Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on Knowing All Nature’s ‘Moods and Manners’)

“I seek acquaintance with nature to know all her moods and manners. Primitive nature is the most interesting to me. I take infinitive pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and, then, to my chagrin I hear that is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know the entire heaven and an entire earth. All the great trees, and beasts, fishes and fowls are gone.” —American essayist, naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), journal entry for Mar. 23, 1856, in The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861 (2009)

PBS is giving Thoreau the same treatment it gave Ernest Hemingway a few years ago: a three-part documentary by Ken Burns, starting tonight. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this Transcendentalist as naturalist and protest figure.

Hailed by youth in the 1960s, Thoreau may be experiencing an even greater groundswell of interest now. Let’s hope so.

Quote of the Day (Holmes Rolston III, on Paradoxical Attitudes Towards Nature)

“Nature is wilderness yet paradise, demonic yet divine, asset yet enemy, jungle yet garden, harsh yet healing, means for man yet end in itself, commodity yet community, the land provoking man's virility yet evoking his sentimentality.”—American philosopher, Templeton Prize winner, and “pioneer of environmental ethics” Holmes Rolston III (1932-2025), “Philosophical Aspects of the Environment” (1973)

The image of Holmes Rolston III that accompanies this post was taken Apr. 4, 2008, by David Keller.

Quote of the Day (Margaret Renkl, on the Paradoxical Faith of the Bluebirds)

“Take your cue from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future but who build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf and straw by straw, shaping them into the roundness of the world.”— American essayist and New York Times opinion writer Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year (2023)

The image accompanying this post, of a pair of Eastern Bluebirds in Michigan, was taken Apr. 14, 2010, by Sandysphotos2009.

Quote of the Day (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on Nature and Art)

“Nature, it seems, must always clash with Art,
And yet, before we know it, both are one;
I too have learned: Their enmity is none,
Since each compels me, and in equal part.”— German man of letters Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), “Nature and Art” (c. 1800; published 1807), translated from the German by Michael Hamburger, in Selected Works (Everyman’s Library, 2000)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—born 275 years ago today in Frankfurt, Germany—was to German literature what William Shakespeare was to England’s and Alexander Pushkin to Russia’s—a titanic figure who decisively influenced its language and literary standing around the world.

But, because of his attitude to nature and art, he was so much more. I think that Goethe might have been the last of the Enlightenment figures who were able to make their marks in multiple fields.

Had he confined his endeavors to literature, Goethe still would have been acclaimed for his versatility in multiple genres: the novel (The Sorrows of Young Werther, a bestseller in 1774), travelogues (Italian Journey), drama (Faust), and assorted poems eventually set to music.

Like Thomas Jefferson—born only six years before—Goethe trained in the law before dabbling in science (he formulated the concept of morphology, a kind of forerunner to Darwin’s theory of evolution) and practicing statecraft (as an aide to Duke Carl August, who later became Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach).

I mentioned that he was an Enlightenment figure, but in another sense, he harked back to the Renaissance who could excel at multiple areas of endeavor. Besides the above activities, Goethe was also a skilled painter and, well into middle age, an enthusiastic athlete.

(For more on Goethe as Renaissance man, see this August 2020 post from the Sarkologist blog.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, using Goethe as a representative of “The Writer” type in his seven lectures on Representative Men (1850), saw him as someone who “in conversation, in calamity…finds new materials” 

Such was his capacity, that the magazines of the world’s ancient or modern wealth, which arts and intercourse and skepticism could command,—he wanted them all. Had there been twice so much, he could have used it as well. Geologist, mechanic, merchant, chemist, king, radical, painter, composer,—all worked for him, and a thousand men seemed to look through his eyes. He learned as readily as other men breathe. Of all the men of this time, not one has seemed so much at home in it as he. He was not afraid to live.

Quote of the Day (Tom Stoppard, on Nature and Each Moment)

“Nature doesn’t disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment.”—Czech-born British playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Tom Stoppard, Shipwreck: The Coast of Utopia, Vol. 2 (2002)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Flannery O’Connor, on Why ‘The Artist Penetrates the Concrete World’)

“St. Augustine wrote that the things of the world pour forth from God in a double way: intellectually into the minds of the angels and physically into the world of things. To the person who believes this—as the western world did up until a few centuries ago—this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source….The artist penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality. This in no way hinders his perception of evil but rather sharpens it, for only when the natural world is seen as good does evil become intelligible as a destructive force and a necessary result of our freedom.”— American short-story writer and novelist Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964), “Novelist and Believer,” originally delivered at Sweet Briar College, VA, reprinted in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1957)

Quote of the Day (George Eliot, on What Goes Unrepaired by Nature)

“Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.” — English novelist Mary Ann Evans, a.k.a. George Eliot (1819-1880), The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Within only 48 hours, my neck of the woods here in New Jersey withstood both a nor’easter and an earthquake measuring 4.8 on the Richter Scale. 

We have endured greater damage on other occasions, such as Hurricane Ida (see the accompanying picture), where, 2 1/2 years later, repairs are still being made, not by nature, but by mankind. 

But, as Eliot writes, there will indeed be isolated spots where nature leaves long-lasting, even irremediable, physical marks on us, and overall the fear lingers of what might happen next.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Harvey Cox, on the 'Religion of the Market' and Nature)

“I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion. The traditional religions and the religion of the global market ... hold radically different views of nature. In Christianity and Judaism, for example, ‘the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein.’ The Creator appoints human beings as stewards and gardeners but, as it were, retains title to the earth. Other faiths have similar ideas. In The Market religion, however, human beings, more particularly those with money, own anything they buy and—within certain limits—can dispose of anything they choose. Other contradictions can be seen in ideas about the human body, the nature of human community, and the purpose of life. The older religions encourage archaic attachments to particular places. But in The Market’s eyes all places are interchangeable. The Market prefers a homogenized world culture with as few inconvenient particularities as possible.” —American theologian Harvey Cox, "The Market as God," Atlantic Monthly, March 1999, reprinted in Best Spiritual Writing 2000, edited by Philip Zaleski (2000)

Quote of the Day (Hans Christian Andersen, on How ‘All Nature is a Series of Miracles’)

“ ‘All nature is a series of miracles,' said the candidate, 'but we are so accustomed to them that we call them things of everyday life.'”—Danish author of fairy tales, plays, travelogues, novels, and poems Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), “The Puppet Showman,” in Pictures of Sweden (1852)

I took this photo of the Hudson River as viewed from Memorial Park in Nyack, NY, in mid-September 2020.

Quote of the Day (Marilynne Robinson, on Wilderness and Secrecy)

“Idaho, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. These names are all notorious among those who know anything at all about nuclear weapons. Wilderness is where things can be hidden, from foreign enemies, perhaps, but certainly from domestic critics. This effect is enhanced by the fact that wilderness dwellers everywhere are typically rather poor and scattered, not much in the public mind, not significant as voters. Wilderness is where things can be done that would be intolerable in a populous landscape. The relative absence of human populations obscures the nature and effect of programs which have no other object than to be capable of the most profound injury to human populations. Of course, even wilderness can only absorb such insult to the systems of life to a degree, for a while. Nature is very active—aquifers so vast, rivers so tireless, wind so pervading.”—American novelist-essayist Marilynne Robinson, “Surrendering Wilderness,” excerpted in The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn 1998, reprinted in The Death of Adam (1998)

Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on a ‘Tolerable Planet’)

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? — If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on?"— American essayist, naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) in a letter to Harrison Blake, May 20, 1860, in Familiar Letters, edited by F. B. Sanborn (1865)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Jurgen Moltmann, on the Unintended Consequences of the Conquest of Nature)

“If human beings cannot control the power over nature which they acquire through science, they have still not learned wisdom. If the conquest of nature – the subjugation of the earth and other created beings – is the goal of scientific and technological civilization, then it is not surprising that all other living things should encounter human beings with fear and trembling. Those who set themselves up to be nature's masters and possessors, and forget that they themselves are merely part of nature, destroy nature and, in the end, annihilate themselves.”—German Reformed theologian Jurgen Moltmann, “Science and Wisdom,” originally published in Theology Today, July 2001, reprinted in The Best Christian Writing 2002, edited by John Wilson (2002)

(The accompanying photo of Jurgen Moltmann was taken in his home in Tubingen, Germany, in August 2020, by Idar Kjolsvik.)

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Anne Frank, on God and Nature, ‘Solace in All Troubles’)

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”—German-Dutch Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929-1945), journal entry for Feb. 23, 1944, The Diary of a Young Girl (1952)

I took the image accompanying this post—Tappan Memorial Park in Tappan, NY—last October.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Fr. John Welch, on St. Francis and the Language of Creation)

“St. Francis was not being romantic when he praised ‘brother sun’ and ‘sister moon.’ He understood that the stars, trees, rivers, and all the elements of creation are a language God speaks to us. Some saints claim God communicated with them through visions and voices. With the perspective of faith, the entire world becomes voice and vision. Any bush can be the burning bush through which God is present.” —John Welch, O. Carm., “Catholic Imagination,” Carmelite Review, Fall 2013-Winter 2014 issue

The image accompanying this post, St. Francis Preaching to the Birds, was painted from 1297 to 1299 by the Italian Renaissance artist-architect Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337).

Song Lyric of the Day (Neil Young, on ‘Mother Nature on the Run’)

“There was a fanfare blowin' to the sun
That was floating on the breeze
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the 1970s.”—Neil Young, “After the Gold Rush,” from his LP of the same name (1970)

This week marks the 50^th anniversary of the release of Neil Young’s third solo album—one that many observers see as the best of his career. The most enigmatic of its 11 songs might be the title tune.

This was supposed to be part of a soundtrack Young hoped to compose for an aborted project by actor Dean Stockwell about a tidal wave sweeping over Southern California. Linda Ronstadt (who later covered it, with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, on their “Trio” CD) recalled, “I would listen to Neil singing that all the time on the road. I would think, ‘This is the future.’”

Certainly, that line about “Mother Nature on the run” feels less like trippy vision than reality in 2020.

Quote of the Day (Wendell Berry, on ‘When Despair for the World Grows in Me’)

“When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”—American poet, novelist, critic, and environmentalist activist Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things,” from The Peace of Wild Things (2018) 

I took this image of a blue heron in Sea Pines Forest Preserve while on vacation in Hilton Head, SC, in November 2014

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on ‘The Forest Primeval')

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Quote of the Day (St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on Spiritual ‘Fuller Satisfaction in the Woods’)

“Believe one who has tried: You shall find a fuller satisfaction in the woods than in books. The trees and the rocks will teach you what you cannot hear from the masters.” —St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), quoted in Life and Works of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, Volume 1, edited by Jean Mabillon and Samuel John Eales (1889)

I took this image at the New Jersey Botanical Garden this past fall.