HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

Northern Advocate, 16 July 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

By Thomas Carlyle

The Library

IT is true enough that, like the dour Scot he was, when he came tc- pen bis works. Thomas Carlyle could be harsh and rugged enough in his words and formed phrases: indeed, lie can at times irritate and almost repel one’s aesthetic sense of the enjoyment ’ of’ literary production with his exaggerated mannerisms and efforts—or what seem such—to make impressive attacks upon the minds of his readers. But this very granitic tendency, however much it may at first tend to repel, being persevered with, eventually loses much of its uncouthness, and we come to realise its power and worth.

Most writers, that is worth callingsuch, undoubtedly gain by being read in lengthy passages. To read a man systematically, day following day, for some weeks or months, will usually bring us into accord with him. unless he should prove to be notably antipathetic in effect. It may well be presumed, seeing how many are ihe dif-

ferences of style encountered, that every writer has his own assured characteristics, and as such a lonely individuality. It is because of this that those so gifted can, to a degree, produce effectively parodies of wellknown literary compositions. Individuality is. naturally, the more mark-

ed as one climb? the higher levels of ability, and. even when it becomes scored almost with a degree of eccentricity. may strangely attract for a time. Carlyle is one of those v'ho tend upon occasion to an excessive divergence from the usual placid course of Style. None the less he is frequently admirable in his wording and stimulating beyond question in his matter. Certainly his treatment of the material selected for his “Heroes and Hero Worship" is exhilarating and often thought-provoking. He takes the hero as Divinity. Prophet. Poet, Priest. Man of Letters and King. Here i's variety, and opportunity for much treatment of the subject from diffei - ent aspects, and so we find. One readily understands how the personality of a man bke Carlyle would be attracted by the stark mythology of Odin and bis fellows.

whom he uses for his Hero a? Divinity. They seem in some measure akin to himself, with their bleak snow and pieet. their storms, their vast rock? rm’ghty mountains, with their

warfare and mighty blows and horseplay.

“The primary characteristic of this old Northland Mythology I find to be impersonation of the visible workings of Nature, Earnest simple recognition of the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell down In awe before, as Religion, The dark hostile Powers ol Nature they figure to themselves as “Jofuns.” Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic Character. Frost. Fire. Sea-tenppest; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as Summerheat, the Sun, are Gods. 'The empire of this Universe is divided between these two; they dwell apart, in perennial internicene feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen. or Divinities: Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the home of the Jotuns.

of it! The power of FIRE, or FLAME, for instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential character c-t wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with those old Norsemen. Loke. a most swift subtle DEMON, of the blood of the Jotuns. The savages of the Ladronos Islands too (say some Spanish voyagers') thought Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil c' god. that bit you sharply when you touched it. and that lived upon dry wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it had not Stupidity to help it. would hide that Flame is a wonder. What is Flame'.’--FROST the old Norse Seer discerns to

be a monstrous hoary Jotun. the Giant THRYM. HRYM; or RIME, the old word now almost obsolete here, bid still used in Scotland to signify hoarfrost. RIME was net then as now a dead chemical Hung, but a living Jotun or Devil; the monstrous Jotun RIME drove home Ins Horses ai night, sat ’combing their manes.--which Horses were HAIL-CLOUDS, or fleet FROST -WINDS. His cows—No. not his. but a kinsman's, the Giant Hyinir’s

“Curious all this: and not idle- or inme, if we will look at the foundation

Cows are Ice-be; gs; this Hymir hooks at the rocks,’ with his devil-eye. and they SPLIT in the glance of it.’’

For the Hero as Poet he handles Shakespeare and Dante. He has been describing the power of the latter to depict in few words, but unforgettable, some scene or experience, and he goes on;

“For though this of painting is one of the outermost developments of a man, it comes like all else from lire essential faculty of him; it is physiognomical of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing it, ns very characteristic of him. In the first place, he could not have discerned the object at all. or seen the vital type of it. unless he had. what we may call, SYMPATHISED with it—-had sympathy, in him to bestow on objects. He must have been SINCERE about it too; sincere and sympathetic;

a man without worth cannot give you the likeness of any object; he dwells in vague 'outwardness, fallacy and trivial hearsay, about all objects. . . . The gifted man is he who SEES the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is bis faculty too. the man of business - '-' faculty, that ho discern the true LIKENESS, not the false superficial one. ci the thing he has got to work in. And how much of MORALITY is in the kind of insight we get of anything; 'tlie eye seeing in all things what ii brought with it the faculty of seeing!' To the mean eye all things are trivia!, as certainly as to the jaundiced .Ivey are yellow " When Carlyle comes to deal with tile Hero as Priest, [mlher and Knox are ids men. Can we wonder that ho chose the latter; here again he had a character after his own for wo are fully expectant that the (wo will have much in common, a-- is the actual ease. "This that Knox did (or his Nation. I say. we may really call a ••esiuToelion as from death, ft was not a smooth business; but it war. welcome surely, and cheap at that p ice. had it

been far rougher. On the whole cheap at any price—as life is. The people began to LIVE; they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. . . . Alas, is it not too true what we said, that many men in the van do always. like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, to till ii up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dryshod, and gain the honour? . . ." And, a little later, lie sums him up, this same Knox: '■■This Knox cannot live but by fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it is the grand gift he has, Wc find in Knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one—a narrow, inconsiderable man. as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, m SINCERITY, as we say, he lias no superior; nay. one might ask; What equal has he? The heart of him is of tile true Prophet, cast. -He lies there, said the Earl of Morton at In’s grave, ‘who never .feared the face of man. Ho resembles, more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrc w Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance. rigid narrow-looking adherence to Gods truth, stern rebuke in the name ol God to all that forsaken truth, an Old-Hebrcw Prophet, in the gufse of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. Wo are to take him lor that; not require him to be other. . .

Wo blame Knox lor his intolerance. i Wall, surely it is good that each of u' | be as tolerant as possible. Yd. r«1 bot- : tom. after all tl'.e talk there is and : lias been about it. what is tolerance? Tolerance lias to tolerate 1 the LINES- j SENTIAL; and to see well who 1 that is. j Tolerance Jias to be noble, measured, , jiusl in its very wrath, ween it can ! telerate no longer. But. on the whole, i we arc not here to tolerate! We have < to resist. to control and vanquish j withal. We do net 'tolerate' Eals r '- ; hoods. Thieveries. Iniciuilies. whe; j they fasten on ns; we say to thorn: | Thou art false, thou an not tolerable! j We are here to extinguish Falsehoods. , * and pul an end to them, in some wise ( way! i will not cpiarrel so much wilo j the way; the doing of the thing is j our great concern. In this sense Knox j was. full surely, intolerant." !

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