Suchergebnisse

The man of letters as a man of business.--Worries of a winter walk.--Confessions of a summer colonist.--The editor's relations with the young contributor.--Summer isles of Eden.--Wild flowers of the asphalt.--Last days in a Dutch hotel.--Some anomalies of the short story.--A circus in the suburbs.--A she Hamlet.--Spanish prisoners of war.--The midnight platoon.--The beach at Rockaway.--American literary centres.--Sawdust in the arena.--At a dime museum.--American literature in exile.--The horse show.--The problem of the summer.--AEsthetic New York fifty-odd years ago.--From New York into New England.--The standard household-effect company.--Staccato notes of a vanished summer.--The art of the adsmith.--The psychology of plagiarism.--Puritanism in American fiction.--The what and the how of it.--Politics of American authors.--Storage.--"Floating down the river on the O-hi-o." ; Mode of access: Internet.

Mere literature -- The author himself -- On an author's choice of company -- A literary politician [Walter Bagehot] -- The interpreter of English liberty [Edmund Burke] -- The truth of the matter -- A calendar of great Americans -- The course of American history. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Subsequently published under titles: Ideals and realities in Russian literature, and Russian literature: Ideals and realities. ; "This book originated in a series of eight lectures on Russian literature during the nineteenth century which I delivered in March, 1901, at the Lowell institute, in Boston."--Pref. ; "Bibliographical notes": p. 318-320. ; Introduction.--Pushkin; Lermontoff.--Gógol.--Turguéneff; Tolstóy.--Gonteharoff; Dostoyevskly; Nekrȧsoff.--The drama.--Folk-novelists.--Political literature; satire; art-criticism; contemporary novelists.--Bibliographical notes. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Subsequently published under titles: Ideals and realities in Russian literature, and Russian literature: ideals and realities. ; "This book originated in a series of eight lectures on Russian literature during the nineteenth century which I delivered in March, 1901, at the Lowell Institute, in Boston."--Pref. ; "Bibliographical notes": p. 318-320. ; Introduction.--Pushkin; Lermontoff.--Gógol.--Turgué-neff; Tolstóy.--Gontcharoff; Dostoyevskiy; Nekrásoff.--The drama.--Folk-novelists.--Political literature; satire; art-criticism; contemporary novelists.--Bibliographical notes. ; Mode of access: Internet. ; spec: In manuscript and front pastedown: Library of Herman Cohen.

Some seventy years ago, sixty-eight, to be exact, Walter Bagehot published a notable little volume entitled Physics and Politics, described in a subtitle as "Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of 'Natural Selection' and 'Inheritance' to Political Society." Actually the volume sought to sketch in outline a natural history of political society, and to describe the process or processes by which later, more elaborate, and more liberal forms of association have emerged, from the dissolution of earlier, simpler, and more rigid, if not oppressive, forms.Society, or at least political society, as Bagehot conceived it, is a kind of super-organism, having a social structure which is maintained by a social process. This structure is imbedded in and cemented by custom. Man is a custom-making animal. The process in this instance which is not otherwise defined, is what we know elsewhere as "the historical process." Its function is to weave and reweave the web of custom and tradition in which the individuals who are destined to live together and eventually act together as a political unit, are ineluctably bound together.Always there is a more or less inflexible tradition which imposes upon each new generation the pattern of the inherited social order. But always there are the liberating and individuating influences of other social processes—competition, conflict, and discussion—which represent what Bagehot describes as man's "propensity to variation," or, to use a political rather than a biological term, his propensity for non-conformity, "which," he adds, "is the principle of progress."