Each man’s joy is joy to me
Each man’s grief is my own
— Joan Baez, “No Man Is an Island”
Then said a rich man, Speak to us of Giving.
And he answered:
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
From a ceremony held at an LRY (Liberal Religious Youth) meeting in 1964, sixty years ago.
At the ceremony in my honor — I had served for a year as Chairman of the New England Regional Committee (NERC) — I was given two books with these dedications on the flyleaves.
The handwriting is that of either Ruth Wahtera or Sandi Mosher. They collaborated on choosing the books and passages to quote. The quotes are from the lyrics to the song “No Man Is an Island” and Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Kind words. I feel — modesty aside — that they were true. They saw something in me; empathy, concern for others.
The Word document posted here (above) is an excerpt from Chapter V of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, in which there is an exchange of letters between Rev, Edward Casaubon and Dorothea Brooke. Mr. Casaubon has decided to propose to Dorothea.
Mr. Casaubon’s letter is a great example of over intellectualizing the emotions (such as I myself used to do sometimes in my youth; reading about the life of distant others can help one to better understand oneself), and of verbosity. So that would could be said plainly becomes encumbered in exposition.
Note how Dorothea does just the opposite in her response, saying what needs to be said in just three sentences.
In the summer of 1984, I contacted Professor Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and asked him, was an article published in 1954 in Cahiers internationaux – Revue internationale du monde du travail his?
The full citation was: « La Conquête de l’Indochine et le capital financier (1873-1885),” Cahiers internationaux – Revue internationale du monde du travaill – n° 56-57, Mai-juin 1954, pp. 75-76.
It was published under the pseudonym Pierre Chavanay.
Le Roy Ladurie mentions this article on page 118 of his Paris-Montpellier: P.C. – P.S.U. 1945-1963 (Gallimard, 1982). He referred to an article which he did not give the title of that was published in the mid-1950s (“est paru au milieu des années 1950”).
“The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace”
By Erin Thompson
The New York Times
October 27, 2023
The piece is verbose, bloated, windy; and is way too long for an op-ed.
Generic writing characterized by simplistic formulations that are foreseen as sounding good to the target audience, but which, in themselves are simplistic and nonsensical. It’s equivalent to the type of writing (in different venues) known as psychobabble.
One can imagine (the writer is a professor) the writers of such essays being products of the educational system predominant now and which seems to have existed since the 1970s, in which English composition classes were watered down — and anything purporting to be a statement of a student’s views was judged to be worthy of an A, despite questions of intellectual rigor and what our English teachers in the 1960s told us to avoid: fuzzy writing and generalities.
Some of the broad, sweeping, meaningless assertions — devoid of any informational content or substance — are highlighted by me below in bold. The quotations are from Professor Thompson’s op-ed.
Last Saturday in a small foundry, a man in heat-resistant attire pulled down his gold-plated visor, turned on his plasma torch and sliced into the face of Robert E. Lee. The hollow bronze head glowed green and purple as the flame burned through layers of patina and wax. Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground.
[Roger W. Smith: re “Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground.” I highlighted this sentence because it is meant to affect us with a profound sensation as a poet or novelist might do — or, if not quite that — to achieve a rhetorical affect. like Martin Luther King Jr.’s “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.”
Here it is bathos.]
I stood next to Andrea Douglas and Jalane Schmidt, who had invited me to witness the last moments of the figure that had gazed down on Charlottesville, Va., from atop a massive steed from 1924, when it was installed, until 2021, when it was removed by the City Council. Dr. Douglas and Dr. Schmidt are the founders of the Swords Into Plowshares project, a community group that led a campaign to melt the statue down and use the metal to make a new public artwork. ,,,
Lee’s journey to the melting pot began more than seven years and two lawsuits ago, when a Charlottesville high school student, Zyahna Bryant, started a petition to remove the monument. “I am offended every time I pass it,” she wrote. “I am reminded over and over again of the pain of my ancestors.” The Charlottesville City Council voted to move the statue, but a lawsuit was quickly filed by a coalition of Confederate heritage supporters to keep it in place. A series of rallies by Klan members, white nationalists and others sought to protect the “world of gods and heroes like Robert E. Lee,” as Richard Spencer put it while leading a tiki-torch-lit march. …
Yet we never reached any consensus about what should become of these artifacts. Some were reinstalled with additional historical context or placed in private hands, but many simply disappeared into storage. I like to think of them as America’s strategic racism reserve.
What should we do with them? Just leaving them there for some future generation to deal with dishonors the intensity of emotions for all involved. But each possible outcome has costs and consequences. Each carries important symbolic weight. And no, we can’t just give them all to the Smithsonian.
The way our communities dispose of these artifacts may influence America’s racial dynamic over the next century, just as erecting them did for the hundred-year period now ending. Three years after George Floyd’s death, seven years after Ms. Bryant’s petition, 99 years after the monument’s installation and 158 years after the end of the Civil War, it’s high time we start figuring this out.
***
… Dr. Schmidt … described the Lee monument as “a lie from the time it was put in.” More than half of the residents of Charlottesville and the surrounding county were enslaved during the Civil War, meaning that “the majority of our community was elated when the Union troops came.” …
But as her perspective evolved, Dr. Schmidt no longer wanted to put Lee in a museum. She was thinking of something much more primal.
Confederate monuments bear what the anthropological theorist Michael Taussig would call a public secret: something that is privately known but collectively denied. It does no good to simply reveal the secret — in this case, to tell people that most of the Confederate monuments were erected not at the end of the Civil War, to honor those who fought, but at the height of Jim Crow, to entrench a system of racial hierarchy. That’s already part of their appeal. Dr. Taussig has argued that public secrets don’t lose their power unless they are transformed in a manner that does justice to the scale of the secret. He compares the process to desecration. How can you expect people to stop believing in their gods without providing some other way of making sense of this world and our future?
Swords Into Plowshares might have been the first to propose melting, but other communities are working out their own creative visions for Lee’s afterlife. …
Covering this story over the past few years, I’ve come to realize two things. First, when a monument disappears without a ceremony to mark why it is coming down, a community has no chance to recognize that it has itself changed. (Ideally the ceremony is public, but because of safety concerns, the melting I attended was not.) Second, if you are outraged that something’s happening to your community’s heroic statue of Lee, you’re not going to be any less outraged if the statue is moved to some hidden storeroom than if it’s thrown into a landfill. So if all changes, large or small, will be resisted, why not go for the ones with the most symbolic resonance?
[Roger W. Smith: “the melting”: this is new jargon indeed, a neologism that is ridiculous … what is “a melting?: .. is it of the same order of words as a christening or a seance?]
That’s why the idea to melt Lee down, as violent as it might initially seem, struck me as so apt. Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity. The way we remove them should be just as emotional, striking and memorable. Instead of quietly tucking statues away, we can use monuments one final time to bind ourselves together into new communities. …
***
A very different process is consuming the world’s largest Lee, who rides, 76 feet tall, across the granite cliff face of Stone Mountain, just outside Atlanta. …
…
Lee’s face was the last piece to go into the crucible. Given how often the monument and its ideals were celebrated with flames — from Klansmen’s torches to the tiki torches of white nationalists in 2017 — it seemed fitting for flames to close over the monument.
Reader comments touched upon the question of destroying a work of art. I feel that this is regrettable and depressing to contemplate. It’s similar in my mind to the removal of the Theodore Roosevelt Statue from in front of the Museum of Natural History three years ago.
A few random comments from the current Washington Post article:
* * *
What you’re missing is that it’s a work of art. Shall we destroy paintings of [Lee] and other people in history that we disdain today? A statue is no different. Did you read the story of Napoleon’s statue? He was forced out of France into exile. But the statue is art.
* * *
Somehow your reasoning feels disingenuous. When art causes maltreatment of another, it needs to be done away with.
* * *
The Lee statue was not a work of art. Art informs. Art brings joy and peace. Art is inclusive. This statue was erected during the height of the Jim Crow era to intimidate Black Charlottesville residents. Learn your history. And don’t begin that journey by looking at statues.
* * *
Are you aware that the National Portrait Gallery in Washington has a portrait of Benedict Arnold hanging on its walls? What’s the difference here? It’s a work of art, my friend. Put it in the Smithsonian.
* * *
You mean blasting off the images, like the Taliban did to the Buddha statues at Bamiyan?
They were good people. The highest moral standards and character. So respectful, appreciative of, and kind to other people. Taught their children such behavior by example.
They always said we love you all (four children) equally: the same. This sounded good, but wasn’t really true. Their affections fluctuated and were not consistent. They would admire and favor one of us for some particular attribute at one time or another.
My siblings and I were very fortunate to have had an intact and stable nuclear family with two parents in a stable, loving relationship.
My mother. Beautiful. Great taste and personal qualities. Refinement. The best values. Discretion and tact. Yet by no means a snob. Modest. So genuine with other people. Met them at the most common level, by which I mean sincere and genuine, not that she somehow condescended to be nice to her “inferiors.”
My father. Not easy to get a handle on. My siblings often get pleasure from portraying him as a rake and a boor. He was very far from that — there was a lot to admire. I myself never fully appreciated the good things. He wasn’t a great father. But he was, in his own way, a good role model.
Distant and inaccessible at times. Sometimes the exact opposite (a genial host and a kind of Santa Claus on holidays; gregarious and affectionate at such and other times). Devoted to work and my mother. Great with and well liked by people in general. His behavior in this respect set a very good example. That meant a lot — means a lot — to a boy. I had thereby some notion of maleness and manhood, which are important to have as one reaches adulthood.
It seemed in many respects that my nuclear family – this was the 50s and 60s – was straight out of the situation comedy Father Knows Best.
But it wasn’t that. My parents were far from perfect, and their insecurities and neuroses were a factor. (Of course, none of this was evident to me then.)
They weren’t snobs, but they were very insecure about, very concerned with, being well thought of by their peers. This was something that, by extension, we children were burdened with.
By all means, don’t do anything that might embarrass them. This was paramount. Doing wrong in this respect would bring disapproval and a tacit withdrawal or withholding of affection.
(It should be noted and acknowledged that this was a different time.)
One thing that I think was very fortunate then: and which, in retrospect, is the way I think things should be: My parents weren’t mean, and although they could be critical (not necessarily a bad thing, since they enforced and were setting standards), they were usually loving and kindly. They very much wanted us to reflect credit upon them (as I observed above). So much so that, as my former therapist observed, it amounted to a form of narcissism. But they actually left us alone a lot. Allowed us to just be kids.
I feel a lot of today’s parents don’t do this. Regarding this, I think I myself very much failed and missed the boat as a parent.
In my childhood, we kids went out and played. For hours on end. With no supervision or parental intervention.
Games such as Hide and Go Seek and Giant Step. Later, board and card games. Playing ball. Building snow forts. Going places. Movies. Comic books. The toy store and candy bars. Hanging out on the stoop or curbside. Telling tall tales and being out after dark.
Hardly any scheduled or programmed activities. Until things like Little League. (And, of course, school activities and sports, most of which came later). No play dates. No karate classes, golf or tennis lessons. (My older brother and I were enrolled in ballroom dancing classes; my parents undoubtedly thought young men should be taught how to dance. And my siblings and I all took piano lessons, with varying degrees of success,) Most afternoons and evenings (and summer vacation time) were open for free play and associating with friends, outdoors or indoors.
This in my opinion is crucial. Essential for individual development, for developing one’s tastes, ideas, and a personality.
Parents must let kids be kids. Not proto adults or achievers in residence. Not paradigms. Just goofy, loveable, inchoate little people. Soon to grow up on their own schedule and in their own way.
… the genius of the United States is … always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . the fluency of their speech their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul . . . their good temper and openhandedness
— Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass, first edition (1855)
EMILY: Good-by. Good-by, world. Good-by, my beautiful town … Mama and Papa. Good-by to … clocks ticking and … Mama’s sunflowers. And … food and … coffee. And … new-ironed dresses and … hot baths … and sleeping and waking. Oh, Earth! You’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
To note and wonder at each precise fact or thing about individual persons.
My parents, for instance:
baked apples
canned peaches and pears, pineapple
frozen strawberries
cinnamon toast
lobster
scalloped oysters
Christmas decorations and stockings
Christmas carols
the smell of a fresh bought Xmas tree
trimming the tree
Cesar Franck’s Symphony in D
Chopin
Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus
Beethoven’s piano sonata no. 27, opus 90
Jordan Marsh department store at Christmastime
Christmas candles
Thanksgiving
Easter eggs; dipping and coloring them with dye
snow shovels
snow tires and snow tire chains
Massachusetts beaches
Cape Cod
dogs
Tennyson; Idylls of the King
Hiawatha and Evangeline
George Gershwin
the Gospels
Protestant hymns
Frère Jacques
My Fair Lady, Carousel, Guys and Dolls, Brigadoon
asparagus
coffee ice cream (my mother)
ginger snaps
autumn leaves
pork strips (Chinese takeout food)
The Late Show
the funny pages (my father)
electric blankets
highballs, gin and tonics
chocolate pudding
Twenty Questions
pencils
dishwashers
clotheslines (my mother)
the four seasons
birthday parties and presents
gift giving
letters, cards, and thank you notes
reading
a summer cottage
conversation
Brueghel
coal bins
blueberry pancakes
French toast
radiators
steam irons, ironing boards
adages
fountain sodas; cherry or vanilla Cokes
frozen orange juice
fried and steamed clams
chowders
gum drops
hot chocolate
raisin bread
apple pie
corn bread
popcorn with melted butter
ZaRex
Jello
grape jelly
wax sealed jars
strawberry jam
pop up toasters
lawn mowing
trees (birch, beach)
flowers
people
These are some of the things that preserve the memory of my parents for me. Of others.
I regard it as not worthwhile to comb through the past looking for faults, which all of us have or had. The faults make us human, mean that we are so. Faults of our loved ones and ancestors. When they are or were alive, we have or had to deal with their faults. It is a somewhat different thing when we are talking about departed persons who were close to us.
It is in the form of an email which I sent last week to a rude correspondent who had contacted me on Facebook. She was interested in Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy. I told her I had a story about how I had obtained my own copy.
Please see attached cover of my old paperback edition of The Perennial Philosophy.
It was beat up and ink stained.
When I first came to New York at age 22, I worked for a nonprofit in a brownstone on East 18th Street.
I met a self employed printer there — he was older than me, middle aged — whom I befriended. I have written a tribute to him which is on my site
He came from a somewhat privileged background — had well established, educated parents — but he moved to New York and the Lower East Side, lived in an apartment for which the rent was $29 a month (!), lived by intuition and was not interested in money or status.
He was into mysticism, very much so; and what might be called New Age stuff. He had no use for doctors (never saw one).
He liked the book Diet for a Small Planet, which he gave me a copy of.
He cooked a lot of beans (delicious), which he bought dried, in a bag. I would visit him in his apartment and we would eat, drink, and talk. I met some of his good friends, who had similar lifestyles and views.
He influenced me a lot. We had great long talks and experiences exploring the City together, going to museums and taking the ferry. Long conversations in his third floor walkup, where we would drink beer, which he always served in a mug, all evening.
He was totally non materialistic and very generous. As a newcomer to New York, I didn’t know anyone and had scarce resources.
One day, we got to talking about the Aldous Huxley book. Here, he said, while I was leaving, and handed me his own precious copy. It was ink stained because when his printer was running, he would sit reading in a serene, contemplative state with a book in his lap.
His hands were inky from the printer. He bought his clothes at thrift shops and made it a point to wear black slacks because, he said, the ink stains on them would be less noticeable.
I already knew William Blake, who is sort of in the mystical tradition. I have read him intensely, but Huxley barely mentions him. I did not know about Meister Eckhart.
I am also attaching a portrait of my friend Bill. He had good aesthetic sense and introduced me to a lot of great films and to painters such as Edward Hopper. He had several artist friends, a few of whom I met.
The portrait was painted by Gregory Gillespie, a friend of Bill’s and well known artist. My wife and I saw the portrait once in a gallery on Madison Avenue. Bill, who is now deceased, was still alive then. The portrait was priced at $40,000.
P.S. — Here is an excerpt from my tribute to Bill:
Bill Dalzell was one of the first people I got to know after moving to New York City. I will never forget his kindness to me. My friendship with Bill was a long and enduring one.
If you got to know Bill well, as I did — if you were privileged to know him — you will probably know the following things about him, and, if you do, will know that they are all true.
He never cared about externals. Dressed simply. Lived by intuition. He followed politics closely but was fundamentally an apolitical person.
He believed absolutely in the spiritual, in mysticism, and in bona fide psychics such as Edgar Cayce and the medium Grace Cooke, author of the White Eagle books. He was interested in the writings of mystics such as Meister Eckhart — in the case of Eckhart, in the concept of detachment or disinterestedness: renouncing self-interest to attain spiritual enlightenment.
These sites may be of interest to the general reader.
There is much already posted or under development on my Whitman site that draws upon Whitman scholarship and biographical materials, often rare. Therefore, the site will be of value to scholars. There is also much that will provide enjoyable reading for the non-scholar who either knows Whitman already or would enjoy getting to know his works better. The foregoing comment applies in general to my sites. I try to be readable and interesting and also, where appropriate, to draw upon my extensive reading and research.
The Dreiser site is both scholarly and aimed at the general reader. The Sorokin site may appeal mostly to scholars and students of issues and history connected with Sorokin’s life and works.
contains observations about the craft of writing and principles of rhetoric, derived from my professional experience and study, reading, and training. It is potentially of value and interest to anyone who appreciates good writing.
Of interest may be the way in which I draw upon my extensive reading to illuminate my observations. For example, current journalism (I read three or four newspapers daily) and American and world literature. Current issues related to language and usage in a political contest are of particular interest to me.
I thought of something to add which may sound boastful. I have made good use of my study of languages – namely, French, Spanish, Latin, and Russian; and some German — instruction in which in high school and various universities I am very grateful for. This has informed my knowledge of literature and made possible much scholarship; and one will find in a few of my posts my own translations and readings and sources in other languages. For example, there are posts drawing upon works in other languages, and posts in which I refer to passages from literature both in the original and English translation. I think this adds to the potential interest as well as the value of my work to a broad audience of readers.
And unperceived unfolds the spreading day,
Before the ripened field the reapers stand
In fair array, each by the lass he loves,
To bear the rougher part and mitigate
By nameless gentle offices her toil.
At once they stoop, and swell the lusty sheaves;
It was the fall of 1968. I had a job as an assistant gardener on a 37-acre estate in the town of Brookline, Massachusetts, which is right outside of Boston.
There were three of us assistants – me, Jack, and Jim; plus Peter, the head gardener, who was Dutch. Jack was my age. Jim was an elderly Irish guy still employed. On warm days he wore a floppy straw hat.
The fall was splendid, as only New England falls can be.
To my surprise, one morning we were told we would spend the day haying.
You have big wooden hay rakes. The sun has dried the tall blades of grass. You rake and the dried shoots (the hay) stick in clumps to the rake.
One of us workers was driving a flatbed truck. You throw the hay over the side onto the back of the truck. You have to shake some of it off and keep shaking until the hay is all dislodged.
The truck drove to a shed, backed up, and the hay was dumped into a hayloft by raising the back of the truck.
It was pleasurable work in the warm sun. And now I knew what haying entailed.
Golden memories. The poem brought them to mind today.
(Well, maybe haying and reaping aren’t quite the same thing, but they’re close enough.)
