Humanity is a complex riddle, which to a mere observer, like myself, means becoming more and more a slave to by-gone times – to Death if you prefer – and taking refuge in them, so as, I'm persuaded, to understand the present.
But maybe the Dead Man is not the best way to solve this riddle, for perhaps he is but a dead weight to land ourselves with, and prevents all of us, not just those invested in history, from making our own errors. An idea (close to that of Ralph Waldo Emerson's own) that Holgrave proceeds to explain, in an earnest tone, to Phoebe Pyncheon:
“a
Dead Man if he happen to have a will disposes of wealth no longer his
own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with
the notions of men much longer dead than he. A Dead Man sits on all
our judgement-seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat
his decisions. We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's
jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! We are sick of Dead Men's
diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which
dead doctors killed their patients! We worship the living Deity,
according to Dead Men's forms and creeds! Whatever we seek to do, of
our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us! Turn our
eyes to what point we may, a Dead Man's white, immitigable face
encounters them, and freezes our very heart! And we must be dead
ourselves, before we can begin to have our proper influence on our
own world, which will no longer be our world, but the world of
another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to
interfere.”
And
yet interfere, in my own affairs, I let them.
Picture credit: Fan Bearing Slave Girl, Legendary Kings by Erte (source: WikiArt)
See The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Written as a journal entry July 2021.
