Sam Stark’s “Let Us Dispute” in The Nation (August 15/22, 2011): 42-45 is a truly fascinating review essay on Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I Have always loved the Holy Tongue.” Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2011). Casaubon (1559-1614), upon one earlier, less interesting portrait of whom Eliot may have based the eponymous character in Middlemarch, was a Jewish classicist and Protestant, and he was modern. “Holy Tongue refutes that great origin myth of modernity, in which Bacon and Descartes liberate us from a world of obscure and useless learning. It reminds us how much their work took for granted the achievements of that world.” (43)
It seems that Casaubon combed his hair and prayed for divine assistance before beginning to read [I am lifting Stark’s words here]; I did not know, but learned from this essay, that Machiavelli dressed up in regal garb to discourse with the ancients. (I am glad I have company since I dress to write.) Casaubon appears to have a large corpus of writing, both published and unpublished, which Grafton and Weinberg are treating as such. He was also an avid book buyer. “…[U]ntil my wife arrives I will not spend more than a gold sovereign on books — unless something truly rare shows up!,” said he. (44) He had a sense of purpose. He was also the Rabbi Yitzhak Kasuban and a discourser to King James. There was royal patronage then and now there is tenure. (45)
Stark: “At a time when we face basic choices about what to do with our universities, libraries and graduate students, Casaubon’s wayward career can help us see better what is at stake in those decisions. It is an example of how the humanities can pursue truth rigorously while still being humane. More than institutions and credentials, canons and curricul[a], it shows that the pursuit of humanistic knowledge can be a way of creating new communities.” (45) This is Friday, so we are wearing white. If you have candles you could light them, remembering Yitzhak Kasuban tonight.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 