To Bring Forth "Something Shining for Man," February 1954
In February 1954 Sigurd was hard at work on the book that became The Singing Wilderness. He occasionally jotted down ideas and goals in loose-leaf journal entries, some dated and some undated. The selection reproduced here shows in particular the inspiration he took from a book called So Long to Learn, by John Masefield, as well as an article from Saturday Review about the poets Kathleen Raine and Theodore Roethke. To see these journal entries in larger context, read The Making of The Singing Wilderness.
February 2, 1954
What I must keep always before me is the objectives in my writing. This seems to be the only sort of thing I can do with heat and enthusiasm. The old ideal hasn't changed and as far as I can see never will. This is my forter and what will give it purpose is a clear conception of objectives. Every piece must somehow accomplish them. If it does not it is not worthwhile.
What are they?
1. The search of Thoreau
2. Re-establish contact with simple things and the earth.
3. Being a part of the whole - oneness, universality.
4. Mystery and wonder - Masefield - Hudson -
5. A glimpse of The Glory -
6. The primeval -
7. To go forward it is necessary to go backward.
8. Runic quality - strange relationships with man and earth and life
9. Contact with that greater life - Masefield, source of all glory, goodness, beauty, wisdom and rightness.
10. To bring down from this greater life, something shining for man - Masefield - somehow each essay must tap the source
11. Awareness of one's surroundings - look at each day as tho it were the last. In these essays each one must be so vivid as tho it were the last of my experiences.
12. The clean, the unsullied, unchanged scene, perfection and beauty.
13. The sense of partnership with mother earth - not a chattel or ownership
If you can catch in each one, not all and not by mentioning them, some of this feeling so that unconsciously there is this sense of the glory then you have done what you set out to do. Never write a word that does not have this reason behind it. Make it as unconsciously included as breathing.
Undated, February 1954
Suggestion for the Book
It is not enough to recount the things you have seen or experienced. There must be something more, something of your own best thinking, something that will contribute a thought or two in everything you write. This is the continuity you need.
In Spring Fever - there is more than just going out looking for spring. What does it mean to you, what about the rejuvenation of mind and body, the inherent urges, the looking for naturalness and the wonder of simple things in the spawning, the golden galleons, the drummer and the flowers, the squirrel and the cat. Unless you somehow get that in constantly your stuff will be worthless.
In Wild Goose there is the wild music of the flyways the idea that you cannot capture it by killing a goose, the inherent thrill of the music. You might bring in here the observation of Asa Koff the Russion on Aseph and the migrant curlew.
In Stone Wall the feeling of oneness with stones the feeling they give you of permanence and the places you have been.
Timber Wolves the primitive fear of the wolves - bring in some ideas on ecology, the balance.
Dead Man's Creek the wonder and joy of a boy on the trout stream his love of the creek and the one who understood him.
Coming of the Snow - the sense of transition, the change in the lives of all things including man.
Farewell to Saganaga - the feeling of a man for the primitive picture, his sorrow at its loss, the resignation and perspective.
In each of the things you write you must bring this in. Somehow it comes in almost automatically to me, but perhaps you must be more obvious more profound.
Possibly 35 essays will be enough, averaging 1500 words, 35 will total 50,000 words. With illustrations, it will make a book the size of Sand County Almanac. The ideal thing will be to make it a picture for every chapter. I shall have 25 in shape before I leave that will leave 10 to do during the year. 1954 should see the completion of this my first volume. I can call it "WILDERNESS MUSIC" or "THE SEARCH" or "WILDERNESS MAGIC"
One thing you know is that you might as well make use of all you have written, the essays of the past on which you have done so much work. The thoughts are all there and the memories. They are grist in the mill. After this first can come a succession of books, all of them essays, all of them recording what I've seen and done. These will be my contribution. They are all I can do. The first must be a masterpiece. No effort is too great.
Timber Wolves - again gives that sense of the old, of being part of the ancient scene, the joy in even a desperate winter adventure, the awareness of being alive, the sort of thing Masefield talks about.
The Way of A Canoe - sense of oneness. There is some of the glory.
Easter on the Prairie - the glory of the open plains the awareness of its beauty the contrasts
Spring Fever - Again the glory in the coming of spring, the feel of it, the sense of awakening and joy.
Birthday on the Manitou - the feeling of the old man for the river his recapturing the past, his oneness with the old river. He had found the glory there in the big pool.
In revising the 1st page of Easter on the Prairie I realized that what I want to do is portray my feelings so that others will catch what I catch. On the prairie those sensations are different. Somehow this is what urges me on to do these things. I feel I must record how I feel, that my feelings are different and worth recording. I am an instrument and what I feel regarding countless things is grist in the mill. These sensations are important to me. Write at white heat says Burroughts, write for yourself, be full of what you want to say. Want to say it more than anythig else in the world.
Sat. Review - Logic of the North discussing poems of Kathleen Raine and Theo Roethke - it says the following - "sometimes one gets the feeling that not even the animals have been there before; but the marsh and the mire, the Void, is always there terrifying. It is a splending place for schooling the spirit." Roethke has the feeling I have evidently of the primeval, something I can bear in mind as background for my own stuff.
"Some of these pieces began in the moor; as if man is no more than a shape writing from the old rock."
And of Raine - "The Scottish border country has a certain bleak impressiveness that its loneliness seems to enhance. She is conscious of her roots in the soil - a kind of deep northness. I noted her admitted kindship with Blake and called her a dealer in eternity and the vision which lies just beyond the world of appearances." When she acknowledges the forms of this world and her senses are finely attuned, she goes at once to the elements - this world seems much cloer in the northern lands - sometimes deals with something similar to the Ode of intim. of immortality of Wordsworth - a former existence - a call to go back to the roots of life in a natural world - the north country seems to be enahanced by its very aloneliness - a certain runic quality - source material for imagery which invests them with a cumulative effect. Roethke - "I believe that to go forward as a spiritual man it is necessary to go backward" - he leans on intuition atavism, by making greater demands on the subconscious he comes up with strange evidence of relationships between man and nature. "I've traced these words in sand with a vestigial tail" - he has derived much joy from his newly discovered closeness to the rest of the earths creatures.
All of this is worth mulling over, the sort of thing that will go into "The Search" and the hunt for continuity and meaning in every one of the things I do. "Dealer in eternity - a runic quality - call to go back to the roots of life - enhanced by loneliness - to go forward a man must go backward - a childlike quality - evidence of strange relationships - the Void a place for the schooling of the spirit. This sort of ties in with Hudson. This is what I should catch in my own.
The idea of Pipes of Pan - gives substance to my writing. All through my work is the question "Where are the Pipes of Pan?" That is part of the search, in fact is the search, the listening for The Pipes, the finding them in a thousand places and hearing them is compensation enough. Children hear them, we hear them occasionally, Jack Linklater heard them as in Wilderness Music.
The listening the waiting, the searching all for the chance of hearing just a strain. You might entitle the lead "The Pipes of Pan" and then go on from there. That would set the tone. Quote the full verse, quote also "Rather hear the tritons horn - Good God, I'd rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn" etc. That is part of the idea. Play it up through your stuff, all to do with the Pipes of Pan.
John Masefield - "Then on one wonderful day when I was little more than five years old, as I stood looking north, over a clump of honeysuckle in flower, I entered into that greater life; and that life entered into me with a delight that I can never forget. I found suddenly that I could imagine imaginary beings complete in every detail, with every faculty and possession and that these imaginations did what I wished for my delight, with an incredible perfection, in a brightness not of this world.
"I believe that life to be the source of all that is of glory or goodness in this world; and that modern man, not knowing that life, is dwelling in death."
"This brings me to the important thing in all arts, the breaking of the tomb, the resurrection of the dead, known as the coming of inspiration. What is this illumination that adds so much to human happiness?"
"The subject comes or it sticks, one or the other; and that is that. This illumination is an intense experience and so wonderful that it cannot be described. While it lasts the momentary problem is merged into a dasslingly clear perception of the entire work in its detail. In a mood of mental ecstasy the writer perceives what seems to be an unchangeable way of statement, so ful, and so insistent that he cannot set down half of what there is to utter. The mood may last for some hours or weeks; it goes as strangely and suddenly as it comes, having in its passing revealed something that will be more sure to please and illumine others than work done in moods less glowing.
"One or two writers have called it the individual's realization of his Higher Being. Two or three others have felt that it is the perception by a mortal of undying reality to which all mortals have access by effort and from which all beauty, good, wisdom, and rightness forever come to man. I cannot doubt that this universe of glory and energy exists and that man in some strange ways enter into it or partake of its nature. We have been through other periods of swaggery and imbecility. The wonder to myself is that the source should be so splendid, so infinite, so full of blessing that annihilates all evil.
"May not every seeker after beauty and order touch the order and beauty of the universe of which the sun, our own source of life is one of the lesser powers? With decent shelter and enough food, neither very hard to win, the effort to create beauty, in praise of undying beauty, must bring gladness here and perhaps leave joy to future times."
From "So Long to Learn"
Masefield gives a clue to what I am trying to do.
In the following her really tells what a man must do. "Fewer and fewer men are taking the discipline of the arts as qualifications for the attempt to know that glory and TO BRING FROM IT SOMETHING SHINING FOR MAN."
In the essays I am working on, each one must bring through it something shining for man. Each must tap somehow, enable me to touch that "greater life" the source of all glory beauty goodness in this world. In short if I can in some way touch this order then I will be accomplishing my purpose.
If each thing I write will somehow have this illumination, this glow, this transcendent beauty, the feeling of having touched the absolute, it will be enough. I can do this by bringing in somehow my feeling for the primeval, the origins of things, the Pipes of Pan, the glory, the sense of wonder, awe, oneness with all life and the universe itself, the childlike qualtiy soon lost of being part of that greater life.
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