tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8570718375010661810.post1427479427099389292..comments2024-03-15T18:01:26.787-05:00Comments on Melvilliana: NO! in thunder Scott Norsworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00458190971293597545noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8570718375010661810.post-26449470918847783982022-12-06T07:39:32.682-06:002022-12-06T07:39:32.682-06:00Super comfortable, TTTT. Although I did not mean t...Super comfortable, TTTT. Although I did not mean to offer Edward Gibbon as any kind of source for Melville's allusion to Socrates' daemon. But I do think the English historian's plain, bluff commentary provides an excellent reality-check to Melville's self-described "gibberish." More importantly, perhaps, a needful counter to the fatal transcendentalist flaw that HM himself identified in his earlier letter to Hawthorne--written in early May or June 1851, when the whale book was not quite finished:<br /><br />"But what plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion."<br />https://books.google.com/books?id=kX9KAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA406&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false<br /><br />About the thunder, a subsequent post on Melvilliana proposes Bible-based and theatrical sources for the idea that, contra Dillingham, "in thunder" means like Jove the Thunderer, rather than during or amidst a thunderstorm. So there Melville figured Hawthorne as Jove = God. <br /><br />https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2014/06/hawthorne-and-jove-in-thunder-god-in.html<br /><br />Kinda wish I had taken more English courses at Emory including Dillingham's. Somehow I finally landed in Jerome Beaty's superb class on the Victorian novel. Fate, or dumb luck?Scott Norsworthyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00458190971293597545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8570718375010661810.post-1886598698079181842022-12-06T03:34:47.898-06:002022-12-06T03:34:47.898-06:00I share your respect for the other sources like Di...I share your respect for the other sources like Dillingham but respecting Melville’s Hawthorne letters one cannot quote Gibbons on Socrates as a source for Melville’s “no saying” d[a]emon. The reference overlooks Gibbon’s anti-supernatural bias that would condemn Socrates for even placing god in a human mind. It is like judging Jefferson as a fraud using the 1619 project bias.<br />Reasoning from your Gibbon’s “the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud” you condem Melville’s profoundest experience as fraudulent.<br />“your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's.”<br />“I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.”<br />Are you comfortable calling Melville’s “Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon, -- the familiar, -- and recognized the sound” a voluntary fraud?<br />Lawrencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04873335021625174373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8570718375010661810.post-24935292753501889372022-12-03T07:28:10.660-06:002022-12-03T07:28:10.660-06:00Interesting connection, thanks! I get the "No...Interesting connection, thanks! I get the "No" part of Socrates' naysaying "daemon" or inner monitor--where's the thunder? Speaking of naysayers, Gibbon regarded the daemon figure with a good deal of skepticism, comparing Socrates to a deluded religious prophet:<br /><br />"From enthusiasm to imposture, the step is perilous and slippery: the daemon of Socrates affords a memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud." --History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 3 (London, 1823) pages 322-323.<br />https://books.google.com/books?id=oYrvJzqlzhUC&pg=PA322&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false<br /><br />Conveniently (and appropriately!) accessible also on Bartleby.com in the excerpt titled "Mahomet's Death and Character": <br /><br />https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/2192.htmlScott Norsworthyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00458190971293597545noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8570718375010661810.post-21316712560184744812022-12-03T05:09:50.480-06:002022-12-03T05:09:50.480-06:00You might want to also consider the "no"...You might want to also consider the "no" of the daemon of Socrates that Melville wrote in his 1851 letter to Hawthorne. "Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon, -- the familiar, -- and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes." Socrates claimed his inner voice only said "no" and never suggested anything,Lawrencehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04873335021625174373noreply@blogger.com