I’d like to share an anecdote from the non-logical path I am being dragged along. A path I alluded to in my previous letter. 1
One day I had the unshakable notion to expand the scope of my reading to include a broader history of Man, with an emphasis on the artistic and literary works that constellate our past- every dead star that still illuminates.
Faust felt like a good place to start. I read it entirely out loud, being a poetic play. Early on I was surprised to catch myself laughing, often. But by the end I was repeating several lines in a questioning staccato and blinking back tears in horror as my mind caught up to my voice. And then it was done.
I only read one translation, and not a recommended one; I suspected a lot of alchemical allusions (which often involve contradictory language and ideas) had been translated away. So I began to read some secondary material that dissected Goethe’s symbolism only to discover almost nothing analyzed was in the Faust I read: the bulk of the discourse revolved around Faust Part Two. There was a sequel! I found a copy, dove in, and immediately gave up. It was nothing but a series of bizarre songs and scenes that made little sense, and Faust and Mephistopheles just happened to be there. Another time, perhaps.
Weeks later I was trying to describe my recent impulse to isolate when it was recommended I read Walden. So I went online and ordered a cheap but antique copy of Emerson’s collected Essays. 2 3 It arrived just in time for me to realize my mistake. I quickly ordered a copy of Thoreau’s Walden and waited, embarrassed.
While waiting for Walden I decided to try and read some Nietzsche (Emerson could wait until my embarrassment had passed). I read a mini biography as a primer and was shocked to read a claim that Nietzsche always kept a copy of Emerson’s essays near him. Somehow that felt impossible. I cannot now locate where I read it, and a Google search results only in a book that quotes from a childhood letter, where he does in fact praise Emerson.
Given this odd discovery, and as a courtesy to coincidence, I sat down, committed to reading the first essay in Emerson’s collection, entitled, “History”. 4
I should have known. The essay was addressed directly to me. It shined a light on my recent behavior and reassured me that isolating and studying history is just what I should be doing:
There is one mind common to all individual men… Of the works of this mind History is the record.
This human mind wrote history and this human mind must read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of History is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience.
As we read we must become Greeks, Romans, Turks… Must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience or we shall see nothing, learn nothing, keep nothing.
It is this universal nature that gives worth to particular men and things.
Unbelievable. Then, just as I began filling with starlight, lifted up by the mystical insight and encouragement of Papa Emerson, he dropped me on my head: buried in the middle of the essay was an entire paragraph dedicated to the importance of reading Faust Part Two, and for the very reasons I had abandoned it. 5
Now you see my predicament. I am being guided, encouraged along a path but also admonished when I stray from it. Perhaps I would have read Faust Part Two in my own time. But my motivation would never have been permeated, as it is now, with this Celestial Insistence.