Concord, June 27, 1861.
My Dear Friend,
— You will think there never was such prodigal sloth as mine. To have such
friends within easy reach by the steamer's mails, and to postpone letters (to
write which is its own reward), and, by postponing, to brave the chances of
time and harm on either side, — looks foolhardy, in a world where decay is so
industrious. You have behaved so nobly too, on your part, as to leave my sloth
and irresolution without excuse: for you have sent me such gentle reminders, in
the shape of new benefits, that my debt grows from month to month. The Life of Michelangelo
did not reach me until long after it was announced by your letter. I feared it
was lost, and ordered a copy from Berlin. Your own book arrived at last, and,
soon afterwards, the ordered copy, and there is now a third copy, in our Boston
Athenaeum; so that America can begin to read. The book is a treasure, — in the
hero, the treatment, the frank criticism, the judicial opinions, and, — what I
value most, — the interior convictions of the writer bravely imparted, though
more seldom than I could wish, as in the first pages, or in the interpretation
of M. A.'s sentence or Raffaelle's diligence. The book has research, method,
and daylight. I hate circular sentences, or echoing sentences, where the last
half cunningly repeats the first half, — but you step from stone to stone, and
advance ever. I first knew from your Essay the passages from Francesco d'
Ollanda, and now you tell me the Florentine Government will print the
Buonarroti Papers. Mr. Cobden, the English Member of Parliament, was in Boston
two years ago, and told me he had been shown by the Buonarroti family, in
Florence, a considerable collection of MSS. of Michelangelo. I hope, now that
liberty has come, or is coming to Italy, there will be all the more zeal to
print them. Michael is an old friend of mine. A noble, suffering soul; poor,
that others may be rich; indemnified only in his perception of beauty. And his
solitude and his opulent genius strongly attract. I miss cheerfulness. He is
tragic, like Dante; though the Erythrӕan
Sibyl is beautiful. I remember long ago what a charm I found in the figure of
Justice, on Paul III's monument, in the Vatican, and wished the legend true
that ascribed the design to Michael A. Yet he has put majesty, like sunshine,
into St. Peter's. We must let him be as sad as he pleases. He is one of the
indispensable men on whose credit the race goes. I believe I sympathize with
all your admirations. Goethe and Michael A. deserve your fine speeches, and are
not perilous, for a long time. One may absorb great amounts of these, with
impunity; but we must watch the face of our proper Guardian, and if his eye
dims a little, drop our trusted companions as profane. I have a fancy that
talent, which is so imperative in the passing hour, is deleterious to duration;
what a pity we cannot have genius without talent. Even in Goethe, the culture
and varied, busy talent mar the simple grandeur of the impression, and he
called himself a layman beside Beethoven.
Yet I do not the less esteem your present taste, which I
respect as generous and wholesome. Nay, I am very proud of my friend, and of
his performance. Pleases me well that you see so truly the penetrative virtue
of well-born souls. Above themselves is the right by which they enter ad
eundem into all spirits and societies of their own order. Like princes,
they have sleeping titles, which perhaps they never assert, finding in the
heyday of action relations enough close at hand, yet are these claims available
at any hour, — claims, against which, conventions, disparities, nationality,
fight in vain, for they transcend all bounds, as gravity grasps instantaneously
all ponderable masses.
Thanks evermore for these costly fruits you send me over the
sea! I have the brochure on Goethe in Italy and that on the portraits and
statues of Goethe. I persuade myself that you speak English. I read German with
some ease, and always better, yet I never shall speak it. But I please myself,
that, thanks to your better scholarship, you and I shall, one of these days,
have a long conversation in English. We are cleaning up America in these days
to give you a better reception. You will have interested yourself to some
extent, I am sure, in our perverse politics. What shall I say to you of them?
'T is a mortification that because a nation had no enemy, it should become its
own; and, because it has an immense future, it should commit suicide! Sometimes
I think it a war of
manners. The Southern climate and slavery generate a marked style of manners.
The people are haughty, self-possessed, suave, and affect to despise Northern
manners as of the shop and compting-room; whilst we find the planters
picturesque, but frivolous and brutal. Northern labor encroaches on the
planters daily, diminishing their political power, whilst their haughty temper
makes it impossible for them to play a second part. The day came when they saw
that the Government, which their party had hitherto controlled, must now,
through the irresistible census, pass out of their hands. They decided to
secede. The outgoing administration let them have their own way, and when the
new Government came in, the rebellion was too strong for any repression short of
vast war; and our Federal Government has now 300,000 men in the field. To us,
before yet a battle has been fought, it looks as if the disparity was immense,
and that we possess all advantages, — whatever may be the issue of the first
collisions. If we may be trusted, the war will be short, — and yet the parties
must long remain in false position, or can only come right by means of the
universal repudiation of its leaders by the South.
But I am running wide, and leaving that which belongs to
you. Let me say that I rejoice in the union which allows me to address this
letter to you, whilst I have my friend Gisela in my thoughts. To her, also, be
this sheet inscribed; and let me entreat, meantime, that she, on the other
hand, will not quite believe that she writes to me by the hand of her husband,
but will, out of her singular goodness, use to me that frankness with which she
already indulged me with autograph letters. My only confidante in this relation
is my daughter Ellen, who reads Gisela's letters and yours to me, with entire
devotion, and whose letter to your wife (sent through Rev. Mr. Longfellow) I
hope you have long since received. Ellen has facility — and inclination to
front and surmount the barriers of language and script. My little book, Conduct
of Life, I tried in vain to send you by post. So I sent it by Mr. Burlingame,
our Minister to Austria, who kindly promised me to forward it to you. But the
Austrian Government has declined to receive him, and I know not how far he
went, or what became of the poor little book. You asked for my photograph head,
and I tried yesterday in Boston to procure you something; but they were all too
repulsive. Ellen had enclosed in her letter some scrap of an effigy. But I am
told that I shall yet have a better to send. And so, with thanks and earnest
good wishes to you and yours, I wait new tidings of you.
R. W. Emerson.
Herman Grihm.
SOURCE: Frederick William Holls, editor, Correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Herman Grimm, p. 57-63
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