The Importance of Transcendentalism or The Uncertain World of All That is or Might Be

   Ferdinando Flosky on Mar 25 15:19:50

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Without transcedentalism one is unable to comprehend that he does not in fact comprehend even that there are no facts such as those which he does not comprehend. Or indeed, he begins to think in terms similar to that stated above, viz., circular rotations from one thought unto another, which though seemingly agreeing with or complementing the former thought, also seem to contradict the former thought and create a whole thought, composed of two or more thoughts in succession, which might damage the sensors of the brain, and is certainly deleterious to one’s comprehention of life.

Mystery is essential to elegance, intelligence, and general good taste. This is why The Turn of The Screw , supposed to be intimated via the digits of the hand of Henry James, is one of the most excellent writings ever composed. It is all mystery. Nothing to be found within its pages is to be supposed certain. It is near as pure as the writings of Kant. No reader will be deceived into thinking that he has discovered anything by it. But I have, perhaps, placed the credit ill. Perhaps where the credit veridically stands is on the pates of our great critics, for it is they, so it seems, who have stirred the waters of Mr. James's conciousness, as portrayed in his diminutive codex, and changed its purity into the opaque of a murky forest pool; transformed his uncertain story into a divine wisp of unfathomable prism, inlayed with shards of mirror, reflecting in each facet the possibilities imagined not by its author, but by the critic whose face was turned unto that facet; turning a moderately interesting tale, with an already prodigious quantity of mystery, into a preternatural microcosm of transcendental thought as it can be seen by the initiated eye in all things both physical and metaphysical.

This is also why works of the kind of The Aspern Papers are so meritorious. Their merit lies in the wonderful mystery of why their author ever desired to materialize them. Take, for example, Jude the Obscure . Is it not a most meretricious tale, unpleasant, unflattering, discouraging, repulsive, and unexciting into the bargain, without even mystery to recommend it? Yet, due to the great phenomenon that someone, supposed to be Thomas Hardy, ever wrote it, while it was such a frightful concentration of human scum, it has been called a great book by some critics and I almost agree with them. As you may be able to visualize due to what I have said previous to this point, even the most vulgar execration of the human mind may be endowed with elegance, genius, and taste when given a sufficient quantity of mystery.

This having been stated, can you doubt what mystery, and the understanding that all is mystery, could do for condition of mankind?

#1

Stephen J. Douglass on Mar 25, 2023 10:47 PM
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I'm giving this book report an A+

:-) Fascinating stuff there, L.

Steve

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