Holgrave the Daguerreotypist on Historical Consciousness
“Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?” cried he, keeping up the earnest tone of the previous conversation. “It lies upon the Present like a giant’s dead body! In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of an old dead giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you what slaves we are to Death, if we give the matter the right word!”
“But I do not see it,” observed Phoebe.
Different Realities
I was looking for the video of "Some Velvet Morning," written by Lee Hazlewood, a few days ago when I first heard that he died. The different realities of multiple versions of the song was my primary interest; but I was distracted by several things and didn't write about it. Besides, there was a Patti Smith concert to go to.
I still have a lot I'd like to say. For starters, the experience of music is no doubt closer to the embedded “interpretation” easily available on Youtube, which casts the latest lawsuit against them in strong relief. Spoonfedcornbread has 752 other songs available, at least at the time I write this. But the more theatrical video available from the link (at least for now) is what inspired me to write about it at length on February 1, 2002.
Ultimately, however, what I was thinking about most is the differing approaches to the real manifest in various versions of this rather surreal song.
Martin's Confusion
An oil painting caught and held him. A heavy surf thundered and burst over an outjutting rock; lowering storm-clouds covered the sky; and, outside the line of surf, a pilot-schooner, close-hauled, heeled over till every detail of her deck was visible, was surging along against a stormy sunset sky. There was beauty, and it drew him irresistibly. He forgot his awkward walk and came closer to the painting, very close. The beauty faded out of the canvas. His face expressed his bepuzzlement. He stared at what seemed a careless daub of paint, then stepped away. Immediately all the beauty flashed back into the canvas. "A trick picture," was his thought, as he dismissed it, though in the midst of the multitudinous impressions he was receiving he found time to feel a prod of indignation that so much beauty should be sacrificed to make a trick. He did not know painting. He had been brought up on chromos and lithographs that were always definite and sharp, near or far. He had seen oil paintings, it was true, in the show windows of shops, but the glass of the windows had prevented his eager eyes from approaching too near. (558-559)
Jack London, Martin Eden (Library of America ed.)
The message that if you examine something too closely it can evaporate before your eyes is only one way of “reading” what I take to be the most significant opening image of Martin Eden. This part stuck with me throughout the novel—the problem of “tricks of the light” and errors in judgment; but underneath, there is a massive amount of intertextual connection with Tristan and Isolde. A sailor falls for an unattainable woman; but instead of the well-educated Tristan, we have the self-educated Martin.
