The Power of the Past

The authors we have read this semester have come from every different background imaginable. Americans, Russians, Frenchmen.....slaves, lords, women…
Something that has caught my attention as I process all I have studied over the last few months is the thought of the lives of the writers. For some reason, I do not always look Voltaire as a real man who lived in the midst of real turmoil; no wonder I am surprised at the pain of Candide. Reading the works with the perception of remembering the lives of their authors has changed the way I receive the story completely. It is a powerful thing, reading the life of a person through their characters.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is a perfect example. I can’t imagine how an eighteen-year-old boy could live his entire life with a cruel father, or how he could process the murder of his father at the hands of his own peasants. It makes sense that he would turn to something as evil as a circle of people celebrating demons and darkness in order to seek understanding and community. As a result of association, he was sent to prison and sentenced to death. Reprieved at the last minute, he was banished to Serbia as a convict. He traveled the world, seeing the results of Enlightenment thought and despising it. In the middle of his life, his wife died, leaving him alone. In his life, he faced murder, shame, fear, isolation, crime, and punishment. His first novel is not a fictional story of a crazed man; it is a window to the soul and struggle of a real person faced with the pain of life.

Max Weber was raised with the purpose of making him a German ruler. His education, clothes, friends, family, time, money; all were focused on his future – a future of influence and power. The pressure placed upon him caused him to fall apart. He had a nervous breakdown, and had no choice but to leave the society that had shaped him for his entire life. No wonder, after he traveled to America, he wrote about how people act because of the weight of their eternity – their forever future.

Frederick Douglas had seen the horrors of slavery, of the evil against his people. How could he not speak against it?

Susan B. Anthony was a woman who raised her voice for the rights of women. What else could she say?

These are just a few of many examples of how a person’s life is infused into their life – how their present life influenced the future of their works.
Which raises the question in my mind….what has yesterday changed? What is my present life, our today, going to do to tomorrow? And what about the next day…