To Bruno Walter and Henry David Thoreau, the power of nature in their lives was the same. Bruno Walter tells:
Next to music, nature . . . has always been the strongest power in my life. And it surely did not penetrate into my soul merely through my vision, no matter how fervently I enjoyed the sight of beautiful mountains, valleys, lakes, sunny days, and moonlit nights. I was vouchsafed also a more immediate access: I felt akin and attached to the thicket and the ocean, to the rocky solitude and the thunderstorm, to the humming of insects, and to the noonday quiet. Saturated with nature, and feeling part of it, I was able early to enter into the sense of Faust’s verses:
This glorious Nature thou didst for my kingdom give,
And power to feel it, to enjoy it.
‘Twas not the stranger’s short permitted privilege
Of momentary wonder that Thou gavest;
No, Thou hast given me into her deep breast
As into a friend’s secret heart to look;
Thus teaching me to recognize and love my brothers
In still grove, or air, or stream.
(Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 315.)
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For a brief biography of Bruno Walter, click here.
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