A diversion from American history

My airplane reading to and from AZ was "To the Finland Station" by Edmund Wilson. Here are a few nuggets.

The first is relevant to the earlier discussion of history telling and myth. Wilson quotes the great French historian Jules Michelet on the story of Joan of Arc:

"What legend is more beautiful than this uncontestable story? But one must be careful not to make it into a legend. One must piously preserve all its circumstances, even the most human; one must respect its touching and terrrible humanity. . . . However deeply the historian may have been moved in writing this gospel, he has kept a firm hold on the real and never yielded to the temptation of idealism."

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Nugget no. 2:

"[The communitarian leader Robert Owen] attended in 1817 a Congress of Sovereigns..., and he met there a veteran diplomat, the secretary of the Congress. Owen explained to this personage that it was now possible, through the extraordinary progress of science ... for the whole of the human race, and no longer merely the privileged few, to be well-educated, well-nourished and well-bred. ... Yes, the veteran diplomat said, they all knew that very well--the governing powers of Europe which he himself represented--and that was just what they didn't want. If the masses became well-off and independent, how were the governing classes to control them?"

~~Fortunately for the powers-that-be, the culture wars and scandals de jour were invented, sometimes adequate replacements for the constraining effect of grinding poverty.


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Monty Python aside, one doesn't usually associate comedy with Karl Marx. But consider this incident (Cologne, 1848 or 9, where Marx was a revolutionary leader):

"Two non-commissioned officers appeared to beard [Marx] in his house one day, declaring he had insulted their rank; but he held them at bay in his dressing gown by the threat of an unloaded revolver."

The expounding prophet of the class struggle as Quick-draw McGraw? *He'll* do the thin'in' around here...