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| Poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) |
Hats off to
the eighteen hardy souls who braved Monday night’s northeaster for our
discussion of four essays from Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. We held a lively conversation, and there were spirited
critiques of Arnold’s view of individualism in a liberal society, and his apparent lack of interest in scientific endeavor. One participant mused, What if Arnold could
have looked at images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope?
We spent some time homing in on Arnold's definition of “culture.” At various times he calls it “the love and
pursuit of perfection,” “a study of perfection,” and something that “originates
in the love of perfection.”
In the part
called “Hebraism and Hellenism,” in which Arnold compares these two wellsprings
of his Victorian England, he writes, “And yet the lesson must perforce be
learned, that the human spirit is wider than the most priceless of the forces
that bear it onward, and that to the whole development of man, Hebraism is,
like Hellenism, but a contribution.”
