Feb 18th 2.30pm QMUL Mile End Arts One: Edward Carpenter and the Future: Reading Together from Towards Democracy. Please email Matt Ingleby m.ingleby@qmul.ac.uk or Charlie Pullen c.pullen@qmul.ac.uk if you would like to attend! All welcome!! If you have a favourite bit you wish to read, please come and read it (tell us which bit first, or surprise us, all good). Otherwise, you can read one of our favourite bits for us! Excerpts, to be distributed to volunteer readers, including the section below:
The magistrate sits on the bench, but he does not
exercise judgment; the doctor dispenses medicine but has heard no tidings of what health is ; the parson opens his
mouth, but no intelligible sound comes forth ; the merchant
distributes evils just the same as goods.
Do you suppose it is all for nothing that disbelief has
gone out over the world ; that weariness has taken possession
of the souls of the rich, and that fatal darkness enfolds the
head of wealth and education;
That men disbelieve in the human heart and think
that the source of power is set otherwhere than in its burning
glowing depths : that the powers which they worship are but
so many withered emblems of power — dead scoriae nodding
and jostling over the living lava-stream?
Do you suppose it is all for nothing that the eyes of
brothers avoid in the street, and none sees what is before
him ; that the heel is upon the head, and Earth alone regards
the faces of them that are oppressed — that the stones in the
wintry fields are become confidants, and the ground is sown
with compressed thought, like seeds?
[When yet there is peace over the world, as of the Sea
swooning away into its hollows ; and differences are sullen
like rocks at ebb-tide, and brackish dismal mudflats lie
between, and the sun stands motionless overhead, and
Contempt trickles malarious, and Avoidance and Negation
and Fear loom up against the sky, and men cling like rotting
weeds about their bases, and the soul stifles for the swingeing
life of the waves and the breath of the wind that blows
from one end of the world to the other.]
Do you suppose it means nothing that that which satisfied
once satisfies now no more (not till the whole round has been made), but unrest and hunger are eating through
men’s souls ?
That a new need gone up is more than all precedent,
and History shrivels before the will, even if it be only of
one man; that the pilgrimage has begun, and men are
leaving their long-loved homes by thousands — and the
tenderest-hearted are the first to sever the old ties ?
That centuries of suffering have compressed thought and
purpose into one — till they are harder than rock ; so that
you shall remove mountains, but you shall not remove the
word which has gone forth?
That expediency and logic expostulate in vain, and man
has become wholly unreasonable, and is calm to drop utility
into the bottomless pit ; and the wise cover their lights,
but the fools flash theirs and are whirled away — like fireflies
in a thunderstorm?
Do you suppose it means nothing when the godlike
Hand comes forth — the awful hand, sacred with the kisses
of the generations of men?
When the hand of Necessity comes forth from the cloud
and covers dark the faces of them who have never known
it, turning them back from their ruin — but stands in the clear
sky, beckoning bright, like a pillar of fire for weary fugitives ?
When the awful vision moves across the sky, and the
earth is electric under it — and the grass stands stiffly, and
the blue thistle in the hedge is erect with meaning,
And men are amorous for the naked stinging touch
of the world, and to wrestle limb to limb with the wind
and the waves;
When poverty and hardship smile for their espousal,
and fierce endurance is fused in one passion with love, and
the glitter of concealment is torn away, and the loins are
compressed and the eyes aflame with lust,
Towards that which shall surely be born?
When Wealth is slowly and visibly putrefying and
putrefying the old order of things;
When the surface test is final — the rainbow-colored scum
— and society rotting down beneath it; a trick of clothing
or speech, metallic chink in the pocket, white skin, soft
hands, fawning and lying looks — everywhere the thrust of
rejection, the bond of redemption nowhere ; the sacred gifts
all violated stale and profaned — men and women falling off
from them listless, like satiated leeches;
When Labor is not loyal and true, nor the Laborers
loyal and true to each other ; when a man has no pride in
the creation of his hands, nor rejoices to make it perfect;
when machinery is perfectly organised and human souls are
hopelessly disorganised ;
Do you think all these things mean nothing?
Edward Carpenter and the Future: Friday 28th June 2024 One-Day Symposium (QMUL) & Run-Up Events. 