<br />17. Lady Ashley, also known as Brett, is a very self-centered, wild, free-living alcoholic. She stoops from one man to the next, when she really love only one man. Jake is the man she is in love with, but as you can very easily tell she’s not ready to settle down. Plus her hormones must still be raging, since she sleeps with a guy like Cohn, to a guy like Rimero. As a role model Brett is not the best.<br /><br />PROMPT 7: Read closely and analyze one of the longer passages in which Hemingway describes bulls or bullfighting. What sort of language does Hemingway use? Does the passage have symbolic possibilities? If the bullfighting passages do not advance the plot, how do they function to develop themes and motifs? RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Bull fighting is described as a great passion for jake and his friends. In a sense, this passion often seems to reflect upon the actions of the characters in the story. At one point Robert is compared to a steer. Mike compares Cohn to a steer because he never says a word but is always “hanging about”, like a steer. Since Cohn became involved with Brett, he was unable to leave her alone, and constantly trailed behind her, following her everywhere.<br /><br />PROMPT 8: Analyze the novel in the context of World War I. How does the experience of war shape the characters and their behavior? Examine the differences between the veterans, like Jake and Bill, and the nonveterans, like Cohn and Romero. <br />RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. The differences between the veterans and the nonveterans in The Sun Also Rises is quite apparent. Everything about the characters, like their behavior, is shaped based upon whether they fought in World War I or not.<br />2. In the novel The Sun Also Rises, the characters who went to war seem to be more content than the characters who didn’t go to war.<br />3. World War I was one of the bloodiest and most devastating wars the world has ever seen. It changed the lives of almost everyone who was involved, and made them look at the world in a different way. Jake and Bill have a much harder time expressing their desires, but people like Cohn sometimes feel guilty, and even a little jealous that they did not experience the war.<br />4. War changes people. It effects them emotionally to the point where there no longer considered to same person.<br /><br /> PROMPT 9: Why is Cohn verbally abused so often in the novel? Is it because he is Jewish? Why does Mike attack Cohn but not Jake, whom Brett actually loves? Why does Cohn accept so much abuse? <br />RESPONSE THESES: <br />1. Cohns actions irritates most of the people he is around. No one really likes him but puts up with him. When everyone gets drunk however, true feelings come out.<br />2. Cohn is an abused character, in the book because as it says at the beginning of the book that he felt inferiority and shyness from being treated as a Jew at Princeton. So to let out his anger he learned to box and that gave him comfort, knowing that he could knock out anyone who would tease him.<br />3. Cohn is often verbally abused in the novel because he is jewish, and because of his involvement with Brett. Jews were looked down upon at the time, and since Cohn was one, he received quite a bit of hostility at certain times.<br />4. Throughout the novel, Cohn acceps much abuse from Mike. Cohn accepts this verbal abuse because he believes he loves Brett and is willing to take anything for her.<br />5. In the novel Cohn is verbally abused and I think it is because the other men are so insecure about themselves they feel that ruining someone elses self esteem will help them get out their insecurities. The fact that Cohn is Jewish is a excuse and it gives them a reason to abuse him.<br />6. Throughout the story lady Ashley (Brett) has been with many men. Some she has went away with, such as Robert Cohn. While some she has been seen with through most of the book, such as the Count and Michael. For some reason though Cohn has been picked on and treated as if he wasn’t wanted on their trip down to Pamplona. To the fiesta and to see the bull-fights. Michael gets very annoyed and jealous with Cohn and things get a little twisted.<br />7. Throughout the novel Mike repeatedly attacks Robert Cohn on his love of Brett. In the first section of the book, before Mike has been introduced into the novel, Jake talks a lot about his love of Brett. But each time he does it is either to himself or to Brett herself, never openly in public.<br />8. In the novel The Sun Also Rises, there are many varied characters, not the least of which is Cohn, the slightly pompus Jewish boxing champ who seems to be somewhat slow-witted at times. During the novel Cohn always seems to be at the end of all his friends jokes, and he is constantly after Brett, the girl he had a short relationship with. Brett more than anything is why he is verbally abused so much.<br />9. The verbal abuse that Cohn receives and endures is because he is Jewish and partly because of his feelings towards Brett.<br />10. Cohn is not verbally abused throughout the novel because he is Jewish. Rather, it is because he brings the characters, who are in a sort o alternate reality back to reality. Being Jewish is only the excuse to get mad at him for try to achieve real happiness. Mike attacks Cohn and not Jake because he is not threatened by Jake but feels that Cohn could take Brett away from him.<br /><br /><br />PROMPT 10: Discuss the problem of communication in the novel. Why is it so difficult for the characters to speak frankly and honestly? In what circumstances is it possible for them to speak openly? Are there any characters who say exactly what is on their mind? If so, how are these characters similar to each other?<br /><br />RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Communication is something people do as a living. The Sun Also Rises is full of communication that dances around the point someone is trying to make. Truth is not always the easiest thing to tell or hear; lying, however, can make a situation easier and complex at the same time.<br />2. The characters have such a hard time communicating because they are so bent on being miserable and so incase themselves within their own little walls. The only time they do speak what is on their mind is when they are drunk or otherwise intoxicated. This is how Mike yells at Cohn, he is so drunk his walls are lowered and all of his anger and jealousy is aimed squarely at Cohn. Even when Jake is alone with Brett they pretend that they can never be together even though they are in love. They just are so stuck in their persons that they can’t do what should be done. The only other person in the book who does or says exactly what he is thinking is Cohn, who hits Jake that night because Brett loves him.<br />3. The characters in the novel have a strong lack of communication. The lack of communication is started because of Lady Brett and her fooling around. When her and Cohn have an affair is when the friends start falling apart because they are trying to keep it a secret from Mike. If all of the characters were to speak honestly then their secrets would be exposed.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-46182811937844451302007-04-04T08:18:00.000-07:002007-04-29T12:07:28.080-07:00Questions for FitzgeraldPROMPT 1: Fitzgerald weaves many thematic elements together throughout the story. The idea of position, however, ties many of them together. The word encompasses themes like class, wealth, social standing, and others. Discuss how Fitzgerald uses the idea of position and its effect on our impression of the text, its characters, and the culture in which it is rooted. RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. The idea of position as a thematic element in The Great Gatsby is one of the major and most important elements presented in the story.<br /><br />2. In The Great Gatsby, having a high status is something everyone wants to achieve. Who wouldn’t want to be rich and popular?<br /><br />3. Fitzgerald uses the idea of position as a key tool in his novel, The Great Gatsby. Position shapes nearly all aspects of the characters, conflicts, and culture of the story.<br /><br /> <br />PROMPT 2: Nick refers to Jordan, Tom, and Daisy as careless in one form or another. Discuss the theme of carelessness and its effect on our impression of the text, its characters, and the culture in which it is rooted. RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. The root of all carelessness in the text is money. Although we first see Daisy as an innocent breathtaking “nice” girl as events take place and the narrator’s Nick’s opinion of her changes.<br /><br />2. Carelessness is a root factor in the novel, The Great Gatsby. Friendships turn awry, funerals are forgotten, and affairs arise. The main character, Nick, tells us about his girlfriend, Jordan, and his friends, Tom and Daisy, who are together. Between the four of them, feelings are not only hurt, but simply forgotten.<br /><br />3. Carelessness in The Great Gatsby is pervasive in all facets of the story. Any tale about the Roaring Twenties must embrace this theme, as it is integral to the entire era. Specifically, in this story, carelessness is pinpointed upon three particular characters: Jordan, Tom, and Daisy. Although they are the focal point of heedless life, other characters also play a role in the theme.<br /><br />4. Nick describes Daisy and Tom as being careless, stating that they smash things up only to retreat into their wealth. At the end, when Nick meets Tom Buchanan in New York he expresses a feeling that Tom is no more than a child because of his uncaring, selfish ways. Throughout the novel, Daisy and Tom both make decisions that would be in their best interest. Not giving much thought to what extent their lives affect others.<br /><br />5. Culture during the 1920s was reckless, jubilant, wasteful, and everyone loved it. This story embodies the “roaring twenties” in its entirety from the flagrant affairs to the wild parties. Everyone in the story is portrayed as careless at some point in the story except Nick. The irony of this is that even though he is quiet, reserved, and thoughtful he fits in better than anyone else.<br /><br />6. Nick feels upset because of how careless Tom and Daisy are. Its like nothing has any consequences to it and they can do whatever they like. I think he is slightly jealous. He is to uptight to just let go and do whatever he wants, even if it would be fun. I don’t think that Tom and daisy are careless in a bad way. if they are really happy then whats the big deal?<br /><br />7. Carelessness is a key factor in The Great Gatsby, It’s more obvious in the ending of the novel then in the beginning. Many characters in the book show obvious carelessness and traces of egotistical qualities. Nick seems to be the only main character not showing this feature but that could also very well be misleading due to the fact that he is the author and you will only get his point of view. Which is the reason Gatsby is glorified the way he is in the book, Nick in a sense idolizes Gatsby, even though Gatsby is a criminal.<br /><br />8. This theme of carelessness and failure to comprehend consequence is rife throughout the The Great Gatsby. Each character has his/her own moments where they do not seem to realize what the outcome of the current situation could be, and especially is shown through Tom and Daisy. Almost every major event in this novel has some trace of carelessness buried inside.<br /><br />9. The reference to the carelessness of Jordan, Tom, and Daisy throughout the Story The Great Gatsby refers and effects our impression of the text, its characters, and the culture in many ways. The theme of superficiality comes up a great deal as a result of this. It’s the idea that even though all the people in this story had money and excitement, it didn’t make them happy or caring. In fact it seemed to do the exact opposite.<br /><br />10. A the quote above suggests, money allows for decisions of whim, some of which are not discussed. For the wealthy, the 1920’s were a time of lavish extravagence and covered affairs. Fitzgerald uses Daisy, Tom, and Jordan in his portrayal of the carelessness of the time.<br /><br /><br /><br />PROMPT 3: Nick is the hardest character to understand in the book because he is the narrator and will therefore only give us an impression of himself that he would like to give. He tells the reader that "I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.” Discuss the self-evaluation of our narrator, Nick, and his place and purpose in the text. RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Nick is possibly the sleaziest, most dishonest, and unlikeable character in the entire book yet dares to call himself honest. Throughout The Great Gatsby, Nick prides himself in being the most honest person in the book. Honestly, by definition Nick is a “great person” and an honest one at that, meaning he doesn’t lie or cheat or steal. He simply has a nack for self applied muteness.<br /><br />2. For most people when they talk about themselves it is god. Also when a person talks about himself/her it tends to be exadurated in a better since. That makes it very difficult to understand what a character is thinking.<br /><br />3. In the book The Great Gatsby Nick describes himself as a a person of honesty and high morals. His purpose in this text is to act as an observer and a moral compass, but only informs the reader of his observation, making him not as moral as he thinks he is.<br /><br />4. Nick’s character in the novel The Great Gatsby plays one of the smallest irrelevant but biggest important roles in the book. Looking at the story itself alone Nick is clearly not important and could basically be cut out of the story without much notice taken. But in all reality Nick is the author and though he plays the bystander who’s not a part of the story but the story is a big part of his life and the story, since he is the author, is written the way he would see it and want you to perceive it.<br /><br />5. Nick thinks of himself as an honest man. He thinks he is the kind of man slow to judgement and not a very confident person. Nick seems to have an okay self evaluation because he doesn’t lie and he doesn’t really judge people.<br /><br />6. Nick is an ideal narrator because he mostly observes and listens to people as they’re speaking. His problems aren’t out for everyone to see and so he in turn sees himself as a better, more honest person.<br /><br />7. Nick, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, sees himself as an insightful man, better than everyone else. His purpose in the story is to show the bad side of the characters, and show the hypocracy of the 1920’s. He just makes fun of various types of people throughout the novel. To understand his pupose in the novel, you first have to understand his character.<br /><br />8. Nick Carraway, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, seems to be a very mistrusting person. In the story he mingles with what he describes as a careless group. He describes their whereabouts throughout the book, not really including himself in the plot much. His purpose in the story seems to be that of storyteller, recounting the dishonesty he sees in his supposedly unbiased way. <br /><br /><br /><br />PROMPT 4: In what sense is The Great Gatsby an autobiographical novel? Does Fitzgerald write more of himself into the character of Nick or the character of Gatsby, or are the author’s qualities found in both characters? RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. There are many instances in The Great Gatsby that reference the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In both Gatsby and Nick, Fitzgerald exposes elements of himself in both their personas and actions.<br /><br />2. In the novel Fitzgerald writes himself into both characters. Gatsby being the portion of Fitzgerald’s personality that was a flashy celebrity who worked hard to become rich to impress and win over the woman he loved for Gatsby this woman was Daisy for Fitzgerald the woman was Zelda. Nick would be the introverted side of Fitzgerald, the westerner caught up in Easts way of life. Although there are similarities in both characters Fitzgerald’s life is much more of a parallel to Gatsby’s.<br /><br />3. The Great Gatsby is a partial autobiography because Fitzgerald not only wrights himself into Nick, but also Gatsby. Fitzgerald can make the charactores more lifelike and convincing because they are real to him. He can put his actual feelings into his characters, instead of just making a personality up and trying to make them seem believable. <br /><br /><br />PROMPT 5: How does Gatsby represent the American dream? What does the novel have to say about the condition of the American dream in the 1920s? In what ways do the themes of dreams, wealth, and time relate to each other in the novel’s exploration of the idea of America? RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Gatsby is a wealthy man. His quote of life is “rags to riches” for he was once poor but now he’s not. The American dream is to work your way into the high society life, with money to spare. Everyone gets a job and works to get money, money is the American dream. Gatsby represents the American dream because he, by himself, went from nothing to something.<br /><br />2. The American dream has always involved the idea of a “rags-to-riches” life. It has also paced high value on the idea of serving America. Jay Gatsby, in The Great Gatsby, did both of these things. He was raised poor, went to war, became a decorated military man and returned home to make vast sums of money through sketchy business with his associate Mr. Wolfsheim.<br /><br />3. Jay Gatsby, the focus of this novel, represents the self-made man and the American dream in a way that was equivocal with the 1920’s. This American Dream of going from essentially nothing to working your way into success was the exact dream that Gatsby pursued and eventually attained. He went from serving his country, coming back with little money, and losing the girl to becoming an extremely wealthy man and able to attain a large estate and home.<br /><br />4. Gatsby represents the American Dream in that he is a classic rags to riches case. He is, more specifically, an example of the themes of dreams, wealth, and time of America throughout the nineteen twenties. Gatsby became an icon for the American dream by, of course, dreaming of one day becoming such.<br /><br />5. Mr. Gatsby represented the American dream of the 1920’s. He had everything you could need or want, especially since the book is set right in the middle of the Great Depression, and most had nothing. Another thing he had was popularity.<br /><br />6. Gatsby represents the American dream because his hard work has led him to a life of relaxation. Gatsby fits right in his place as a wealthy man in the American 1920s. Because he has his wealth, he has time to ponder and get caught up in his concepts of time and dreams.<br /><br />7. Gatsby represents the American Dream. He is rich. He has nearly everything he could possible ask for. He throws big parties. He has lots of friends. He has everything he wants and that is the American dream.<br /><br />8. Jay Gatsby, in The Great Gatsby, seems to be the epitome of the American dream in the 1920’s. he became wealthy despite his humble beginnings. He also served his country. The American dream in the 1920’s, however, are not exactly based on the same principles it had been.<br /><br />9. The American dream in the 1920’s, which is still largely pursued today, was spawned by the idea that a person (white male) could rise above his social and economic situation to one of greater wealth and respect. Gatsby is a perfect example of this “rags to riches” theory, but is tragically cursed by the classic cliché that “money won’t buy you happiness.” Themes of dreams, wealth, and time are all aspects of this American idealism and all have great effect on Gatsby’s dreams and success.<br /><br />10. Jay Gatsby is the epitome of the American Dream. Through luck, inspiration, motivation, and a liberal splash of corruption he raised himself up from the dregs of society to a respectable position.<br /><br />11. The image of a self-made man, much the basis for the American dream, is also a good summary for Gatsby’s success. Being from a poor farming family, Gatsby had little else but his ambition for greatness. Not until serving his country did he ever make anything of himself, perhaps some slight pro military service propaganda on Fitzgerald’s part. The American dream in The Great Gatsby seems to come off as being cheap, little effort can produce great wealth without any real accomplishments.<br /><br /><br />PROMPT 6: Compare and contrast Gatsby and Tom. Given the extremely negative light in which Tom is portrayed throughout the novel, why might Daisy choose to remain with him instead of leaving him for Gatsby?<br /><br />RESPONSE THESES:<br /><br />1. Tom and Gatsby both love Daisy. This is both their greatest similarity and greatest difference. Tom’s affection for Daisy is merely superfluous and becomes more about control than anything else. Gatsby’s infatuation, on the other hand, is so deep that it shaped his entire being. Daisy’s role in the novel is to decide between the two.<br /><br />2. There are many different types of love. The love Daisy had for Gatsby in her youth vanished when he left for war. The love she had for him then was a love without consequences. Realistic problems did not exist, both of them had yet experienced life on their own terms. Daisy was still a young girl, while Gatsby nothing more than a twitterpated young man, about to leave the relationship during the heat of their passion.<br /><br />3. The internal conflict that Daisy faces over deciding between Jay and Tom becomes the most controversial issue in the story. Gatsby and Tom represent two very different lives for Daisy, and in that rests her indecision. Gatsby, being from an early time in her life, represents all the hope, romance, and expectations for the future. Tome she met later in life and stands for dependable stability.<br /><br />4. Gatsby and Tom seem completely different socially and romantically, but they both like Daisy and Daisy likes them. Daisy remains with Tom for reasons of convenience.<br /><br />5. The characters Tome and Gatsby are alike and different in several ways. One of the ways they are alike is that they are both quite wealthy. Another way they are alike is the way they live their lives. But Tome and Gatsby are different in some ways. Tome is is a strong ex-football star and Gatsby is just a rich guy. Tome is also more of a tough mean guy, but Gatsby is kinder and less tough.<br /><br />6. Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan had, in The Great Gatsby, a mutual friendship with the narrator of the story, Nick Carraway. In Nick’s perspective these are many similarities as well as differences between Gatsby and Mr. Buchanan. While they have several obvious common traits and goals, Nick seems to prefer and admire Gatsby more than he does Tom.<br /><br />7. Daisy chooses to stay with Tome as opposed to Gatsby because of her love for Tom, the likeness of character between Daisy and Tom, and the untruthfulness of Tom’s portrayal by Nick in the book. Most persuasive aspect of her decision is in the fact that she still loves Tom.<br /><br />8. Daisy decides to stay with Tom after all Gatsby has attempted to do for one simple reason~ a sense of security. Although, she loves Gatsby very much, she feels that there is not a concrete future with him. She has an underlying fear that Gatsby will up and leave her like he did previously when he went off to war.<br /><br />9. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby’s character is presents as vastly superior to Tom Buchanan. This presentation, though, is from Nick, the narrator’s, point of view. He is biased toward Gatsby who was his friend and neighbor.<br /><br />10. There are many differences between Tome and Gatsby in the story. The main difference is that Tom is richer, more dull, and lies on a different scale than Gatsby. It’s because of most of their differences that Daisy ends up with Tome in the end, even though Tom is cast is a more negative light.<br /><br />11. Tom and Gatsby are evil twins. Retrospectively they are what the other considers evil so sense is there made. Gatsby got shipped off as a child though so they didn’t live together. Tom was raised wealthy, lived wealthy, acted wealth and had a masterful control over his lifes stability. Gatsby rose out of the mud much like a bog monster to become a criminal/man of wealth.<br /><br />12. The main difference between Gatsby and Tom, also the reason why Daisy chooses Tom over Gatsby, lies in location of their homes. East Egg and West Egg both have similar attributes and both are homes to the extremely wealthy, but there is a fundamental difference between them. East Egg is the home of the aristocracy of America, the “old money.” West Egg, on the contrary, supports people who have come into their money more recently, the “new money.” West Egg is, as Nick says, “the less fashionable of the two.”heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-8357328422646992792007-04-03T21:06:00.000-07:002007-04-03T21:13:27.551-07:00Somewhere to go to make a new friend...Hi again...<br /><br />There's this website you should visit and make exhaustive use of over the next 10 weeks. Check it out!<br /><br />www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets.htm<br /><br />Once there, look these folks up. I'll let you know what, precisely, you should be looking for and why later.<br /><br />Amy Lowell<br />Robert Frost<br />Carl Sandburg<br />Wallace Stevens<br />William Carlos Williams<br />Ezra Pound<br />H. D.<br />Marianne Moore<br />T. S. Eliot<br />Edna St. Vincent Millay<br />E. E. Cummings<br />Jean Toomer<br />Hart Crane<br />Claude McKay<br />Langston Hughes<br />Countee Cullen<br />Gertrude Stein<br /><br />Happy meeting!heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-91486639088144108142007-04-03T13:06:00.000-07:002007-04-03T13:17:13.384-07:00Fragmentation and Redemption in "The Waste Land"The recipe for salvation in the wake of the “fall of Man” has served as the stuff of inspiration in epics throughout literature, from Iliad to Paradise Lost. Homer relied on Greek mythology while Milton had the Bible to turn to, with the destiny of the soul always hanging in the balance between good and evil. As life in modern times has become more complex, the significance of cultural symbology convoluted by the sheer magnitude of history, a contemporary exploration of Man's spiritual predicament becomes necessarily more difficult.<br /><br />The Waste Land, as its title suggests, is set in this rubble of human history and understanding. In form and theme the poem represents a sort of mental pilgrimage through the fragmented artifacts of civilization in pursuit of deliverance from the "unreality" of the modern world and a hope for redemption. In crafting the poem, T.S. Eliot has applied an allusive technique that allows him to cultivate a sense of cohesion among this chaos, a metaphysical awareness through which he recognizes the potential for redemption only to deny its consummation.<br /> <br />In the middle ages and earlier times of faith, spring was the traditional season of pilgrimage and heralded the prospect of spiritual rebirth along with the new growth of the natural world. Perverted into the modern context of spiritual disavowal in The Waste Land, however, this notion rises here as a sort of ‘voice of the Age.’ Spring becomes a cruel reminder that life has been reduced to a series of meaningless past-times and excursions. This state is conveyed through the subtle interplay of dead winter and rejuvenating spring in the opening lines: “April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.” (1-4) This pronouncement is drawn from the opening of Chaucer's Prologue, where seasonal change represents the perpetual life-cycle of creation. By a subtle juxtaposition of winter snow and spring showers and the mixing of memories and desires of childhood, Eliot shows that such reminders are pervasive, outnumbered possibly only by the means through which they are ignored. The inhabitants of The Waste Land encountered by Eliot's pilgrim fear and deny any trace of life that reminds them of this living death or disturbs their neutral and comfortable nothingness. That humankind has chosen to ignore and avoid them through the hollow rituals of drink, sex, politics, and religion suggests a self-perpetuating human tendency to favor the path of least resistance.<br /> <br />The second stanza comes in stark contrast to the disturbing spring showers of the poem's opening, metaphorically illustrating the effects of humanity's disinterest in self-actualization with images of a landscape ravaged and sterilized by drought, one in which “the sun beats/ And the dead tree gives no shelter,.../ And the dry stone no sound of water.” (22-24) Here the very language and imagery are interwoven by yet another voice as echoes of that which the Biblical prophets used to announce the need for faith. The "Son of Man," (20) is not cognizant of the disastrous consequences of his barren existence, for he has obfuscated the whole scene of life and his own spiritual identity with superficialities. That he "know[s] only a heap of broken images" (21) suggests that the proliferation of human knowledge has only confused his vision as the images seen in a shattered mirror are fractured and distorted. The promise of the existence of an alternative to this desolation and "fear in a handful of dust" (30) by this apparently omniscient new speaker follows, cultivating in Eliot's would-be pilgrim a sense of disillusionment with the mundane. This relation, and the one in the poem's epigraph, to the tragic Greek legend of Sibyl (who, for her lack of foresight, wishes herself into an eternity of perpetual decay) sets him upon his quest for spiritual deliverance.<br /> <br />For the purpose of brevity, a summary of the intervening sections of the work must suffice. The remainder of The Waste Land largely consists of the travails of this quest, bearing out the pattern of helpless predicaments followed by the eventual portrayal of potential salvation common to most such tales of self-discovery. In the body of the poem before the final section, the pilgrim gathers sufficient evidence against the legitimacy of civilization and pronounces his judgment: "Falling towers / Jerusalem Athens Alexandria / Vienna London / Unreal." (374) In this final declaration of the unreality of these icons of human accomplishment and progress, the whole citadel of false civilization appears baseless and seems to collapse in a torrent of frantic nightmare images of baby-faced bats and topsy-turvy towers. This horrific scene represents his final trial through which he must retain his resolve and sanity in the absence of an anesthetic social perspective if he is to reach the end of his quest and escape The Waste Land of a world without clear meaning. As the prophetic voice promised in the beginning of the poem, he has indeed been shown fear in the dust of a collapsed world.<br /> <br />This overwhelming sense of loss and displacement appears confluent with several dominant works of the budding Modernist movement. That the moments preceding an apprehension of complete self-knowledge are consistently depicted as horrific in Conrad's <em>Heart of Darkness </em>and Joyce’s <em>Ulysses</em>, among other works, suggests a consonant theme and a pervasive desire to rediscover personal identity at any cost in cultural currency. Lost in the cacophony of cultural dogma, the questors in these modern odysseys, Kurtz and Dedalus respectively, come to this state in much the same way as they likewise struggle toward self-actualization. Kurtz’s final words before his death, which were stricken as the original epigraph for "The Waste Land" upon Ezra Pound’s suggestion that Conrad was too contemporary, “the horror,” testify to the mind-wrenching pain of having the foundation of one’s social identity stripped away as superfluous and unreal. A similar, though more extensively explored, mental anguish nearly overcomes Joyce’s questor, Dedalus, as he grapples for his sanity under the harsh light of complete vision.<br /> <br />The result of this terrifying engagement in all three cases, though few points in literature have been so heatedly debated, is a sense of purgation. Lending historical credence to this claim are the allusions in both works to Dante's Purgatorio and the concept of a refining fire that purifies the soul en route to either salvation or damnation. Eliot makes the most direct use of this idea as he quotes the great text directly, yoking it to a popularly misunderstood image of cultural collapse: "London Bridge is falling down.../ Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina." (427-428) The context of this section of Purgatorio is of instrumental significance, for it marks Dante's ascent out of Purgatory, suggesting that "The Waste Land" can likewise be escaped, metaphorically, by Eliot's pilgrim.<br /> <br />The survival of this final trial precipitates the appearance of the "empty chapel," (389) alluding to the legend of the Holy Grail in which the quest's end comes with admission to the Chapel Perilous and the granting of wisdom and healing by the Grail's keeper. Heralded by the crowing of the cock outside the chapel, healing rain comes from above in the form of a storm and wisdom is presented by a voice in the thunder. The significance of “What the Thunder Said” in the thrice repeated "Da," (401) lies not in a pronouncement of any Truth, however, but in its evocation of three questions that the questor must answer for himself. Taken from the ancient Hindu manuscripts, Upanishads, this dialogue is also paralleled in the Grail legend as an exchange with the Grail’s keeper that begets wisdom and draws the scope of The Waste Land together as a personal pursuit for metaphysical identity.<br /> <br />The first "Da" elicits the question, "what have we given?" (402) This draws out the pilgrim's conclusion that, in surrendering to the objects and falsehoods of civilization, one is left with naught, our souls as "empty rooms" (410) The pilgrim's response to the second "Da:" "We think of the key, each in our prison / Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison," (415-416) suggests that in forsaking the prison of the material world, one only becomes equally tethered to a singular concept of the self. The final "Da" pushes the pilgrim to accept the need for faith in some higher power, something greater than the world or Man, a doctrine by which to live. Further, the inclusion of the incensed artist, Hieronymo, suggests that the pilgrim may be identified with Eliot himself as an artist. <br /> <br />The final lines of The Waste Land signify an attempt to cultivate a personal doctrine from the wreckage of cultural bankruptcy that may rekindle in him a sense of faith. Eliot's selection of a few powerful images that, bound together by their context and apparent personal significance, form this doctrine and ironically also represent his failed attempt to quell his doubts: <br /> <br /> These fragments I have shored against my ruins<br /> Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.<br /> Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.<br /> Shantih shantih shantih (431-434)<br /><br />That Eliot can only refer to this new synthesis as a sort of distilled amalgamation of “fragments,” however, draws him back into the folds of superficial faith and suggests that what lies beyond them is the fear of spiritual ruin. In the end, Eliot's succumbs again, as “mad Heironymo” to the feeling of safety in these cultural trappings, demonstrating his reluctance to traverse the crossroads that would cast the destiny of his soul in stone, a point that is defined in Hindu ideology as Brahma, an undoing of the self through immersion in the whole. The closest correlative to this sort of spiritual ascension in Western mythology comes only after death. That Eliot's pilgrim ultimately shies away from the consummation of this endeavor in favor of the solace of human artifice, however carefully selected, suggests that salvation comes at a higher cost than he is willing to pay.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-11118260996161087052007-04-03T12:59:00.000-07:002007-04-03T13:00:44.275-07:00Modernism: A List of Major Tendencies and LeaningsBelow are some of the major formal tendencies and thematic leanings of the Modernist movement. Keep them in mind as we attempt to slog our way through the next couple of weeks.<br /> <br />Open Form<br />Free Verse<br />Discontinuous narrative<br />Juxtaposition<br />Intertextuality<br />Classical allusions<br />Borrowings from other cultures and languages<br />Unconventional use of metaphor<br />Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties<br />Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context<br />Valorization of the despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future<br />Disillusionment<br />Fragmentation<br />Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past, borrowed without chronology<br />Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes<br />Stream of Consciousness<br />Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Centuryheisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-89551093072301538632007-04-02T08:21:00.000-07:002007-04-02T08:23:56.540-07:00Modernism IntroductionModernism<br />Modernism is a cultural movement that generally includes progressive art and architecture, music and literature which emerged in the decades before 1914, as artists rebelled against late 19th century academic and historicist traditions.<br />Some divide the 20th century into modern and postmodern periods, whereas others see them as two parts of the same larger period. This article will focus on the movement that grew out of the late 19th and early 20th century, while Postmodernism has its own article.<br /><br />Historical outline<br />The Modernist Movement emerged in the mid-19th century in France and was rooted in the idea that "traditional" forms of art, literature, social organization and daily life had become outdated, and that it was therefore essential to sweep them aside and reinvent culture. Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was "holding back" progress, and replacing it with new, and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end. In essence, the Modern Movement argued that the new realities of the 20th century were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt their world view to accept that what was new was also good and beautiful.<br />Precursors to modernism<br /><br />The first half of the 19th century for Europe was marked by a series of turbulent wars and revolutions, which gradually formed into a series of ideas and doctrines now identified as Romanticism, which focused on individual subjective experience, the supremacy of "Nature" as the standard subject for art, revolutionary or radical extensions of expression, and individual liberty. By mid-century, however, a synthesis of these ideas with stable governing forms had emerged, partly in reaction to the failed Romantic Revolutions of 1848. Called by various names, this stabilizing synthesis was rooted in the idea that what was "real" dominated over what was subjective. It was exemplified by Otto von Bismarck's realpolitik, by "practical" philosophical ideas such as positivism and in general by cultural norms now connoted by the term "Victorian era".<br /><br />Central to this synthesis, however, was the importance of institutions, common assumptions and frames of reference. These drew their support from religious norms found in Christianity, scientific norms found in classical physics and doctrines that asserted that depiction of the basic external reality from an objective standpoint was in fact possible. Cultural critics and historians label this set of doctrines Realism, though this term is not universal. In philosophy, the rationalist and positivist movements established a primacy of reason and system.<br />Against the current ran a series of ideas, some of them direct continuations of Romantic schools of thought. Notable were the agrarian and revivalist movements in plastic arts and poetry (e.g. the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the philosopher John Ruskin). Rationalism also drew responses from the anti-rationalists in philosophy. In particular, Hegel's dialectic view of civilization and history drew responses from Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, who were major influences on Existentialism. All of these separate reactions together, however, began to be seen as offering a challenge to any comfortable ideas of certainty derived by civilization, history, or pure reason.<br /><br />From the 1870s onward, the views that history and civilization were inherently progressive, and that progress was inherently amicable, were increasingly called into question. Writers like Wagner and Ibsen had been reviled for their own critiques of contemporary civilization, and warned that increasing "progress" would lead to increasing isolation and the creation of individuals detached from social norms and their fellow men. Increasingly, it began to be argued not merely that the values of the artist and those of society were different, but that society was antithetical to progress itself, and could not move forward in its present form. Moreover, there were new views of philosophy that called into question the previous optimism. The work of Schopenhauer was labelled "pessimistic" for its idea of the "negation of the will", an idea that would be both rejected and incorporated by later thinkers such as Nietzsche.<br /><br />Two of the most disruptive thinkers of the period were, in biology, Charles Darwin and, in political science, Karl Marx. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty of the general public, and the sense of human uniqueness of the intelligentsia. The notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as "lower animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx seemed to present a political version of the same problem: that problems with the economic order were not transient, the result of specific wrong doers or temporary conditions, but were fundamentally contradictions within the "capitalist" system. Both thinkers would spawn defenders and schools of thought that would become decisive in establishing modernism.<br />Separately, in the arts and letters, two ideas originating in France would have particular impact. The first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors (en plein air). They argued that human beings do not see objects, but instead see light itself. The school gathered adherents, and despite deep internal divisions among its leading practitioners, became increasingly influential. Initially rejected from the most important commercial show of the time — the government-sponsored Paris Salon — the art was shown at the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by inferior artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention, and opened commercial doors to the movement.<br /><br />The second school was Symbolism, marked by a belief that language is expressly symbolic in its nature, and that poetry and writing should follow whichever connection the sheer sound and texture of the words create. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé would be of particular importance to what would occur afterwards.<br />At the same time social, political, and economic forces were at work that would eventually be used as the basis to argue for a radically different kind of art and thinking.<br /><br />Chief among these was steam-powered industrialization, which produced buildings that combined art and engineering in new industrial materials such as cast iron to produce railroad bridges and glass-and-iron train sheds, or the Eiffel Tower, which broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be, and at the same time offered a radically different environment in urban life. The miseries of industrial urbanity, and the possibilities created by scientific examination of subjects would be crucial in the series of changes that would shake European civilization, which, at that point, regarded itself as having a continuous and progressive line of development from the Renaissance. With the telegraph's harnessing of a new power, offering instantaneity at a distance, time itself was altered.<br /><br />The breadth of the changes can be seen in how many disciplines are described, in their pre-20th century form, as being "classical", including physics, economics, and arts such as ballet.<br /><br />The beginning of modernism 1890–1910<br /><br />Clement Greenberg wrote 'What can be safely called Modernism emerged in the middle of the last century— and rather locally, in France, with Baudelaire in literature and Manet in painting, and maybe with Flaubert, too, in prose fiction. (It was a while later, and not so locally, that Modernism appeared in music and architecture). The "avant-garde" was what Modernism was called at first, and the term remained to describe movements which identify themselves as attempting to overthrow some aspect of tradition or the status quo.<br /><br />Beginning in the 1890s and with increasing force afterwards, a strand of thinking began to assert that it was necessary to push aside previous norms entirely, and instead of merely revising past knowledge in light of current techniques, it would be necessary to make more thorough changes. The movement in art paralleled such developments as the Theory of Relativity in physics; the increasing integration of the internal combustion engine and industrialization; and the rise of social sciences in public policy. In the first fifteen years of the twentieth century a series of writers, thinkers, and artists made the break with traditional means of organizing literature, painting, and music - again, in parallel to the change in organizational methods in other fields. The argument was that if the nature of reality itself was in question, and the restrictions which, it was felt, had been in place around human activity were falling, then art too, would have to radically change.<br /><br />As Sigmund Freud vividly offered a view of subjective states that involved an unconscious mind full of primal impulses and counterbalancing restrictions, and Carl Jung would combine Freud's doctrine of the unconscious with a belief in natural essence to stipulate a collective unconscious that was full of basic typologies that the conscious mind fought or embraced. This attacked the idea that people's impulses towards breaking social norms were the product of being childish or ignorant, and were instead essential to the nature of the human animal, while the ideas of Darwin had introduced the idea of "man, the animal" to the public mind.<br /><br />At the same time, and in nearly the same place as Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche championed a process philosophy, in which processes and forces, specifically the 'will to power', were more important than facts or things (although, it must be mentioned that Freud was far more influenced by Nietzsche than the latter was by the former). Similarly, the writings of Henri Bergson became increasingly influential, as Bergson also championed the vital 'life force' over static conceptions of reality. What united all these writers was a romantic distrust of the Victorian positivism and certainty. Instead they championed, or, in the case of Freud, attempted to explain, irrational thought processes through the lens of rationality and holism. This was connected with a general search to culminate the century long trend to thinking in terms of holistic ideas, which would include an increased interest in the occult, and "the vital force".<br /><br />Out of this collision of ideals derived from Romanticism, and an attempt to find a way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown, came the first wave of works, which, while their authors considered them extensions of existing trends in art, broke the implicit contract that artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture and ideas. These "modernist" landmarks include Arnold Schoenberg's atonal ending to his Second String Quartet in 1906, the abstract paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 and culminating with the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich, and the rise of cubism from the work of Picasso and Georges Braque in 1908.<br /><br />Powerfully influential in this wave of modernity were the theories of Freud, who argued that the mind had a basic and fundamental structure, and that subjective experience was based on the interplay of the parts of the mind. All subjective reality was based, according to Freud's ideas, on the play of basic drives and instincts, through which the outside world was perceived. This represented a break with the past, in that previously it was believed that external and absolute reality could impress itself on an individual, as, for example, in John Locke's tabula rasa doctrine.<br /><br />However, the modern movement was not merely defined by its avant-garde but also by a reforming trend within previous artistic norms, as well as arguing that to maintain the high standards of previous accomplishments it was necessary to advance technique and theory. This search for simplification of diction was found in the work of Joseph Conrad. The pressures of communication, transportation and more rapid scientific development began placing a premium on architectural styles which were cheaper to build and less ornamented, and on writing which was shorter, clearer, and easier to read. The rise of cinema and "moving pictures" in the first decade of the twentieth century gave the modern movement an art form which was uniquely its own, and again, created a direct connection between the perceived need to extend the "progressive" tradition of the late nineteenth century, even if this conflicted with then established norms.<br /><br />This wave of the modern movement broke with the past in the first decade of the twentieth century, and tried to redefine various artforms in a radical manner. Leading lights within the literary wing of this movement (or, rather, these movements) include Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Valery, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Louis Aragon, Tristan Tzara, Jean Cocteau, Paul Eluard, Gertrude Stein, Wyndham Lewis, H.D., Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Basil Bunting, Robert Walser, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, and Franz Kafka. Composers such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Poulenc and George Antheil represent modernism in music. Artists such as Gustav Klimt, Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Les Fauves, Cubism and the Surrealists represent various strains of Modernism in the visual arts, while architects and designers such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe brought modernist ideas into everyday urban life. Several figures outside of artistic modernism were influenced by artistic ideas; for example, John Maynard Keynes was friends with Woolf and other writers of the Bloomsbury group.<br /><br />In architecture and the arts of design, a search for a recognizably "modern" vocabulary of ornament had been under way since the essays of Viollet-le-Duc and Henry Cole in mid-century; Art Nouveau, termed "Modern Style" by many of its adherents, continued in this vein. A handful of designers like Christopher Dresser managed to eliminate ornament from some industrial design. Adolf Loos' manifesto "Ornament and Crime" (1908, in English 1913) repudiated the work of the Austrian form of Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secession, expressing the idea that the progress of culture is associated with the deletion of ornament from everyday objects, and that it was a crime to force craftsmen or builders to waste their time on ornamentation that simply served to hasten obsolescence. Modernist design retained a moral reaction against ornament.<br /><br />The explosion of modernism 1910–1930<br />On the eve of World War I, a growing tension and unease with the social order began to break through - seen in the Russian Revolution of 1905, the increasing agitation of "radical" parties, and an increasing number of works which either radically simplified or rejected previous practice. In 1913, famed Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, working for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, composed Rite of Spring for a ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky that depicted human sacrifice, and young painters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse had only recently begun causing a shock with their rejection of traditional perspective as the means of structuring paintings - a step that none of the Impressionists, not even Cézanne, had taken.<br /><br />This development began to give a new meaning to what was termed 'Modernism'. At its core was the embracing of disruption, and a rejection of, or movement beyond, simple Realism in literature and art, and the rejection of, or dramatic alteration of, tonality in music. In the 19th century, artists had tended to believe in 'progress', though what that word entailed varied dramatically, and the importance of the artist's contributing positively to the values of society. So, for example, writers like Dickens and Tolstoy, painters like Turner, and musicians like Brahms were not 'radicals' or 'Bohemians', but were instead valued members of society who produced art that added to society, even if it was, at times, critiquing less desirable aspects of it. Modernism, while it was still "progressive" increasingly saw traditional forms and traditional social arrangements as hindering progress, and therefore the artist was recast as a revolutionary, overthrowing rather than enlightening.<br /><br />An example of this trend was to be found in Futurism. In 1909, F.T. Marinetti's first manifesto was published in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro, and rapidly a group of painters (Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Gino Severini) co-signed The Manifesto of Futurist Painting. Such manifestos were modelled on the famous "Communist Manifesto" of the previous century, and were meant to provoke and gather followers while they put forward principles and ideas. However, Futurism was strongly influenced by Bergson and Nietzsche, and it should be seen as part of the general trend of Modernist rationalization of disruption.<br />It must be stressed that Modernist philosophy and art were still viewed as being part, and only a part, of the larger social movement. Artists such as Klimt, Paul Cezanne and Mahler and Richard Strauss were "the terrible moderns" - those farther to the avant-garde were more heard of, than heard. Polemics in favour of geometric or purely abstract painting were largely confined to 'little magazines' (like The New Age in the UK) with tiny circulations. Modernist primitivism and pessimism was controversial but was not seen as representative of the Edwardian mainstream, which was more inclined towards a Victorian faith in progress and liberal optimism.<br />However, World War I and its subsequent events were the cataclysmic disruptions that late 19th century artists such as Brahms had worried about, and avant-gardists had embraced.<br /><br />First, the fantastic failure of the previous status quo seemed self-evident to a generation that had seen millions die fighting over scraps of earth - prior to the war, it had been argued that no one would fight such a war, since the cost was too high. Second, the introduction of a machine age into life seemed obvious - machine warfare became a touchstone of the ultimate reality. Finally, the immensely traumatic nature of the experience made both critical and subjective strands of the modern movement basic assumptions: Realism seemed to be bankrupt when faced with the fundamentally fantastic nature of trench warfare - as exemplified by books such as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. Moreover, the view that Mankind was making slow and steady moral progress came to seem ridiculous in the face of the senseless slaughter of the Great War. The First World War, at once, fused the harshly mechanical geometric rationality of technology with the nightmarish irrationality of myth.<br /><br />Thus in the 1920s, and increasingly after, modernism, which had been such a minority taste before the war, came to define the age. There was a subtle, but important, shift from the earlier phase: in the beginning the movement was undertaken by individuals who were part of the establishment, or wished to join the establishment. However, increasingly, the mood began to shift towards a replacement of the older hierarchy with one based on new ideas, norms, and methods. Modernism was seen in Europe in such critical movements as Dada, and then in constructive movements such as Surrealism, as well as in smaller movements such as the Bloomsbury Group. Each of these "modernisms", as some observers labelled them at the time, stressed new methods to produce new results. Again, Impressionism was a precursor: breaking with the idea of national schools, artists and writers adopted ideas of international movements. Surrealism, Cubism, Bauhaus, and Leninism are all examples of movements that rapidly found adopters far beyond their original geographic base.<br /><br />Exhibitions, theatre, cinema, books and buildings all served to cement in the public view the perception that the world was changing - and this often met with hostile resistance. Paintings were spat upon, riots organized at the opening of works, and some political figures even denounced modernism as being connected with immorality. At the same time, the 1920s were known as the "Jazz Age", and there was a public embrace of the advancements of mechanization: cars, air travel and the telephone. The assertion of Modernists was that these advances required people to change, not merely their habits, but their fundamental aesthetic sense.<br /><br />By 1930, modernism had won a place in the establishment, including the political and artistic establishment.<br /><br />Ironically, by the time it was being accepted, Modernism itself had changed. There was a general reaction in the 1920s against the pre-1918 Modernism, which emphasised its continuity with a past even as it rebelled against it, and against the aspects of that period, which seemed excessively mannered, irrational, and emotionalistic. The post-World War period, at first, veered either to systematization or nihilism and had, as perhaps its most paradigmatic movement, Dada.<br /><br />Since both rationality and irrationality are present to varying degrees in all large movements, some writers attacked the madness of the new Modernism, while, at the same time, others described it as soulless and mechanistic. Modernists, in turn, attacked the madness of hurling millions of young men into the hell of war, and the falseness of artistic norms that could not depict the emotional reality of life in the 20th century.<br /><br />The rationalistic side of modernism was a move back towards control, self-restraint, and an urge to re-engage with society. Some influences came from Machine Age thought and the idolization of technology. Examples of this approach include Stravinsky's neoclassical style of composition, the "International style" of Bauhaus, Schoenberg's atonality, the New Objectivity in German painting. At the same time, the desire to turn social critique into persuasive counter-order found expression in the beginnings of econometrics, and the rise of societies to reform nations along scientific, and often socialistic, lines. The victories of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with its emphasis, at least in words, on both humane life and rational planning, came to be taken by many as an example of the maxim "I have seen the future, and it works".<br /><br />However, it must be remembered that these concepts and movements were often in competition with each other, and even in direct conflict. Within modernity there were disputes about the importance of the public, the relationship of art to audience, and the role of art in society. Rather than a lockstep, organized unity, it is better to see modernism as taking a series of responses to the situation as it was understood, and the attempt to wrestle universal principles from it. In the end science and scientific rationality, often taking models from the 18th Century Enlightenment, came to be seen as the source of logic and stability, while the basic primitive sexual and unconscious drives, along with the seemingly counter-intuitive workings of the new machine age, were taken as the basic emotional substance. From these two poles, no matter how seemingly incompatible, modernists began to fashion a complete worldview that could encompass every aspect of life, and express "everything from a scream to a chuckle".heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-82664538015764800982007-03-15T07:56:00.000-07:002007-03-15T07:59:12.758-07:00The Modernist RevolutionThe English novelist Virginia Woolf declared that human nature underwent a fundamental change "on or about December 1910." The statement testifies to the modern writer's fervent desire to break with the past, rejecting literary traditions that seemed outmoded and diction that seemed too genteel to suit an era of technological breakthroughs and global violence.<br /><br />"On or about 1910," just as the automobile and airplane were beginning to accelerate the pace of human life, and Einstein's ideas were transforming our perception of the universe, there was an explosion of innovation and creative energy that shook every field of artistic endeavor. Artists from all over the world converged on London, Paris, and other great cities of Europe to join in the ferment of new ideas and movements: Cubism, Constructivism, Futurism, Acmeism, and Imagism were among the most influential banners under which the new artists grouped themselves. It was an era when major artists were fundamentally questioning and reinventing their art forms: Matisse and Picasso in painting, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein in literature, Isadora Duncan in dance, Igor Stravinsky in music, and Frank Lloyd Wright in architecture.<br /><br />The excitement, however, came to a terrible climax in 1914 with the start of the First World War, which wiped out a generation of young men in Europe, catapulted Russia into a catastrophic revolution, and sowed the seeds for even worse conflagrations in the decades to follow. By the war's end in 1918, the centuries-old European domination of the world had ended and the "American Century" had begun. For artists and many others in Europe, it was a time of profound disillusion with the values on which a whole civilization had been founded. But it was also a time when the avante-garde experiments that had preceded the war would, like the technological wonders of the airplane and the atom, inexorably establish a new dispensation, which we call modernism. Among the most instrumental of all artists in effecting this change were a handful of American poets.<br /><br />Ezra Pound, the most aggressively modern of these poets, made "Make it new!" his battle cry. In London Pound encountered and encouraged his fellow expatriate T. S. Eliot, who wrote what is arguably the most famous poem of the twentieth century--"The Waste Land"--using revolutionary techniques of composition, such as the collage. Both poets turned to untraditional sources for inspiration, Pound to classical Chinese poetry and Eliot to the ironic poems of the 19th century French symbolist poet Jules Laforgue. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle) followed Pound to Europe and wrote poems which, in their extreme concision and precise visualization, most purely embodied his famous doctrine of Imagism.<br /><br />Among the American poets who stayed at home, Wallace Stevens--a mild-mannered executive at a major insurance firm in Hartford, Connecticut--had a flair for the flashiest titles that poems have ever had: "Peter Quince at the Clavier," "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle." Stevens, the aesthete par excellence, exalted the imagination for its ability to "press back against the pressure of reality."<br /><br />What was new in Marianne Moore was her brilliant and utterly original use of quotations in her poetry, and her surpassing attention to the poetic image. What was new in E. E. Cummings was right on the surface, where all the words were in lower-case letters and a parenthesis "(a leaf falls)" may separate the "l" from "oneliness."<br /><br />William Carlos Williams wrote in "plain American which cats and dogs can read," to use a phrase of Marianne Moore. "No ideas but in things," he proclaimed. In succinct, often witty poems he presents common objects or events--a red wheelbarrow, a woman eating plums--with freshness and immediacy, enlarging our understanding of what a poem's subject matter can be. Unlike Williams, Robert Frost favored traditional devices--blank verse, rhyme, narrative, the sonnet form--but he, too, had a genius for the American vernacular, and his pitiless depiction of a cruel natural universe marks him as a peculiarly modern figure who is sometimes misread as a genial Yankee sage.<br /><br />Of the many modern poets who acted on the ambition to write a long poem capable of encompassing an entire era, Hart Crane was one of the more notably successful. In his poem "The Bridge," the Brooklyn Bridge is both a symbol of the new world and a metaphor allowing the poet to cross into different time zones, where he may shake hands in the past with Walt Whitman and watch as the train called the Twentieth Century races into the future.<br /><br />Hart Crane <br />Born in 1899 in Garrettsville, Ohio, Harold Hart Crane was a highly anxious and volatile child. He began writing verse in his early teenage years, and though he never attended college, read regularly on his own, digesting the works of the Elizabethan dramatists and poets—Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Donne—and the nineteenth-century French poets—Vildrac, Laforgue, and Rimbaud. His father, a candy manufacturer, attempted to dissuade him from a career in poetry, but Crane was determined to follow his passion to write. Living in New York City, he associated with many important figures in literature of the time, including Allen Tate, Katherine Anne Porter, E. E. Cummings, and Jean Toomer, but his heavy drinking and chronic instability frustrated any attempts at lasting friendship. An admirer of T. S. Eliot, Crane combined the influences of European literature and traditional versification with a particularly American sensibility derived from Walt Whitman. His major work, the book-length poem, The Bridge, expresses in ecstatic terms a vision of the historical and spiritual significance of America. Like Eliot, Crane used the landscape of the modern, industrialized city to create a powerful new symbolic literature. Hart Crane committed suicide in 1932, at the age of thirty-three, by jumping from the deck of a steamship sailing back to New York from Mexico.<br /><br />E. E. Cummings <br />Edward Estlin Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1894. He received his B.A. in 1915 and his M.A. in 1916, both from Harvard. During the First World War, Cummings worked as an ambulance driver in France, but was interned in a prison camp by the French authorities (an experience recounted in his novel, The Enormous Room) for his outspoken anti-war convictions. After the war, he settled into a life divided between houses in rural Connecticut and Greenwich Village, with frequent visits to Paris.<br /><br />In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. Later in his career, he was often criticized for settling into his signature style and not pressing his work towards further evolution. Nevertheless, he attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex. At the time of his death in 1962, he was the second most widely read poet in the United States, after Robert Frost.<br /><br />H. D. <br />Hilda Doolittle was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1886. She attended Bryn Mawr, as a classmate of Marianne Moore, and later the University of Pennsylvania where she befriended Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. She travelled to Europe in 1911, intending to spend only a summer, but remained abroad for the rest of her life. Through Pound, H. D. grew interested in and quickly became a leader of the Imagist movement. Some of her earliest poems gained recognition when they were published by Harriet Monroe in Poetry.<br /><br />Her work is characterized by the intense strength of her images, economy of language, and use of classical mythology. Her poems did not receive widespread appreciation and acclaim during her lifetime, in part because her name was associated with the Imagist movement even as her voice had outgrown its boundaries, as evidenced by her book-length works, Trilogy and Helen in Egypt. Neglect of H. D. can also be attributed to her times, as many of her poems spoke to an audience which was unready to respond to the strong feminist principles articulated in her work. She died in 1961.<br /><br />T. S. Eliot <br />Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in Missouri on September 26, 1888. He lived in St. Louis during the first eighteen years of his life and attended Harvard University. In 1910, he left the United States for the Sorbonne, having earned both undergraduate and masters degrees and having contributed several poems to the Harvard Advocate. After a year in Paris, he returned to Harvard to pursue a doctorate in philosophy, but returned to Europe and settled in England in 1914. The following year, he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood and began working in London, first as a teacher, and later for Lloyd's Bank.<br /><br />It was in London that Eliot came under the influence of his contemporary Ezra Pound, who recognized his poetic genius at once, and assisted in the publication of his work in a number of magazines, most notably "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in Poetry in 1915. His first book of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, was published in 1917, and immediately established him as a leading poet of the avant-garde. With the publication of The Waste Land in 1922, now considered by many to be the single most influential poetic work of the twentieth century, Eliot's reputation began to grow to nearly mythic proportions; by 1930, and for the next thirty years, he was the most dominant figure in poetry and literary criticism in the English-speaking world. <br /><br />As a poet, he transmuted his affinity for the English metaphysical poets of the 17th century (most notably John Donne) and the 19th century French symbolist poets (including Baudelaire and Laforgue) into radical innovations in poetic technique and subject matter. His poems in many respects articulated the disillusionment of a younger post-World-War-I generation with the values and conventions—both literary and social—of the Victorian era. As a critic also, he had an enormous impact on contemporary literary taste, propounding views that, after his conversion to orthodox Christianity in the late thirties, were increasingly based in social and religious conservatism. His major later poems include Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1943); his books of literary and social criticism include The Sacred Wood (1920), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), After Strange Gods (1934), and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1940). Eliot was also an important playwright, whose verse dramas include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.<br /><br />He became a British citizen in 1927; long associated with the publishing house of Faber & Faber, he published many younger poets, and eventually became director of the firm. After a notoriously unhappy first marriage, Eliot separated from his first wife in 1933, and was remarried, to Valerie Fletcher, in 1956. T. S. Eliot received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948, and died in London in 1965.<br /><br />Robert Frost <br />Robert Frost was born in San Francisco in 1874. He moved to New England at the age of eleven and became interested in reading and writing poetry during his high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He was enrolled at Dartmouth College in 1892, and later at Harvard, but never earned a formal degree. Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a teacher, cobbler, and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first professional poem, "My Butterfly," was published on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.<br /><br />In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who became a major inspiration in his poetry until her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912, after their New Hampshire farm failed, and it was abroad that Frost met and was influenced by such contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to promote and publish his work. By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length collections, A Boy's Will and North of Boston, and his reputation was established. By the nineteen-twenties, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book—including New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1936), Steeple Bush (1947), and In the Clearing (1962)—his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes) increased.<br /><br />Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time, Frost is anything but a merely regional or minor poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony. Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died on January 29, 1963, in Boston.<br /><br />Marianne Moore <br />Born near St. Louis, Missouri, on November 15, 1887, Marianne Moore was raised in the home of her grandfather, a Presbyterian pastor. After her grandfather's death, in 1894, Moore and her family stayed with other relatives, and in 1896 they moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She attended Bryn Mawr College and received her B.A. in 1909. Following graduation, Moore studied typing at Carlisle Commercial College, and from 1911 to 1915 she was employed as a school teacher at the Carlisle Indian School. In 1918, Moore and her mother moved to New York City, and in 1921, she became an assistant at the New York Public Library. She began to meet other poets, such as William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens, and to contribute to the Dial, a prestigious literary magazine. She served as acting editor of the Dial from 1925 to 1929. Along with the work of such other members of the Imagist movement as Ezra Pound, Williams, and H. D., Moore's poems were published in the Egoist, an English magazine, beginning in 1915. In 1921, H.D. published Moore's first book, Poems, without her knowledge.<br /><br />Moore was widely recognized for her work; among her many honors were the Bollingen prize, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. She wrote with the freedom characteristic of the other modernist poets, often incorporating quotes from other sources into the text, yet her use of language was always extraordinarily condensed and precise, capable of suggesting a variety of ideas and associations within a single, compact image. In his 1925 essay "Marianne Moore," William Carlos Williams wrote about Moore's signature mode, the vastness of the particular: "So that in looking at some apparently small object, one feels the swirl of great events." She was particularly fond of animals, and much of her imagery is drawn from the natural world. She was also a great fan of professional baseball and an admirer of Muhammed Ali, for whom she wrote the liner notes to his record, I Am the Greatest! Deeply attached to her mother, she lived with her until Mrs. Moore's death in 1947. Marianne Moore died in New York City in 1972.<br /><br />Ezra Pound <br />Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot. His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry--stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome." His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.<br />Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy and London, where, as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and became London editor of the Little Review in 1917. In 1924, he moved to Italy; during this period of voluntary exile, Pound became involved in Fascist politics, and did not return to the United States until 1945, when he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting Fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during the Second World War. In 1946, he was acquitted, but declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his confinement, the jury of the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award (which included a number of the most eminent writers of the time) decided to overlook Pound's political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements, and awarded him the prize for the Pisan Cantos (1948). After continuous appeals from writers won his release from the hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, in 1972.<br /><br />Wallace Stevens <br />Wallace Stevens was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1879. He attended Harvard as an undergraduate and earned a law degree from New York Law School. Admitted to the U.S. Bar in 1904, Stevens found employment at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co. in Connecticut, of which he became vice president in 1934. In November 1914, Harriet Monroe included four of his poems in a special wartime issue of Poetry, and Stevens began to establish an identity for himself outside the world of law and business. His first book of poems, Harmonium, published in 1923, exhibited the influence of both the English Romantics and the French symbolists, an inclination to aesthetic philosophy, and a wholly original style and sensibility: exotic, whimsical, infused with the light and color of an Impressionist painting. More than any other modern poet, Stevens was concerned with the transformative power of the imagination. Composing poems on his way to and from the office and in the evenings, Stevens continued to spend his days behind a desk at the office, and led a quiet, uneventful life. Though now considered one of the major American poets of the century, he did not receive widespread recognition until the publication of his Collected Poems, just a year before his death. His major works include Ideas of Order (1935), The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937), Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction (1942), and a collection of essays on poetry, The Necessary Angel (1951). Wallace Stevens died in Hartford in 1955.<br /><br />William Carlos Williams <br />William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883. He began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams' writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams's second collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions. Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh—and singularly American—poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His influence as a poet spread slowly during the twenties and thirties, overshadowed, he felt, by the immense popularity of Eliot's "The Waste Land"; however, his work received increasing attention in the 1950s and 1960s as younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility of his language and his openness as a mentor. His major works include Kora in Hell (1920), Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), the five-volume epic Paterson (1963, 1992), and Imaginations (1970). Williams's health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey in 1963.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-72060918513220107362007-03-12T10:10:00.000-07:002007-03-12T10:12:21.812-07:00HUCK FINN ESSAY QUESTIONSOn our in-class essay day… (one week after your forum) you will be asked THREE of the following questions and MUST RESPOND TO ONE OF THEM. Your responses will be assessed according to our analytic traits for writing. Though six points are possible for each trait, you will be scored out of five.<br /><br />1. Twain paints a bleak, depressing picture of the Phelps Plantation. Compare and contrast Huck’s view of life on the plantation to life on the raft. In what way is his view affected by his recent loss of Jim? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument. <br /><br />2. Huck is shocked when Tom Sawyer tells him he will help steal Jim out of slavery. What does Tom know about Jim and how does that affect his decision? How does Huck view Tom as a member of society? How does he view himself? Support your answer with examples from the novel. <br /><br />3. Jim acts as an informant in the case of the king and duke’s Royal Nonesuch show. In what way is justice being done? Why do you think Jim is seen in a different light in this section of the novel? Do his actions seem believable? Defend your argument with examples from the novel. <br /><br />4. The contrasting personalities of Huck and Tom provide the reader with the satiric humor in these chapters. In what way do their personalities contrast? How are Tom’s romantic notions brought out in the plan to free Jim? How does Huck disagree? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument. <br /><br />5. Tom and Huck disagree on the idea of stealing and borrowing. What does Huck call borrowing? What does Tom consider stealing? When does Tom consider stealing all right? When is it wrong? Support your argument with quotes from the novel. <br /><br />6. In this section of the novel Tom already knows that Jim has been freed by Miss Watson. In view of this fact, how do you interpret his actions in the plan of escape? Is Tom unusually cruel to Jim by making him wait unnecessarily? Why doesn’t he tell Huck and Jim? Explain your answer. <br /><br />7. Two different types of morality are demonstrated in the novel. Contrast Huck’s morality with Tom’s. How are they different? Explain the origins of each of the boys’ sense of morality? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument. <br /><br />8. Twain often satirizes the religious sensibilities of his day through the characters in the novel. In what way is he satirizing Uncle Silas’s prayers with Jim? Do you feel Uncle Silas is being kind to Jim? Why does Jim feel his kindness? Explain your answer. <br /><br />9. Jim is taken out of his prison to help Huck and Tom with the grindstone. In what way is this humorous incident ironic? Why does Jim go back to his prison? Why doesn’t he leave while he has the chance? Why don’t the boys help him to escape? Explain your answer. <br /><br />10. Tom often prescribes cruel treatment for Jim in order to carry out his elaborate plan of escape. How does one account for his lack of sensitivity to Jim’s feelings? Is Tom a cruel person? How does Tom treat other people in the novel? Cite examples from the novel to support your argument. <br /><br />11. Tom works on a coat of arms for Jim. Does he have sufficient knowledge of this subject? Is his knowledge limited? Why doesn’t he give Huck the definitions of “fess” and “bar sinister”? Support your answer with examples from the novel. <br /><br />12. Jim unselfishly gives up his freedom so they can get a doctor for Tom. Does this act seem consistent with Jim’s character? Why does he do it? Describe one other instance in the novel where Jim is unselfish. Cite examples from the novel to support your argument. <br /><br />13. Tom is happy when they reach the raft in spite of the fact that he has a bullet in his leg. Why is he happy? Why doesn’t he want to see a doctor? What instructions does Tom give Huck about the doctor? How is this a part of Tom’s plan of escape? Explain your answer with examples from the novel. <br /><br />14. Huck invents stories throughout the novel to get himself out of tight situations. Is Huck’s story to the doctor as believable as his stories have been in the past? Does the doctor doubt Huck? Are there any flaws in his story? Use examples from the novel to support your argument. <br /><br />15. Jim is often referred to as a noble character in the novel. In what way is his nobility shown in the last few chapters. How does he show courage by helping the doctor? Why does he do it? What price does he pay? Support your answer with examples from the novel. <br /><br />16. The men who are attending to Jim want to hang him as an example to other slaves who might attempt to escape. Why do they decide against it? How does this incident satirize the morality of the men? Cite examples from the novel to explain your answer. <br /><br />17. At the end of the novel Huck wants to escape so Aunt Sally will not try to “sivilize” him. How has the meaning of the word “sivilize” changed for Huck? In what way has Huck grown as a character in the novel? Give examples from the novel to support your argument.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-5217214910398584702007-03-08T09:33:00.001-08:002007-03-08T09:34:06.338-08:00Huck Finn ProjectWhile we are reading Huck Finn we will use various strategies to better understand the book and what it has to tell us. While it is easy to mock and ridicule the wide range of seemingly “unacademic” strategies teachers use to get info into their students’ heads, sometimes these actually work better than the old standards that consist of a series of leading questions to be written or spoken about. Sound familiar? So, warm up your wagging fingers, do your special eye-rolling exercises, practice your deep sighs and disgruntled huffs of resentment… It’s project time! You may propose some projects be done as a team but these must be approved. Any project that is turned in as a team and yet has not been approved by me will not be accepted. Moreover, I expect that two-person projects be twice as good!<br />Option I: Jim’s Journal: This option asks you to get in character as Jim and keep a DAILY journal as the story unfolds. In other words, you will keep a journal as if you were Jim. The quality of work here will be reflected in the following components:<br />o extent to which you inhabit the character (e.g., sound and think like he would)<br />o overall quality of your writing (note: you may write in the same vernacular style that Twain used but you must be consistent and effective in your use of this style)<br />o thoroughness: extent to which your journal reflects on and includes the entire novel<br />o insight: extent to which your entries show insight into the characters and the story<br />(Option: you could, if you prefered, write your journal as Mark Twain. Many writers keep journals of what they think while they write their books. What would Twain be thinking and saying to himself about this book as he writes it?)<br />Option II: Graphic Novel: This option allows the artistic students to use their skills to recreate the story in a graphic novel (i.e., comic book) format. If you are really technologically oriented and want to show off, you could make yours animated and interactive. The quality of your work here will be determined by the following:<br />o quality of the art work: it should look sharp--both the pictures and the text.<br />o extent to which your graphic novel includes the entire story of Huck Finn<br />o inclusion of an introduction in which you explain what you tried to capture in your recreation of the novel (e.g., "I wanted to emphasize the extent to which they reject society and reveal themselves as rebels in the American spirit. I did this because...and showed it by...")<br /><br /><br />Option III: Formal Essay: This option asks you to choose an idea or character central to the book and examine that idea in depth in an essay. You may also consider taking some recurring aspect of American history or culture and writing an essay in which you discuss how Huck Finn relates to that theme (e.g., the American spirit of independence). Your essay must accomplish the following:<br />o It must be at least five-pages typed (double-spaced, 12-point font).<br />o It should clearly identify the thesis of the paper early on and maintain that focus throughout. <br />o It must examine its subject carefully, supporting each of its supporting elements with examples from appropriate sources (e.g., Huck Finn , your history book, etc.).<br />o It must be original in its focus so as to avoid questions of whether it was or could have been lifted off the Internet.<br />(Note: you must approve your topic with me first.)<br />Option IV: Be the Teacher: You will teach an entire class period in which you lead a discussion on a particular set of themes or some other focused topic as it relates to Huck Finn. During this 45-minute period you will prepare and be ready to do the following:<br />o facilitate a class discussion on selected, important themes<br />o introduce your lesson with some opening remarks<br />o use visual aids--video clips, handouts, posters, overheads--to help the class think about and understand the ideas you present<br />o write a one page follow-up analysis of what you set out to accomplish, how well they/you accomplished this goal and a reflection about what you would do differently.<br />Option V: Publish your Own Newspaper: This option asks you to create a six-page newspaper with all the appropriate elements common to a newspaper of that era. (You can find examples of newspapers on the web by visiting the Cyberguide for Twain’s novel.) … http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/huckcen/huckcentg.html <br />Your work will be assessed according to the quality of the following:<br />o the writing<br />o the formatting and overall appearance and layout of the paper<br />o the extent to which the paper shows understanding of and insight into the novel Huck Finn<br />o demonstrated mastery of the computer to create the paperheisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-32407470610051676102007-03-08T09:33:00.000-08:002007-03-08T09:34:05.520-08:00Huck Finn ProjectWhile we are reading Huck Finn we will use various strategies to better understand the book and what it has to tell us. While it is easy to mock and ridicule the wide range of seemingly “unacademic” strategies teachers use to get info into their students’ heads, sometimes these actually work better than the old standards that consist of a series of leading questions to be written or spoken about. Sound familiar? So, warm up your wagging fingers, do your special eye-rolling exercises, practice your deep sighs and disgruntled huffs of resentment… It’s project time! You may propose some projects be done as a team but these must be approved. Any project that is turned in as a team and yet has not been approved by me will not be accepted. Moreover, I expect that two-person projects be twice as good!<br />Option I: Jim’s Journal: This option asks you to get in character as Jim and keep a DAILY journal as the story unfolds. In other words, you will keep a journal as if you were Jim. The quality of work here will be reflected in the following components:<br />o extent to which you inhabit the character (e.g., sound and think like he would)<br />o overall quality of your writing (note: you may write in the same vernacular style that Twain used but you must be consistent and effective in your use of this style)<br />o thoroughness: extent to which your journal reflects on and includes the entire novel<br />o insight: extent to which your entries show insight into the characters and the story<br />(Option: you could, if you prefered, write your journal as Mark Twain. Many writers keep journals of what they think while they write their books. What would Twain be thinking and saying to himself about this book as he writes it?)<br />Option II: Graphic Novel: This option allows the artistic students to use their skills to recreate the story in a graphic novel (i.e., comic book) format. If you are really technologically oriented and want to show off, you could make yours animated and interactive. The quality of your work here will be determined by the following:<br />o quality of the art work: it should look sharp--both the pictures and the text.<br />o extent to which your graphic novel includes the entire story of Huck Finn<br />o inclusion of an introduction in which you explain what you tried to capture in your recreation of the novel (e.g., "I wanted to emphasize the extent to which they reject society and reveal themselves as rebels in the American spirit. I did this because...and showed it by...")<br /><br /><br />Option III: Formal Essay: This option asks you to choose an idea or character central to the book and examine that idea in depth in an essay. You may also consider taking some recurring aspect of American history or culture and writing an essay in which you discuss how Huck Finn relates to that theme (e.g., the American spirit of independence). Your essay must accomplish the following:<br />o It must be at least five-pages typed (double-spaced, 12-point font).<br />o It should clearly identify the thesis of the paper early on and maintain that focus throughout. <br />o It must examine its subject carefully, supporting each of its supporting elements with examples from appropriate sources (e.g., Huck Finn , your history book, etc.).<br />o It must be original in its focus so as to avoid questions of whether it was or could have been lifted off the Internet.<br />(Note: you must approve your topic with me first.)<br />Option IV: Be the Teacher: You will teach an entire class period in which you lead a discussion on a particular set of themes or some other focused topic as it relates to Huck Finn. During this 45-minute period you will prepare and be ready to do the following:<br />o facilitate a class discussion on selected, important themes<br />o introduce your lesson with some opening remarks<br />o use visual aids--video clips, handouts, posters, overheads--to help the class think about and understand the ideas you present<br />o write a one page follow-up analysis of what you set out to accomplish, how well they/you accomplished this goal and a reflection about what you would do differently.<br />Option V: Publish your Own Newspaper: This option asks you to create a six-page newspaper with all the appropriate elements common to a newspaper of that era. (You can find examples of newspapers on the web by visiting the Cyberguide for Twain’s novel.) … http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/huckcen/huckcentg.html <br />Your work will be assessed according to the quality of the following:<br />o the writing<br />o the formatting and overall appearance and layout of the paper<br />o the extent to which the paper shows understanding of and insight into the novel Huck Finn<br />o demonstrated mastery of the computer to create the paperheisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-34293214213626369092007-02-14T08:38:00.000-08:002007-02-14T08:44:09.492-08:00EMILY DICKINSONConfident Despair and the Circuitry of Truth<br />The Poetry of Emily Dickinson<br /><br />For Emily Dickinson, poetry is an expression of her ceaseless pursuit of Truth and, in a sense, Immortality. To the extent that her idealized progress toward certain knowledge must be engaged with the ill-suited mortal faculties of sense and comprehension of what is sensed while tied to an imperfect world, this progress is perpetually frustrated. In stark contrast with the romantic and transcendental temperament of many of her American and Continental contemporaries, though, Dickinson acknowledges her imperfect, human perspective as an ineluctable element of her quest. Her poetry, then, can be seen both as the instrument by which she reworks her perception and as the product of that reworking. <br /><br />Within this dynamic relationship, however, Dickinson consistently returns to a few primary symbols which seem to represent some unchanging elements and conditions of the quest as a whole. The most prevalent of these symbols are related to visual perception: the night, which is the symbol of her benighted, “fallen” perception, or spiritual blindness; noon and the sun, which represent absolute visionary glory, fulfillment of quest, the eradication of any division between perceiver and perceived; and physical eyesight itself, which must mediate between these two absolutes and align the real and temporal with an envisioned ideal. But the relationships among night, noon, and perception are dynamic and in constant flux; truth can only be glimpsed obliquely. “The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind” (P 1129)–that is, true vision involves the ability to perceive relationships, to comprehend noon in terms of the night which is the human condition, the only condition Dickinson knows firsthand.<br /><br />Poetic vision, therefore, is not a transcendental oneness with noon, a facile appropriation of the object of spiritual longing into the frame of a mere perceptual moment (though Dickinson did experience such moments, characterizing the them as “ecstatic instants”) but rather a multi- faceted endeavor toward gaining perspective upon that object, a perspective which absolutely necessitated distance. Dickinson characterizes the relationship between the perceiver and the perceived as paradoxically self-defeating, precisely: “Perception of an object costs / Precise the Object’s loss” (P 1071). What this means is that; 1) in order to see something, one must be separate from it and that 2) complete identification with an object necessarily precludes one’s perception of it. The most impressive and ominous logical off-shoot of this (one that resurfaces under innumerable guises throughout the Dickinson canon) is that in order to really know the capital concepts of God or Truth, to know anything at all, the singular identity of the perceiver must cease to exist. <br /><br />But if the quest cannot be completed short of death, let alone organized into a single coherent thrust, individual moments of vision–attainments of true perspective–can be recorded, shaped into discrete poetic wholes. In order to place herself–a poet working “at night”–in an appropriate relationship to “noon,” the object of quest, it was necessary to experiment constantly with visionary perspectives in her poems; thus the poems often appear as fictions, the arguments of artificial personae bound to deliberately static (and therefore imperfect) perspectives. Some of these personae utter seemingly profound truths, but often the fictions also subtly qualify the speakers’ claims; sometimes the personae are still naive, in the state of innocence–and their naïveté is obvious, rather pathetic; and on occasion the speakers simply make fools of themselves. <br /><br />To understand the complexity of Dickinson’s quest is to become sensitive to her various, often cunning uses of personae and their inadequately recognized affect: dramatic irony. To this affect, she creates a variety of fictions whose personae represent differing postures and attitudes toward the quest itself. Some speakers are self-deluding, others are merely complacent,<br />and still others make bold claims for the speaker’s own perception and intelligence, her need to scrutinize carefully perceptual relationships–measuring distances, establishing ratios between perceptual gains and losses–and thus her ability to hold her own in her courtship with death. The burden of establishing a link with omnipresence then, for Dickinson, falls not upon faith but upon human perception, which must constantly adjust its focus, never relax into certainty; otherwise, these narrow, artificial conceptions may be mistaken for the infinitely complex reality.<br /><br />This perpetual shifting of perspectives from one poem to the next gives the body of Dickinson’s work an animated quality, an illusion of movement comprised of a series of flickering glimpses. As such, her poems have often been characterized as fragmentary bits of insight which make up a large, loosely related whole, but actually the opposite is true: the canon itself is fragment while individual poems are each self-contained units, singular perspectives. This is the paradox of a quest which requires numberless strategies, the sum of which–if the number were finite–would succeed in producing complete vision, and thus the poet’s union with it in the act of envisioning, the fulfillment of the quest. In the act of establishing the inextricable relationship between perception and its object’s loss, between artistic gain and personal depravation, she finds her identity and the role of her own “physiognomy” in the quest for immortality. <br />The noon of spiritual fulfillment is omnipresent, and to achieve it one must have “developed” sophisticated eyes. But since human perception, no matter how shrewdly developed, can sustain only instants of vision, oblique glimpses of immortality, the inevitable state of the human questor is despair. For Dickinson, however, this despair contains the key to its own transcendence, precisely because the energy of her quest is so unflagging, and her understanding of its conditions and limitations so thoroughly clear-sighted. As the poems examined above should indicate, the human night and the spiritual noon have their multi-faceted relationship through the mediation of perception and through the creation of poetic stances which enhance perceptual effectiveness. The following excerpt is a clear statement of the central emotional stance underlying this delicate mediation:<br /><br />‘Tis failure–not of Hope–<br />But Confident Despair–<br />Advancing on Celestial Lists–<br />With faint–Terrestrial power–<br /><br />‘Tis Honor–though I die–<br />For That no Man obtain<br />Till He be justified by Death–<br />This–is the Second Gain–<br />(P 522)<br /><br />This poem is one of her most ambitious: it charts the poet’s quest from those presumptuous hopes of a naive questor to the “confident despair” which is the poet’s mature stance; and, like much of Dickinson’s canon, it points toward death as the crux of all meaning and relationship. The poem also contains an intense and beautiful pride, claiming the “honor” inherent in a quest that can achieve no sustained fulfillment; this honor itself sustaining and helps maintain the difficult stance of confident despair. The speaker who feels herself “Advancing on Celestial Lists– / With faint–Terrestrial power–“ knows that no certainty or true justification can exist on this side of death; but, if she despairs at the “faintness” of her own vision, she nonetheless remains confident in its relationship with the noon of her pictured fulfillment. Confidence in the reality of grace, despair at its incalculable distance–here the central paradox of Dickinson’s poetic insight, that perception of an object requires its loss, is stated poignantly in terms of her religious/artistic quest as a whole. Only through the effort of her poetic strategies could she alleviate that loss, cultivating a vision of her own questing self and of her position.<br /><br /><br />Emily Dickinson Presentation Assignment<br /><br />Follow these steps:<br /><br />1. Go to www.americanpoems.com/poets/emilydickinson<br />2. Read the poems until you find one that you like.<br />3. Copy and paste it into a Word document.<br />4. List all of the reasons that you like it.<br />5. List all of the words that you don’t know, including their secondary and archaic meanings.<br />6. Address each of our 13 poetry questions.<br />7. Decide which 5 of the 13 questions gave you the most interesting ideas.<br />8. Sign up for your presentation day and time.<br />9. Dig deeper into those 5 questions and use them as the basis of your presentation. <br />10. Give me a list of all of the equipment you will need.<br />11. Create your presentation, making sure that you do the following things:<br /> a. Create an outline that highlights the information you will be covering in class.<br /> b. Create any materials (audio, video, pictures, handouts, overheads) you will need to get your ideas into our heads.<br /> c. Streamline your presentation so that it takes exactly 10 MINUTES!<br /> d. Rehearse your presentation and your timing in front of others.<br /> e. At least one day BEFORE your presentation slot, double check to make sure that EVERYTHING WORKS!!!<br /> f. Teach us your poem.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-68439570789151381872007-01-25T08:24:00.000-08:002007-01-25T08:42:45.774-08:00SAMPLE ESSAY #1Eroticism in the Poetry of Walt Whitman<br /><br />Walt Whitman's poems often alude or directly state sexuality. While he tries hard to write about women and men the same, he treats homosexual eroticism and heterosexual eroticism differently.<br /><br />In the poem "I Sing the Body Electric," Whitman has equal stanzas for both men and women. But they are all very different. When Whitman describes women he seems to be very detached and speaks from a more general veiw. In each section about women he mostly writes stuff about them that has to do with things like motherhood. But not sexually. As Whitman is describing the two sexes in their daily lives, the woman was a mothering cow. In stanzas about the auction of slaves, he describes the woman as "the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates and mothers." Every time Whitman describes women, he goes back to this maternal image of them. Even when Whitman has a few short lines about the female sexuality, he immediately has a line of "She is to conceive daughters as well as sons.<br /><br />Whitman's writing style is also different when he writes the female sections. His words seem to be more natural and flowy like a woman is just a part of nature. He uses phrases like "folds of their dress" and "bend of legs, negligent flowing hands..."<br /><br />Even though Witman gives male and female equal time in the poem, you can tell he is clearly drawn to the man. He was compairing a woman in flowing dress on the street to naked swimmers and wrestlers. The way he describes man is so much more passionate and erotic. He always seems to talk of women from a detached voice but seems to actually be watching men, or physically touching them. He describes an old farmer then says "you wish to sit by him in the boat, that you and him might touch each other." Whitman is never physically with any woman he decribes.<br /><br />Try as he might, Whitman is clearly prone to homoeroticism. You simply can't compare birthing mothers to naked swimmers and say Whitman is not homoerotic. Even though he acknowledges women's sexuality, he simply does not find them erotic.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-18504862638176065712007-01-25T08:22:00.000-08:002007-01-25T08:24:26.333-08:00SAMPLE ESSAY #2W.E.B. Du Bois at Odds With Booker T. Washington <br /> <br /> Du Bois voiced his first public criticism of Washington in The Souls of Black Folk, a series of essays permeated with his growing resentment. What caught the public eye was the section entitled “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” which, though it recognized the Tuskegee educator’s achievements, unmistakably took him to task on a number of counts. Washington’s educational program, declared Du Bois, was “unnecessarily narrow,” and had developed into a “gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life.” His failure to see, in Du Bois’s estimation, that no educational system could exist “on any other basis than that of the well-equipped college or university,” and his corresponding overemphasis on industrial training was stunting the growth of Black higher education and destroying the opportunity for developing the best minds of the race.<br /><br /> As Du Bois admitted, however, some of the criticism of Washington stemmed from “mere envy” and from “the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds.” Even Du Bois’s own attacks occasionally showed a distinctly personal element. But Washington could afford to me magnanimous; the fact that the Anti-Slavery Society, a British organization, should have felt it necessary to ask his advice before extending a welcome to Du Bois demonstrates how completely Washington dominated the scene. It was this very domination which the opposition group so resented. Their differences with Washington sprang from a sincere and significant disagreement on the approach to Black advancement, but mainly they feared that the ascendancy of the “Tuskegee Machine,” as Du Bois called it, had given Washington a power over Black affairs which they felt should not be vested in any individual.<br /><br /> In the realm of civil rights Washington had spoken against disenfranchisement and lynching, but his protest was far too mild for Du Bois, and his voluntary surrender of full citizenship had “without a shadow of a doubt” aided White society’s supposed design to take away the Black ballot and assign Blacks to “a distinct status of civil inferiority.” Furthermore, Du bois asserts, Washington’s emphasis on self-help released White society, Northern or Southern, from any and all responsibility to the betterment of its Black counterpart. It was not a problem for one race or for one region, as Washington tended to think, but a problem for the nation as a whole. For Du Bois, a Black could not hope for success “unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group.”<br /><br /> Finally, Du Bois warned of a group of “educated and thoughtful” Blacks who were alarmed by some of Washington’s theories and who had never accepted whole-heartedly his leadership, thrust upon them as it had been by “outer pressure.” Their criticism had been largely hushed by public opinion, but they now felt “in conscience bound” to ask of the nation three things: the right to vote, civic equality, and the education of youth according to ability. So far as Washington preached thrift, patience, and industrial training for the masses, they would support him. “But,” Dubois concludes, “so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty and voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds – so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this – we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them.”<br /> During the last twelve years of his life Washington was pursued relentlessly by his self-appointed gadfly, Du Bois. Soon abandoning the measured, restrained tones of The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois elaborated his attack to take issue with Washington on almost every point of his program. This is not to say that the public viewed them as champions of opposing armies, as Du Bois often characterized their ideological relationship; for most laymen of the time had not even heard of Du Bois. But within the narrow circle of Blacks anxious to have a part in determining race leadership and program, the struggle between Washington and Du Bois was of real significance.<br /> Except for a common dedication to the cause of race advancement, the personalities of the two men seem to differ as widely as their ideas. Washington was a practical realist, interested primarily in attaining tangible goals; Du Bois was romantic, willing and eager to fight for principle even at the expense of the surer gains he saw as the fruits of compromise. In contrast to Du Bois’s poetic temperament, Washington’s was simple, direct, prosaic. Though Du Bois as an intellectual liked to deal with ideas, while Washington preferred men and things, Du Bois was by far the more emotional. Washington was first and last an American, while Du Bois characterized himself first and last as Black. Washington possessed a genuine humility and an ability to identify himself with the common man; Du Bois was imperious, egocentric, and aloof. To Du Bois, Washington’s faith in man and God was somewhat naive.<br /><br /> In his critique of the Tuskegee philosophy, Du Bois denied the hypothesis on which Washington’s program rested: the necessity of cooperation with the White South. He could not agree that there was a solidarity of interest between the Southern Black and the Southern White which made the race problem one to be solved from within. The price for cooperation and support, according to Do Bois, was too high: “Today the young Negro of the South who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken. . . . He must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong. . . . His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers.” Even had he rationally accepted Washington’s premise, Du Bois would likely have found it hard to follow him emotionally; for to Du Bois the White man was an enemy rather than a friend.<br /><br /> Since both men were educators, their divergence in educational philosophy became the focal point of their most widely publicized and ideologically telling disagreement. To Du Bois, an intellectual who had no doubt that the really important things in life lay in the realm of the mind, Washington’s emphasis on bank accounts and ownership of property was an abhorrent debasement of human (and especially Black) potential. Deploring the fact that “for every social ill the panacea of wealth has been urged,” he insisted that “the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.” He wailed at Washington’s sense that education should begin at the bottom and expand upward.<br /><br /> He therefore championed the cause of higher education for the best Black minds at institutions like Fisk, Atlanta, and Howard, setting forth the doctrine of the “Talented Tenth,” a term which became the trade-mark of his educational philosophy: “The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.”<br /><br /> Washington vigorously denied that he opposed the higher training and ambition of the brighter minds of the race. “I would not by any means have it understood,” he insisted, “that I would limit or circumscribe the mental development of the Negro student.” Recalling the many industrial schools of Germany, where Du Bois, ironically, received much of his education, he made plain his opposition to the “ill-advised” notion that industrial education meant class education to which Blacks should be confined. Industrial education “should be given in a large measure to any race, regardless of color, which is in the same stage of development as the Negro,” he maintained.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com70tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-19583944356246767682007-01-25T08:15:00.000-08:002007-01-25T08:18:01.775-08:00SAMPLE ESSAY #3The Lost Colony of Roanoke, 1588<br /><br />Almost all Americans have heard of the lost colony of Roanoke. There are many things, however, that you might not know. Did you know, for example, that Roanoke was one of the first English colonies on American soil? How about that Europeans were the very first to settle on Roanoke? What about how the colony was lost in 1588? There are several different ideas on how this colony was lost that even historians can’t agree on.<br /><br />Some people say the entire population was killed off by a hurricane. Oddly, however, all of the buildings were still there, just deserted. A hurricane would have destroyed the buildings, not just the people.<br /><br />Others think that Roanoke was ravaged by a disease. Strangely, there were no bodies found. How can you die and have your body disappear? Quite a ridiculous theory isn’t it?<br /><br />Another theory is that the 90 men, 17 women and nine children of Roanoke simply left the colony and settled on Chesapeake Bay to keep other English settlers from stealing their land. This idea also has problems. <br /><br />First, these weren’t the original English settlers, but a second group coming to pick up the fifteen men that were stranded on Roanoke by first colonists the year before. This second group’s mission was to save that original group of 15, but was delayed by a storm and ended up stranded themselves and had to rebuild Roanoke. <br /><br />Second, this group was actually waiting to be helped by the English because the natives were angry and they were kind of scared. In fact, they sent the Governor, John White back to England to ask for help. Unfortunately, Governor White got delayed by storms and the captain refused the passage back to Roanoke because it was winter. <br /><br />Then, England’s war with the Spanish required all available larger boats. Governor White had to get smaller boats with greedy captains who attempted to rob other boats but got robbed themselves. This left the colonists at Roanoke for two years afraid of the natives who might attack them. So, the colonists were not afraid of the English, but were actually waiting for them.<br /><br />This led to another popular theory that the people of Roanoke were killed by natives. Again, though, there were no bodies found at the site. Strangely, there was also no evidence of any recent battle. <br />It could also be that the people of Roanoke went to live with the only friendly group of natives, the Croatoans. Actually, the word “croatoan” was carved in a fence post and was also is the name of a nearby island. This is very probable. It might be what really happened!<br /><br />It is an incredible fact that historians up to now have no sure explanation about what exactly happened to the colonists and the residents of Roanoke in 1588. There are several different theories about what happened during that three year period. Some, as we know, include a hurricane or the spread of a disease. Even peculiar yet popular theories such as extraterrestrial abductions have been issued. After looking at all the theories and evidence, the most probable explanation for what happened to Roanoke is that the colonists were stranded, waited for the English, but had to leave the colony and stay with the Croatoans.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-26334078635862065192007-01-02T21:00:00.000-08:002007-01-02T21:03:15.328-08:00"Self-Reliance" AssignmentsAssignment on Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”<br />Quotation Analysis Exercise (20 pts for content, 20 points for style)<br /><br />Hopefully you have read this essay, otherwise, this is going to be tremendously taxing. Your job here is to teach the class what the following quotations from “Self-Reliance” mean. You will have ninety seconds per group member to do so starting Friday, the day after tomorrow. You may use any means at your disposal to accomplish this. You may break your discussion of the quotation among yourselves any way you see fit, but consider that you will each be scored individually. Bear in mind the diversity of depth, length and quality of our Thoreau assignments before the break. Some were brilliant and thoughtfully put together. Some were sloppy and half-hearted at best. Try not to be the group that squanders its time and slaps things together at the last moment, it will be obvious. In order to receive full credit for the content of your presentation, you must do the following:<br /><br />Find the quotation your group has been given in its original context. <br />Discuss what it means within that context. <br />Discuss how it could be applied now.<br />Discuss what the impact of its current application might be.<br /><br />Style credit will be awarded according to our Analytic Traits for speaking.<br /><br />1. Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.<br />2. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.<br />3. Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.<br />4. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.<br />5. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.<br />6. It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.<br />7. Traveling is a fool's paradise.<br />8. Insist on yourself; never imitate.<br />9. Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.<br />10. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.<br />11. Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.<br />12. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.<br /> <br />Assignment on Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”<br />Discussion Question Exercise (20 points for content, 20 points for style)<br /><br />Below are your discussion questions for “Self-Reliance.” You will have ninety seconds per group member to respond to them in class one week from today. As you may have noticed from my seeming inability to approach such things in a consistent manner, questions like these can be approached and addressed in a variety of ways. Individually, cooperatively, competitively… It’s almost as if I’m just not quite sure of the one best way to do things, isn’t it? Given the subject matter here, I think it only fitting to leave you almost entirely to your own devices in deciding how you will deal with one of these questions. You may choose any single question below to answer. Please note, however, that if you choose a question already chosen by anyone else, you will be grouped together during your response time on Wednesday. So, things could work out like a group presentation, like a forum, like a debate, like an individual speech… It’s all up to you. Of course, everyone will have to rely on themselves for their grade.<br /><br />Both Style and Content credit will be awarded according to our Analytic Traits for speaking.<br /><br />1. How is Emerson's idea of Self-Reliance different from and similar to the common use of the term (take care of your own needs and don't depend on others outside yourself)?<br />2. Is Emerson really saying, "Believe anything you want to believe and do anything you want to do"? Is he really saying, "Nothing outside yourself matters"?<br />3. In what ways is Emerson speaking religiously -- that is, about our relationship to the divine?<br />4. Emerson's religious ideas are claimed today by groups as diverse as the Unitarian Universalists and the Mormons. Does this make sense? How have such different religious groups made use of Emerson's ideas, especially those in "Self-Reliance"?<br />5. How does Emerson's "Self-Reliance" inspire the environmental and sustainable growth movements today?<br />6. What would Emerson think of the survivalist movement?<br />7. What would Emerson think of 21st century American capitalism?<br />8. Would Emerson's ideas as expressed in this essay result in a stronger or weaker government? More or less democracy?<br />9. Was Emerson a liberal or conservative -- and in what ways? (You might also want to read Emerson's essay "The Conservative.")<br />10. What would Emerson think about today's libertarianism?<br />11. If you're familiar with the work of Ayn Rand, how is Emerson alike, how is he different?<br />12. What would Emerson say about the human capacity for good and for evil?<br />13. How have Emerson's ideas helped shape our concept of the American Dream?heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-52471623484394702232007-01-02T19:23:00.000-08:002007-01-02T19:32:21.533-08:00ANALYSIS OF EMERSON'S "SELF-RELIANCE"THE FOLLOWING IS TAKEN FROM THE WEBSITE: http://www.transcendentalists.com/self_reliance_analysis.htm<br />IF YOU WANT TO FOLLOW ANY OF THE LINKS OR SEEK MOR INFORMATION, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU GO THERE AND BEGIN YOUR DIGGING.<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />Help in understanding Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, Self-Reliance:<br /><br />"It is said to be the age of the first person singular" - Ralph Waldo Emerson<br /><br />"Nothing at last is sacred but the integrity of your own mind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance<br /><br />Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance" is often the first or only exposure students get to Emerson's thought. Here are some resources to help understand this essay:<br /><br />Background:<br /><br />What is Transcendentalism?<br />An essay introducing the background and context of Transcendentalism, for help in understanding where Emerson's ideas came from.<br /><br />Transcendentalism - Definitions<br />From Emerson himself, with some dictionary and other simple definitions listed as well.<br /><br />Transcendentalism<br />Basic information on Transcendentalism - links to the two items above plus more.<br /><br />Self-Reliance Online<br /><br />Self-Reliance - HTML searchable copy of the text at EmersonCentral.com<br /><br />About Emerson's essay, "Self-Reliance"<br /><br />On Self-Reliance<br />Ann Woodlief's excellent introduction to the Emerson essay, Self-Reliance.<br /><br />Emerson and the Irony of Self-Reliance: An American Response to Nihilism<br />An article by Alfred I. Tauber (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader). Looks at the problem of selfhood in Emerson's essay and relates that to relevance today, especially in religious belief in our increasingly-secular age.<br /><br />Versions of Romanticism From Emerson's Self-Reliance<br />A short essay, some selections from the essay, and some excellent questions for thinking about Emerson's ideas.<br /><br />Culture of the Common Man<br />A short introduction to American culture about 1841, looking at Emerson's essay and its relationship to ideas of democracy, culture and the masses.<br /><br />Self-Reliance and Ralph Waldo Emerson<br />A Unitarian Universalist minister muses about the position of Emerson in that faith today, where he's often considered a "prophet of religious liberalism."<br /><br />Self-Reliance (1841) - about the book and its author<br /><br />Essays based on Self-Reliance<br /><br />Note to lazy students: don't think to copy these -- your teacher also knows where they are! They're here to show some examples of how students have approached the topic. Rely on your own self!<br /><br />After Reading Emerson's Self-Reliance<br /><br />Self-Reliance and Creative Destruction - by Bryan Caplan<br /><br />Self-Reliance Now - Kristen Rosenfeld<br /><br />Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self-Reliance - Piper S. Colemanscurry<br /><br />Response to Emerson’s Self-Reliance<br /><br />Writing about Self-Reliance<br /><br />If you're trying to write an essay on what Self-Reliance means, be sure to take Emerson's own ideas into consideration! A good teacher assigning an essay on Self-Reliance will admire a student who takes Emerson's thought seriously. Parroting back what you think the teacher wants to hear about Emerson is to violate the very spirit of the essay!<br /><br />But that doesn't mean that you can write just anything. Emerson's essay urges us to take our ideas seriously, not lightly. Does your idea resonate with your innermost voice of reason and conscience?<br /><br />Quotations from "Self-Reliance"<br /><br />It's worth thinking about these quotations. Try to figure out what they mean. Sometimes they make more sense when you see them in context -- do a search on the essay online to find their context.<br /><br />Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.<br />Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.<br />Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.<br />What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.<br />A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.<br />It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.<br />Travelling is a fool's paradise.<br />Insist on yourself; never imitate.<br />Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other.<br />The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.<br />Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not.<br />And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.<br />Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.<br /><br /><br />Some questions to think about:<br /><br />How is Emerson's idea of Self-Reliance different from and similar to the common use of the term (take care of your own needs and don't depend on others outside yourself)?<br />Is Emerson really saying "Believe anything you want to believe and do anything you want to do"? Is he really saying "Nothing outside yourself matters"?<br />In what ways is Emerson speaking religiously -- that is, about our relationship to the divine?<br />Emerson's religious ideas are claimed today by groups as diverse as the Unitarian Universalists and the Mormons. Does this make sense? How have such different religious groups made use of Emerson's ideas, especially those in "Self-Reliance"?<br />How do Emerson's "Self-Reliance" and Thoreau's ideas (in "Walden" and elsewhere) inspire the environmental and sustainable growth movements today?<br />What would Emerson think of the survivalist movement?<br />What would Emerson think of 21st century American capitalism?<br />Would Emerson's ideas as expressed in this essay result in a stronger or weaker government? More or less democracy?<br />Was Emerson a liberal or conservative -- and in what ways? (You might also want to read Emerson's essay "The Conservative.")<br />What would Emerson think about today's libertarianism?<br />If you're familiar with the work of Ayn Rand, how is Emerson alike, how is he different?<br />What would Emerson say about the human capacity for good and for evil?<br />How have Emerson's ideas helped shape our concept of the American Dream?<br />Should students read more essays of Emerson, or just this one? Is this the best selection from Emerson for a high school or college student?<br /><br /><br />A closing thought:<br /><br />Like many thinkers, Emerson's thought evolved through his lifetime. He later came to value social reform movements and group action more than he did in his early life. This was perhaps partly due to the maturity one gains in the life cycle, perhaps partly due to the failure of individual philanthropy to solve the increasing social problems of his age, perhaps partly due to the issue of slavery, in which the individual interests of slave vs. slaveholder were in stark contrast. But certainly, Emerson's later writing was more interested in relationships among people, and ethical behavior, than early works like "Self-Reliance" may indicate. Nevertheless, the worldview expressed in "Self-Reliance" is not, I would contend, one of radical separation of the individual from the rest of the universe, though Emerson has sometimes been accused of that view.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-27289305550549862592006-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:002006-12-07T08:28:16.504-08:00Emerson's "The New-England Reformers"New England Reformers<br />from Essays: Second Series (1844) Ralph Waldo Emerson page updated 11/22/00 with major revisions and new editing<br />A Lecture read before the Society in Amory Hall, on Sunday, 3 March, 1844<br /><br />Whoever has had opportunity of acquaintance with society in New England, during the last twenty-five years, with those middle and with those leading sections that may constitute any just representation of the character and aim of the community, will have been struck with the great activity of thought and experimenting. His attention must be commanded by the signs that the Church, or religious party, is falling from the church nominal, and is appearing in temperance and non-resistance societies, in movements of abolitionists and of socialists, and in very significant assemblies, called Sabbath and Bible Conventions, — composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul of the soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, of the priesthood, and of the church. In these movements, nothing was more remarkable than the discontent they begot in the movers. The spirit of protest and of detachment, drove the members of these Conventions to bear testimony against the church, and immediately afterward, to declare their discontent with these Conventions, their independence of their colleagues, and their impatience of the methods whereby they were working. They defied each other, like a congress of kings, each of whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable. What a fertility of projects for the salvation of the world! One apostle thought all men should go to farming; and another, that no man should buy or sell: that the use of money was the cardinal evil; another, that the mischief was in our diet, that we eat and drink damnation. These made unleavened bread, and were foes to the death to fermentation. It was in vain urged by the housewife, that God made yeast, as well as dough, and loves fermentation just as dearly as he loves vegetation; that fermentation develops the saccharine element in the grain, and makes it more palatable and more digestible. No; they wish the pure wheat, and will die but it shall not ferment. Stop, dear nature, these incessant advances of thine; let us scotch these ever-rolling wheels! Others attacked the system of agriculture, the use of animal manures in farming; and the tyranny of man over brute nature; these abuses polluted his food. The ox must be taken from the plough, and the horse from the cart, the hundred acres of the farm must be spaded, and the man must walk wherever boats and locomotives will not carry him. Even the insect world was to be defended, — that had been too long neglected, and a society for the protection of ground-worms, slugs, and mosquitos was to be incorporated without delay. With these appeared the adepts of homœopathy, of hydropathy, of mesmerism, of phrenology, and their wonderful theories of the Christian miracles! Others assailed particular vocations, as that of the lawyer, that of the merchant, of the manufacturer, of the clergyman, of the scholar. Others attacked the institution of marriage, as the fountain of social evils. Others devoted themselves to the worrying of churches and meetings for public worship; and the fertile forms of antinomianism among the elder puritans, seemed to have their match in the plenty of the new harvest of reform.<br />With this din of opinion and debate, there was a keener scrutiny of institutions and domestic life than any we had known, there was sincere protesting against existing evils, and there were changes of employment dictated by conscience. No doubt, there was plentiful vaporing, and cases of backsliding might occur. But in each of these movements emerged a good result, a tendency to the adoption of simpler methods, and an assertion of the sufficiency of the private man. Thus it was directly in the spirit and genius of the age, what happened in one instance, when a church censured and threatened to excommunicate one of its members, on account of the somewhat hostile part to the church, which his conscience led him to take in the anti-slavery business; the threatened individual immediately excommunicated the church in a public and formal process. This has been several times repeated: it was excellent when it was done the first time, but, of course, loses all value when it is copied. Every project in the history of reform, no matter how violent and surprising, is good, when it is the dictate of a man's genius and constitution, but very dull and suspicious when adopted from another. It is right and beautiful in any man to say, 'I will take this coat, or this book, or this measure of corn of yours,' — in whom we see the act to be original, and to flow from the whole spirit and faith of him; for then that taking will have a giving as free and divine: but we are very easily disposed to resist the same generosity of speech, when we miss originality and truth to character in it.<br />There was in all the practical activities of New England, for the last quarter of a century, a gradual withdrawal of tender consciences from the social organizations. There is observable throughout, the contest between mechanical and spiritual methods, but with a steady tendency of the thoughtful and virtuous to a deeper belief and reliance on spiritual facts.<br />In politics, for example, it is easy to see the progress of dissent. The country is full of rebellion; the country is full of kings. Hands off! let there be no control and no interference in the administration of the affairs of this kingdom of me. Hence the growth of the doctrine and of the party of Free Trade, and the willingness to try that experiment, in the face of what appear incontestable facts. I confess, the motto of the Globe newspaper is so attractive to me, that I can seldom find much appetite to read what is below it in its columns, "The world is governed too much." So the country is frequently affording solitary examples of resistance to the government, solitary nullifiers, who throw themselves on their reserved rights; nay, who have reserved all their rights; who reply to the assessor, and to the clerk of court, that they do not know the State; and embarrass the courts of law, by non-juring, and the commander-in-chief of the militia, by non-resistance.<br />The same disposition to scrutiny and dissent appeared in civil, festive, neighborly, and domestic society. A restless, prying, conscientious criticism broke out in unexpected quarters. Who gave me the money with which I bought my coat? Why should professional labor and that of the counting-house be paid so disproportionately to the labor of the porter, and woodsawyer? This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person whom I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other. Am I not too protected a person? is there not a wide disparity between the lot of me and the lot of thee, my poor brother, my poor sister? Am I not defrauded of my best culture in the loss of those gymnastics which manual labor and the emergencies of poverty constitute? I find nothing healthful or exalting in the smooth conventions of society; I do not like the close air of saloons. I begin to suspect myself to be a prisoner, though treated with all this courtesy and luxury. I pay a destructive tax in my conformity.<br />The same insatiable criticism may be traced in the efforts for the reform of Education. The popular education has been taxed with a want of truth and nature. It was complained that an education to things was not given. We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods, we cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of the day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse, of a cow, of a dog, of a snake, of a spider. The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, 'All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.' And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men. The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of the planet through a telescope, is worth all the course on astronomy: the shock of the electric spark in the elbow, out-values all the theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.<br />One of the traits of the new spirit, is the inquisition it fixed on our scholastic devotion to the dead languages. The ancient languages, with great beauty of structure, contain wonderful remains of genius, which draw, and always will draw, certain likeminded men, — Greek men, and Roman men, in all countries, to their study; but by a wonderful drowsiness of usage, they had exacted the study of all men. Once (say two centuries ago), Latin and Greek had a strict relation to all the science and culture there was in Europe, and the Mathematics had a momentary importance at some era of activity in physical science. These things became stereotyped as education, as the manner of men is. But the Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high and dry on the beach, and was now creating and feeding other matters at other ends of the world. But in a hundred high schools and colleges, this warfare against common sense still goes on. Four, or six, or ten years, the pupil is parsing Greek and Latin, and as soon as he leaves the University, as it is ludicrously called, he shuts those books for the last time. Some thousands of young men are graduated at our colleges in this country every year, and the persons who, at forty years, still read Greek, can all be counted on your hand. I never met with ten. Four or five persons I have seen who read Plato.<br />But is not this absurd, that the whole liberal talent of this country should be directed in its best years on studies which lead to nothing? What was the consequence? Some intelligent persons said or thought; 'Is that Greek and Latin some spell to conjure with, and not words of reason? If the physician, the lawyer, the divine, never use it to come at their ends, I need never learn it to come at mine. Conjuring is gone out of fashion, and I will omit this conjugating, and go straight to affairs.' So they jumped the Greek and Latin, and read law, medicine, or sermons, without it. To the astonishment of all, the self-made men took even ground at once with the oldest of the regular graduates, and in a few months the most conservative circles of Boston and New York had quite forgotten who of their gownsmen was college-bred, and who was not.<br />One tendency appears alike in the philosophical speculation, and in the rudest democratical movements, through all the petulance and all the puerility, the wish, namely, to cast aside the superfluous, and arrive at short methods, urged, as I suppose, by an intuition that the human spirit is equal to all emergencies, alone, and that man is more often injured than helped by the means he uses.<br />I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and the indication of growing trust in the private, self-supplied powers of the individual, to be the affirmative principle of the recent philosophy: and that it is feeling its own profound truth, and is reaching forward at this very hour to the happiest conclusions. I readily concede that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity, there has been a noise of denial and protest; much was to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish, — and that makes the offensiveness of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault on the kingdom of darkness, they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit. It is of little moment that one or two, or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses.<br />The criticism and attack on institutions which we have witnessed, has made one thing plain, that society gains nothing whilst a man, not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things around him: he has become tediously good in some particular, but negligent or narrow in the rest; and hypocrisy and vanity are often the disgusting result.<br />It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration. Do not be so vain of your one objection. Do you think there is only one? Alas! my good friend, there is no part of society or of life better than any other part. All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike. Do you complain of our Marriage? Our marriage is no worse than our education, our diet, our trade, our social customs. Do you complain of the laws of Property? It is a pedantry to give such importance to them. Can we not play the game of life with these counters, as well as with those; in the institution of property, as well as out of it. Let into it the new and renewing principle of love, and property will be universality. No one gives the impression of superiority to the institution, which he must give who will reform it. It makes no difference what you say: you must make me feel that you are aloof from it; by your natural and super-natural advantages, do easily see to the end of it, — do see how man can do without it. Now all men are on one side. No man deserves to be heard against property. Only Love, only an Idea, is against property, as we hold it.<br />I cannot afford to be irritable and captious, nor to waste all my time in attacks. If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false sentiment, I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? the street is as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie. When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue piecemeal? This is a jewel amidst the rags of a beggar.<br />In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false churches, alike in one place and in another, — wherever, namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, there it will do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth, it shall abrogate that old condition, law or school in which it stands, before the law of its own mind.<br />If partiality was one fault of the movement party, the other defect was their reliance on Association. Doubts such as those I have intimated, drove many good persons to agitate the questions of social reform. But the revolt against the spirit of commerce, the spirit of aristocracy, and the inveterate abuses of cities, did not appear possible to individuals; and to do battle against numbers, they armed themselves with numbers, and against concert, they relied on new concert.<br />Following, or advancing beyond the ideas of St. Simon, of Fourier, and of Owen, three communities have already been formed in Massachusetts on kindred plans, and many more in the country at large. They aim to give every member a share in the manual labor, to give an equal reward to labor and to talent, and to unite a liberal culture with an education to labor. The scheme offers, by the economies of associated labor and expense, to make every member rich, on the same amount of property, that, in separate families, would leave every member poor. These new associations are composed of men and women of superior talents and sentiments: yet it may easily be questioned, whether such a community will draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the good; whether those who have energy, will not prefer their chance of superiority and power in the world, to the humble certainties of the association; whether such a retreat does not promise to become an assylum to those who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the strong; and whether the members will not necessarily be fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot enter it, without some compromise. Friendship and association are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of the best of the human race, banded for some catholic object: yes, excellent; but remember that no society can ever be so large as one man. He in his friendship, in his natural and momentary associations, doubles or multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one.<br />But the men of less faith could not thus believe, and to such, concert appears the sole specific of strength. I have failed, and you have failed, but perhaps together we shall not fail. Our housekeeping is not satisfactory to us, but perhaps a phalanx, a community, might be. Many of us have differed in opinion, and we could find no man who could make the truth plain, but possibly a college, or an ecclesiastical council might. I have not been able either to persuade my brother or to prevail on myself, to disuse the traffic or the potation of brandy, but perhaps a pledge of total abstinence might effectually restrain us. The candidate my party votes for is not to be trusted with a dollar, but he will be honest in the Senate, for we can bring public opinion to bear on him. Thus concert was the specific in all cases. But concert is neither better nor worse, neither more nor less potent than individual force. All the men in the world cannot make a statue walk and speak, cannot make a drop of blood, or a blade of grass, any more than one man can. But let there be one man, let there be truth in two men, in ten men, then is concert for the first time possible, because the force which moves the world is a new quality, and can never be furnished by adding whatever quantities of a different kind. What is the use of the concert of the false and the disunited? There can be no concert in two, where there is no concert in one. When the individual is not individual but is dual; when his thoughts look one way, and his actions another; when his faith is traversed by his habits; when his will, enlightened by reason, is warped by his sense; when with one hand he rows, and with the other backs water, what concert can be?<br />I do not wonder at the interest these projects inspire. The world is awaking to the idea of union, and these experiments show what it is thinking of. It is and will be magic. Men will live and communicate, and plough, and reap, and govern, as by added ethereal power, when once they are united; as in a celebrated experiment, by expiration and respiration exactly together, four persons lift a heavy man from the ground by the little finger only, and without sense of weight. But this union must be inward, and not one of covenants, and is to be reached by a reverse of the methods they use. The union is only perfect, when all the uniters are isolated. It is the union of friends who live in different streets or towns. Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke. Government will be adamantine without any governor. The union must be ideal in actual individualism.<br />I pass to the indication in some particulars of that faith in man, which the heart is preaching to us in these days, and which engages the more regard, from the consideration, that the speculations of one generation are the history of the next following.<br />In alluding just now to our system of education, I spoke of the deadness of its details. But it is open to graver criticism than the palsy of its members: it is a system of despair. The disease with which the human mind now labors, is want of faith. Men do not believe in a power of education. We do not think we can speak to divine sentiments in man, and we do not try. We renounce all high aims. We believe that the defects of so many perverse and so many frivolous people, who make up society, are organic, and society is a hospital of incurables. A man of good sense but of little faith, whose compassion seemed to lead him to church as often as he went there, said to me; "that he liked to have concerts, and fairs, and churches, and other public amusements go on." I am afraid the remark is too honest, and comes from the same origin as the maxim of the tyrant, "If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused." I notice too, that the ground on which eminent public servants urge the claims of popular education is fear: 'This country is filling up with thousands and millions of voters, and you must educate them to keep them from our throats.' We do not believe that any education, any system of philosophy, any influence of genius, will ever give depth of insight to a superficial mind. Having settled ourselves into this infidelity, our skill is expended to procure alleviations, diversion, opiates. We adorn the victim with manual skill, his tongue with languages, his body with inoffensive and comely manners. So have we cunningly hid the tragedy of limitation and inner death we cannot avert. Is it strange that society should be devoured by a secret melancholy, which breaks through all its smiles, and all its gayety and games?<br />But even one step farther our infidelity has gone. It appears that some doubt is felt by good and wise men, whether really the happiness and probity of men is increased by the culture of the mind in those disciplines to which we give the name of education. Unhappily, too, the doubt comes from scholars, from persons who have tried these methods. In their experience, the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. He was a profane person, and became a showman, turning his gifts to a marketable use, and not to his own sustenance and growth. It was found that the intellect could be independently developed, that is, in separation from the man, as any single organ can be invigorated, and the result was monstrous. A canine appetite for knowledge was generated, which must still be fed, but was never satisfied, and this knowledge not being directed on action, never took the character of substantial, humane truth, blessing those whom it entered. It gave the scholar certain powers of expression, the power of speech, the power of poetry, of literary art, but it did not bring him to peace, or to beneficence.<br />When the literary class betray a destitution of faith, it is not strange that society should be disheartened and sensualized by unbelief. What remedy? Life must be lived on a higher plane. We must go up to a higher platform, to which we are always invited to ascend; there, the whole aspect of things changes. I resist the skepticism of our education, and of our educated men. I do not believe that the differences of opinion and character in men are organic. I do not recognize, beside the class of the good and the wise, a permanent class of skeptics, or a class of conservatives, or of malignants, or of materialists. I do not believe in two classes. You remember the story of the poor woman who importuned King Philip of Macedon to grant her justice, which Philip refused: the woman exclaimed, "I appeal": the king, astonished, asked to whom she appealed: the woman replied, "from Philip drunk to Philip sober." The text will suit me very well. I believe not in two classes of men, but in man in two moods, in Philip drunk and Philip sober. I think, according to the good-hearted word of Plato, "Unwillingly the soul is deprived of truth." Iron conservative, miser, or thief, no man is, but by a supposed necessity, which he tolerates by shortness or torpidity of sight. The soul lets no man go without some visitations and holy-days of a diviner presence. It would be easy to show, by a narrow scanning of any man's biography, that we are not so wedded to our paltry performances of every kind, but that every man has at intervals the grace to scorn his performances, in comparing them with his belief of what he should do, that he puts himself on the side of his enemies, listening gladly to what they say of him, and accusing himself of the same things.<br />What is it men love in Genius, but its infinite hope, which degrades all it has done? Genius counts all its miracles poor and short. Its own idea it never executed. The Iliad, the Hamlet, the Doric column, the Roman arch, the Gothic minster, the German anthem, when they are ended, the master casts behind him. How sinks the song in the waves of melody which the universe pours over his soul! Before that gracious Infinite, out of which he drew these few strokes, how mean they look, though the praises of the world attend them. From the triumphs of his art, he turns with desire to this greater defeat. Let those admire who will. With silent joy he sees himself to be capable of a beauty that eclipses all which his hands have done, all which human hands have ever done.<br />Well, we are all the children of genius, the children of virtue, — and feel their inspirations in our happier hours. Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals. In the circle of the rankest tories that could be collected in England, Old or New, let a powerful and stimulating intellect, a man of great heart and mind, act on them, and very quickly these frozen conservators will yield to the friendly influence, these hopeless will begin to hope, these haters will begin to love, these immovable statues will begin to spin and revolve. I cannot help recalling the fine anecdote which Warton relates of Bishop Berkeley, when he was preparing to leave England, with his plan of planting the gospel among the American savages. "Lord Bathurst told me, that the members of the Scriblerus club, being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to the many lively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of eloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose up all together with earnestness, exclaiming, 'Let us set out with him immediately.'" Men in all ways are better than they seem. They like flattery for the moment, but they know the truth for their own. It is a foolish cowardice which keeps us from trusting them, and speaking to them rude truth. They resent your honesty for an instant, they will thank you for it always. What is it we heartily wish of each other? Is it to be pleased and flattered? No, but to be convicted and exposed, to be shamed out of our nonsense of all kinds, and made men of, instead of ghosts and phantoms. We are weary of gliding ghostlike through the world, which is itself so slight and unreal. We crave a sense of reality, though it come in strokes of pain. I explain so, — by this manlike love of truth, — those excesses and errors into which souls of great vigor, but not equal insight, often fall. They feel the poverty at the bottom of all the seeming affluence of the world. They know the speed with which they come straight through the thin masquerade, and conceive a disgust at the indigence of nature: Rousseau, Mirabeau, Charles Fox, Napoleon, Byron, — and I could easily add names nearer home, of raging riders, who drive their steeds so hard, in the violence of living to forget its illusion: they would know the worst, and tread the floors of hell. The heroes of ancient and modern fame, Cimon, Themistocles, Alcibiades, Alexander, Cæsar, have treated life and fortune as a game to be well and skillfully played, but the stake not to be so valued, but that any time, it could be held as a trifle light as air, and thrown up. Cæsar, just before the battle of Pharsalia, discourses with the Egyptian priest, concerning the fountains of the Nile, and offers to quit the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, if he will show him those mysterious sources.<br />The same magnanimity shows itself in our social relations, in the preference, namely, which each man gives to the society of superiors over that of his equals. All that a man has, will he give for right relations with his mates. All that he has, will he give for an erect demeanor in every company and on each occasion. He aims at such things as his neighbors prize, and gives his days and nights, his talents and his heart, to strike a good stroke, to acquit himself in all men's sight as a man. The consideration of an eminent citizen, of a noted merchant, of a man of mark in his profession; naval and military honor, a general's commission, a marshal's baton, a ducal coronet, the laurel of poets, and, anyhow procured, the acknowledgment of eminent merit, have this lustre for each candidate, that they enable him to walk erect and unashamed, in the presence of some persons, before whom he felt himself inferior. Having raised himself to this rank, having established his equality with class after class, of those with whom he would live well, he still finds certain others, before whom he cannot possess himself, because they have somewhat fairer, somewhat grander, somewhat purer, which extorts homage of him. Is his ambition pure? then, will his laurels and his possessions seem worthless: instead of avoiding these men who make his fine gold dim, he will cast all behind him, and seek their society only, woo and embrace this his humiliation and mortification, until he shall know why his eye sinks, his voice is husky, and his brilliant talents are paralyzed in this presence. He is sure that the soul which gives the lie to all things, will tell none. His constitution will not mislead him. If it cannot carry itself as it ought, high and unmatchable in the presence of any man, if the secret oracles whose whisper makes the sweetness and dignity of his life, do here withdraw and accompany, him no longer, it is time to undervalue what he has valued, to dispossess himself of what he has acquired, and with Cæsar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, 'All these will I relinquish, if you will show me the fountains of the Nile.' Dear to us are those who love us, the swift moments we spend with them are a compensation for a great deal of misery they enlarge our life; — but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life: they build a heaven before us, whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.<br />As every man at heart wishes the best and not inferior society, wishes to be convicted of his error, and to come to himself, so he wishes that the same healing should not stop in his thought, but should penetrate his will or active power. The selfish man suffers more from his selfishness, than he from whom that selfishness withholds some important benefit. What he most wishes is to be lifted to some higher platform, that he may see beyond his present fear the transalpine good, so that his fear, his coldness, his custom may be broken up like fragments of ice, melted and carried away in the great stream of good will. Do you ask my aid? I also wish to be a benefactor. I wish more to be a benefactor and servant, than you wish to be served by me, and surely the greatest good fortune that could befall me, is precisely to be so moved by you that I should say, 'Take me and all nine, and use me and mine freely to your ends'! for, I could not say it, otherwise than because a great enlargement had come to my heart and mind, which made me superior to my fortunes. Here we are paralyzed with fear; we hold on to our little properties, house and land, office and money, for the bread which they have in our experience yielded us, although we confess, that our being does not flow through them. We desire to be made great, we desire to be touched with that fire which shall command this ice to stream, and make our existence a benefit. If therefore we start objections to your project, O friend of the slave, or friend of the poor, or of the race, understand well, that it is because we wish to drive you to drive us into your measures. We wish to hear ourselves confuted. We are haunted with a belief that you have a secret, which it would highliest advantage us to learn, and we would force you to impart it to us, though it should bring us to prison, or to worse extremity.<br />Nothing shall warp me from the belief, that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no skepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet. It has had a name to live in some dogmatic theology, but each man's innocence and his real liking of his neighbor, have kept it a dead letter. I remember standing at the polls one day, when the anger of the political contest gave a certain grimness to the faces of the independent electors, and a good man at my side looking on the people, remarked, "I am satisfied that the largest part of these men, on either side, mean to vote right." I suppose, considerate observers looking at the masses of men, in their blameless, and in their equivocal actions, will assent, that in spite of selfishness and frivolity, the general purpose in the great number of persons is fidelity. The reason why any one refuses his assent to your opinion, or his aid to your benevolent design, is in you: he refuses to accept you as a bringer of truth, because, though you think you have it, he feels that you have it not. You have not given him the authentic sign.<br />If it were worth while to run into details this general doctrine of the latent but ever soliciting Spirit, it would be easy to adduce illustration in particulars of a man's equality to the church, of his equality to the state, and of his equality to every other man. It is yet in all men's memory, that, a few years ago, the liberal churches complained, that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession: a religious church would not complain. A religious man like Behmen, Fox, or Swedenborg, is not irritated by wanting the sanction of the church, but the church feels the accusation of his presence and belief.<br />It only needs, that a just man should walk in our streets, to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial a contrivance is our legislation. The man whose part is taken, and who does not wait for society in anything, has a power which society cannot choose but feel. The familiar experiment, called the hydrostatic paradox, in which a capillary column of water balances the ocean, is a symbol of the relation of one man to the whole family of men. The wise Dandini, on hearing the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, "judged them to be great men every way, excepting, that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws, which to second and authorize, true virtue must abate very, much of its original vigor."<br />And as a man is equal to the church, and equal to the state, so he is equal to every other man. The disparities of power in men are superficial; and all frank and searching conversation, in which a man lays himself open to his brother, apprizes each of their radical unity. When two persons sit and converse in a thoroughly good understanding, the remark is sure to be made, See how we have disputed about words! Let a clear, apprehensive mind, such as every man knows among his friends, converse with the most commanding poetic genius, I think, it would appear that there was no inequality such as men fancy between them; that a perfect understanding, a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished differences, and the poet would confess, that his creative imagination gave him no deep advantage, but only the superficial one, that he could express himself, and the other could not; that his advantage was a knack, which might impose on indolent men, but could not impose on lovers of truth; for they know the tax of talent, or, what a price of greatness the power of expression too often pays. I believe it is the conviction of the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary. Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want of skill in other directions, has added to his fitness for his own work. Each seems to have some compensation yielded to him by his infirmity, and every hindrance operates as a concentration of his force.<br />These and the like experiences intimate, that man stands in strict connexion with a higher fact never yet manifested. There is power over and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications. We seek to say thus and so, and over our head some spirit sits, which contradicts what we say. We would persuade our fellow to this or that; another self within our eyes dissuades him. That which we keep back, this reveals. In vain we compose our faces and our words; it holds uncontrollable communication with the enemy, and he answers civilly to us, but believes the spirit. We exclaim, 'There's a traitor in the house!' but at last it appears that he is the true man, and I am the traitor. This open channel to the highest life is the first and last reality, so subtle, so quiet, yet so tenacious, that although I have never expressed the truth, and although I have never heard the expression of it from any other, I know that the whole truth is here for me. What if I cannot answer your questions? I am not pained that I cannot frame a reply to the question, What is the operation we call Providence? There lies the unspoken thing, present, omnipresent. Every time we converse, we seek to translate it into speech, but whether we hit, or whether we miss, we have the fact. Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever.<br />If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make themselves good in time, the man who shall be born, whose advent men and events prepare and foreshow, is one who shall enjoy his connexion with a higher life, with the man within man; shall destroy distrust by his trust, shall use his native but forgotten methods, shall not take counsel of flesh and blood, but shall rely on the Law alive and beautiful, which works over our heads and under our feet. Pitiless, it avails itself of our success, when we obey it, and of our ruin, when we contravene it. Men are all secret believers in it, else, the word justice would have no meaning: they believe that the best is the true; that right is done at last; or chaos would come. It rewards actions after their nature, and not after the design of the agent. 'Work,' it saith to man, 'in every hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape the reward: whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn, or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought: no matter, how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.'<br />As soon as a man is wonted to look beyond surfaces, and to see how this high will prevails without an exception or an interval, he settles himself into serenity. He can already rely on the laws of gravity, that every stone will fall where it is due; the good globe is faithful, and carries us securely through the celestial spaces, anxious or resigned: we need not interfere to help it on, and he will learn, one day, the mild lesson they teach, that our own orbit is all our task, and we need not assist the administration of the universe. Do not be so impatient to set the town right concerning the unfounded pretensions and the false reputation of certain men of standing. They are laboring harder to set the town right concerning themselves, and will certainly succeed. Suppress for a few days your criticism on the insufficiency of this or that teacher or experimenter, and he will have demonstrated his insufficiency to all men's eyes. In like manner, let a man fall into the divine circuits, and he is enlarged. Obedience to his genius is the only liberating influence. We wish to escape from subjection, and a sense of inferiority, — and we make self-denying ordinances, we drink water, we eat grass, we refuse the laws, we go to jail: it is all in vain; only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise before a man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison.<br />That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. The life of man is the true romance, which, when it is valiantly conducted, will yield the imagination a higher joy than any fiction. All around us, what powers are wrapped up under the coarse mattings of custom, and all wonder prevented. It is so wonderful to our neurologists that a man can see without his eyes, that it does not occur to them, that it is just as wonderful, that he should see with them; and that is ever the difference between the wise and the unwise: the latter wonders at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the usual. Shall not the heart which has received so much, trust the Power by which it lives? May it not quit other leadings, and listen to the Soul that has guided it so gently, and taught it so much, secure that the future will be worthy of the past?heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-983134918896498072006-12-07T08:26:00.001-08:002006-12-07T08:26:43.840-08:00Emerson's "Nominalists and Realists"Nominalist and Realist<br />from Essays: Second Series (1844)<br /><br />In countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives; In thousand far-transplanted grafts The parent fruit survives; So, in the new-born millions, The perfect Adam lives. Not less are summer-mornings dear To every child they wake, And each with novel life his sphere Fills for his proper sake.<br />ESSAY VIII Nominalist and Realist<br />I cannot often enough say, that a man is only a relative and representative nature. Each is a hint of the truth, but far enough from being that truth, which yet he quite newly and inevitably suggests to us. If I seek it in him, I shall not find it. Could any man conduct into me the pure stream of that which he pretends to be! Long afterwards, I find that quality elsewhere which he promised me. The genius of the Platonists, is intoxicating to the student, yet how few particulars of it can I detach from all their books. The man momentarily stands for the thought, but will not bear examination; and a society of men will cursorily represent well enough a certain quality and culture, for example, chivalry or beauty of manners, but separate them, and there is no gentleman and no lady in the group. The least hint sets us on the pursuit of a character, which no man realizes. We have such exorbitant eyes, that on seeing the smallest arc, we complete the curve, and when the curtain is lifted from the diagram which it seemed to veil, we are vexed to find that no more was drawn, than just that fragment of an arc which we first beheld. We are greatly too liberal in our construction of each other's faculty and promise. Exactly what the parties have already done, they shall do again; but that which we inferred from their nature and inception, they will not do. That is in nature, but not in them. That happens in the world, which we often witness in a public debate. Each of the speakers expresses himself imperfectly: no one of them hears much that another says, such is the preoccupation of mind of each; and the audience, who have only to hear and not to speak, judge very wisely and superiorly how wrongheaded and unskilful is each of the debaters to his own affair. Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never. When I meet a pure intellectual force, or a generosity of affection, I believe, here then is man; and am presently mortified by the discovery, that this individual is no more available to his own or to the general ends, than his companions; because the power which drew my respect, is not supported by the total symphony of his talents. All persons exist to society by some shining trait of beauty or utility, which they have. We borrow the proportions of the man from that one fine feature, and finish the portrait symmetrically; which is false; for the rest of his body is small or deformed. I observe a person who makes a good public appearance, and conclude thence the perfection of his private character, on which this is based; but he has no private character. He is a graceful cloak or lay-figure for holidays. All our poets, heroes, and saints, fail utterly in some one or in many parts to satisfy our idea, fail to draw our spontaneous interest, and so leave us without any hope of realization but in our own future. Our exaggeration of all fine characters arises from the fact, that we identify each in turn with the soul. But there are no such men as we fable; no Jesus, nor Pericles, nor Caesar, nor Angelo, nor Washington, such as we have made. We consecrate a great deal of nonsense, because it was allowed by great men. There is none without his foible. I verily believe if an angel should come to chaunt the chorus of the moral law, he would eat too much gingerbread, or take liberties with private letters, or do some precious atrocity. It is bad enough, that our geniuses cannot do anything useful, but it is worse that no man is fit for society, who has fine traits. He is admired at a distance, but he cannot come near without appearing a cripple. The men of fine parts protect themselves by solitude, or by courtesy, or by satire, or by an acid worldly manner, each concealing, as he best can, his incapacity for useful association, but they want either love or self-reliance.<br />Our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach us a little reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden surrender to the brilliant qualities of persons. Young people admire talents or particular excellences; as we grow older, we value total powers and effects, as, the impression, the quality, the spirit of men and things. The genius is all. The man, — it is his system: we do not try a solitary word or act, but his habit. The acts which you praise, I praise not, since they are departures from his faith, and are mere compliances. The magnetism which arranges tribes and races in one polarity, is alone to be respected; the men are steel-filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle, and say, 'O steel-filing number one! what heart-drawings I feel to thee! what prodigious virtues are these of thine! how constitutional to thee, and incommunicable.' Whilst we speak, the loadstone is withdrawn; down falls our filing in a heap with the rest, and we continue our mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals; for the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its persons are poor empirical pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis fatuus. If they say, it is great, it is great; if they say, it is small, it is small; you see it, and you see it not, by turns; it borrows all its size from the momentary estimation of the speakers: the Will-of-the-wisp vanishes, if you go too near, vanishes if you go too far, and only blazes at one angle. Who can tell if Washington be a great man, or no? Who can tell if Franklin be? Yes, or any but the twelve, or six, or three great gods of fame? And they, too, loom and fade before the eternal.<br />We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets of faculties, the particular and the catholic. We adjust our instrument for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easily as we pick out a single figure in the terrestrial landscape. We are practically skilful in detecting elements, for which we have no place in our theory, and no name. Thus we are very sensible of an atmospheric influence in men and in bodies of men, not accounted for in an arithmetical addition of all their measurable properties. There is a genius of a nation, which is not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the society. England, strong, punctual, practical, well-spoken England, I should not find, if I should go to the island to seek it. In the parliament, in the playhouse, at dinner-tables, I might see a great number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conventional, proud men, — many old women, — and not anywhere the Englishman who made the good speeches, combined the accurate engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. It is even worse in America, where, from the intellectual quickness of the race, the genius of the country is more splendid in its promise, and more slight in its performance. Webster cannot do the work of Webster. We conceive distinctly enough the French, the Spanish, the German genius, and it is not the less real, that perhaps we should not meet in either of those nations, a single individual who corresponded with the type. We infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument, to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed a stone. And, universally, a good example of this social force, is the veracity of language, which cannot be debauched. In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be made with safety to the sentiments, which the language of the people expresses. Proverbs, words, and grammar inflections convey the public sense with more purity and precision, than the wisest individual.<br />In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. Our proclivity to details cannot quite degrade our life, and divest it of poetry. The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the hours; morning and night, solstice and equinox, geometry, astronomy, and all the lovely accidents of nature play through his mind. Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world, and is always moral. The property will be found where the labor, the wisdom, and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and (the whole life-time considered, with the compensations) in the individual also. How wise the world appears, when the laws and usages of nations are largely detailed, and the completeness of the municipal system is considered! Nothing is left out. If you go into the markets, and the custom-houses, the insurers' and notaries' offices, the offices of sealers of weights and measures, of inspection of provisions, — it will appear as if one man had made it all. Wherever you go, a wit like your own has been before you, and has realized its thought. The Eleusinian mysteries, the Egyptian architecture, the Indian astronomy, the Greek sculpture, show that there always were seeing and knowing men in the planet. The world is full of masonic ties, of guilds, of secret and public legions of honor; that of scholars, for example; and that of gentlemen fraternizing with the upper class of every country and every culture.<br />I am very much struck in literature by the appearance, that one person wrote all the books; as if the editor of a journal planted his body of reporters in different parts of the field of action, and relieved some by others from time to time; but there is such equality and identity both of judgment and point of view in the narrative, that it is plainly the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman. I looked into Pope's Odyssey yesterday: it is as correct and elegant after our canon of today, as if it were newly written. The modernness of all good books seems to give me an existence as wide as man. What is well done, I feel as if I did; what is ill-done, I reck not of. Shakspeare's passages of passion (for example, in Lear and Hamlet) are in the very dialect of the present year. I am faithful again to the whole over the members in my use of books. I find the most pleasure in reading a book in a manner least flattering to the author. I read Proclus, and sometimes Plato, as I might read a dictionary, for a mechanical help to the fancy and the imagination. I read for the lustres, as if one should use a fine picture in a chromatic experiment, for its rich colors. 'Tis not Proclus, but a piece of nature and fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see the author's author, than himself. A higher pleasure of the same kind I found lately at a concert, where I went to hear Handel's Messiah. As the master overpowered the littleness and incapableness of the performers, and made them conductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe what efforts nature was making through so many hoarse, wooden, and imperfect persons, to produce beautiful voices, fluid and soul-guided men and women. The genius of nature was paramount at the oratorio.<br />This preference of the genius to the parts is the secret of that deification of art, which is found in all superior minds. Art, in the artist, is proportion, or, a habitual respect to the whole by an eye loving beauty in details. And the wonder and charm of it is the sanity in insanity which it denotes. Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much. In modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the artist works here and there, and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought. Beautiful details we must have, or no artist: but they must be means and never other. The eye must not lose sight for a moment of the purpose. Lively boys write to their ear and eye, and the cool reader finds nothing but sweet jingles in it. When they grow older, they respect the argument.<br />We obey the same intellectual integrity, when we study in exceptions the law of the world. Anomalous facts, as the never quite obsolete rumors of magic and demonology, and the new allegations of phrenologists and neurologists, are of ideal use. They are good indications. Homoeopathy is insignificant as an art of healing, but of great value as criticism on the hygeia or medical practice of the time. So with Mesmerism, Swedenborgism, Fourierism, and the Millennial Church; they are poor pretensions enough, but good criticism on the science, philosophy, and preaching of the day. For these abnormal insights of the adepts, ought to be normal, and things of course.<br />All things show us, that on every side we are very near to the best. It seems not worth while to execute with too much pains some one intellectual, or aesthetical, or civil feat, when presently the dream will scatter, and we shall burst into universal power. The reason of idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are waiting, we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and with crimes.<br />Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre, and flout the surfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake, and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals. Though the uninspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the divine man does not respect them: he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives over the surface of the water. But this is flat rebellion. Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh particulars. It is all idle talking: as much as a man is a whole, so is he also a part; and it were partial not to see it. What you say in your pompous distribution only distributes you into your class and section. You have not got rid of parts by denying them, but are the more partial. You are one thing, but nature is one thing and the other thing, in the same moment. She will not remain orbed in a thought, but rushes into persons; and when each person, inflamed to a fury of personality, would conquer all things to his poor crotchet, she raises up against him another person, and by many persons incarnates again a sort of whole. She will have all. Nick Bottom cannot play all the parts, work it how he may: there will be somebody else, and the world will be round. Everything must have its flower or effort at the beautiful, coarser or finer according to its stuff. They relieve and recommend each other, and the sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities. She punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an induction which is rare and casual. We like to come to a height of land and see the landscape, just as we value a general remark in conversation. But it is not the intention of nature that we should live by general views. We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment. If we were not thus infatuated, if we saw the real from hour to hour, we should not be here to write and to read, but should have been burned or frozen long ago. She would never get anything done, if she suffered admirable Crichtons, and universal geniuses. She loves better a wheelwright who dreams all night of wheels, and a groom who is part of his horse: for she is full of work, and these are her hands. As the frugal farmer takes care that his cattle shall eat down the rowan, and swine shall eat the waste of his house, and poultry shall pick the crumbs, so our economical mother despatches a new genius and habit of mind into every district and condition of existence, plants an eye wherever a new ray of light can fall, and gathering up into some man every property in the universe, establishes thousandfold occult mutual attractions among her offspring, that all this wash and waste of power may be imparted and exchanged.<br />Great dangers undoubtedly accrue from this incarnation and distribution of the godhead, and hence nature has her maligners, as if she were Circe; and Alphonso of Castille fancied he could have given useful advice. But she does not go unprovided; she has hellebore at the bottom of the cup. Solitude would ripen a plentiful crop of despots. The recluse thinks of men as having his manner, or as not having his manner; and as having degrees of it, more and less. But when he comes into a public assembly, he sees that men have very different manners from his own, and in their way admirable. In his childhood and youth, he has had many checks and censures, and thinks modestly enough of his own endowment. When afterwards he comes to unfold it in propitious circumstance, it seems the only talent: he is delighted with his success, and accounts himself already the fellow of the great. But he goes into a mob, into a banking-house, into a mechanic's shop, into a mill, into a laboratory, into a ship, into a camp, and in each new place he is no better than an idiot: other talents take place, and rule the hour. The rotation which whirls every leaf and pebble to the meridian, reaches to every gift of man, and we all take turns at the top.<br />For nature, who abhors mannerism, has set her heart on breaking up all styles and tricks, and it is so much easier to do what one has done before, than to do a new thing, that there is a perpetual tendency to a set mode. In every conversation, even the highest, there is a certain trick, which may be soon learned by an acute person, and then that particular style continued indefinitely. Each man, too, is a tyrant in tendency, because he would impose his idea on others; and their trick is their natural defence. Jesus would absorb the race; but Tom Paine or the coarsest blasphemer helps humanity by resisting this exuberance of power. Hence the immense benefit of party in politics, as it reveals faults of character in a chief, which the intellectual force of the persons, with ordinary opportunity, and not hurled into aphelion by hatred, could not have seen. Since we are all so stupid, what benefit that there should be two stupidities! It is like that brute advantage so essential to astronomy, of having the diameter of the earth's orbit for a base of its triangles. Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation of all men into a few men. If John was perfect, why are you and I alive? As long as any man exists, there is some need of him; let him fight for his own. A new poet has appeared; a new character approached us; why should we refuse to eat bread, until we have found his regiment and section in our old army-files? Why not a new man? Here is a new enterprise of Brook Farm, of Skeneateles, of Northampton: why so impatient to baptise them Essenes, or Port-Royalists, or Shakers, or by any known and effete name? Let it be a new way of living. Why have only two or three ways of life, and not thousands? Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much. We came this time for condiments, not for corn. We want the great genius only for joy; for one star more in our constellation, for one tree more in our grove. But he thinks we wish to belong to him, as he wishes to occupy us. He greatly mistakes us. I think I have done well, if I have acquired a new word from a good author; and my business with him is to find my own, though it were only to melt him down into an epithet or an image for daily use.<br />"Into paint will I grind thee, my bride!"<br />To embroil the confusion, and make it impossible to arrive at any general statement, when we have insisted on the imperfection of individuals, our affections and our experience urge that every individual is entitled to honor, and a very generous treatment is sure to be repaid. A recluse sees only two or three persons, and allows them all their room; they spread themselves at large. The man of state looks at many, and compares the few habitually with others, and these look less. Yet are they not entitled to this generosity of reception? and is not munificence the means of insight? For though gamesters say, that the cards beat all the players, though they were never so skilful, yet in the contest we are now considering, the players are also the game, and share the power of the cards. If you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your own caricature of him. For there is somewhat spheral and infinite in every man, especially in every genius, which, if you can come very near him, sports with all your limitations. For, rightly, every man is a channel through which heaven floweth, and, whilst I fancied I was criticising him, I was censuring or rather terminating my own soul. After taxing Goethe as a courtier, artificial, unbelieving, worldly, — I took up this book of Helena, and found him an Indian of the wilderness, a piece of pure nature like an apple or an oak, large as morning or night, and virtuous as a briar-rose.<br />But care is taken that the whole tune shall be played. If we were not kept among surfaces, every thing would be large and universal: now the excluded attributes burst in on us with the more brightness, that they have been excluded. "Your turn now, my turn next," is the rule of the game. The universality being hindered in its primary form, comes in the secondary form of all sides: the points come in succession to the meridian, and by the speed of rotation, a new whole is formed. Nature keeps herself whole, and her representation complete in the experience of each mind. She suffers no seat to be vacant in her college. It is the secret of the world that all things subsist, and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return again. Whatever does not concern us, is concealed from us. As soon as a person is no longer related to our present well-being, he is concealed, or dies, as we say. Really, all things and persons are related to us, but according to our nature, they act on us not at once, but in succession, and we are made aware of their presence one at a time. All persons, all things which we have known, are here present, and many more than we see; the world is full. As the ancient said, the world is a plenum or solid; and if we saw all things that really surround us, we should be imprisoned and unable to move. For, though nothing is impassable to the soul, but all things are pervious to it, and like highways, yet this is only whilst the soul does not see them. As soon as the soul sees any object, it stops before that object. Therefore, the divine Providence, which keeps the universe open in every direction to the soul, conceals all the furniture and all the persons that do not concern a particular soul, from the senses of that individual. Through solidest eternal things, the man finds his road, as if they did not subsist, and does not once suspect their being. As soon as he needs a new object, suddenly he beholds it, and no longer attempts to pass through it, but takes another way. When he has exhausted for the time the nourishment to be drawn from any one person or thing, that object is withdrawn from his observation, and though still in his immediate neighborhood, he does not suspect its presence.<br />Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise. Jesus is not dead: he is very well alive: nor John, nor Paul, nor Mahomet, nor Aristotle; at times we believe we have seen them all, and could easily tell the names under which they go.<br />If we cannot make voluntary and conscious steps in the admirable science of universals, let us see the parts wisely, and infer the genius of nature from the best particulars with a becoming charity. What is best in each kind is an index of what should be the average of that thing. Love shows me the opulence of nature, by disclosing to me in my friend a hidden wealth, and I infer an equal depth of good in every other direction. It is commonly said by farmers, that a good pear or apple costs no more time or pains to rear, than a poor one; so I would have no work of art, no speech, or action, or thought, or friend, but the best.<br />The end and the means, the gamester and the game, — life is made up of the intermixture and reaction of these two amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies and tends to abolish the other. We must reconcile the contradictions as we can, but their discord and their concord introduce wild absurdities into our thinking and speech. No sentence will hold the whole truth, and the only way in which we can be just, is by giving ourselves the lie; Speech is better than silence; silence is better than speech; — All things are in contact; every atom has a sphere of repulsion; — Things are, and are not, at the same time; — and the like. All the universe over, there is but one thing, this old Two-Face, creator-creature, mind-matter, right-wrong, of which any proposition may be affirmed or denied. Very fitly, therefore, I assert, that every man is a partialist, that nature secures him as an instrument by self-conceit, preventing the tendencies to religion and science; and now further assert, that, each man's genius being nearly and affectionately explored, he is justified in his individuality, as his nature is found to be immense; and now I add, that every man is a universalist also, and, as our earth, whilst it spins on its own axis, spins all the time around the sun through the celestial spaces, so the least of its rational children, the most dedicated to his private affair, works out, though as it were under a disguise, the universal problem. We fancy men are individuals; so are pumpkins; but every pumpkin in the field, goes through every point of pumpkin history. The rabid democrat, as soon as he is senator and rich man, has ripened beyond possibility of sincere radicalism, and unless he can resist the sun, he must be conservative the remainder of his days. Lord Eldon said in his old age, "that, if he were to begin life again, he would be damned but he would begin as agitator."<br />We hide this universality, if we can, but it appears at all points. We are as ungrateful as children. There is nothing we cherish and strive to draw to us, but in some hour we turn and rend it. We keep a running fire of sarcasm at ignorance and the life of the senses; then goes by, perchance, a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and happy, and making the commonest offices beautiful, by the energy and heart with which she does them, and seeing this, we admire and love her and them, and say, "Lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dissipated, or too early ripened by books, philosophy, religion, society, or care!" insinuating a treachery and contempt for all we had so long loved and wrought in ourselves and others.<br />If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is ready to sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that tomorrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony! But the Truth sits veiled there on the Bench, and never interposes an adamantine syllable; and the most sincere and revolutionary doctrine, put as if the ark of God were carried forward some furlongs, and planted there for the succor of the world, shall in a few weeks be coldly set aside by the same speaker, as morbid; "I thought I was right, but I was not," — and the same immeasurable credulity demanded for new audacities. If we were not of all opinions! if we did not in any moment shift the platform on which we stand, and look and speak from another! if there could be any regulation, any 'one-hour-rule,' that a man should never leave his point of view, without sound of trumpet. I am always insincere, as always knowing there are other moods.<br />How sincere and confidential we can be, saying all that lies in the mind, and yet go away feeling that all is yet unsaid, from the incapacity of the parties to know each other, although they use the same words! My companion assumes to know my mood and habit of thought, and we go on from explanation to explanation, until all is said which words can, and we leave matters just as they were at first, because of that vicious assumption. Is it that every man believes every other to be an incurable partialist, and himself an universalist? I talked yesterday with a pair of philosophers: I endeavored to show my good men that I love everything by turns, and nothing long; that I loved the centre, but doated on the superficies; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice and rats; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the old pagan world stood its ground, and died hard; that I was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not live in their arms. Could they but once understand, that I loved to know that they existed, and heartily wished them Godspeed, yet, out of my poverty of life and thought, had no word or welcome for them when they came to see me, and could well consent to their living in Oregon, for any claim I felt on them, it would be a great satisfaction.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-40997582973950312632006-12-07T08:25:00.001-08:002006-12-07T08:25:54.882-08:00Emerson's "Politics"Politics<br />from Essays: Second Series (1844)<br /><br />Gold and iron are good To buy iron and gold; All earth's fleece and food For their like are sold. Boded Merlin wise, Proved Napoleon great, — Nor kind nor coinage buys Aught above its rate. Fear, Craft, and Avarice Cannot rear a State. Out of dust to build What is more than dust, — Walls Amphion piled Phoebus stablish must. When the Muses nine With the Virtues meet, Find to their design An Atlantic seat, By green orchard boughs Fended from the heat, Where the statesman ploughs Furrow for the wheat; When the Church is social worth, When the state-house is the hearth, Then the perfect State is come, The republican at home.<br />ESSAY VII Politics<br />In dealing with the State, we ought to remember that its institution are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born: that they are not superior to the citizen: that every one of them was once the act of a single man: every law and usage was a man's expedient to meet a particular case: that they all are imitable, all alterable; we may make as good; we may make better. Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rooted like oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever. But politics rest on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity. Republics abound in young civilians, who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living, and employments of the population, that commerce, education, and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people, if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat: so much life as it has in the character of living men, is its force. The statute stands there to say, yesterday we agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article today? Our statute is a currency, which we stamp with our own portrait: it soon becomes unrecognizable, and in process of time will return to the mint. Nature is not democratic, nor limited-monarchical, but despotic, and will not be fooled or abated of any jot of her authority, by the pertest of her sons: and as fast as the public mind is opened to more intelligence, the code is seen to be brute and stammering. It speaks not articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the education of the general mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic. What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions of public bodies, then shall be carried as grievance and bill of rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy of culture and of aspiration.<br />The theory of politics, which has possessed the mind of men, and which they have expressed the best they could in their laws and in their revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objects for whose protection government exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in virtue of being identical in nature. This interest, of course, with its whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a county. This accident, depending, primarily, on the skill and virtue of the parties, of which there is every degree, and, secondarily, on patrimony, falls unequally, and its rights, of course, are unequal. Personal rights, universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the census: property demands a government framed on the ratio of owners and of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off, and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds, and no fear of the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed fit that Laban and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer, who is to defend their persons, but that Laban, and not Jacob, should elect the officer who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And, if question arise whether additional officers or watch-towers should be provided, must not Laban and Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds to buy protection for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than Jacob, who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his own.<br />In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, and so long as it comes to the owners in the direct way, no other opinion would arise in any equitable community, than that property should make the law for property, and persons the law for persons.<br />But property passes through donation or inheritance to those who do not create it. Gift, in one case, makes it as really the new owner's, as labor made it the first owner's: in the other case, of patrimony, the law makes an ownership, which will be valid in each man's view according to the estimate which he sets on the public tranquillity.<br />It was not, however, found easy to embody the readily admitted principle, that property should make law for property, and persons for persons: since persons and property mixed themselves in every transaction. At last it seemed settled, that the rightful distinction was, that the proprietors should have more elective franchise than non-proprietors, on the Spartan principle of "calling that which is just, equal; not that which is equal, just."<br />That principle no longer looks so self-evident as it appeared in former times, partly, because doubts have arisen whether too much weight had not been allowed in the laws, to property, and such a structure given to our usages, as allowed the rich to encroach on the poor, and to keep them poor; but mainly, because there is an instinctive sense, however obscure and yet inarticulate, that the whole constitution of property, on its present tenures, is injurious, and its influence on persons deteriorating and degrading; that truly, the only interest for the consideration of the State, is persons: that property will always follow persons; that the highest end of government is the culture of men: and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement, and the moral sentiment will write the law of the land.<br />If it be not easy to settle the equity of this question, the peril is less when we take note of our natural defences. We are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect. Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. They believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred to one, that he will cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound: it will always attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight; — and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, — if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; with right, or by might.<br />The boundaries of personal influence it is impossible to fix, as persons are organs of moral or supernatural force. Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the powers of persons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.<br />In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its own attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do what it will with the owner of property, its just power will still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say, that all shall have power except the owners of property: they shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write every statute that respects property. The non-proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do, the whole power of property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of it. Of course, I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that property to dispose of.<br />The same necessity which secures the rights of person and property against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, determines the form and methods of governing, which are proper to each nation, and to its habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. In this country, we are very vain of our political institutions, which are singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men, from the character and condition of the people, which they still express with sufficient fidelity, — and we ostentatiously prefer them to any other in history. They are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting the advantage in modern times of the democratic form, but to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers living in the monarchical idea, was also relatively right. But our institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical defects which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well. What satire on government can equal the severity of censure conveyed in the word politic, which now for ages has signified cunning, intimating that the State is a trick?<br />The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the parties into which each State divides itself, of opponents and defenders of the administration of the government. Parties are also founded on instincts, and have better guides to their own humble aims than the sagacity of their leaders. They have nothing perverse in their origin, but rudely mark some real and lasting relation. We might as wisely reprove the east wind, or the frost, as a political party, whose members, for the most part, could give no account of their position, but stand for the defence of those interests in which they find themselves. Our quarrel with them begins, when they quit this deep natural ground at the bidding of some leader, and, obeying personal considerations, throw themselves into the maintenance and defence of points, nowise belonging to their system. A party is perpetually corrupted by personality. Whilst we absolve the association from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same charity to their leaders. They reap the rewards of the docility and zeal of the masses which they direct. Ordinarily, our parties are parties of circumstance, and not of principle; as, the planting interest in conflict with the commercial; the party of capitalists, and that of operatives; parties which are identical in their moral character, and which can easily change ground with each other, in the support of many of their measures. Parties of principle, as, religious sects, or the party of free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition of slavery, of abolition of capital punishment, degenerate into personalities, or would inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our leading parties in this country (which may be cited as a fair specimen of these societies of opinion) is, that they do not plant themselves on the deep and necessary grounds to which they are respectively entitled, but lash themselves to fury in the carrying of some local and momentary measure, nowise useful to the commonwealth. Of the two great parties, which, at this hour, almost share the nation between them, I should say, that, one has the best cause, and the other contains the best men. The philosopher, the poet, or the religious man, will, of course, wish to cast his vote with the democrat, for free-trade, for wide suffrage, for the abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code, and for facilitating in every manner the access of the young and the poor to the sources of wealth and power. But he can rarely accept the persons whom the so-called popular party propose to him as representatives of these liberalities. They have not at heart the ends which give to the name of democracy what hope and virtue are in it. The spirit of our American radicalism is destructive and aimless: it is not loving; it has no ulterior and divine ends; but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness. On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant. From neither party, when in power, has the world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.<br />I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished, as the children of the convicts at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of construing the Constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water." No forms can have any dangerous importance, whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no difference how many tons weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass a thousand fold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynch-law' prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency: everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.<br />We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other. There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so many, or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind, which he calls Truth and Holiness. In these decisions all the citizens find a perfect agreement, and only in these; not in what is good to eat, good to wear, good use of time, or what amount of land, or of public aid, each is entitled to claim. This truth and justice men presently endeavor to make application of, to the measuring of land, the apportionment of service, the protection of life and property. Their first endeavors, no doubt, are very awkward. Yet absolute right is the first governor; or, every government is an impure theocracy. The idea, after which each community is aiming to make and mend its law, is, the will of the wise man. The wise man, it cannot find in nature, and it makes awkward but earnest efforts to secure his government by contrivance; as, by causing the entire people to give their voices on every measure; or, by a double choice to get the representation of the whole; or, by a selection of the best citizens; or, to secure the advantages of efficiency and internal peace, by confiding the government to one, who may himself select his agents. All forms of government symbolize an immortal government, common to all dynasties and independent of numbers, perfect where two men exist, perfect where there is only one man.<br />Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public ends look vague and quixotic beside private ones. For, any laws but those which men make for themselves, are laughable. If I put myself in the place of my child, and we stand in one thought, and see that things are thus or thus, that perception is law for him and me. We are both there, both act. But if, without carrying him into the thought, I look over into his plot, and, guessing how it is with him, ordain this or that, he will never obey me. This is the history of governments, — one man does something which is to bind another. A man who cannot be acquainted with me, taxes me; looking from afar at me, ordains that a part of my labor shall go to this or that whimsical end, not as I, but as he happens to fancy. Behold the consequence. Of all debts, men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their money's worth, except for these.<br />Hence, the less government we have, the better, — the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government, is, the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man, of whom the existing government, is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation. That which all things tend to educe, which freedom, cultivation, intercourse, revolutions, go to form and deliver, is character; that is the end of nature, to reach unto this coronation of her king. To educate the wise man, the State exists; and with the appearance of the wise man, the State expires. The appearance of character makes the State unnecessary. The wise man is the State. He needs no army, fort, or navy, — he loves men too well; no bribe, or feast, or palace, to draw friends to him; no vantage ground, no favorable circumstance. He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is a prophet; no statute book, for he has the lawgiver; no money, for he is value; no road, for he is at home where he is; no experience, for the life of the creator shoots through him, and looks from his eyes. He has no personal friends, for he who has the spell to draw the prayer and piety of all men unto him, needs not husband and educate a few, to share with him a select and poetic life. His relation to men is angelic; his memory is myrrh to them; his presence, frankincense and flowers.<br />We think our civilization near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy. As a political power, as the rightful lord who is to tumble all rulers from their chairs, its presence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual Register is silent; in the Conversations' Lexicon, it is not set down; the President's Message, the Queen's Speech, have not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of force and simulation, the presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and ambition are confession of this divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is because we know how much is due from us, that we are impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it. But each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reaching the mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and we are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a certain humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, 'I am not all here.' Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail: climb they must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best persons, and make life serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behavior, could he afford to circumvent the favor of the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous, as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.<br />The tendencies of the times favor the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and penalties of his own constitution, which work with more energy than we believe, whilst we depend on artificial restraints. The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party, and unites him, at the same time, to the race. It promises a recognition of higher rights than those of personal freedom, or the security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions: nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labor secured, when the government of force is at an end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? Could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered.<br />We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbor, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design, have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the simple ground of his own moral nature. Such designs, full of genius and full of fate as they are, are not entertained except avowedly as air-pictures. If the individual who exhibits them, dare to think them practicable, he disgusts scholars and churchmen; and men of talent, and women of superior sentiments, cannot hide their contempt. Not the less does nature continue to fill the heart of youth with suggestions of this enthusiasm, and there are now men, — if indeed I can speak in the plural number, — more exactly, I will say, I have just been conversing with one man, to whom no weight of adverse experience will make it for a moment appear impossible, impossible, that thousands of human beings might exercise towards each other the grandest and simplest sentiments, as well as a knot of friends, or a pair of lovers.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-31359620505753693512006-12-07T08:24:00.001-08:002006-12-07T08:24:47.924-08:00Emerson's "Nature"Nature<br />from Essays: Second Series (1844)<br /><br />The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery: Though baffled seers cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart, Throb thine with Nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west. Spirit that lurks each form within Beckons to spirit of its kin; Self-kindled every atom glows, And hints the future which it owes.<br />Essay VI Nature<br />There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of the Indian Summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough. The solitary places do not seem quite lonely. At the gates of the forest, the surprised man of the world is forced to leave his city estimates of great and small, wise and foolish. The knapsack of custom falls off his back with the first step he makes into these precincts. Here is sanctity which shames our religions, and reality which discredits our heroes. Here we find nature to be the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance, and judges like a god all men that come to her. We have crept out of our close and crowded houses into the night and morning, and we see what majestic beauties daily wrap us in their bosom. How willingly we would escape the barriers which render them comparatively impotent, escape the sophistication and second thought, and suffer nature to intrance us. The tempered light of the woods is like a perpetual morning, and is stimulating and heroic. The anciently reported spells of these places creep on us. The stems of pines, hemlocks, and oaks, almost gleam like iron on the excited eye. The incommunicable trees begin to persuade us to live with them, and quit our life of solemn trifles. Here no history, or church, or state, is interpolated on the divine sky and the immortal year. How easily we might walk onward into the opening landscape, absorbed by new pictures, and by thoughts fast succeeding each other, until by degrees the recollection of home was crowded out of the mind, all memory obliterated by the tyranny of the present, and we were led in triumph by nature.<br />These enchantments are medicinal, they sober and heal us. These are plain pleasures, kindly and native to us. We come to our own, and make friends with matter, which the ambitious chatter of the schools would persuade us to despise. We never can part with it; the mind loves its old home: as water to our thirst, so is the rock, the ground, to our eyes, and hands, and feet. It is firm water: it is cold flame: what health, what affinity! Ever an old friend, ever like a dear friend and brother, when we chat affectedly with strangers, comes in this honest face, and takes a grave liberty with us, and shames us out of our nonsense. Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much scope, just as we need water for our bath. There are all degrees of natural influence, from these quarantine powers of nature, up to her dearest and gravest ministrations to the imagination and the soul. There is the bucket of cold water from the spring, the wood-fire to which the chilled traveller rushes for safety, — and there is the sublime moral of autumn and of noon. We nestle in nature, and draw our living as parasites from her roots and grains, and we receive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude, and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I think, if we should be rapt away into all that we dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that would remain of our furniture.<br />It seems as if the day was not wholly profane, in which we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its perfect form; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of water, and over plains, the waving rye-field, the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical steaming odorous south wind, which converts all trees to windharps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames; or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sittingroom, — these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle, I leave the village politics and personalities, yes, and the world of villages and personalities behind, and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight, too bright almost for spotted man to enter without noviciate and probation. We penetrate bodily this incredible beauty; we dip our hands in this painted element: our eyes are bathed in these lights and forms. A holiday, a villeggiatura, a royal revel, the proudest, most heart-rejoicing festival that valor and beauty, power and taste, ever decked and enjoyed, establishes itself on the instant. These sunset clouds, these delicately emerging stars, with their private and ineffable glances, signify it and proffer it. I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. I am over-instructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance: but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. This is the meaning of their hanging-gardens, villas, garden-houses, islands, parks, and preserves, to back their faulty personality with these strong accessories. I do not wonder that the landed interest should be invincible in the state with these dangerous auxiliaries. These bribe and invite; not kings, not palaces, not men, not women, but these tender and poetic stars, eloquent of secret promises. We heard what the rich man said, we knew of his villa, his grove, his wine, and his company, but the provocation and point of the invitation came out of these beguiling stars. In their soft glances, I see what men strove to realize in some Versailles, or Paphos, or Ctesiphon. Indeed, it is the magical lights of the horizon, and the blue sky for the background, which save all our works of art, which were otherwise bawbles. When the rich tax the poor with servility and obsequiousness, they should consider the effect of men reputed to be the possessors of nature, on imaginative minds. Ah! if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches! A boy hears a military band play on the field at night, and he has kings and queens, and famous chivalry palpably before him. He hears the echoes of a horn in a hill country, in the Notch Mountains, for example, which converts the mountains into an Aeolian harp, and this supernatural tiralira restores to him the Dorian mythology, Apollo, Diana, and all divine hunters and huntresses. Can a musical note be so lofty, so haughtily beautiful! To the poor young poet, thus fabulous is his picture of society; he is loyal; he respects the rich; they are rich for the sake of his imagination; how poor his fancy would be, if they were not rich! That they have some high-fenced grove, which they call a park; that they live in larger and better-garnished saloons than he has visited, and go in coaches, keeping only the society of the elegant, to watering-places, and to distant cities, are the groundwork from which he has delineated estates of romance, compared with which their actual possessions are shanties and paddocks. The muse herself betrays her son, and enhances the gifts of wealth and well-born beauty, by a radiation out of the air, and clouds, and forests that skirt the road, — a certain haughty favor, as if from patrician genii to patricians, a kind of aristocracy in nature, a prince of the power of the air.<br />The moral sensibility which makes Edens and Tempes so easily, may not be always found, but the material landscape is never far off. We can find these enchantments without visiting the Como Lake, or the Madeira Islands. We exaggerate the praises of local scenery. In every landscape, the point of astonishment is the meeting of the sky and the earth, and that is seen from the first hillock as well as from the top of the Alleghanies. The stars at night stoop down over the brownest, homeliest common, with all the spiritual magnificence which they shed on the Campagna, or on the marble deserts of Egypt. The uprolled clouds and the colors of morning and evening, will transfigure maples and alders. The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is great difference in the beholders. There is nothing so wonderful in any particular landscape, as the necessity of being beautiful under which every landscape lies. Nature cannot be surprised in undress. Beauty breaks in everywhere.<br />But it is very easy to outrun the sympathy of readers on this topic, which schoolmen called natura naturata, or nature passive. One can hardly speak directly of it without excess. It is as easy to broach in mixed companies what is called "the subject of religion." A susceptible person does not like to indulge his tastes in this kind, without the apology of some trivial necessity: he goes to see a wood-lot, or to look at the crops, or to fetch a plant or a mineral from a remote locality, or he carries a fowling piece, or a fishing-rod. I suppose this shame must have a good reason. A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. The fop of fields is no better than his brother of Broadway. Men are naturally hunters and inquisitive of wood-craft, and I suppose that such a gazetteer as wood-cutters and Indians should furnish facts for, would take place in the most sumptuous drawingrooms of all the "Wreaths" and "Flora's chaplets" of the bookshops; yet ordinarily, whether we are too clumsy for so subtle a topic, or from whatever cause, as soon as men begin to write on nature, they fall into euphuism. Frivolity is a most unfit tribute to Pan, who ought to be represented in the mythology as the most continent of gods. I would not be frivolous before the admirable reserve and prudence of time, yet I cannot renounce the right of returning often to this old topic. The multitude of false churches accredits the true religion. Literature, poetry, science, are the homage of man to this unfathomed secret, concerning which no sane man can affect an indifference or incuriosity. Nature is loved by what is best in us. It is loved as the city of God, although, or rather because there is no citizen. The sunset is unlike anything that is underneath it: it wants men. And the beauty of nature must always seem unreal and mocking, until the landscape has human figures, that are as good as itself. If there were good men, there would never be this rapture in nature. If the king is in the palace, nobody looks at the walls. It is when he is gone, and the house is filled with grooms and gazers, that we turn from the people, to find relief in the majestic men that are suggested by the pictures and the architecture. The critics who complain of the sickly separation of the beauty of nature from the thing to be done, must consider that our hunting of the picturesque is inseparable from our protest against false society. Man is fallen; nature is erect, and serves as a differential thermometer, detecting the presence or absence of the divine sentiment in man. By fault of our dulness and selfishness, we are looking up to nature, but when we are convalescent, nature will look up to us. We see the foaming brook with compunction: if our own life flowed with the right energy, we should shame the brook. The stream of zeal sparkles with real fire, and not with reflex rays of sun and moon. Nature may be as selfishly studied as trade. Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology; psychology, mesmerism (with intent to show where our spoons are gone); and anatomy and physiology, become phrenology and palmistry.<br />But taking timely warning, and leaving many things unsaid on this topic, let us not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd,) and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creatures, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation on transformation to the highest symmetries, arriving at consummate results without a shock or a leap. A little heat, that is, a little motion, is all that differences the bald, dazzling white, and deadly cold poles of the earth from the prolific tropical climates. All changes pass without violence, by reason of the two cardinal conditions of boundless space and boundless time. Geology has initiated us into the secularity of nature, and taught us to disuse our dame-school measures, and exchange our Mosaic and Ptolemaic schemes for her large style. We knew nothing rightly, for want of perspective. Now we learn what patient periods must round themselves before the rock is formed, then before the rock is broken, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil, and opened the door for the remote Flora, Fauna, Ceres, and Pomona, to come in. How far off yet is the trilobite! how far the quadruped! how inconceivably remote is man! All duly arrive, and then race after race of men. It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato, and the preaching of the immortality of the soul. Yet all must come, as surely as the first atom has two sides.<br />Motion or change, and identity or rest, are the first and second secrets of nature: Motion and Rest. The whole code of her laws may be written on the thumbnail, or the signet of a ring. The whirling bubble on the surface of a brook, admits us to the secret of the mechanics of the sky. Every shell on the beach is a key to it. A little water made to rotate in a cup explains the formation of the simpler shells; the addition of matter from year to year, arrives at last at the most complex forms; and yet so poor is nature with all her craft, that, from the beginning to the end of the universe, she has but one stuff, — but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety. Compound it how she will, star, sand, fire, water, tree, man, it is still one stuff, and betrays the same properties.<br />Nature is always consistent, though she feigns to contravene her own laws. She keeps her laws, and seems to transcend them. She arms and equips an animal to find its place and living in the earth, and, at the same time, she arms and equips another animal to destroy it. Space exists to divide creatures; but by clothing the sides of a bird with a few feathers, she gives him a petty omnipresence. The direction is forever onward, but the artist still goes back for materials, and begins again with the first elements on the most advanced stage: otherwise, all goes to ruin. If we look at her work, we seem to catch a glance of a system in transition. Plants are the young of the world, vessels of health and vigor; but they grope ever upward towards consciousness; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The animal is the novice and probationer of a more advanced order. The men, though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought, are already dissipated: the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt, when they come to consciousness, they too will curse and swear. Flowers so strictly belong to youth, that we adult men soon come to feel, that their beautiful generations concern not us: we have had our day; now let the children have theirs. The flowers jilt us, and we are old bachelors with our ridiculous tenderness.<br />Things are so strictly related, that according to the skill of the eye, from any one object the parts and properties of any other may be predicted. If we had eyes to see it, a bit of stone from the city wall would certify us of the necessity that man must exist, as readily as the city. That identity makes us all one, and reduces to nothing great intervals on our customary scale. We talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial life were not also natural. The smoothest curled courtier in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, and is directly related, there amid essences and billetsdoux, to Himmaleh mountain-chains, and the axis of the globe. If we consider how much we are nature's, we need not be superstitious about towns, as if that terrific or benefic force did not find us there also, and fashion cities. Nature who made the mason, made the house. We may easily hear too much of rural influences. The cool disengaged air of natural objects, makes them enviable to us, chafed and irritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they, if we camp out and eat roots; but let us be men instead of woodchucks, and the oak and the elm shall gladly serve us, though we sit in chairs of ivory on carpets of silk.<br />This guiding identity runs through all the surprises and contrasts of the piece, and characterizes every law. Man carries the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry suspended in a thought. Because the history of nature is charactered in his brain, therefore is he the prophet and discoverer of her secrets. Every known fact in natural science was divined by the presentiment of somebody, before it was actually verified. A man does not tie his shoe without recognising laws which bind the farthest regions of nature: moon, plant, gas, crystal, are concrete geometry and numbers. Common sense knows its own, and recognises the fact at first sight in chemical experiment. The common sense of Franklin, Dalton, Davy, and Black, is the same common sense which made the arrangements which now it discovers.<br />If the identity expresses organized rest, the counter action runs also into organization. The astronomers said, 'Give us matter, and a little motion, and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass, and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces. Once heave the ball from the hand, and we can show how all this mighty order grew.' — 'A very unreasonable postulate,' said the metaphysicians, 'and a plain begging of the question. Could you not prevail to know the genesis of projection, as well as the continuation of it?' Nature, meanwhile, had not waited for the discussion, but, right or wrong, bestowed the impulse, and the balls rolled. It was no great affair, a mere push, but the astronomers were right in making much of it, for there is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball, through all the races of creatures, and through the history and performances of every individual. Exaggeration is in the course of things. Nature sends no creature, no man into the world, without adding a small excess of his proper quality. Given the planet, it is still necessary to add the impulse; so, to every creature nature added a little violence of direction in its proper path, a shove to put it on its way; in every instance, a slight generosity, a drop too much. Without electricity the air would rot, and without this violence of direction, which men and women have, without a spice of bigot and fanatic, no excitement, no efficiency. We aim above the mark, to hit the mark. Every act hath some falsehood of exaggeration in it. And when now and then comes along some sad, sharp-eyed man, who sees how paltry a game is played, and refuses to play, but blabs the secret; — how then? is the bird flown? O no, the wary Nature sends a new troop of fairer forms, of lordlier youths, with a little more excess of direction to hold them fast to their several aim; makes them a little wrongheaded in that direction in which they are rightest, and on goes the game again with new whirl, for a generation or two more. The child with his sweet pranks, the fool of his senses, commanded by every sight and sound, without any power to compare and rank his sensations, abandoned to a whistle or a painted chip, to a lead dragoon, or a gingerbread-dog, individualizing everything, generalizing nothing, delighted with every new thing, lies down at night overpowered by the fatigue, which this day of continual pretty madness has incurred. But Nature has answered her purpose with the curly, dimpled lunatic. She has tasked every faculty, and has secured the symmetrical growth of the bodily frame, by all these attitudes and exertions, — an end of the first importance, which could not be trusted to any care less perfect than her own. This glitter, this opaline lustre plays round the top of every toy to his eye, to ensure his fidelity, and he is deceived to his good. We are made alive and kept alive by the same arts. Let the stoics say what they please, we do not eat for the good of living, but because the meat is savory and the appetite is keen. The vegetable life does not content itself with casting from the flower or the tree a single seed, but it fills the air and earth with a prodigality of seeds, that, if thousands perish, thousands may plant themselves, that hundreds may come up, that tens may live to maturity, that, at least, one may replace the parent. All things betray the same calculated profusion. The excess of fear with which the animal frame is hedged round, shrinking from cold, starting at sight of a snake, or at a sudden noise, protects us, through a multitude of groundless alarms, from some one real danger at last. The lover seeks in marriage his private felicity and perfection, with no prospective end; and nature hides in his happiness her own end, namely, progeny, or the perpetuity of the race.<br />But the craft with which the world is made, runs also into the mind and character of men. No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of holding him hard to some one point which nature had taken to heart. Great causes are never tried on their merits; but the cause is reduced to particulars to suit the size of the partizans, and the contention is ever hottest on minor matters. Not less remarkable is the overfaith of each man in the importance of what he has to do or say. The poet, the prophet, has a higher value for what he utters than any hearer, and therefore it gets spoken. The strong, self-complacent Luther declares with an emphasis, not to be mistaken, that "God himself cannot do without wise men." Jacob Behmen and George Fox betray their egotism in the pertinacity of their controversial tracts, and James Naylor once suffered himself to be worshipped as the Christ. Each prophet comes presently to identify himself with his thought, and to esteem his hat and shoes sacred. However this may discredit such persons with the judicious, it helps them with the people, as it gives heat, pungency, and publicity to their words. A similar experience is not infrequent in private life. Each young and ardent person writes a diary, in which, when the hours of prayer and penitence arrive, he inscribes his soul. The pages thus written are, to him, burning and fragrant: he reads them on his knees by midnight and by the morning star; he wets them with his tears: they are sacred; too good for the world, and hardly yet to be shown to the dearest friend. This is the man-child that is born to the soul, and her life still circulates in the babe. The umbilical cord has not yet been cut. After some time has elapsed, he begins to wish to admit his friend to this hallowed experience, and with hesitation, yet with firmness, exposes the pages to his eye. Will they not burn his eyes? The friend coldly turns them over, and passes from the writing to conversation, with easy transition, which strikes the other party with astonishment and vexation. He cannot suspect the writing itself. Days and nights of fervid life, of communion with angels of darkness and of light, have engraved their shadowy characters on that tear-stained book. He suspects the intelligence or the heart of his friend. Is there then no friend? He cannot yet credit that one may have impressive experience, and yet may not know how to put his private fact into literature; and perhaps the discovery that wisdom has other tongues and ministers than we, that though we should hold our peace, the truth would not the less be spoken, might check injuriously the flames of our zeal. A man can only speak, so long as he does not feel his speech to be partial and inadequate. It is partial, but he does not see it to be so, whilst he utters it. As soon as he is released from the instinctive and particular, and sees its partiality, he shuts his mouth in disgust. For, no man can write anything, who does not think that what he writes is for the time the history of the world; or do anything well, who does not esteem his work to be of importance. My work may be of none, but I must not think it of none, or I shall not do it with impunity.<br />In like manner, there is throughout nature something mocking, something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with us. All promise outruns the performance. We live in a system of approximations. Every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature, not domesticated. Hunger and thirst lead us on to eat and to drink; but bread and wine, mix and cook them how you will, leave us hungry and thirsty, after the stomach is full. It is the same with all our arts and performances. Our music, our poetry, our language itself are not satisfactions, but suggestions. The hunger for wealth, which reduces the planet to a garden, fools the eager pursuer. What is the end sought? Plainly to secure the ends of good sense and beauty, from the intrusion of deformity or vulgarity of any kind. But what an operose method! What a train of means to secure a little conversation! This palace of brick and stone, these servants, this kitchen, these stables, horses and equipage, this bank-stock, and file of mortgages; trade to all the world, country-house and cottage by the waterside, all for a little conversation, high, clear, and spiritual! Could it not be had as well by beggars on the highway? No, all these things came from successive efforts of these beggars to remove friction from the wheels of life, and give opportunity. Conversation, character, were the avowed ends; wealth was good as it appeased the animal cravings, cured the smoky chimney, silenced the creaking door, brought friends together in a warm and quiet room, and kept the children and the dinner-table in a different apartment. Thought, virtue, beauty, were the ends; but it was known that men of thought and virtue sometimes had the headache, or wet feet, or could lose good time whilst the room was getting warm in winter days. Unluckily, in the exertions necessary to remove these inconveniences, the main attention has been diverted to this object; the old aims have been lost sight of, and to remove friction has come to be the end. That is the ridicule of rich men, and Boston, London, Vienna, and now the governments generally of the world, are cities and governments of the rich, and the masses are not men, but poor men, that is, men who would be rich; this is the ridicule of the class, that they arrive with pains and sweat and fury nowhere; when all is done, it is for nothing. They are like one who has interrupted the conversation of a company to make his speech, and now has forgotten what he went to say. The appearance strikes the eye everywhere of an aimless society, of aimless nations. Were the ends of nature so great and cogent, as to exact this immense sacrifice of men?<br />Quite analogous to the deceits in life, there is, as might be expected, a similar effect on the eye from the face of external nature. There is in woods and waters a certain enticement and flattery, together with a failure to yield a present satisfaction. This disappointment is felt in every landscape. I have seen the softness and beauty of the summer-clouds floating feathery overhead, enjoying, as it seemed, their height and privilege of motion, whilst yet they appeared not so much the drapery of this place and hour, as forelooking to some pavilions and gardens of festivity beyond. It is an odd jealousy: but the poet finds himself not near enough to his object. The pine-tree, the river, the bank of flowers before him, does not seem to be nature. Nature is still elsewhere. This or this is but outskirt and far-off reflection and echo of the triumph that has passed by, and is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then in the adjacent woods. The present object shall give you this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone by. What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever and ever. It is the same among the men and women, as among the silent trees; always a referred existence, an absence, never a presence and satisfaction. Is it, that beauty can never be grasped? in persons and in landscape is equally inaccessible? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven, if she stoops to such a one as he.<br />What shall we say of this omnipresent appearance of that first projectile impulse, of this flattery and baulking of so many well-meaning creatures? Must we not suppose somewhere in the universe a slight treachery and derision? Are we not engaged to a serious resentment of this use that is made of us? Are we tickled trout, and fools of nature? One look at the face of heaven and earth lays all petulance at rest, and soothes us to wiser convictions. To the intelligent, nature converts itself into a vast promise, and will not be rashly explained. Her secret is untold. Many and many an Oedipus arrives: he has the whole mystery teeming in his brain. Alas! the same sorcery has spoiled his skill; no syllable can he shape on his lips. Her mighty orbit vaults like the fresh rainbow into the deep, but no archangel's wing was yet strong enough to follow it, and report of the return of the curve. But it also appears, that our actions are seconded and disposed to greater conclusions than we designed. We are escorted on every hand through life by spiritual agents, and a beneficent purpose lies in wait for us. We cannot bandy words with nature, or deal with her as we deal with persons. If we measure our individual forces against hers, we may easily feel as if we were the sport of an insuperable destiny. But if, instead of identifying ourselves with the work, we feel that the soul of the workman streams through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over them, of life, preexisting within us in their highest form.<br />The uneasiness which the thought of our helplessness in the chain of causes occasions us, results from looking too much at one condition of nature, namely, Motion. But the drag is never taken from the wheel. Wherever the impulse exceeds, the Rest or Identity insinuates its compensation. All over the wide fields of earth grows the prunella or self-heal. After every foolish day we sleep off the fumes and furies of its hours; and though we are always engaged with particulars, and often enslaved to them, we bring with us to every experiment the innate universal laws. These, while they exist in the mind as ideas, stand around us in nature forever embodied, a present sanity to expose and cure the insanity of men. Our servitude to particulars betrays into a hundred foolish expectations. We anticipate a new era from the invention of a locomotive, or a balloon; the new engine brings with it the old checks. They say that by electro-magnetism, your sallad shall be grown from the seed, whilst your fowl is roasting for dinner: it is a symbol of our modern aims and endeavors,—-of our condensation and acceleration of objects: but nothing is gained: nature cannot be cheated: man's life is but seventy sallads long, grow they swift or grow they slow. In these checks and impossibilities, however, we find our advantage, not less than in the impulses. Let the victory fall where it will, we are on that side. And the knowledge that we traverse the whole scale of being, from the centre to the poles of nature, and have some stake in every possibility, lends that sublime lustre to death, which philosophy and religion have too outwardly and literally striven to express in the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The reality is more excellent than the report. Here is no ruin, no discontinuity, no spent ball. The divine circulations never rest nor linger. Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water and gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is forever escaping again into the state of free thought. Hence the virtue and pungency of the influence on the mind, of natural objects, whether inorganic or organized. Man imprisoned, man crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man impersonated. That power which does not respect quantity, which makes the whole and the particle its equal channel, delegates its smile to the morning, and distils its essence into every drop of rain. Every moment instructs, and every object: for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence, until after a long time.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-35924736502822797632006-12-07T08:23:00.002-08:002006-12-07T08:24:05.773-08:00Emerson's "Gifts"Gifts<br />from Essays: Second Series (1844)<br /><br />Gifts of one who loved me, — 'T was high time they came; When he ceased to love me, Time they stopped for shame.<br />Essay V Gifts<br />It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into chancery, and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing. If, at any time, it comes into my head, that a present is due from me to somebody, I am puzzled what to give, until the opportunity is gone. Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of ordinary nature: they are like music heard out of a work-house. Nature does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed? Fruits are acceptable gifts, because they are the flower of commodities, and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If a man should send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before me a basket of fine summerfruit, I should think there was some proportion between the labor and the reward.<br />For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option, since if the man at the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always a great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. I can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies. Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift, which one of my friends prescribed, is, that we might convey to some person that which properly belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him in thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me. Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and pleasing, for it restores society in so far to its primary basis, when a man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an index of his merit. But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy me something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of black-mail.<br />The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive gifts. How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow. We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something of degrading dependence in living by it.<br />"Brother, if Jove to thee a present make, Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."<br />We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society, if it do not give us besides earth, and fire, and water, opportunity, love, reverence, and objects of veneration.<br />He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence, I think, is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him. The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary, than with the anger of my lord Timon. For, the expectation of gratitude is mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and heart-burning, from one who has had the ill luck to be served by you. It is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who says, "Do not flatter your benefactors."<br />The reason of these discords I conceive to be, that there is no commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything to a magnanimous person. After you have served him, he at once puts you in debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received. But rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people.<br />I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to prescribe. Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There are persons, from whom we always expect fairy tokens; let us not cease to expect them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules. For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The best of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in fate. I find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me; then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No services are of any value, but only likeness. When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick, — no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33932587.post-28850060402925172472006-12-07T08:23:00.001-08:002006-12-07T08:23:32.128-08:00Emerson's "Manners"Manners<br />from Essays: Second Series (1844)<br /><br />"How near to good is what is fair! Which we no sooner see, But with the lines and outward air Our senses taken be. Again yourselves compose, And now put all the aptness on Of Figure, that Proportion Or Color can disclose; That if those silent arts were lost, Design and Picture, they might boast From you a newer ground, Instructed by the heightening sense Of dignity and reverence In their true motions found." Ben Jonson<br />Essay IV Manners<br />Half the world, it is said, knows not how the other half live. Our Exploring Expedition saw the Feejee islanders getting their dinner off human bones; and they are said to eat their own wives and children. The husbandry of the modern inhabitants of Gournou (west of old Thebes) is philosophical to a fault. To set up their housekeeping, nothing is requisite but two or three earthern pots, a stone to grind meal, and a mat which is the bed. The house, namely, a tomb, is ready without rent or taxes. No rain can pass through the roof, and there is no door, for there is no want of one, as there is nothing to lose. If the house do not please them, they walk out and enter another, as there are several hundreds at their command. "It is somewhat singular," adds Belzoni, to whom we owe this account, "to talk of happiness among people who live in sepulchres, among the corpses and rags of an ancient nation which they know nothing of." In the deserts of Borgoo, the rock-Tibboos still dwell in caves, like cliff-swallows, and the language of these negroes is compared by their neighbors to the shrieking of bats, and to the whistling of birds. Again, the Bornoos have no proper names; individuals are called after their height, thickness, or other accidental quality, and have nicknames merely. But the salt, the dates, the ivory, and the gold, for which these horrible regions are visited, find their way into countries, where the purchaser and consumer can hardly be ranked in one race with these cannibals and man-stealers; countries where man serves himself with metals, wood, stone, glass, gum, cotton, silk, and wool; honors himself with architecture; writes laws, and contrives to execute his will through the hands of many nations; and, especially, establishes a select society, running through all the countries of intelligent men, a self-constituted aristocracy, or fraternity of the best, which, without written law or exact usage of any kind, perpetuates itself, colonizes every new-planted island, and adopts and makes its own whatever personal beauty or extraordinary native endowment anywhere appears.<br />What fact more conspicuous in modern history, than the creation of the gentleman? Chivalry is that, and loyalty is that, and, in English literature, half the drama, and all the novels, from Sir Philip Sidney to Sir Walter Scott, paint this figure. The word gentleman, which, like the word Christian, must hereafter characterize the present and the few preceding centuries, by the importance attached to it, is a homage to personal and incommunicable properties. Frivolous and fantastic additions have got associated with the name, but the steady interest of mankind in it must be attributed to the valuable properties which it designates. An element which unites all the most forcible persons of every country; makes them intelligible and agreeable to each other, and is somewhat so precise, that it is at once felt if an individual lack the masonic sign, cannot be any casual product, but must be an average result of the character and faculties universally found in men. It seems a certain permanent average; as the atmosphere is a permanent composition, whilst so many gases are combined only to be decompounded. Comme il faut, is the Frenchman's description of good society, as we must be. It is a spontaneous fruit of talents and feelings of precisely that class who have most vigor, who take the lead in the world of this hour, and, though far from pure, far from constituting the gladdest and highest tone of human feeling, is as good as the whole society permits it to be. It is made of the spirit, more than of the talent of men, and is a compound result, into which every great force enters as an ingredient, namely, virtue, wit, beauty, wealth, and power.<br />There is something equivocal in all the words in use to express the excellence of manners and social cultivation, because the quantities are fluxional, and the last effect is assumed by the senses as the cause. The word gentleman has not any correlative abstract to express the quality. Gentility is mean, and gentilesse is obsolete. But we must keep alive in the vernacular, the distinction between fashion, a word of narrow and often sinister meaning, and the heroic character which the gentleman imports. The usual words, however, must be respected: they will be found to contain the root of the matter. The point of distinction in all this class of names, as courtesy, chivalry, fashion, and the like, is, that the flower and fruit, not the grain of the tree, are contemplated. It is beauty which is the aim this time, and not worth. The result is now in question, although our words intimate well enough the popular feeling, that the appearance supposes a substance. The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature or benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness. The popular notion certainly adds a condition of ease and fortune; but that is a natural result of personal force and love, that they should possess and dispense the goods of the world. In times of violence, every eminent person must fall in with many opportunities to approve his stoutness and worth; therefore every man's name that emerged at all from the mass in the feudal ages, rattles in our ear like a flourish of trumpets. But personal force never goes out of fashion. That is still paramount today, and, in the moving crowd of good society, the men of valor and reality are known, and rise to their natural place. The competition is transferred from war to politics and trade, but the personal force appears readily enough in these new arenas.<br />Power first, or no leading class. In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks. God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door; but whenever used in strictness, and with any emphasis, the name will be found to point at original energy. It describes a man standing in his own right, and working after untaught methods. In a good lord, there must first be a good animal, at least to the extent of yielding the incomparable advantage of animal spirits. The ruling class must have more, but they must have these, giving in every company the sense of power, which makes things easy to be done which daunt the wise. The society of the energetic class, in their friendly and festive meetings, is full of courage, and of attempts, which intimidate the pale scholar. The courage which girls exhibit is like a battle of Lundy's Lane, or a sea-fight. The intellect relies on memory to make some supplies to face these extemporaneous squadrons. But memory is a base mendicant with basket and badge, in the presence of these sudden masters. The rulers of society must be up to the work of the world, and equal to their versatile office: men of the right Caesarian pattern, who have great range of affinity. I am far from believing the timid maxim of Lord Falkland, ("that for ceremony there must go two to it; since a bold fellow will go through the cunningest forms,") and am of opinion that the gentleman is the bold fellow whose forms are not to be broken through; and only that plenteous nature is rightful master, which is the complement of whatever person it converses with. My gentleman gives the law where he is; he will outpray saints in chapel, outgeneral veterans in the field, and outshine all courtesy in the hall. He is good company for pirates, and good with academicians; so that it is useless to fortify yourself against him; he has the private entrance to all minds, and I could as easily exclude myself, as him. The famous gentlemen of Asia and Europe have been of this strong type: Saladin, Sapor, the Cid, Julius Caesar, Scipio, Alexander, Pericles, and the lordliest personages. They sat very carelessly in their chairs, and were too excellent themselves, to value any condition at a high rate.<br />A plentiful fortune is reckoned necessary, in the popular judgment, to the completion of this man of the world: and it is a material deputy which walks through the dance which the first has led. Money is not essential, but this wide affinity is, which transcends the habits of clique and caste, and makes itself felt by men of all classes. If the aristocrat is only valid in fashionable circles, and not with truckmen, he will never be a leader in fashion; and if the man of the people cannot speak on equal terms with the gentleman, so that the gentleman shall perceive that he is already really of his own order, he is not to be feared. Diogenes, Socrates, and Epaminondas, are gentlemen of the best blood, who have chosen the condition of poverty, when that of wealth was equally open to them. I use these old names, but the men I speak of are my contemporaries. Fortune will not supply to every generation one of these well-appointed knights, but every collection of men furnishes some example of the class: and the politics of this country, and the trade of every town, are controlled by these hardy and irresponsible doers, who have invention to take the lead, and a broad sympathy which puts them in fellowship with crowds, and makes their action popular.<br />The manners of this class are observed and caught with devotion by men of taste. The association of these masters with each other, and with men intelligent of their merits, is mutually agreeable and stimulating. The good forms, the happiest expressions of each, are repeated and adopted. By swift consent, everything superfluous is dropped, everything graceful is renewed. Fine manners show themselves formidable to the uncultivated man. They are a subtler science of defence to parry and intimidate; but once matched by the skill of the other party, they drop the point of the sword, — points and fences disappear, and the youth finds himself in a more transparent atmosphere, wherein life is a less troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal semblance, the most puissant, the most fantastic and frivolous, the most feared and followed, and which morals and violence assault in vain.<br />There exists a strict relation between the class of power, and the exclusive and polished circles. The last are always filled or filling from the first. The strong men usually give some allowance even to the petulances of fashion, for that affinity they find in it. Napoleon, child of the revolution, destroyer of the old noblesse, never ceased to court the Faubourg St. Germain: doubtless with the feeling, that fashion is a homage to men of his stamp. Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past. It usually sets its face against the great of this hour. Great men are not commonly in its halls: they are absent in the field: they are working, not triumphing. Fashion is made up of their children; of those, who, through the value and virtue of somebody, have acquired lustre to their name, marks of distinction, means of cultivation and generosity, and, in their physical organization, a certain health and excellence, which secures to them, if not the highest power to work, yet high power to enjoy. The class of power, the working heroes, the Cortez, the Nelson, the Napoleon, see that this is the festivity and permanent celebration of such as they; that fashion is funded talent; is Mexico, Marengo, and Trafalgar beaten out thin; that the brilliant names of fashion run back to just such busy names as their own, fifty or sixty years ago. They are the sowers, their sons shall be the reapers, and their sons, in the ordinary course of things, must yield the possession of the harvest to new competitors with keener eyes and stronger frames. The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.<br />Aristocracy and fashion are certain inevitable results. These mutual selections are indestructible. If they provoke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority, by the strong hand, and kill them, at once a new class finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk: and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life, and is one of the estates of the realm. I am the more struck with this tenacity, when I see its work. It respects the administration of such unimportant matters, that we should not look for any durability in its rule. We sometimes meet men under some strong moral influence, as, a patriotic, a literary, a religious movement, and feel that the moral sentiment rules man and nature. We think all other distinctions and ties will be slight and fugitive, this of caste or fashion, for example; yet come from year to year, and see how permanent that is, in this Boston or New York life of man, where, too, it has not the least countenance from the law of the land. Not in Egypt or in India a firmer or more impassable line. Here are associations whose ties go over, and under, and through it, a meeting of merchants, a military corps, a college-class, a fire-club, a professional association, a political, a religious convention; — the persons seem to draw inseparably near; yet, that assembly once dispersed, its members will not in the year meet again. Each returns to his degree in the scale of good society, porcelain remains porcelain, and earthen earthen. The objects of fashion may be frivolous, or fashion may be objectless, but the nature of this union and selection can be neither frivolous nor accidental. Each man's rank in that perfect graduation depends on some symmetry in his structure, or some agreement in his structure to the symmetry of society. Its doors unbar instantaneously to a natural claim of their own kind. A natural gentleman finds his way in, and will keep the oldest patrician out, who has lost his intrinsic rank. Fashion understands itself; good-breeding and personal superiority of whatever country readily fraternize with those of every other. The chiefs of savage tribes have distinguished themselves in London and Paris, by the purity of their tournure.<br />To say what good of fashion we can, — it rests on reality, and hates nothing so much as pretenders; — to exclude and mystify pretenders, and send them into everlasting 'Coventry,' is its delight. We contemn, in turn, every other gift of men of the world; but the habit even in little and the least matters, of not appealing to any but our own sense of propriety, constitutes the foundation of all chivalry. There is almost no kind of self-reliance, so it be sane and proportioned, which fashion does not occasionally adopt, and give it the freedom of its saloons. A sainted soul is always elegant, and, if it will, passes unchallenged into the most guarded ring. But so will Jock the teamster pass, in some crisis that brings him thither, and find favor, as long as his head is not giddy with the new circumstance, and the iron shoes do not wish to dance in waltzes and cotillons. For there is nothing settled in manners, but the laws of behavior yield to the energy of the individual. The maiden at her first ball, the country-man at a city dinner, believes that there is a ritual according to which every act and compliment must be performed, or the failing party must be cast out of this presence. Later, they learn that good sense and character make their own forms every moment, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor, or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way: and that strong will is always in fashion, let who will be unfashionable. All that fashion demands is composure, and self-content. A circle of men perfectly well-bred would be a company of sensible persons, in which every man's native manners and character appeared. If the fashionist have not this quality, he is nothing. We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world, forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him, — not bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve in a new company the same attitude of mind and reality of relation, which his daily associates draw him to, else he is shorn of his best beams, and will be an orphan in the merriest club. "If you could see Vich Ian Vohr with his tail on!—" But Vich Ian Vohr must always carry his belongings in some fashion, if not added as honor, then severed as disgrace.<br />There will always be in society certain persons who are mercuries of its approbation, and whose glance will at any time determine for the curious their standing in the world. These are the chamberlains of the lesser gods. Accept their coldness as an omen of grace with the loftier deities, and allow them all their privilege. They are clear in their office, nor could they be thus formidable, without their own merits. But do not measure the importance of this class by their pretension, or imagine that a fop can be the dispenser of honor and shame. They pass also at their just rate; for how can they otherwise, in circles which exist as a sort of herald's office for the sifting of character?<br />As the first thing man requires of man, is reality, so, that appears in all the forms of society. We pointedly, and by name, introduce the parties to each other. Know you before all heaven and earth, that this is Andrew, and this is Gregory; — they look each other in the eye; they grasp each other's hand, to identify and signalize each other. It is a great satisfaction. A gentleman never dodges: his eyes look straight forward, and he assures the other party, first of all, that he has been met. For what is it that we seek, in so many visits and hospitalities? Is it your draperies, pictures, and decorations? Or, do we not insatiably ask, Was a man in the house? I may easily go into a great household where there is much substance, excellent provision for comfort, luxury, and taste, and yet not encounter there any Amphitryon, who shall subordinate these appendages. I may go into a cottage, and find a farmer who feels that he is the man I have come to see, and fronts me accordingly. It was therefore a very natural point of old feudal etiquette, that a gentleman who received a visit, though it were of his sovereign, should not leave his roof, but should wait his arrival at the door of his house. No house, though it were the Thuilleries, or the Escurial, is good for anything without a master. And yet we are not often gratified by this hospitality. Every body we know surrounds himself with a fine house, fine books, conservatory, gardens, equipage, and all manner of toys, as screens to interpose between himself and his guest. Does it not seem as if man was of a very sly, elusive nature, and dreaded nothing so much as a full rencontre front to front with his fellow? It were unmerciful, I know, quite to abolish the use of these screens, which are of eminent convenience, whether the guest is too great, or too little. We call together many friends who keep each other in play, or, by luxuries and ornaments we amuse the young people, and guard our retirement. Or if, perchance, a searching realist comes to our gate, before whose eye we have no care to stand, then again we run to our curtain, and hide ourselves as Adam at the voice of the Lord God in the garden. Cardinal Caprara, the Pope's legate at Paris, defended himself from the glances of Napoleon, by an immense pair of green spectacles. Napoleon remarked them, and speedily managed to rally them off: and yet Napoleon, in his turn, was not great enough with eight hundred thousand troops at his back, to face a pair of freeborn eyes, but fenced himself with etiquette, and within triple barriers of reserve: and, as all the world knows from Madame de Stael, was wont, when he found himself observed, to discharge his face of all expression. But emperors and rich men are by no means the most skilful masters of good manners. No rentroll nor army-list can dignify skulking and dissimulation: and the first point of courtesy must always be truth, as really all the forms of good-breeding point that way.<br />I have just been reading, in Mr. Hazlitt's translation, Montaigne's account of his journey into Italy, and am struck with nothing more agreeably than the self-respecting fashions of the time. His arrival in each place, the arrival of a gentleman of France, is an event of some consequence. Wherever he goes, he pays a visit to whatever prince or gentleman of note resides upon his road, as a duty to himself and to civilization. When he leaves any house in which he has lodged for a few weeks, he causes his arms to be painted and hung up as a perpetual sign to the house, as was the custom of gentlemen.<br />The complement of this graceful self-respect, and that of all the points of good breeding I most require and insist upon, is deference. I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer a tendency to stateliness, to an excess of fellowship. Let the incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man teach us independence. Let us not be too much acquainted. I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self-poise. We should meet each morning, as from foreign countries, and spending the day together, should depart at night, as into foreign countries. In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confusion and meanness. It is easy to push this deference to a Chinese etiquette; but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise: a lady is serene. Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with blast and running, to secure some paltry convenience. Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbor's needs. Must we have a good understanding with one another's palates? as foolish people who have lived long together, know when each wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out his plate, as if I knew already. Every natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to slaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should signify, however remotely, the recollection of the grandeur of our destiny.<br />The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts go to its conformation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart must furnish a proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good-breeding, a union of kindness and independence. We imperatively require a perception of, and a homage to beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and workyard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at short distances, the senses are despotic. The same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigor, into all parts of life. The average spirit of the energetic class is good sense, acting under certain limitations and to certain ends. It entertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects everything which tends to unite men. It delights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love measure. You must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the want of measure. This perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of the social instrument. Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together. That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship. For, fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary, and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.<br />The dry light must shine in to adorn our festival, but it must be tempered and shaded, or that will also offend. Accuracy is essential to beauty, and quick perceptions to politeness, but not too quick perceptions. One may be too punctual and too precise. He must leave the omniscience of business at the door, when he comes into the palace of beauty. Society loves creole natures, and sleepy, languishing manners, so that they cover sense, grace, and good-will; the air of drowsy strength, which disarms criticism; perhaps, because such a person seems to reserve himself for the best of the game, and not spend himself on surfaces; an ignoring eye, which does not see the annoyances, shifts, and inconveniences, that cloud the brow and smother the voice of the sensitive.<br />Therefore, besides personal force and so much perception as constitutes unerring taste, society demands in its patrician class, another element already intimated, which it significantly terms good-nature, expressing all degrees of generosity, from the lowest willingness and faculty to oblige, up to the heights of magnanimity and love. Insight we must have, or we shall run against one another, and miss the way to our food; but intellect is selfish and barren. The secret of success in society, is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in the company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion. All his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation equally lucky occasions for the introduction of that which he has to say. The favorites of society, and what it calls whole souls, are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contented and contenting, at a marriage or a funeral, a ball or a jury, a water-party or a shooting-match. England, which is rich in gentlemen, furnished, in the beginning of the present century, a good model of that genius which the world loves, in Mr. Fox, who added to his great abilities the most social disposition, and real love of men. Parliamentary history has few better passages than the debate, in which Burke and Fox separated in the House of Commons; when Fox urged on his old friend the claims of old friendship with such tenderness, that the house was moved to tears. Another anecdote is so close to my matter, that I must hazard the story. A tradesman who had long dunned him for a note of three hundred guineas, found him one day counting gold, and demanded payment: "No," said Fox, "I owe this money to Sheridan: it is a debt of honor: if an accident should happen to me, he has nothing to show." "Then," said the creditor, "I change my debt into a debt of honor," and tore the note in pieces. Fox thanked the man for his confidence, and paid him, saying, "his debt was of older standing, and Sheridan must wait." Lover of liberty, friend of the Hindoo, friend of the African slave, he possessed a great personal popularity; and Napoleon said of him on the occasion of his visit to Paris, in 1805, "Mr. Fox will always hold the first place in an assembly at the Thuilleries."<br />We may easily seem ridiculous in our eulogy of courtesy, whenever we insist on benevolence as its foundation. The painted phantasm Fashion rises to cast a species of derision on what we say. But I will neither be driven from some allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love is the basis of courtesy. We must obtain that, if we can; but by all means we must affirm this. Life owes much of its spirit to these sharp contrasts. Fashion which affects to be honor, is often, in all men's experience, only a ballroom-code. Yet, so long as it is the highest circle, in the imagination of the best heads on the planet, there is something necessary and excellent in it; for it is not to be supposed that men have agreed to be the dupes of anything preposterous; and the respect which these mysteries inspire in the most rude and sylvan characters, and the curiosity with which details of high life are read, betray the universality of the love of cultivated manners. I know that a comic disparity would be felt, if we should enter the acknowledged 'first circles,' and apply these terrific standards of justice, beauty, and benefit, to the individuals actually found there. Monarchs and heroes, sages and lovers, these gallants are not. Fashion has many classes and many rules of probation and admission; and not the best alone. There is not only the right of conquest, which genius pretends, — the individual, demonstrating his natural aristocracy best of the best; — but less claims will pass for the time; for Fashion loves lions, and points, like Circe, to her horned company. This gentleman is this afternoon arrived from Denmark; and that is my Lord Ride, who came yesterday from Bagdat; here is Captain Friese, from Cape Turnagain; and Captain Symmes, from the interior of the earth; and Monsieur Jovaire, who came down this morning in a balloon; Mr. Hobnail, the reformer; and Reverend Jul Bat, who has converted the whole torrid zone in his Sunday school; and Signor Torre del Greco, who extinguished Vesuvius by pouring into it the Bay of Naples; Spahi, the Persian ambassador; and Tul Wil Shan, the exiled nabob of Nepaul, whose saddle is the new moon. — But these are monsters of one day, and tomorrow will be dismissed to their holes and dens; for, in these rooms, every chair is waited for. The artist, the scholar, and, in general, the clerisy, wins its way up into these places, and gets represented here, somewhat on this footing of conquest. Another mode is to pass through all the degrees, spending a year and a day in St. Michael's Square, being steeped in Cologne water, and perfumed, and dined, and introduced, and properly grounded in all the biography, and politics, and anecdotes of the boudoirs.<br />Yet these fineries may have grace and wit. Let there be grotesque sculpture about the gates and offices of temples. Let the creed and commandments even have the saucy homage of parody. The forms of politeness universally express benevolence in superlative degrees. What if they are in the mouths of selfish men, and used as means of selfishness? What if the false gentleman almost bows the true out of the world? What if the false gentleman contrives so to address his companion, as civilly to exclude all others from his discourse, and also to make them feel excluded? Real service will not lose its nobleness. All generosity is not merely French and sentimental; nor is it to be concealed, that living blood and a passion of kindness does at last distinguish God's gentleman from Fashion's. The epitaph of Sir Jenkin Grout is not wholly unintelligible to the present age. "Here lies Sir Jenkin Grout, who loved his friend, and persuaded his enemy: what his mouth ate, his hand paid for: what his servants robbed, he restored: if a woman gave him pleasure, he supported her in pain: he never forgot his children: and whoso touched his finger, drew after it his whole body." Even the line of heroes is not utterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on the wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaves; some friend of Poland; some Philhellene; some fanatic who plants shade-trees for the second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders. And these are the centres of society, on which it returns for fresh impulses. These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of behavior. The beautiful and the generous are, in the theory, the doctors and apostles of this church: Scipio, and the Cid, and Sir Philip Sidney, and Washington, and every pure and valiant heart, who worshipped Beauty by word and by deed. The persons who constitute the natural aristocracy, are not found in the actual aristocracy, or, only on its edge; as the chemical energy of the spectrum is found to be greatest just outside of the spectrum. Yet that is the infirmity of the seneschals, who do not know their sovereign, when he appears. The theory of society supposes the existence and sovereignty of these. It divines afar off their coming. It says with the elder gods, —<br />"As Heaven and Earth are fairer far Than Chaos and blank Darkness, though once chiefs; And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth, In form and shape compact and beautiful; So, on our heels a fresh perfection treads; A power, more strong in beauty, born of us, And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old Darkness: ———— for, 't is the eternal law, That first in beauty shall be first in might."<br />Therefore, within the ethnical circle of good society, there is a narrower and higher circle, concentration of its light, and flower of courtesy, to which there is always a tacit appeal of pride and reference, as to its inner and imperial court, the parliament of love and chivalry. And this is constituted of those persons in whom heroic dispositions are native, with the love of beauty, the delight in society, and the power to embellish the passing day. If the individuals who compose the purest circles of aristocracy in Europe, the guarded blood of centuries, should pass in review, in such manner as that we could, at leisure, and critically inspect their behavior, we might find no gentleman, and no lady; for, although excellent specimens of courtesy and high-breeding would gratify us in the assemblage, in the particulars, we should detect offence. Because, elegance comes of no breeding, but of birth. There must be romance of character, or the most fastidious exclusion of impertinencies will not avail. It must be genius which takes that direction: it must be not courteous, but courtesy. High behavior is as rare in fiction, as it is in fact. Scott is praised for the fidelity with which he painted the demeanor and conversation of the superior classes. Certainly, kings and queens, nobles and great ladies, had some right to complain of the absurdity that had been put in their mouths, before the days of Waverley; but neither does Scott's dialogue bear criticism. His lords brave each other in smart epigramatic speeches, but the dialogue is in costume, and does not please on the second reading: it is not warm with life. In Shakspeare alone, the speakers do not strut and bridle, the dialogue is easily great, and he adds to so many titles that of being the best-bred man in England, and in Christendom. Once or twice in a lifetime we are permitted to enjoy the charm of noble manners, in the presence of a man or woman who have no bar in their nature, but whose character emanates freely in their word and gesture. A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form: it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. I have seen an individual, whose manners, though wholly within the conventions of elegant society, were never learned there, but were original and commanding, and held out protection and prosperity; one who did not need the aid of a court-suit, but carried the holiday in his eye; who exhilarated the fancy by flinging wide the doors of new modes of existence; who shook off the captivity of etiquette, with happy, spirited bearing, good-natured and free as Robin Hood; yet with the port of an emperor, — if need be, calm, serious, and fit to stand the gaze of millions.<br />The open air and the fields, the street and public chambers, are the places where Man executes his will; let him yield or divide the sceptre at the door of the house. Woman, with her instinct of behavior, instantly detects in man a love of trifles, any coldness or imbecility, or, in short, any want of that large, flowing, and magnanimous deportment, which is indispensable as an exterior in the hall. Our American institutions have been friendly to her, and at this moment, I esteem it a chief felicity of this country, that it excels in women. A certain awkward consciousness of inferiority in the men, may give rise to the new chivalry in behalf of Woman's Rights. Certainly, let her be as much better placed in the laws and in social forms, as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide so entirely in her inspiring and musical nature, that I believe only herself can show us how she shall be served. The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polymnia; and, by the firmness with which she treads her upward path, she convinces the coarsest calculators that another road exists, than that which their feet know. But besides those who make good in our imagination the place of muses and of Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs over and fills the house with perfume; who inspire us with courtesy; who unloose our tongues, and we speak; who anoint our eyes, and we see? We say things we never thought to have said; for once, our walls of habitual reserve vanished, and left us at large; we were children playing with children in a wide field of flowers. Steep us, we cried, in these influences, for days, for weeks, and we shall be sunny poets, and will write out in many-colored words the romance that you are. Was it Hafiz or Firdousi that said of his Persian Lilla, She was an elemental force, and astonished me by her amount of life, when I saw her day after day radiating, every instant, redundant joy and grace on all around her. She was a solvent powerful to reconcile all heterogeneous persons into one society: like air or water, an element of such a great range of affinities, that it combines readily with a thousand substances. Where she is present, all others will be more than they are wont. She was a unit and whole, so that whatsoever she did, became her. She had too much sympathy and desire to please, than that you could say, her manners were marked with dignity, yet no princess could surpass her clear and erect demeanor on each occasion. She did not study the Persian grammar, nor the books of the seven poets, but all the poems of the seven seemed to be written upon her. For, though the bias of her nature was not to thought, but to sympathy, yet was she so perfect in her own nature, as to meet intellectual persons by the fulness of her heart, warming them by her sentiments; believing, as she did, that by dealing nobly with all, all would show themselves noble.<br />I know that this Byzantine pile of chivalry or Fashion, which seems so fair and picturesque to those who look at the contemporary facts for science or for entertainment, is not equally pleasant to all spectators. The constitution of our society makes it a giant's castle to the ambitious youth who have not found their names enrolled in its Golden Book, and whom it has excluded from its coveted honors and privileges. They have yet to learn that its seeming grandeur is shadowy and relative: it is great by their allowance: its proudest gates will fly open at the approach of their courage and virtue. For the present distress, however, of those who are predisposed to suffer from the tyrannies of this caprice, there are easy remedies. To remove your residence a couple of miles, or at most four, will commonly relieve the most extreme susceptibility. For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue.<br />But we have lingered long enough in these painted courts. The worth of the thing signified must vindicate our taste for the emblem. Everything that is called fashion and courtesy humbles itself before the cause and fountain of honor, creator of titles and dignities, namely, the heart of love. This is the royal blood, this the fire, which, in all countries and contingencies, will work after its kind, and conquer and expand all that approaches it. This gives new meanings to every fact. This impoverishes the rich, suffering no grandeur but its own. What is rich? Are you rich enough to help anybody? to succor the unfashionable and the eccentric? rich enough to make the Canadian in his wagon, the itinerant with his consul's paper which commends him "To the charitable," the swarthy Italian with his few broken words of English, the lame pauper hunted by overseers from town to town, even the poor insane or besotted wreck of man or woman, feel the noble exception of your presence and your house, from the general bleakness and stoniness; to make such feel that they were greeted with a voice which made them both remember and hope? What is vulgar, but to refuse the claim on acute and conclusive reasons? What is gentle, but to allow it, and give their heart and yours one holiday from the national caution? Without the rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar. The king of Schiraz could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate. Osman had a humanity so broad and deep, that although his speech was so bold and free with the Koran, as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, some fool who had cut off his beard, or who had been mutilated under a vow, or had a pet madness in his brain, but fled at once to him, — that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the centre of the country, — that it seemed as if the instinct of all sufferers drew them to his side. And the madness which he harbored, he did not share. Is not this to be rich? this only to be rightly rich?<br />But I shall hear without pain, that I play the courtier very ill, and talk of that which I do not well understand. It is easy to see, that what is called by distinction society and fashion, has good laws as well as bad, has much that is necessary, and much that is absurd. Too good for banning, and too bad for blessing, it reminds us of a tradition of the pagan mythology, in any attempt to settle its character. 'I overheard Jove, one day,' said Silenus, 'talking of destroying the earth; he said, it had failed; they were all rogues and vixens, who went from bad to worse, as fast as the days succeeded each other. Minerva said, she hoped not; they were only ridiculous little creatures, with this odd circumstance, that they had a blur, or indeterminate aspect, seen far or seen near; if you called them bad, they would appear so; if you called them good, they would appear so; and there was no one person or action among them, which would not puzzle her owl, much more all Olympus, to know whether it was fundamentally bad or good.'heisquitemadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16477199984584789385noreply@blogger.com4