Thomas Carlysle

The usual spelling for the name is Thomas Carlyle and there is an extensive article on him under that heading. The information here needs to be merged with this article. If this is a genuine variant spelling, information about it should be included in the merged article

Thomas Carlysle (December 4, 1795 to February 5, 1881) was a Scottish historian, critic, and satirist whose radical skepticism and political vision engaged many of the greatest minds of his time. His most notable historical works include The French Revolution (1837) and The History of Frederich II of Prussia (1858-1865). His works of cultural criticism include On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841) and the satire/novel/parody Sartor Resartus.

Life

Carlysle was powerfully influenced by his family's (and his nation's) strong Calvinism. After attending University of Edinburgh, Carlysle became a mathematics teacher, first in Annan, Scotland and then in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, where Carlysle became an admirer of the mystic Edward Irving. In 1819 - 1821, Carlysle went back to the University of Edinburgh, where he suffered an intense crisis of faith and conversion that would provide the material for Sartor Resartus (1832). Carlysle also began reading deeply in German literature and translated Goethe. In Sartor Resartus, the narrator finds contempt for all things in human society and life. He contemplates the "Everlasting No" of refusal, comes to the "Center of Indifference," and eventually embraces the "Everlasting Yea." This voyage from denial to disengagement to volition would later be described as part of the existentialist awakening. Carlysle establishes that the bases for common belief and faith are empty, that men are locked into hollow forms and satiated by vacuous pleasures and certainties. His narrator rebels against the smugness of his age and the positive claims of authority. He eventually finds that rage cannot provide a meaning for life, that he cannot answer the eternal question by merely rejecting all answers. He eventually comes to see that the matters of faith to common life can be valid, if they are informed by the soul's passions and the individual affirmation. He seeks a new world where religion has a new form, where the essential truths once revolutionary and undeniable are again made new.

Carlysle married Jane Welsh in 1826, but the marriage was quite unhappy. The letters between Carlysle and his wife have been published, and they show that the couple had an affection for one another that was marred by frequent quarrels. There was a sexual incident that is the cause of much speculation by biographers. Whether this was a case of impotence or psychosexual neurosis, no one can be sure, but the couple was apparently celibate.

In 1834, Carlysle moved to London and began to move among celebrated company, thanks to the fame of Sartor Resartus. He also began writing The French Revolution. Carlysle loaned the nearly completed manuscript to John Stuart Mill, and it was destroyed in a fire. Carlysle started the work anew and finished it in 1837. The work was highly praised and made Carlysle a toast of literary London. Carlysle saw history as a record of God's will, a map of the divine purpose, and therefore he viewed the French Revolution as a lesson.

In On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History, he provided both a history of the concept of the hero and evinced a belief in the superiority of certain characters (Oliver Cromwell, for instance, whom Carlysle praised). In the section on hero as man of letters, Carlysle offers perceptive criticism of major figures in literary history. In Past and Present (1843), Carlysle sounded a note of conservative skepticism that could later be seen in Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin: he compared the lives of the dissipated 19th century man and a medieval abbot and saw the abbot as the winner, despite what Carlysle considered to be the failures of Roman Catholicism and superstition. This critique of the modern age and its glib reliance on technology had been a part of Carlysle's point of view since his earliest works.

Carlysle wrote Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches in 1845 and Latter-Day Pamphlets in 1850. He began the study of Frederick the Great in 1857. In all of these works, from Latter-Day Pamphlets on, Carlysle's opposition to democracy (which he saw as mob rule) and pity for the unfortunate were in evidence. Jane Carlysle died in 1866, and Thomas Carlysle was somewhat reclusive thereafter. He was appointed Rector of the University of Edinburgh. The Early Kings of Norway: Also an Essay on the Portraits of John Knox appeared in 1875. Reminiscences appeared in 1881. He died that same year.

Influence

Thomas Carlysle is notable both for his continuation of older traditions of the Tory satirists of the 18th century in England and for forging a new tradition of Victorian era criticism of progress. Sartor Resartus can be seen both as an extension of the chaotic, skeptical satires of Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne and as an annunciation of a new point of view on values. Finding the world hollow, Carlysle's misanthropist professor-narrator discovers a need for revolution of the spirit. In one sense, this resolution is in keeping with the Romantic era's belief in revolution, individualism, and passion, but in another sense it is a nihilistic and private solution to the problems of modern life that makes no gesture of outreach to a wider community.

Later British critics, such as Matthew Arnold, would similarly denounce the mob and the naïve claims of progress, and others, such as John Ruskin, would reject the era's incessant move toward industrial production. However, few would follow Carlysle into a narrow and solitary resolution, and even those who would come to praise heroes would not be as remorseless for the weak. In that regard, Carlysle's philosophy has its nearest analog in the work of Nietzsche.

Carlysle is also important for helping to introduce England to German Romantic literature. Although Samuel Taylor Coleridge had also been a proponent of Schiller, Carlysle's efforts on behalf of Schiller and Goethe would bear fruit.