I will talk about Emerson for a moment, though Emerson would not approve. He preached "the infinitidue of the private man." He means we EACH are the infinite ALL. This modest man!
A farmers wife attended one of his lectures and later reported, "I did not understand almost anything the man said but I know in my heart he regards himself as no better than me."
That exactly is NOT modesty. Any Narcassistic can see the truth: Thou Art God. But are you the only one? Is your faith in yourself yet in the diseased infant form of arrogance such that you require the painful envy and grudging praise of others to keep your ego inflated? You are adolescent at best. Emerson amazingly seemed to bypass this adolescent form of the growth into full deity.
In the first book of his first series of lectures, entitled History, Emerson extolled the reader to read ALL books, all religion, all myth, all history, as mere commentary on the one true writing, the scripture that matters: your own living autobiography. Emerson makes no mention of himself. Unlike Jesus or Buddha he did not "speak with authority." He rebuked nobody. He cursed nobody whatsever.
NON-Emersonian EVER to curse. He who curses remains accursed forever. To say it straightly, Emerson was and is better than Confucius, Jesus, Socrates, and Buddha, the cardinal teachers. He never let that FACT go to his head. How did the sage manage that?
Ivan teased me on account of my fourth wife, Susan. He asked about my seventy year old lover. A distant descendent of Louisa alcott. I corrected him. She is sixty. He lewdly accused her of being dried up but that has never been an issue, nor completing my love of her in great geysers of appreciation. I chided Ivan, alas, even Abraham when touring Egypt with his sixty year old wife Sarai managed to capture in a trap the eyes of lust of the Egyptian princes. They would do ANYTHING to have her. She at age 60. Ivan said, Must you compare your life to ancient people constantly? You are just an ordinary man living in an ordinary neighborhood. Having properly defeated my friend, I just said, "Heh."
Every day of my life is parable. Dad Dan said I have readers just because of the juicy gossip and family drama. How you underestimate me! It is ALL deliberate and involved and encoded four, sixteen, thirty-two layers down. I don't mind that you non readers don't get it. Almost ANYTHING I write. You get so little ... so infinitely little. Nobody ever invented has to be read between the lines more than me.
Of the Genius of Shakespeare The greateset writer of all time, Hands down? Harold Bloom said, There is no god but God, and his name is Shakespeare. Harold Bloom admits that Emerson properly acclaimed Shakpeare's literal divinity best, of all his readers. Because that's who Emerson was. The invisible eyeball. The ultimate Reader. But at the end of that essay in Representative Men, he takes account with Shakespeare. Our god lacked any faith. Any religion. He wrote only for sheer entertainment. Emerson prophesied that one greater than Shakespeare would one day come. Harold Bloom, for his part, rued this last remark as blasphemy.
The prophesy is fulfilled in me. The greatest writer of all time. Jillian DID say, "When you write you are great, yes, but when you edit you are GOD." I had shown her the deepest secrets of editing. But Ezra is my better as an editor. I am still bowing in discipleship to him. As for Reader, Emerson still has me beat. But as sheer WRITER, what Emerson called SCHOLAR, there is none of my compare at any time, at any place, at any where. And that's fine. Part of my art is that I require no secondary opinion to tell me this. I need no applause. I need no "proof," as if the self-evident could EVER be proved. When you true to prove the self-evident you just confuse yourself.
So that's fine.
The greatest dictionary of all time is the Oxford English Dictionary. The English are so PROUD of the their language, that, faithless as it is, can brag and truly the greatest line of poets of any nation of any time:
Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, The First Generation of Romantic Poets, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake, and then the second generation of Byron, Shelley, Keats, and the rest.
I am speaking only of English poets. Not American. No nation comes close, nowhere CLOSE to boasting of a roster of poets this great. In no place ever.
Till me and those who follow.
And that's fine. The English language IS divine. It is the holy spirit. It is the FIRST and BEST form of Globalism ever to exist. These things don't happen by accident. They come from a sort of Destiny.
Exactly BECAUSE agnosticism and secularism are the guiding muses of most those poets, with a few exceptions, mostly eccentrics, like Milton, they have made a secular substrate which ALL religions may read, enjoy, love, and share in. The Holy Spirit, English, impregnates ALL languages EVERYWHERE the way Zeus through his LOGOS did. And that's fine. The Anglican church is completely beside the point. All gods can sit in the audience of Shakespeare, though, very very notably, our own American puritans, coming at last to what Shakespeare styled "the brave new world" for a time turned the theater down. American forebodings.
I don't really speak English. I speak Ameran. What mencken in his beat book called the American Language. It will be a long time before we collectively call it this. Today is not mine. I belong to the day after tomorrow. I plant the seed of the World Tree. I am the Same. You all may well forget my Name, for history never will and never can, and will scratch its head at the audacities I shouted loudly to all who would listen, each and every day, and people shrugged and looked away.
That's my sense of humor. I am the Grand Hilarity. The Divine Comedy. I am the Laughter of Ama divine.
The Oxford English Dictionary is undoubtedly the greatest dictionary of all time. The English honor their lexicograpers. The great book, Life of Johnson, boswell write to honor and praise his best friend, the lexicographer. So this is the tradition and the o.e.d. is a final fruit. No other dictionary comes close. Tolkien contributed. Whole generations made this volume. Like a 16 volume scripture. My parents bought be for my birthday a "shorter" version of it in two huge volumes. I bought the WHOLE oed with microprint for reading with magnifying glass in one volume, the entire English language in one huge unwiedly volume. Paid hundred for it. Mailed it to Jillian as a marriage gift for our eternal marriage. This blesses her shelf to this day. These things are not without their meaning. I bless you all, all 200 of you, as my Niviana. I sometimes despair how much, if any, the inner meanings get into any of you! Jillian reads them all. She once said, I've read everything you've ever written Daniel and I am proud of it. Later, she insisted I put her name on any and all books I had published through a professional publishing house. It annoys me how over the top my rhetoric has to get through to any if you. But truly, the beauty in these words can't be lost on you? Can't you see the BEAUTY of this thing?
So back to studies preparing for EZRA. A gift dedicated to Jillian. They all are and must be. She my Muse. I've dedicated volumes to my wife and kids and friends at times. Ezra will be for you.
