Introduction
In Sesame and Lilies, John Ruskin warned us not to try to manipulate the great writers of the past into agreeing with us or our times. And if we have so little respect for them as to want to try, we would be better off not entering the ‘court of the past’ at all.
This court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this:— it is open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates.* In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portières of that silent Faubourg St Germain,* there is but brief question:— “Do you deserve to enter?”* “Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? — no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognise our presence.”
* Elysium was the ancient Greeks’ abode of the blessed dead, as contrasted with Hades.
* Faubourg St Germain was for many generations Paris’s fashionable intellectual centre. Ruskin’s idea was that the congregation of dead writers in Elysium, the silent ‘court of the past’, makes the abode of the blessed into a grand salon like Faubourg St Germain — or in British terms, Walter Scott’s Abbotsford, or Virginia Woolf’s Bloomsbury.
* Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) imagined that above the gates of Hades was written: “Abandon hope all ye that enter here”. Ruskin now suggests a message for neighbouring Elysium: “Do you deserve to enter?”.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
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