Wicks & Bartelby

[public domain]

NB that Wicks has a collection of "Undeliver'd"
sermons (511), as well as   his "Spiritual Day-Book"
(275, 440, 481), his "Unpublished Sermons" (95),   and
the work entitled "Christ and History" (349), but that
they all seem to   contain exactly the same muddled
mix of petulance, polemic and pompousness.

As Planets do the Sun, we orbit 'round God according
to Laws as
              elegant as Kepler's. God is as sensible
to us, as a Sun to a Planet.
              Tho' we do not see Him, yet we know
where in our Orbits we run,-
              when we are closer, when more distant,
when in His light and
              when in shadow of our own making.... We
feel as components of
              Gravity His Love, His Need, whatever it
be that keeps us circling.
              Surely if a Planet be a living Creature,
then it knows, by something
              even more wondrous than Human Sight,
where its Sun shines,
              however far it lie.

            

- Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Unpublished Sermons


While this scrap from a Wicks unpublished sermon may
be considered a traditional motto or epigraph for the
chapter, it's not clear that this is how it functions
in the text overall. It's not clear to me that the
piece is polemical, petulant, or pompous. I agree that
it is muddled. Furthermore, it's not clear to me that
the author of this passage from an unpublished sermon
is pompous or polemical. But I agree that the overall
impression we get from these, but not specifically
from these scraps, is that young Wicks is a pompous,
petulant, polemical young priest. Is he pathetic?
Sure. And I think the text and the author are very
sympathetic. We might consider how Wicks functions a
Bartleby in M&D. 

Between Franklin's hectic aphorist, Poor Richard, and
Melville's doomed scrivener, Bartleby, lies about a
century of early America, consolidating itself as a
Christian capitalist state, even as acedia was in the
last stages of its shift over from a spiritual to a
secular condition.

-- Thomas Pynchon









__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience
http://launch.yahoo.com