LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Part 2: John Quincy Adams on "the melancholy madness of Poetry without the inspiration"

     . . . . For maximum tickle-brain effect, the following first section really should be read aloud, in company with other writers.

First part of ""the melancholy madness of Poetry without the inspiration" here.

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Washington D.C. March 10, 1831

Sun rose 6:13. Fahrenheit 30. -- I lost one or two stanza's [sic] of Dermot, by my walk with Mr. Hagner, and should therefore get something by way of composition -- As I proceed with Dermot, the subject opens upon me, and I feel distressingly my wants.  I supposed I could make out of it a Tale of about 50 Stanza's -- I now think I cannot get through with it in less than one hundred.  My Style is the mock heroic; but it wants vivacity, humour, poetical invention and a large command of Language. -- I want besides a knowledge of Ireland, physical moral and political -- A knowledge of the manners, usages, prevailing opinions, modes of life, social habits and dress of the twelfth century.  I want a faculty of inventing and delineating character, of naturalizing familial dialogue and spicing my treat with keen and cutting Satire.  I want the faculty of picturesque description: of penetrating into the inmost recesses of human Nature -- of moralizing in harmonious verse -- of passing from grave to gay, from lively to severe -- of touching the cords of sympathy with the tender and sublime -- and to consecrate the whole by a perpetual tendency to a pure and elevated morality -- I do not believe there is in human history a happier subject for a mock-heroic Poem than the Conquest of Ireland by Henry the second -- But where are the legendary fables of Ireland for machinery [an 18th C term meaning the apparatus of something, whether culture, art, etc.] -- where the art of painting the intrigues of Dermot at the Court of Henry; where the art of describing Battles, and Sieges, the desolation of the Country during the progress of the Conquest, the destruction of Fernes, the Capitol of Leinster, the interior of the monastery where Dermot concealed himself upon his return after his expulsion -- All this a true Poet might paint with touches of the terribly sublime -- if I had undertaken it forty years ago I might have made something of it now -- At present, I might as well undertake to paint a Scene of the Deluge upon Canvas; or to compose the music of an Opera -- or to execute the Pediment of the Capitol which I designed. [Italian sculptor Luigi Persico's original design for the sculpture included figures of Peace, Plenty, and Hercules; these were replaced at the suggestion of President John Quincy Adams with the figure of Hope. Adams wished the design to "represent the American Union founded on the Declaration of Independence and consummated by the organization of the general government under the Federal Constitution, supported by Justice in the past, and relying upon Hope in Providence for the future."MrJohn W. Taylor was here, and took leave of me -- Going in a day or two for home. I had a long conversation with him upon the aspects of political affairs, and upon the prostitution of principle as well as the hostility to me, manifested by the party now holding up Mr. Clay as the Candidate for the next Presidential Election -- I gave him instances and proofs, some of which were already known to him; others he had not heard of before
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Washington D.C. March 12 1831

Morning walk omitted.  Proportional deduction from the progress of Dermot.  [The rest of this day's entry is entirely concerned with the matter before the Supreme Court, brought by the Cherokees, regarding the states essentially nullifying treaties made with them, which quite outrages and depresses JQ, as indeed it would any decent-thinking person.]


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     . . . . Sir Walter Scott's wildly popular long poem historical Romances were doubtless JQ's inspiration for doing The Tale of Dermont.  JQ always wished to be widely popular, and seldom achieved it, and only for short periods. 

1805: The Lay of the Last Minstrel
1806: Ballads and Lyrical Pieces
1808: Marmion
1810: The Lady of the Lake

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Washington D.C.,  April 16th 1831


Rain -- I finished this Morning the fair copy of my Poem of Dermot MacMorrogh, and have now the measure of my own Poetical Power -- Beyond this I shall never attain, and now it is an important question whether I should throw this, and almost all the other verses I have written into the fire -- Hitherto I have confined myself to Translations, and fugitive pieces of a very few Lines of Stanza's; a small portion of whihc have been published in Newspapers and Magazines.  I have now completed a historical Tale, of upwards of two thousand line; the subject of my own Selection -- the moral clear and palpable -- the characters and incidents strictly historical -- The Story complete and entire -- It has amused and occupied two Months of my life and leaves me now like a pleasant dream, to dull and distressing realities -- To a sense of wasted Time to the humiliation of enterprize, ashamed of performance-- Yet at the same Time with an insatate thirst for undertaking again higher and better things.

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And here we come to "The End" of Dermont, JQ's "a pleasant dream", which was his escape in those dreary winter days after leaving the White House and returning to Quincy in the spring. Once he has finished Dermont though, his mind falls back into his keen sense of humiliation and shame, for losing the presidency to Andrew Jackson.  But he is not finished, he resolves. As we shall see, soon he will be "undertaking again higher and better things."  Indeed, he will be returned to D.C. as a Massachusetts Congressman, who became hated by the slaveocracy, and by no one more than Andrew Jackson, for his unrelenting representation for the rights of the enslaved and for Abolition. His state of Massachusetts, which did so much to form the souls of his parents and his own, returned him to Congress, without challenge, until the very end of his life.

He died of stroke, on the floor of Congress, in the midst of a debate upon a resolution on which he was resolved to vote "No!" In thunder.


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