Culture as legacy and bond between generations in Aldous Huxley’s essay, ‘T. H. Huxley as a Literary Man’, is ideally linked back to the debate on humanistic and scientific cultures at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the following century, but with a different approach due also to the period in which it was written (the 1930s). In analysing T. H. Huxley’s style (a biologist and the author’s grandfather) the writer seems animated by the desire to reconcile art and science. The fields are different, but not opposed, and both help in human progress, although in different ways. He underlines the differences between literature and science: literary legacy is progressive and cumulative; scientific notions are perishable and ‘fugitive’, doomed to oblivion, ‘science is soon out of date, art is not’; also the methods diverge ‘science is investigation’, and ‘Literature is the art of making statements movingly’. Then the two tracks seem to intersect and Huxley shows how science can be written in a ‘literary style’ and how art is a gift which can also be possessed by scientists and unprofessional writers.
‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’: Notes on ‘T. H. Huxley as a Literary Man’
Elisa Fortunato
2020-01-01
Abstract
Culture as legacy and bond between generations in Aldous Huxley’s essay, ‘T. H. Huxley as a Literary Man’, is ideally linked back to the debate on humanistic and scientific cultures at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the following century, but with a different approach due also to the period in which it was written (the 1930s). In analysing T. H. Huxley’s style (a biologist and the author’s grandfather) the writer seems animated by the desire to reconcile art and science. The fields are different, but not opposed, and both help in human progress, although in different ways. He underlines the differences between literature and science: literary legacy is progressive and cumulative; scientific notions are perishable and ‘fugitive’, doomed to oblivion, ‘science is soon out of date, art is not’; also the methods diverge ‘science is investigation’, and ‘Literature is the art of making statements movingly’. Then the two tracks seem to intersect and Huxley shows how science can be written in a ‘literary style’ and how art is a gift which can also be possessed by scientists and unprofessional writers.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
