Thomas Carlyle, página 2 de 5

Latter-Day Pamphlets was a series of "pamphlets" published by Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle in 1850, in vehement denunciation of what he believed to be the political, social, and religious imbecilities and injustices of the period.Thomas Carlyle (4 December 1795 5 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born of peasant parents in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, Carlyle attended the University of Edinburgh where he excelled in mathematics, inventing the Carlyle circle. After finishing the arts course, he prepared to become a minister in the Burgher Church while working as a schoolmaster. He quit these and several other endeavours before settling on literature, writing for the Edinburgh Encyclopdia and working as a translator. He found initial success as a disseminator of German literature, then little-known to English readers, through his translations, his Life of Friedrich Schiller (1825), and his review essays for various journals. His first major work was a novel entitled Sartor Resartus (183334). After relocating to London, he became famous with his French Revolution (1837), which prompted the collection and reissue of his essays as Miscellanies. Each of his subsequent works, from On Heroes (1841) to History of Frederick the Great (185865) and beyond, were highly regarded throughout Europe and North America. He founded the London Library, contributed significantly to the creation of the National Portrait Galleries in London and Scotland, was elected Lord Rector of Edinburgh University in 1865, and received the Pour le Merite in 1874, among other honours.

Translator: Uno Brummer

«La historia del mundo es la biografía de los grandes hombres». Durante el mes de mayo de 1840, Thomas Carlyle pronunció seis conferencias en seis días distintos sobre la temática de los héroes. Un año después, en 1841, se publicó en Londres la recopilación de aquellos discursos en un libro con el título On Heroes, Hero-Worship and The Heroic in History (Sobre los héroes, el culto al héroe y lo heroico en la historia). El héroe de Carlyle es aquel individuo apegado, enraizado y empujado por la causa de la Realidad, de los Hechos, que da su vida para combatir contra la Falsedad y las Apariencias. En parte, para Thomas Carlyle, la Humanidad avanza en la Historia gracias a la aparición de grandes hombres, los héroes, que, con su acción y palabra, van marcando el devenir de todos los demás hombres. Desde los tiempos remotos del paganismo nórdico hasta el, mucho más cercano al autor, siglo XVIII, al cual Carlyle denomina despectivamente el siglo escéptico; desde el nacimiento del Islam hasta la Revolución Francesa; Sobre los héroes incluye en su análisis, estudiados bajo las categorías del héroe como dios, profeta, poeta, sacerdote, hombre de letras o rey, a personajes tan variopintos como Odín, Thor, Mahoma, Dante, Shakespeare, Lutero, John Knox, Samuel Johnson. Rousseau, Robert Burns, Oliver Cromwell o Napoleón.

Biographical Introduction by Richard Herne Shepherd

Contributor: W. H. Hudson

The Present Time, youngest-born of Eternity, child and heir of all the Past Times with their good and evil, and parent of all the Future, is ever a "New Era" to the thinking man; and comes with new questions and significance, however commonplace it look: to know it, and what it bids us do, is ever the sum of knowledge for all of us. This new Day, sent us out of Heaven, this also has its heavenly omens;amid the bustling trivialities and loud empty noises, its silent monitions,

Carlyle encontró en las vidas ajenas un motivo de arte mayor, el cual requería para su mejor realización el concurso indispensable de la sensibilidad y la maestría. Si na-die ha sentido como Carlyle que este mundo es irreal, segun la apreciacion de Jorge Luis Borges, hagamos lo posible por no caer en el error de buscar en esta defensa de la biografia un alegato en favor de la llamada vida real. Busquemos, en cambio, las tramas del original y nada sencillo mundo prosistico de Carlyle, obra maestra de la narrativa

Introduction: Ralph Waldo Emerson