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If you read my posts regularly, you know that I am a fan of Mark Twain. Recently, I was made aware of a Google Map that maps significant events in Mark Twain's life. The map was created by Terry Ballard for the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. Mr. Ballard wrote me about it after visiting Littourati. Have fun exploring Mark Twain's life interactively!
We're going to go Mediaeval and get Romantic in this post. While William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) travels through Bad Axe and tries to locate Ivanhoe, Michigan but only finds a church, I will look a little more into the place's namesake and explore Romanticism in general. It's going to be fun, really! With a cartoon at the end. Do an heroic quest for the map to locate Ivanhoe!
Book Quote
"....I was on state 142, just west of the farm town of Bad Axe, and looking for Ivanhoe. Later when I was - apparently - in Ivanhoe, I had found only a church,..."
Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 1
Google Earth screen capture of St. Columbkille Church and Rectory in Ivanhoe, Michigan.Bad Axe and Ivanhoe, Michigan
After moving through Bad Axe, LHM really makes an effort to find Ivanhoe, Michigan. I surmise that his interest is based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott. I don't know if Ivanhoe is named for the novel but I will spend the post on this possibility since the novel touches on some themes that I've already covered in previous posts.
So, what is Ivanhoe? It was written by Scott and published around 1820 or thereabouts. I've never read the book, but the author was trashed by one of my favorite writers. More about that later.
Ivanhoe is a novel based in Romanticism and Mediaevalism. Romanticism was in many ways a reaction against the ideals and progress of its time. In Europe, first the Enlightenment and then the Industrial Revolution led to many changes in society. Rural lifestyles were supplanted by the growth of cities and the rise of new technology. Social movements formed as well, upending the traditional class systems. In the midst of this, Romantics looked inward, focused on emotion and feelings, believing in natural law (universal laws derived from nature rather than man-made law) and gazed longingly on a mediaeval past and a simpler, happier time. In America, Romanticism helped birth some of our greatest literature - James Fenimore Cooper'sLast of the Mohicans is an example - where Native Americans were noble savages helpless to preserve themselves against the industrial and military might, and intrigues, of France and Britain in their attempts to conquer North America. It also led to the Transcendental Movement associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Romanticism not only fueled literature but also art and music also and had a large effect on politics as well. In Germany, its ideals not only inspired Richard Wagner's great operas, but also may have culminated in Nazi ideology which was based in large part on a hatred of industrialization and the idea that with enough "living room," Germans could be strong and mighty heroes that would return their country to its traditional pastoral and rural past.
Ivanhoe itself is a novel set in a time of change. The Normans had conquered England, and the last remaining Saxon families are having to decide their allegiances. Wilfred of Ivanhoe, son of a Saxon lord, pledges allegiance to the Norman king Richard I (the Lionhearted) and disrupts his father's plans to marry his ward, Lady Rowena, to another powerful Saxon lord and possible claimant to the throne. In this backdrop of change the winners (Normans) are consolidating their claim to England and marching forward through history while the losers (Saxons) look back longingly and helplessly upon what they have lost.
I've never considered myself a Romantic, but I've struck similar tones at times throughout this blog, particularly about the potential harmful effects of technology. I have wistfully looked back on times when people spent less time on their cell phones, IPods, IPads and Facebook and actually talked with each other. I have fondly remembered when a busy signal meant that the person you were trying to reach would not be available for awhile. I have recalled a time where cable television had only thirteen stations when I grew up. At times, I have felt like a modern Ivanhoe, caught between a world of yesterday and today. Like Ivanhoe, I have embraced the present (my Richard I is computers, media at my fingertips, music when and where I want) and yet yearned for the past I've lost (my Lady Rowena is the simpler life that I used to lead without all of these things).
I've already mentioned that one offshoot of the Romantic movement might be Nazism. Mark Twain, one of my favorite authors, lays another fault at the feet of Romanticism, particularly that espoused by Sir Walter Scott. Twain writes that Sir Walter Scott:
sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote. Most of the world has now outlived good part of these harms, though by no means all of them; but in our South they flourish pretty forcefully still. Not so forcefully as half a generation ago, perhaps, but still forcefully. There, the genuine and wholesome civilization of the nineteenth century is curiously confused and commingled with the Walter Scott Middle-Age sham civilization; and so you have practical, common-sense, progressive ideas, and progressive works; mixed up with the duel, the inflated speech, and the jejune romanticism of an absurd past that is dead, and out of charity ought to be buried. But for the Sir Walter disease, the character of the Southerner-- or Southron, according to Sir Walter's starchier way of phrasing it-- would be wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval mixed, and the South would be fully a generation further advanced than it is. It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them. Enough is laid on slavery, without fathering upon it these creations and contributions of Sir Walter.
Sir Walter had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war. It seems a little harsh toward a dead man to say that we never should have had any war but for Sir Walter; and yet something of a plausible argument might, perhaps, be made in support of that wild proposition. The Southerner of the American Revolution owned slaves; so did the Southerner of the Civil War: but the former resembles the latter as an Englishman resembles a Frenchman. The change of character can be traced rather more easily to Sir Walter's influence than to that of any other thing or person.
I'm not sure if it's fair of Twain, as much as I like him, to blame not only the character of the South before the Civil War, slavery, and the Civil War itself on Sir Walter Scott. Perhaps he was making him the figurehead of the Romantic movement. In that case, the progressive forces of industrialism and modernity, moving in the Union, won the war.
In fact, LHM is sort of on a Romantic quest in his trip around America and he too laments some of the things that are changing and that are lost. I believe each one of us will always wrestle with those two sides of our Janus. The forward looking, modern and ultimately hopeful sides of our characters will always fight, even a little, with the side of our character that looks back and wonders what we've left behind, and whether our progress has really been worth it.
William Least-Heat Moon wants to put the miles between him and his troubles, and we're going along with him like a fly in his van riding shotgun. For a reference point on our journey, click on the thumbnail to get to the interactive map.
Book Quote
"...through the old statehouse town of Corydon, I drove to get the miles between me and home. Daniel Boone moved on at the sight of smoke from a new neighbor's chimney; I was moving from the sight of my own. Although the past may not repeat itself, it does rhyme, Mark Twain said. As soon as my worries became only the old immediate worries of the road - When's the rain going to stop? Who can you trust to fix a waterpump around here? Where's the best pie in town? - then I would slow down."
Blue Highways: Part 1, Chapter 5
Marker commemorating Indiana's first capitol at Corydon. Photo by Kathy and her Buckethead H., on http://travel.gather.com. Click on photo to go to site.
Corydon, Indiana
The quote above cites one of my favorite authors, Mark Twain. The idea that the past does not repeat itself, but rhymes, appeals to me on so many levels. I've faced this in many aspects of my life. You hear the phrases "the more things change, the more they stay the same," or "we are doomed to repeat our mistakes." I think that these phrases touch on part of Mark Twain's idea. For me, when it seems that I finally get a handle on things, especially those situations that really set off negative reactions or times of self-despair or even self-destructiveness, I go through a learning process. I think to myself okay, I know how to handle these situations in the future and I will never go down that road again. But other situations come up that bring on the same negative consequences in my life. The situations seem different, but once you peel through layers of disguise, connections begin to reveal themselves. Only after I've gone through the whole damn process again do I realize that indeed, I was just relearning what I already learned. It can be very frustrating and maddening, but after the fact, I realize that Twain's rhymes were there if I'd only recognized them.
I don't know about any of you, but I have some of the spirit of moving on when one has the "sight of the smoke of a neighbor's chimney." I am an introvert, and am often uncomfortable around large groups of people. In addition, I grew up in a small town, and it's taken about twenty years for me to get used to living in cities. My wife despairs of me sometimes, because she loves to take advantage of cities and I, if left to my own devices, usually don't do the things that cities offer best - live music, theater, restaurants and other activities. Were I living in Daniel Boone's time, I might have done what he did and moved on when people got too near. But I'd probably come back from time to time, because I like people. As did Daniel Boone, who was largely responsible for settling Kentucky and served in the politics of the state in his later life.
Don't we often do that, whether or not we live in a city, or on a remote ranch somewhere? Humans seem driven by the need for people, and companionship, but also a need for our own space. This causes some interesting clashes, especially in our society where the old frontiers defined by seemingly limitless geography have given way to the new frontiers defined by how far we can go in the electronic, virtual world. People immerse themselves in computer activities, such as I do in this blog. It's a solitary thing that divorces us from the reality around us. A young man plays World of Warcraft and doesn't talk to another live human for weeks. A woman builds an avatar and disappears into Second Life. Yet even as they divorce from reality, they seek community in these places. Facebook is the most popular social networking site on the internet, with millions of people seeking companionship in their Facebook friends. World of Warcraft is interactive gaming with others, all solitary, sitting at their computers and connected to each other in the game. We don't often hear of the Daniel Boone's of this frontier, though some have decided to chuck it all and go "off the grid." We tend to think of them as a little crazy.
I don't know whether this aspect of our society is bad or good. I think the lack of real community is a negative, but you can't help but admire the new and innovative ways people are finding each other. Someone like William Least-Heat Moon, even as he drives to put the miles between him and home and the problems he is running from, can't help but pass through towns like Corydon, reminders that the world exists and that we can always plug back into true reality when and if we must.
Ho about a little information about Corydon? It was the second capitol of the territory of Indiana, and the first state capitol. It was also the site of the only Civil War battle in Indiana. For those of us into 70s television, the town was the birthplace of James Best, better known as Roscoe P. Coltrane, sheriff in the Dukes of Hazzard (the original TV series). The town is also known for its festivals and town activities. So, there's a bunch of reasons to stop there!
;)
Mark Twain, 
