Heroes, Hero-worship, and The Heroic in History
ž Throughout
this lecture we are going to discuss the following issue:
ž Who
is a hero according to Carlyle?
ž Why
he has chosen them as Hero?
ž About
his view on Dante and Shakespeare.
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Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 – 5 February 1881)
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Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer,
essayist, historian and teacher. Considered one of the most important social
commentators of his time, he presented many lectures during his lifetime with
certain acclaim in the Victorian era. One of those conferences resulted in his
famous work On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History where he
explains that the key role in history lies in the actions of the "Great
Man", claiming that "History is nothing but the biography of the
Great Man".
He was a contemporary of the Romantic poets, translator of
Goethe and historian of the French Revolution. He wrote political essays,
historiography, philosophical satires and fiction in which he often blurred the
boundaries between literary genres.
Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4, 1795, in Ecclefechan,
in the Galloway region of Scotland. His father was a stern Calvinist who would
greatly influence Carlyle's later philosophies. Carlyle entered the University of Edinburgh as a teen in
1809, and though initially planning a career in the ministry, he chose to
explore mathematics and teaching, eventually settling into a career as a
writer. He particularly took to the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and in
the mid-1820s translated his novel Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship.
After a lengthy courtship, Carlyle wed Jane Welsh, a fellow
literary aficionado, in 1826. They were married until Welsh's death four
decades later.
Marriage to Jane Welsh:
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| Jane Welsh Carlyle |
Though the two at first lived in a rural area in Scotland,
where Carlyle worked on essays for publication, they eventually moved to London
in 1834, hosting salons and becoming known for their social gatherings of the
intelligentsia.
Their marriage proved to be one of the most famous, well
documented, and unhappy of literary unions. Over 9000 letters between Carlyle
and his wife have been published showing the couple had an affection for each
other marred by frequent and angry quarrels.
Carlyle became increasingly alienated from his wife.
Carlyle's biographer James Anthony Froude published (posthumously) his opinion
that the marriage remained unconsummated.
Although she had been an invalid for some time, his wife's
sudden death in 1866 was unexpected and it greatly distressed Carlyle who was
moved to write his highly self-critical "Reminiscences of Jane Welsh
Carlyle", published posthumously.
Literary Career:
- Carlyle published Sartor Resartus in Fraser's Magazine in the mid-1830s. Later released in book format, it was a satirical, spiritual treatise which featured the scholar character of Teufelsdröckh.
- Then, in 1837, Carlyle put forth The French Revolution, a subjective account of the famous era that was distinctive in its dramatic, multi-perspective style and brought the writer great fame. (A draft of the manuscript had accidentally burned while in the possession of Carlyle's friend John Stuart Mill.)
- Carlyle became a top literary figure in Victorian England, with some of his additional books including On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) and Past and Present (1843). He also wrote about Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great.
- His work was defined by a belief in hierarchical order and God-bound duty. Though commended for his dedication to charities and the impoverished, Carlyle was also known to be in a perennially acerbic mood at times and issued violently racist writing, with some of his notable friends later becoming estranged.
Death:
After Jane Carlyle's death in 1866, Thomas Carlyle partly
retired from active society. He was appointed rector of the University of
Edinburgh. With much of his later years spent mourning Welsh, Carlyle died on
February 5, 1881, in London, England, and was buried back in Scotland with his
parents' remains.
Upon Carlyle's death in London interment, in Westminster
Abbey was offered but rejected due to his explicit wish to be buried beside his
parents. His final words were, "So, this is death. Well!"
Carlyle’s Hero
In the mid-19th century, the Scottish man of letters Thomas
Carlyle coined the term “Hero-worship,” by which he meant the high regard, entirely
proper in his view, that ordinary people have for the great figures of their
history. His project in Lectures on Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in
History (1841) was to restore greatness to dignity in an age he believed had
come to belittle the very possibility of exceptional human achievement.
Carlyle claimed,
“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this
world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. . . .
All things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the
outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts
that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world.”
Carlyle identifies: the hero as divinity, prophet, poet, priest, man of letters, and king. He
suggests that the times in which one lives have some bearing on the type of hero who steps forward: the hero-divinity seems to be a figure belonging to the pagan past and is unlikely to resurface. Nevertheless, Carlyle argues vehemently against the proposition that the times make the man. He asks: What about the numerous manifest historical instances in which a people were in desperate need of a hero and didn’t get one—to their ruin? Heroes appear on their own schedule.
Carlyle seems to regard heroism as an essential property: The greatness of the heroic type will always express itself, but it manifests itself in a form appropriate to its times. One age’s prophet is another age’s playwright is another’s king. A young person destined for greatness will find a proper avenue for its expression and travel down it. What distinguished Muhammad and Samuel Johnson from their respective contemporaries was greatness or heroism. What distinguished them from each other was that the 7th century was ripe for a prophet, the 18th for a literary lion.
The Great Man Theory was a popular 19th century idea
according to which history can be largely
explained by the impact of "great men", or heroes: highly influential individuals who, due to either their personal charisma, intelligence, wisdom, or Machiavellianismutilized their power in a way that had a decisive historical impact.
built before their lifetime. For
example, a scholarly follower of the Great Man theory would be likely to study the
Second World War by focusing on the big personalities of the conflict – SirWinston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Charles de Gaulle
(Allies); Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, (Axis); et al. – and view all of the
historical events as being tied directly to their own individual decisions and
orders.
The Great Man Theory is associated most often with
19th-century commentator and historian Thomas Carlyle, who
personal attributes and divine inspiration. In his book On
Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, Carlyle set out how he saw
history as having turned on the decisions of "heroes", giving
detailed analysis of the influence of several such men (including Muhammad,
Shakespeare, Luther, Rousseau, and Napoleon). Carlyle also felt that the study
of great men was "profitable" to one's own heroic side; that by
examining the lives led by such heroes, one could not help but uncover
something about one's true nature.
This theory is usually contrasted with a theory that talks
about events occurring in the fullness of time, or when an overwhelming wave of
smaller events cause certain developments to occur. The Great Man approach to
history was most fashionable with professional historians in the 19th century;
a popular work of this school is the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition
(1911) which contains lengthy and detailed biographies about the great men of
history, but very few general or social histories. For example, all information
on the post-Roman "Migrations Period" of European History is compiled
under the biography of Attila the Hun. This heroic view of history was also
strongly endorsed by some philosophical figures such as Hegel, Nietzsche, and
Spengler, but it fell out of favor after World War II.
Criticisms:
One of the most vitriolic critics of Carlyle's formulation
of the Great Man theory was Herbert Spencer, who believed that attributing
historical events to the decisions of individuals was a hopelessly primitive,
childish, and unscientific position. He believed that the men Carlyle called
"great men" were merely products of their social environment.
“ [Y]ou must admit that the genesis of a great man depends
on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which
he appears, and the social state into
which that race has slowly grown .... Before he can remake his society, his
society must make him.
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Dante’s Portrait by Giotto
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by Dante Alighieri between c. 1308 and his death in 1321
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The Nine Circles of Hell as depicted by Dante in his Divine
Comedia
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Why Carlyle chose Dante as his hero?
Carlyle more than any
other Victorian figure is responsible for the diffusion of Dante among the
English intelligentsia of the Nineteenth century.
Carlyle in Heroes and Hero-Worship ("The hero as
Poet"), most emphatically assigns the Italian poet the place of honor in
his special grid of evaluation of world literature. To him it is only Dante's
greatness that can compete with Shakespeare's.
For Carlyle, Dante is seen as the absolute standard to be
followed in order to judge human culture and morality. Superior to Shakespeare,
Dante appears to Carlyle as the model and archetype of a regenerated humanity.
Carlyle praises Dante both for the penetration of his moral
understanding, but also for the sharpness and accuracy of his physical
portraits and scenes that he has written in his book. The gift of accurate representation of a
thing is linked in Carlyle's judgment with correctness of moral perception .
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Depiction of Hell by different painters as represented by
Dante in his Book
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- Dante as a hero presented by Carlyle was not the authentic Dante as represented in the various authoritative studies of the Nineteenth century: Carlyle's Dante is primitive, the poet's greatness is founded exclusively in conciseness and 'sincerity of speech'; he does not take into consideration the linguistic complexity and the formal arrangements.
- Dante unites perspicuity with conciseness - and the most naked simplicity with the profoundest observation of the heart. In Hero and Hero-Worship Carlyle maintained that the extreme immediacy and intense realism of The Divine Comedy were due to the fact that the poet had written 'with his heart's blood', driven by an impulse verging on vengeance against those who had plotted against Florence.
- From Carlyle’s point of view Dante seems to be that of a romantic writer’s vision who, looking back at the Middle Ages, yearns for a kind of order in the Victorian Age that is no longer possible.
- What has interested the romantic and post-romantic sensibility of Carlyle is not so much the formal design of poetry but its scenes and characters. Presumably Carlyle's strong liking for the Inferno derived from his taste for captivating vivid images, from the tragic and solemn utterance, from the shadowy recesses of the underground world that exhibit the human specimens symbolizing sin and human weakness. For these reasons, Carlyle judged the Inferno as artistically and morally superior to The Purgatorio and The Paradiso.
- Carlyle was very much influenced by Dante. We see this fact in the first chapter ("Midas") of Past and Present (1843), after having described the pitiful condition of the workers, Carlyle wrote: 'There was something that reminded me of Dante's Hell in the look of all this; and I rode swiftly away'.
- At Stockport Assizes [. . .] a Mother and a Father are arraigned and found guilty of poisoning three of their children to defraud a 'burial society' of some 3l. 8s. due on the death of each child [. . .] Yes, in the Ugolino Hunger-tower stern things happen: best-loved little Gaddo fallen dead on his Father's knees!
- These are the pictures that Carlyle transmitted to Victorian sensibility - strong images that, at the same time, ended up by giving a grossly reductive interpretation of the greatness of the entire framework that supports the Dantean construction
- For Carlyle Dante was the poet who, in a very convincing manner, managed to portray human sentiments and feelings in all their overwhelming force, feelings that are 'fierce as the central fire of the world' . This 'central fire' portrayed by Dante is the only rivalling concept able to compete with the solar vision that was introduced three centuries later by the Shakespearean theatre with its 'upper light of the world' .
