Dearest,
“After a considerable interval I am still willing to think that these commonplace books are very useful and harmless things, —at least sufficiently so, to warrant another trial.”
Those words are from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s journal (V; 1822 January 12), which I’ve always wanted to read but could never find a copy of. At long last, I got one – it’s a scan of a library’s set that was floating online. I’m not reading it from a screen, tho: no, never that. For recently our next-door neighbor gifted me his old printer, which came equipped with a full tank of ink: thus, I was able to make a hardcopy of Emerson. Now I’m finally reading his mind. My initial reaction is a hope that someday people will appreciate me as much as I appreciate him.
The edition that I got has an editor’s note before the above-quoted entry: “Emerson seems to have kept no journal for the last half of 1821.” It felt right to share these clippings now, as I return to my own commonplace book after abandoning it for a year.
All those months that passed . . . what have I neglected to tell you about? So many thoughts – I’ll try to safeguard them as they return to me. It will require at least a few entries to get them all canned. (I cannot stand to lose any ideas – if there’s a runaway, I gladly forsake ninety-nine good ones to chase after one bad one.) I’m glad that I didn’t waste my time painting or drawing or writing music or making a movie, since the arts are all dead, and the machines that preserved them are obsolete. . . .
I think I’ve noted this before, but I’ll say it again: Now talking pictures have gone the way of silent films.
Vanity of vanities, I say. Our technologies keep changing so fast, people can’t keep up. Plus, nobody has a memory anymore; so, if you bother to speak in a known language, none among the living can recall what you said. Therefore, to achieve communication, one must write to the unborn.
Look at Emerson: a teenager jotting in his notebook, beseeching his era’s deities or the dead (whoever might be willing to listen) to lend luck to his effort – meanwhile, I myself, two centuries in the future, am reading these same words with measureless esteem.
This is one of the reasons that I remain interested in the medium of text (despite its current unpopularity). For if you write something, even on a blog screen, as long as you eventually transfer the message to a more lasting substance, such as paper, someone someday might read it.
The written word transcends the conditions of life and death; it permeates the border of identity. In the epilogue to his biography Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown mentions that Possidius ended his own Life of Augustine with some lines from the gravestone of an unknown pagan:
Traveller, do you not know how a poet can live beyond the grave?You stand and read this verse: it is I, then, who am speaking.Reading this work aloud, your living voice is mine.
To behold and become genius! This is why it’s important that written works get saved. Words last longer on gravestones than mobile phones. Also, because we are mortal and therefore do not enjoy limitless time to spend reading absolutely everything, it is helpful to learn to distinguish the value of texts: to discern and honor those that are higher and richer over those that are lower and poorer. (My stance about rich and poor with regard to artworks differs wholly from my stance on the same with regard to people – I say: let us be aesthetically ruthless while socioeconomically compassionate – just as I am against warfare in physical reality, I side wholeheartedly with William Blake’s verse: “I will not cease from mental fight.”)
My brother Paul has two small children now: one is six and one is three. Being interested in the health of their imagination, I’ve spent my time reading a lot more so-called children’s books and authors of young-adult works than I did in those days when I was nephew-and-niece-less. For the record, I am against the segregation of children’s literature: I don’t think that there should be a subsection for junior readers; what Oscar Wilde said about morality and immorality, I echo for kids’ lit: Books are written well or poorly; that is all. I love much that is considered children’s writing – it seems just as rewarding for any adult; and I love the idea of youngsters reading, say, Gertrude Stein. I especially love the biblical stories in Genesis-Exodus-Numbers, and Samuel and Kings, because they seem to occupy both worlds at once: they mix childlike naivety with adult sophistication.
What I’m trying to say is, if it strikes you as frivolous to hear that I’m currently working my way through a huge tome that purports to collect all the fairy tales and stories of Hans Christian Anderson, you should blame my brother’s kids. Along with my sweetheart, each day I read a few of Anderson’s tales aloud. Today we happened to come to one that is more like an essay: it’s called “The Muse of the Twentieth Century” – since it seems to fit among this entry’s concerns about textual art being lost or remembered, and how each age treats strong or weak works, I’ll share a section of it here (translated by Erik Christian Haugaard):
. . . in a time like ours, poesy is only in the way, . . . we know full well that what our “immortal” poets compose will, in the future, exist, if at all, as scratchings on the walls of prisons, and be of interest only to the curious few. . . .
I will grant that there are still people who on a weekday—when they have nothing else to do—feel a need for poetry; and that when this “hunger” makes them uncomfortable in their precious organs, they send a messenger to the bookstore to buy four crowns’ worth of the latest poetry: a copy of the volume that has received the most laurel leaves from the critics. That is, if they are not content with the poetry that they get free from the grocer who wraps his wares in printed sheets. The publisher sells these pages very cheaply.
Cheapness is a virtue in an age as busy as ours. We have need of what we have, and that is enough! . . . Our time is too valuable and too short for games of fantasy.
It’s hard to tell if I’m interpreting all this with his intended tone, but I think I’m mostly on the same page as Mr Anderson. I like the notion of people “needing” poetry. Yet, how should we define that term? We could say: poetry is strictly a metrical arrangement of words; and we could add that it must rhyme . . . On the other hand, we could grant that a poem is merely a making: poetry is anything that has been made – that’s how I understand the word’s etymology. So an online-chat message or even a video game could be considered an instance of poetry; or at least we could say that these things contain poetic elements. And people seem to have a hunger for them. Moderners are willing to spend time on social networks, and money on interactive audiovisual fantasies; not to mention services that offer dramatic miniseries. But then we can start to talk about whether these works are strong or weak, especially when we compare them to other creations.
What I fear most is that great texts of high worth will get lost in the shuffle. For the public seems prone to misvalue its age’s best works.
In one of the “Memorable Fancies” from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, there is this moment that occurs during a conversation with two famous prophets, which has always left me pensive:
After dinner I ask’d Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel said the same of his.
The prophets are calmer about this than I would be. Where do they get their confidence! I don’t trust the sorting process of time. Not only do I fear that certain valuable creations could meet oblivion, but that the best creations might even get lost as a rule; like “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Early in Emerson’s journal [II; 1820 April 4th], he says:
. . . even after the invention of letters, much, very much, has never reached us. This we need not regret. What was worth knowing was transmitted to posterity, the rest buried in deserved forgetfulness. Everything was handed down which ought to be handed down. The Phenicians gave the Greeks their Alphabet, yet not a line of all which they wrote has come down, while their pupils have built themselves an imperishable monument of fame.
Am I the only one who feels wounded by this? “This we need not regret”? Why not?—I regret it! How can we say such forgetfulness is “deserved”? Whence comes the “ought,” in “Everything was handed down which ought to be handed down”? Who decides such things? I demand to be shown this Judge. I will have his peruke.
My desire is infinite. And my position is transparent: of course I’m just worried that my own precious energies will be ignored; that they will be abandoned to destruction. – Dear Public, don’t do this. Have a heart, Future Folk.
(I’m feeling loose now. I will end this loosely . . .)
And yet, if I get my way about being remembered, then, when I’m no longer Bryan Ray, I’ll be annoyed that Bryan Ray took up so much space. – So, on second thought, go ahead and let all my good works burn in the hellfire.
Imagine making your way through a vast crowd in a city and tapping a stranger on the shoulder to say: “Sir, I give you permission to ignore me.”
But seriously, I understand that these invitations to self-annihilation are too drastic in the opposite direction. Instead, take the middle path: Toss out any bones and fat that you find in my offerings.
This is as good of a place as any to remind myself what Matthew’s Jesus says:
Which of you by fretting, bothering, stressing out, and worrying can add one cubit unto his stature? (6:27)
That’s right: Only by learning to speak well in front of large groups can one grow taller. For, although God voted for King Saul to be the first U.S. president, he changed his mind after eyeing Abraham Lincoln.
People build up the world, and the world breaks down. There is as much distinguished work to be done intellectually in the present as there was in Emerson’s era. Do you desire to do any work? I’m a little jaded, myself.
But the fact that I’m sending you another epistle is proof that I’m willing to keep renovating our sandcastle. There is the tide, and there are waves; and old mother Death is up ahead, waiting for us faithfully. . . . What’s not to believe in?
Is the Christian Trinity something that we can all still argue about? . . . How about books, as a form of proselytizing; or rather in general: are they finally extinct? Instant-message me the details.
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