“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Robert Southey HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1774
August 12, Friday: Robert Southey was born.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Robert Southey “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1793
When a fellow of Jesus College, William Frend, was arraigned for the publication of a politically seditious pamphlet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge became a student agitator. He developed his own plan for how to avoid the violence which was destroying the idealism of the early days of the French Revolution, and this scheme, which was referred to as “pantisocracy,” involved the creation of a self-contained community of 12 men and 12 women on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania which would govern itself and would educate its children according to its own lights. At this point he was in association with the poet Robert Southey in Cambridge. Granted, this was all pretty stupid, but no Thornstein Veblen had yet come along to explain about the recirculation of the elites, and no Simone Weil had yet come along to explain that “For centuries past, noble minds have regarded the power of oppressors as constituting a usurpation pure and simple, which one had to try to oppose either by simply expressing a radical disapproval of it, or else by armed force placed at the service of justice. In either case, failure has always been complete; and never was it more strikingly so than when it took on momentarily the appearance of victory, as happened with the French Revolution, when, after having effectively succeeded in bringing about the disappearance of a certain form of oppression, people stood by HDT WHAT? INDEX
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helpless, watching a new oppression immediately being set up in its place.”1
“I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.” — W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939
1. Simone Weil, “Reflections concerning the Causes of Liberty and Social Oppression,” in OPPRESSION AND LIBERTY, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1794
When a fellow of Jesus College, William Frend, was arraigned for the publication of a politically seditious pamphlet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge became a student agitator. He developed his own plan for how to avoid the violence which was destroying the idealism of the early days of the French Revolution, and this scheme, which was referred to as “pantisocracy,” involved the creation of a self-contained community of 12 men and 12 women on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania which would govern itself and would educate its children according to its own lights.
During this year, whether before of after the “pantisocracy” idea I do not know, Coleridge went down into London under an assumed name, Silas Tomkyn Comberbache, and enlisted as a dragoon. When he was discovered there by his friends, his enlistment contract was bought out by his brothers and he was sent back to his college work in Cambridge. Then Coleridge and Robert Southey left Cambridge for good, and became public lecturers in Bristol, England.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
June: Samuel Taylor Coleridge met Robert Southey, with whom he would plan a pantisocracy (essentially, a kibbutz thingie).
August/September: Samuel Taylor Coleridge met Thomas Poole, a prosperous tanner who would become a good and longlasting friend, and became engaged to Sara Fricker, sister to the poet Robert Southey’s fiancée.
October: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey issued a tragedy, “The Fall of Robespierre.” Coleridge was at this point full of radical political fervor.
From this point forward, little Louis-Charles in his prison cell would maintain an obdurate silence (this refusal to communicate would be explained, by others, as having arisen out of his having been induced to make that deposition against his mother Marie Antoinette).
December: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey left Cambridge, for good. Touring Wales, he began RELIGIOUS MUSINGS.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Robert Southey HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1795
January-June: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey had become public lecturers on political and moral topics in Bristol, England. Coleridge met William Wordsworth.
Summer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey quarreled, and abandoned their ideas of forming a “pantisocracy” and going to the New World.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Robert Southey HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1798
At the age of 17, Ebenezer Elliott’s 1st poem, “The Vernal Walk,” was in imitation of the poems of James Thompson (he had also been reading in Byron and the Romantic poets, and Robert Southey).
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Robert Southey HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1799
William Godwin’s ST. LEON, A TALE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY (4 volumes, London: G.G. & J. Robinson).
When Charles Lloyd accused Mary Hays of improprieties, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and William Godwin became involved in the furor. WILLIAM GODWIN’S LIFE
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Robert Southey “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1801
Robert Southey’s THALABA. (At some point, having inhaled nitrous oxide, he would enthuse: “Oh Tom! Such a gas has Davey discovered, the geseous oxyd! Oh, Tom! I have had some; it made me laugh and tingle in every toe and fingertip. Davey has actually invented a new pleasure for which language has no name. Oh, Tom! I am going for more this evening; it makes one strong and so happy, so gloriously happy! Oh, excellent airbag!” Unfortunately, his THALABA would not have a similar impact on its readers.)
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Robert Southey “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1805
Robert Southey’s MADOC. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1807
Robert Southey’s LETTERS FROM ENGLAND BY DON ESPRIELLA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1808
Robert Southey’s THE CHRONICLE OF THE CID.
Ebenezer Elliott wrote to Southey for advice on how to get published and Southey responded (they would correspond until 1824, and in 1823 they would meet each other in person).
At Bristol, England Walter Savage Landor caught up with Southey, whom he had missed on a trip to the Lake District in the previous year. He also wrote a work “The Dun Cow” which was written in defence of his friend Dr. Samuel Parr who had been attacked in an anonymous work “Guy’s Porridge Pot,” which Landor was fierce to deny was any work of his. Landor felt impelled to participate in the Peninsular War. At the age of 33 he left England for Spain as a volunteer, to serve in the national army against Napoléon Bonaparte. He landed at Corunna, introduced himself to the British envoy, offered 10,000 reals for the relief of Venturada, and set out to join the army of General Joaquín Blake y Joyes. However, in this he would be disappointed, for he would not be permitted to take part in any real action and found himself assigned to mere support roles, and then at Bilbao he almost got captured. A couple of months later when the Convention of Sintra brought an end to the campaign, Landor returned to England. The Spanish Government offered him its gratitude, and King Ferdinand awarded him the credentials of a Colonel in the Spanish Army. However, the King of England would restore the Jesuit Order and Landor would on account of this return his commission. Returning to England, he joined Wordsworth and Southey in denouncing this Convention of Sintra.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Robert Southey “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1810
Robert Southey’s CURSE OF KEHAMA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1812
Friend Bernard Barton’s METRICAL EFFUSIONS put him in contact with Robert Southey. Soon he would also make the acquaintance of James Hogg. He would be able to publish volume after volume of his poetry, until 1828. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1813
Robert Southey’s LIFE OF NELSON.
September: Walter Scott’s THE VISION OF DON RODERICK, ROKEBY, and THE BRIDAL OF TRIERMAIN.
Robert Southey was anointed Poet Laureate to the Royal Family of England after Scott declined that honor. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1814
Robert Southey’s RODERICK, THE LAST OF THE GOTHS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1817
Robert Southey’s WAT TYLER. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1819
January 30, Saturday: Poet Laureate Robert Southey wrote a long and carefully considered letter to Ebenezer Elliott, pointing out faults in the poem Night. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1820
Robert Southey’s A VISION OF JUDGMENT. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1821
George Gordon, Lord Byron: SARDANAPALUS; CAIN; MARINO FALIERO (flopped in London); THE TWO FOSCARI; THE VISION OF JUDGEMENT (a poem written retaliating against Robert Southey’s “A Vision of Judgement,” which attacked “the Satanic School”); THE PROPHECY OF DANTE; DON JUAN III-V. This was the year of the Bowles controversy, during which Byron wrote two letters in defence of Pope, attacking the Lake Poets and the Cockneys.
Lockhart’s unsigned JOHN BULL’S LETTER TO THE RT. HON. LORD BYRON. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1822
February: George Gordon, Lord Byron wrote Cantos VI, VII, and VIII of DON JUAN. Robert Southey attacked Lord Byron in The Courier. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Hellas was published. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1823
Robert Southey’s THE HISTORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR.
Birth of Ebenezer Elliott’s and Fannie Gartside Elliot’s 9th child, John Gartside Elliott.
Ebenezer Elliott finally was able to meet Robert Southey. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1829
Volumes I and II of the Reverend William Ellis’s POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES, DURING A RESIDENCE OF NEARLY SIX YEARS IN THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS; INCLUDING DESCRIPTIONS OF THE NATURAL HISTORY AND SCENERY OF THE ISLANDS — WITH REMARKS ON THE HISTORY, MYTHOLOGY, TRADITIONS, GOVERNMENT, ARTS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE INHABITANTS. BY WILLIAM ELLIS, MISSIONARY TO THE SOCIETY AND SANDWICH ISLANDS, AND AUTHOR OF THE “TOUR OF HAWAII.” (London: Fisher, Son & Jackson, Newgate Street, M,DCCC, XXIX). POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES, I POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES, II
Robert Southey would remark, in the Quarterly Review, “A more interesting book we have never perused.”2
2. Henry David Thoreau would reference the material in A WEEK. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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A WEEK: We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn’s PEOPLE OF Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hortense, but they imply a A WEEK relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw. There may be an excess of cultivation as well as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A highly cultivated man, — all whose bones can be bent! whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The young pines springing up in the cornfields from year to year are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civilizing the Indian, but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has glances of starry recognition to which our saloons are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, dim only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of the stars compared with the dazzling but ineffectual and short-lived blaze of candles. The Society-Islanders had their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be “of equal antiquity with the akua fauau po, or night-born gods.” It is true, there are the innocent pleasures of country life, and it is sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter retirements and more rugged paths. It will have its garden-plots and its parterres elsewhere than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by the way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heedlessness as berries. We would not always be soothing and taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo. The Indian’s intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There is something vulgar and foul in the latter’s closeness to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former’s distance. In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes, “Some nation yet shut in With hills of ice.”
REV. WILLIAM ELLIS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1834
October 14, Tuesday: David Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, John Poole’s translation of the 1st of the 3 volumes of Pietro “Metastasio” Trapassi (1698-1782)’s DRAMAS AND OTHER POEMS; OF THE ABBÈ PIETRO METASTASIO (London: Printed for Otridge and Son, 1800).
He also checked out some volume of Robert Southey’s miscellaneous poetry and/or prose that the library had labeled “A.13.6” or possibly “A.15.6.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1835
Robert Southey began to issue an edition of the writings of William Cowper, which would complete its publication in 1837. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1836
Walter Savage Landor’s DEATH OF CLYTEMNESTRA. FRIENDLY CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THREE INFANT SCHOOLS IN THE PARISH OF KENSINGTON. PRINTED SOLELY FOR THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADY MARY FOX.
There were other publications during this year, such as his LITERARY HOURS, THE LETTERS OF A CONSERVATIVE; IN WHICH ARE SHOWN THE ONLY MEANS OF SAVING WHAT IS LEFT TO THE ENGLISH CHURCH, ADDREST TO LORD MELBOURNE (London: Saunders and Otley), A SATIRE ON SATIRISTS, AND ADMONITION TO DETRACTORS (London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street) which included a criticism of William Wordsworth’s failure to appreciate Robert Southey, ALABIADAS THE YOUNG MAN, and a satire on Irish priests, TERRY HOGAN; AN ECLOGUE LATELY DISCOVERED IN THE LIBRARY OF THE PROPAGANDA AT ROME, AND NOW FIRST TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH. THERUNTO IS SUBJOINED A DISSERTATION BY THE EDITOR, PHELIM OCTAVIUS QUARLE, S.T.P. ... (London: printed by J. Westheimer and Co.). Wordsworth’s Poems, in Chronological Sequence • November 1836 • Six months to six years added he remained HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1839
Robert Southey used the term “Flue,” meaning influenza. (The English, in 1743, had begun to use the Italian word “influenza,” meaning “influence,” for this illness, because they were hypothesizing that the illness might be an influence from the stars. In 1951, W.H. Auden would shorten Southey’s “Flue” into “flu.”)
Publication of THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, COLLECTED BY HIMSELF. TEN VOLUMES IN ONE (New York: Published by D. Appleton & Co. / 200, Broadway).3 TEN VOLUMES IN ONE
3. This volume would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
1843
Walter Savage Landor mourned the death of his friend Robert Southey and dedicated to him a poem in the Examiner. He was visited by his children Walter Landor and Julia Landor, and placed a poem to Julia in Blackwood’s Magazine. By that dejected city, Arno runs, Where Ugolino claspt his famisht sons. There wert thou born, my Julia! there thine eyes Return’d as bright a blue to vernal skies. And thence, my little wanderer! when the Spring Advanced, thee, too, the hours on silent wing Brought, while anemonies were quivering round, And pointed tulips pierced the purple ground, Where stood fair Florence: there thy voice first blest My ear, and sank like balm into my breast: For many griefs had wounded it, and more Thy little hands could lighten were in store. But why revert to griefs? Thy sculptured brow Dispels from mine its darkest cloud even now. And all that Rumour has announced of grace! I urge, with fevered breast, the four-month day. O! could I sleep to wake again in May.
March 21, Tuesday: Robert Southey died, mentioning to the last the name of his friend Walter Savage Landor. The body would be placed in the churchyard of Crosthwaite Church in Keswick. A memorial to him, written by his friend William Wordsworth, is inside this church.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Robert Southey HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: December 11, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT SOUTHEY ROBERT SOUTHEY