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Of all the things I’ve read about Lincoln recently, this very moving something-or-other is among my favorites. The idea that a person unfamiliar with Lincoln might meet and then find herself falling in love with him warms my heart.
(Thanks to a reader for the link.)
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21 comments
February 27, 2009 at 3:01 pm
kathy a.
oh, my. what a work of caring. and so amazing, too.
February 27, 2009 at 3:07 pm
kid bitzer
i love kalman’s work anyhow. and i liked her drawings in this series.
but i was still shocked–jolted, thrilled, electrified–at the intensity of the photograph in the middle. something about scrolling through her childish drawings, reading her declaration of love, and then seeing that photo of his ravaged, pock-marked, care-worn ugly face. god he was beautiful.
and i think kalman’s work made that shock possible, made it possible to see that face anew again. very moving.
February 27, 2009 at 3:12 pm
ari
but i was still shocked–jolted, thrilled, electrified–at the intensity of the photograph in the middle. something about scrolling through her childish drawings, reading her declaration of love, and then seeing that photo of his ravaged, pock-marked, care-worn ugly face. god he was beautiful.
and i think kalman’s work made that shock possible, made it possible to see that face anew again. very moving.
This was exactly my reaction as well (meaning you’ve made a good point). In fact, not to get too sappy, I found myself crying — this happens a lot, as Eric will tell you — when I reached that point in the essay. It is an essay, right?
February 27, 2009 at 3:15 pm
kid bitzer
yup. i cried too.
but i didn’t say that in my earlier comment because, yup, it’s too sappy.
February 27, 2009 at 4:21 pm
eric
Huh. For some reason it reminded me of these.
February 27, 2009 at 4:25 pm
ari
Is that an internet tradition (with which, of course, I am unfamiliar)? Because those are insanely cool. But they didn’t make me cry.
February 27, 2009 at 4:34 pm
eric
Oh, have we found the only thing?
February 27, 2009 at 4:38 pm
ari
Not only did I misspell “that” (since fixed), but the content of my query was and is rather muddy. I meant, smartypants, that if it’s an internet tradition, of course I’m not familiar with it. So is it? And internet tradition? Because it’s neat.
February 27, 2009 at 4:46 pm
eric
It’s something I saw linked on the Internet once, for sure. By Wolfson, maybe?
February 27, 2009 at 4:58 pm
Buster
1. I don’t want to sound like a jerk–and I know that comments prefaced this way are typically followed by real jerkiness–but I’ve never really understood the strong emotional attachment folks have to Lincoln. When I got hired at my first job, my boss (the principal of the school) shook my hand and told me, “This hand shook the hand of a Union veteran who shook Lincoln’s hand. That’s only two hands away!” I was unsure (well, I was 23 and almost always unsure of most things) whether I was supposed to care because I was an historian or because I was an American. In any event, I just nervously smiled and moved on. Over the years, I’ve run into a number of folks–not to profile, but they’re usually white guys over 40, though I know the artist under consideration isn’t that–who have this same love of Lincoln. I get admiration and historical interest. I don’t get the tearing up and “passing” on of laid-on skin. I’m seriously asking (and not mocking): what is it?
2. The tradition, as far as I can tell, is an internet-adaptation of the comic book or graphic novel. In Russia, where the comix market is underdeveloped and printing/distribution is prohibitively expensive, most artists distribute their work this way. This reminded me a lot of those works, though the execution was far better than the Russian comix. I’ve seen some Americans do it too. I bet SEK will have the answer eventually.
February 27, 2009 at 5:13 pm
kid bitzer
it’s a fair question, buster, and not especially jerky.
but i’m not sure if there’s any very good answer. i certainly doubt there’s any unitary answer. different old white guys probably feel it for different reasons. part of the story in my case is that i am grotesquely ugly myself, and that affects my feelings about lincoln, but that obviously would not apply to ari.
and even after you collected lots of personal explanations, you might not be any the nearer to giving a damn yourself.
i mean, what’s this mozart person and why do people go on about him? for lots of reasons, none of which will make you musical.
but let’s start a step back: do you like any of his writings?
(and as a confessed lincoln-worshipper, i gotta say even i think that handshake thing is weird.)
February 27, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Buster
As a craftsman, I admire his prose. As a student of history, I think he was an especially keen politician. As a human, I think his life story is compelling.
I just don’t tear up over it or fantasize about going to the MOMA with him. Or pass on his skin, to go to the extreme.
And it seems like there is a disproportionate number of people who do. Enough to justify that Kelman art blog, right? Otherwise the piece probably wouldn’t make sense.
I don’t want to distract from other conversations about Lincoln and this particular work. I’m just dreaming that someone will have a neat answer for this perhaps unanswerable question.
February 27, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Buster
“Kelman art blog” above should read “Kalman.”
apologies.
February 27, 2009 at 9:01 pm
eric
Or pass on his skin, to go to the extreme.
So what you’re saying is, you won’t shake Ari’s hand?
February 28, 2009 at 4:41 am
kid bitzer
let’s just say i’ll pass on his skin.
February 28, 2009 at 11:35 am
[links] Link salad at Potlatch | jlake.com
[...] In Love with A. Lincoln — (Snurched from The Edge of the American West.) [...]
February 28, 2009 at 5:45 pm
fromlaurelstreet
thanks so much for posting the link to kalman’s ode. after reading it, i started doing some poking around with respect to robert lincoln and learned more than i would have imagined.
turns out he was a highly paid corporate lawyer and then president and chairman of the pullman company, but i’m not sure what his father would have thought.
http://fromlaurelstreet.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/robert-lincoln/
March 1, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Buster
So what you’re saying is, you won’t shake Ari’s hand?
Oops, sorry I missed this, went to bed, left for a weekend trip and I fear that it is now far too late for a witty off-color rejoinder involving Ari’s hand, ass kissing and Lincoln’s distant kin.
Or maybe there’s just never a good time for that.
March 2, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Bloix
Random thoughts.
Maira Kalman is a prominent author-illustrator of children’s books. My children particularly liked “Sayonara, Mrs. Kackleman.” Yours may like her, too.
The handshake thing is an old-fashioned ritual, gone now, that used to be common. In a world before voice recording, video, and mass-reproduced photo images, it was a way of imagininf a link to history. It lasted into the first half of the last century or so. Any prominent person would do. (The Deadheads here will know the line, “Shake the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan.”)
It’s not at all problematic that someone doesn’t have a depth of feeling toward Lincoln, but I do think it’s peculiar, not to say uncharitable, to attribute that feeling to some sort of emotional disturbance common to middle-aged white men – particularly when we are discussing a work of art expressing that feeling that was created by a woman. If you don’t feel an emotion it’s fine to say that you don’t feel it without sneering at others who do feel it.
As for why Lincoln inspires feelings of love – well, as his temple in Washington shows, Lincoln is essentially a religious figure. His life story is as close as a secular person can come to the life of a saint. He came from dirt-poor common people; he rose to the heights of power, which he used for good, never for personal aggrandizement or pleasure; he worked tirelessly for the freedom of others, and he succeeded, only to be killed at the moment of his greatest triumph. He lived a life of unutterable sadness, alone even when surrounded by friends and colleagues. His face in repose, as it always is in the photography of the day, is unusually expressive – sorrow, determination, affection, wisdom. He has no sex appeal, which makes him unthreatening as a competitor to men or a predator to women. He was an extraordinary leader, capable of moving vast numbers of people by the power of his words, and yet his writing is deeply mysterious, powerful while being almost past understanding. The second inaugural, in particular, is bewildering — deeply tragic and entirely optimistic in the same breath. No figure in history combined the practical ability to move people to action with the profundity of thought that is present in Lincoln.
If you sat down and said, let me imagine a secular figure with the most compelling aspects of the lives of Jesus and Moses, you would not be able to write anything closer than the life of Lincoln. Jesus, for all his empathy, was a failure in this world. Moses, for all his practical success, was a hard man. Lincoln is a more moving figure than either of them, because like Jesus, he inspires people to allow themselves to feel love, and like Moses, he brought freedom to multitudes. Lincoln makes people feel that it is possible to have both goodness and power in one leader.
One last thought – the most thoughtful appraisal of Lincoln that I know comes from Frederick Douglass. It repays reading many times:
http://www.ashbrook.org/library/19/douglass/lincolnoration.html
March 2, 2009 at 5:51 pm
kid bitzer
many, many thanks for that essay, bloix. first rate.
thanks also for the link to the douglass oration, which contains some gems. (as well as at least four quotations from shakespeare; probably more to those who know the plays better).
this from douglass:
“Any man can say things that are true of Abraham Lincoln, but no man can say anything that is new of Abraham Lincoln.”
is part of why i was so moved by kalman. in her own weird, quirky way, she kinda said something new about lincoln. which is kind of an achievement.
March 2, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Buster
Don’t get knickers all unduly twisted, Bloix.
I tried to be clear that I wasn’t mocking or sneering. Rather, I mentioned the tidbit about middle-aged white men as an indication that I thought that there might be some cultural explanation for some folks’ deep feelings for Lincoln. This blog being a place where reflective historians circulate, I thought it worth asking, since I honestly wanted to know more about this affective connection some feel with Lincoln. I did note, for the record, that the artist under consideration didn’t fit into the group of older white dudes.
Your comment, intentionally or not, actually helps me a great deal in understanding the attachment to Lincoln as an element of civil religion. I thank you for that. And for the bit of information about the passed-on handshakes; the ritual now seems less creepy and more like a goofy enactment of a scene from Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.