Literary Criticism and Me

I’ve written about literary criticism before, and about I have problems with it. Some years ago I had an exchange at the Absolute Write forums about this. The other person said, “Literary criticism, and critical theory, are ways of reading texts that are interpretive, rather than evaluative. One way of thinking of criticism is to look at it as a reader attempting to find personal meaning in a text, to discover how, and why, a text (a poem, a song, a novel, a letter, an advertisement) does or does not "work" for that reader.”

For many years I critiqued poems at four different Internet poetry sites. I figure I’ve critiqued more than 1,000 poems. A couple of sites have become defunct (one at least lost to hackers), and if I never copied or printed my critiques on those I’ve lost them. So be it. I did a lot of critiquing.

However, literary criticism escapes my understanding. “Interpretive, rather than evaluative” this more knowledgeable person said. I’m not sure what to do with that. Interpret what the author said, but don’t evaluate it. I don’t know how to separate the two. This is probably what got me afoul of so many English classes in my school years.

I’m just about finished reading a small literary criticism about Thomas Carlyle. It’s written by a University of Kansas professor, the cobbled notes of a class he taught. The book is Thomas Carlyle, a Study of His Literary Apprenticeship, 1814-1831, by William Savage Johnson (1911). Johnson shows how the various parts of Carlyle’s philosophy and doctrine began appearing in his early works, though they were not fully articulated until later works. I think this is the second time to read this. I think I began it once before and abandoned it. It’s only 73 pages, and right now I’m on page 64, so less than 10 pages to go.

I imagine I’ll finish it, but I’m not enjoying it. Perhaps Johnson is too deep for me. Or perhaps literary criticism, as practiced by thems that do it, is beyond me.

All of which is causing me to rethink my currently-shelved Carlyle projects, and wonder if instead I need to just trash them. The one I was farthest along with was a study of his short book Chartism. This was to include: background of the conditions in Britain that caused him to write the book; selections from letters before and after writing and publication; the book itself, with my editor’s notes added to help a 21st century American audience to understand it; all the reviews (that I can find) that came out around the time of publication; various reviews and interpretations of the work right up to the present era. Some of these would require release of copyright to include them in my book. I also figured on including an essay or two of mine (yet to be written) of my own literary criticism of the work.

However, based on what I now know of literary criticism, I think this is a dead project. I’m not saying I will never resurrect it, and at this stage I’m not discarding all notes and deleting all files. But I’ll have to get a whole lot of writing, intellectual, and publishing mojo back before I’ll tackle this again.

Weekends Are For Rest?

That's what we're told, right? Weekends are for rest, and leisure. For the Christian (devout or cultural), Sunday is meant to be a day of rest. We sometimes substitute a day of leisure for a day of rest. Of course, a person who works all week with their mind might find the mind most rested by partaking in rigorous physical activity. A person who works all week at a physical job might need to rest their body and engage their mind during the weekend.

Well, how can I report on the stewardship of my weekend? I'm not sure it was all that restful. On Saturday I was up reasonably early. The first hour is somewhat of a blur. I went to The Dungeon, but don't remember accomplishing very much. After that it was a combination of clean-up in the house and stock trading work. It was a rainy day, and outside work was impossible. Lynda and I watched two stock trading webinars, one in the late morning and one in the late afternoon. This is part of our assignment on the new stock trading education program we are in. We had much more than that to do, but that was what we could accomplish. We also had to work on setting up an account with the brokerage arm of the educational service we're in. This took much longer than expected, but we got it done. However, something still seemed wrong, as we couldn't access the many features we were supposed to. Time required that we put this off. Plus, we figured it would mean a call to their tech service, which isn't open on the weekends.

Another major task was to clean the kitchen table. This becomes a dumping ground for all kinds of things: mail until it's gone through; mail we don't know what to do with; Lynda's mom's papers waiting to be filed; piles of receipts waiting to be filed; sometimes food items or dishes from a meal eaten there; and countless other things. I had said Friday that we really needed to clean that. So Saturday morning I decided I'd do my part. I went through all the mail, and was able to get rid of most of it. I went through Esther's papers and discarded or neatly piled those still needing attention. Lynda went through her stuff as well. I won't say it's perfect, but it is definitely much cleaner than it was. Less than an hour of additional work and we could use it for a family meal.

Next, since Lynda was planning to leave for Oklahoma City on Sunday (for a while it might have been Saturday, but lack of progress toward that goal made Sunday the day), preparations for that was part of our Saturday work. That, and other cleaning needed around the house.

Around 2:00 p.m. I made our weekly Wal-Mart grocery and prescription run. That took an hour, plus more including putting things away. That evening Lynda had a meal in mind to fix, different than the one I was planning on, but a good one. I helped her with it and we had a nice combo dish for the meal. Meanwhile I had to begin preparing to teach Life Group on Sunday. I had 40 pages (27 catch-up; 13 this week) to read in the book we're studying, and then a lesson to prepare from it. I read it, and found that this week's chapter fed into a lesson that took less time to prepare than average. That brought us through the evening, and off to bed.

Sunday was busy with prep for church and Life Group, church, teaching Life Group, and helping Lynda find things, pack, load, and get on the road. She did so at 2:45 p.m., at which time I went to The Dungeon. I first pulled up the brokerage account. They asked me to provide a little more information for my profile. Once I did that, and tried to access all those features, I was able to. One task down! I took an hour to learn their platform, and to customize it for comfort of the eyes and for some things our mentor wants us to have on it. Then it was time for stock chart study. I had about 100 charts to try to get through by 8:00 p.m. Monday evening. I worked diligently at it for a while, though being unfamiliar with this new system of evaluating stock charts, I reviewed them in both the new system and the one I've been using. A couple of hours and I had 33 charts reviewed, and my mind was mush. Clearly I wasn't going to finish that evening. Also, Sunday was my day to blog here, but I wasn't going to be able to do that either.

So I said the heck with it. I needed to take the rest of the evening off. Rather than pull out the good food from the night before, I ate junk and watched Sunday night football. Not content with just watching, I pulled out the Nook, and between plays I resumed my research into the letters of Thomas Carlyle, identifying on a list whether they have references to the compositions he was working on. I did that between plays, so obviously it wasn't done very efficiently. But I managed to get through a couple of dozen letters.

Then, at 10:30 p.m. or so Lynda called from OKC, wanting to discuss some things about this new trading program and what our mentor expects. We talked through that, though it required me to return to The Dungeon and pull up certain things. We spent half an hour or so on that, then it was back upstairs to see forecasts of the severe weather expected in the night, and off to bed.

To sum it up: My body doesn't feel properly rested due to lack of an exertion outlet due to the rain, and my mind doesn't feel properly rested due to few opportunities to disengage it over the weekend. However, I was refreshed by the excellent worship and study with God's people, and with the reading in our study book. Looking ahead, may next weekend provide proper rest and rejuvenation for body and mind, added to that for soul and spirit.

Nothing to Write

Today is my day to post to this blog. Unfortunately I have nothing to write. We've been expecting rain since around noon, but then they changed the forecast to say we wouldn't get any till around 9:00 p.m. this evening. It finally started a few minutes ago, just in time for me to walk out to the car without a jacket. That's okay. Clothes, skin, and hair all dry without being damaged. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my papers from becoming wet.

Today I spoke to the engineering seminar class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. This is a weekly, 1 hour class that features practicing engineers coming in to talk about a significant project. Back in August the call came in to me to try and set something up to support this professor and his class. I wanted someone else to do this, but got exactly zero responses to my e-mail, so I did it. Actually, I got one response to my e-mail: on Tuesday of this week—just a little late. I talked about the engineering challenges with the Crystal Bridges Museum, focusing more on the flood control issues than anything else.

The class had around 30 people attend. I knew two of them: students who interned with us this past summer. Actually, I knew an older man who attended. He's a practicing civil engineer in Fayetteville, where the U of A is. I recognized him, but couldn't remember his name. He came up after the program and introduced himself, and I recalled where our paths had crossed before, perhaps 8 years ago.

Tonight Lynda and I will participate in another live training webinar for stock and options trading. Following recommendations from this service, I placed a trade this morning that would go up in a down market. It gained close to 20% in the sharp downturn today. Had I not been on a conference call when the market opened, I could have made even more. I got in after 9:15 instead of at 8:30.

Other stock trading training will consume a lot of time over the next week, and even up to six month's time, as we work through this training. I'm hoping the time commitment will taper off some after the first two weeks, but we'll see. People who know about this have asked me when I'll write. I tell them I don't expect to write anything for the next 6 months. Should an hour or two a week present itself for writing, and should I have sufficient brain power left to actually work on something, my order of writing work will be:

- prepare Father Daughter Day for publication and publish it
- research my next Thomas Carlyle book, and begin working on the essay I'll include in it
- get back on my civil war book in the Documenting America series.

I should probably look to short stories, given that I'll have so little time, but that would mean beginning another project rather than working on a present one, and I don't think my head would stay together if I had another project to do.

Well, the rain has stopped; it's time to go home and see about supper and webinars and dream about leisure. Not much of a post, I know, but it's what I got today.

Milestones in the last week

That's what's happened to me: several milestones over the last five days. I don't know that my brain will allow me to make a lengthy discussion of these, so let me list then, then come back to them and see if I have the wherewithal to add commentary.

• Participated in my first 5K event last Saturday, April 5
• Was able to learn G.I.M.P. enough to be able to create a cover for a print book
• Had a good enough regular check-up at the doctor that he has reduced the frequency of my check-ups to every six months instead of three months.
• Figured out two sticky problems at work. Neither is done yet, but the way is clear to both of them.
• Had the book cover I created accepted by CreateSpace, and I was able to order the proof copy.

Concerning the 5K, I need to make it clear that I participated, I didn't run. One of the routes I take on one or two weekend days is 5K, so I knew I could finish it. Based on that route, I was hoping to beat 50 minutes in the competition. Then last week I went to the track and did a two mile hard run, to see how I might do. Based on that I had an unofficial goal of 48 minutes. I finished the event with a time of 45:44, last among men in my age group, but I felt good about it. I jogged about a minute or two during the race, maybe even three minutes, and that seemed enough to help me get my time down.

I discussed G.I.M.P. in my other blog, and won't take too long here. It's a graphics editing program, not at all intuitive to use. Over four days of the last seven I worked my way through it, and was able to put together a cover for the print version of Thomas Carlyle's Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles. I turned that in Tuesday night, and Wednesday afternoon received the e-mail from CreateSpace saying that the cover (as well as the interior, which I had already formatted a few days before) met all specs needed for printing, and they could proceed. So my first print cover was acceptable. I ordered the print, and can't wait to see how it looks on the book.

With my blood sugar measurements as low as they've been for years, and still trending down, the doctor was wanting to give me four months between check-ups instead of the normal three. But that doesn't work so well for prescriptions filled on a quarterly basis. So I suggested that I continue to come in for my lab work quarterly, but that I see him every six months. If the labs show any sign of trouble, either his office or I can schedule a visit. He thought that was a good idea, so it's done. I won't see the doc again, except for the labs, until October, which will be my annual physical.

And, one other thing that's positive this week is getting up to three book sales for the month. I sold one e-copy of Documenting America, one print copy at work of Operation Lotus Sunday, and an e-copy of the Carlyle encyclopedia book. I'm not really expecting to sell many of this oddball, public domain book, and to sell even one so soon after publication is good.

So I'm feeling good about things right now. Next will be to finish my novel-in-progress, to make a proper cover for The Gutter Chronicles (including a print cover), and to do a print cover for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Then it's onward to who knows what after that.

Put off...put on: Ephesians 4:17-32

How interesting that today's Life Group lesson should be about Ephesians 4:17-32. We continue our in-depth look at this wonderful epistle by Paul. Interesting because of how the subject matter dovetails with my current research into a literary figure of the 19th Century. The passage that particularly caught my eye was:

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

The apostle's metaphor is subtle but clear. The image is of changing clothes. He says put off, whereas today we would say take off, and put on. The intent is, I believe, unmistakable. Clothing ourselves is an activity that everyone does, and we all can understand. It's also something deliberate. The cleansing from sin that comes at the moment of salvation is a supernatural thing, brought about from God's mercy through Jesus' sacrifice, at the moment we request it. That request is made evident by a stated sorrow for our sins and intention to turn from them and towards God. We can't gain our own salvation without God, as Paul has clearly said earlier in Ephesians.

But now he seems to be saying that this putting off of the old man and putting on the new is something we control. It is a deliberate action on our part. Paul goes into more specifics. Put off falsehood is the first. Yes, that seems right, that truthfulness is something within our control. We don't need a divine intervention to make that happen. Every day, in every conversation, we decide 1) to not lie, and 2) to tell the truth. We take off a garment, perhaps a hat, an old faded falling apart one, and put on a new one, fresh from the store.

That's not to say that it's easy, or that we don't need to ask for help, both human and divine. We do, especially if falsehood (or any of the other things that Paul writes about after that) has been a habit for a long time. In that case our own strength will fail us, over and over again. We need human help through stronger Christian friends and accountability partners. We need the extra strength that God gives when only we ask. With these, changing our spiritual clothes should be possible, and the new garments, once put on, will never fade, soil, or wear out, if only we continue to wear them.

Now, concerning the other factor about this. I've reported here, and at my other blog, that I'm researching the writings of Thomas Carlyle. He was a British writer who lived from 1795-1881, writing some amazing works of non-fiction. He wrote literary criticism as well as cultural and political pieces, though he really wasn't primarily a political thinker/philosopher, though that was certainly part of his portfolio. He was one of the biggest literary names in Victorian England.

One of Carlyle's most creative works was an odd book titled Sartor Resartus. That would be translated The Tailor Retailored. It was a the life and opinions of a fictional German tailor/philosopher, and it centered around the philosophy of clothes. Now, I've tried reading this work, and have never yet gone all the way through it. The language is strange, and I find I need maximum powers of concentration to read it with any understanding. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised the ideas in it, while lamenting that the vehicle (i.e. the writing style and oddness of diction) would put people off and limit his readership, but that it would eventually find a large readership. This is exactly what happened. Even today, people read and analyze Sartor Resartus as an important, break-out work.

So, understanding that I have yet to read it, this comes from reading a few critiques of it, with writing easier to understand than the book itself. The gist of it is that clothes both hide and reveal. They cover our nakedness, but reveal the body at the same time, and further reveal something about the person wearing the clothes. In the case of Paul's metaphor of putting off the old man and putting on the new, the clothes reveal something about us. The clothes of hard hearts, insensitivity, futile thinking, darkened understanding reveal that life practices that are opposed to the clothes of righteousness. The clothes reveal. Yet at the same times the clothes conceal. The clothes of righteousness and holiness can be donned by one who knows neither of those, who walks in the old ways yet puts on clothes that look like a new self.

Paul talks always in the pair of suits of clothing. Putting off the old isn't enough. You must also put on the new. So it's not enough to put off falsehood. You must also speak truthfully. Paul also gives a reason for this: we are all members of one body. You must no longer steal; you must work with your hands. Why? In order to share with those in need.

I enjoy Paul's metaphors. As much as I struggle with developing metaphors for my own writing, I need to study this. And obviously not just for the metaphor, but also for the building up of the new man I became almost forty years ago.

Figuring Out Dropbox

Lately I’ve been experimenting with Drobox. I’ve used this Internet-based tool before, but sparingly. The graphics designer who did the covers for Doctor Luke’s Assistant and the print cover for Documenting America saved them to Dropbox, because of their size. I recovered them from there, did whatever I had to do with them, but didn’t explore Dropbox much. When I needed those covers either completed or tweaked, the next designers I gave them to got the files via Dropbox.

So as I understand it, Dropbox is a service wherein you can store files on someone’s server, somewhere in the world, and access the files at any time from any computer. It also becomes a place to store files you want backed up. A poor man’s backup, if you will. The service is free, up to some number of mb or gb. For a fee I’m sure you can get a whole lot more storage space.

I’m concerned about this thing, this cloud thing, if that’s the right word for it. If I store my files at Dropbox, where are they? They are on a hard drive, only God knows where, with my name on a small piece of it. So long at the Internet is available, I can access them. If the Internet is not available, they are as good as lost, whereas if they are on a hard drive at your location, you can access them so long as you have electricity and a working computer. But, lack of Internet is temporary. They say that in the future the Internet will be so much more ubiquitous than it is even now that lack of Internet will be almost unheard of. Maybe 10 to 15 years down the road.

But I like things to be where I’m at. Paper books and files are nice. A hand-held e-reader is nice. I’m concerned when things are out of my sight. However, I have a current need regarding my writing, and decided to see how Dropbox might help me.

My current work-in-progress is a non-fiction, public domain book titled Thomas Carlyle’s Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles. For the first time all twenty-one articles will be gathered into one volume. Plus I have a short introduction and some footnotes added. I’m at the point where I’m doing some incredibly picky stuff to the text, to get it closer to perfect, and will soon shift to formatting for print book and e-book. I’m working on it at the office and at home. My normal procedure is to save it to whatever computer I’m working at, with the day’s date attached to the file name, and e-mail it to myself. Then I can access it via e-mail at the other computer. Except sometimes I forget to do the e-mail. I get to the other computer and realize I don’t have the latest tweaks to build on, and I lose whatever time I was going to spend on it.

That would be eliminated if I would just save it to Dropbox, in addition to the computer I’m working on. Then, so long as I have the Internet, I should be able to access it from anywhere. Right? That’s the theory. And so far it worked. Yesterday I worked on it a little at work, saved it to my office computer, saved it to Dropbox (for the first time), and then worked on it at home in the evening. I repeated the saving process. Today I did some additions to the Introduction and proofreading that resulted in a few changes. I saved it to my computer here, changing yesterday’s date to today’s, then saved it to Dropbox with that new file name. I don’t know if circumstances will allow me to work on it at home tonight. But if they do, I will have the latest file there to pull-up and work on. If I remember to save it to Dropbox, tomorrow I’ll have the latest file here at work.

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll come to like this. It should maximize my writing time, but most importantly eliminate downtime. And that’s a good thing. And it will assure that the most recent copy is always backed-up to the Internet. And that’s another good thing. I’ll keep using it for a while, see how I like it. So far, so good.

What Will Forty Years Do?

I've written before on this blog about how I admire the works of Thomas Carlyle. How I entered into the Carlyle labyrinth is a long story. I've read less of his words than I wish I had, and those that I have read aren't really representative of his entire writing career. So far my reading of Carlyle has been mostly concentrated on his early writings, those before his first truly original book-length work, Sartor Resartus.

Part of this is a book I downloaded, the first volume of the love letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle. This volume covers from when they first met in 1821 to sometime in 1824, still two years before they married. I'm currently reading in early 1824, having only 53 pages left to read (some of those being an appendix of some length).

In a book with the name of love letters you would not expect to find inspiration for writing, unless it were something for a romance or a romantic relationship within another book. But in a letter that Thomas wrote to Jane on January 8, 1824, I found some inspiration. Here's what Carlyle wrote.

Life is not so short as that amounts to: I believe no literary man ever spent the fiftieth part of his time or attention upon literature. Cowper was near his grand climacteric before he began to write at all. Think of what forty years of diligence will do, if you employ them well! I swear to you there is no danger: you want only a little experience to give you confidence in your own powers.

I'm less than two months away from turning 62. I didn't start writing creatively until I was 49, almost 50. Carlyle was not yet 30 when he wrote this. He could realistically expect to be writing for 40 years. Can I?
Forty years from age 50 is age 90. I could still be around then. Statistics say that's unlikely, but not impossible.

Or say I only had 30 years, taking me to age 80. That's certainly possible. Eighteen more years of writing from where I am now, fourteen of those after retirement from the day job. It's an appealing proposition.

I tend to want success now, with success defined as having readers. Not readers who are friends and family (not that I don't want them), but readers who are strangers, who found me because someone else who's a stranger to me recommended my books or stories.

I'm finding a few of those strangers. My total book sales are up to 249 (of twelve titles), and I don't think very many of these were sold to family, a few more to friends. Someone is finding my books, about five per month.

So I suppose now is not the time to give up. Most days I want to. Success seems quite unlikely, regardless of how many ideas I pour out and craft. Ah, but I won't give up just yet. I'll hope for forty more years to do this. If that's too much to ask for, I'll take the eighteen and see what I can do. At two books a year, and maybe another four stories a year, I could have 120 items available for sale by the time I hit 80.

For now I'll be content to shoot for that, quietly, one item at a time.

Amazed by Technology - part 1

Among the many books I plan to write is one titled Technology Drives Everything. I may stick (Almost) between Drives and Everything, for I'm sure some matters of the heart still move regardless of how technology does.

Technology rose up this week, yesterday and today, in a good way. I must digress first and set the scene. As I've written before I am an occasional student of the life and writing of Thomas Carlyle, English author, philosopher, and prophet. I can't for sure remember how I was drawing into his circle, but probably from books in my possession passed down from Uncle David Sexton to my mom to my dad and now to me. A couple of them were by Carlyle, and for a while I picked up some more from used book sources.

Every now and then I leave the writing route I should be on and follow Carlyle down various forest paths, finding a work, reading a few paragraphs, downloading it (if available to do so), finding a reference, downloading that. Sidelines Syndrome always compels me, however, to do more than read Carlyle or about Carlyle, and so I must write about him. The engineer in me wants things to be organized; hence I'm working on a bibliography of Carlyle's writings based on the date of composition rather than the date of publication. For me the composition is more critical than the publication date, though the latter is of interest as well.

In this pursuit I first came across some website that had various Carlyle compositions listed. I blended these into one typed document. Slowly I learned of more, and added them. I discovered some older bibliographies that were available for download from Google books, downloaded them, and continued to expand the blended bibliography. I learned that everyone seemed to be most interested in the chronology of publication, not of composition.

But let me stop a moment. I downloaded those bibliographies, and had them immediately available. What an incredible convenience, and boon to research. Using my current research subject as an example of the old way, on 3 November 1825, Carlyle wrote to William Tait, a London publisher, and told him about books he needed for his project for Tait to translate German novelists into English. After discussing the German writers and which of their works he wished to translate, Carlyle got down to the need of having copies.

If I had these books ready by me, I should reckon the undertaking half completed. Perhaps it may not be so difficult to obtain at least a perusal of them. Most, nay all of them, are marketable works, and I could read, without injuring , them. By your commercial connexions I trust you may be able to procure me the greater part of them: I shall expect your tidings on the subject soon....

He referred to an earlier letter, to a different colleague, who he wanted to procure books in Germany and ship them to him.

One work about Carlyle that I saw references on at several places is Sartor Called Resartus, by G.B. Tennyson. Published in 1966, it is still under copyright protection and hence not available for viewing on the Internet. Checking my usual places for purchasing books, I found it could be had for about $20 plus shipping, a little more than I wanted to pay at the moment. Inter-library loan costs $2.00 per book, whether they can get it or not. But would such a book as this, not exactly mainstream for scholars and readers, even be available through ILL?

I was looking somewhere for this book on line when I noticed a button for checking the book out in WorldCat. I keep forgetting that this service is out there. It's a joint catalog of many, many libraries. I don't know if it's limited to the libraries of academia, or if it includes public libraries. Through this I learned that the University of Arkansas library in Fayetteville, 25 miles down the road, had a copy. Except I have no relationship and no privileges there, and the cost of a 50 mile round trip was about equal to purchasing the book.

Expanding my search I found it in other places where I might go sometime or where I have friend, including the Stephen F. Austin University library in Nacogdoches Texas. A writing colleague in nearby Lufkin graduated from there. But I soon found it was as far for her to drive as it would be for me to go to Fayetteville.

Then I thought of my alma mater, the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. In the WorldCat I searched for libraries close to my old area code. URI popped up as having the book. Given that URI is 1,400 or so miles away, I thought of my friend Gary who works there. Taking a chance, I e-mailed him Tuesday morning to see if he had library privileges and if he would undertake getting me copies of certain pages from the book. Three e-mails later and the book was checked-out, the pages scanned, and an e-mail brought them to me in Bentonville Arkansas. Reading those pages caused me to realize I could use some others, and those were in my inbox the next morning.

What an incredible convenience this is! The very thing that Carlyle wrote several letters on, obtaining resources for his writing, I was able to work through in a matter of four hours. Yes, it took correspondence with a couple of friends to make it happen. That part was the same as for Carlyle. But the communications went two ways in minutes, and the needed work was procured in a few hours, whereas for Carlyle it took months for exchanging correspondence, finding books to borrow to avoid expensive purchases, waiting for those books to be shipped, etc.

Technology is an incredible thing. I'm glad to be living in this era.

Understanding Thomas Carlyle being tired of his own books

As I've mentioned on this blog before—many times, actually—I'm a fan of the writing of Thomas Carlyle, especially his letters. Two themes come through these over and over. One, despite his writing thousands of letters, he thought himself a delinquent correspondent and apologized in seemingly every letter about how slow he was in responding. He must have learned more ways of saying "sorry I didn't reply sooner" than any other writer.

Second, Carlyle frequently writes how tired he is of working on his own books. It seems to have been that way on every one of them. Sometimes it began at the research phase, sometimes partly through the writing, but always by the time he get to checking galley proofs. Here's a sample.

In fact you must know, Sir, that one month is going to satisfy me here: the people, particularly the Lady, seem still more tired of the place than I am; they are going down to Edinr about the first of Feby to stay there for a month—meaning to return again, and then set out for London in April. I do not return. Meister must begin printing whenever I arrive, and I must push it thro' as fast as possible. Woe to this Schiller! I have absolutely taken up a horror at it. Would you believe that I but began it three nights ago, and am not yet half thro' the first copy of it. My mind absolutely will not fasten on it...

Meister refers to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, which Carlyle translated to English and published. "This Schiller" refers to the Schiller's Life and Writings, the work Carlyle was currently engaged with. However, this wasn't a book from scratch. Rather, it was taking his own articles on Schiller and his writing that had already appeared in The London Magazine and reworking them a little, with some expansions, and putting them in book form. In other words, he was mainly editing them. And three days into the process he was already tired of it.

As I say, Carlyle seems to have felt that was on each book—at least so far as my reading of his letters can detect. I find that I'm a little like that too. On Thursday last I finished revision three of my current novel, originally titled China Tour but finally titled Operation Lotus Sunday. I say it was finished because I added the last scene to it, a scene suggested by my prior readings. On Friday I went through my wife's suggested edits, made decisions on each, and added them to my copy. On Saturday I typed them all, officially declaring Rev 3 as done and ready for printing.

Why print it? Because I had enough changes from Rev 2 to Rev 3 that I think I need to read it one more time, reading it quickly, as a reader hopefully would, and see if the story really hangs together well, and if there's any repetition I haven't noticed before. In truth, I'm almost tired of reading it. I think I can get through it in two days of dedicated reading. But I've read it through about three times already. I don't know that I particularly want to read it a fourth time, at least not right now.

But read it I must, and hope that my mind will fasten on it. I'll start that either tonight or tomorrow, and see where it takes me.

The Hero as Priest

Man as Deity and Deity as hero were in the past. So was prophet, as in modern times men speak for themselves, not for God. So said Thomas Carlyle in lectures in the series On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Originally given in 1840, these were published in 1841, and were popular in their day. Among Carlyle’s many works, this book is as popular as any.

The hero as poet, it seems, survives into modernity, though I think Carlyle believed that all the good poets were in the past. Now he turns to the hero as priest. The priest, he says,

is a kind of Prophet; in him too there is required to be a light of inspiration, as we must name it. He presides over the worship of the people; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people; as the Prophet is their spiritual King with many captains: he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through this Earth and its work. The ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen Heaven; interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in a more familiar manner unfolding the same to men.

So if I understand Carlyle correctly, he believes the priest functions almost as an under-prophet. The offices are much the same, with the prophet having a wider reach.

Many have presided “over the worship of the people” functioning as “a voice from the unseen Heaven.” Tens of thousands, nay probably millions, have done that even just considering those sanctioned by some higher-up authority to do so, discounting the many who, without having recognized credentials, have been intermediaries between God and man. What makes one priest a hero and another not? Carlyle settled on Martin Luther and John Knox as samples of the hero as priest. Why them? He tells us, in clearer language than he often does.

Yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as Reformers than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when this same way was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfaring and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labor as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers.

So, the priest who serves in quiet times, who does nothing more than raise his congregation to new spiritual heights, who helps them to do good and avoid evil, is no hero to Carlyle. To be a hero you have to have served in tumultuous times and been the equivalent of a warrior priest. Luther certainly fits the bill. As the one who finally found a way to break the grip on the people of a corrupt Roman Catholic Church, he is generally considered the founder of the Reformation. Others had come before him: Wycliffe, Hus, even perhaps the Waldensians, are part of the Reformation equation.

But clearly Luther paid a huge price, as did Knox. Not that Hus didn’t: he was executed. Wycliffe was also persecuted, though I can’t remember his outcome. But those two didn’t have success to the extent that Luther and Knox did. Remember, for Carlyle to call someone a hero, they must first have accomplished some great thing, then they must be sincere in how they approach life and their accomplishments. Luther and Knox, about whom I know significantly less, fulfilled these criteria.

This was a good chapter, derived from what must have been a good lecture. I don’t want to get into this too much. My brain is trending toward mush right now, and I have many hours left in the day before I sleep. Possibly I’ll get back to this chapter and add another post. But if not, know that it’s well worth reading.

Carlyle: The Hero as Poet

On May 12, 1840, Thomas Carlyle gave his third lecture in his series on Heroes. Titled "The Hero as Poet," it looked into the lives of Dante and Shakespeare. His previous lectures, he said, dealt with the production of older ages, "not be be repeated in the new." Divinity as hero and prophet as hero would never happen again, he said. Mankind had advanced to the point where he no longer stooped to such low intellectual things. Or, "if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendor, Wisdom, and Heroism, are ever rising higher...."

Ah, but the poet! He believed we would always have poet-heroes. "...the hero...can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will according to the kind of world he finds himself born into." Concerning the poet, what would it take to turn a poet into a hero—or maybe a hero into a poet. Carlyle says

I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, Philosopher;—in one or the other degree, he could have been, he is all these.

So I conclude he picks Dante and Shakespeare, not because of the greatness of their poetry, but because of the greatness of their lives. Or, perhaps he would say their poetry was great because they were great men and heroes, capable of fulfilling many roles in life. He doesn't completely dismiss aptitude, saying both of these men obviously had aptitude for poetry. And in good Carlylean characteristic, he can't help but bring Goethe into the equation when discussing aptitudes. I think, by the time I finish all of Carlyle's works, I shall be very tired of hearing about Goethe.

Dante he (Carlyle) likes because he rose from some limitations to be able to write his book. Although he was born upper class, the political machinations of Florence drug him down. He was, however, a bright light in a dark age. His life was from 1265 and spanned a mere 56 years, into into the next century, which was squarely in the Dark Ages (or Middle Ages if you prefer). Thus his accomplishment was even bigger because of these handicaps. And best of all, Dante was sincere in what he did. As mentioned before, sincerity is akin to greatness as the mark of the hero.

Shakespeare, Carlyle says, "has given us the Practice of body" whereas Dante "has given us the Faith or soul." Shakespeare worked as the Renaissance was unfolding, which gave him advantages Dante didn't have. Although, Macaulay said that the mark of a greater poet was a great work produced in a civilized age. Easy for a poet to produce a great work in a dark age, harder in a civilized age. How exactly a civilized age is supposed to hinder a poet is something I haven't quite figured out, but I'm not calling Macaulay wrong. Shakespeare clearly wrote in an age more civilized than the age of Dante's labors. Those more astute than I will have to figure out which had the greater environmental handicap.

Carlyle believes Shakespeare could have done so much more than he did, in terms of politics or public leadership. The greatness of his verse demonstrates this. In the end he says, "Yet I call Shakspeare [sic] greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer."

As was his way, Carlyle did not confine himself to these two giants of the world of the poets. Goethe, as I already mentioned; Mirabeau, Tieck, and even Napoleon are all mentioned in almost the same breath as the hero as poet. These lines of reasoning aren't developed much, though perhaps I need to go back and see about that.

This is a lecture/chapter I wan to re-read, in quiet tranquility, with no deadlines or distractions. I think it has much more to inform me that I haven't comprehended.

Carlyle: The Hero as Prophet

Some time back, I guess a couple of weeks ago now, I did the first part of my review of Thomas Carlyle's Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Here's a link to that review.

The second lecture was "The Hero as Prophet. Again, it seems to me the title would make more sense as "The Prophet as Here", but, as I wrote before, it was Carlyle's lecture so he was free to pick his title. And he was free to pick his prophet for this lecture, which was Mohammed, prophet to Islam. Ths lecture begins:

From the first rude times of Paganism among the Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very different epoch of religion, among a very different people: Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men!

Man had evolved in his intellect so that man was no longer considered a god. Now he was merely a spokesman for God, or a god. The older way of thinking was an error, though we can understand why primitive man made the error given his limited development.

Why Mohammed? And why would he be considered a hero to a non-Moslem? Carlyle explains.

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can.

As the lecture unwinds, Carlyle keeps hitting home that Mohammed was no quack: He was sincere in his beliefs and teachings. We see that this is the most important thing to Carlyle as he defines who is and who is not a hero. It's either the first or second cut to get on the short list for hero consideration. Was he a great man was the first criteria, great in the sense was he a leader of men, a shaper of events? Certainly Mohammed qualifies. Second, was he sincere in his belief, not just trying to lead men astray with teaching he knew was erroneous but which he spread to mankind for profit or prestiege or for sadistic self-enjoyment. Mohammed, says Carlyle, was sincere. He makes the cut.

Later Carlyle disparages the Prophet's agenda, his method of spreading it (or more correctly the method his early followers used to spread it), his personal life (to a lesser extent). He speaks ill of the Koran, saying it is a jumbled mess, mostly out of order, that has no great place in literature. Despite living for five years in Moslem lands, I've never read the Koran. It's on the reading list, but not high at the moment. He also speaks negatively about the Arab culture in which Islam first flourished. He calls them "the Oriental Italians," to contrast with the Persians, who were "the French of the East."

I have trouble with Carlyle's reasoning here, though it's difficult to say, given Carlyle's definition of a hero, that Mohammed shouldn't make the cut. Was he sincere? Did he really believe Allah had spoken to him? Given all the difficulty the residents of Mecca gave him in the earliest days, you'd have to think he was sincere; otherwise he surely would have given up.

I'm not sure sincerity is a good criteria, and I guess that's my problem. So long as we are leaving out the ordinary man and woman from the ranks of heroes, wouldn't correctness of results by the great man have something to do with it? How can we believe someone to be a hero when we also believe them to have been guilty of gross error in their thinking and practices? I cannot.

This was a clearly written chapter. It gave me a lot to think about. I actually want to go back and re-read it, as a fair amount I read in a semi-distracted state. Perhaps I'll come a little closer to Carlyle's way of thinking if I can apply focused gray cells to his words. If I ever manage to do that, perhaps I'll come back and modify this. My conclusion at present: This is a chapter well worth reading, even though I disagree with its conclusions.

A Carlyle Bibliography

As I work through this period of studying the works of Thomas Carlyle, a period that I'm not really sure how long it will last, I've been troubled by the lack of a bibliography of his works. A quick Internet search didn't turn one up, except for a listing of works on biography sites. I used them to put together a blended list, along with the table of contents of his Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. This gave me something I felt good about.

As I went on, however, reading something at a website here or in one of Carlyle's letters there, I discovered my blended bibliography wasn't complete. I more complete Internet search turned up a Google book of The Bibliography of Carlyle, by R.H. Shepherd. This was published in 1881, just after Carlyle's death. In this I found most of what I had, though some that I didn't. I also had a couple of things not in Shepherd, which is not very reassuring.

More searching, in on-lie used book sites, resulted in finding Thomas Carlyle: A Descriptive Bibliography by Rodger Tarr, from the 1980s. It's under copyright so is not on-line as of yet. I found it for a reasonable price, so I ordered it and expect it to arrive Monday or Tuesday.

I'm not really sure what I'll find in the Tarr book, nor where I'm going with this. One interesting thing is how the Shepherd bibliography is based mostly on publications, not on writing. So Carlyle's works are listed based on when they were published. So for example Carlyle's Reminiscences, which was published in 1881, contains memorials he wrote from 1832 to 1867. But since they were never published until 1881, that is where they are listed. Something like Reminiscences of My Irish Journey, which he wrote while on the journey in 1849 aren't listed in Shepherd, because they weren't published until after Carlyle's death. I'll be interested in how Tarr handles this.

I'm more interested in a list of Carlyle's writings in chronological order of when they were written, not when they were published. The published date is of interest also, but not as much as the writing date. Perhaps bibliography refers to publishing and there is another term I should be using for writings. I'll have to research that.

Another curious factor, at least for Shepherd and the on-line bibliographies is to not include any works that the writer produced that weren't published, as well as to ignore (or be unaware of) writing from early in the career, especially those items not included in the complete works compilation. I suppose that sort of makes sense. If Carlyle thought some of his early writings were not of good quality, he wouldn't want them in his collected works. But that then makes those writings harder to find.

Ah, well, lots of work ahead. I haven't yet run out of steam in this area of interest. I'll see where it takes me.

Carlyle: The Hero as Divinity

And now, back to Thomas Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. I provide the link to an e-book download from Google Books, a no-cost download.

Carlyle's six lectures in 1840, becoming the six chapters in the 1841 book, are:

LECTURE I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.
LECTURE II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM.
LECTURE III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE.
LECTURE IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM. LECTURE V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.
LECTURE VI. THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM.

It seems that these titles almost have to be the opposite. Instead of "The Hero as Divinity" it should be "The Divinity as Hero". But no matter. It was Carlyle's lecture series and he could choose the titles.

Still trying to draw from the opening of the book to better determine Carlyle's definition of a hero, we find this in his opening remarks.

...Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.

This gives us his purpose in the topic of the lectures, but not really a definition. Well, maybe a sort of definition. Heroes are the leaders of men; the modellers, patterns, and creators of what the mass of me do or attain. Um, I don't think so, but that is a topic for the end of my series of essays.

Odin, he says, may or may not have been a man. He was the chief divinity of the Norsemen, competing with Thor and maybe a few others for that title. Carlyle says Odin was an actual man who, through ages of verbal story telling, became revered as a god. Others disagree. I won't go into specific references, but those who have carefully fact checked (to use the modern term) Carlyle's work say no, the evidence that there ever existed a man named Odin who became revered as a god is next to nothing—perhaps spurious, even. Odin most likely never existed. He was the Norse equivalent of Zeus or Apollo; a legend, nothing more.

But Carlyle believed at that time that the religion of a man was of utmost importance in knowing the man. "It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's. ...the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is." So it is natural that Carlyle would start with the divinity as a hero. After all, in his way of thinking, a man is known by his religion, and the great men order the steps of man, so a god as a hero—perfect sense.

But I could make little sense of this chapter. Carlyle was obviously well read in the Norse myths and legends, and in their paganism. For pages and pages in the book he goes on, representing who knows how long in the lecture, about how paganism was okay, given the intellectual and religious development of mankind at that time. Okay, I can accept that. We developed as a people over centuries, are still developing (or going backwards, depending on your viewpoint, but even backwards is a development of sorts), and can always be better in our thinking and our doing.

Henry Larkin, in his 1886 work Carlyle and the Open Secret of his Life, compares this lecture to Carlyle's mystical work Sartor Resartus, and says:

This first lecture is in many respects the most magnificent of the series; and yet, in the express purpose of it, it is the most inconclusive  and disappointing. Nothing can be grander of its kind than the introductory portion; mainly embodying the transcendental ideas of 'Sartor' but with the now added emphasis of his own personal endorsement. No less satisfactory is the light he throws on the old Norse Mythology, still living amongst us in strange, unexpected ways.

The use of language is magnificent. The conveying of useful information is lacking. That's my assessment of the letter, so to some extent I agree with Larkin. Maybe this was another of those times when I was reading in my off-peak hours. Re-reading portions of this I see the rhetoric soaring, and feel that the substance is something I should better grasp, and so should read it again. But I will not, at this time. Maybe in a future time. And if I do, it will be from printed pages, rather than from my e-reader, to see if that makes a difference in my comprehension.

Carlyle: Heroes and Hero Worship Part 1

While I was on the road trip, rather than write, rather than edit, rather than read a pleasure book I had with me, rather than read to research for my next non-fiction book, rather than study my Life Group lessons, I read for research into Thomas Carlyle, specifically his 1840 book On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History. The language and sentence structure is a bit old-fashioned, but actually the reading wasn't too difficult. I don't yet know what I want to do with Carlyle over the remaining years of my writing career, but until I do I'm reading him.

The term "hero worship" has always grated on me, because I believe our only object of worship should be God. However, if I think of the term more as admiration I can deal with it and absorb it into my brain.

First, or course, is to come up with a definition of a hero. I read deep into Heroes without understanding Carlyle's definition. In fact, I think it was chapter 4, corresponding to the fourth of his six lectures, before I figured it out. However, going back and re-reading from the beginning, I find this a little way into Chapter 2, with it also stated (thought less clearly) in Chapter 1.

But of a Great Man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it is incredible he should have been other than true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is first of all in right earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

So to Carlyle, the most important thing for a man to be considered heroic is that he be sincere in his pursuits. The opposite, in his term is a quack: someone who practices quackery. By this he means someone who is trying to hoodwink those he interacts with, perhaps trying to appear sincere but knowing none of what he says or does is based on truth. While the term quack is nowadays applied to medical charlatans, Carlyle would apply the term to someone like Bernie Madoff, who bilked investors out of billions, because Madoff knew he was conning people. I suppose, had Madoff sincerely thought the type of investments he was making for his clients would have paid off, if he really believed what he was doing was right, he would be a candidate to be a hero even if his clients lost billions.

I find this a strange definition. Or maybe I find that Carlyle overstates it. In his mind, and in his lectures and book, if a man is sincere and does great things then he is a hero. He doesn't need to be right—just sincere. He doesn't need to help people as opposed to hurt them—he just needs to be sincere as he goes about his work. If his work is riddled with errors, or if he actually hurts people as a result of what he produces, so long as he did this sincerely he can be a hero. So Mohammad, who Carlyle says was in error in his doctrines and approach to spreading them, was a hero because he sincerely believed he received those doctrines from God. Rousseau, who he pans as having few accomplishments other than spurring the intellectual foundation for the French Revolution, was a hero because he was sincere in what he did.

I'm sorry, but for me that's not enough. Sincerity may be one component of being a hero, but accomplishment for good is of greater importance in my opinion. The sincere man who hurts people, such as Rousseau, is no hero. The prophet who leads a billion people into theological error, thought he sincerely believes what he preaches, is no hero.

I'm going to take a few posts to give my impressions of this book. At the end I hope to say a few things about heroes in our own generation, and to give some examples. Of course, I've planned such series at this blog before, and often fall short of my own expectations. I'm currently in the last chapter of the book, with about 90 e-book pages to read. We'll see how this series goes.

Still Learning From Thomas Carlyle

I'm probably wasting my time reading Thomas Carlyle. Not really just reading him, but studying him. Right now I'm reading his 1840 book On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic Heroic in History. This is the first time I've read that, and I'm 330 pages into its 523. I'm also doing some formatting of his book Past and Present, with an eye toward putting it into a certain printed volume of his works.

I started reading Past and Present years ago, maybe 2005, but put it aside for other things that were more important at the time. This is an interesting book. Carlyle had finished Heroes and was working on a book on Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War of the 1640s.

Something going on in England troubled Carlyle, so he broke off from the Cromwell book and in a hurry put together and published Past and Present. I read the first couple of chapters of the Cromwell book some years ago, and as I say am reading the Heroes book right now. So three books, from 1840, 1842, and 1844 have passed from Carlyle's mind to his pen to my mind fairly recently.

It's interesting to see the common themes in these books, even common wording and overlapping ideas. In Heroes Carlyle frequently makes reference to German literature. Early in his career Carlyle wrote extensively  on German literature. In Cromwell Carlyle used "Dryasdust" as a euphemism in the Introduction. In Past and Present he uses "Dryasdust" as well, though I'm not sure yet of the context. I suspect, as I go through his writings, I'm going to find much more overlap.

Which leads me to a memory from Saudi Arabia and North Carolina. This will take a while to explain. In Saudi it was very hard to find good English language reading material. One day I stumbled upon the library in Dhahran, the Aramco community. In that library I found an atlas of the stars. Actually, it was an atlas and sort-of encyclopedia of astronomy. When I was at Dhahran for business, I would look for occasions to spend an hour in the library. I studied certain things in the encyclopedia, learning about galaxies, galaxy clusters, and all the stars closest to us.

Fast forward a few years to our time in North Carolina. In the Asheboro public library I found two magazines of great interest. One was on astronomy, the other on NASA and the space exploration it did. I found many excuses to go to the library (fortunately my children were at a good go-to-the-library age then), and so we were in the library often. Those two mags were my main reading material in those visits.

In the astronomy mag I read an article about a certain astronomer. The interview explained how getting telescope time at a major telescope was difficult. The other problem was getting the time when whatever it was he waned to see was visible. He might have to wait months if not a year for telescope time at the right time. But when he did, he planned out his work, maximized his time, and then spent months going over the photographs. So meticulous planning led to six hours in the key place which led to months of deciphering research/work which then led to many publication.

Carlyle did the same thing as this astronomer did. His early work on German literature found much more use for him than just those translations and articles. Carlyle may have over done it some, however.

Which leads me to...what thought? That I need to do a good job of planning my research, of finding time in the "right seat" at the right time. Then to use that research over a long period of time to write whatever it is I right. I think I'm on the right path with this, but probably need to do a better job of it.

In another post, I may explore this habit of Carlyle of overdoing the same themes from book to book.

The hope that future days will be calmer

Those who have read my blog for a while know that I read in the writings of Victorian British writer Thomas Carlyle, especially his letters. For a previous post drawn from Carlyle’s writings, see here. Or you could search by “Carlyle” in the search feature of this blog. Here, let me make it easy for you.

Yesterday I went back to the Carlyle Letters Online for little break in the work day. I decided to do some reading in the letters of the period when Carlyle was preparing his German Romance: Specimens of Its Chief Authors, with biographical and critical notes, 4 Vols., which was published in early 1827. I began with a few letters in 1825 where Carlyle wrote to someone about his research and early writing, and skipped through the letters for the next two years, judging from the index to which correspondents he was likely to write about this. I ended with several letters to the publisher in the month Carlyle finished the writing and was reviewing proofs of the early volumes.

Today I decided to go back further in time, to do the same thing in the couple of years leading up to Carlyle’s first full length book, a translation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. That was published in 1824, so I began in 1822, again just skimming through the list of letters to his different correspondents. In February 1822 I saw a letter that might have something about it, in its earliest gestation, and so pulled it up. 

It did not have anything about the Wilhelm Meister, but I found this buried in it. Nor do I in the smallest abandon the hope that future days will be calmer than those that have passed and are passing over us. Depend upon it, my good friend, there is a time coming, when tho' we may not be great men, we shall be placid ones; when, having mended by much toil what is capable of mending in our condition, and resigned ourselves to endure with much patience what in it is incapable of mending, we shall meet together like toilworn way-farers descending the mountain cheerily and smoothly which they climbed with danger and distress. “We will laugh and sing and tell old tales” and forget that our lot has been hard, when we think that our hearts have been firm, and our conduct true and honest to the last. This should console us whatever weather it is with us: the task is brief; and great is the reward of doing it well.

 

Given all that, I admire Carlyle’s confidence. “Future days will be calmer…tho’ we may not be great men, we shall be placid ones…toilworn way-farers descending the mountain cheerily and smoothly which they climbed with danger and distress.”

I don't know for sure that Carlyle ever found those calmer days. At least, if you believe the complaints in his letter, he didn't. He wrote how he was a slacker when in fact he worked himself into ill health. He complained about every book he wrote, from the moment of conception till it was born to the world. As I wrote in a previous post, it seems that for every book he would describe it as a sorry enterprise, one he was anxious to be rid of.

I have to take and consider this advice, however, whether Carlyle actually achieved it or not. I'm still comining that mountain, not always cheerily. The cost in time and mental energy are sometimes almost exhausting. I go from completing this post to work on China Tour, hoping to get my 1,000 words written tonight—even though it's 8:45 p.m. already.

So, I will say along with Carlyle, the tast if breif; and great is the reward of doing it well. Oh, God, help me to embrace this and carry it through.

Carlyle on Carlyle

 

It’s been a while since I wrote anything about my studies into the works of Thomas Carlyle. That’s because it’s been ages since I even looked at them, or at least looked at them enough to find something to draw from them.

Last Friday, at a moment when I just didn’t feel like working, I went to the Carlyle Letters Online site and browsed. I looked at the year 1826, which was before he gained notoriety. I probably should have gone back to 1823, since that’s when he was probably working on his first major work. I forgot the chronology when I began looking.

But TC didn’t disappoint me in 1826. In a letter dated 31 July 1826 to William Tait, Carlyle talked about his then-current work, a translation of some German novels, but with lots of biographical information and commentary added. He was talking about this in letters in January that year, and every month down through July. On January 7 that year he said this about it to his fiancée:

Tait the [book]seller is writing to Germany for more matter: I expect to be very busy for the next three months. I pray Heaven the thing were off my hands; for it is a sorry piece of work at the best, and written nearly altogether for the “lucre of gain.”

Having read a hundred or so of Carlyle’s letters, trying to pick the times when he would have been busy writing a major work, I can say that for every book he seemed to have this hate affair with it. He said the book marred his health. He said the book was not going well. He said he might not finish the book. He said the book probably wouldn’t sell even if he did finish it. He said, as he neared completion, that he was glad to be about rid of it. I want to scream out, “Hey Tom, if you hate writing so much, why do you do it?”

But, I suppose it wasn’t writing he disliked; it was the process of turning research into a finished product that someone would print and others would buy and read. I’m not sure I can relate to that, but I can sort of see where he’s coming from. It’s not my experience, but could well have been his.

So in the July letter to Tait, Carlyle wrote this.

I this morning send off the last eight leaves of Ms. for our German Book; and as the Printers have only about ten sheets remaining to compose, I calculate that the whole matter will be off my hands in a few days.

I am happy to tell you that this work, which has given me some unexpected trouble, also gives me some unexpected pleasure, and that at the present moment I am far better satisfied with the general structure of it than when you first proposed the business I could even hope to be. What its fate with the reading world may be you are better able to predict than I; but at all events, I think we may offer our Book to the Public as a thing fulfilling what it promises; giving real German Novellists, the highest to be found in that country; and on the whole offering a considerably truer and more comprehensive glimpse into German Literature than any other yet offered in England.

So it seems, by the time this work was down to checking the galley proofs, that Carlyle found something to be pleased about. I’m glad of that. I would hope that most writers, when they come to the end of a work, will be able to say they can look back and feel it was a worthwhile project and something they can be proud of.

Me? I'm at the beginning of a project. The last seven days I started three novels, not really knowing which one I'm going to write next. I also thought I might start one non-fiction book and put that beside the novels, pick one project, and run with it. But whichever one I do next, I don't believe I'll ever regret writing it, or even express to another an exaggerated claim of wanting to be done with it. All things I have written so far have come closer to thrilling me, rather than wearing me down. May it always be so.

A Little More on Thomas Carlyle

I haven't written anything about Thomas Carlyle for quite a while. That's mainly because this whirlwind I call life hasn't allowed me to read him for a long time. Every now and then I pull out a volume of his correspondence with Ralph Waldo Emerson and look up some tidbit I half remember, or just read a pair of letters for enjoyment. Sometimes on a Friday afternoon at the office, when taking a break, I'll go to the Carlyle Letters On-line site and pull up one to read. I find it difficult to read these on-line, for some reason, and so rarely finish the letter I pull up unless it's a short one.

At Suite101.com the topic editor for the Great Thinkers topic posted on the forum asking members to write articles for her topic. I thought that Thomas Carlyle would probably qualify as a great thinker, and that maybe I could write an article or two about him, possibly generating a wee bit of revenue with subject matter I like. So about a week ago I pulled up one of Carlyle's letters, not quite at random. However, instead of reading it on-line, I did a quick copy and paste into MS Word and format for tight printing yet easy reading, and printed the letter. I took it home to read in the evening. Alas, way led on to way, and it was just a half hour ago, at work, that I started reading it.

And very quickly I remembered what I like about Carlyle. He is a phrase maker, a wordsmith, a poet when not intending to be. The letter I accessed was one Carlyle wrote Dec 24, 1834 to William Graham. I'm not quite sure who Graham was in relation to Carlyle, but I the letter was addressed to Scotsbrig, where Carlyle lived for a while. Part of the letter involved remembrances on the death of Edward Irving, who was a mentor to Carlyle and some kind of acquaintance to Graham. Here's part of what Carlyle wrote.

I can assure you, the sound of it sent new life thro' me, like a breath from old true Annandale in the middle of these Babylonian fogs. Surely friends should improve, on far better reason than wines, by long keeping! The very enemy that we might have for twenty years would almost become a friend. While death thins our ranks, mows down our stateliest, oh surely, surely let the survivors rank themselves the closer, and await what is appointed them not single but together!

Now that's phraseology, IMHO. The idea expressed in the middle of the quote, that friendship should improve with age, with better reason than wine improves with age, is a great idea. I don't know if that would be considered profound or not. I don't know that elevates Carlyle into the great thinkers category. But it's a great idea excellently expressed.

And that's why I like Carlyle: for his great ideas excellently expressed.

The Roller-Coaster Ride Continues

...I feel as of old that the only true enemy I have to struggle with is the unreason within myself. If I have given s[uch] things harbour within me I must with pain cast them out again.

Thus wrote Thomas Carlyle on August 27, 1833 in a letter to his brother John. I read this today, not for the first time, as I was doing some more research into the relationship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle. The article I wrote and recently submitted to BiblioBuffet (now word yet, BTW) dealt with Emerson's first letter to Carlyle after they met. I wanted to research more about their meeting, as background for the next of these articles or to perhaps expand and re-market the article already written. But I prate.

I found Carlyle's words to be exactly what I needed today, for again I'm on the writing roller-coaster ride. Despite adding several new articles to Suite101.com as of late, page views are not really growing (just a little, perhaps), and revenues have quit growing and are regressing. For Feb 7-9 I earned 10 lousy cents. For all my 64,800 or so words posted there in a little less than ten months, I've earned just over $60 dollars, not including the one contest I won. That's less than 1/10th of a cent per word, and less than $1.00 per article in total. The Suite gurus say $1.00 per article per month is the site average. I'm sure skewing the curve on the low side.

On days like this it doesn't seem that I should continue to write there, if at all. Why bother? Fiction is too difficult to break in. Bible studies are saturated. Non-fiction requires credentials. Poetry is a non-starter. Political essays are fun but where's the money in that? And freelancing requires so much work and so much patience and such a long lead time to earn any money or build any platform that it doesn't seem worth it.

The only thing that recommends writing to me is that I enjoy doing it. Is that enough?

Carlyle seems to have ridden the same roller-coaster I have, or should I say I'm on the same one he rode almost 180 years ago. That wasn't his first time. But is it "unreason within myself" to question whether this writing thing I so enjoy is something I should pursue for economic gain, or for ministry? I don't know. I guess I'll spend a couple of weeks considering this.

Meanwhile I will still write articles for Suite, so long as I have subjects to write on. This afternoon I wrote and published one about construction engineering; this evening I wrote and published one about pollution prevention at construction sites. I have perhaps twenty more articles cued up, some of the research already begun or done from my regular course of vocational duties. I don't know how long I'll keep it up, but I will for a while.

Although my novel in progress is open on my computer. I have a new poem rolling around somewhere inside my skull, waiting to land for a while at the correct side of my brain and in the correct lobe. A friend is reviewing one of my incomplete Bible studies, and I just borrowed a book from the pastor for research for another. So Suite better start making economic sense, if it wants me to continue.