Emerson’s insufferable
essays? Now just wait a damn minute here, Bucko! I don’t know enough about
Thomas Carlyle, but there is that suspiciously titled, Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, which I haven’t given
myself the experience of plowing through but I’d bet my bottom dollar it’s
infuriating, and there’s also all that Teutonic/Nordic worship business he’s known
for, and all that business about hero worship and the idea that history isn’t
made by communities of people acting together toward a common purpose but by
the personalities of influential men whose decisions command the course of
events. This led to Nietzsche’s “will to power” and the “Übermensch”, the
theoretical underpinnings (probably not entirely fair, but still) of Hitler and
Fascism. All of Carlyle and what followed from him an incredibly phallic and twisted
evolution into a disastrous patriarchal future we’re still not free of yet. Take,
for example, the recent exposé of Exxon’s deliberate decision to deny climate
change and start a campaign attacking the science, when their own scientists
were telling them back in the 70s what was happening and what they and Earth
could expect. These were self-styled CEO-Übermenschen whose greed and contempt
have done incalculable damage to us and our planet. Blame Carlyle. (I’m exaggerating
just a little. But he’s a detestation-worthy figure if you choose to hang even
a little guilt on him for what he perpetuated with such vigor.) Someday maybe I’ll
read his novel, Sartor Resartus, and see if I can tell what all the fuss is
about. I haven’t read Atlas Shrugged
either, though, and don’t feel like I’m missing too much at this point. I get
it. I don’t want it, but I get it. Atlas
Shrugged is radical-Conservative/Libertarian hogwash, though, that the
likes of our Republican politicians these days pay such homage to. That makes
it worse to me than a bad case of scabies. But I’ve always heard Sartor Resartus is supposed to be a
masterpiece, so I’ll hold off the snark since I don’t know what I’m talking
about. But really, Carlyle, “the Negro Question”? Ugh.
As for Emerson, reading his essay, “Nature,” marks one of
the defining moments in my literary formation. I’m a transparent eyeball
myself. Thoreau built his little cabin on Emerson’s land, and that’s probably
who he borrowed the axe from to build it. When you read enough Emerson, the
essays start melting together a bit. He more or less developed the same couple
ideas over and over, but they’re good ideas. B. would have hated them. They’re about God in the world. B. wasn’t all
that interested in the world. He wasn’t that interested in God either.
I don’t know who this DS 294 is addressed to. A woman, a
poet and critic—Elizabeth Bishop? Whoever she was, she didn’t like Carlyle, and
I guess she didn’t like Emerson either. Don’t know. The key point: by attracting
praise as an artist, she has automatically attracted enemies at the same time.
It’s a world full of snakes and louts out there, and writers can be among the
nastiest. B. loves the idea—can’t fool me!—that he had overcome the snakes and
louts and won the literary competition by asserting what a nebbish he is. We
didn’t see anything like it again until Bill Gates lucked into the contract
that launched Microsoft. I wonder, what would Carlyle think of the postmodern Überdork?
The hero-nerd? Actually, who cares? Carlyle was a jerk.
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