Discussing Essays By Robert Louis Stevenson

In this episode of Canonball we discuss essays that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote between 1874 and 1888.

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Transcript

Stevenson was born in 1850 in Edinburgh, Scotland. From his childhood, he inherited a tendency toward illness that might have been exacerbated by living in a cold, damp house for a while. And even as an adult, he was often sick and his illnesses left him very thin. Despite his health problems though, and maybe partially in defiance of them, he wrote and traveled a lot throughout his life and as we'll see, he had a pretty vigorous outlook. In 1871, when Stevenson was about 21, he told his dad that he wanted to pursue a literary life and his dad allowed him to do that, but they agreed that he would study law so that he would have something to fall back on. He later befriended the poet William Ernest Henley, who's best known for a very nice poem called Invictus, certainly worth reading if you're not familiar with it. Henley had a wooden leg and is often considered to have been the inspiration for Long John Silver in Treasure Island, which Stevenson would later write. The two were good friends and they sometimes worked together on literary projects until they got into a spat and their friendship largely ended in 1888. It was apparently over whether Stevenson's wife had plagiarized some piece of writing by Henley's cousin. Stevenson also became friends with the novelist Henry James, who's known for The Turn of the Screw and a number of other novels. In 1889, so now he's about 39 years old, Stevenson moved to Samoa and built a very big house there. This is after he had gained some fame and money from his writing and apparently while he was there, he tried to warn the natives that if they didn't cultivate their land and create some kind of defense, then Europeans were going to come there and set up colonies. Stevenson then died in Samoa in 1894 and five years after his death, Samoa was divided between Germany and the United States and his house was used by the governor of German Samoa. And it has today been converted into a museum commemorating Stevenson. While Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are Stevenson's most famous writings and the two pieces that made him famous during his lifetime, his total output includes 13 novels, 11 collections of travel writings, seven short story collections, five volumes of poetry, three plays, and a lot of essays. In 2018, Stevenson was ranked as the 26th most translated author in the world with Charles Dickens being number 25. He's certainly best known for his fiction. I remember reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde when I was probably about 15 and I wasn't aware of any essays by him, which is why I was interested to find a book of his essays at a Goodwill near my house. There have been times in the past when I bought clothes from Goodwill, but today I focus on the bookshelf. When my wife and I want to go on a walk, sometimes we'll walk down the street to the Goodwill and see if there's anything good. Usually we don't come back with anything. The bookshelf in a Goodwill generally comprises a lot of pulp fiction, cookbooks, outdated technical manuals, popular religious books, and travel guides. But every once in a while you can find a gem. Over the past year I've found Bronte, Dante, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Rilke, a little volume of German folk tales, I'm sure I'm forgetting some others, and this book of essays by Robert Louis Stevenson. And maybe it would be better for me to leave those books for someone else to find, but nobody's perfect. And if I'd done that, you wouldn't be hearing about these essays right now. So you're in this with me. It is a small volume with a hardcover. The pages are yellowing and the front cover has the name of a woman and an address in Ohio. The copyright dates given in the edition are 1892, 1895, 1905, and 1918. So the last date given is 1918 and the previous dates are separated by 3, 10, and 13 years. So the average is eight and a half years or so. So we could estimate that this edition was printed somewhere between 1918 and 1926, making it about a hundred years old. And you'll notice about those years, the first year listed was 1892 and Stevenson died in 1894. So not this particular printing of the book, but this edition was in print while Stevenson was still alive. It was first printed about two years before his death. About half of the essays have notes in the margins that look like a woman's handwriting. So they're probably written by this previous owner whose name is in the front cover. And the other half of the essays have no notes in the margin. And the pages of some of them were even still connected at the edges in that way.that old books sometimes were when they first came from the printer. There were probably only three or four pairs of pages that were connected in this way, and I cut them very carefully with an X-Acto knife. And it was interesting to think that in the hundred years since the book had been printed, no one had ever looked at those pages. But you and I are going to look at them today. From what I could see online, these essays appear to be largely out of print. And at first, I was hesitant to put pencil markings in such an old book. But when I realized that this was how I was going to convey some of this writing to you, and also that the book already has a lot of notes in it, I decided it was worth it. Also, my markings in a book are not very obtrusive. I mark the beginning and the end of a passage I want to read or remember with a little corner being two small pencil marks. And then I put a book dart on the edge of the page to note that there's a spot there that I marked. I don't sell book darts, but they're a little metal thing that you can put easily on the page of a book. And I recommend them as a tool for marking information and passages that you want to easily return to later. And in opening the book this morning to record this episode, I discovered that though I had tried to be gentle with it while I was reading it this past week, the cover of the book has become slightly separated from the pages toward the front. So it's already seen some damage. I may try to put some tape on that later, but then I will put this book on my shelf and probably never take it down again unless somebody wants to look at it. But now opening it very carefully, we can enjoy some passages from this book of essays by Robert Louis Stevenson. And this first one happens to be kind of a heavy way to start, but it's from the first essay in the book. And here he's talking about how we sometimes value or act as though we value the image of ourselves in the minds of others more than our actual physical self. And in this passage, he used the word viscerant or vicerant, which is somebody who rules a colony on behalf of the sovereign. We would probably today use the word viceroy. He writes at one point, quote, as a monarch who should care more for the outlying colonies he knows on the map or through the report of his viscerants than for the trunk of his empire under his eyes at home, are we not more concerned about the shadowy life that we have in the hearts of others and that portion in their thoughts and fancies, which in a certain far away sense belongs to us than about the real knot of our identity, that central metropolis of self of which alone we are immediately aware or the diligent service of arteries and veins and infinitesimal activity of ganglia, which we know as we know a proposition in Euclid to be the source and substance of the whole. At the death of everyone whom we love, some fair and honorable portion of our existence falls away and we are dislodged from one of these dear provinces. And they are not perhaps the most fortunate who survive a long series of such impoverishments till their life and influence narrow gradually into the meager limit of their own spirits and death when he comes at last can destroy them at one blow, end quote. In another essay, he relays an anecdote told to him by somebody he met on a train and he draws a nice philosophical metaphor from it. Stevenson writes, quote, I remember meeting a man once in a train who told me of what must have been quite the most perfect instance of this pleasure of escape. He had gone up one sunny windy morning to the top of a great cathedral somewhere abroad. I think it was Cologne Cathedral, the great unfinished marvel by the Rhine. And after a long while in dark stairways, he issued it last into the sunshine on a platform high above the town. At that elevation, it was quite still and warm. The gale was only in the lower strata of the air and he had forgotten it in the quiet interior of the church and during his long ascent. And so you may judge of his surprise when resting his arms on the sunlit balustrade and looking over into the place far below him, he saw the good people holding on their hats and leaning hard against the wind as they walked. There is something to my fancy quite perfect in this little experience of my fellow travelers. The ways of men seem always very trivial to us when we find ourselves alone on a church top with the blue sky and a few tall pinnacles and see far below us the steep roofs and foreshortened buttresses and the silent activity of the city streets. But how much more must they not have seemed so to him as he stood not only above other men's business, but above other men's climate in a golden zone like Apollo's, end quote. This one's sort of short, but it's an interesting thought if, like me, you maybe pay a little bit too much attention to what time it is. He writes, quote, not to keep hours for a lifetime is, I was going to say, to live forever. You have no idea unless you have tried it how endlessly long is a summer's day that you measure out only by hunger and bring to an end only when you are drowsy, end quote. And that's a tricky one because...Not to keep hours for a lifetime is to live forever. That seems risky I think that one of the most valuable things you can do is learn how to keep track of and allocate your time To use your time well to plan what you're doing to use each day how you want to whatever that means It doesn't have to be productive in an economic sense But don't let the day slip away from you while you're doing nothing in particular But he is correct in that you do get a different perception of a single day if you try to stay away from Any kind of timekeeping device no clocks no computer No cell phone Stevenson didn't even have to deal with those things and you find or I have found when I do this experiment that your perception of time Changes that the day feels longer when you're not giving the moments of the day this Quality of saying oh now it's 10 o'clock now. It's 2 o'clock and of course this is a Luxury practice for somebody who has no schedule to keep and that might have been easier to do in the 19th century than it is Today, but you could still try this on a weekend day and later. Anyway, he seems to anticipate my objection He writes quote or perhaps you're left to your own company for the night and surly weather imprisons you by the fire You may remember how burns Numbering past pleasures dwells upon the hours when he has been happy thinking It is a phrase that may well perplex a poor modern Gird about on every side by clocks and chimes and haunted even at night by flaming dial plates For we are here so busy and have so many far-off Projects to realize and castles in the fire to turn into solid Habitable mansions on a gravel soil that we can find no time for pleasure trips into the land of thought and among the hills of vanity Changed times indeed when we must sit all night beside the fire with folded hands and a changed world for most of us when we Find we can pass the hours without discontent and be happy thinking We are in such haste to be doing to be writing to be gathering here to make our voice Audible a moment in the derisive silence of eternity that we forget that one thing of which these are but the parts Namely to live we fall in love we drink hard We run to and fro upon the earth like frightened sheep and now you are to ask yourself if when all is done you would not have been better to sit by the fire at home and Be happy thinking to sit still and contemplate to remember the faces of women without Desire to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy to be everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet Content to remain where and what you are is not this to know both wisdom and virtue and to dwell with happiness End quote but then later He also seems to wonder whether what he's saying is true quote you lean from the window your last pipe Reeking whitely into the darkness your body full of delicious pains your mind Enthroned in the seventh circle of content when suddenly the mood changes the weather cot goes about and you ask yourself one question more Whether for the interval you have been the wisest philosopher or the most egregious of donkeys human experience is not yet able to reply But at least you have had a fine moment and look down upon all the kingdoms of the earth and whether it was wise or foolish Tomorrow's travel will carry you body and mind into some different parish of the infinite and quote in another spot He writes and in this passage He mentions William Hazlitt who is another man at whose writing will have to look quote We admire splendid views and great pictures and yet what is truly admirable is rather the mind within us That gathers together these scattered details for its delight and makes out of certain colors certain distributions of graduated light and darkness that intelligible whole which alone we call a picture or a view Hazlitt Relating in one of his essays how he went on foot from one great man's house to another's in search of works of art Begin suddenly to triumph over these noble and wealthy owners because he was more capable of enjoying their costly Possessions than they were because they had paid the money and he had received the pleasure and the occasion is a fair one for self complacency while the one man was working to be able to buy the picture the other was working to be able to enjoy the Picture an inherited aptitude will have been diligently improved in either case Only the one man has made for himself a fortune and the other has made for himself a living spirit It is a fair occasion for self complacency I repeat when the event shows a man to have chosen the better part and laid out his life more wisely in the long run Than those who have credit for most wisdom end quote and in another passage He's talking about marriage and friendship and how the two resemble and differ from one another and he writes Quote the fact is we are much more afraid of life than our ancestors and cannot find it in our heartshearts either to marry or not to marry. Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age. The friendships of men are vastly agreeable, but they are insecure. You know all the time that one friend will marry and put you to the door, a second accept a situation in China and become no more to you than a name, a reminiscence, and an occasional cross letter, very laborious to read. A third will take up with some religious crotchet and treat you to sour looks thenceforward. So, in one way or another, life forces men apart and breaks up the goodly fellowships forever. The very flexibility and ease which make men's friendships so agreeable while they endure, make them the easier to destroy and forget. And a man who has a few friends, or one who has a dozen, if there be anyone so wealthy on this earth, cannot forget on how precarious a base his happiness reposes, and how by a stroke or two of fate, a death, a few light words, a piece of stamped paper, a woman's bright eyes, he may be left, in a month, destitute of all. Marriage is certainly a perilous remedy. Instead of on two or three, you stake your happiness on one life only. But still, as the bargain is more explicit and complete on your part, it is more so on the other, and you have not to fear so many contingencies. It is not every wind that can blow you from your anchorage, and so long as death withholds his sickle, you will always have a friend at home." In another spot he writes, "...the habitual liar may be a very honest fellow, and live truly with his wife and friends, while another man, who never told a formal falsehood in his life, may yet be himself one lie, heart and face from top to bottom. This is the kind of lie which poisons intimacy, and vice versa. Veracity to sentiment, truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion, that is the truth which makes love possible and mankind happy." And he'll sometimes drop in a funny, thought provoking couple of sentences. At one point he writes, "...I hate questioners and questions. There are so few that can be spoken to without a lie." And here he's giving questions in quotation marks as if somebody else is asking them. Continuing on, "...do you forgive me? Madam and sweetheart, so far as I have gone in life, I have never yet been able to discover what forgiveness means. Is it still the same between us? Why, how can it be? It is eternally different, and yet you are still the friend of my heart. Do you understand me? God knows. I should think it highly improbable." He begins one essay called An Apology for Idlers with an exchange attributed to James Boswell and Samuel Johnson. Boswell, of course, being Johnson's friend and biographer, who by the way was also born in Edinburgh. Boswell said, "...we grow weary when idle," and Johnson answered, "...that is, sir, because others being busy, we want company. But if we were idle, there would be no growing weary. We should all entertain one another." So Johnson was saying, when we're not doing anything, we only get bored because everybody else is busy. But if all of us were just idle, then we could all hang out and talk to each other and we'd have a nice time. And in this passage, he uses a made-up word that combines French and English. L-E-S-E is apparently the French verb to hurt, to injure. And he says, les a respectability. So maybe that's hurt respectability or something. I don't quite follow that part. And if you Google this word, you get references to this essay. So it seems like it's not used in a lot of places. It's something that Stevenson made up. And the passage references two episodes in history. One is the famous episode of Alexander the Great and Diogenes. Alexander the Great, after having conquered the known world, goes and visits the philosopher Diogenes, who's living on the street as an ascetic. And he wants to do something for him. He says, tell me what you want and I'll give it to you. And Diogenes says, get out of my light, that Alexander is blocking his sunlight and what he wants from him is for him to get out of the way of the sun so that he can enjoy the sunlight. And this anecdote reflects Diogenes' disregard for Alexander's worldly power. And Plutarch says that Alexander walked away saying to his guys around him, if I were not Alexander, I would want to be Diogenes. And the other one is a reference to the Roman senators when the barbarians, being presumably either the Visigoths in 410 or the Vandals in 455, sacked Rome. These senators are sitting quietly in the Senate waiting for the barbarians to arrive. And looking online, I saw literary references to this reported incident. There's a poem about it. There's a book with a title that seems to be based on this incident, but I couldn't find a source about the historical incident. So if you know what it is, please let me know. But this passage is also interesting because ittouches on a topic that I'm interested in, which is how certain actions are given prestige under the current orthodoxy based on the degree to which they serve the power centers for which that orthodoxy is part of the public relations arm. For example, a Hollywood screenwriter has a certain kind of prestige because they are a part of a larger social, political, economic system, and what they do serves that system. Whereas an independent poet, who maybe has written more words and put more effort into their work than the screenwriter has, does not get that prestige because they do not serve that system. And Stevenson here is not only talking about that dynamic, but he mentions it. He writes, quote, just now, when everyone is bound under pain of a decree in absence, convicting them of lesser respectability to enter on some lucrative profession, and labor therein with something not far short of enthusiasm. A cry from the opposite party, who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savors a little of bravado and gasconade. And yet this should not be. Idleness, so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for six penny pieces is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow, as we see so many, takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, goes for them. And while such a one is plowing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a glass at their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate place by the disregard of Diogenes. Where was the glory of having taken Rome for these tumultuous barbarians who poured into the senate house and found the fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success? It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled the arduous hilltops and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence, physicists condemn the unphysical. Financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks. Literary persons despise the unlettered and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none." End quote. Later, reminding us about the limitations of books, he writes, quote, books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit like the lady of Shiloh peering into a mirror with your back turned to all the bustle and glamour of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thoughts." End quote. That's something we've talked about before that by reading something, you're by definition not going to encounter an original thought. You can only encounter something that somebody else already thought about and wrote down. Now, that can be beneficial, but you got to make sure you make time for your own thinking as well. And this next one is an eerie anticipation, not only of the effect of life and work on the mind, but the effect of technology and social media as well. He writes, quote, they have been to school and college, but all the time they had their eye on the metal. They have gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time they were thinking of their own affairs as if a man's soul were not too small to begin with. They have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play until here they are at 40 with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement and not one thought to rub against another while they wait for the train." End quote. How many people do you know who can't sit quietly and wait for something and think about something in their head without looking at their phone? And the interests of technology seek to portray any hostility to technology, to the mythology about its endless advance as a kind of cantankerousness, as a nostalgia, and as at base irrational. But there is a legitimate criticism of the unrestrained introduction of an increasing quantity of increasingly powerful technology into our daily lives. And for me, the most significant criticism is that it comes at a cost that's not advertised. The cost being the functioning of our minds. Sometime in the past year or two, I found a statistic about how an increase in using screens while the brain is developing is related to, correlated to, connected somehow to an increase in early onset dementia and Alzheimer's. And this is not like when you get it in your 60s or 70s or something. This is when it appears before the age of 40.And when I read that, I was startled and I said, well, if that's true, there must be some other reported increase in these illnesses. And sure enough, there's another finding that between 2013 and 2017, early onset Alzheimer's and dementia increased by 200% across the board and by close to 400%, it was something like 375% in basically Gen X and millennials. And if you Google what I'm talking about, it'll come up quickly. And if I've gotten the numbers slightly wrong, forgive me, but the gist of what I'm saying is correct. So it's nice if the internet and technology helps us shuffle data around more easily, but if the net result is that it causes the degeneration of the mind, then that in the end will have been a bad exchange. Later, Stevenson writes, quote, there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they're disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other day, a ragged barefoot boy ran down the street after a marble with so jolly an air that he set everyone he passed into a good humor. One of these persons who had been delivered from more than usually black thoughts stopped the little fellow and gave him some money with this remark. You see what sometimes comes of looking pleased. If he had looked pleased before, he had now to look both pleased and mystified. I justify this encouragement of smiling rather than tearful children. I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but upon the stage, but I'm prepared to deal largely in the opposite commodity. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the 47th proposition. They do a better thing than that. They practically demonstrate the great theorem of the livableness of life," end quote. This is now a different essay and he's talking about people who live on the side of a volcano and the precautions that they take while their whole existence is fundamentally at risk living on a volcano. This is a real life example that he gives but it's a powerful metaphor also. He writes, quote, "'We have all heard of cities in South America built upon the side of fiery mountains and how even in this tremendous neighborhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in the greenest corner of England. There are serenades and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead. And meanwhile, the foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky high into the moonlight and tumble man and his merrymaking in the dust. In the eyes of very young people and very dull old ones, there is something indescribably reckless and desperate in such a picture. It seems not credible that respectable married people with umbrellas should find appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery mountain," end quote. So people live on the side of a volcano and they carry an umbrella with them in case it rains. And later in the same essay, quote, "'Whether we regard life as a lane leading to a dead wall, a mere bag's end,' as the French say, or whether we think of it as a vestibule or gymnasium, whether we wait our turn and prepare our facilities for some more noble destiny, whether we thunder in a pulpit or pull in little atheistic poetry books about its vanity and brevity, whether we look justly for years of health and vigor or are about to mount into a bath chair as a step toward the hearse, in each and all of these views and situations there is but one conclusion possible, that a man should stop his ears against paralyzing terror and run the race that is set before him with a single mind," end quote. And I have a bunch of passages marked here. We probably won't get to all of them, but that's one that starts to show something of Stevenson's own philosophy. He was a guy who was physically sick a lot, but he wanted to grab onto life. He wanted to live it fully. And in that way, we might consider his fiction writing. I've only read a little of it, but a lot of it is about adventures and people sometimes think of it as oriented toward young people, to be a reflection of this philosophy of life of his, which itself might have in part been a reaction to his illnesses. And in this way, Stevenson and Nietzsche share at least that in common. Of course, they're very different in almost every other way, but they were both guys who were sick a lot. And in their writing, a reaction to that sickness is visible. And reading these essays of Stevenson makes me take him a little bit more seriously, makes me think of him not as just the guy who wrote Treasure Island, though there's nothing wrong with that book. And it does make me want to check out some of his other novels. And again, I don't know if he was thinking of.of writing for young people. I'd have to read more of his comments on his own writing. But I do know that writers can get categorized erroneously, and that categorization continues just by imitation. Somebody says this thing about a certain writer, and that meme continues just because somebody else heard it and they say it, and then somebody else heard it and they say it. And meanwhile, none of the people who are saying this have read anything by that writer. An example of this that comes to mind is Jules Verne, who is sometimes thought of as a writer for young people, but I think his novels are great. They have a lot in them. They're kind of surreal. They're strange. They're very imaginative. They have a lot of cool scientific information in them. And these essays make me wonder whether Stevenson has been similarly miscategorized. And there's another element at play here. There is a concept that I'm thinking of that doesn't have any name that I'm aware of. But what I'm thinking of is how different fields can take a certain shape because of the nature of that field. So we think of different disciplines like playing football and writing poetry and sailing as not exactly equivalent, but they are things that you can work hard on and you can get better at or worse at, and they're somehow related. And they certainly are, but the field itself can start to take a shape based on the people who are attracted to that field. And they might not necessarily all develop in the same way. And it has something to do with the traits of the people who are attracted to the field. So people who get good at sailing are probably for the most part, not people who are also afraid of water. And they also like to be outdoors. They have a reasonable level of physical fitness. They enjoy the mysticism or poetry or spirituality or however they would articulate it of the sea, of the ocean, of confronting nature. Anyway, we could brainstorm a list of traits that are not unique to people who sail, but many of the people who do sail have these traits. And we could do the same thing for people who play football and for people who write poetry. And if we were to do this for literary critics, for the people who read books and write books and write about books, one of the shared traits is a willingness to sit quietly and read a book for a long time. That's basically a requirement if you wanna be a literary critic, somebody who says something in the discussion about the value of certain pieces of writing and can make themselves heard. What is not a requirement to be in that discussion is to be very physically strong, for example, or to be very outdoorsy or to be somebody who really likes adventure. You might be all those things, but it is not a requirement of being in that group. Just like if you're a sailor, you might also like to read books, but that's not a requirement for sailing necessarily. At least it's not a central tenant of it. And I wonder if something that can happen in the evolution of literary criticism, we're now talking about sort of a sociology of literature, is that people like Stevenson who have this emphasis on robustness and energy and adventure and vitality, vigor, livingness, and they try to convey that a little bit in their writing, a lot of people who are interested in literature, not that this is totally foreign to them, but this feeling might not be a really central thing to them. Not that bookish people cannot be that way, but the general tendency might be on the average that that is not a central part of their character. And the result might be that when they encounter it in writing, it's not something that really resonates with them intensely. What does resonate with them is introverted, contemplative, thoughtful, ruminating. And when they encounter that in writing, that's more likely to resonate with them. So it might very well be that Stevenson wrote some novels that were sort of adventure novels that sold some copies during his lifetime, but they don't have a lot of literary value. But I think we should at least consider the possibility, especially in light of these essays that are very interesting and thoughtful and show somebody who was certainly capable of writing other stuff than the fiction that he's best known for. We should consider the possibility that there is a sociological explanation that may in part explain Stevenson's tenuous position in literary history. And I'm very interested in that in general, this sociology of knowledge. How do memes spread? Why do we think what we think? What is the social component, the social influence in what we would lovingly call our opinions? How did our opinions get there? How did our ideas get into our head? Was it the result of objective, impartial, dispassionate, detached analysis, either our own or that of someone else in history? Or is there more at play here that needs to be considered and when possible, ejected? Later, Stevenson writes, as courage and intelligence are the twoqualities best worth a good man's cultivation. So it is the first part of intelligence to recognize our precarious estate in life, and the first part of courage to be not at all abashed before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage, not looking too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over the past, stamps the man who is well armored for this world. And not only well armored for himself, but a good friend and a good citizen to boot. We do not go to cowards for tender dealing. There is nothing so cruel as panic. The man who has least fear for his own carcass has most time to consider others." End quote. And lower down on the same page, quote, The scruple monger ends by standing stock still. Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, keeps all his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs until if he be running toward anything better than wildfire, he may shoot up and become a constellation in the end. Lord, look after his health. Lord, have a care of his soul, says he. And he has at the key of the position and swashes through incongruity and peril toward his aim. Death is on all sides of him with pointed batteries, as he is on all sides of us. Unfortunate surprises gird him round. Mim-mouthed friends and relations hold up their hands in quite a little elegiacal synod about his path. And what cares he for all this? Being a true lover of living, a fellow with something pushing and spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any other soldier in any other stirring deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he touched the goal. A peerage or Westminster Abbey, cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are great incentives, not for any of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living. Of being about their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of every nation tread down the nettle danger and pass flyingly over all the stumbling blocks of prudence. Think of the heroism of Johnson. Think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the end. Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever embark upon any work much more considerable than a half-penny postcard? Who would project a serial novel after Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course? Who would find hard enough to begin to live if he dallyed with the consideration of death?" And, wrapping up the same essay, he writes, quote, And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced. Is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? And does not life go down with a better grace foaming in full body over a precipice than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the gods love die young, I cannot help believing they had this sort of death also in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot fit of life, a tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes it abound onto the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched. The trumpets are hardly done blowing. When trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land. End quote. On the limits of language, he writes, quote, Language is but a poor bull's-eye lantern wherewith to show off the vast cathedral of the world. And yet a particular thing once said in words is so definite and memorable that it makes us forget the absence of the many which remain unexpressed, like a bright window in a distant view which dazzles and confuses our sight of its surroundings. There are not words enough in all Shakespeare to express the merest fraction of a man's experience in an hour. The speed of the eyesight and the hearing and the continual industry of the mind produce in 10 minutes what it would require a laborious volume to shadow forth by comparisons and roundabout approaches. If verbal logic were sufficient, life would be as plain sailing as a piece of euclid. But as a matter of fact, we make a travesty of the simplest process of thought when we put it into words. For the words are all colored and force-worn. Apply inaccurately and bring with them from former uses ideas of praise and blame that have nothing to do with the question in hand. So we must always see to it nearly that we judge by the realities of life and not by the partial terms that represent them in man's speech. And at times of choice, we must leave words upon one side and act upon those brute convictions unexpressed and perhaps inexpressible, which cannot be flourished in an argument, but which are truly the sum and fruit of our experience. Words are for communication, not for judgment. This is what every thoughtful man knows for himself." And along similar lines,persuasive process and brings us to a far more exact conclusion than to read the works of all the logicians extant. If both, by a large allowance, may be said to end in certainty, the certainty in the one case transcends the other to an incalculable degree. If people see a lion, they run away. If they only apprehend a deduction, they keep wandering around in an experimental humor." And of course, that's not the end of that argument, because our senses can deceive us, and there are certain things that even if we see something very clearly, for example, the sun moving across the sky, we can be mistaken about what's actually going on and it can require some other reasoning, some other observations to try to figure it out. But talking about the limits of words as compared with our senses in provoking a reaction, he makes a fine point. Talking about courage and cowardice in life, he writes, Quote, This is no doubt very properly so, but it does not follow that the one sort of proposition is any less true than the other, or that Icarus is not to be more praised and perhaps more envied than Mr. Samuel Budget the successful merchant. The one is dead, to be sure, while the other is still in his counting house counting out his money, and doubtless this is a consideration. But we have, on the other hand, some bold and magnanimous sayings common to high races and natures, which set forth the advantage of the losing side and proclaim it better to be a dead lion than a living dog. It is difficult to fancy how the mediocrities reconcile such sayings with their proverbs. According to the latter, every lad who goes to sea is an egregious ass. Never to forget your umbrella through a long life would seem a higher and wiser flight of achievement than to go smiling to the stake, and so long as you are a bit of a coward and inflexible in money matters, you fulfill the whole duty of man." And later when he's talking about how people get ideas and how they express them, he writes, quote, to have a catch word in your mouth is not the same thing as to hold an opinion. Still less is it the same thing as to have made one for yourself. And there are too many of these catch words in the world for people to rap out upon you like an oath and by way of an argument. They have a currency as intellectual counters, and many respectable persons pay their way with nothing else. They seem to stand for vague bodies of theory in the background. The imputed virtue of folios full of knockdown arguments is supposed to reside in them, just as some of the majesty of the British Empire dwells in the constable's truncheon. They are used in pure superstition, as old clodhoppers spoil Latin by way of exorcism. And yet they are vastly serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion and stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings. And when a young man comes to a certain stage of intellectual growth, the examination of these counters forms a gymnastic at once amusing and fortifying to the mind." End quote. So that's talking about people who just repeat certain phrases that spread around and seem to stand for an argument without actually making it. At another spot, he writes, quote, I overheard the other day a scrap of conversation, which I take the liberty to reproduce. What I advance is true, said one, but not the whole truth, answered the other. Sir, returned the first. And it seemed to me there was a smack of Dr. Johnson in the speech. Sir, there is no such thing as the whole truth. End quote. So that's a funny thing to remember. If anybody ever uses that one on you, or if you use it on yourself, there is no such thing as the whole truth. Or if anybody finds it, let me know. There are pieces of truth. This is not relativism. This is not to say nothing is true, but I don't think humanity can ever access the comprehensive truth. The whole thing. We can just find portions or pieces that are true. And in an essay where he's talking about Thoreau, he writes, quote, we must all work for the sake of work. We must all work, as Thoreau says again, in any absorbing pursuit, it does not matter what, so it be honest. But the most profitable work is that which combines into one continued effort the largest proportion of the powers and desires of a man's nature. That into which he will plunge with ardor, and from which he will desist with reluctance, in which he will know the weariness of fatigue, but not that of satiety, and which will be ever fresh, pleasing, and stimulating to his taste. Such work holds a man together, braced at all points. It does not suffer him to doze or wander, it keeps him actively conscious of himself, yet raised among superior interests. It gives him the profit of industry with the pleasures of a pastime. This is what his art should be to the true artist, and that to a degree unknown.in other and less intimate pursuits, for other professions stand apart from the human business of life. But an art has its seat at the center of the artist's doings and sufferings, deals directly with his experiences, teaches him the lessons of his own fortunes and mishaps, and becomes a part of his biography." Later he has an interesting thought, he writes, quote, The respectable are not led so much by any desire of applause as by a positive need for countenance. The weaker and the tamer the man, the more will he require this support, and any positive quality relieves him by just so much of this dependence." End quote. So he's saying people who are considered respectable, it's not that they want applause, they need it, they need approval. In another essay he's describing the effect of reading a book, and he writes, quote, In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous. We should gloat over a book, be wrapped clean out of ourselves and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest kaleidoscope dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand colored pictures to the eye." End quote. In another spot he writes, quote, Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance. End quote. And that's from an essay called Gossip on Romance. And he's not talking about romance like between a man and a woman, he's talking about romance or romantic literature as opposed to realist literature. And of course, Stevenson mostly wrote what we would call romantic literature. And that essay has a lot in it that would be very interesting for somebody who writes fiction because it has a lot about his own approach to writing and why and how he does it the way that he does it. But since that's not really the focus of this podcast, I didn't want to dawdle on it for too long. But I did think that that line was interesting. Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance. And if we think of poetry as a certain kind of words or speech that have a certain special quality and they're thought out in a certain way, then what poetry is to language, the equivalent for conduct would be drama, this kind of special action and the equivalent for circumstance, a kind of special setting would be what Stevenson calls romance. And before that, he described some of the situations that he liked to read about when he was a kid, guys in a bar playing a card game or whatever it is. You'd be reading a book and when he encountered certain kinds of scenes, he would like it. And I think we all respond to that. We all acknowledge that there's a difference between the setting or situation of a post office compared with that of encountering a wrecked ship on a beach at night. That circumstance has a certain quality to it. And that's what Stevenson would call romance. And in another essay called A Note on Realism, he gives a really nice outline of how to do any kind of writing well, though it seems in particular to apply to nonfiction writing and maybe to realist fiction. You'll have taken some broad steps toward writing something nice if you have thought about all the components in this list. He writes, quote, style is the invariable mark of any master. And for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will. Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or color are allotted in the hour of birth and can be neither learned nor stimulated. That's harsh. But the just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, the proportion of one part to another into the whole, the elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important, and the preservation of a uniform character from end to end, these, which taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage. What to put in and what to leave out, whether some particular fact be organically necessary or purely ornamental, whether, if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design, and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably or in some conventional disguise, are questions of plastic style continually re-arising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to propound, end quote. In this next one, he mentions the need for strength in producing art and courage. He writes, quote, this question of realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical method of a work of art. Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be nonetheless voracious. But if you be weak, you run the risk of being tedious and inexpressive. And if you be very strong and honest, you may change.upon a masterpiece. A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind. During the period of gestation, it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless but also alas that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design. On the approach to execution, all is changed. The artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate aerial, to the touch of matter. He must decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his own design." End quote. And a kind of optimism and curiosity, it's not naive, but vibrant, comes through in a lot of what Stevenson says. We live in a time today where it's very fashionable to talk about how terrible everything is. And I don't think we need to look at the world with anything but the most clear eyes. We don't need the world to be better than it is. We don't need it to be worse than it is. But for whatever reason, and it probably has something to do with the fact that humans respond to negative emotion. And so, if you're somebody who is tearing stuff down a lot, you'll get a lot of attention online or wherever you are. And if you're talking about the poetry of something or the beauty of it, that's less likely to get attention. And even in intellectual circles, there's something about it that seems stupid. For whatever reason, that's not the attractor toward which a lot of human attention at a lot of different levels tends to gravitate. And part of my goal in this podcast and in my publishing company is to focus on and to call your attention to things that I think are good and beautiful. We look at nice old books that are interesting and thought-provoking and have value for us. I want to print books that have similar value. And this is in part because there is so much energy that's directed toward cultivating and expressing just empty bad feelings. We have every right to be hostile toward whatever appears by our reason to warrant our hostility. But in the meantime, we ought to also, when we can, if only for our own health, but also for the enjoyment of our lives and that of those around us, to focus our attention on good things and also to try to make good things or do good things in whatever way we can, whether professionally or otherwise. And this next passage also maybe suggests that the poetry that you write or that you see, poetry meaning worldly beauty, I guess I should say, the goodness that you can see is a reflection of something that's in you. In an essay called The Lantern Bearers, he writes, quote, this harping on life's dullness and man's meanness is a loud profession of incompetence. It is one of two things, the cry of the blind eye I cannot see or the complaint of the dumb tongue I cannot utter. To draw a life without delights is to prove I have not realized it. To picture a man without some sort of poetry, well, it goes near to prove my case, for a chosen author may have little enough, end quote. And those are the passages I wanted to read you from this book of essays by Robert Louis Stevenson. If nothing else, Stevenson is a writer who reminds us that life is or can be an adventure. And hopefully you feel that your life is an adventure or some portions of it have been at least. And if you can't identify with that feeling at all, then maybe you should ask yourself why that is. And if you can identify with that sentiment, it still never hurts to keep on the watch for the opportunity for your next adventure. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I hope you will share it with a thoughtful friend who you think will enjoy it. And go to my website, vollrathpublishing.com, the link is in the description, and pick up a copy of the edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that I printed. I have it at a good price with free shipping, original cover art, 97 footnotes throughout the book that explains some of the literary, historical, geographical references that Mary Shelley uses, some of the more unusual vocabulary words that she uses. My edition has excellent print quality. I'm very pleased with how it came out. The edition of Frankenstein that I keep in my library is the edition that I printed. That was part of my goal was I wanted to make an edition that I would be glad to keep in my library and I achieved that. So I can say with confidence that it will make a great addition to your library as well. Frankenstein is one of those books that I think everybody should read. It is a forceful warning about the dangers of technology and how easy it might be for us to build something that could destroy us. If you haven't read it, you absolutely should order yourself a copy right now and do so. If you have read it, but you don't own a copy, then you should have a copy in your house. Order my edition. If you have read it and you do own a copy, then you should still order my edition. It makes a great gift for a friend or a family member so they can benefit from this great book. Thank you so much for listening. Farewell until next time. Take care and happy reading.