Dear Mr Thoreau,
The Mass of
men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is
confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the
desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of
minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is
concealed even under what are called games and amusements of mankind.
There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a
characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.
If
all I read of your work was this phrase in chapter one, I would think
you to be the dark narrator of an industrial dystopian tale. Yet,
this shadow between the pages of your book is only a momentary
obfuscation of the glowing light of your soul. So much of your book
reads like love poetry, and though you are criticised these days as a
bit of a weekend warrior, a hobby farmer with money at home, lauding
the virtues of poverty while you live a seasonal fantasy life as a
rural pioneer, I find that your love of nature is both authentic, and
praiseworthy.
Your
writing is beautiful You saw things that were so magnificent they
had to be written about. You experienced things in those woods that
bear the weight of any of criticism, and for me still stand tall,
monuments of poetry and of a rich and glorious delight in the English
language.
It is a vulgar
error to suppose that you have tasted Huckleberries who never plucked
them.
There
is a truth beyond the beauty of poetry, and though you point to it,
we cannot know it until we have tasted the wild fruit, plucked it
with our hands, and felt the rain and sun on our faces. Until we
have shivered in the cold and sweated in the hearth, worn ourselves
weary with the day and rested our souls with the rejuvenating magic
of a hearth-lit fire, we cannot claim to really understand the true
flavour of life, of being alive.
I
will quote back to you a few of my favourite passages...
This was an
airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and
where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed
over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains,
bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial
music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is
uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the
outside of the earth everywhere.
I was as much
affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and
unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was
sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that
ever sang of fame.
Let us settle
ourselves , and work and wedge our prejudice, and tradition, and
delusion and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe,
through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord,
through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy, till we come
to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality,
and say This is and no mistake; and then begin, having a point
d'appui, below freshet and
frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or
set a lamp post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a
Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams
and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right
fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on
both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge
dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily
conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only
reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our
throats and feel cold in the extremities if we are alive, let us go
about our business.
How
ordinarily tragic it is that you died of Tuberculosis, death rattling
in your throat and uttering your strange, absurd and prophetic last
words; Moose, Indian.
Henry, you have done so much more than inspire
a century of readers to find beauty in nature, and to revel in the
wonderful poetry of your experiences. You have inspired a century of
writers to seek out that wildness you described, and to find it anew
in themselves, in ourselves. I would like to share with you
something of Mary Oliver's poetry. A friend and I made the music in
this little video, and the poem belongs to Mary.
Working on a farm, I have many opportunities
each day to see the magnificence of creation played out in the
ordinary scenes of nature. It is easy for me to take it for granted
and to spend a day failing to notice the brilliant yellow lichen
growing on the trees, or to hear the hunting cry of the kite who
follows my shadow. But you, Mr Thoreau, remind me that no matter the
ills that beset me in life, no matter the grave thoughts that anchor
my mind, the beauty and peacefulness that surrounds me must be
attended to, lest I should fall forever from the grace and wonderment
that is to be found every day, in nature. Lest I should fall into a life of quiet desperation...
I want to conclude my letter with is this quote
from you:
Thank
God, they cannot cut down the clouds.
Thank
God indeed, and thank you Henry. Time has not yet cut down the
forest hidden between the leaves of your book.
With
gratitude and respect,
Morgan.
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