The Saunterer

Wendell Berry on discovering the world

    Years ago we discovered art museums and through that discovered something important about discovery. Wendell Berry has put that something into words:

    Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.

    (Quoted from Part Three of the unpaged The Little Blue Book of Travel Wisdom, edited by Julie Ganz. Skyhorse Publishing, 2014.)
    For a brief biography of Wendell Berry, click here. For images of or relating to Wendell Berry, click here.

Robinson Jeffers on man and nature

    If you wanted something ennobling to think about, it seems you’d want to think about the human race. In fact, Robinson Jeffers believed you would do better to think about nature:

    Man is a part of nature, but a nearly infinitesimal part; the human race will cease after a while and leave no trace, but the great splendors of nature will go on. Meanwhile most of our time and energy are necessarily spent on human affairs; that can’t be prevented, though I think it should be minimized; but for philosophy, which is an endless research of truth, and for contemplation, which can be a sort of worship, I would suggest that the immense beauty of the earth and the outer universe, the divine “nature of things,” is a more rewarding object. Certainly it is more ennobling. It is a source of strength; the other of distraction.

    (Quoted from page 254 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Robinson Jeffers, click here. For images of or relating to Robinson Jeffers, click here.

Jenny Read’s credo

    Jenny Read was an artist working in San Francisco in the 1970s when she was murdered. Friends found and published her journal, and in it was her credo, wonderfully to the point:

more work = more problems
more problems = more solutions
more commitment = greater solutions

    (Quoted from page 178 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For information about Jenny Read, click here. For images of or relating to Jenny Read, click here.

Godfrey Harold Hardy on pure mathematics

    G. H. Hardy, who worked in number theory, tells us the defining feature of pure mathematics:

    Beauty is the first test; there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

 

    Quoted from page 6 of The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, by Alan L. Mackay. The Institute of Physics, 1977)

    For a brief biography of Godfrey Harold Hardy, click here. For images of or relating to Godfrey Harold Hardy, click here.
    For a brief biography of Alan L. Mackay, click here. For images of or relating to Alan L. Mackay, click here.

C. Wright Mills on how mass society imprisons us

    A prisoner is a puppet: Neither has control. C. Wright Mills had it right when in 1956 he wrote:

    The powers of ordinary men are circumscribed by the everyday worlds in which they live, yet even in these rounds of job, family, and neighborhood they often seem driven by forces they can neither understand nor govern. “Great changes” are beyond their control, but affect their conduct and outlook none the less. The very framework of modern society confines them to projects not their own, but from every side, such changes now press upon the men and women of the mass society, who accordingly feel that they are without purpose in an epoch in which they are without power.

    (As quoted from page 3 of The Power Elite by C. Wright Mills. Oxford University Press, 2000. First edition in 1956.)
    For a brief biography of C. Wright Mills, click here. For images of or relating to C. Wright Mills, click here.

Elizabeth von Arnim on the reason for gardens

    Big-city dwellers — Oh, what you are missing:

    The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd around me at every step — it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover. When I have been vexed I run out to them for comfort, and when I have been angry without just cause, it is there I find absolution. Did ever a woman have so many friends?

    (Quoted from page 32 of Elizabeth and Her German Garden, by Elizabeth von Arnim. The Henneberry Company, 1901.)
    For a brief biography of Elizabeth von Arnim, click here. For images of or relating to Elizabeth von Arnim, click here.

Anthony Davis on the attraction of old books

    Why do books, especially old ones, attract some people? Anthony Davis considers them a form of art:

    The attraction comes from the special nature of books — they are objects of beauty but also objects of inspiration and learning . . . . And they are marvellously tactile, designed to be handled. Books exist in more dimensions than most other old objects.

    (Quoted from page 32 of the Times Literary Supplement, June 26, 2015.)
For a brief biography of Anthony Davis, click here.

Charles Simic on the artistic images of Joseph Cornell

    To Charles Simic there are three kinds of images, and the artistic boxes of Joseph Cornell are the rarer third kind:

    First, there are those seen with eyes open in the manner of realists in both art and literature. Then there are images we see with eyes closed. Romantic poets, surrealist, expressionists and everyday dreamers know them. The images Cornell has in his boxes are, however, of the third kind. They partake of both dream and reality, and of something else that doesn’t have a name. They tempt the viewer in two opposite directions. One is to look and admire . . . and the other is to make up stories about what one sees . . . Neither [way] by itself is sufficient. It’s the mingling of the two that makes up the third image.

    (Quoted from page 60 of Dime-Store Alchemy: The Art of Joseph Cornell, by Charles Simic. New York Review Book, 1992.)
    To see some of Joseph Cornell’s boxes, click here.
For a brief biography of Charles Simic, click here. For images of or relating to Charles Simic, click here.
For a brief biography of Joseph Cornell, click here.

Willi Unsoeld on ananda

    Know what ananda is? Know how to get it? You can with yoga, although Willi Unsoeld favored mountaineering:

    The reason that solitude seems so beneficial is that moving off into this remote mountain range you are able to simplify your life. You reduce stimuli until finally you are faced only with your own ego, and then it is a relatively simple step to jettison that awareness of self, fading out under the overpowering awe of this greatest of mountain ranges, and then you are not in the picture. What is left? The answer is ananda, or bliss, the peace that surpasses all understanding and cannot be reduced to words.

    (Quoted from page 96 of The Vast Unknown: America’s First Ascent of Everest, by Broughton Coburn. Crown Publishers, 2013.)
    For a brief biography of Willi Unsoeld, click here. For images of or relating to Willi Unsoeld, click here.
    For a brief biography of Broughton Coburn, click here. For images of or relating to Broughton Coburn, click here.

John Muir on Nature

    There’s something sad in knowing that so few people would think or say what John Muir did:

    To let sheep trample so divinely fine a place seems barbarous.

    (Quoted from page 342 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of John Muir, click here. For images of or relating John Muir, click here.