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material in the way of illustrations and allusions which they have given
him, but also for the creation of a moral atmosphere, a medium of thought
and feeling in which he can speak freely and with an assurance of
sympathy to a very wide circle of readers."
I need not stop to indicate the great poems in which Tennyson has so
often used Scripture. The mind runs quickly to the little maid in
"Guinevere," whose song, "Late, Late, so Late," is only a paraphrase of the
parable of the foolish virgins. "In Memoriam" came into the skeptical era
of England, with its new challenge to faith, and stopped the drift of young
men toward materialism. Recall the fine use he makes, in the heart of it, of
the resurrection of Lazarus, and other Biblical scenes. Dr. van Dyke's
"four hundred direct references to the Bible" do not exhaust the poems. No
one can get Tennyson's style without the English Bible, and no one can
read Tennyson intelligently without a fairly accurate knowledge of the
Bible.
In this Victorian group the last name is Thackeray's. He is another
whose mother trained him in the English Bible. The title of Vanity Fair is
from Pilgrim's Progress, but the motto is from the Scripture; and he wrote
his mother regarding the book: "What I want is to make a set of people
living without God in the world (only that is a cant phrase.)" It is certain
his mother did not count it a cant phrase, for he learned it from the
Scripture. The subtitle of his Adventures of Philip says he is to show who
robbed him, who helped him, and who passed him by. Thackeray got those
expressions from the Bible. Somewhere very early in any of his works he
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reveals the influence of his childhood and manhood knowledge of the
English Bible.
All this about the Victorian group is meant to be very familiar to any
who are fresh from the reading of literature. They are great names, and
they have differences as wide as the poles; but they have this in common,
that they have drunk lightly or deeply from the same fountain; they have
drawn from it ideas, allusions, literary style. Each of them has weakened
as he has gotten farther from it, and loyalty to it has strengthened any one
of them.
Turn now to the American group of writers. If we except theological
writers with Jonathan Edwards, Horace Bushnell, Henry Ward Beecher,
and their like, and political writers with Jefferson, Webster, and their like,
the list need not be a long one. Only one writer in our narrower sense of
literature must be named in the earlier day--Benjamin Franklin. In the
period before the Civil War must be named Edgar Allan Poe (died 1849)
and Washington Irving (died 1859). The Civil War group is the large one,
and its names are those of the later group as well. Let them be alphabetical,
for convenience: William Cullen Bryant, poet and critic; George William
Curtis, essayist and editor; Emerson, our noblest name in the sphere of
pure essay literature; Hawthorne, the novelist of conscience, as Socrates
was its philosopher; Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose "two chief hatreds
were orthodoxy in religion and heterodoxy in medicine"; James Russell
Lowell, essayist and poet, apt to live by his essays rather than by his
poetry; Longfellow, whose "Psalm of Life" and "Hiawatha" have lived
through as much parody and ridicule as any two bits of literature extant,
and have lived because they are predestined to live; Thoreau, whose
Walden may show, as Lowell said, how much can be done on little capital,
but which has the real literary tang to it; and Whittier, whose poetry is
sung the world around.
That makes only twelve names from Franklin to Whittier. Others could
be included; but they are not so great as these. No one of these could be
taken out of our literature without affecting it and, in some degree at least,
changing the current of it. This is not to forget Bret Harte nor Samuel L.
Clemens. But each is dependent for his survival on a taste for a certain
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kind of humor, not delicate like Irving's and Holmes's, but strong and
sudden and a bit sharp. If we should forget the "Luck of Roaring Camp,"
"Truthful James," and the "Heathen Chinee," we would also forget Bret
Harte. We are not apt to forget Tom Sawyer, nor perhaps The Innocents
Abroad, but we are forgetting much else of Mark Twain. Whitman is not
named. His claims are familiar, but in spite of his admirers he seems so
charged with a sensuous egotism that he is not apt to be a formative
influence in literary history. It is still interesting, however, to remember
how frequently he reveals his reading of Scripture.
Fortunately, all these writers are so near, and their work is so familiar,
that details regarding them are not needed. Two or three general words can
be said. In the first place, observe the high moral tone of all these first-
grade writers, and, indeed, of the others who may be spoken of as in
second rank. There is not a meretricious or humiliating book in the whole
collection. There is not one book which has lived in American literature
which has the tone of Fielding's Tom Jones. Whether it is that the Puritan
strain continues in us or not, it is true that the American literary public has
not taken happily to stories that would bring a blush in public reading.
Professor Richardson, of Dartmouth, gives some clue to the reason of that.
He says that "since 1870 or 1880 in America there has been a marked
increase of strength of theistic and spiritual belief and argument among
scientific men, students of philosophy, religious 'radicals,' and others." He
adds that while much contemporary American literature and thought is
outside the accepted orthodox lines, yet "it is not hostile to Christianity; to
the principles of its Founder it is for the most part sincerely attached. On
the other hand, materialism has scarcely any hold upon it." Then follows a
very notable sentence which is sustained by the facts: "Not an American
book of the first class has ever been written by an atheist or denier of
immortality." That sentence need not offend an admirer of Walt Whitman,
for he "accepts both theism and the doctrine of the future life." American
thought has remained loyal to the great Trinity, God, Freedom, and
Immortality. So it comes about that while there are a number of these
writers who could be put under the ban of the strongly orthodox in religion,
every one of them shows the effect of early training in religion and in the
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Scripture.[1]
[1] This is fully worked out in Professor Richardson's American
Literature, with ample illustration and argument.
Another thing to be said is that America has a unique history among
great nations in that it has never been affected by any great religious
influence except that which has issued from the Scriptures. No religion has
ever been influential in America except Christianity. For many years there
have been sporadic and spasmodic efforts to extend the influence of
Buddhism or other Indian cults. They have never been successful, because
the American spirit is practical, and not meditative. We are not an
introspective people. We do not look within ourselves for our religion.
Whatever moral and religious influence our literature shows gets back first
or last to our Scriptures. The point of view of nature that is taken by our
writers like Bryant and Thoreau is that of the Nineteenth Psalm. Moreover,
we have been strongly under the English influence. Irving insisted that we
ought to be, that we were a young nation, that we ought frankly to follow
the leadership of more experienced writers. Longfellow thought we had
gone too far that way, and that our poets, at least, ought to be more
independent, ought to write in the spirit of America and not of traditional
poetry. Whether we ought to have yielded to it or not, it is true that English
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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