De la Mare writes about the Moon in Behold, This Dreamer! I wonder how much experience of moonlight we have. I live near one of the edges of a small town that is surrounded by a small river and cultivated fields. Street lights shine, but when I look from a south-facing bedroom window into the rear of our property on a night of bright moonlight, I am able to see the changed appearance of tree branches and trunks and bushes. The "glamour" of moonlight isn't utterly dispelled.

Here's a reason not mentioned by Dobelli to avoid social media. (His brief was specifically against the news -- newspapers, "breaking news" on phones, etc.)

Namely -- unwanted bizarre behavior may be caught from social media.

[unherd.com]

We do better to read books such as Behold, This Dreamer! and to go for walks in the woods if we safely can do so. (I realize that for people in some places, a walk in the woods means setting oneself up for unpleasant encounters with vagrants.)

yesDale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here's a reason not mentioned by Dobelli to avoid
> social media. (His brief was specifically against
> the news -- newspapers, "breaking news" on phones,
> etc.)
>
> Namely -- unwanted bizarre behavior may be caught
> from social media.
>
> [unherd.com]
> ourettes-leads-back-to-youtube-star/?mc_cid=9e12c9
> a14c&mc_eid=9cdda136af
>
> We do better to read books such as Behold, This
> Dreamer! and to go for walks in the woods if we
> safely can do so. (I realize that for people in
> some places, a walk in the woods means setting
> oneself up for unpleasant encounters with
> vagrants.)

I quickly read the article. It touches upon issues near and dear to my heart...

Can there even be such a thing as self-diagnosed mental illness? Perhaps there can be, but what's lacking in the current diagnostic environment is a bit of skepticism, because a much lesser social tick--attention seeking--is gratified by self-reporting symptoms of mental illness.

I mean, my grandparents, simple Balkan hillbillies, would have snorted derisively and in disbelief--always assuming that you could have gotten them to even understand that yes, people would freely demean themselves publicly, by reporting as serious afflictions nothing more than minor obstacles in life.

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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We are going to see more and more "mental illness."

Think of the relevance to our own time of the passage quoted below -- from a German book written, I suppose, in the early 1930s.


Adolf Köberle, The Quest for Holiness (English translation © 1936)

…we cannot take the influence exerted by either a morbid or a wholesome mental life seriously enough. The worst delusion of the materialistic thinking of the past decade is its almost complete loss of reverence or fear of the mighty, invisible power of “mere” ideas. Even a morbid imagination that remains limited to fancies and desires is a terrifying, living power, that can torment and enslave [end of p. 210] its victims to a fearful degree, creates an atmosphere around itself and infects and poisons others, as it tremendously increases the power of evil in the world, while in a blessed way, all pure, wholesome thinking and feeling, even when it happens in the most obscure places, spreads irresistibly and bears its certain fruit. The unbridled fecundity of morbid and evil imaginations must therefore be mercilessly combated and avoided because, under any circumstances, it is sufficient by itself alone to corrupt man utterly. But the most uncanny thing about such a play of desires is something else. It is the fact that the unrestrained roving thoughts never remain confined to the hidden chambers of the soul, but they crowd out into the open and display themselves in words and actions, that enslave, burden and shape the future of their author still more certainly than the morbid thoughts.

…An evil word is like a sped arrow that cannot be recalled. Its results are immeasurable and beyond all human control. The word has stronger formative power, it multiplies itself more rapidly and quickly than the originating thought. It produces lasting history, enmity and contention; inconspicuously and without effort it moulds the opinions and views of many, thus involving all the more responsibility….[continuing to p. 212:] the deed… finally involves the whole man.

Arthur Machen's miscellany Dog and Duck might be a book to place on the same shelf as Behold, This Dreamer!

I have been reading the Machen on again, off again -- it's a good book for that kind of reading.

It doesn't deal with the same subject as de la Mare's, but both books relate to poetic consciousness as opposed to "sociological consciousness."

Machen's book is scanned here:

[archive.org]

Would anyone be willing to give the piece therein called "The Merry Month of May" a reading? In the little sheet of notes I have tucked into my copy (a gift from an Irish friend), I wrote, about this essay -- "WOW -- this needs rereading and consideration -- can he be right?" Arthur Machen contrasts the olden mirth and merriment of the time of Chaucer with the humor characteristic of modernity. He might consider that, in our time, we are departing not only from merriment but from humor into the snark that Sawfish mentioned this morning at the film sub-genres thread here at ED.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 30 Aug 21 | 10:27AM by Dale Nelson.

SNIP...

>
> …An evil word is like a sped arrow that cannot
> be recalled. Its results are immeasurable and
> beyond all human control. The word has stronger
> formative power, it multiplies itself more rapidly
> and quickly than the originating thought. It
> produces lasting history, enmity and contention;
> inconspicuously and without effort it moulds the
> opinions and views of many, thus involving all the
> more responsibility…. the deed… finally
> involves the whole man.

The final paragraph reads like a rationale for external control of "hurtful speech".

The problem is this, as expressed in extremes for sake of clarity...

The object individual--the one hearing the speech--can exert self-control to his/her emotional response--essentially, it's "growing a thicker skin". In essence, the burden is on the object individual to diffuse any reaction.

Or, alternatively, the subject individual--the one uttering the speech--can be held responsible for the level of hurt inflicted--thus acting as a deterrent to such speech. On the compliant/report of hurtful speech, the subject individual must offer a defense, and failing to succeed, is subject to legal penalty.

There are intermediary points, too, but these two cases illustrate the issue. The current line seems to be drawn at verifiable, intentional falsehood that results in material damages; or as uttered against a member of specific protected group.

For the latter, the "reasonable person" test is not the guiding principal, so far as I know.

--Sawfish

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sawfish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> SNIP...
>
> >
> > …An evil word is like a sped arrow that
> cannot
> > be recalled. Its results are immeasurable and
> > beyond all human control. The word has
> stronger
> > formative power, it multiplies itself more
> rapidly
> > and quickly than the originating thought. It
> > produces lasting history, enmity and
> contention;
> > inconspicuously and without effort it moulds
> the
> > opinions and views of many, thus involving all
> the
> > more responsibility…. the deed… finally
> > involves the whole man.
>
> The final paragraph reads like a rationale for
> external control of "hurtful speech".

Sawish, I don't think Köberle is thinking of language police, but of (1) personal self-control and (2) social disapproval, which might take the form of someone saying "Shame!" or turning away from the speaker, etc.

The kind of "language police" we see now (who are so very biased and warped in their treatment of what counts as an offense) I take to be a symptom of the malady of our time. British cops might arrest someone for a bad word while standing off and letting openly criminal acts proceed.

I just ran across a passage in a comment at the First Known When Lost blog -- a passage from G. K. Chesterton's Autobiography, which I have copied and will paste here; it's about Yeats and, especially, de la Mare.

"I have known one or two isolated cases also of the mere man of imagination. It is always difficult to give even an outline of men of this kind; precisely because an outline is always the line at which a thing touches other things outside itself. I have already suggested very vaguely, for instance, something of the position of W. B. Yeats; but that is precisely because Yeats does touch some things outside his own thoughts; and suggests controversies about Theosophy or Mythology or Irish politics. But he who is simply the imaginative man can only be found in the images he makes and not in the portraits of him that other people make. Thus I could mention a number of detached and definite things about Mr. Walter de la Mare; only that they would not, strictly speaking, be about him. I could say that he has a dark Roman profile rather like a bronze eagle, or that he lives in Tallow not far from Tallow Court, where I have met him and many other figures in the landscape of this story; or that he has a hobby of collecting minute objects, of the nature of ornaments, but hardly to be seen with the naked eye. My wife happens to have the same hobby of collecting tiny things as toys; though some have charged her with inconsistency on the occasion when she collected a husband. But she and de la Mare used to do a trade, worthy of Goblin Market, in these pigmy possessions. I could mention the fact that I once found a school, somewhere in the wilds of the Old Kent Road, if I remember right, where all the little girls preserved a sort of legend of Mr. de la Mare, as of a fairy uncle, because he had once lectured there ever so long ago. I’ve no idea what spells he may have worked on that remote occasion; but he had certainly in the words of an elder English poet, knocked ‘em in the Old Kent Road. But even a thing like this has not strictly speaking anything to do with the subject; the centre and fullness of the subject. And I have never been able to say anything that is, in that sense, about the subject. The nearest I could ever come to judging imaginative work would be simply to say this; that if I were a child, and somebody said to me no more than the two words Peacock Pie, I should pass through a certain transforming experience. I should not think of it especially as being a book. I should not even think of it as being a man; certainly not as something now so sadly familiar as a literary man. A sacramental instinct within me would give me the sense that there was somewhere and somehow a substance, gorgeously coloured and good to eat. Which is indeed the case. Nor would any doubts and differences about the theoretical or ethical edges of Mr. Yeats’s personality affect my appetite, even now that I am no longer a child, for the silver apples of the moon and the golden apples of the sun.” (pp. 293 - 294)

Thanks Dale for the interesting little passage. It reminds me also of Mare's story "The Connoisseur", in which he describes a tiny weeny, pretty little object; I believe it was a black pearl, minusculary carved.