Remembering October for Ed I

[John Cole]

A liitle note from Emerson:


But this beauty of Nature which is seen and felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, mountains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight, shadows in still water, and the like, if too eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and mock us with their unreality. Go out of the house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey. The beauty that shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October, who ever could clutch it? Go forth to find it, and it is gone: 't is only a mirage as you look from the windows of diligence.

[andyfox]

You New Englanders, with your Red Sox and your Emerson and your Puritans and your "scollops" and your necessary journey and your windows of diligence.

No wonder when one lands at Logan the pilot tells you to set your watch back a hundred years. [By the time the luggage arrives, it's be right again.]

/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Zeno]

John,

Civility will not be tolerated on this forum. You will be executed by chain saw. Please submit your death statement for review and report to Gestapo headquarters immediately. Thank You.

Heinrich Himmler.



PS. Enjoyed the Emerson quote. Thanks. Today, the wind is currently stripping the last of the aspen leaves, and with diligence, I might add.

-Zeno

[andyfox]

"Civility will not be tolerated on this forum. You will be executed by chain saw. Please submit your death statement for review and report to Gestapo headquarters immediately. Thank You. Heinrich Himmler."

Exactly what I was trying to say, only you said it with so much more. . . panache. As usual.

[John Cole]

Zeno,

Emerson is the antidote for Mencken's "The Hills of Zion," which I just finished reading for an independent study with a student.

Hell, I made the student read Emerson, too.

John

[Zeno]

Did not Poe have a row with Emerson? I'd bet the devil my head he did. I have hardly ever read Emerson - do you have a good essay to recommend, something that I could ease into without stretching my head too much?

The only antidote to Mencken is....more Mencken. /images/graemlins/grin.gif
The Hills of Zion is an interesting and amusing essay. On an almost philosophical note - orphic enthusiasm and bacchic orgies seem to creep (or are the opiate underpinnings of?) into almost every religion, in one form or another.

What a rip-roaring adventure to be in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. I recommend “Summer of the Gods” by Edward J. Larson as a good read about the history behind the trial and the ongoing debate. This book won some prize (Pulitzer?) in 1998.

Glad to hear Mr. Mencken has not been outlawed from the curriculum. If you insisted on freshman students reading some of his more controversial essays in class would you be executed, excommunicated, or exonerated? Just wondering.

Glad your back posting. Do try to be civil to balance out the other more shrill posters. Like that ass, Zeno.

-Zeno

[Ed I]

John Burroughs:

If I were to name the three most precious resources of life, I should say books,friends,and nature;and the greatest of these,at least the most constant and always at hand,is nature. Nature we have always with us,an inexhaustible storehouse of that which moves the heart,appeals to the mind,and fires the imagination,-health to the body, a stimulus to the intellect,and a joy to the soul.

[John Cole]

Zeno,

I'm doing this class for one student only as an independent study. Along with the essay by Mencken, we read essays by Thurber, Perelman, and Mary McCarthy's great essay "Soldiers in Uniform." I figured these were four strong voices to put together.

Emerson must be plunged into, but the place to begin is with "Nature," from which the quote I posted is taken. This essay, along with "Self-Reliance," influenced many American essayists--and still does.

John

[Zeno]

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I'll take Mencken's weltanscauung over Emerson's any day.

[Phat Mack]

You have managed to post something by Emerson that I enjoyed reading. Congratulations. I like reading about Emerson (The Flowering of New England, etc.), but Emerson himself has always left me cold. I imagine the people who have read Ulysses outnumber those who have waded through Self Reliance a hundred to one.

Hell, I made the student read Emerson, too.

Depending on the student's age, and your jurisdiction, this may or may not be considered child abuse.