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Volume 39:

Prefaces and Prologues (full text)

No part of a book is so intimate as the Preface. So begins the preface to the Harvard Classics' volume of prefaces. I'm not one for general rules of this sort, but by the time I'd finished this volume, I'd begun to think this may be so. At the very least, this book made entirely of prefaces proved to be an intimate book. The introductory form offers only the slightest unity to the volume, which draws from books of science (Bacon, Copernicus, Newton), religion (Calvin and Knox), history (Raleigh), fiction (Fielding and Hugo), poetry (Dryden, Wordsworth, Whitman), criticism (Goethe and Hippolyte Taine), and even lexicography (Samuel Johnson). In the end, the diversity of the works encourages a reader to focus on the writers' respective tones.

Each of their voices balances humility with pride. The former often seems designed to manage expectations; the latter is usually justified by the importance of the work being introduced. Many of the prefaces are obviously designed to secure protection for controversial ideas, which makes striking this balance all the more important. Thus, John Calvin writes to King Francis:

When I began this work, Sire, nothing was further from my thoughts than writing a book which would afterwards be presented to your Majesty. My intention was only to lay down some elementary principles, by which inquirers on the subject of religion might be instructed in the nature of true piety. [...] But when I perceived that the fury of certain wicked men in your kingdom had grown to such a height, as to leave no room in the land for sound doctrine, I thought I should be usefully employed, if in the same work I delivered my instructions to them, and exhibited my confession to you, that you may know the nature of that doctrine, which is the object of such unbounded rage to those madmen who are now disturbing the country with fire and sword.

And Copernicus to Pope Paul III:

I can easily conceive, most Holy Father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which I have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, I ascribe certain motions to the Earth, they will cry out at once that I and my theory should be rejected. For I am not so much in love with my conclusions as not to weigh what others will think about them, and although I know that the meditations of a philosopher are far removed from the judgment of the laity, because his endeavor is to seek out the truth in all things, so far as this is permitted by God to the human reason, I still believe that one must avoid theories altogether foreign to orthodoxy.

Dr. Johnson is on safer footing with his famous Dictionary, which allows him one of the great dedications of all time, to the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield.

Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the Public should consider me as owing that to a Patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself. Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less.

Prefaces to creative work are something of a different matter. Ideally, such work will stand on its own merits. But in some cases, the authors suspected -- quite rightly, as it happens -- that they were doing something that hadn't been done before, and that readers might need some context, or at least a clarification of intention. In each of these cases -- Fielding, Hugo, Wordsworth, and Whitman -- one has the sense that the theory has grown out of the creative work, not the other way around. Of course, this is just as it should be. In one case, in fact, it's tough to tell the preface from the work itself. Here is Whitman introducing Leaves of Grass (the ellipses are his):

America does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions ... accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the door ... that it was fittest for its days ... that its action has descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches ... and that he shall be fittest for his days. The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

--CRB, October 30, 2007

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