Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-c654p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T19:17:09.948Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - “COLLISIONS OF DISCOURSE” II: ELECTRIC AND OCEANIC “CURRENTS” IN CONVERSATION The cultural work of Holmesian talk

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Peter Gibian
Peter Gibian
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Get access

Summary

There lies the gold, and there it has slept, and will sleep, unless you can manage the collisions of discourse … to overcome the strong cohesion and detach the sparkling atom to the day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Clubs”

Vernon Parrington seems far off the mark when he takes the Master's final word from the Poet passage examined at the end of the last chapter – “Boys must not touch off their squibs and crackers too near the powder-magazine” – out of its conversational context, citing it as the main piece of evidence for his influential 1927 revaluation of Holmes:

If the mind is free other things will take care of themselves – this pretty much sums up Holmes's social philosophy …

Unfortunately his Brahminism sealed pretty tightly certain windows of his mind that might better have been kept open. A radical in the field of theology where personal concern brought him to serious grappling with the problem, a tolerant rationalist in the realm of the intellect, he remained a cheerfully contented conservative in other fields. He was unconsciously insulated against the currents of social and political thought flowing all about him.

But it is difficult to sum up the social philosophy of a very complex written oeuvre and of a very self-divided man.

Type
Chapter
Information
Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation , pp. 110 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×