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Samuel Butler: A critical study
A trenchant analysis of the 19th century satirist and novelist, with special attention given to ""Erewhon"" and ""The Way of All Flesh.""
194 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1915
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September 27, 2024
"Most men will readily admit that the two poets who have the greatest hold over Englishmen are Handel and Shakespeare — for it is as a poet, a sympathiser with and renderer of all estates and conditions whether of men or things, rather than as a mere musician, that Handel reigns supreme."
in Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino, by Samuel Butler
(....a world without machines...)
Well, I’ve started to read the utopian novel Erewhon, and as most often, I try to get, as much as possible, information on the author, to better understand the text. That’s why I picked up this biographical work by Cannan. I had also some notions of the other novel of Butler: The way of all flesh; so, the critical study by Cannan made a lot of sense.
But, before Cannan, the enlightening introduction by Francis Byrne in the novel Erewhon*. The great character traits of Butler (the son, because the father was a minister) may be summed up in a few words: temperamental, with a “practical imagination” . Mainly known for his satirical work which encompassed “all British institutions”; but maybe at the top: the Anglican church, a personally relevant institution in the sense that Butler himself almost got ordained; yet, he left Cambridge by 1858, not becoming a parson.
Darwin’s influence will prove great in his life; the 1859 book, The Origin of Species, some wrote, posed “a big social problem”. By 1859 Butler left to New Zealand, a sort of exile. His experiences there will be transposed, fully or in part, in the novel Erewhon.
Cannan calls the attention for the early years of Butler: though a failure as a painter, the writer got (at the age of 13) “fortified “ by music; he would have three main figures to admire for life: Homer, Shakespeare and Handel. I can recall the Erewhon chapter when the main character, while alone, having lost his native mate Chowbok, falls asleep in the mountain and has this dream: he sees a church organ and can hear the music playing : of Handel. The atmosphere is charged with music, it's vivid, and, as he woke up, it still endured: “distant sounds of music” as of Aeolian harp- like.
Cannan says Butler was “mischievous” though not malicious. In his criticism of the church (and he wrote many articles on religious issues) he wouldn’t attain the level of Voltaire. The latter would call the Catholic Church the Infamous (L’ infame).
Now, I’ m about to approach the chapters dealing with the Darwin's influence; and the issue of the “machines”; something the Erewhoanians had destroyed in their utopia, Erewhon, the “idyllic” land.
As for Darwin, Cannan affirms he could never have been taken seriously by Butler, because he lacked humor (“the valet of imagination”). Yet Butler accepted “evolution”. It made him to elaborate on several fronts/contributions: (1) the connection between heredity and memory (check on his book Life and habit); (2) the teleological aspect of organic life (3) the explanation of the physics of memory (here Butler saw memory as “organized matter”). Nevertheless, he was critical on Darwin (Cannan says “offended”). Darwin omitted the works of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and those of Lamarck and Buffon. And to be precise, Darwin’s natural selection was different from H. Spencer formulation: “survival of the fittest”.
As Cannan put it: “Scientists have been right in preaching evolution but they have preached it in such a way as to make it almost as a stumbling block as of an assistance”.
Regarding the machines and the concept of “mechanical consciousness”, Butler, while in New Zealand, published, in 1863, an article/letter called “Darwin among the machines” (signed by Cellarious) where he compared the human evolution to the machines evolution; in it you could read a sort of prophecy that one day man would become the “inferior” race, therefore replaced by machines.
He kept the belief, one could wonder: “…he desired to live in grace, not under the law” [of evolution].
I think as I read more and more of the book, I started questioning the likes and dislikes of Butler. He really loved south Europe and its people.
In Erewhon, the utopian novel, he spoke of the Erewhonians of dark skin, but not darker than south Italians and Spaniards; and he had found them “agreeable”. In fact, his holidays for some years were spent in Italy.
From another source I got access to the reaction to his death, in Italy (Varallo) . In the Il Corriere Valsesiano, Varallo, of 28 June 1902, was written “la morte d’un inglese entusiasta di Varallo”….and “Nostro buonissimo amico Samuel Butler è morto il 18 di Giugno”…and “poiché a Varallo tutti lo conoscevame e lo amavano”. Indeed, everybody knew him and loved him.
A chapter of the Cannan work is dedicated to the holidays of Butler. He speaks of a Butler “cloistered “ like a Michelangelo. Yet, riding horses, and enjoying Varallo…and Sicily, a finer place.
Butler, who, after the death of Miss Savage (his aid), dedicated himself to the translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Everything was in God’s hand, working through evolution or descent with modification, was Butler’s thinking. Cannan said Butler was a genius for fifteen years; had no interest in politics, but, curiously, his God was “too close”, and… “casts a shadow”.[!].
The critical study approaches the novel The way of all flesh, as an application of the theories of Butler on heredity; it’s a book whose subject involves the “relation of parents and children under the shadow of the church of England”.
The Conclusion of the book hints at an under-appreciated British writer (just like Bernard Shaw had called the attention to), who, despite all “prejudice” , managed to plant his “mustard seed”.
It is written that after The Fair Haven publication, an “elaborate and intricate irony”, Butler made the “clergy angry”. He even wrote “so I had no friends”.
Of himself, he wrote: “I am elderly, grey bearded and according to my clerk, Alfred, disgustingly fat; I wear spectacles and get more and more bronchitic as I grow older”.
But back to the dislikes, Cannan quotes Stendhal who said that England was a perilous country to live in: genius and talent lose 25% of their value.
Butler was happy in Italy, his “second country”.
Butler, the solitary bachelor, at his 100 percent,…plus.
P.S. I’ve found it curious Butler’s theory of the Odyssey being written by a woman, and set in Sicily.
*stands for NOWHERE.
in Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino, by Samuel Butler
(....a world without machines...)
Well, I’ve started to read the utopian novel Erewhon, and as most often, I try to get, as much as possible, information on the author, to better understand the text. That’s why I picked up this biographical work by Cannan. I had also some notions of the other novel of Butler: The way of all flesh; so, the critical study by Cannan made a lot of sense.
But, before Cannan, the enlightening introduction by Francis Byrne in the novel Erewhon*. The great character traits of Butler (the son, because the father was a minister) may be summed up in a few words: temperamental, with a “practical imagination” . Mainly known for his satirical work which encompassed “all British institutions”; but maybe at the top: the Anglican church, a personally relevant institution in the sense that Butler himself almost got ordained; yet, he left Cambridge by 1858, not becoming a parson.
Darwin’s influence will prove great in his life; the 1859 book, The Origin of Species, some wrote, posed “a big social problem”. By 1859 Butler left to New Zealand, a sort of exile. His experiences there will be transposed, fully or in part, in the novel Erewhon.
Cannan calls the attention for the early years of Butler: though a failure as a painter, the writer got (at the age of 13) “fortified “ by music; he would have three main figures to admire for life: Homer, Shakespeare and Handel. I can recall the Erewhon chapter when the main character, while alone, having lost his native mate Chowbok, falls asleep in the mountain and has this dream: he sees a church organ and can hear the music playing : of Handel. The atmosphere is charged with music, it's vivid, and, as he woke up, it still endured: “distant sounds of music” as of Aeolian harp- like.
Cannan says Butler was “mischievous” though not malicious. In his criticism of the church (and he wrote many articles on religious issues) he wouldn’t attain the level of Voltaire. The latter would call the Catholic Church the Infamous (L’ infame).
Now, I’ m about to approach the chapters dealing with the Darwin's influence; and the issue of the “machines”; something the Erewhoanians had destroyed in their utopia, Erewhon, the “idyllic” land.
As for Darwin, Cannan affirms he could never have been taken seriously by Butler, because he lacked humor (“the valet of imagination”). Yet Butler accepted “evolution”. It made him to elaborate on several fronts/contributions: (1) the connection between heredity and memory (check on his book Life and habit); (2) the teleological aspect of organic life (3) the explanation of the physics of memory (here Butler saw memory as “organized matter”). Nevertheless, he was critical on Darwin (Cannan says “offended”). Darwin omitted the works of his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and those of Lamarck and Buffon. And to be precise, Darwin’s natural selection was different from H. Spencer formulation: “survival of the fittest”.
As Cannan put it: “Scientists have been right in preaching evolution but they have preached it in such a way as to make it almost as a stumbling block as of an assistance”.
Regarding the machines and the concept of “mechanical consciousness”, Butler, while in New Zealand, published, in 1863, an article/letter called “Darwin among the machines” (signed by Cellarious) where he compared the human evolution to the machines evolution; in it you could read a sort of prophecy that one day man would become the “inferior” race, therefore replaced by machines.
He kept the belief, one could wonder: “…he desired to live in grace, not under the law” [of evolution].
I think as I read more and more of the book, I started questioning the likes and dislikes of Butler. He really loved south Europe and its people.
In Erewhon, the utopian novel, he spoke of the Erewhonians of dark skin, but not darker than south Italians and Spaniards; and he had found them “agreeable”. In fact, his holidays for some years were spent in Italy.
From another source I got access to the reaction to his death, in Italy (Varallo) . In the Il Corriere Valsesiano, Varallo, of 28 June 1902, was written “la morte d’un inglese entusiasta di Varallo”….and “Nostro buonissimo amico Samuel Butler è morto il 18 di Giugno”…and “poiché a Varallo tutti lo conoscevame e lo amavano”. Indeed, everybody knew him and loved him.
TUE TIMES, LONDON,
20 June 1902.
We regret to announce that Mr Samuel Butler, best known to
his countrymen as the author of "Erewhon," died on Wednesday
night, in his 67th year. He was a remarkably gifted man,...
A chapter of the Cannan work is dedicated to the holidays of Butler. He speaks of a Butler “cloistered “ like a Michelangelo. Yet, riding horses, and enjoying Varallo…and Sicily, a finer place.
Butler, who, after the death of Miss Savage (his aid), dedicated himself to the translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Everything was in God’s hand, working through evolution or descent with modification, was Butler’s thinking. Cannan said Butler was a genius for fifteen years; had no interest in politics, but, curiously, his God was “too close”, and… “casts a shadow”.[!].
The critical study approaches the novel The way of all flesh, as an application of the theories of Butler on heredity; it’s a book whose subject involves the “relation of parents and children under the shadow of the church of England”.
The Conclusion of the book hints at an under-appreciated British writer (just like Bernard Shaw had called the attention to), who, despite all “prejudice” , managed to plant his “mustard seed”.
It is written that after The Fair Haven publication, an “elaborate and intricate irony”, Butler made the “clergy angry”. He even wrote “so I had no friends”.
Of himself, he wrote: “I am elderly, grey bearded and according to my clerk, Alfred, disgustingly fat; I wear spectacles and get more and more bronchitic as I grow older”.
But back to the dislikes, Cannan quotes Stendhal who said that England was a perilous country to live in: genius and talent lose 25% of their value.
Butler was happy in Italy, his “second country”.
Butler, the solitary bachelor, at his 100 percent,…plus.
P.S. I’ve found it curious Butler’s theory of the Odyssey being written by a woman, and set in Sicily.
*stands for NOWHERE.
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