James Fenimore Cooper and James McNeill Whistler

In this particular lecture we take two individuals and the reasons for taking two at this time are a little bit arcane. The reason for it being is that the thrust of the importance of James Fenimore Cooper is all but obliterated in most literary histories. And his importance and the development of the spiritual genius of the American people has just recently begun to be suspected. And so I couple Whistler with Cooper hoping that the highlight of several aspects of Cooper's work will linger with you. I also feel that if you would take yourselves your own experience to several of his novels and I will give you a couple of clues for one in particular with the cassette of this lecture you will be able to read for yourself and unfold for yourself a dimension of experience that is becoming increasingly important in our time and Cooper actually prophetically was one of the first individuals to sense this and note this down. Cooper of course lived at the time when the revolutionary spirit that was sweeping the world changed the entire nature of societies both here in this country and in Europe and from there around the world. Cooper was born in 1789 in September and that was during Washington's first administration. Benjamin Franklin was still alive. Jefferson was just about to have returned from France. The French Revolution the storming of the Bastille had happened just a few months before. So that Cooper was born in New Jersey Burlington into a world which had just begun to take the first step into an era which was known as the Age of Revolutions. A British historian named Hobsbawm wrote a great book called The Age of Revolutions. And Cooper of course when he is seen as a contemporary of Napoleon as a contemporary of Beethoven and Goethe suddenly looms for us. Shelley Blake etc. he suddenly becomes a figure of the romantic rebellion the age of revolution and one of the most mystical figures in our history. All of this is covered up by the fact that mundane intelligence always mistakes the spirit for something so ordinary like sunlight or fresh water that it's hardly worth noting at the time and only later in sort of a Pythagorean retrospective of how did we ever arrive here and we look back and observe lo these great changes and transformations that have been taking place all the time were in fact understood by a few individuals of the time and all of the important insight and information and experiences which we need now to tone the order of the world with understanding both individually as human beings and socially as a knit political perspective. That information exists like a hidden treasure in the structures created in the past by that handful of individuals who visionary were alive to the present moment moving toward our future. And Cooper is one of the greats. He is the great example also of the individual who grew up in Jefferson's America. He was born as I said in 1789. His parents took him very very young I think one year old not even one to northern New York state Lake Otsego where his father founded the community of Cooperstown New York which many of you recognize as being the location for the Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown New York. James Fenimore Cooper's father founded and named the place. So this is an old family. Cooper was a fifth generation American and his time and his wife Susan Delancey the Delanceys had been there almost since the founding of Jamestown. So that Cooper really was an example of the first of the really Indigenous Americans and his personality which in his time was often seen as abrasive was actually that characteristic expansiveness that the American seems to have in their makeup. And we'll see good reason for that. Cooper of course was in the privileged class of his time in terms of monetary background. He was given a very good education. He was entered into the young Yale University at age 13 and he was thrown out of Yale University two years later for indescribable pranks. No one has ever been able to discover why it was but it must have been something substantial. Yale doesn't boot you out for nothing. Cooper went back home like many a booted out college chum and moped around the father's estate for a year or so. And finally the father understanding young men and these temperaments very well got him to sign up for the Navy. As fathers often wish that they would be able to effect on recreant sons. Cooper actually spent quite a lot of time in the Navy. He went overseas as we would say most of his time was spent in the United States on the waterways. And in fact Cooper was very very proud of the United States Navy of his part in it and later on in life would write the monumental two volume history of the Navy of the United States in 1839 which still is the basic account of the early days of the Navy. And later on of course all of this background would serve for his context for 11 of his novels. Cooper wrote the first of the sea novels in fact his first sea novel which was his I think his fourth novel published called The Pilot the hero of it was based on John Paul Jones whom Cooper knew of course and The Pilot set the tone for hundreds of imitators and all the great sea stories. And we'll see Moby Dick later on. And I'm sure you've heard of Joseph Conrad's Sea Stories. All of these take their root from James Fenimore Cooper and The Pilot is just a magnificent story. It's still in print. The Heritage Club edition of The Pilot which is still available. There aren't many books after 200 years still have popular readership. It's just a pretty good story. Long Tom Coffin in there as the one of the great figures in world fiction. Enjoyable to read. All of this came from Cooper's time in the Navy. He of course like many a young man fell in love and decided to get married. And in 1810 he left the Navy on furlough and never returned. These were moments when one could do this with some freedom. And of course in the ensuing couple of years later the War of 1812 broke out. And Cooper being a great aficionado of battle strategies and of the Navy has in his history of the U.S. Navy the best account we have of the War of 1812 1812 1314 all the way through. Cooper's understanding of the military action is just superb. He had a very great military mind. His wife Susan Delancey was from the Delanceys and they for instance were some of the earliest people to own farms in Scarsdale New York and so forth. And when she was taken to Lake Otsego to live in the Cooper Estates. After 2 or 3 months she was very unhappy with the primitive wilderness and had to return home. Cooper coming along in her wake and for several years they oscillated back and forth between her family and his people. And finally after six years she found a way to handle the situation and he stayed with her people for a while. Cooper was fairly wealthy. He inherited $50,000 around 1820 or so which was a lot of money at that time and was fairly well off. His wife was reading a novel one day to him and he in great disgust said this is a piece of trash. I could do better. And of course the Delancey blood was raised in her and she said oh yes when will you do it and he wrote a potboiler called precaution with a heroine and complications and so forth. And surprisingly it sold moderately well. But Cooper of course was tantalized by the fact that one could sit down with a pen and actually make money out of this. He had had a little brush with handling finances and so forth and realized that any source of income was worth investigating especially when it was such an easy thing to do. And so for the next 30 years he would write one book a year. His second book was called The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground and the protagonist Harvey Birch is a spy during the Revolutionary War and it's still in print. And when the spy came out it sold fabulously well. I think in three months they sold out the first two huge printings and had to go to an unprecedented third printing. And not only that it began to be sought after in England and translated into other languages. And before the end of that year Cooper was suddenly an internationally famous author doing very well. His share of the take from this novel was equal to the profits of half a whaling ship's voyage. So Cooper began sharpening all the pencils. With the success of The Spy he decided that he would take a setting from the native background and he wrote a novel called The Pioneers. And The Pioneers took the Lake Otsego area of New York State and in a beautiful description described the wonderful forest and so forth and then zeroed in on the town of Templeton the fictional town of Templeton next to Lake Otsego and took off from there. And one of the characters in The Pioneers was named Nathaniel or Natty Bumppo and he would have many other names in fiction. He was also called Leatherstocking all the way through the novel so that all of the tales that came after it were called Leatherstocking Tales. The Pioneer Man Cooper then wrote The Pilot and very quickly began to establish himself. So on the externals Cooper seemed to be a popular potboiling novelist somebody who was is beginning to turn them out once a year and who began to develop a European reputation he moved to New York City. He bought a three story townhouse. He decided that they would need to raise the children with a little bit more civilization than would be available even in New York City. And so he moved with his family to Paris for five years. And there of course he met the great Marquis de Lafayette who was a great friend of many Americans. And Lafayette became very close to Cooper and introduced him to the highest levels of Paris literary society. And in the middle of the five years in Paris Cooper took a great continental tour. And then in 1831 came back to the United States and was shocked to see the changes that had taken place in the five years because between 1826 and 1831 the ugly specter of machine politics had reared its head especially in New York City. And if you remember from last time that Jefferson and his protégés Madison and Monroe had for 25 years run the country and the United States prospered like it never had prospered before and suddenly there was a prize worth managing for. And this manipulation found its apotheosis in the figure of Jackson. And President Jackson of course the great patron of machine politics getting your cronies to get the hammerlock on a group of people who in turn would get the hammerlock all the way down until finally you had the name of every guy in the block who can vote And you made sure that he voted. Well Jackson could handle it with a little bit of equilibrium but after Jackson we had a succession of presidents and administrations who were literally out for the vote and they found that one could very easily manipulate the working person by offering them a jobs and opportunity in exchange for their vote and their keeping quiet about some of the larger strategic decisions that the boys in the back room who know better will tell you where we're going. Well Cooper of course coming from an old American family tradition an individual of the first Order took great offense at this. And over the next 7 or 8 years while he was writing still in the Old Vein he began a series of libel suits and lawsuits against people like Horace Greeley and so forth. And pretty soon Cooper was almost consumed by political intrigues and he wrote several books which still should be read today one The American Democrat which is a great description of what Jefferson's original idea of democracy had been and what Jackson had seized out of it and what it had become in his time. And Cooper in that book coined the phrase mobocracy which later on Frank Lloyd Wright would seize upon in I think around 1895 or so and wrote the great book Genius and the Mobocracy that somehow through machinations the basic structures of individual freedom had been curled around had become the grasping prize of the manipulating few so that Cooper began to lose interest in all of the great novel undertakings except for a trilogy. He wrote the Littlepage Trilogy which concerned the Anti-rent strikes in New York in the 1840s. You see we have had these problems a long time. When Cooper died in 1851 at age 62 he was noted as being a very cantankerous outspoken social critic somewhat a little abrasive for most people and probably old fashioned. I think that was the way they tried to whitewash him so that his ideas were shunted into children's books for the children on their shelves or for the littérateurs who would like to enjoy good tales. And the rest of it was too cantankerous to even look at. So let's move on then to the next writer that sort of thing. None of those images are true. Cooper in fact is extraordinary. And when one turns to the works with an idea of spiritual intelligence and forming a sensibility which is world class in its scope suddenly all of these pleasant little books to entertain open up capacities which are like a Pandora's box of mythopoetic images of timeless concerns of the human spirit and show that Cooper was in fact a world class genius working patiently over about 20 years to find and discover in his own massive intuition and suspended in the midst of the primordial American experience a coherent imagery which would facilitate him to locate himself and his characters and the American experience in some kind of a time space which was universal. And it's interesting that the core the golden thread of this experience are the five novels which are referred to as the Leatherstocking tales and also curious that the protagonist the character who has so many names he has a lot of names he has many names in the first novel is an old man almost ready to die and Cooper is a young man just writing his first note and as he goes along and increases in his age and experience he keeps writing further back in time until at his old age he writes the book which has the protagonist as a young man in his early 20s 21 or 22. So they crisscross in time their experience. And it's interesting also because we fortunately have some firsthand reportage of how these events came to pass. One of Cooper's daughters Susan Fenimore Cooper was actually with Cooper on a drive in a horse and carriage the day when he first conceived the Deerslayer which was the last great novel in that series and one of the most sublime works of world class fiction. This is what she wrote. It's only about a page or so long and this is her experience as a young girl riding with her dad alongside the shores of Lake Otsego. And this is how it was born. And you'll see in her description because you are all familiar by now with the way in which the spirit works you'll see it working here. She wrote "One pleasant summer evening the author of The Pathfinder was driving along the lake shore in his farm wagon singing cheerily as he passed over that quiet shady road as he frequently did though no musician he often sang went in a gay mood snatches of familiar songs that had struck his fancy and many a time when driving along the quiet shady road leading to his mountain farm the squirrel at play or the sleepy teamster dozing on his seat has been surprised by some sudden burst of Robert Burns song or Moore's Love's Young Dream which were a special favorites with him on the present occasion. However it was a political song that he was singing and shall we avow the act of infidelity and electioneering song of the party opposed to his very own. But suddenly he paused and as an opening in the wood revealed a sweet view of the lake his spirited gray eye rested a moment on the water with that expression of abstracted poetical thought ever familiar to those who lived with him. Then turning to the companion at his side the daughter who is now writing these very lines he exclaimed I must write one more book dearie about our little lake. Again his eye rested on the water and the banks with the far seeing look of one evoking imaginary figures to fill the beautiful scene. A moment of silence followed his daughter being unwilling to interrupt the train of thought opening before him. A few minutes passed. Again he cracked his whip and resumed his song and with some careless chat and little incidents of the hour drove homeward. And a few days later the first pages of the Deerslayer were written." This was the genesis of it and he had discovered in that moment in that repose the very crucial image that he had been seeking all the time. And he had realized that his initial vision had focused on the wrong emphasis. And when we ask the wrong questions or have the wrong perspective we of course don't see the very invisible structure which is to manifest before us but just a slight shift of perspective a little bit of the energy of the spirit and our inner eye focuses on in fact the real center and the entire structure opens out and archetypally as if it were there all the time completed totally. And that's what Cooper saw was that the focus in the wilderness was not the town it was the lake. And so in The Deerslayer as it begins the very first short sentence gives Cooper's tone of mind. He wrote simply a short sentence on the human imagination. Events produce the effect of time so that right away the opening chords of a great symphony that we have a world of imagination which in its flow seems to temporize in order not according to rhythms of any clocks or measurement but through the juxtaposition of imagery. What then orders that imagery it is in fact a hidden synthesizing symbolic recognition waiting to be brought up into consciousness. And what bridges that transformation the bringing of the core of the heart of the structure into consciousness the relational feeling tone orientation of one sense in space. And so for Cooper the whole notion of landscape and writing of a landscape becomes the central stage. And in the landscape it's the natural flow of the landscape that is the real context for human realization and not at all what we thought at first. Not at all. The plot of so-called histories. Not at all. The plot even of the development of character although that's important. But really the focus the growing edge of spiritual comprehension is the relationality between the consciousness and its spatiality. And so Cooper began to develop this and he gives us this view that whatever may be the changes produced by man the eternal round of the seasons is unbroken. Summer and winter seed time and harvest return in their stated order with a sublime precision affording to man one of the noblest of all the occasions he enjoys of proving the high powers of his far reaching mind. It's almost like Homer encompassing man's far reaching mind encompassing the laws that control their exact uniformity and in calculating their never ending revolutions. Centuries of summer suns had warmed the tops of the same noble oaks and pines sending their heats even to the tenacious roots so that we have this image of timelessness the primeval eternal forest one of the last areas in the world where civilized man and the primordial natural experience could be brought into a juxtaposition which was here now. And so we have this view of the forest and suddenly we hear voices even to the tenacious roots and in mid-sentence when voices were heard calling to each other. And so we have one of these primordial moments wherein this vast unbroken space we suddenly have two characters moving when voices were heard calling to each other in the depths of a forest of which the leafy surface lay bathed in brilliant light on a cloudless June day. It's summer solstice time while the trunks of the trees rose in gloomy grandeur and the shades beneath their calls were in different tones evidently proceeding from two men who had lost their way. There's a bifurcation right away to two kinds of men lost their way and were searching in different directions for their path. And this of course was the beginning inside for a great examination called the American Adam tracing back the idea that many of the early American writers where their basic education was the Bible, The Old Testament and this whole idea of the American primordial continent as being like a Garden of Eden. And that man here was like returning back to his old Adamic roots. And so the protagonist of many works and of course Deerslayer almost the epitome of the primordial man coming back. And so this having lost one's path and needing to find one's way. So at length the shout proclaims success. And presently a man of gigantic mold broke out of the tangled labyrinth of a small swamp emerging into an opening that appeared to have been formed partly by the ravages of the wind and partly by those of fire wind and fire. The disasters of nature. So coming out of this labyrinth out of the tangle out of the primordiality the chaos into the light. The first individual in the novel named Hurry Harry and the second Deerslayer. And they're quite distinct characters. And the first one who comes out, Hurry is his name. He's always in a rush. He's large he's boisterous and the second one is Deerslayer. Both these frontiersmen were still young Hurry having reached the age of 6 or 8 and 20 while Deerslayer was several years his junior. Their attire needs no particular description though it may be well to add that it was composed in no small degree of dressed deerskins and had the usual signs of belonging to those who passed their time between the skirts of civilized society and the boundless forests. So here they are. And Deerslayer says Hurry Harry says come Deerslayer fall to and prove that you have a Delaware stomach. Delaware Indians as you say you've had a Delaware education cried. Hurry setting the example by opening his mouth to receive a slice of cold venison steak that would have made an entire meal for a European peasant. Fall to lad and prove your manhood on this poor devil of a doe with your teeth as you've already done with your rifle. Nay nay Hurry there's little manhood in killing a doe and that too out of season. The Delawares have given me my name. Not so much on account of a bold heart as on account of a quick eye and an active foot. So the Deerslayer begins with his first primordial name the Deerslayer. He's not a killer in the sense of a slaughterer as he would say later on but he's a provider and he has a very peculiar mind in the sense that he is almost like an Adam type figure. He has a mind that has no intense complications. In fact it's a mind which reflects as we will see the primordial condition of the forest. He says have you ever killed a man Deerslayer. They're eating and they're talking and he says to own the truth. I never did answer Deerslayer because he is young he has not yet been in a war. Seeing that a fitting occasion never offered. The Delawares have been peaceable since my sojourn with them and I hold it to be unlawful to take the life of man except an open and generous warfare. And so they go on discussing. And what comes out of this is that Deerslayer has been raised since a young boy by the Delaware or the Mohican Indians and in fact has attuned himself so much to the American wilderness that whatever it is that he is as a human being structurally is in immediate and total sympathy with the primordial forest environment. It's almost like Deerslayer is a natural Zen master. He has that capacity for instantaneous composure and later on a couple of novels down the line when Deerslayer becomes Hawkeye when he has been initiated into warfare. Hawkeye whenever he is talking always his eye is roving like a small radar screen and his ears and sensibilities can hear. And in fact they are so sensitive that Cooper from time to time notes such little sounds as the dull thud and the inner ear of a distant waterfall. Not bothering Hawkeye at all because he understands that that's in the pattern. And yet even at a young age when they're trying to find their way to this lake Lake Otsego which in the deerslayer is called Glimmerglass. Glimmerglass the ultimate looking glass wherein one can see one's true self and where they're looking for this. And Hurry Harry says. Well I marked it up by several noting several kinds of trees together and Deerslayer says well there are many groupings of that. But he says I see one tree over here that is not growing in a natural way that in fact when it was young it was bent over by snows and has been raised by human hand and stops with the branches may grow and the branches of another kind of tree that ordinarily would have shaded it out and snuffed it out and hurry. Hurry says yes that's it. I was the one who put that tree there many years ago. And he says how did you see this. And of course to him the wilderness is a chaos. To the Deerslayer it's his education. It's an open book. He's at home there. He sees nature as it is and it reads to him consistently the true message of its origins and nature and purposes. They break through and at last they find the lake. And this is the very lake that Cooper was looking at. And I think if I can find this here I should I should probably read this. Maybe I'll just give the rendition Deerslayer when he first sees Glimmerglass he's never seen a lake like this. It's about 3 or 4 miles across and maybe two miles or so. He lets out a sudden sigh and he positions his gun his long rifle so that he can lean against it. And he's like Cooper was. He's absolutely captivated we would say colloquially really hypnotized. But what it is is that Deerslayer finds awakened in himself for the very first time in his life. A central image of the celestial reflecting capacities of his own nature. And as he's looking out I think the only time that I've ever seen a phenomenon like this was at Lake Tahoe one time where early early in the morning when Tahoe is really set and smooth it gets its name from the Indian population to sky water. Tahoe means sky water where the satin smooth finish of Tahoe with the mist across the way produces the illusion of a vast nothingness that it's as if the sky goes down to your very feet. This is the kind of characteristic that Deerslayer finds awakened in himself and as he does he comes to the fact that he is an individual who inside of himself and outside of himself here has infinitudes of capacity and relationality. And he begins to realize that his companion does not have these capacities at all does not see any of the wilderness does not see this experience has none of it inside. And Hurry Harry begins to get a glimmer that there is something different about Deerslayer. They get into an argument. He grabs Deerslayer by the shoulders and starts to throttle him to bring him around. That he's the younger man and watch his tongue and all this. And Deerslayer looks at him level straight and without raising his voice at all says Hurry I will tell you every time just as I have told you there is nothing to change in what I have said. And we find this great equanimity of Deerslayer. And it's the first time that Cooper finally found the right image. He and The Prairie some years before had tried to develop that image when he had the two great Indian protagonists of the novel The Prairie and a Pawnee Indian whose name was Hard Heart and a Teton Sioux Indian whose name was Maturi. And they met. Both of them were mounted on horses and they met on a sandbar in the middle of a river near the Grand Tetons in Wyoming and all the warriors of both tribes were lined alongside the river bank and the two of them were to fight it out on this sandbar at close range. And of course this image you will recognize as being the archetypal spiritual setting of the Bhagavad Gita. The two great armies arranged and into the middle space comes the great protagonist and in the closeness of the inner realization comes forth the inner qualities totally intact. And if one is not prepared for this ready for this one experiences it as a vertigo as a drowning motion as a sudden glimpse of insight. Or if one is ready for this one experiences it as ecstasy as equanimity as Deerslayer did. So Cooper in a very sophisticated way shows us a true primordial man alive in the world of the 1740s. And this of course written in 1840 1841 to be exact about 100 years later. He's encouraging the people of 1840 who had seen the total confusion of the American tradition by that time to say wait just the span of a few human lives back we could easily have understood that we already had a totally different kind of experience from those which European and other human beings have had. It may have been true he says in one of his travelogues in Switzerland when he was looking at the Alps and all the old traditions of antiquity. He says in one of his travelogues that European man probably had the experience of early America thousands of years ago. But we have it today and we have it with all the advantages of knowing what the mistakes of civilization can be so we can bridge two unlikely elements into a harmony. Never before had we can take the cream of civilization and the primordiality of nature and bring them together and create in fact a perfected nature with man following truly civilized in the heart of it. And in fact Cooper was one of the first of the Americans to become interested in gardening not putting flower beds down but in making huge English gardens with arrangements of trees and rocks and so forth almost like the Japanese Zen garden type of arrangement. And he spent a lot of time a lot of money. And this was decades because before there ever was a book on landscape gardening and Cooper was always out there because he was doing his meditating with this. And just the same way the Deerslayer image of Glimmerglass. And Deerslayer seeing it brings together to a culmination all of these events all of these capacities and even more than that even more than that the subtitle of his first real fine great novel The Spy was A Tale of the Neutral Ground. The Neutral Ground one which does not participate in any given polarity but is freed from the constraints of any particular polarity. And given the freedom the ultimate universal mobility of like a no man's land or an everyone's land. It's the same thing. And in fact many of the most recent critics striving to understand Cooper have begun to surface. There is a study here for instance published by Yale University Press. They never forget their alumni at Yale. I don't think Damon Runyon was a Yale graduate. A World by Itself: The Pastoral Moment in Cooper's Fiction published oh about 4 or 5 years ago at Yale has a chapter in here called Exploring the Neutral Ground. Suddenly several hundred years after the event we begin to have a critical consciousness which is looking at the situation as it really was. And he writes at the beginning he says a true phenomenology of the space of Cooper's imagination world must take account of The Last of the Mohicans. In many ways this adventure tale seems to violate the aesthetics of landscape that inform and control his other forest novels. The narrator begins to lay out the geography of the book on the first page where he stresses the toils and dangers of the wilderness and explains the necessity of struggling against the rapids of the streams and affecting the rugged passes of the mountains. Unlike the Deerslayer where such terrain is merely referred to and then left behind for the preferred space of the interior forest here the introductory descriptions serve to prepare us for a journey through a landscape which becomes to use Cooper's terms increasingly broken interrupted rugged landscape consistently drawn in images of difficulty so that for Cooper in his early works the neutral ground has all of this potential this possibility for everyone and yet for no one but is undeveloped and is fraught with difficulties is rugged needing only the informing capacity of a spiritual intelligence to move conscientiously within that middle ground to set it in order and arrange it. Much like a landscape gardener who admiring the primordial wilderness would be content to let it be. But once it's been interrupted and one has all these stumps around and half cleared land then it is befitting for man to come and clear the stumps out plant new trees make beautiful arrangements and restore back some kind of primordiality out of his own self because the basic landscape is still there inside of us intact. And since it was destroyed out here it can be put back again by man himself because he has the patterns all inside. All those capacities are there so that the experience of America for Cooper by 1840 even was one that required for us to awaken first of all in ourselves the capacity of the primordial human being who can respond to the natural order having a symbolic center like a lake which reflects the sky and the truth just as it is. No interpretations that the first order of social reform or individual character building or psychological subtlety or literary pleasure any of them and all of them focus on awakening this capacity first and then to produce the kind of education and confidence and companionability of groups and so forth which enable those visions to come forth out of the individuals and manifest themselves on the earth so that space and geography landscape and character all of these capacities are put into a fruitful ordering and motion. All of this there. This author goes on to talk about how he says that many people have misunderstood Cooper all the way through that. In fact he says in many of his works Cooper depicts a zone of intermediate space which lies between well-defined areas of the setting. In The Deerslayer for example Leatherstocking becomes mired and is captured in the low marshy land that intervenes between the distinct worlds of lake and forest. And so on. And he goes on to describe many incidents of how the events in the novels take place within contexts that inform this critical intelligence about spatiality and nature and man's relationship with it. So that finally and I think I will give you this lead ahead Deerslayer said "Hurry Harrry and open the bushes. The rest I can do for myself. The other obeyed and the men left the spot. Deerslayer clearing the way for his companion who was carrying his large canoe that he had hidden in the brush years before. Then they both broke suddenly into the brilliant light of the sun on a low gravelly point that was washed by water on quite half its outline." There's always a geometry of meaning lurking in Cooper as we will see it later on in Faulkner. Faulkner and Frank Lloyd Wright of course two of the individuals who understood what Cooper was doing. And so this geometry of meaning always is there so that once one has critically alerted one's mind and experience you read and it's an open book. "An exclamation of surprise broke from the lips of Deerslayer an exclamation that was low and guardedly made. However for his habits they were much more thoughtful and regulated than those of the reckless Hurry. When on reaching the margin of the lake he beheld the view that unexpectedly met his gaze." It was in truth sufficiently striking to merit a brief description. On a level with the point. The point of the land. It's like a finger of destiny. Because this is the lake where Cooper himself grew up. On the level with the point lay a broad sheet of water so placid and limp that it resembled a bed of the pure mountain atmosphere. It resembled a bed of the sky compressed into a setting of hills and woods. Its length was about three leagues while its breadth was irregular expanding to half a league or even more opposite to the point and contracting to less than half that distance. More to the south worth. Of course its margin was irregular. Being indented by bays and broken by many projecting low points. The middle ground is always broken in Cooper. Why? Because there's always a transformational process happening and there's always that kind of broken ground in between the individual and any other individual. Initially all of this always characteristic are reverberations are never in an organized posture until we have reached back and attain to a moment of purity of insight then all of our boundaries and edges are regular. Then the vibrations proceed according to a geometry of music at its northern or nearest end. It was bounded by an isolated mountain lower land falling off east and west. But the most striking peculiarities of this scene were its solemn solitude and sweet repose on all sides. Wherever the eye turned nothing met it but the mirror like surface of the lake the placid view of heaven and the dense setting of woods. So rich and fleecy were the outlines of the forest that scarce an opening could be seen. The whole visible earth from the rounded mountain top to the water's edge presenting one unvaried hue of unbroken verdure as if vegetation were not satisfied with the triumph so complete the trees overhung the lake itself shooting out towards the light. And there they were miles and miles along its eastern shore where a boat might have pulled beneath the surface of dark Rembrandt looking hemlocks quivering aspens melancholy pines. I always have about ten times too much material and have to make painful editorial excisions all the time. I was going to go through patiently and show you some of the ways in which Cooper as a writer develops this geometry of meaning. I don't have time. All I can say is take yourselves to the works. It's all there and all available. I thought you would be interested in a couple of transitions and then we'll bring in Whistler a little bit and see where we're getting to. We'll have some images. The first human being that Deerslayer kills is in the following manner. This is how it happens. There has been some complications ensuing. And he's going through the forest and suddenly this event takes place presenting one unvaried hue of unbroken verdure as if vegetation were not satisfied with the triumph so complete the trees overhung the lake itself shooting out towards the light. And there they were miles and miles along its eastern shore where a boat might have pulled beneath the surface of dark Rembrandt looking hemlocks quivering aspens melancholy pines. In a word the hand of man had never yet defaced nor deformed any part of this native scene which lay bathed in the sunlight. A glorious picture of a fluent forest grandeur softened by the balminess of June relieved by the beautiful variety afforded by the presence of so broad and expansive water. "Tis grand. To solemn. Tis an education of itself to look upon" exclaimed Deerslayer. And of course there he is his education. And we have critics springing up all over. We have in fact published by the University of California Press a little book called Cooper's Landscapes that came out about 3 or 4 years ago. So all of a sudden after centuries of misunderstanding the old potboiler turns out to have had a totally different message entirely. And in this this author Nevius who I think has some pretty good ideas begins to probe into the notion that once one gets a. Schemata of what Cooper is doing and sets aside the habitual notion that he's only writing picturesque scenery. Once one sees that he is in fact developing a phenomenology of the spirit based upon its spatial sensitivity integrating into the conscious capacity for flowing with it. Cooper begins more and more to resemble the epitome of the Jeffersonian American for whom if you remember Jefferson writing at age 81 civilization moving inland seemed to be like clouds of light rushing over him towards the inner spaces the interior. And the same with Cooper. His capacity to delineate at least one great individual who as the protagonist for all this is able to integrate it. And of course the keynote. And we'll pause here for just a little bit for a break. The keynote was that Deerslayer who was to become Hawkeye who was to become Pathfinder who had many many names and later on at the end of his life would just simply be called the Old Trapper had learned it from the native Indians. Let's take a break there and we'll go on with this. Here he began to push the canoe from the shore and to make his other preparations for departing. He might have been thus employed a minute when happening to turn his face toward the land. His quick and certain. I told him at a glance the imminent jeopardy in which his life was placed. The black ferocious eyes of the savage were glancing on him like those of the crouching Tiger through a small opening in the bushes and the muzzle of his rifle seemed already to be opening in a line with his own body. Then indeed the long practice of deerslayer as a hunter did him good service. Accustomed to fire with the deer on the bound and often when the precise position of the animal's body had in a manner to be guessed at he used the same expedients here to cock and poise his rifle were the acts of a single moment and a single motion. Then aiming almost without sighting he fired into the bushes where he knew a body ought to be in order to sustain the appalling countenance which alone was visible. There was not time to raise the piece any higher or to take a more deliberate aim. So rapid were his movements that both parties discharged their pieces at the same instant the concussions mingling in one report. The mountains indeed gave back but a single echo. Deerslayer dropped his piece and stood with head erect steady as one of the pines in the calm of a June morning watching the result while the savage gave the yell that has become historical for its appalling influence. Leaped through the bushes and came bounding across the open ground flourishing a tomahawk. Still Deerslayer moved not but stood with his unloaded rifle against his shoulder. While with the hunters habits his hands were mechanically feeling for the powder horn and charger. One about 40ft from his enemy the savage hurled his keen weapon but it was with an eye so vacant and a hand so unsteady and feeble that the young man caught it by the handle as it was flying past him. And at that instant the Indian staggered and fell his whole length on the ground. I know it I know it exclaimed Deerslayer who was already preparing to force a fresh bullet into his rifle. I knowed it must come to this as soon as I got the range from the creature's eyes. A man's sight suddenly and fires quick when his own life is in danger. Yes. I knowed it would come to this. I was about the hundredth part of a second too quick for him or it might have been bad for me. The reptile's bullet has just grazed my side. But say what they will for again a redskin is by no means a certain with powder and ball. As a white man their gifts don't seem to lie that way even against such great as he is in other matters. Isn't downright deadly with the rifle. And so Deerslayer and the response in one motion in a moment has killed his first man. And from this act later on in the book in Deerslayer wherein complications of the plot Deerslayer must give himself up as a captive to the Iroquois to the Huron Indians. It is the reputation for having killed this great warrior that he is given the name Hawkeye and while he is brought into the camp and he is recognized as both a young man and as a man of great prowess of the wilderness he is afforded some courtesy even though his captors are his enemies but as a part of the classical taunting allowed by the tribes an old woman who was a relative of the man killed comes up to taunt Deerslayer and hurl scathing words and take sticks and poke at him and so forth. And the object of course is to bear this with manly men. And Deerslayer does of course. And it's later on when the chief captain of the captive Indians tells the old woman to sit down temporarily. Then comes this. I thank you Huron or Mingo as I most like to call you returned the other. I thank you for the welcome. I thank you for the fire. Each is good in its way and the last is very good. When one has been in a spring as cold as the Glimmerglass even Huron warmth may be pleasant at such a time to a man with a Delaware heart. The paleface says the Indian the paleface. But my brother has a name so great a warrior would not have lived without a name Mingo said the hunter. A little of the weakness of human nature exhibiting itself in the glance of his eye and the color on his cheek. Mingo your brave called me Hawkeye because the man didn't die right away. Deerslayer had set his gun down had helped prop the man against the tree had actually gone and fetched him water. And as the great Huron warrior was dying he gave him the name. The first man that he had killed called him Hawkeye. So the next time that we find him in The Last of the Mohicans he is in fact referred to as Hawkeye. He has become Hawkeye. And later on when he is captured in The Last of the Mohicans because these patterns run in Cooper. All great artists work in patterns and once one gets the sense of a pattern one can appreciate the tremendous extent of development. For instance in Beethoven's Symphony series once one has gone through the great appreciation of the development of style up to the Sixth Symphony and then has seen what he's done with the Sixth and Seventh Symphony the Ninth Symphony seems like a mountain range. It's incredible that an artist could take those patterns and develop it to that extent and complication. The same with Cooper. So that when he is captured in The Last of the Mohicans he is interviewed and they ask him his name and so forth. And Uncas who is the royal prince of the Delawares is addressing the old Tamminen who is the great chief of the people. What name has he gained by his deeds says the old man. The old Indian we call him Hawkeye Uncas replied using the Delaware phrase for his sight never fails. The Mingos know him better by the death he gives their warriors. He is called the Long Rifle and in French La Longue Carabine La Longue Carabine exclaimed Tamanend opening his eyes and regarding the scout sternly. My son has not done well to call him friend Uncas says. I call him so who proves himself such with great calmness and with a steady glance Uncle says if Uncas is welcome among the Delawares then his Hawkeye with his friends. Now the pale face thou hast slain my young men. His name is great for the blows he has struck against the Lenape. The Lenni Lenape is the ancient name for the Indians of that area the Delaware. And it goes on. And the complications turn out that Hawkeye. Hawkeye has been framed all the time that Tamina now begins to realize. And all the braves realize that Hawkeye Deerslayer is actually a friend of theirs and actually in his comportment has shown himself as he says to have a Delaware heart is an Indian education and a Delaware heart. Towards the end of Hawkeye's life and development at the very end when he's 82 or 83 years old in prayer he is on his death scene and again he is surrounded by a circle of Indians this time the Indians of the prairie and he has declaimed in several portions of the Leatherstocking can tell that the Delaware Indians that taught him originally came from the far west beyond the big river beyond the Mississippi. And it turns out that the end of his days are spent there nestled up against the Rocky Mountains among the Pawnee who are the Pawnee the Blackfoot the Dakota were the ancestors about 1500 years before of that tribe known as the Delaware the Lenni Lenape of whom all of them were killed and the tribe species died out in and around 1760s so that at the close of Hawkeye's life of Deerslayer life he is surrounded by a respectful circle of Pawnees all sitting down. And there's one white man whose name is Middleton and one Indian who he has adopted as his son named Hard Heart. And they on both sides of him and everyone is listening to the last words of Hawkeye. Then as the flame drew near to the socket his voice was hushed and there were moments when his attendants doubted whether he still belonged to the living. Middleton who watched each wavering expression of his weather beaten visage with the interest of a keen observer of human nature softened by the tenderness of personal regard fancied he could read the workings of the old man's soul and the strong lineaments of his countenance. Perhaps what the enlightened soldier took for the delusion of mistaken opinion did actually occur. For who has returned from that unknown world to explain by what forms and in what manner matter. He was introduced into its awful precincts without pretending to explain what must ever be a mystery to the quick. We shall simply relate the facts as they occurred. The trapper had remained nearly motionless for an hour. His eyes alone had occasionally opened and shut. When opened his gaze seemed fastened on the clouds which hung around the western horizon reflecting the bright colors and giving form and loveliness to the glorious tints of an American sunset. The hour the calm beauty of the season the occasion all conspired to fill the spectators with solemn awe. Suddenly while musing on the remarkable position in which he was placed Middleton felt the hand which he held grasp his own with incredible power and the old man supported on either side by his friends rose upright to his feet. For a moment he looked about him as if to invite all in presence to listen. That lingering remnant of human frailty and then with a fine military elevation of the head and with a voice that might be heard in every part of that numerous assembly he pronounced the word here a movement so entirely unexpected and the air of grandeur and humility which were so remarkably united in the mean of the trapper together with the clear and uncommon force of his utterance produced a short period of confusion in the faculties of all present. When Middleton and Hard Heart each of whom had involuntarily extended a hand to support the form of the old man turned to him again they found that the subject of their interest was removed forever beyond the necessity of their care. And so Deerslayer Hawkeye dies standing with the declaration of here to the clouds in the sense of the great figure of really a natural religious man whose spiritual genius wonderfully delineated by Cooper and also the epitome of the westward movement of the United States of its development the carrying of the interface between the Indian and the European consciousness the first real strong interracial inner civilization interface moving westward and developing itself. All of this presented with an art form that was commensurate in its structure with the message the content which was floated by its nature. Now it's quite interesting to note that just as soon as this capacity was being developed by Cooper who was the first great literary artist of the United States the first great visual artist of the United States was already at work and already plying his work and that was James McNeill Whistler. Now Whistler had been born in 1834 and as a youngster had his parents had moved to Saint Petersburg Russia for a number of years had been brought back. Whistler had been enrolled at West Point and was there for several years almost three years and it was at West Point where his military capacities were not up to the standard for West Point. So he was not matriculated. But he learned that he was a very capable engraver and did some of the earliest engravings of the American coastline for military installations and so forth. And in 1855 just four years after Cooper died fairly young 62 Whistler already had moved to Europe had already moved to Paris already was developing his art and four years later in 1859 he moved to London where he spent most of the rest of his life developing his artwork. But you will see in some of the slides of both Cooper's work and of Whistler's work a remarkable kind of a resonance because the aspect of Whistler's artistic mentality that developed most radically was his capacity to have an open interface with another civilization rather than the Indian with the Oriental because it was Whistler who first discovered the works of Hiroshige who first brought that fantastic consciousness of the world of the Japanese print and Japanese art to Paris to Europe to the Western art world. And very very quickly more quickly than one could suppose if one were just learning the ropes by ABC's Whistler within a few years was doing the kind of artwork both in content and in form that one would have recognized as being in the tradition of Asian art of far Eastern art especially with the Japanese aesthetic. And Whistler himself and his writings began to write almost in mystical converted tones of saying that color needs to be embroidered upon the canvas so that its reality presents itself pure. And of course like Cooper Whistler covered all of this capacity all of this discovery with an abrasive personality keeping people away. Whistler's great social book was called The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Britain in the 1890s and he was proud of it. Whistler got involved with a fantastic lawsuit against John Ruskin the great art critic. Ruskin had written of one of Whistler's paintings called The Falling Rocket which you'll see is a piece of junk and worse and worse and worse. And Whistler of course took him to court and spent almost all of his money. And the judge said well Whistler is right. And we will award you one farthing in damages because it's junk art anyway. And so all of these great cartoons of the time show this feisty little Whistler being given this one farthing piece by the judge and Whistler had to hold this great big auction and had to sell off everything that he owned all of his Japanese prints all of his kimonos all of his ginger jars because he was a great collector of all this stuff. He was the first great Western collector of Oriental art. He had a beautiful three storey house in London which he had built specially for him. All the brick was all painted beautiful white and the ceiling was sort of a slate gray. All of it was color coordinated and beautiful and filled with his treasures. And he had to sell everything. And he left London for a year. He went off to Venice and made a series of 40 lithographs which when he came back with his portfolio he made scads of money. You just cleaned up and of course became lionized and became in fact the head for several years of the British Art Academy. He became a legend in his own time. The fierce American. Everybody wanted to be around him. Everyone wanted to be sued by him. He had great times with Oscar Wilde and Gilbert and Sullivan had a spectacular opera and musical. And Whistler said they stole all this from him. And so he was involved in all kinds of lawsuits. He finally fell in love. He had many mistresses during his life but he fell in love with a fat woman named Trixie who just suited him to a T and he loved her madly all her life until she died. And he was totally happy with her. So the vicissitudes of an artist and Whistler oddly enough lived until 1903. So it's interesting that with Cooper and in Whistler the beginnings of American art literature and the visual arts. We have two socially cantankerous individuals two great mystical aestheticians two fantastic individuals who whose lives overlapped considerably. And the one born when Franklin was still alive and the other died in 1903. So that we have two individuals that begin American art overlapping like this. The similar nature who span the entirety of the 19th century and their sensibilities and their accomplishments. Quite amazing. And of course the Cooper Whistler tandem that I've set somewhat before you this week. And I'll give you some slides to fortify the Whistler part sets a wonderful stage because right in the middle of that comes two individuals who were very close friends who produced a revolution in human consciousness. Emerson and Thoreau for whom the realities of the American wilderness and the Orient met very very easily and perfectly in the two hands of New England gentlemen. And we'll see that next week. But let's take a look at some slides now and see what we can do about listening. That's Cooper I think. Yeah. This is Cooper when he was 61. This is taken from the frontispiece of one of his books. A tough individual. Now Fenimore is his mother's name. He took that in 1826 to preserve her memory. And that's how the venom got into his name. A spry mystical individual but living in a pioneer society and in a social level where he could not express his mystical inclinations so readily and covered it up with all kinds of social qualities. But as you can see his work reveals this is Otsego Hall which burned down to the ground about 4 or 5 years after Cooper's death. The ancestral home of the Cooper's. And you can see set in the midst of the wilderness the palatial English manor the fantastic rolled lawns and the beginnings of the placements of trees and so forth. This is an illustration many of Cooper's illustrators were absolute fools. They did not read the works. They made up all kinds of illustrations that had nothing to do with what Cooper was talking about. And many people who have never read Cooper's works have looked at the illustrations and have thought oh this is what it's about. This is Deerslayer helping the Huron that he has just killed the first man he has killed helping him to a drink of water. And this is a poignant moment in Deerslayer life when he becomes Hawkeye and when he realizes that he can carry his primordial humanity even over the threshold of having entered into as Cooper says his first warpath. This is an illustration from the Pathfinder the mystical glimmer of that river with It's not quite a waterfall but like a rock sheet and canoe with the two inhabitants. The great American wilderness. This is such a poignant image and near the end of this lecture series because you have to realize that all of these developments happened over a hundred years ago. And when we get to late 20th century American artists like Morris Graves and Alan Hovhaness we come to very very high level of civilization. And I will bring this slide back when we do Morris Graves because a lot of Graves' work in the 1950s and 60s very similar to this kind of mood this kind of an aesthetic and especially this kind of an inner imagery that uses the shimmering glow of light for a transformational energy. It's almost like matter being transformed into energy right before our experience. And we of course if we are integrated in following it transform also from matter to energy. Last of the Mohicans and this is La Longue Caribine Hawkeye wrestler leaning against his rifle looking very much like an Indian himself. This is from The Prairie. This is a religious image of Deerslayer. Hawkeye become the Old Trapper moving west into the sunset. The Conestoga wagon. The idea and I think I've mentioned it twice now. The notion of the virgin land. The symbol of the West as an archetype for the developing American character. And I know I've often remarked that whenever there's been a rocket sent up from Vandenberg Air Force Base and the contrails of the rocket take those beautiful pretzel like shapes in the western sky. Again it's this sort of imagery that's still with us still formative in our psyches and in our mentalities. This is an illustration also from The Prairie by Dali one of the best illustrators of Cooper. One can see in the very background the Devils postpile. Incidentally these are close encounters of the third kind. These are the two Indians Hard Heart and maturity having their battle is not quite in focus. It must be decided. This is it. Focus. It's my eyes that are focused. So one doesn't get the dramatic effect that Cooper has of these two long lines of the Warriors and the two Chiefs coming in between to fight on the narrow sandbar which is why they're so close because there's no land to fight on except this narrow sandbar. And Edgar Allan Poe incidentally wrote a great criticism about this battle this very battle in this very novel by Cooper saying that the ultimate tension and in his words terror and in the literary experience was the closeness the proximity of space. And all the action is cramped together. And he got his whole aesthetic for like the cast and crew and so forth from reading Cooper's description. Primordial wilderness. This kind of a shimmering presence that is almost a moving spirit in the midst of all this noble savage. That idea which will be repeated later on in about another generation by the quest to find again there must be some place on the planet where the noble savage still lives and will find this fantastic quest to go out to the Pacific Ocean to go to the far distant Isles. Herman Melville seeking for the primordial man someplace in some island in the Pacific. He must still exist. And we find people like Gauguin searching for it. And Robert Louis Stevenson that somehow primordial man can still be found somewhere on the planet. And though he's disappeared from the American scene he must still exist in some paradisical Island in the Pacific. Brave archetypal images of expectation. And of course if he doesn't exist in the Pacific perhaps some planet perhaps some star somewhere would be a primordial being through contact with which we may re-establish our own primordial interior vision wisdom. …is on the right. Here's a… He affected the costumes with great flair and he adopted the moniker here for a while. I don't know if you can see the brush stroke the way in which the volumes mass on the canvas purely by motion of the brush stroke and the color and the way in which the tapestry of the background becomes almost like a model of waterfall. Of an indefinite middle ground. This is of course a terrible slide of a great painting Whistler's Mother arrangement in gray and black. Many of his works had abstract geometrical descriptions of them assigned by the artist not out of caprice but very much in the light of what Cooper was doing that these were universal focuses of universal energy flows and that this was in fact an arrangement an event we would call nuclear physics today. Self-portrait later on in life and I think you can see almost the same way in which those who have been coming quite a bit know I favor Rembrandt quite a bit especially his self-portraits was there here very very similar in his regard in the eye the posture and his self portraiture the same way as Rembrandt the character emerging out of a massing of volume the light being an intermediate sort of inner glow the body of the painter. This white smock is actually just a scraped negative space volume which sports almost as if it were a volcanic eruption in black haloed negativity of the negative great metaphysical artist. The butterfly was his symbol and he used it very much like Hiroshige or some of the other Oriental artists would use a stamp or a sign. This is on its side. Oddly enough this is the way John Ruskin saw this painting The Falling Rocket. He said it was a mess. And so we're not outside. We could see that it is in fact twilight fireworks in London. But it's difficult to make that case with this particular rendition. Let's see if this next slide will. This will be a little less abstract. There are prints of Hiroshima that are almost deadringer cousins for this. The great bridge. Tokyo London and Whistler. Here with A Nocturne in Blues is doing something with space and color and light and volume that simply had not been done before… it had been approached occasionally by Rembrandt and some of his last portraits but it was really Whistler here conscientiously working with the Asian art tradition and his own Western capacities of blending in such a way as to produce works that were just literally not seen in his own time. This unfortunately another poor slob. But we had to have. This was done in 1871 1872 and the flow of color on the canvas there this green gray which is the flow of the river the Thames River as we can see along here and the warehouses on the far side. But what's being presented here is a seamless fabric of the cosmos as seen through a color modulation. It's all of one piece. And that figure the man is in a timeless suspension in the flow of an energy modulation and not there as a drawn-in static figure in a composition. If Whistler had lived in the 1970s instead of the 1870s we would have really had something like this again. The kind of that's a balance in the middle of the slide picture. It's not a part of the competition. Here again you can see with the brush stroke what Whistler is aiming toward that instead of having static figures one has focuses of flow on the right. Here the arm of the woman is a motion of the brush which might have started out to be a part of the clothing or part of that movement and with it coming inland gives us the feeling of an arm. But it isn't just an arm because we can see quite clearly without any illusion without any optical change that we're dealing here with flow and mass and that form comes from our apprehension of its purposes. I guess we inserted that by mistake. Yeah I put it in. I don't use it. Sorry. There's two of the two of those I think. Oh This is from later on. This is when we get to Longfellow. This is Nokomis was probably the last one. We'll get to that. We'll come back to the Indians in about three weeks and see that great changes have happened that after Cooper we find we will find that Longfellow went back into the primordial beginnings of the spiritual development of the American Indian and found the great chief and law giver of Hiawatha and wrote a great epic about him. Mr. Hall incidentally mentioned Hiawatha in Sunday's lecture. Yeah for those of you who were here. Well next week we'll take the New England sages Emerson and Thoreau. Take a look at them.