Wednesday 19 June 2019

'Thought once awakened does not again slumber!'

On the Able Sage of Chelsea!

In the true literary man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness; he is the light of the world; the world's priest - guiding it, like a sacred pillar of fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of time. - Carlyle

From Emerson, the Noble Sage of Concord, let’s now move on to Carlyle, the Able Sage of Chelsea!

Apropos our deliberations on Thomas Carlyle vis-à-vis the importance of the year 1836, a defining year in the annals of literary history that saw a literary torrent of sorts, me thought it meet - to mince and to munch - more on this Sage of Chelsea, who also tripled up as a historian, an essayist and a biographer of his times!

Carlyle’s annual lectures were later published under the title, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History in 1841. In this series of six profound lectures, Carlyle brings out the uniqueness that underlies the personalities of heroic men replete with heroic vitalism.

To Carlyle, history is all about the making of heroic men or women, who are bestowed with the most excellent gifts and powers of vision and of action! Since his age lacked a person of a heroic mould, he only wishes that people of a true heroic vitalism and temperament should step forward, in the interests of society, to lead the people, who are like sheep without a shepherd. (We should also remember that, the 19th century was an age when belief in the Divine was at its lowest ebb ever!)

Only a person of a heroic mould - he quite feels - could shake the masses out of their stupor and lead society to its acme of dynamism!

Some of the immortal quotes that have taken the minds and the hearts of his avid readers by storm, are reproduced below –

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

Men of letters are a perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all men that a God is still present in their life; that all "appearance," whatsoever we see in the world, is but as a vesture for the "divine idea of the world," for "that which lies at the bottom of appearance." In the true literary man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness; he is the light of the world; the world's priest - guiding it, like a sacred pillar of fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of time.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber.

Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?

Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes were fabled to do? They persuade men. Not the wretchedest circulating library novel, which foolish girls thumb and con in remote villages!

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

From 1834 onwards, Carlyle was working on his monumental work, The French Revolution. This period enabled him to meet up with great literary minds of all hues, including Wordsworth, Southey, and Sterling, with Sterling or John Sterling topping his list of hot favourites!

His Sartor Resartus published in 1836, is one of his most enigmatic works ever! It’s really impossible to pigeon-hole a book of this complexity, into any one particular genre as such! It deals with the life of a fictional German philosopher and academic.

to be continued…

image: amazondotcom

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