Talk:Matthew Arnold/Archive 1

message: Amazing...There is not enough interest in this titan of Western culture for even one comment on his article to be posted? I wish I had more knowledge of his life to help give him a more respectable article. Is Stephen Colbert more important than Matthew Arnold? What is happening to our world? 75.68.6.81 21:23, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: His poetry endures because of its directness, and the literal fidelity of his beautifully circumstantial description of nature, of scenes, and places, imbued with a kind of majestic sadness which takes the place of music. Alike in his poetry and in his prose, which supplies in charm of manner, breadth of subject-matter, and acuteness of individual judgment, what it lacks in system, a stimulating personality makes itself felt. He was chiefly valuable to his own age as its severest critic; to ours he represents its humanest aspirations.
If anyone can find a citation for it, then surely it can go back in.  The assessment is not a bad one; the term "humanest" is eccentric, but not inappropriate.  I had thought I might find it in Chambers essay but it is not there that I can see. (You know I keep writing here as if there are others looking in, but other than Guinevere50, the vandals, the bots and the bot-like admins, I have a suspicion I am simply talking to myself...) Mddietz 18:48, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  You were wise not to go to the Dover Beach page.  Shortly after I made most of the comments here with my recommendations for changes to this article and for the new pages for some of the poems, a rather eccentric individual posted a snippet here disparaging the content of this page, and then posted again on the Dover Beach page.  He made his "beachhead" at Dover Beach  where he bravely attempted to save the world from the army of "scoliasts and right wing Nazis" who run wikipedia and will not allow him to post freely whatever he pleases to post.  Quite an interesting experience,-- in the course of which I ended up rewriting the Dover Beach page myself as a sort of bottomline defense in the name of sanity, motherhood and apple pie... Stockholm, huh?  I envy you.  I've never had a chance toget to scandanavia.  One of these days, perhaps. Mddietz 14:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

message: I reverted an edit as follows: Arnold never entirely rejected Christianity; rather, under the Influence of Baruch Spinoza and his father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, he rejected religious superstition, which he called "auberglabe," after-thoughts. He had a curious fascination for church rituals. Throughout his life, he seems to have most desired, for England, a state church that was open to a wide variety of Chiristian beliefs. This was because it was a radical change from the previous version, but unsupported by any citation. Can anybody support or expand on this, or on Arnold's religious beliefs?--Guinevere50 21:45, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Arnold and religion

message: I have done some cleaning up in the bibliography, starting with separating it from the Notes.  I have added four headings: Primary Sources (this should include only texts containing significant portions of Arnold's own writings); Biographies and Critical Lives (Arnold asked that no biographies be written on him and this was so generally respected that decent biographies do not appear until the second half of the twentieth century---before that we had only critical lives (Saintsbury, Trilling) and expurgated letters); Bibliographies; and Writings on Arnold.  This last currently contains two books that seem to me to be a little too far afield.  In all, many of the major Arnoldian texts are missing and I hope over time to fill in this list and produce a decent starter bibliography.  Mddietz 20:26, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bibliography

message: I would guess that the very nature of this site makes vandalism a recurrent, perhaps even necessary part of the process.  What intrigues me is the various tonalities that vandalism takes on.  At one point, reading back through the history of this page, someone added the phrase "Matthew is gay."  Not that interesting as vandalism goes, nothing more than a small adolescent plea for attention.  We just had another little burst of vandlaism,-- this much more interesting in its way, although, I would imagine, equally a call for attention.  It was appended to the discussion of "Dover Beach."  Here it is, parenthesis and all--
:(Which, of course, isn't really what the poem is about at all, so it might be wise to read it first before either commenting ridiculously upon it or relying on someone else's unschooled commentary anent it. You takes your chances, you gets your results.)
Now why would someone, who apparently has some knowledge of the poem and some capacity to think critically, believe that this was the best way to recommend a correction to the article?  Is it the age we live in that leads even the brightest amongst us to these little acts of vandalism and incivility?  Arnold famously said that "conduct is three-fourths of life."  John Dewey responded that it was no mere three-fourths, but the whole of life.  Can anyone imagine that he or she has tapped the depths of "Dover Beach" and not know this? Mddietz 18:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Little acts of vandalism