The Flag of My Disposition
"If some things were different, other things would be otherwise." - Stockton
“what unuttered adoration for the world,
what unform’d desires,
what questionings unsure, uncommitted
What prayers, what stamp’d and seal’d conviction,
What vast and vague and hazy dreams”
An essential aspect of freedom - if it exists in this world at all - is the freedom granted by literacy. It is the freedom to understand and to articulate what is happening to us as well as others, to learn and to teach, to read and to write. The death of classical literature in Western academia, the execution of the Western Canon, rests unjustly as the critical component of the American problem, in so far as it can be defined. The American problem is a problem of absence. It is what Whitman referred to as belatedness. The West suffers from the absence of culture, gender, sexuality, religion, class, politics, and law; from the debasement of humanity in general.
In the absence of humanity, we are left with an impoverished language, a language that is no longer able to articulate or to express our lived reality. We are left with a language that is no longer able to inform us of the world in which we live. We are thus lead not by truth, nor by a sense of “beingness,” but rather by emotional impulses and material drives. We are left with a language that serves not to explain the world, but to justify and to rationalize our actions, or very existence, as if the fact of it were not sufficient justification in its own right.
It is sufficient.
To you, life was not denied.
It is a sad development that the average person is no longer able to articulate or to express the reality of their own life. Sadder still is that we have forgotten the innate beauty of the gift of language. The English language in particular, the language of liberty, evolved as such not due to some bullshit Anglo-Saxon superiority but rather to its lack of class and gender distinctions.
The English language is not just a means of communication, it is a way of life. It is a language that has been used to articulate the hopes and dreams of the English working man and the fears of the English middle class, the horrors of imperialist war and the heroism and inveterate honor at the heart of the English (or American) soldier. It is a language that has been used to articulate the beauty of the English landscape while laughing at the absurdity of the English character, used to articulate the fantasies of the aristocrat and the realities of the common man. If there is any one thing that English has done for the world, it is to make it feel at home.
And now I cannot help but briefly mention the Griffin and the Minor Canon by Frank R. Stockton, which, according to my own personal interpretation, beautifully presents the degradation of classic literature in academia and society that we are witnessing the end of today, revealing the superiority of the Western canon through the character of the Griffin, juxtaposed with the superficiality and impermanence central to the constitution of a character named the ‘minor canon.’ The minor canon is well-intentioned and generally virtuous, but he is not powerful. He is not powerful, but the Griffin is, being both widely feared by the public, as well a source of wonder, much like many of the works highlighted by the late literary scholar Harold Bloom, who so beautifully honored the most aesthetic of the Western literary works in his 1994 publication, “the Western Canon.”
Language is the most powerful tool in the hands of humanity as well as the Divine. It is the Holy differentiation exalting humankind over our primitive animal counterpart. They have not been likewise anointed. The power vested in us via our ability and affinity for articulation must be protected and revered rather than perverted and stripped of meaning and depth, and thus its vital communicative capacity.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
- John 1:1, the New Testament (King James)
The answer to the American problem is in the hands of the Writer.
The Writer is the only one who can make the American people see the truth and act upon it. The politician cannot. He is too dependent upon the power of the press to make him popular. The press, likewise, cannot. It is too dependent upon advertising and corporations, and too heavily influenced by governmental structures. The churches, for similar economic reasons, also cannot bring the Truth to the people. It is only the Writer, the cast-away and impoverished monk sacrificing his time, his reputation, his efforts his love, who can effectively fight for the truth that he himself lives. He is a man of the people but not of the masses, possessing a singular ability to pull men up, and out of the swamp into clear and clean waters. He is not a destroyer, like the Artist, nor is he an imitator, like the Actor.
It is literature that shows men what they are, what they might be, and what they are not; out of the swamp of darkness and into the light of the sun. The English language is not perfect, and I have no doubt that it can be improved upon, but it is the language of liberty, and it is the language of the Internet. It is, for better or worse, the language of the world. I am not a native speaker, and I do not claim to be, because a person’s native tongue is always the first language of their mother - I am not even a native speaker of my own language.
I’ve been writing this article for over a day, and I do not know what my point is - I do not know that I have a point. All I know is that I love these words. I love them like love my own tongue. I love them in the same way that I love my own name. . . And so, I write, and I dare to publish.
Let me be judged me by my works, and if you judge me unworthy, I will not care. I will not care, because I love these words; I will keep writing until it’s done.
I love my own name.
Thank you for reading, and please know that feedback is always appreciated.
Stay shiny!
-written with love, by M. Shultz