`A Perfected Instrument'

“His use of words became a perfected instrument, acquired by an education largely self-attained -- `picked up,’ he said, `under pressure of necessity.’ That the books read became part of him is apparent in phrases influenced by the Bible, Shakespeare, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Burns, Blackstone’s Commentaries; and not least, by some books of Euclid – read and `nearly mastered,’ as he says, after he had become a member of Congress. The largeness of the life entered into the writing, as with a passion he strove to persuade his hearers of what he believed, adroit, ingenious mentality framing an art which, if it is not to be designated poetry, we may call a `grasp of eternal grace’ – in both senses, figurative and literal.”

The precision of syntax and artful selection of quotation betrays the writer as Marianne Moore. The mention of Congress, self-education, deep if not broad reading and “largeness of life” reveal her subject as Abraham Lincoln. Can you recall another Congressman, past or present, Moore’s encomium might fairly describe? That an American president ranks among our finest writers of prose, given what we have subsequently endured, is a truth as yet unknown to professors of English.

The passage is drawn from “Abraham Lincoln and the Art of the Word,” written by Moore in 1960 for inclusion in Lincoln for the Ages, edited by R.G. Newman. Like her poetry and much of her prose, the eight-page essay consists largely of quotations – in this case, Lincoln’s own words, particularly letters and speeches. Here’s how she does it, in an excerpt with obvious implications for the blogosphere:

“The malcontent attacks greatness by disparaging it – by libels on efficiency, interpreting needful silence as lack of initiative, by distortion, by ridicule. `As a general rule,’ Lincoln said, `I abstain from reading attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.’ Expert in rebuttal, however, as in strategy, he often won juries and disinterested observers alike, by anecdote or humorous implication that made argument unnecessary.”

I read Moore’s essay several hours before finding at the library a book I’ve awaited impatiently – The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, by Daniel Mark Epstein, a writer of enviable versatility. He is a poet, translator and playwright who has written biographies of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Nat King Cole, Aimee Semple McPherson, and my favorite, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington. What the prose works share are American subjects. As I write, I’ve read only a few pages of Epstein’s new Lincoln volume, but already I trust his learned, confident voice:

“He was a secretive man, who kept his own counsel. He was an ambitious man of humble origins, with colossal designs on the future. And it would always be advantageous not to be closely known, never to be transparent. Passing a farmer on a dray, he would tip his hat and grin. Everybody knew him. Nobody knew him. He would play the fool, the clown, the melancholy poet dying for love, the bumpkin. He would take the world by stealth and not by storm. He would disarm enemies by his apparent naïveté, by seeming pleasantly harmless. He would go to such lengths in making fun of his own appearance that others felt obliged to defend it.”

Moore writes:

“Consider also the stateliness of the three cannots in the Gettysburg Address: `We cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we may say here, but it can never forget what they did here.’ Editors attempting to improve Lincoln’s punctuation by replacing dashes with commas, should refrain – the dash, as well known, signifying prudence.”