We had stepped down
from the pulpit; we had flung aside the pen; we had shut up the ledger; we had thrown
off that sweet, bewitching, enervating indolence, which is better, after all,
than most of the enjoyments within mortal grasp.
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance (1852)
From Wikipedia
The Blithedale Romance is a work of fiction based on Hawthorne's recollections of Brook Farm, a short-lived agricultural and educational commune where Hawthorne lived from April to November 1841. The commune, an attempt at an intellectual utopian society, brought together many famous Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.
In the novel's preface, Hawthorne describes his memories of this temporary home as "essentially a daydream, and yet a fact" which he employs as "an available foothold between fiction and reality." His feelings of affectionate scepticism toward the commune are reflected not only in the novel, but also in his journal entries and in the numerous letters he wrote from Brook Farm to Sophia Peabody, his future wife.
In a somewhat lighthearted way, Hawthorne presents the Blithedale movement as a renunciation of middle class indolence which in his time represented a huge contrast between working people and those who did not work with their hands.
From Wikipedia
The Blithedale Romance is a work of fiction based on Hawthorne's recollections of Brook Farm, a short-lived agricultural and educational commune where Hawthorne lived from April to November 1841. The commune, an attempt at an intellectual utopian society, brought together many famous Transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.
In the novel's preface, Hawthorne describes his memories of this temporary home as "essentially a daydream, and yet a fact" which he employs as "an available foothold between fiction and reality." His feelings of affectionate scepticism toward the commune are reflected not only in the novel, but also in his journal entries and in the numerous letters he wrote from Brook Farm to Sophia Peabody, his future wife.
In a somewhat lighthearted way, Hawthorne presents the Blithedale movement as a renunciation of middle class indolence which in his time represented a huge contrast between working people and those who did not work with their hands.
He implies that this is what the middle classes really want
and generally achieve - that sweet,
bewitching, enervating indolence, which is better, after all, than most of the
enjoyments within mortal grasp. It is surely what many of us seem to desire
too and here in the twenty-first century a far greater proportion of the population have achieved it.
How securely we don’t yet know, but
indolence is attractive. We foster it in numerous ways from social drinking to passive
entertainments such as TV and cinema, from dining out to relaxing in the sun. One might even say that
fostering indolence has been deliberate and it isn’t difficult to see why that
could be so.
A population in love with indolence is laid-back and not likely to upset the established order. It is likely to be generally accepting, easily pleased and manipulated. Not only that but... Blimey I’ve finished my glass of port...
A population in love with indolence is laid-back and not likely to upset the established order. It is likely to be generally accepting, easily pleased and manipulated. Not only that but... Blimey I’ve finished my glass of port...
4 comments:
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Demetrius - I'm surprised we allow it.
Pour another, quick.
James - I have.
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