"We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin even with that greatness which made the spots on which it rested hallowed; and until, by our own lives, and by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us, we feel that union and relationship of the spirit which we seek"
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Restlessness is the engine of this sentence: not the vague kind you cure with distraction, but the sharper ache of standing near “greatness” and realizing proximity isn’t belonging. Jones Very, a Transcendentalist-era poet with a mystic streak, frames admiration as spiritually insufficient. The “spots on which it rested” evokes a quasi-religious tourism of genius: we sanctify the places where extraordinary lives happened, as if geography could transmit grace. Very punctures that impulse by making the hallowing feel like a symptom of distance. We turn sites into shrines because we haven’t yet made the inner crossing.
His real target is a culture (then and now) that confuses consumption with kinship. “We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin” insists that the only admiration that satisfies is the kind that changes the admirer. Greatness isn’t a spectacle to behold; it’s a standard that demands an answer. That answer comes in two channels: “by our own lives” (the ethical, lived proof) and “by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us” (serious engagement with inherited ideas, not merely quoting them). The syntax keeps pushing forward, clause after clause, mimicking the seeking it describes.
Subtextually, Very is spiritualizing influence without turning it into idolatry. He wants communion, not fanhood: “union and relationship of the spirit” names an intimacy earned through imitation, struggle, and dialogue across time. The intent is aspirational, but also corrective: stop treating greatness as something external that blesses you; treat it as something that indicts you, then invites you to grow into its lineage.
His real target is a culture (then and now) that confuses consumption with kinship. “We feel unsatisfied until we know ourselves akin” insists that the only admiration that satisfies is the kind that changes the admirer. Greatness isn’t a spectacle to behold; it’s a standard that demands an answer. That answer comes in two channels: “by our own lives” (the ethical, lived proof) and “by converse with the thoughts they have bequeathed us” (serious engagement with inherited ideas, not merely quoting them). The syntax keeps pushing forward, clause after clause, mimicking the seeking it describes.
Subtextually, Very is spiritualizing influence without turning it into idolatry. He wants communion, not fanhood: “union and relationship of the spirit” names an intimacy earned through imitation, struggle, and dialogue across time. The intent is aspirational, but also corrective: stop treating greatness as something external that blesses you; treat it as something that indicts you, then invites you to grow into its lineage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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