788 John Ruskin (with Bob Blaisdell) | My Last Book with Francesca Wade

Summary

The History of Literature – Episode 788

John Ruskin (with Bob Blaisdell) | My Last Book with Francesca Wade
Aired March 30, 2026
Host: Jacke Wilson
Guests: Bob Blaisdell (editor, “Ruskin on Art and Artists” and “Ruskin on Genius”), Francesca Wade (author of “Gertrude: An Afterlife”)

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Episode Overview

This episode of The History of Literature is a deep dive into the life, work, and far-reaching influence of John Ruskin—19th-century art critic, social commentator, and visionary thinker. Host Jacke Wilson, joined by Ruskin anthologist Bob Blaisdell, explores Ruskin’s theories about art, genius, and perception, and how his ideas left a mark on figures as distinct as J.M.W. Turner, the Pre-Raphaelites, Marcel Proust, and D.H. Lawrence.
The episode concludes with literary biographer Francesca Wade sharing the book she would choose as her “last book,” focusing on Gertrude Stein's boundary-pushing prose.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Was John Ruskin?

• Born in 1819, son of a wine merchant and a deeply religious mother.
• Ruskin was a solitary, precocious child, emotionally self-sufficient, with parents who doted on him.

  “He was an alone child … His parents doted on him and he took their love and attention for granted.” – Bob Blaisdell (06:47)

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2. Ruskin’s Revelation in Art: Seeing vs. Knowing

• At age 12, Ruskin experienced a pivotal change: learning to draw what he actually saw, not what he knew was there.

• Encouraged “innocent vision”—observing reality without preconceptions.

  "[He had to] stop drawing what he thought or knew was there and start drawing what he saw." – Bob Blaisdell (08:31)

• Ruskin extended this principle to critique artists who neglected genuine observation, favoring imagination over honest seeing.

  "To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one." – John Ruskin, quoted by Blaisdell (13:36)

• He valued “talkative facts”—features of objects that revealed their history and vitality, not just their surface details.

  “In a tree… it is more important to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs … Talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than silent ones.” – John Ruskin via Bob Blaisdell (26:11–27:45)

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3. The Artist's Duty and the Value of Clear Vision

• Ruskin prized the skill of seeing over the skill of drawing.
• He advocated teaching drawing, not to create more artists, but to cultivate appreciation for nature and art.

  "I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing. And I would rather teach drawing, that my pupils may learn to love nature than teach the looking at nature, that they may learn to draw." – John Ruskin via Bob Blaisdell (30:53–32:13)

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4. Application Beyond the Visual Arts: Architecture, Literature, and Society

• Ruskin’s “seeing clearly” was also applied to architecture and poetry.

• Loved Gothic architecture for the unique, human touches of individual craftsmen.

  “He would climb up and he would see some little gargoyle that some unknown workman had done and he’d appreciate it ... he then would rue the manufacturer of design that didn’t have a human touch.” – Bob Blaisdell (16:12)

• Though less interested personally in Ruskin’s social criticism, Blaisdell acknowledged its importance and influence on figures like Tolstoy (17:01).

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5. Ruskin’s Writing Style and Influence

• Eclectic, digressive style—followed connections as they arose, much to the delight of readers like Proust.

  "As soon as a thought came into Ruskin's head as he was writing… even though he was heading north, if a thought about west came to him, and he went west and went south and then sometimes he didn't get back north." – Bob Blaisdell (18:38)

• Systematically referenced his own work, almost biblically, for readers to cross-check his ideas (19:39–20:40).

• Influenced: Pre-Raphaelite artists, Marcel Proust (who translated Ruskin), and—by style, if not direct citation—D.H. Lawrence.

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6. Ruskin’s Complex Personality

• “Dynamic man with disturbing and dramatic imbalances.”
  • Social awkwardness, strained relationships (including his infamous non-consummated marriage).
  • Deeply passionate about art, often more so than about people.
  • Obsessed with teaching, especially to young women (without “doing anything,” by Blaisdell’s wording), and suffered personal breakdowns (32:20–36:26).

  “He was more connected to the art that he saw than to people.” – Bob Blaisdell (30:45)

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7. Ruskin’s Lasting Legacy

• Direct literary influence most evident in Proust (who credited Ruskin with transforming his own creative vision).
• Bob Blaisdell suggests parallels to Lawrence’s drive to record psychological and social reality, “to see things as they are” (38:23–39:40).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Fine art, said John Ruskin, is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man go together.” – Jacke Wilson (00:40)
• “‘A book is essentially not a talking thing, but a written thing…’” – Ruskin via Jacke Wilson (02:48)
• “To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.” – John Ruskin via Bob Blaisdell (13:36)
• "As soon as a thought came into Ruskin's head as he was writing… even though he was heading north, if a thought about west came to him, and he went west and went south and then sometimes he didn't get back north." – Bob Blaisdell (18:38)
• "He was more connected to the art that he saw than to people." – Bob Blaisdell (30:45)

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |:----------:|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:40 | Quoting and introducing Ruskin’s philosophy | | 04:09 | Bob Blaisdell joins—background and structure of Ruskin anthology books | | 06:07 | Ruskin’s childhood and formative influences | | 08:31 | Ruskin’s epiphany: Drawing what he sees, not what he knows | | 13:36 | “To see clearly…” quote and discussion on the spiritual aspect of perception | | 16:12 | Ruskin’s appreciation of architecture’s human touch | | 17:01 | His social commentary and impact on other thinkers (e.g., Tolstoy) | | 18:38 | Ruskin’s writing style and its influence on literary figures | | 26:11 | Blaisdell reads from Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” | | 30:53 | “The sight is a more important thing than the drawing.” (from “The Elements of Drawing”) | | 32:20 | Ruskin’s psychological complexity and private life | | 36:26 | Ruskin’s influence on literature and direct connections to Proust and Lawrence | | 45:41 | Francesca Wade segment: “My Last Book” question | | 47:43 | Wade’s choice: Gertrude Stein’s “Stanzas in Meditation” |

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“My Last Book” Segment: Francesca Wade

Guest: Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude: An Afterlife

• Asked what her “last book” would be, Wade chooses Gertrude Stein’s Stanzas in Meditation:

  “One of her most sort of … difficult, abstract experiments in language … you could, in a way, sort of pass out of the world on this kind of cloud of language.” – Francesca Wade (47:57)

• Discusses Stein’s effect on consciousness and language as a kind of preparation for a new type of experience:

  “Ending life with a bit of kind of mental gymnastics and some kind of beautiful images and sort of profundity.” – Francesca Wade (48:51)

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Conclusion

This episode offers an absorbing journey through John Ruskin’s thought, centering on his insistence on the primacy of perception, his breadth of influence, and the quirks of his lifelong project to describe and defend honest seeing. Bob Blaisdell’s expert commentary sheds light on why Ruskin mattered to artists and writers alike, and how his digressive, passionate style inspired the likes of Proust and—possibly—D.H. Lawrence.
The episode’s coda, with Francesca Wade’s reflection on departing this world with Stein’s experimental prose, forms an elegant thematic echo about consciousness, perception, and art’s power to remake our ways of seeing.

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Recommended Reading

• Ruskin on Art and Artists (Dover Thrift Editions, edited by Bob Blaisdell)
• Ruskin on Genius (Hesperus Press, edited by Bob Blaisdell)
• Stanzas in Meditation by Gertrude Stein

For More Episodes:
historyofliterature.com | facebook.com/historyofliterature

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Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

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[Jack Wilson]

Hello Fine art, said John Ruskin, is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man go together. End Quote Ruskin was one of the outstanding men of 19th century European art critic, a visionary thinker and an influential social commentator who transformed the way human beings saw art and related it to their own lives. His influence continued well into the 20th century, with figures like Proust saying that even a dead Ruskin could continue to reach us like the light from stars that have died long ago. Proust wrote a novel, gave it up as a failure, and then read Ruskin. He translated Ruskin. I do not claim to know English, he once said. I know Ruskin. And then with Ruskin as a major influence to Proust's thinking, he wrote what is probably the landmark achievement in 20th century literature, the majestic remembrance of things past. Or, if you will, in search of lost time. But who was Ruskin? How did he himself arrive at his views? And what in his readings made him so popular with those who loved and appreciated the arts? We'll talk to Bob Blaisdell about John Ruskin's thought and influence today on the history of literature.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Okay, here we go.

[Jack Wilson]

Welcome to the podcast. One more quote from Ruskin to set the stage and then we'll hear from Bob Blaisdell. And we're going to have a My last book today.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

How?

[Jack Wilson]

Well, it would be a little on the nose to choose someone who chose Proust, wouldn't it? Although we have plenty of those to pick from. So let's things mix. Let's things mix up a bit and mix things up a bit. And we'll take Francesca Wade, our Gertrude Stein expert. She's Stein is kind of Proust adjacent, but spoiler alert. Francesca Wade does not choose Marcel Proust. We'll see who who she chooses. Will it be Stein? We will find out. But first our Ruskin quote and then our Ruskin expert. Here's Ruskin. A book is essentially not a talking thing, but a written thing. And written not with A view of mere communication, but of permanence. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful or helpfully beautiful. This the piece of true knowledge or sight which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever, engrave it on rock if he could, saying, this is the best of me. For the rest I ate and drank and slept and loved and hated like another. My life was as the vapor and is not. But this I saw and knew. This, if anything, of mine is worth your memory. End quote. Hmm. Just gave me a little chill. Bob Blaisdell is next.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Okay.

[Jack Wilson]

Joining me once again is Bob Blaisdell,

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

who's been with us for discussions of

[Jack Wilson]

Karl, Ove Knausgard, Peter the magical two

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

year period when Chekhov became Chekhov, and a look at Chekhov's statements on writing. He's here today to discuss a pair of books he helped bring to life.

[Jack Wilson]

Ruskin on Art and Artists, published by

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Dover Thrift Editions, and John Ruskin on

[Jack Wilson]

Genius, published by Hesperus. Bob Blaisdell, welcome back to the history of literature.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Thank you. It's nice to talk to you again.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

So these books are my favorite kind of books. They're a great size. They fit into my jacket pocket, and they're just filled with little treasures. You can read them almost like poetry. There's a brief section that makes you nod with appreciation or inspires you or makes you think about something in a new or unusual way. Were they fun to work on?

[Bob Blaisdell]

They were great fun to work on. And I like the format too, though it goes against a tendency of mine of. Of putting too much into books. Yeah. And I was. It was helpful to have page limits and having to carve it down to size. It's better. It's better. Shorter. I like it. I. I reread them and I'm glad they're compact.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Well. And unlike someone like Chekhov, where you can kind of find your way into Chekhov in small doses with his. I mean, he's a master of the short story. With Ruskin, I feel like it's kind of nice to have this little gateway because for a lot of us, he's maybe not someone we would know where to turn. And these give us a really good sense of who he was and what he was writing about. But let's start with his background and his childhood. He was born in 1819. How did he grow up? What kind of childhood did he have?

[Bob Blaisdell]

He was an alone child. His mother was very religious. His father was A wine merchant. Also religious, but not. Not as religious as his mother. His parents were first cousins and they married on the late side. They did everything together. He was incredibly precocious. Yeah. And in his autobiography that he wrote at the end of his life, he reproduces a little book that he put together when he was about 7 years old. And it's. He's an odd kid. He know. He knew. He was an odd kid.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He was not around other children very much, around some cousins occasionally. And his parents doted on him and he took their love and attention for granted. And as he said, he never really needed anybody else's attention ever. He thought he didn't need their attention after.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

By adolescence now, he had some Scottish in his background, but he grew up in London. Did he consider himself to be Scottish or English? Did that matter at all to him?

[Bob Blaisdell]

I don't think it mattered to him. That's a good question, though. And the Scotch background was certainly there in the Calvinist religion. From his mother and with his mother. His mother from the time he was very small. I came across this, or was reminded of this the other day when he was a kid and she was trying to teach him to learn to read. She tried to teach him by syllables and he refused. And she thought maybe he was slow, but he decided he was going to learn the whole word. And so suddenly one day he was reading whole passages. He had his own reading system.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He was very confident in all the systems that he. He came up with for himself.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah. And then when he was around 12, he had what seems like a very momentous, for him, revelation regarding art. So what exactly was that?

[Bob Blaisdell]

So he'd had an art teacher and he had a tutor that. Who was also tutoring a cousin. And Ruskin had competed with her because she was a little older and she was very good at it. And the. The art master got him to see things all at once and was able to learn how to abstract pictures that he saw. And I don't know quite how this happened, but it came to him that he had to stop drawing what he thought or knew was there and start drawing what he saw. And he stuck with this idea for the rest of his life.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

That the artist in some way has to trust his innocent vision and not fill in what's what he doesn't actually see. And if he was true to what he saw, he could be Turner. And he, through training, he thought he had lost something of the spontaneity that he recognized in the artists that he most admired. He drew all the time. And he was very expert, and he illustrated his own books. If he couldn't get reproductions of the books, because reproductions were very expensive, especially when he started publishing in the 1850s. As soon as he was able to get reproductions, he used them, but when he couldn't get them, he drew the illustrations himself.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

So what is the difference? I mean, I'm not someone who can draw at all. And maybe I'm not even the right person to explore this question, but maybe that does make me the right person to explore this question. What's the difference between what you think you see and what you actually see? Did he explain this any further?

[Bob Blaisdell]

He did explain it all the time, partly through his writing about particular artists and works of art. He would scold, he would exclaim when it was clear to him that a painter hadn't actually looked at that tree, that the artist had painted what a tree might be.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah, because we all know a tree has a trunk and leaves. And instead of looking exactly at the tree that's right in front of you, you maybe are just thinking, oh, and here's the place on the canvas where I'll paint the tree. And you draw from sort of memory or your knowledge, rather than how the actual tree is standing there in the sunlight or the wind or. Or the shape of it or. Or whatever that might be part of the real landscape. Your mind is filling it in with what you know a tree should be.

[Bob Blaisdell]

That's right. And he was. He was adamant, even down to stones. He said, if you draw a stone, you're. Any stone is no stone at all, so there's a stone there. He really loved geology. He could have been a geologist. He writes a lot about ge. He loved that with rocks, they had a history, and if you drew the rock correctly, you could tell how and when that rock came to be, that it had a past, that it's made up of these components and with trees, very much so. That if you drew a tree or you painted a tree and you weren't showing it its future as well as its past, that is, its limbs are striving for the sun, that the leaves are turning for the sun, that there's a thrust upward, downward, V thought you were faking it.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah. That's so interesting.

[Jack Wilson]

Did he?

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

I mean, when he criticized other artists for not getting this right, for not drawing what they actually saw, was he saying, I've been to this landscape and I've. I've seen this mountain myself and it doesn't look quite like that? Or was he able to do that even if he wasn't comparing it with the reality. To say, I can tell that this is an instance where the artist was not looking at, you know, was not making that connection with the actual.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yes. His confidence was not arrogance. It was because he knew. And it can't look like that. And the revelations that artists gave him, that Turner gave him.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah. And it almost seems like from something you said earlier, that it wasn't just that he was devoted to accuracy for its own sake, but that he seemed to think that there was almost a spiritual aspect or something to getting it correctly. When you say that he could tell that an object had a past and a future. And it was that almost like art would take on a special quality if one was drawing reality instead of what was just coming out of their imagination.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Mostly he's not somebody delivering one liners, but here's one. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Just to see clearly.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And he said it was more important to see clearly than to do art.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

That it was better to see a thing than to learn how to paint it. And he spent so much time teaching working class people how to draw and paint.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He thought it was better that they learn to just appreciate the masters. And also just to look at the tree, you see the treat.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah. It's almost like something I had always hoped for when I would haul my. My kids off to piano lessons that I thought, well, at a minimum, it's going to help them appreciate music. That doing this will unlock something in them. They'll know more about music or they'll feel it differently, or they'll just understand it in a way that might not be available to someone like me who didn't have those kind of lessons. Yeah. So I'm also interested. You know, he had such a wide range of interests and this moment and this revelation was so important to him. Did it affect how he viewed other

[Jack Wilson]

realms of art like architecture or poetry?

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Was he seeing there that there was something about this quality of learning how to see what you actually see and not what you think you see, that it could be applied to other. Other aspects beyond the visual arts.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He read very widely. He liked to quote poetry. He quoted Wordsworth a lot. He quoted the Bible. He knew it backwards and forwards. Though he'd given up his belief in it. He did write about literature. He did dabble in a kind of children's fiction. He loved architecture. He wrote about it all the time. But he would remind us that he's not an architect. But he could write what he saw and why he liked it and what was won and lost. And he's very good also about admitting his prejudices and then the revelation that he had about Gothic, how he came to love Gothic architecture. He loved seeing a workman's touch on buildings and little designs that no one else had seen. He would sometimes climb up churches. He would get access.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He would pay off the right person and he would climb up and he would see some little gargoyle that some unknown workman had done and he'd appreciate it. And he then would rue the manufacturer of design that didn't have a, a human touch. So he's very good about that, about showing his turns of thought, his. How he got to like what he liked.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right. He had such a wide ranging curiosity and his thinking was so eclectic. What were some of his other interests? We've talked a little bit about the visual arts and architecture, but what else caught his attention? How about society and how human institutions were set up?

[Bob Blaisdell]

The least interesting part of his. Of his life for me, but. And yet very important to other people, including to Tolstoy. I was very impressed by Ruskin's work on, on social issues.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Well.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

And when you mentioned Venice, I was thinking of Proust. And I mean, it's, it's unbelievable what kind of influence that he had on writers and literary figures. Even though, as you say, he himself was, was not exactly a poet or, or a writer, but the, the creativity, the inspiration that these creative writers of the 19th and early 20th century. It seems like Ruskin was as influential on them as just about anyone else.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He's such a wonderful writer and he gets so enthusiastic. He works himself up.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And, and one reason, one reason why the books are enormous. And you're like, how do I get through all these books? And one thing he did as a writer and that he trusted and I think is a great model and I think Proust, Proust loved this was as soon as a thought came into Ruskin's head as he was writing, even though he was heading north, if a thought about west came to him and he went west and went south and then sometimes he didn't get back north.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

But he followed, he followed the thoughts as they came to him because they, they were bubbling up and he thought he better go in that direction while it was there. He thinks that's one of the excitements of reading him is he's thinking aloud on the page.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And he gets caught up, excited himself by what he's saying and it seems

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

as though, I mean, some of his best writing on literature might come in a book about painting or, or vice versa.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Some of his best writing about, anyway, sculpture and as in Modern Painters and the Stones of Venice. He writes a lot about the painters. He does. He didn't bind himself by like a systematic.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Here's going to be like, I'll have to develop a scheme and then stick to it and leave everything else out. He had sort of a digressive style.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He. He did, but he also. This is an odd one is he also, after he got into like second editions and third editions of his works, he labeled every section by number and section number. So he could refer. He could refer to particular. You can see this in Modern Painters, Volume 3, Section 21, Paragraph 22. Yeah. So he had his own system. Like he knew.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

He knew what he had said on those pages. And he will sometimes refer the reader back to those pages. And that's the only 19th century example of that that I know. I mean, maybe his model was the Bible where you cite chapter and verse and he could cite himself chapter and verse for his own reference. He knew he repeated things. He knew he had already covered this

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

in more detail in such and such passage.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yes. And he will even disagree with what he said in that, which is also impressive.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah, right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

It's also unusual for any writer.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right. So did the nature of his writing with that digressive style? Was that present challenges for you in finding these descriptions that you were pulling on for. On art and artists or on genius or, or did that make things. How did you go about putting together the excerpts for these books?

[Bob Blaisdell]

I got an assignment From Dover about 25 years ago for an anthology of Ruskin. And I hadn't read Ruskin. I, I knew of him because I knew Victorian literature very well. He was just a name to me and he was dealing with art and social issues and whatever references that I read had not made me curious about him. But as soon as I started opening up volumes, and there were so many volumes, there was dozens and dozens of his collected works. I would be reading and I would be fascinated. And then things would get very, very dull or distracted. And I realized, oh, this is how it works. Because I. In volume after volume, there's long, great stretches. I think he had a great influence on D.H. lawrence. I haven't seen anybody who said that. But Lawrence worked himself up, you know, into this kind of pitch where he get these heights and Ruskin seemed to be. To do that also. Lawrence, more than anybody else had that kind of expressive confidence. Yeah, what he was saying. And so I read thousands and thousands of pages and I also, I must have skipped half of those pages, which I don't recommend about any kind of reading. But with Ruskin, I sometimes skipped and skipped and then in the midst of a, of a desert, there would be this brilliant flower.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right. Well, let's take a quick break and then when we come back we'll hear some of those flowers. Oh good.

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[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Okay, we're back. So, Bob Ruskin, we talked about his. How he worked himself up into these. These heights of. Of passion and energy. And he's certainly known for his enthusiasm being infectious. And I was wondering if there's a passage or two that you could read for us to help us hear what his style is like.

[Bob Blaisdell]

This one is from Modern Painters, Volume 1, which he wrote when he was about 22 or 23 years old. I have little headings to help the reader focus and to help organize these quotes. I'll read the heading. Talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than silent ones. Now it ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that those are always most valuable, which are most historical, that is, which tell us most about the past and future states of the object to which they belong. In a tree, for instance, it is more important to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs, which is indicative of growth and life, than any particular character of leaf or texture of bow. It is more important that we should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and higher into the sky and be impressed with the current of life and motion which is animating every fiber, than that we should know the exact pitch of relief with which those fibers are thrown out against the sky. For the first truths tell us tales about the tree, about what it has been and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only in its present state and are in no way talkative about themselves. Talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than silent ones.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

This makes me think I was kind of misunderstanding a little bit when we were talking about the difference between drawing what you see and what you think you see. I was kind of imagining that it was someone was drawing. And when they were drawing a tree, they were maybe saying, well, I know a tree has green leaves. And so they'd fill it in with the color green. And then Ruskin would say, look at that. If you look, they're actually browning on the edges there, or they're not quite green. You thought they would be, but actually in the sunlight there, they're actually white or something like that. This makes it seem like what he's saying is, you know, even setting aside kind of the photoreality of it, you're missing something about the energy of the object, or you're missing something about something that's visible, something that's there about, you know, the way that the tree is reaching toward the sunlight or is Aspiring to be something else. I'm wondering, do you think that was actually there, or is that just Ruskin, who's seeing, like a kind of. I don't know what I'd call it, a vibration or an energy or something that he's investing these objects with? Something that maybe aren't necessarily just a physical reality, but something that it may be there, but it's not necessarily purely visual.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Let me see if I can sort through that. I'll start by saying he's very convincing to me. His energy is so directed towards the. The painting, towards the artwork, that as he would also say, well, you're not a genius and I'm a genius, and you're getting the advantage of my genius looking at this thing. And I usually agree with him. Yeah, it's wonderful to be in his presence and in. In his excitement. And while he's describing it, I think I see it too. Ruskin brings out wonderful things for me, and. And when I. I'm able to check the evidence, go see a. A Titian or a Tintoretto, I'm like, damn it. He is. He is right. What he has seen has helped me almost get there. Not with the thrill that he has, but a lighter version of it. I think just of my own capacity, that he had a wonderful capacity for the pleasure of what he saw. He knew that also took away from his. His connection to living people, to his own parents, to his relatives, to his friends. He was more connected to the art that he saw than to people.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah. Okay. How about another passage? Do you have one for us? Sure.

[Bob Blaisdell]

We'll stick with the vision. The heading for this. The sight is a more important thing than the drawing, something that I referred to earlier. I am nearly convinced that when once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty in drawing what we see. But even supposing that this difficulty be still great. I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing. And I would rather teach drawing, that my pupils may learn to love nature than teach the looking at nature, that they may learn to draw. It is surely also a more important thing for young people and unprofessional students to know how to appreciate the art of others than to gain much power in art themselves. And that's from his book the Elements of Drawing, which even if it doesn't help you learn to draw, it's a wonderful book about teaching. It's very exacting, and you get a sense of him, what he would be like in the classroom. And he wrote it up because people would ask him, how can I do this? And he would write letters back to them. It's hard to write an entertaining book about doing a creative act, but he did.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Okay, so there are. We haven't talked a whole lot about him as a person. You write Ruskin was a dynamic man with disturbing and dramatic imbalances in his character. So what are some examples of his dynamism? Unless we've already covered that? And what are the disturbing and dramatic imbalances?

[Bob Blaisdell]

He didn't have the usual connections to other human beings. One thing I do admire about him is he's the one who usually points it out. He knows he is not like other people. He had problems personally sometimes with Turner, whom he really, he thought of as one of the greatest painters ever and was, was motivated to write about Turner so much because he wasn't appreciated enough by his own country. But his relations with Turner, he didn't like that Turner was, you know, he drank and he fooled around and he, he liked to do new drawings and the life of artists. He could get very moral about. Most people know that he. He married a woman, a very attractive young woman who he could not sleep with.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

And in kind of an abrupt way. I know there's been a lot of

[Jack Wilson]

speculation, we've talked about it on the

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

podcast before too, that something about her kind of shocked him and he kind of didn't really recover from it. There's been speculation.

[Jack Wilson]

I don't know if we have to

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

go into what the different things have been considered, but it seems like he had a kind of idealist side to him or a, A search for an idyllic form and human beings maybe couldn't

[Jack Wilson]

quite live up to that.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah, well, and just there's a kind of Victorian squeamishness. I mean, he'd seen a lot of pictures. He appreciated the Italian artist. There's. There's so many nudes, of course, and. But in a real person. And his wife, he, he could not go there. He was also aware that he just wanted to work and he, he didn't understand that she, his wife, wanted attention. When they got to Italy on their honeymoon, she was like, this is fantastic. And there was finally a social life. And he was, yeah, I'll. I'll see you later. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go look at the museums and, or that not even the museums, just wherever he could go and see the art. So the, the marriage end was annulled because of non consummation, and she married one of the painters, one of the Pre Raphaelite painters that he admired and had encouraged. And she lived a happy life and had lots of kids, and her husband illustrated. Illustrated novels for Trollope, for instance, and had a normal, good life. And she didn't like talking about Ruskin after the annulment. He liked teaching girls, and he fell in love with very young women. He didn't do anything, but he was certainly obsessed with some of the girls that he had taught and he was teaching and with a. A young woman who died, and she became a kind of saint to him and a visitor in his various madnesses. He would work himself to exhaustion just to get himself to stop, but he couldn't stop himself from driving himself. And that went on until about 11 years before he died, when he finally had a breakdown that he. He did not recover from and did not speak again, I think, for the last 11 years of his life.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Wow. So let's talk about his influence a bit, especially on the literary world. I mean, what were they taking from him? Was it this thing about the visual? Were they saying, he's helped me to see the world and help me to write about it, or were they just inspired by other aspects of his work? Or what did they attribute him not just to helping them think and to being kind of someone who helped open doors to them in terms of seeing paintings and so on, but did they attribute to him something that they could use in their writing of novels?

[Bob Blaisdell]

The only one I would say that I know it's true, is of Proust. He wrote about him. He translated Ruskin into French. And I don't know that. That Lawrence ever acknowledged Ruskin. I. I was very deep into Lawrence as a young man and almost into middle age, and he was the first reference I thought of when I started reading Ruskin.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

First style.

[Bob Blaisdell]

The voice.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah, right.

[Bob Blaisdell]

The distinctiveness of the voice and the power and the. The wandering to kind of build up and. And find what he had to say. So. And as for Charlotte Bronte, I don't know what he gave her besides what she said, this appreciation of what she was seeing. He did have an influence on, not directly. He promoted the Pre Raphaelites, and they were grateful, but some of them didn't think that he. He fully got them or. And he thought that maybe they didn't understand what they were doing as well as he understood they were doing.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

The example that you gave, which is the one that you weren't able to connect but is sticking in my mind is Lawrence, because I was trying to get from you an answer to a question of whether Ruskin applied this idea of seeing things as they actually are instead of seeing things that you think you see. And whether he applied that to other realms beyond the visual arts. And it strikes me that Lawrence, you could say that about that that's what

[Jack Wilson]

he did, that that was his great

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

project, was to say the psychology of relationships or the way we think about ourselves, the way we interact with each other, or the way we feel about sex, or the way we are, you know, our motivations and all of that. It seems like he's saying everybody thinks it's X, but I see that it's Y. Or, you know, I like, let's clear away a lot of what we, what we assume to be the case and let's talk about what. What if we would only let ourselves see the truth, the way that we would talk about how people really are.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yeah, that's very good. You reconvinced me.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah, yeah,

[Bob Blaisdell]

that's a, that's a very good development of. And connection. And now probably tomorrow I'll look up, I'll look something up and ah, there'll be all sorts of obvious connections that I, I just didn't know.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

You'll be looking at it and saying, I went and checked because I thought I, I wanted to make sure I was right. And it turns out I was more right than I even thought the first time around.

[Bob Blaisdell]

No. Or there'll be lots of things that maybe Lawrence said that I just. My time with Lawrence really ended by the time I started on Ruskin. And I didn't ever do any research to see what Lawrence made of Ruskin.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Did you burn out of Lawrence? Was there something in Lawrence that made you decide to, to set him aside consciously? Or did you just feel like you got everything that you were going to get out of him? Or why did you, why did you depart from him?

[Bob Blaisdell]

I, I burned out the way maybe you do with a very close, intense friend. The Rainbow was the second most important book to me in, in my young life. And the, the last time I tried to read it, at the beginning of the pandemic, I, I was. Oh, okay. I kind of caught back the, the excitement. And then about halfway through, I said, I've had enough. Too much. You're too. I, I overdosed. I lost. I. I adored Lawrence so much. And now, I mean, there are things that I, I've read some essays that I really liked and I went back to the poems and I did an anthology of his poems and they were wonderful. But those novels, I can't read them anymore. I wish I could. Yeah. And I should say that again, that Tolstoy, I don't think he had. He didn't read the art criticism or wasn't interested in it. He was only interested in Ruskin's social

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

reforms and his projects and plans for changing institutions to help people.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Yes.

[Jack Wilson]

Right.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

So one last question. You mentioned that the Rainbow was the second most important book to you when you were young. What was the first?

[Bob Blaisdell]

Innocent Enough. Yep.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Can't knock the. Can't knock the queen off her throne.

[Bob Blaisdell]

I. It was. It was up there. They were. They were both. I. I read them both back and forth and. But the Rainbow. And there's parts of the Rainbow which are. Feel to me like part of my own life, and I adore. But again, I can't get back through that fiction.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Do you think when you read it now, you're thinking that it no longer measures up, or there's just nothing in there for you, or do you think you're kind of remembering who you were when you read it? And there's something about that period where you think, I can't get close to that person, who I was when I was so deeply interested in this.

[Bob Blaisdell]

There's a little bit of. Of that, but it's. It's mostly. And I recognize why and how I was excited, but it was only in. In certain passages. I think I could maybe read the first half again. The first half of the Rainbow. Tom Brangwen, how he gets married and helps raise his stepdaughter. I think I can go back to that because I. I would feel like going back to my own life.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Yeah.

[Bob Blaisdell]

And he's. He's as important as some important people in my life.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right. Well, I would love to. To keep asking you more about this because I'm. I'm trying to. I'm trying to see us as readers as we really are and not as I think we are. I'm following Ruskin down that path, but let's leave things there. The books are Ruskin on Genius, published by Hesperus, and Ruskin on Art and a Dover Thrift Edition. Bob Blaisdell, thank you so much for

[Jack Wilson]

joining me on the history of literature.

[Bob Blaisdell]

Thank you, Jack. That was very nice. Very nice.

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[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

So good, so good, so good.

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[Jack Wilson]

And finally today, Francesca Wade was here back in episode 766. Francesca has spent years in the archives of Gertrude Stein, making discoveries, and it was a pleasure to speak with her. Stein is a special writer, demanding at times, delivering great insight and power at others. She's always had passionate defenders as well as serious readers who nevertheless accuse her of being some kind of fraud. Here's a taste of Stein's particular style. There are no commas in this passage. It can be hard to read on the page, but if you read it aloud, the pauses are there, the fuzzy picture resolves into something with clarity. I think a novel is what you dream in your night's sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts, although it is written and thought with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night. And some dreams are like anything, and some dreams are like something. And some dreams change, and some dreams are quiet, and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what anyone would do, only a little different, always just a little different. And that is what a novel is. End quote. So after Francesca and I discussed Gertrude Stein, one of modernism's leading and most polarizing figures, I asked Francesca a special question.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Okay, I'm joined now by Francesca Waid,

[Jack Wilson]

author of Gertrude An Afterlife. Francesca, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

You can either choose one that exists

[Jack Wilson]

or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Francesca Wade]

I mean, such an impossible question. I don't know if it's a cop out. To return to Gertrude Stein, I was

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

wondering, that's kind of the big question. Did Stein write anything that would be the right book for you at that time?

[Francesca Wade]

I guess I was thinking something like her book Stanzas and Meditation, which is one of her most sort of, you know, kind of difficult sort of abstract experiments in language. And I think that would be rather a Wonderful last book because you could, in a way, sort of pass out of the world on this kind of cloud of language.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

Right, right. It's when we talked about Gertrude Stein in our main conversation, we talked about her as kind of rewiring the brain. And it's almost like, you know, now's the time to let go of. Of the way that we've understood consciousness to be and so on. And so you could kind of let Stein just kind of rearrange all of the language and it's almost like a way of, you know, getting ready for a whole new form of consciousness.

[Francesca Wade]

Exactly, exactly. Leaving behind earthly structures and. Yeah. Ending life with a bit of kind of mental gymnastics and some kind of beautiful images and sort of profundity.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

This is what I learned when I

[Jack Wilson]

tried to learn a language.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

And I think it's why little kids can learn second languages so easily is I find.

[Jack Wilson]

Found it so hard to forget English,

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

you know, and it's almost like my brain was. It was too baked in the English part of it. And so you could kind of. It would be a way of maybe passing from the rigidity of language. And then Stein kind of starts to unlace the shoes, so to speak. And then. And then you just get into a. Where you're maybe just feeling emotions or colors or or sounds or something, and you no longer have the tyranny of language kind of making you want things and think things and remember things and all the things that you can kind of slip out. Wow. What a good answer.

[Bob Blaisdell]

I know.

[Francesca Wade]

I'm convinced I might go and read it.

[Podcast Host (Jack Wilson)]

I know I might have to pick up a copy in case I get to the point where I've got to reach for the last book quickly. Okay. Francesca Wade, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Francesca Wade]

Thank you so much.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Francesca Wade for being here and to Bob Blaisdell for telling us all about John Ruskin. You can read more in the Dover Thrift edition, Ruskin on Art and Artists and the Hespera Press edition of John Ruskin on Genius, with a foreword by Melvin Bragg. Both of those books were edited by Bob. We've got some great episodes coming up for you this spring. I just talked to a famous historian about her origin story. That's a fun one. As well as to a man who talked to a dozen or more people around the world who are busy translating Shakespeare into their own language. What are they learning about the Bard and what can they teach the rest of us? I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.

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[Bob Blaisdell]

Time to party.

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[Bob Blaisdell]

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I thought you were a clone. Well, clones aren't real, dummy. And time machines are super grounded in reality.

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