Herman Melville
The New Republic is running a huge piece on the failure of the Arab Spring by Martin Peretz. As if anyone really cares to hear the opinion on this subject of someone who hates Arabs. Still, a friend sent me the link, and I flipped to the end, just to scratch the itch…
I am not made happy by the lapse of Arab spring. For a moment, the moment to which I alluded in my first paragraph, I experienced the shock of recognition, to use Edmund Wilson’s pregnant phrase. That moment has passed and apparently it is the Arabs who want it that way. At least, that is the case in Egypt where the ultra-pious have triumphed in the elections.
It wasn’t Edmund Wilson’s pregnant phrase. In 1943 Wilson published a collection of writers writing on other writers and titled it “The shock of recognition” in a quotation of Herman Melville’s famous comment on Nathaniel Hawthorne. Famous to some anyway. In 1850 Melville reviewed Hawthorne‘s book Mosses from an Old Manse and wrote:
Give not over to future generations the glad duty of acknowledging him for what he is. Take that joy to yourself, in your own generation; and so shall he feel those grateful impulses in him, that may possibly prompt him to the full flower of some still greater achievement in your eyes. And by confessing him, you thereby confess others, you brace the whole brotherhood. For genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.
It is one of Melville’s greatest lines, for a reason. It is about a movement in American culture, transcendentalism, personified by Hawthorne– the American spring. I suspect Peretz knows even less about the Arab spring than he does about American literature.
What is interesting here, is that the point of Melville’s essay was to tell Americans in a literary sense “hawthorne is who you have been waiting for” – he is the great american genius americans thought “will come in the costume of Queen Elizabeth’s day” — he is saying, shakespeare wasn’t even “Shakespeare” in his time and that in every generation there is real genius, and that idolization and over emphasis on earlier epochs and genius can lead to stagnation, and is overall disdainful of humanity – as it deifies very few, creating in them a unattainable standard for genius. In short, we manufacture a sense of “all time genius” in some, but at the same time, overlook and disregard genius in our present.
So, if Peretz is saying he felt the “shock of recognition” he is stating (from an idealist point of view) the recognition of the “idea” in our time. So, he says the Arab Spring represents in our time the true manifestation of genius and the “idea” – but in the hands of those crazy A-rabs, it “lapsed.” This is some incredible racism right here, he is basically saying, “see what happens when we let the Arabs carry the torch of humanity? These people aren’t to be trusted with defining for this generation things like liberty, justice and freedom. They are “now” smart enough to “think” about these issues, and their own condition, but are still in need to arbitrary and undemocratic control of their societies, in fact they prefer it this way. This guy is a D-BAG
Melville also has another interesting line, especially in the context here:
” Whereas, great geniuses are parts of the times; they themselves are the time; and possess an correspondent coloring. It is of a piece with the Jews, who while their Shiloh was meekly walking in their streets, were still praying for his magnificent coming; looking for him in a chariot, who was already among them on an ass.
———————-
I wonder how Marty feels about this.
Thanks, Phil, I’ll have to store this.
Slight correction: transcendentalism was personified especially by Emerson, not Hawthorne, who, although he lived for a time in a transcendentalist community, was not one of the exponents of transcendentalism.
We regret to inform mr Weiss that his application for the pedant’s society has been rejected. The main reason is that the applicant was having too much fun writing it. Mr Seauton’s application has been referred for further consideration. As is customary, we’ve included a hidden invitation for new applicants in this message.