Put this on the second page:
When the mists in my beloved valley steam all around me; when the sun rests on the surface of the impenetrable forest at noon and only single rays steal into the inner sanctum; when I lie on the tall grass beside a rushing brook and become aware of the remarkable diversity of a thousand little growing things on the ground, with their peculiarities; when I can feel the teeming of a minute world amid the blades of grass and the innumerable, unfathomable shapes of worm and insect inside my heart and can sense the presence of the Almighty, who in a state of continuous bliss bears and sustains us – then, my friend, when it grows light before my eyes and the world around me and the sky above come to rest wholly within my soul like a beloved, I am filled often with yearning and think, if only I could express it all on paper, everything that is housed so richly and warmly within me, so that it might be the mirror of my soul as my soul is the mirror of Infinite God… ah, my dear friend… but I am ruined by it. I succumb to its magnificence.
Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther. It sounds like something I could have written here at the cabin.
4 Comments
Or, in three words, “nature is glorious”. It’s not really an idea that benefits from being written down. It can only be experienced in the moment.
It feels like reading pornography. Some frenzied account of various pleasurable details. With no data.
It’s worth noting that writing about music is like this too. It’s impossible to get the feeling across in words.
But don’t forget the key bit of data – the reaction of the person to the natural phenomena. That is, in fact, described here quite well enough.
Fair enough. But it’s an idea that keeps getting re-written, in spite of the ineffectiveness of doing so. It’s not a bad idea of itself. It just doesn’t work. The reaction to nature is visceral. Reading and writing are not visceral. Music and dance are visceral, which is why something like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Stravinsky’s right of spring are successful. Even a painting is much more visceral than a written account of nature, because it is sensual, and the experience of nature is sensual. It just is.
Writing, I think, is more powerful when it comes to the conceptual, for instance. Can you imagine trying to write a piece of music that conveys the meaning of the word “epistemic” or “teleological”? It would necessarily come out retarded. Or can you imagine writing a piece of music that was a book review? Or a philosophical text?