`Gruff Humaneness'

It's good to have elberry back in The Lumber Room after an absence of several months. He appears rested, revitalized and ornery. One of his first posts included this bracing bit of good sense:

"A friend recently wrote to me of Dr Johnson’s ‘gruff humaneness’. This seems to me a good description of another doctor, Theodore Dalrymple. Those who are good are often rough-around-the-edges types - i think of Dr Johnson, the bully, the slob, the near-lunatic, finding a whore passed out in the gutter, lifting her onto his mighty back and carrying her to his home for medical attention. Goodness is often surprising, unexpected, inasmuch as good men don’t ride about on white horses waving flags - those who talk loudly of the righteousness of their cause, and so of their own righteousness, are not to be trusted."

As always, there's more than reflexive contrariness to elberry, though don't underestimate the charms of an inveterate contrary streak. He's on to something here regarding the difference between goodness and an overriding wish to appear good. Each day we meet someone -- bank teller, librarian, doctor -- who has internalized a fraudulent bit of egotism-masking-as-deep-feeling. The face they present others like a hideous rictus is one of eye-meeting sincerity and profound concern, often accompanied by a soulful tilt of the head. Politicians and other celebrities, of course, have learned this lesson well. Anyone devoting so much energy to maintaining a fashionably pleasing persona has little left over for the more challenging job of trying to be a decent human being. Thus, elberry's observation that "Those who are good are often rough-around-the-edges types" sounds at once like a truth worth examining.

Later in his post elberry mentions Beckett who, with Johnson and Dalrymple, completes an interesting triumverate of men with little interest in appearing ingratiating, yet who possess notable gifts for compassion, charity and a devotion to the truth as they perceive it. Deep confidence, even a certain no-bullshit toughness, is not inconsistent with humility. After all, no humble person grovels.

Among the noble men of the 20th century was Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish poet and essayist. In 1986 he gave an interview, "The Art of Empathy," to Renata Gorczynski which is included in Polish Writers on Writing (edited by Adam Zagajewski). In Herbert we see a mingling of strength and humility, goodness and flintiness, similar to Johnson's, Beckett's and Dalrymple's. In addition, all share a devotion to tradition, to antecedents, to the roots of their thinking and writing:

"I would like what I write to be the reflection of some human life -- unimportant, undistinguished, mine -- and through that the life of my generation, my relations to my elders, to my masters. That is a duty of continuity and -- apart from my terrible character flaws -- a duty of fidelity. Oh, that's what I would say, that my poetry is about fidelity; in general it is about a certain virtue of endurance, of affirming life in all its complexity."