Just after pulling William Faulkner's name for the Small Works List, I pulled John Adams. Obviously the reason this name appears on this list is probably because (though I am never sure) is probably because some letter of his or some address of his was featured in an early American Literature volume of the Norton Anthology took a snippet from him. I get these names cold, unknown and without context.
Here is what I knew of John Adams before pulling his name. He was a president, probably the second. His son was also president, maybe the fourth? John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were friends and wrote a lot of letters to each other. I have heard that the died on the same day, July 4th but I don't remember if it was in the same year. Abigail Adams, the second first lady, was a significant figure in the history of the country, she may have saved some paintings and it was clear that they loved it each other very much in the old timey way of expressing it through letters. I do not
Other than that, I didn't know much. I couldn't have told you what political party he was or if there were even political parties at that time. I don't know if there was a spectrum of political affiliation that would make sense to our current understanding of these things. I couldn't tell you much, but having read Adams' "Thoughts on Government," I was not surprised by the ideas expressed in this document. I am a poltical novice and I don't hope that this space becomes a political space at all. I want to avoid it in fact, not as to say that politics aren't important or that everything we say and do in this currently political climate isn't embued with some spin on the ball of the lingerings of some political ideology. I do not pretend to think that one, especially during these frought political times, separate themselves from the ideas of their times but I hope to do so here. One of the motivations for this project is not to run from contemporary ideas or contemporary troubles but to bring into our current discourse old ideas but more than this old ways of thinking, slower ways of thinking, and a set of concerns that is not of the minute, up to date, always sort of burning with the urgency of now, but to think slowly and deeply about something else and then return to our present day considerations and see what might look different.
John Adams accomplishes this. His thoughts on government are very refreshing almost. The thing that stands out his concern for poetry although he is a politician. It is hard to say what presidents or Governors think of poetry nowadays to borrow a phrase from my students, but Adams was concerned for the work of Alexander Pope and that is refreshing. Poetry is important. I am surprised how little of poetry people know any more. To Adams, it was the stuff of importance, enough importance to include it in his original sort of statement of purpose of government.
“Nothing can be more fallacious than this: But poets read history to collect flowers not fruits—they attend to fanciful images, not the effects of social institutions. Nothing is more certain from the history of nations, and the nature of man, than that some forms of government are better fitted for being well administered than others” (Adams).
He seems to be saying here that the work of poets and politicians are essentially different and that the person stepping into the role of politician or political leader has to be the serious one, the one on whom decisions rest. Poets can go about looking for flowers, avoiding the fruits and never sort of setting about to the real work of governing, running a place, doing the thing. Of this notion, I wholeheartedly agree. If all that you read of Adams though was this quote you might think that he was anti-poetry but he is not and draws upon Pope and other poets often in this document. So, poetry is still essential but it is for a different sort of role than that of an organizing principle of governments, states, or nations. A poet would make a terrible governor or president perhaps. We have not had one yet I don't think. We have had governors, senators, professors, generals, business leaders, a peanut farmer, a hat salesman and an actor as presidents but never a poet. JFK won a Pulitzer for his book Profiles in Courage. The first Roosevelt was a historian. Obama wrote two books by the time he became president. Not any of them poets. Eisenhower later picked up oil painting and was said to have painted 260 canvases. The second Bush has taken up painting in his post-presidential career.
The other thing that stood out from this short pamphlet is what Adams thinks the qualities of a political leader should be, “This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey” (Adams).
I dont think this takes much editorializing or contextualizing. I just wonder if these are still valued the same way as then and what that means for this system he helped build not still valuing these things might mean going forward.
I thought this was an interesting read. I am not a political science person and so what I latched onto here is very little of the actual purpose of this document - these are just the things that stood out to me.
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