He was a rare gem

I just posted And so hold on when there is nothing in you, Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ and in so doing became aware of it as an example of something D.G. Myers argued, that we are losing our common awareness. It isn't important what the canon is. As Myers pointed out, it is always changing. But it is important that there be a canon, some touchstone of common knowledge.

In the instance of the post, I quoted a couple of lines from William Wordsworth's The World is Too Much With Us. I didn't cite it. It didn't trigger a thought at all. Most people would catch that line. But then I also quoted a verse from Rudyard Kipling's If. That pulled me up short. I regard that as a well quoted and widely read poem but it is definitely a poem with a message incompatible with the ethos of the modern academy. Is it still taught at all? Should I link to it? Well, I did. But then it made me think of the Wordsworth line. What reason do I have to believe that that would be obvious to any reader. Probably no good reason.

This is fresh in my mind because I discovered this morning that D.G. Myers passed away September 26th. I never knew the man other than through his blog, A Commonplace Blog. But what a humane spirit and erudite mind was revealed there. His wasn't a blog I visited frequently but I did periodically and always with the expectation to be surprised or challenged or impressed by his insight. And sometimes all three at the same time. He was a rare gem.

His Academy Quits Me in January of this year is a sad indictment of modern teaching in the university. His followup post makes clear the argument about the importance of a canon rather than The Canon.

To the revising of canons there is no end. But the canon, the “old canon,” the “patriarchal canon,” the “restricted, canonical list,” the “fixed repertory”—this is a bogey. It has never existed. It has merely changed, from critic to critic and generation to generation; it bears no marks of persistence as well as change. . . . Those who fear canons have seen a pattern where there is only randomness, and have mistaken a selection for a principle. The name they have given to this is “the canon,” but there is not enough of an identity among canons for there to be any one canon. It cannot be said to be a substantial entity.