Speaking of polyhistors, here is a very unusual polyhistor
and a truly extraordinary man.
Eddie Lovett, a black sharecropper’s son from rural Arkansas
who only got as far as eighth grade, may not have been a polymath as I have
defined it, but he was a self-taught man who signed his name, “Eddie Lovett,
Polyhistor,” and he is an inspiration to us all.
He may only have gone to
school through the eighth grade, but he more than made up for it as an adult. In the Army, he
read voraciously and attended history classes offered by the Army. He bought
books wherever he was stationed, sometimes lugging around fifty books in his
bags. He took advantage of being stationed in Europe to visit the great
European libraries, including the Vatican Library.
At home, he was a farmer and a carpenter. Financially, he
was a poor man, but his home intellectual life was as rich as could be.
He built a library on his property, which he called the
Hippocrene Library. The name comes from the Hippocrene fountain in Greece, which
was formed by the divine horse Pegasus, and which was the source of poetic
inspiration. He had well over two thousand books, including Shakespeare’s complete
works (forty volumes), Will and Ariel Durant’s eleven volume Story of Civilization, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
and works by Thomas Jefferson, Voltaire, Rousseau, and countless others. A sign
over the library door read, “Hic Habitat Felicitas”
(Here Lives Happiness).
Unfortunately, disaster struck in 1975; his library caught
fire and burned to the ground. But the story caught the ear of America, and
people flocked to the rescue. People sent books by the case, and Lovett ended
up with more books than he knew what to do with, at least 40,000. He had to beg
people to stop sending books. He rebuilt his library, which he called the
Phoenix, and settled down to read. Lovett figured that he spent about twelve
hours a day reading and writing and estimated that he had read about 10,000
books in his life.
Why did Eddie Lovett read? He said, "I conceded my
ignorance a long time ago, and have tried to overcome it. And you know
something? Reading a book is still the only way to do that.” He also believed,
“The more I learn, the more I learn that I need to learn, and the more I learn
that I don't know. And I aspires [sic] to drink very deep from the fountain of
knowledge.”
Eddie Lovett is in this pantheon of polymathy because his
message is a critical message – reading a book is the way to overcome one’s
ignorance.
A good article about him from the Los Angeles Times can be found here and a good book chapter about him is here.
