Carlyle Thread.

[Anonymous No.16225676]

Carlyle Thread.

>I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly preferring the Inferno to the two other parts of the Divine Commedia. Such preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feeling. The Purgatorio and Paradiso, especially the former, one would almost say, is even more excellent than it. It is a noble thing that Purgatorio, "Mountain of Purification;" an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is man purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act. It is beautiful how Dante works it out. The tremolar dell' onde, that "trembling" of the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of demons and reprobate is underfoot; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy itself. "Pray for me," the denizens of that Mount of Pain all say to him. "Tell my Giovanna to pray for me," my daughter Giovanna; "I think her mother loves me no more!" They toil painfully up by that winding steep, "bent down like corbels of a building," some of them,—crushed together so "for the sin of pride;" yet nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have reached the top, which is heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; the whole Mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind! I call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought.

[Anonymous No.16226317]

>>16225676
I've often wondered why Nietzsche loathed Carlyle (and loved Emerson!) but the passage quoted helps toward clarifying matters: this could be Wagner.

[Anonymous No.16226346]

>>16226317
Nietzsche put on a bit of an act often when talking about Carlyle, I remember at one point Nietzsche stated that Carlyle was a self-deceiver in his rhetoric, but that he was very interesting between this and his ideas. Or something along those lines.

I think Carlyle has a better opinion than Nietzsche on many of the same things in which they focus. And Carlyle practically had an influence on any person with the slightest intellectual interest in the 19th century, as well it seems those totally uncaring for such things just by his expanse, and undoubtedly influenced Nietzsche both directly and through Emerson at the very least. One interesting fact is, though not to say Carlyle "belonged" to Wagner in anyway, but Wagner quotes him as the start of one of his major works "Art and Revolution", as well as Liszt apparently being influenced by Carlyle almost as much as Wagner was by Schopenhauer in the 1850's. Developing his ideas of the musician-hero and the German folk-art festivals by Carlyle.

[Anonymous No.16226373]

>>16225676
He was born in my home area, where do I start with him?

[Anonymous No.16226390]

>>16226373
I'd venture On Heroes and Hero Worship and then The French Revolution.

[Anonymous No.16226392]

>>16226373
The Hero worship essay has many of his ideas. After that his main philosophical work Sartor Resartus and then The History of the French Revolution.

[Anonymous No.16227455]

>>16225676
Just finished his translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship the other day. Read Sartor Resartus about a year and a half ago. I fw dude generally based on those 2 works, especially Sartor as prologue to something like a Moby-Dick (though not as closely related as my high school English teacher would have had me believe, baka). The Nietzsche contrast is interesting, especially given Nietzsche's affinity for Emerson, as >16226317 mentioned. Perhaps the key to the divergence is in the correspondence between Emerson and Carlyle? I could have copped a hardcover of it for <20 4 years ago, and didn't. Live and learn.