The More Wisdom than Wit of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln, US President, 1861-1865. Photo: Mathew Brady Civil War Series [Public Domain] via US National Archives.

The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations by Abraham Lincoln

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the third of the Dover "Wit and Wisdom" series I have read, following on from Poor Richard (Benjamin Franklin) and Mark Twain. While the latter two were certainly witty in the humorous sense of the word, its use in relation to Lincoln is one more of quick intelligence, sans humour.

There are many familiar quotes in this book, two at least from popular culture. The first from Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues" (p. 29):

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time (29 May 1856).

The other quote is from Saving Private Ryan, a letter of condolence to a Mrs Lydia Bixby. Lincoln believed that Bixby had lost five sons in the war. The book suggests this was what Lincoln believed at the time, but it was a mistake - she had lost two (p. 78). I decided to delve into this a little more.

While there is much controversy about the actual letter, ranging from opinions that the wording of the letter is greater than the Gettysburg Address, to that it wasn't written by Lincoln but by his assistant personal secretary, John Hay.

What is even stranger is that Bixby may well have been a Confederate sympathiser and operated a house of ill repute! Still, that doesn't take away from Lincoln's eloquence.

There isn't much in the way of humour other than a mild form of self-deprecating humility. My favourite story about Lincoln is his decision to grow a beard, based on the suggestion of an 11 year-old girl, Grace Bedell, in a letter of 15 October 1860 (p. 14). My great, great grandfather, James Beasley Percy, born in 1866 near Armidale, wore the same beard.

Emily and James Percy, circa 1890s.

But there is one thing that Lincoln was famous for, not so much what he wrote but what he didn't send. On 14 July 1863, Lincoln wrote a scathing letter to General George G. Meade for letting Robert E. Lee's forces escape following the Battle of Gettysburg (p. 86). Lincoln referred to these as "hot letters" to let off steam. I suppose it is easier not to post a letter, much less so with a "flaming" email!

While quotes are easy to come by on the internet, and not all are adequately attributed, I find reading the "Wit and Wisdom" series useful in that the quotes are themed around important events or activities. Reading a person's thoughts, letters, and speeches in this way provides a richer idea of the trials and tribulations they faced, rather than the glossy bits that are seen in a simple meme or online quote.

Lincoln appears to be much more serious than Twain or Poor Richard. Indeed, responding to a cabinet minister wondering why Lincoln was reading a humorous book (p. 44), Lincoln replied:

With all the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

And he was under enormous strain. In responding to a reported death threat, Lincoln remarked on 4 April 1865 (p. 16):

I cannot bring myself to believe that any human being lives who would do me any harm.

Alas, there was, but the rest is history.

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Appreciating Ted Hughes

Hawk Roosting: Feet or foot? Photo: Summerdrought [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia

Lupercal by Ted Hughes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I sat down to write about my first reading of this collection of poetry, I drew a blank. I knew nothing of Ted Hughes until he was mentioned in a comment about my reading of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, along with Sylvia Plath. I'd heard of Plath! 

I didn't hate the poetry, nor did I like it. But it seemed strange. I knew it was about animals, but that was the extent of the experience of my first reading. So I took to some research and made some enlightening discoveries.

Hughes was the UK's Poet Laureate, just like Alfred, Lord Tennyson. There had to be something I was missing.

In an interview with The Paris Review from 1995, Hughes mentions a number of issues concerning "The Art of Poetry", such as the differences in drafting verse in handwriting versus typing. In response to the question "Is a poem ever finished?", Hughes mentions a struggle he has had with the singular or plural in the middle of the poem, "Hawk Roosting". Neither worked satisfactorily.

So I start there:

My feet are locked upon the rough bark.

It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot

And he's right. Swap feet for foot and back again, and neither works grammatically. But it works as it is in the poem.

I tried another poem, "Urn Burial". On the first reading, my mind was clouded by seeing some of the oldest remnants of human urn burials in Bahrain on a visit during my sabbatical in 2009. All I could picture were the skeletal remains curled up in the large stone urns. No animals in sight.

Then, like a 3D picture, the symbolism became clear: Oh, it's a weasel! (It even reads "weasel", but I was off in another dimension.) It started to make sense.

This was not entirely my own doing. I had to digress with Hughes' ars poetica, "The Thought Fox". Hughes basically tells me how to read his poetry. It's very clever, but maybe a little more academic than I was expecting.

Hughes' fascination with animals came from his childhood experience. His older brother, ten years his senior, loved to hunt. Hughes acted as his older brother's retriever and this continued for something like twenty years. Hughes is also famous for his children's books.

Like many readers these days, I had fallen victim to the general decline in reading poetry for fun. (Except epic and didactic poetry such as Homer, Virgil, and Hesiod.)

This year I have read Frank O'Hara, Sir Walter Ralegh, T.S. Eliot, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, and I am now a convert. I also read Nietzsche's The Gay Science and I am currently reading Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence, both works about poetry. It makes more sense to read poetry more than once, and with some study in between. (Hughes said this in his Paris Review interview, too.)

Had I not read up about Hughes, I would have been none the wiser. And I would certainly be missing out.

The icing on the cake was the name of the collection, Lupercal, is derived from an ancient Roman pastoral or fertility festival, Lupercalia, held annually on my birthday. This made more sense of the numerous classical references that had confused me in my first reading. (The birthday bit gave a surprising personal connection!)

Perhaps I am now a Ted Hughes fan.

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Tennyson: Art imitates life and proves me wrong yet again

Heavily hangs the broad sunflower. Keswick, Gunning 25th December 2018. Photo by Michael de Percy.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Alfred Tennyson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Stoics were happy to be proven wrong so that they might root out their own ignorance. Only recently have I begun to really enjoy poetry, and a visit to the bookstore at a time my mind was open brought me to this selection of poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Tennyson became Poet Laureate of Britain in 1850 following William Wordworth's death. He wasn't the first choice. Not knowing what the position of poet laureate even meant, my class self-consciousness went off on its usual tangent. Typical, an "appointed" artist. State-contrived creativity. What nonsense.

I once felt the same about Hemingway. Americans uber-promoting their own as the best in the world, without considering anyone else, anywhere else. And then I read Islands in the Stream. Wow. And I have since devoured all the works I could find written by Hemingway. He is my favourite author.

So when I purchased this book, I thought I'd give it a go. And then my class-self-consciousness kicked in. Until page 4:

        Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks

of the mouldering flowers:

       Heavily hangs the broad sunflower

Over its grave i' the earth so chilly; 

Before reading the book, I had been out preparing the garden for the ensuing heatwave. An enormous sunflower had opened up, the biggest I have ever seen. Then it began to droop.

I added a longer stake to keep the flower upright. But after I put the stake in, I realised that the flower was not drooping for lack of water or support. It was solid, bent over in the position shown in the photograph above.

A few hours later I read page 4 of Tennyson's Song. And in it was all the beauty and reason of my broad sunflower in its present condition. A work of God. 

My Damascene moment instantly converted me to Tennyson. Once again, my own bullshit had been called and I was wrong. 

The rest of the works are an absolute delight, and I made an interesting discovery. Tennyson used the phrase "a handful of dust" (p. 48). Evelyn Waugh had borrowed the phrase as the title for his novel, from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

The Waste Land is what got me into poetry in the first place, so the miracle of life continues, the circle of literary learning turns, and I live and learn.

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