—To a great Latin soul, may my writings inspire you to rise early.
As we bear witness to the decline of post-America, my current meditations may be reprised as an attempt to escaping the pernicious gloom and dejection of a stagnant economy, the black swans of a protracted pandemic, whose morbid effects I have been able to ward-off through the healing powers of literature.
Today I am hale and happy, but I can hardly shake-off a persistent uncertainty, an unshakable foreboding in the whirlwinds of our times.
Optimistically, I am looking forward to seeing you in the blissful winds of the Spring. May the lush greeneries of Mother Nature grant your soul new wings, new dreams, new places and verve. And like the brave ancient peoples beyond the Alps, let us find vim and joy even in the inclemencies of the elements. The nipping cold has only tempered my spirit in the serious business of existence, and I wish to retreat back into the wilderness to be left alone with my thoughts.
It is the irony of history, that a Latin man should be at home with an Englishman such as Edward Gibbon, or the other lofty spirit, John Milton, whose archaism could grant me but a veritable treasured storehouse of Latinized English from such glorious an era.
Las palabras latinas son nuestro patrimonio intelectual (Latin words are our patrimony), and while there are so many words as yet unkown to me, their meanings could be checked by their recurrent repetitions.
This is the secret of intuitive understanding, because our mind, all the while, seems to labor quietly in the profoundest lucubration (mediation) of the unconscious: the slumberous secretary (memory) ought to be the submissive maidservant in the tidy office of reason, and with some stern authority, she shall comply to our orders.
Retention is a self-conscious act of the will, but it is an excellent practice to associate words with one another, to compare and square their roots, to relate their etymologies to the most distant relatives with our mother tongue, Latin.
True! With these Anglo-Saxon authors, whose writings are full-fraught with a veritable storehouse of monosyllables (the literary patrimony of the Northern Europeans) a Latin reader could scarcely “plod” through the woods of yore without carrying a dictionary. Such monosyllables could test the patience and mettle of the fiercest legions of our times.
In the last resort, the margins (or blank pages) of a book should be used for such purposes, and even the underscoring of obscure words and phrases could avail the memory (our inner secretary) to greater retention and understanding.
This is the main reason why hard-paged books are the best repository of information, because we may fancy to feel the texture, shades and shades of abstract things otherwise existing in the realm of thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Therefore, the impressive lexicon and brilliance of an obdurate thinker such as E. Gibbon, is often checked on his foxed books’ personal notes, time-stricken papers and journals resuming the labors of decades.
The impressive brilliance of former writers could be due to their accumulations of books for reference.
It is noteworthy that the distinct style of Edward Gibbon is not only of form, or of inordinate length —rarely verging on lackadaisical euphuism— he has a penchant for poesy and philosophy, which could cast the unrolling theaters of history, the individual and the transiency of things, into an inexplicable timelessness and heroic grandeur.
Therefore it is fair to say that Gibbon’s writings could set us free from the fetters of times, and that unlike a visual documentary of the past, timelessness and magnificence are accesible through the poetic wings of the written word.
The visual images, however vivid and colorful, may have a tinge of fleeting sensuality, which, nonetheless, could have a striking immediacy and directness to our senses of sight and hearing, but their after-effects seem to lose the luster and power of the first impressions, and so the visual images, however presented with high definition, could not hold sway the higher faculties of our mind to the same effects as the unfettered paths of great literature.
In this manner, the visual images fail to transform us into contemplative witnesses of existence. While winning our attention for the present time, the unrolling scenes of motion pictures may fall behind the enduring delights of the Decline and Fall of E. Gibbon, because his thoughts could thunder even across the pavilions of millennia.
The inner eye of so rich an imagination has a greater scope of action, intellectual dexterity and freedom in the higher spatial realms of thoughts, whose boundless expansiveness cannot frame our mind to the narrow limits and constraints of the physical world. This is the main reason why Gibbon’s narratives could be so uplifting.
His lexicon rarely loses the delicate tincture, glint, freshness and luster of the choicest dictions (e.g., lucubration, acquiesce, specious, moiety, and so on) quite often leaving ample space for the most diverse interpretations, unfettered nays, yeas and plausible conjectures.
Such great a writer would spur our mind, sort of speak, to the daily improvement of our faculties (diligence, productivity and probity), to soar higher and higher in the interpretation and meaning of history, to construe the moral lessons of the past, and to diligently apply ourselves to the study of those mysterious forces believed to be the main culprits behind the decline of peoples and nations.
“...History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” --Edward Gibbon.
That such heights of superior literature are inaccessible from the niveau of our times could point to a gradual descent of “civilization and culture,” not on the medium of language itself, but on this fateful recurrence (Decline and Fall of Times) somehow sapping our noblest strivings and aspirations.
This is the tragedy of our times. While surrounded by a mountain of books, the best ones are often left unread in the shelves of oblivion, as indecipherable hieroglyphs to a passerby spectator from another time, their cumbersome stock of archaic lexicons and awkward locutions, may prove to be an insurmountable hurdle to a modern reader unrooted from his mother tongue Latin.
With the advent of the Internet (Google), I have often purchased the best classics from a book-vendor peddling the best of humanities in the streets of New York.
With the outbreak of COVID-19, sometime on April of the year 2020, I purchased an excellent abridged edition (as compressed by Dero. A Saunder, March, 1952) of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon.
Upon opening its time-stricken pages, I felt confronted with a voluminous conundrum, a mysterious book that stirred me up to the diligent labor of an archeologist. Every digging into this mine of human treasures reassured me that my labors were not in vain.
Like Heinrich Schliemann in search of Troy, an inner assurance dictated my reason, the gentle voice of silence guided my thoughts to a clearer understanding, and so the solemn hour unveiled her mysteries as though by the grace of God! A blessed illumination is often granted by this inner scribe of our inquiries, the unconscious operations of the mind, whose mysterious processes could crack open the meanings of words.
Perhaps the ineluctable forces of decadence and nihilism had disrupted a missing link between the past and present; or, perhaps the insidious usurpation of our most beloved values had left us all but strangers and orphans to our own history; from her formidable womb, a new people is born unreceptive to the writings of Edward Gibbon.
Accordingly, one should not just marvel at the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one should even inquire on the decline of the classics (English Literature in America) in the unfortunate desertion and neglect of the romantic languages, especially in the United States of America.
********************************************
This rather lengthy comment on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire would be magnified at a latter point. Edward Gibbon is such a great writer that any criticism could be deemed as impertinent and nonsensical:
Therefore, I am not here presuming to be such snarky a critic. True, while commenting on Gibbon’s stylistic distinction, I felt tempted to emulating his quaint English still smacking of medievalism.
“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius”
A scholar (the teacher would rather use a pseudonym when posting videos on YouTube) has called to my attention Gibbon’s seeming lacunae when surveying the desultory events of human history. The said scholar, while admitting Gibbon’s intellectual rigor to conveying narratives in the most lucid style, could not always praise his rhetorics in reference to the reader’s niveau and power of comprehension.
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Today I am hale and happy, but I can hardly shake-off a persistent uncertainty, an unshakable foreboding in the whirlwinds of our times.
Optimistically, I am looking forward to seeing you in the blissful winds of the Spring. May the lush greeneries of Mother Nature grant your soul new wings, new dreams, new places and verve. And like the brave ancient peoples beyond the Alps, let us find vim and joy even in the inclemencies of the elements. The nipping cold has only tempered my spirit in the serious business of existence, and I wish to retreat back into the wilderness to be left alone with my thoughts.
It is the irony of history, that a Latin man should be at home with an Englishman such as Edward Gibbon, or the other lofty spirit, John Milton, whose archaism could grant me but a veritable treasured storehouse of Latinized English from such glorious an era.
Las palabras latinas son nuestro patrimonio intelectual (Latin words are our patrimony), and while there are so many words as yet unkown to me, their meanings could be checked by their recurrent repetitions.
This is the secret of intuitive understanding, because our mind, all the while, seems to labor quietly in the profoundest lucubration (mediation) of the unconscious: the slumberous secretary (memory) ought to be the submissive maidservant in the tidy office of reason, and with some stern authority, she shall comply to our orders.
Retention is a self-conscious act of the will, but it is an excellent practice to associate words with one another, to compare and square their roots, to relate their etymologies to the most distant relatives with our mother tongue, Latin.
True! With these Anglo-Saxon authors, whose writings are full-fraught with a veritable storehouse of monosyllables (the literary patrimony of the Northern Europeans) a Latin reader could scarcely “plod” through the woods of yore without carrying a dictionary. Such monosyllables could test the patience and mettle of the fiercest legions of our times.
In the last resort, the margins (or blank pages) of a book should be used for such purposes, and even the underscoring of obscure words and phrases could avail the memory (our inner secretary) to greater retention and understanding.
This is the main reason why hard-paged books are the best repository of information, because we may fancy to feel the texture, shades and shades of abstract things otherwise existing in the realm of thoughts, ideas and concepts.
Therefore, the impressive lexicon and brilliance of an obdurate thinker such as E. Gibbon, is often checked on his foxed books’ personal notes, time-stricken papers and journals resuming the labors of decades.
The impressive brilliance of former writers could be due to their accumulations of books for reference.
It is noteworthy that the distinct style of Edward Gibbon is not only of form, or of inordinate length —rarely verging on lackadaisical euphuism— he has a penchant for poesy and philosophy, which could cast the unrolling theaters of history, the individual and the transiency of things, into an inexplicable timelessness and heroic grandeur.
Therefore it is fair to say that Gibbon’s writings could set us free from the fetters of times, and that unlike a visual documentary of the past, timelessness and magnificence are accesible through the poetic wings of the written word.
The visual images, however vivid and colorful, may have a tinge of fleeting sensuality, which, nonetheless, could have a striking immediacy and directness to our senses of sight and hearing, but their after-effects seem to lose the luster and power of the first impressions, and so the visual images, however presented with high definition, could not hold sway the higher faculties of our mind to the same effects as the unfettered paths of great literature.
In this manner, the visual images fail to transform us into contemplative witnesses of existence. While winning our attention for the present time, the unrolling scenes of motion pictures may fall behind the enduring delights of the Decline and Fall of E. Gibbon, because his thoughts could thunder even across the pavilions of millennia.
The inner eye of so rich an imagination has a greater scope of action, intellectual dexterity and freedom in the higher spatial realms of thoughts, whose boundless expansiveness cannot frame our mind to the narrow limits and constraints of the physical world. This is the main reason why Gibbon’s narratives could be so uplifting.
His lexicon rarely loses the delicate tincture, glint, freshness and luster of the choicest dictions (e.g., lucubration, acquiesce, specious, moiety, and so on) quite often leaving ample space for the most diverse interpretations, unfettered nays, yeas and plausible conjectures.
Such great a writer would spur our mind, sort of speak, to the daily improvement of our faculties (diligence, productivity and probity), to soar higher and higher in the interpretation and meaning of history, to construe the moral lessons of the past, and to diligently apply ourselves to the study of those mysterious forces believed to be the main culprits behind the decline of peoples and nations.
“...History is little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” --Edward Gibbon.
That such heights of superior literature are inaccessible from the niveau of our times could point to a gradual descent of “civilization and culture,” not on the medium of language itself, but on this fateful recurrence (Decline and Fall of Times) somehow sapping our noblest strivings and aspirations.
This is the tragedy of our times. While surrounded by a mountain of books, the best ones are often left unread in the shelves of oblivion, as indecipherable hieroglyphs to a passerby spectator from another time, their cumbersome stock of archaic lexicons and awkward locutions, may prove to be an insurmountable hurdle to a modern reader unrooted from his mother tongue Latin.
With the advent of the Internet (Google), I have often purchased the best classics from a book-vendor peddling the best of humanities in the streets of New York.
With the outbreak of COVID-19, sometime on April of the year 2020, I purchased an excellent abridged edition (as compressed by Dero. A Saunder, March, 1952) of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon.
Upon opening its time-stricken pages, I felt confronted with a voluminous conundrum, a mysterious book that stirred me up to the diligent labor of an archeologist. Every digging into this mine of human treasures reassured me that my labors were not in vain.
Like Heinrich Schliemann in search of Troy, an inner assurance dictated my reason, the gentle voice of silence guided my thoughts to a clearer understanding, and so the solemn hour unveiled her mysteries as though by the grace of God! A blessed illumination is often granted by this inner scribe of our inquiries, the unconscious operations of the mind, whose mysterious processes could crack open the meanings of words.
Perhaps the ineluctable forces of decadence and nihilism had disrupted a missing link between the past and present; or, perhaps the insidious usurpation of our most beloved values had left us all but strangers and orphans to our own history; from her formidable womb, a new people is born unreceptive to the writings of Edward Gibbon.
Accordingly, one should not just marvel at the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one should even inquire on the decline of the classics (English Literature in America) in the unfortunate desertion and neglect of the romantic languages, especially in the United States of America.
********************************************
This rather lengthy comment on the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire would be magnified at a latter point. Edward Gibbon is such a great writer that any criticism could be deemed as impertinent and nonsensical:
Therefore, I am not here presuming to be such snarky a critic. True, while commenting on Gibbon’s stylistic distinction, I felt tempted to emulating his quaint English still smacking of medievalism.
“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius”
A scholar (the teacher would rather use a pseudonym when posting videos on YouTube) has called to my attention Gibbon’s seeming lacunae when surveying the desultory events of human history. The said scholar, while admitting Gibbon’s intellectual rigor to conveying narratives in the most lucid style, could not always praise his rhetorics in reference to the reader’s niveau and power of comprehension.
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Little occurred to me that an abridgment is liable to incongruous reductiveness, inevitable cracks and unwitting mutilations, which the aforementioned teacher of letters (sic, “lack of backup stories”) should rather infer as the errors of unwitting licentiousness from less cautious editors, whose hermeneutics and contractions of the said literature, could have, unfortunately, marred the original train of thoughts anymore than an incompetent translation of the Bible.
By reducing or adulterating such turgid literature to the comprehension of the lay student, we may assume occasional violations to the syntactic integrity of the original.
Instead of blaming such apparently disjointed narratives on the author’s lack of intellectual cohesiveness, one should either plead our case before the tribunal of our intellectual inadequacy, or bring an injunction against this ever-growing alluvion of bad books and novellas passing for literature, whose noxious influences have perhaps crippled our faculties in the comprehension and enjoyment of the enduring classics of yore.
Of course, it behooves me to say that some writers (such as Frederick Nietzsche and Thomas Mann), two minds of the first order, had expressed themselves in a prose style one may reluctantly appraise as the acme of Western Literature. However great writers, one is tasked to plod through an insurmountable plethora of archaisms and hifalutin verbosity which could easily find the sanction of a less capable modern writer.
Why are these ancient writers so great?
We should sorely regret the current state of things in post-America, for even their once supreme authors are becoming obsolete (a fossilized classical genre on the verge of extinction) whereas more and more inferior authors, with an effusion of superlative praises of mutual support and solidarity, are holding in contempt the authority of the classics.
Therefore, my friend scholar was right when comparing the Decline of Rome (USA) with the neglect of the classics, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as the best education in the improvement of modem society and its citizens.
Are they relevant?
Their masterworks in dereliction, would require a new branch of classical studies and preservation, like those old pipe organs from medieval times, whose size and magnificence could attest to their once glorious times, and could even win our admiration, but their jarring sounds are said to be out of tune, cacophonous, uneven and even disjointed.
But it is more disheartening when few can understand or enjoy the ineffable works of former authors.
Today we may even blame Gibbon’s lack of thoroughness, that is to say, his little regard for the reader’s expected capacity to fill-in the superfluous materials and references. Consequently, Gibbon’s literature is alike turgid and recondite.
Nay, the teacher of our times, while holding an abridgment of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, may even fail to separate the ancient author from the modern editor’s own liberties to clipping materials “thereof” thus inevitably altering the integrity and logical sequels of such classics.
We are lucky if such lofty thoughts could hold sway the best faculties of our mind.
Like a vast river ever receding with nostalgia amidst the ponderous but somewhat entertaining scenes of human history, Gibbon’s literature could even cast the fleetingness of our transient existence with an inexplicable sense of timelessness, nay, a wondrous sense of elation almost reaching the metaphysical realms of the fantastic and divine.
Make me happy while longing for a distant past.
His chapters, like a covey of passing clouds forming and disbanding amidst a most serene welkin of lucubration so I felt my mind to be filled with things glorious and beautiful, and from such symposium of lofty spirits, there emerges an inexplicable love for the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
From 2020-to the present, Edward Gibbon has become my educator, and through him I have learned to appraise the English Language as a remarkable repository of foreign words (from the most ancient Latinism to the most commonly loaned French dictions at home), which, as being the language of the educated thinkers of Europe in the eighteenth century (French), my teacher has simply expressed himself as befitting a philosopher of the highest rank, alongside the other giants, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, in the literary heights of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment.
Dear scholar of today, you have done an excellent job! And you deserve my admiration and high respects. Like a free thinker, nonetheless, I may agree with my friend Philo, that at times you seem to judge the classics from the niveau (platform) and ethos of your times , and by so doing, your pithy analysis of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, while praising and recommending Edward Gibbon’s Magnus Opus, may rather seem to dismiss him as an outdated writer and irrelevant historian.
Gibbon’s genius lies in his remarkable imagination and insights to surmising facts from the universal stuff of human nature, where evidence is lacking to purport the truth of history, a brilliant historian, or a divinely gifted poet such as Shakespeare, as aided by his intuitive powers, could furnish us with the missing lacunae beyond the testimony of the eye-witnesses, nay, beyond the scarce remnants in the provinces of archeology.
While your snarky criticism of Gibbon’s archaism and liberalism may win my sympathy, you have failed to be guided by his humble confessions and reasonings:
Chapter V (A.D. 248-285)
“...The confusion of the times and the scarcity of authentic memorials oppose equal difficulties to the historian who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture (watchword); and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and restrained passions, might on some occasions supply the want of historial materials.”
Nevertheless, yours is a brilliant analysis of Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece. Why it is so difficult to understand Gibbon’s English?
His prose writing is the mark of genius, and with some patience and intellectual exertion, one could finally rise to his lofty heights.
Is his English outdated? I would say that master works of such extraordinary excellence are simply timeless, and our difficult task is to emulate what time has tested to be the work of genius.
Once again Sir, you have done a wonderful job!
Gibbon’s English, like any great work demanding a broad lexicon, has a goodly stock of foreign words, Latin, French, Scandinavian, which could cast his thoughts and prose writings in the mold of Great Classical Literature. In other words, Gibbon is an indefatigable smith when smelting, blending and substituting the most diverse resources and tools of the English language at his disposal.
Pusillanimity, lack of courage, would not apply to an anachronistic man, whose amazing genius seems to rise above the decadence and mediocrity of our times.
This teacher is very helpful, but some of his comments on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire could be faulty in premises, inferences and propositions, like an astronomer led astray by a mirage of erroneous postulates and figments assuming the form of facts.
The word “pusillanimity,” for example, is often used by Edward Gibbon, which the commenter, somewhat facetiously, may even demur as an outdated word in the rich classical literature of the English Language. It is like saying that Dante’s Divine Comedy is antiquated because it was fashioned after the Aeneid of Virgil, an ancient author which lived more than one thousand years prior to the renown Italian poet.
Great writings could not be demeaned by the employment of a cheap language (hackneyed) to please an average reader, or an easy language that’s to be understood by less capable minds.
Another example of prose writing used by Gibbon, “Libidinous Complexion,” (when making references to the high libido of the Arabs and dark skin Moors) which the modern scholar once again misunderstood in a literal interpretation.
During the eighteen century, and even today, some hold the theories that the darker races are believed to have a higher libido than the white Europeans.
Sybaritism, complacency, hubris, schism, the ravages of a protracted pandemic, the loss of moral compass, and a teetering economy, could warn us all of decadence and decline, but the most obvious symptoms of decomposition and decay are those of Sodom and Gomorrah’s hideous binges: depravities, sexual perversity, unnatural practices, galore, and with a libidinous complexion, a new refractory people is born out of the cesspool of anarchy and degeneration.
The heaving-up of such degenerate symptoms could finally overwhelm the once wholesome fabrics and institutions of a nation.
Resources are soon depleted in keeping a precarious sense of safety and peace, but from without, along the unguarded borders of our complacency, there comes the unrooted hordes of chaos and decline...
The question is not of decline but of fortitude. Can the American Empire withstand the tides of our times?
By reducing or adulterating such turgid literature to the comprehension of the lay student, we may assume occasional violations to the syntactic integrity of the original.
Instead of blaming such apparently disjointed narratives on the author’s lack of intellectual cohesiveness, one should either plead our case before the tribunal of our intellectual inadequacy, or bring an injunction against this ever-growing alluvion of bad books and novellas passing for literature, whose noxious influences have perhaps crippled our faculties in the comprehension and enjoyment of the enduring classics of yore.
Of course, it behooves me to say that some writers (such as Frederick Nietzsche and Thomas Mann), two minds of the first order, had expressed themselves in a prose style one may reluctantly appraise as the acme of Western Literature. However great writers, one is tasked to plod through an insurmountable plethora of archaisms and hifalutin verbosity which could easily find the sanction of a less capable modern writer.
Why are these ancient writers so great?
We should sorely regret the current state of things in post-America, for even their once supreme authors are becoming obsolete (a fossilized classical genre on the verge of extinction) whereas more and more inferior authors, with an effusion of superlative praises of mutual support and solidarity, are holding in contempt the authority of the classics.
Therefore, my friend scholar was right when comparing the Decline of Rome (USA) with the neglect of the classics, the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as the best education in the improvement of modem society and its citizens.
Are they relevant?
Their masterworks in dereliction, would require a new branch of classical studies and preservation, like those old pipe organs from medieval times, whose size and magnificence could attest to their once glorious times, and could even win our admiration, but their jarring sounds are said to be out of tune, cacophonous, uneven and even disjointed.
But it is more disheartening when few can understand or enjoy the ineffable works of former authors.
Today we may even blame Gibbon’s lack of thoroughness, that is to say, his little regard for the reader’s expected capacity to fill-in the superfluous materials and references. Consequently, Gibbon’s literature is alike turgid and recondite.
Nay, the teacher of our times, while holding an abridgment of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, may even fail to separate the ancient author from the modern editor’s own liberties to clipping materials “thereof” thus inevitably altering the integrity and logical sequels of such classics.
We are lucky if such lofty thoughts could hold sway the best faculties of our mind.
Like a vast river ever receding with nostalgia amidst the ponderous but somewhat entertaining scenes of human history, Gibbon’s literature could even cast the fleetingness of our transient existence with an inexplicable sense of timelessness, nay, a wondrous sense of elation almost reaching the metaphysical realms of the fantastic and divine.
Make me happy while longing for a distant past.
His chapters, like a covey of passing clouds forming and disbanding amidst a most serene welkin of lucubration so I felt my mind to be filled with things glorious and beautiful, and from such symposium of lofty spirits, there emerges an inexplicable love for the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
From 2020-to the present, Edward Gibbon has become my educator, and through him I have learned to appraise the English Language as a remarkable repository of foreign words (from the most ancient Latinism to the most commonly loaned French dictions at home), which, as being the language of the educated thinkers of Europe in the eighteenth century (French), my teacher has simply expressed himself as befitting a philosopher of the highest rank, alongside the other giants, Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau, in the literary heights of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment.
Dear scholar of today, you have done an excellent job! And you deserve my admiration and high respects. Like a free thinker, nonetheless, I may agree with my friend Philo, that at times you seem to judge the classics from the niveau (platform) and ethos of your times , and by so doing, your pithy analysis of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, while praising and recommending Edward Gibbon’s Magnus Opus, may rather seem to dismiss him as an outdated writer and irrelevant historian.
Gibbon’s genius lies in his remarkable imagination and insights to surmising facts from the universal stuff of human nature, where evidence is lacking to purport the truth of history, a brilliant historian, or a divinely gifted poet such as Shakespeare, as aided by his intuitive powers, could furnish us with the missing lacunae beyond the testimony of the eye-witnesses, nay, beyond the scarce remnants in the provinces of archeology.
While your snarky criticism of Gibbon’s archaism and liberalism may win my sympathy, you have failed to be guided by his humble confessions and reasonings:
Chapter V (A.D. 248-285)
“...The confusion of the times and the scarcity of authentic memorials oppose equal difficulties to the historian who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture (watchword); and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and restrained passions, might on some occasions supply the want of historial materials.”
Nevertheless, yours is a brilliant analysis of Edward Gibbon’s masterpiece. Why it is so difficult to understand Gibbon’s English?
His prose writing is the mark of genius, and with some patience and intellectual exertion, one could finally rise to his lofty heights.
Is his English outdated? I would say that master works of such extraordinary excellence are simply timeless, and our difficult task is to emulate what time has tested to be the work of genius.
Once again Sir, you have done a wonderful job!
Gibbon’s English, like any great work demanding a broad lexicon, has a goodly stock of foreign words, Latin, French, Scandinavian, which could cast his thoughts and prose writings in the mold of Great Classical Literature. In other words, Gibbon is an indefatigable smith when smelting, blending and substituting the most diverse resources and tools of the English language at his disposal.
Pusillanimity, lack of courage, would not apply to an anachronistic man, whose amazing genius seems to rise above the decadence and mediocrity of our times.
This teacher is very helpful, but some of his comments on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire could be faulty in premises, inferences and propositions, like an astronomer led astray by a mirage of erroneous postulates and figments assuming the form of facts.
The word “pusillanimity,” for example, is often used by Edward Gibbon, which the commenter, somewhat facetiously, may even demur as an outdated word in the rich classical literature of the English Language. It is like saying that Dante’s Divine Comedy is antiquated because it was fashioned after the Aeneid of Virgil, an ancient author which lived more than one thousand years prior to the renown Italian poet.
Great writings could not be demeaned by the employment of a cheap language (hackneyed) to please an average reader, or an easy language that’s to be understood by less capable minds.
Another example of prose writing used by Gibbon, “Libidinous Complexion,” (when making references to the high libido of the Arabs and dark skin Moors) which the modern scholar once again misunderstood in a literal interpretation.
During the eighteen century, and even today, some hold the theories that the darker races are believed to have a higher libido than the white Europeans.
Sybaritism, complacency, hubris, schism, the ravages of a protracted pandemic, the loss of moral compass, and a teetering economy, could warn us all of decadence and decline, but the most obvious symptoms of decomposition and decay are those of Sodom and Gomorrah’s hideous binges: depravities, sexual perversity, unnatural practices, galore, and with a libidinous complexion, a new refractory people is born out of the cesspool of anarchy and degeneration.
The heaving-up of such degenerate symptoms could finally overwhelm the once wholesome fabrics and institutions of a nation.
Resources are soon depleted in keeping a precarious sense of safety and peace, but from without, along the unguarded borders of our complacency, there comes the unrooted hordes of chaos and decline...
The question is not of decline but of fortitude. Can the American Empire withstand the tides of our times?