After Emerson wrote to Carlyle that every writer is a skater, a sailor, and that a book has more variation than a surveyor’s compass (see my post on June 17), Carlyle had this to say in reply.
How true is that you say about the skater; and the rider too depending on his vehicles, on his roads, on his et ceteras! Dismally true have I a thousand times felt it, in these late operations; never in any so much. And in short the business of writing has altogether become contemptible to me; and I am become confirmed in the notion that nobody ought to write,–unless sheer Fate force him to do it;–and then he ought (if not of the mountebank genus) to beg to be shot rather. That is deliberately my opinion,–or far nearer it than you will believe.
Carlyle to Emerson, 2 June 1858
Carlyle is a difficult writer to understand. His motivations for being a writer are unclear, except that he could. No doubt his statement that the business of writing has “become contemptible” to him is an exaggeration, an over-statement at a time of physical or mental exhaustion. Yet, in all his correspondence to Emerson, Carlyle always complained about whatever he was writing: how difficult it was to do the research; how the book never came together as he wanted it to; how he had to change directions often in midstream; how he would go mad if he continued to write. I’m sure Emerson’s statement of the nature of writing and of the book was somewhat in response to prior complaints by Carlyle.
Carlyle was either considerably down in the dumps or revelling in over-statement to say “nobody ought to write…unless Fate force him…and then he ought…to beg to be shot rather.” Yet, I suspect these words contain a large measure of truth. While I would ascribe it to a calling rather than to Fate, perhaps the writer ought to make sure he has a calling for it, with proofs of the calling equivalent to the preacher’s proofs: grace, gifts, and usefulness. An urge to write may not be enough.
I think, in a future post, I will write about the writer’s grace, gifts, and usefulness, and see where that takes me. Not tomorrow, nor maybe this week, for I have some accumulated book reviews to post.
