Category Archives: Henry David Thoreau

Season of Sight Season of Heart

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Sandy Stott | 10 comments

For me November has always brought the advent of sight’s season, especially in the woods; often, what has been hidden by leaves – a burl, a nest, an old sign – comes clear. And the long-boned outlines of the land also appear. Then, there is the thin transparency of November’s light; on a cloudless day, it is the clearest glass. Yes, the span of daylight is short, but vision’s length and depth more than compensate for that.

The other day, I was poking around in Thoreau’s November Journal writings, figuring that he too might have found revelation in the month’s light, when I came upon this:

Day before yesterday to the Cliffs in the rain, misty rain. As I approached their edge, I saw the woods beneath, Fair Haven Pond, and the hills across the river, — which, owing to the mist, was as far as I could see, and seemed much further in consequence. I saw these between the converging boughs of two white pines a rod or two from me on the edge of the rock; and I thought that there was no frame to a landscape equal to this, — to see, between two near pine boughs, whose lichens are distinct, a distant forest and lake, the one frame, the other picture. In November a man will eat his heart, if in any month. Journal, 11/1/52.

A different sort of November day, to be sure, but no less lovely in its grays and greens and browns. Here too was Thoreau in the museum of his vision, finding “frames” for the “pictures” hung liberally there. He walked his woods with no less reverence than the slow, heel-clicking strides of museum-goers as they cross polished stone floors and contemplate painters’ visions.

Tree-framed November Light at Walden

But what stopped me was the final sentence in this passage – what does it mean to eat your heart? And what in November might incline one that way?

It’s common enough to say “Eat your heart out,” when we think we have something others want. Well, okay, but envy seems unrelated or a small reading of Thoreau’s sentence. Somehow, I thought, it is the unequaled nature of the “frame” that triggers his observation. And the image of Thoreau stopped near the edge of the Fairhaven Cliffs, looking at this loved landscape came clear to me. There he was, and here I was, looking through his eyes at a landscape hung just so; here, contained by the lichened boughs, was the best world, a world to swell your heart.

Tree-framed Cardigan Mountain – heartland

For a while I could live on that expansive vision, in that framed, chosen world. Perhaps feeling such affectionate surplus is what it means to eat one’s heart.

But you may see through other eyes, see it otherwise. If so, let us know.

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Posted in Arts, General, Henry David Thoreau, Literature, Nature, The Roost, Thoreau Quote

Tagged Fair Haven Pond, Fairhaven Cliffs, November Journal

A Thoreauvian Artist in Amsterdam

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Sandy Stott | 1 comment

By Corinne H. Smith

You never know when or where you will meet another fan of Henry David Thoreau. Even if the person may be long gone and may have left only a few clues behind.

In my part-time job at a bookstore specializing in art books, I recently came upon a unique catalog from 1965. It consisted of black-and-white illustrations of artwork by an artist named Viktor IV. I had never heard of him, and we certainly didn’t have any other books about him. From what I could tell, he then lived in Amsterdam and created unique pieces out of wood and other materials. This was a small and quirky publication that was probably self-published. Normally, I wouldn’t have thought too much of it. But the three-line dedication at the top of the opening page took me by surprise:

What? Wait. Who WAS this guy? I had to do some online research to find out.

Viktor IV was the professional name of New York-born artist Walter Karl Gluck (1929-1986). As a young man, he traveled around the world before settling down in Amsterdam in 1961, with the intent of being a photo-journalist. It is said that the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy had a profound affect on him. He immediately decided to become a full-time artist instead of a photographer. After he made a collage based on the assassination, he renamed himself Viktor IV. He set up his studio and home on a small ship docked in one of Amsterdam’s waterways. And he soon became one of the art community’s notable characters. People got used to seeing him riding his painted bicycle or walking around the city, in bare feet and dressed all in black, with wild white hair and a bushy beard, looking for inspiration.

Viktor at Home

Viktor’s early art was created from driftwood and other found pieces in the river. He assembled decorated wooden panels that he called “ikons.” But he didn’t limit himself to small creations. He also put additional structures like extra masts, towers, and rafts on and around his ship. As long as he didn’t block the entire waterway, he was free to add to it as he pleased.

Throughout his life, Viktor kept a set of artist journals filled with writings and drawings. He later developed these into thousands of individual pieces of artwork. When Viktor eventually became intrigued with time-keeping, he devised what he called “Bulgar Time,” and designed a clock to run backward. You can see a virtual example of the clock on his web site at http://www.viktoriv.nl/en/home.html. It’s a tad disconcerting at first to watch the hands move the wrong way, but it’s fun.

Sadly, Viktor drowned one day while making underwater adjustments to his flotilla. He had gotten tangled in the ropes beneath his ship. He was 57 years old.

Reports say that the two people who were the biggest influences in Viktor’s life were Dutch painter Anton Heyboer and American writer Henry David Thoreau. He read “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience” at some point in his youth. How Henry led Viktor specifically to Amsterdam is not spelled out in the brief bios I read. What IS clear is that Viktor IV followed his Different Drummer, and he found his own Walden. He discovered not only where he needed to be, but what he needed to do in life. This Thoreauvian lesson attracts both the heart and the head.

Maybe today Viktor and Henry are floating in a boat somewhere, looking for driftwood, nodding to each other, and laughing about time running backward. Good for them.

1 Comment

Posted in Arts, General, Henry David Thoreau, The Roost

Tagged Bulgar Time, Different Drummer, Henry David Thoreau, Walter Karl Gluck

Redwoods Abroad

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Sandy Stott | 2 comments

It’s been said that Henry Thoreau would walk miles to visit a tree, and, over time, I’ve come to understand the lure of arboreal friendship and walking for it. The tree, after all, can’t come to me. There’s a large white pine I like especially at the bend of a trail that descends from the Andromeda Ponds behind Walden toward Fairhaven Bay; I run my hand across its rough bark at each passing.

The other day, during a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, my eye was drawn to two large trees – conifers of some sort, they looked decidedly foreign in this setting, and, even given good size, they looked young. I bent to read the small sign by the path side and found they were sequoias. And that, of course, set me to wondering how two redwoods had arrived in the middle of Paris.

Well rooted

Not long after I’d begun this wondering, I’d learned that there are redwoods all over Europe, the largest of which is Scottish and now reaches some 54 meters into the air. It is said to be “growing quickly.” Europe’s redwoods don’t yet match the sky-scratching height of our tallest trees out west, where a sequoia named Genesis rises 86.2 meters to the current record, but after only 160 or so years, they are on their way. The temperate U.K. and Belgium and France seem favored locales for redwoods in Europe.

What also caught my attention was the timing of an apparent enthusiasm for planting these monumental trees. The largest of the lot date from the 1850s, a time when, an ocean away, Henry Thoreau was traveling a good deal in Concord to visit woody friends of his own.

Discovered only in 1852 in California, the giant sequoia rapidly became a tree-to-have in English Gardens, which were fashionable in the 2nd half of the 19th century throughout much of Europe. The gardens, influenced by Romanticism, had intentionally wild sectors to them, and the sequoia came from the wild Americas. That it promised also to be monumental seemed in keeping with a European mindset.

Looking up in the Luxembourg Gardens

Whether Thoreau paid much attention to this woody discovery and its hopscotch migration eastward, isn’t clear. His journal doesn’t attend to the June 27th, 1853 felling of a huge sequoia (reportedly over 300 feet high and 1,224 years old) in California – a media sensation; eventual fallout from it and other cuttings helped lead to John Muir (who lionized Thoreau) and the 1872 founding of the park at Yosemite, and then on to the national park system.

It seems that, faithful to Concord and his local focus, Thoreau spent his time and ink thinking about trees he knew.

But Thoreau does mention the sequoia in the writings that became Faith in a Seed:
“What would Pliny and Evelyn have said of that eighth wonder of
the world, the giant sequoia of California, which springing from so
small a seed (the cones are said to be shaped like those of a white
pine, but to be only two and a half inches long) has outlasted so many
of the kingdoms of the world?
If we suppose the earth to have sprung from a seed as small in
proportion as the seed of a willow is compared with a large willow
tree, then the seed of the earth, as I calculate, would have been
equal to a globe less than two and a half miles in diameter, which
might lie on about one-tenth of the surface of this town.”

Almost every day during this sojourn, I walk over to see the two sequoias. Still in their youth – I estimate they are 20 to 25 meters tall – already they have begun looking down at many of their elders; it won’t be long before they see much of Paris. It’s good to make new friends.

Thanks to Corinne Smith for unearthing the quotation from Faith in a Seed.