Monday January 30, 2023; 6:25 PM EST
- In passing just now, I noticed Emerson sneaking in a quiet warning to those who want to write, a warning about being too timid, too decorous, too well-behaved. Something like this: As people, sometimes we are “fenced by etiquette,” but as writers we must not be. Here is the passage, below. As you might expect, he thought it was normal to use the word "men" . . .#
- Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries in a thousand years have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, in "Books," in "Society and Solitude"#
- In our slogan-loving, mind-numbing age, you can easily picture the "Fenced by Etiquette" t-shirts and mugs. Of course if it fits on a coffee mug it's only part of the story.#