A Temple of Texts: Essays

by William H. Gass

  In times past, it was customary to load a book with more of these burdens than is the habit now. Normally, we save introductions for reissues. A fancy edition of The Way of All Flesh may contain a frontal essay by Theodore Dreiser, while a cheap “just for study” copy will be hawked by a professor from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. My treasured copy of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy has a Preface by F. D. and P. J.-S. and an introduction whose part 1 is by P. J.-S. and whose part 2, briefer, is by F. D., which suggests these initials know the difference. This is followed by Burton’s poem, “The Argument of the Frontispiece,” next by the frontispiece itself (and another poem, longer, which is an address by the author’s pseudonym, Democritus Junior, to his book: “Go forth, my book, into the open day …” This done, space is made for still another set of verses titled “The Author’s Abstract of Melancholy,” with its famous refrain, “Naught so sweet as Melancholy,” when, hard upon, I shall encounter an introduction, “Democritus Junior to the Reader,” of ninety-three pages. Have we got to grandmother’s house yet? No. We now turn a leaf headed “To the Mischievously Idle Reader,” written in both prose and verse, and subsequently find the four-page synopsis of the Anatomy’s “First Partition,” laid out like a densely plowed field.

  The Book of Prefaces is got up to resemble a book of bygone days, with much accompanying material in both red and black ink: endpapers with drawings resembling a mural, a decorative title page that finds icons for every English-speaking nation these prefaces have been drawn from, an equally elaborate copyright notice and dedication, unexpectedly a sheet containing the pen-and-ink portraits of every soul who has been remotely connected to the project, and who would permit Alasdair Gray to draw them, including its first and last typists and the project’s only sponsor. The margins are crowded with columns in two shades of red ink, called “glosses,” and these actually exceed biographical aims to become—well, glosses. A nice touch is an errata card, also doubly inked and in matching type, which can serve as a bookmark, although a purple ribbon leaks out of the book’s bottom edge.

  Font sizes change like evil purposes; more images (of those who have volunteered glosses and were paid in portraits) clog the rear, where there’s a postscript and an index, as well. Dates in very large type fix each entry in its time and control their order, so that were a reader to read this collection straight through (no one expects it, and for dipping into or sipping from this volume, hotels and bathrooms are the venues suggested), they might experience the rich course of English prose from nowhere to now, and also profit from the enterprise by observing changes in the manners and morals of our authors, in their plights and perilous status, from hence to thence.

  Alasdair Gray cuts this historical sweep into steps or eras of his own (suffering our customary doubts)—English Remade, c. 1330 to c. 1395; A Great Flowering—Hakluyt to Coke; The Establishment, Dryden to Burns, et cetera, and between them he adds valuable explanatory material. These intersticed essays have, I regret to say, no name. They exist, all the same.

  There are supposed to be some Irish authors (harps are pictured), but none of them are very Irish, except Synge. I looked for Yeats and Flann O’Brien but didn’t find them. That they didn’t write prefaces is scarcely an excuse. Anyway, Synge is almost enough, as he concludes his preface to The Playboy of the Western World with these fine lines: “In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery, and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.” “In Ireland, for a few years more, we have …”: What an anguished twist of syntax is this, worthy of a condemned man, and how lovely the phrase “where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten,” whose lilt is the last pure lilt in my memory bank, if any lilt is left.

  Each section is upfronted by an epigram as if engraved upon a calling card of flamboyant design, and some of these are quite likable, as well as brief and paradoxical, as required by the OED. According to Ivor Cutler, “Lord Finook sometimes had to boil his cottages—to get the cottagers out.” The divisions of the book that these epigrams grace are more than purely descriptive. One is headed “How Class War Dulled English Literature.” Alasdair Gray has provided us with a brief opinionated history of England to accompany his chronologically arranged prefaces. Unopinionated histories are uninteresting.

  Most of the examples from earlier times are encrusted with Christianity, but gradually the disagreeable Coverdale is supplanted by gents such as Arthur Golding, who writes a verse forward to his translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Even so (it is 1565), he is constrained to begin by apologizing: “I would not wish the simple sort offended for too bee, When in this booke the heathen names of feynèd Godds they see.” After which we move ahead smartly through Ascham, Holinshed, and North to Hakluyt, Marlowe, and Spenser, where we encounter a true invocation. Moral instruction is still uppermost in the minds of our authors, even when they are themselves the sad example, as in the case of Robert Greene, who also warns Marlowe of actors like Shakespeare, whom he believes is a scene thief.

  Moral instruction continues to direct matters even when these authors are disavowing it. One hears, almost for the first time, in Marlowe’s prologue to Tamburlaine, words whose sense says, Reader, it’s up to you: “View but his picture in this tragicke glasse, And then applaud his fortunes as you please.” Robert Greene, in his preface to Greenes Groats-worth of Witte, repents of his life, and warns his fellows, Marlowe in particular, of that upstart crow and thief of baubles, a certain Shake-scene, an ape of excellence. One of the marginal glosses helpfully reminds us that Shake-scene borrowed (and did not return) the plot of The Winter’s Tale from one of Greene’s romances, though Greene was well dead when he did it. Equally often, history was Shake-scene’s muse—the muse of Purloinment—but his prologues pretend to call on higher powers: “O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend The brightest Heaven of Invention …”

  Aside from flattering their patrons, covering their asses, explaining why they were compelled into publication, diffidently praising their performance, and making promises for their art that not even a muse of fire could quite put a torch to (all sensible moves, I should add, amusing, even edifying, to observe, and certainly not mentioned for censure), the preface is most often the place for a preemptive strike. Occasionally, the writer, anticipating only too accurately a negative response, hands his critics their weapons, as Wordsworth does, moreover with a condescension as massive as a landslide:

  Readers of superior judgment may disapprove of the style in which many of these pieces are executed. It must be expected that many lines and phrases will not exactly suit their taste. It will perhaps appear to them, that wishing to avoid the prevalent fault of the day, the author has sometimes descended too low, and that many of his expressions are too familiar, and not of sufficient dignity. It is apprehended, that the more conversant the reader is with our elder writers, and with those in modern times who have been the most successful in painting manners and passions, the fewer complaints of this kind will he have to make.

  In the preface to his Dictionary, Dr. Johnson whines (another persistent feature of the genre)—“It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward”—a whine, yes, but how perfectly composed. As the reader reads these prefaces, ticked across a clock of ages, he can be expected to exclaim, Another lame excuse, still further transparent self-flattery, one more bitter complaint, abject apology, resentful pose, inadequate defense, insufficient explanation; yet gladly add, on account of the pure delight to the eye they are, But when has lameness or insufficiency—so com
mon, so ordinary; when has flattery—oft offered, oft bought—been so acceptably employed, so agreeably offered, or so well and comfortably expressed?

  Erasmus

  AN AFTERWORD TO

  THE PRAISE OF FOLLY

  There is the fool who is foolish from the weaknesses of a mad mind; who honestly knows not what he does, and is ignorant of consequences. There is God’s fool, who is foolish because he is indifferent to material concerns, and pursues virtue in a world that has no real regard for righteousness and seldom rewards it. There are fools who feel fortunate to have been made misery’s muse; and fools who sincerely believe with the preacher that all is vanity, that nothing is new, yet that everything passes like a fart from a fat meal—gone and good riddance; nevertheless, these fools manage to remain vain, attending their tailor despite the flightiness of fashion, furnishing their flat, purchasing old masters, investing in oil lamps and rubber-soled shoes. There is the fool who has made God’s work his business out of presumption, greed, and a passion for power. There is the befooled fool, who lives in a landscape of myth and legend, false promises, and payments to be made now for rewards to be received beyond the grave. There is the fool of meaningless feats: the fool who has written more zeros than anyone alive; who has leaped out of unbuttoned pants; who construes one couplet per academic year, and has carried commas over distances of forty miles. There is the fool of diet, of drink, of dalliance, dice, high jinks, and derring-do; the fool who accepts like Hugo’s Hunchback the humiliation of a king’s crown and pretends to rule, during the besotted hours of a single day, a rabble who dance like tops and swap their venereal diseases. And there is the fool who plays the fool to save his wisdom from calumny and himself from the gibbet, since if a fool be mad, what he does and says can be excused as merely madness and the devil’s inspiration, while if he be a jester and mad only for the moment, still his madness may amuse as his madness is paid to do, so he is protected from complaint and reprisal by becoming a witless hireling; yet because his witlessness has wit, he’s attended to, and his riddles turned as a spitted bird is turned till done on all sides. There is no end to fools and foolishness, since each of us can seem a fool to a fool, fool others, be fooled, and fool ourselves; for were we not bamboozled about who we are and how we live and nature’s ways, we would have to become—in self-defense and for survival in the face of pitiless truth—one of those fools we, a moment ago, began with: namely, fools who are foolish from a mind gone mad and, like the philosopher Democritus, laugh with a laughter that appreciates the absurd, sees its point, and deftly dodges its damage.

  Erasmus, and Thomas More, the man he most admired, were cold-climate humanists: they knew of snow and sleet and frozen fog, chimney smoke and fur; there was no sunny seaside life to be had where they lived, and when pagan thought swept back into Europe, it tended to divide its influence, the Greeks conquering the south, even where Rome once ruled, while Roman ideals plodded off north, where stoic duty would be appreciated, and where the new learning could be pursued in familiar monkish surroundings.

  Nothing much is known about Erasmus’s unfortunate parents, an ignorance that Charles Reade found to be an advantage, for there were few facts to hinder him when he wrote a novel of thwarted young love purportedly about them, called The Cloister and the Hearth. They were, in any case, Dutch, and consequently bore a name—Gerardszoon—quite unlike the Latin one the youthful Erasmus gave himself, adding a bit of hometown distinction: Desiderius Erasmus Rotterdamus, the latter then a village whose precincts had been recently saved from the sea. As his birthplace grew into a town, so did the plot of the family romance, embellished by Erasmus’s rivals during his days of fame. His father—it was eventually said—fell in love with a young woman, Margaret, who permitted the expression of his passion with the usual unfortunate results, especially since neither of their families appears to have approved the proposed marriage, let alone their liaison. Gerard was at this delicate moment called away to Rome for causes that remain unknown, and there, although intending to return to rescue Margaret’s reputation and save the name of their child, he was delayed for reasons presumably pressing and certainly obscure. Meanwhile, villainous relatives sent him false word of Margaret’s death. In the grip of grief, he became a priest, although, I imagine, not before singing an aria so moving it brought a curtain down to conceal his pitiable form.

  Upon Gerard’s return, he discovered the boy born, Margaret alive, and himself bound by other vows. These vows did not prevent the lovers from living together until the plague made its rather regular return. Unfortunately for the reliability of this tale, Erasmus had an older brother, throwing its timing off. One might conjecture that this elder brother was Margaret’s by a previous suitor, which would account for family objections to Gerard’s plans. He was certainly as slow and ill-starred as Erasmus was quick and, by fortune, favored. Or maybe he was the child born while Gerard was dawdling about in Rome, and Erasmus was the product of their later and steadier relationship, but this is not an hypothesis a novelist would find appealing.

  Although Erasmus does seem to have been illegitimate, his parents formed a firm and caring family that provided for him and his early education. The lay society where his father sent him to school was called the Brethren of the Common Life. It emphasized the teachings of Jesus and recommended a biblically directed though relatively undoctrinal Christian existence. The Brethren had schools throughout the Netherlands and northern Germany, and were known for their emphasis on the inward and purely spiritual qualities of Christianity, but this renown did not guarantee that a particular school might not be more worried about discipline and a compliant demeanor than any actual moral development, and from Erasmus’s later accounts, he little liked their repressive strictures or protective ignorance.

  Though some of his schoolmates became notable, the lot was like most lots, frugal with curiosity, keenness, and ambition; so the youth must have been a daunting handful, committing Horace and Terence to memory, as J. A. Froude reports, devouring every book that he was permitted to open, excelling at debate, writing essays, odes, and heroic poems, as well as dispatching imprudent letters to his superiors in a Latin so excellent that, in place of praise, only their penmanship could be faulted—which it most predictably was.

  Although Erasmus was a bastard and as such was technically barred from any basic service within the Church, at fourteen, after the plague bore his parents off, his guardians, who apparently frittered away his meager patrimony, decided to give Erasmus over to the care of a gang of religious recruiters called the Collationary Fathers. According to Froude, they “made their living by netting proselytes for the regular orders. Their business was to catch in some way superior lads, threaten them, frighten them, beat them, crush their spirits, tame them, as the process was called, and break them in for the cloister.” (Life and Letters of Erasmus. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1895.) As Erasmus’s many letters show, his memory was not for words alone. He forgot no imbecility, no injustice or obstruction, no slight or humiliation, no browbeating, bullyragging, or flogging.

  So, in due course, Erasmus was placed in a monastery, where his priestly life, equally illegitimate, would begin, though it was already too late for its teachings to alter his early sympathy for simple Christian virtue, or his passion for books, or his tendency to challenge his superiors, whom he perhaps was too ready to think lazy, inept, or foolish. During Erasmus’s entire life, he spoke well of a modesty, a humility, a forbearance he could never have found flourishing in himself.

  The monastery, like so many, was long on discipline, middling about academic regimen, and short on learning. Erasmus found no pleasure in his fellow monks’ pleasures; he avoided his brothers, as brothers are inclined to do; his aloofness was interpreted as disdain; his rations were cut, except for Friday’s inevitable salt cod, whose flavorless flesh and harsh smell he could scarcely stomach, so consequently his delicate constitution suffered; he slept poorly; his books were removed from his cell and the librar
y closed to him—it was apparently better to be habitually drunk than persistently studious. Erasmus detested each of the monastery’s rules and every routine. He resolved to live his life outside all walls and beyond the hearing of orders.

  As for fish, Erasmus waited until 1526 to publish his funny and scurrilous dialogue between a fishmonger and a butcher: Concerning the Eating of Fish. The butcher alleges that a dispensation is coming from the College of Cardinals, permitting people to eat what they wish, which means the fishmonger will soon be out of business. But the monger is as delighted as the butcher, for when meat was forbidden, it was desired; now that it is allowed, flesh will lose its allure, and thus more fish will be scaled than before. This is only an opening exchange, of course, in a dialogue of some length, which became, along with In Praise of Folly, another center of dispute. Its blunt speech and boisterous tone remind us that François Rabelais was a contemporary.

  Importunate people frequently discover that their disagreeable pushiness profits them, and Erasmus was able to obtain a position as secretary to the bishop of Combray, a post that bore him away from one service into that of another; for which he was grateful, but not sufficiently to remove discontent, so that shortly the bishop was relieved to advance Erasmus’s education by allowing him to proceed to Paris, where his poems had preceded his trunks, thus permitting him to revolve in witty but indolent circles.

  Paris, then as now, was generous with its pleasures—amusements which Folly would later be ready to recommend—but it was also prepared to ruin his stomach with sorry fish, surround him with friendly companions who couldn’t care less about anything at all, so that, once more, he would see how purely formal devotions and unkempt dissolution had replaced study and discovery. Desperately in need of money, if he were to live on his own, he wrote finely phrased but begging letters and did hack work when he could obtain it. Finally, a friend found him a job as a tutor to the son of a landed Zeeland lady. The fruitless journey there involved such a remarkable incident, as Hendrik Willem van Loon reports, that I must repeat it here, though I encourage a prudent disbelief as the safest attitude for the reader.