/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20111130]

>All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth.
holy shit, did Melville copy Carlyle?

[Anonymous No.20111135]

>>20111130
They were both big on German philosophy so they both copied from them.

[Anonymous No.20111147]

>>20111130
and Carlyle copied Emerson

[Anonymous No.20111194]

>>20111147
Carlyle was already a student of the Germans in the early 1820's.

[Anonymous No.20111222]

>>20111147
please be bait

[Anonymous No.20111251]

isn't that just, you know, basic platonic idealism

[Anonymous No.20111253]

>>20111130
Melville was extremely influenced by Carlyle in both philosophy and style probably more than any other writer.

>>20111147
Embarrassing post.

[Anonymous No.20111271]

>>20111251
the wording is pretty similar to what is said in Moby Dick. this is pretty much exactly what Ahab says verbatim. there are also phrases throughout the book that i've seen Melville use, like referring to Nature as a 'charnel-house' and 'a thousand voices'

[Anonymous No.20111294]

>>20111130
This is a stupid belief.

[Anonymous No.20111343]

>>20111294
>hasn't come to the realization that reality moves at different speeds
>hasn't studied the mediums to gauge the hierarchy of speed
>thought
>image
>sound
>gesture
>word
>materialization
>not being able to predict materialization from images or sounds alone
>has to wait for word or god forbid materialization itself to perceive reality
>no esp potential
>never going to make it literally
>never a creative potential just a tool used by the zeitgeist to produce itself
Stupid indeed my awake friend, stupid indeed. Better not catch you sleepwalking in my dreams.

[Anonymous No.20111519]

>>20111135

[Anonymous No.20113080]

>>20111130
>Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea
The real question is who is willing this idea? Otherwise it doesn’t make much difference.

[Anonymous No.20113089]

>>20111135
Carlyle introduced German philosophy to Anglos, which means Melville would have read him.

[Anonymous No.20113491]

>>20113080
it's true ain't it? at least to an extent.

[Anonymous No.20113920]

>>20111343
ah, sweet,

[Anonymous No.20114725]

>>20113491
Yes, matter doesn’t exist physically. That’s the best worldview we have at this moment imo.

[Anonymous No.20114852]

>>20113089
What about Coleridge

[Anonymous No.20115345]

>>20113089
I was reading a biography about Melville and his first contact with German philosophy was through a German philosophy professor he met on a boat. He wrote in his journal how they would shoot the shit with others while drinking whiskey.

[Anonymous No.20115793]

>>20115345
SOVL

[Anonymous No.20115985]

Where to start with this so called "Carlyle"?

[Anonymous No.20116376]

>>20111130
>All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event, in each living act, in each undoubted deed, there some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moulding of its features from beyond that unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?
Only the first sentence is similar to Carlyle.

[Anonymous No.20116381]

>>20116376
It's the same idea, it's what Ahab's philosophy is all about but spoken more clearly

[Anonymous No.20116403]

>>20116381
Ahab's philosophy is to reach the Platonic heights through the pursuit of the impossible. Where in Carlyle does it say that?

[Anonymous No.20116425]

>>20116403
They are similar in their views of how symbols interact with the world is what I meant Compare this:

>Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself.

To:

>O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies; not the smallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.

Also here's another passage that reminded me of Moby Dick quite a bit:
>Who am I; what is this ME? A Voice, a Motion, an Appearance;—some embodied, visualized Idea in the Eternal Mind? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, written in all colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Nature: but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream-grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds and many-colored visions flit round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half-waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they were substances; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves most awake!

reminds me a lot of the 'weaver god' passage from Moby Dick

[Anonymous No.20116434]

>>20115985
Good talk all. Useless board

[Anonymous No.20116520]

>>20116434
What do you want people to say? It's not like Carlyle wrote a lot of books.

[Anonymous No.20116750]

>>20116376
It's not just what's said, it's the whole style that is Carlylean.

[Anonymous No.20116754]

>>20115985

[Anonymous No.20116771]

>>20113089
>Carlyle introduced German philosophy to Anglos
I mean... Im no expert, but wasnt germany kind of an achademic hub for the west at the time? Do you mean popularly? Because Americans in general in the mid 1800s were pretty Germanophilic.

[Anonymous No.20116890]

>>20116771
That was only after Carlyle's work.

Before the 1820s it was exceptional to know who Goethe was among academics. Through Carlyle's scholarly work in that decade he almost singlehandedly introduced this 'German renaissance' to England, which earned him thanks from Goethe himself.