Lifelong Learning: Between Modern Strategies and Romantic Ideals. Our Post-Moral Society and Its Cultural Models

Abstract

Teaching literature has been for me one of the highest spiritual missions. American literature has offered me the best examples of non-conformist literary texts, which can only convey between the lines the ultimate truth about human existence and its meaning. My essay consists of three parts, devoted to three of the most outstanding and best representative American writers, despite their professional and personal destinies, that were by no means “exemplary:” R. W. Emerson, Wallace Stevens, William Faulkner. What their epigons have always failed to capture is their paradoxical insight into the tremendous power of (self)teaching over the vitality of the creative mind. Although voiced in three different stylistic tones, each one of which sounds unmistakably unique, it is this one ineffable vision that sends us readers the same message: the secret of a longer (and better) life is learning. At all ages…