Saturday, November 22, 2014

Worldlings don't get it

 Herman Melville's annotation in Henry Taylor, Notes from Life (Boston, 1853):
"Yet the gross worldling thinks that money
settles all things—that insults have a
pecuniary tariff."  --Melville's Marginalia Online
 A Captain of U. S. Dragoons describes his ideal reader:
I address not then, the shallow or hurried worldling; but the friendly one, who in the calm intervals from worldly cares, grants me the aid of a quiet and thoughtful,—and if it may be,—a poetic mood!
Scenes Beyond the Western Border, July 1852; and
Scenes and Adventures in the Army
(The July 1852 plea for one "friendly" and "poetic" reader instead of the superficial "worldling" was selected to serve as the epigraph for the 1857 book.)

Melville's poem "Lone Founts" similarly urges rejection of the "worldling's" perspective:

LONE FOUNTS

Though fast youth's glorious fable flies,
View not the world with worldling's eyes;
Nor turn with weather of the time.
Foreclose the coming of surprise:
Stand where Posterity shall stand;
Stand where the Ancients stood before,
And, dipping in lone founts thy hand,
Drink of the never-varying lore:
Wise once, and wise thence evermore.   --Poems from Timoleon
On second thought, don't get Melville started on worldlings:
Shall hearts that beat no base retreat
   In youth's magnanimous years—
Ignoble hold it, if discreet
   When interest tames to fears;
Shall spirits that worship light
   Perfidious deem its sacred glow,
   Recant, and trudge where wordlings go,
Conform and own them right?   --The Enthusiast