Landscape and Realization
Presented on: Thursday, April 11, 1985
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic America: Our Critical Heritage
(James Fenimore Cooper, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Adams, Mark Twain)
Presentation 2 of 13
Landscape and Realization:
The American Wilderness as a New Home; The Sea as a Place of Adventure and Freedom
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, April 11, 1985
Transcript:
Well, I think we should begin. I see a few friends that have managed to see through the illusion of other commitments and have discovered that something quite real is obtained. Most of you realize, I think by now, that spiritual form is not identifiable in a profane way. That profane sight does not see spiritual form. It becomes invisible to it. It moves in inscrutable ways. It simply doesn't exist, because spiritual form is not based upon things; not based upon material ______ (? 1:30). It is an arrangement of the material in relational ways so that the unity of the whole becomes visible. And it is that that is spiritual form.
So the profane eye does not belong to the child or the primordial human being, but belongs to those who have duped themselves, who've grown away from nature, grown away from themselves, grown away from their heritage, and must then recapture it. It must be tutored again, educated again, to see spiritual form. And that perception of spiritual form is but just a new beginning, a new ABC. We have to relearn the whole world, and there is much to be done actually.
James Fenimore Cooper is one of the real classic writers of spiritual form. He is one of the most imitated of all writers and even in his time he was legendary. The great American historian Parkman, who went to Southern Italy, Sicily, in the 1860s, was surprised to find in the most ordinary homes translations of Fenimore(?al) Cooper(?al) on the shelf. He was household reading for the world. He was the first great international artist and we always couple him with Scott, but he was much more profound than Scott. For Scott was not an artist. He was a romantic dramatist, but he was not an artist. But Cooper was an artist. And Cooper's works have an affinity with painting. Cooper always sets the scene so that the artistic eye, the sense of artistic composition, comes into play. By his design is to highlight and make apparent spiritual form, rather than just artistic achievement. And so is very difficult to see. His greatest triumph was in making visible the new person, the American, who was quite new to the stage of the world. And in fact even today is invisible largely, even to ourselves. For that person, the American, as a spiritual form, has a tremendous mythological content. There is an archetypal formation that's active.
Just to give you an example, one of the most indelible creations of the last of the wild in American literature, was the character of Shane, the Western gunman. I think maybe you might have seen the film that was made, wasn't it George Stevens who directed Shane about 30 years ago? The figure of Shane is very much an update and a recasting of the hero of The Leatherstocking Tales. He's an American hero. He has a tremendously complex character and nature. And what he delivers is that he is going to forego his sense of adventure to allow his energies to go into the land, into the families who are going to live on the land, become at onement with the landscape. That somehow man and the landscape belong together, just as any Song (sp?) Dynasty Chinese landscape painting.
Man reveals himself as spiritual form in the landscape in which he is conscious of. It is his conscious composition of the landscape to a dramatic setting for himself, for his own mobility in that landscape, that allows for the sense of reality to flow between he and nature. And man and nature find this harmony, this paradise as it were, together. The old image of the ultimate landscape is the Garden of Eden. The, Persian, the Old Persian word for it was paradise. Man in paradise is godlike. All men in paradise form a community of the elect within whose care it possible to reflect the face of the divine, which would be invisible otherwise; which in no profane way can be seen at all. And it is only in the relationality of spiritual human beings together, being together, and their being together a form of ultimate worship, that the face of the Divine is revealed; that the form is discernable, becomes conscious.
The image of the West in American history was like rediscovering the Garden of Eden, but it was a very peculiar event, because it was not in one location. It was the West en mas, en todo; not only the West as this large, huge landscape, a whole continent the size of Europe combined, but there was a tremendous elan moving across that landscape, which has been identified, which has been culled by meaning. And the name that we call it is The Frontier. And The Frontier was like a spiritual threshold moving across this garden paradise of promise and possibility, and the American spirit rode that wave, crested on that tidal verging all across the continent carrying with it the tremendous potent content, archetypal content.
And as it moved, the consciousness of the American psyche, in its collective nature, opened up as it hadn't opened up for thousands of years. Look what tremendous development came from the move from the Sinai Wilderness into the holy land. And look at the tremendous difference in scale between moving across the Jordan River into a few dozen miles of Canan (sp? 10:14) and moving over the Aleganeas (sp?) into two and a half thousand miles of land. It still has not been digested; it still has not been comprehended. Well there have been books. In 1950 The Virgin Land won all the historical prizes, sub entitled the American West as Symbol and Myth. But this was a development of a thesis that had been first mooted back in 1920 by Frederick Jackson Turner in this famous article The Significance of The Frontier in American History. It was published in this final revised form in 1920, but had been given in Chicago in 1893; the Chicago of Frank Lloyd Wright, and Louie Sullivan, and John Dewey, a tremendous time. The Chicago which was then just settling down from its Frontier era that had just taken place the generation before, and now it was becoming self-conscious that somehow this was mid-America. It was not the beginning, it was not the Atlantic coast, it was not the end. There was still development going on to the far West, but somehow mid-America, the heart, and Chicago in the 1890s became very self-conscious of itself as a locale of great importance. It was a fulcrum for the American experience and that somehow that had to be understood. It wasn't just an idea that some professors or some metaphysicians would have, it was in the air. And the American people have always wanted to have the story told straight. Let us understand what it is, whatever it is.
And so the significance of The Frontier in American history, and there was a tremendous development here, and he says that we have misunderstood everything by limiting our focus to the Atlantic coast, to the development of the colonies, to the development of the United States there, that somehow we have missed the dynamic show. That this tremendous dynamic surge of the Frontier is the guiding, defining, creating edge of the consciousness which we should engender in ourselves, and ask ourselves again and again. And so books like The Virgin Land, books like The Far Western Frontier, by Ray Billington, books like Wilderness in the American Mind by Roderick Nash, published by Neo (sp? 13:27) just in 1967. There aren't many, but the list goes on.
These forces must focus in someone. This is the rule of life. There must be someone in whose integrity of living this content and this form manifests. This is the rule of life.
Let's look at Shane for a few minutes. Let's look at three passages. It's told from the standpoint of a young boy, an adolescent boy, who sees everything going on, but the author gives him an added insight. Shane is teaching him about guns, just as Leatherstocking, his most important symbol - not a possession, but a symbol -- will be his rifle. And for Shane, the rifle is now condensed to the handgun. He says "If it's speed you're after Bob, don't split the move into parts. Don't pull, cock, aim and fire. Slip back the hammer as you bring your gun up and squeeze the second it's uplevel, one motion." Zen, the samurai, in a new form, one motion. One need not aim. Mr. Hall (sp?) recounted one time where he was learning bow and arrow, archery, and he went out to the Morongo Indian Reservation in the 20s, and the Indians there said "you're doing it all wrong. You are aiming the bow and the arrow at the target. You are breaking up the flow. Shoot in one motion from the hip. Be at one with the target. You never miss." And he said he finally mastered that, early in the 20s. That's how to shoot, that style, Indian style.
This legacy of the Indian to the American is how to live and move in a unity. Don't break it up. So Shane, it comes down to Shane telling a little boy, and the little boy says:
"Well, how do you aim it then? How do you get a sight on it?" "No need to. Learn to hold it so the barrel's right in line with the fingers as if they were straight out. You won't have to waste time bringing it high to take a sight. Just point it low and quick and easy, like pointing a finger."
The creation -- the creation of unity. Michelangelo couldn't have painted it better. There's no Sistine Chapel as gorgeous as the expanse of this psyche, like pointing a finger. As the words came, he was doing it.
"The old gun was veering on some target over by the corral and the hammer was clicking at the empty cylinder. Then the hand around the gun whitened and the fingers slowly opened and the gun fell to the ground. The hand sank to his side stiff and awkward, he raised his head, and the mouth was a bitter gash in his face. His eyes were fastened on the mountains climbing in the distance. "Shane, Shane, what's the matter?" He did not hear me. He was back somewhere along the dark trail of the past. He took a deep breath and I could see the effort run through him as he dragged himself into the present, and a realization of a boy staring at him. He beckoned to me to pick up the gun, and when I did he leaned forward and spoke earnestly. "Listen Bob, a gun is just a tool. No better, no worse than any tool. Remember, it's as good or as bad as the man who carries it."
It's this integrity which became a code, which is still a code. It is still here in its American version. It is so archetypally present. But there's something hidden in there, which the hero is conscious of. There's a darkness. After the action of Shane when he's going into town to shoot it out with the chief gunslinger, the bad guy (in the film he was played by Jack Palance), and the little boy runs down ahead to try and see this, and in the moonlight and the starlight, he sees his friend Shane and suddenly it isn't his Shane anymore.
"He was tall and terrible. There in the road looming up gigantic in the mystic half-light. He was the man I saw that first day, a stranger, dark and forbidding, foraging his lone way out of an unknown past, into the utter loneliness of his own immovable and indistinct defiance. He was the symbol of all the dim, formless imaginings of danger and terror, in the untested realm of human potentialities beyond my understanding. The impact of the menace that marked him was like a physical blow."
And of course he goes in and the gunslinger is, is, is gone. And Shane is gone. When he has to act, when he has to bring his potential into action against evil, they both go. It's like a neutralizing, and neither are there any longer. But something must remain, and what must remain is life. Life must remain. When the archetypal energies balance each other, there must be a tilt toward life. It must continue. This is why Isis displaced Zeus in the ancient world. Life must continue. Psychic power is made to negate itself, but life must continue, it must be rooted and just as in The Odyssey, where the final recognition by Penelope of Odysseus, she's trying to test him... "How do I know it's you? You've been gone 20 years. I've had all kinds of suitors bringing me all kinds of stories. How do I know it's you?" And he says "Only I and you know." He says "have my bed moved out into the hallway then. I'll sleep there and in the morning we'll talk more." So she commands a servant to move the bed into the hallway and Odysseus shouts "Have you then broken our vows? For the bed is founded on a bedpost, which was the trunk of an Olive tree growing in that space and we built the room around it. And I myself crafted the living tree into the post that is our bed. Has someone then cut this tree down in order to allow the bed to be moved?" And she, quivering, fearful because she knows that is the sign of his integrity. He is the only one who knows this, remembers this, had the prescience to build in this way, the foundation of their unity, on the core of the world tree.
The same thing comes up in Shane. The two parents of the little boy, the man who has tried to vie with shame for the boy's parental figure, father figure. The mother who is torn between her love for two different kinds of men, finally deciding to stay with her man.
He says "Marian I'm sick of the sight of this valley and all that's in it. If I tried to stay here now, my heart wouldn't be in it anymore. I know it's hard on you and the boy, but we'll have to pull up stakes and move on. Montana maybe. I've heard there's good land for the claiming up that way." Mother heard him though. She had let my hand go and stood erect so angry that her eyes snapped and her chin quivered. But she heard him though. "Joe, Joe Starrett?" Her voice fairly cracked which was rich with emotion that was more than her anger. "So you'd run out on Shane just like he's here, really to stay?" "But Marian, you don't understand. He's gone." "He's not gone. He's here. He's in this place. He's in this place he gave us. He's all around us, and in us, and he always will be." She ran to the tall corner post, to the one Shane had set, she beat at it with her hands. "Here Joe. Take it. Pull it down." Father stared at her in amazement, but he did as she said. No one could have denied her in that moment. He took hold of the post and pulled at it. He shook his head, braced his feet, and strained at it with all his strength. And the big muscles of his shoulders and back knotted and bulged till I thought this shirt too would shred, creaking right along the rails, and the post moved ever so slightly, and the ground at the base showed little cracks fanning out, but the rails held and the posts stood." Father turned from it, beads of sweat breaking on his face. A light creeping up his drawn cheeks. "See Joe? See what I mean? We have roots here now we can never tear loose."
It's this archetypal energy that the hero delivers to his people. And the American Western hero rides that most perilous of all tidal waves, the shock wave, the threshold of The Frontier moving through Eden in a vast scale. And it's Cooper who alerts us to this for the first time in American history. He's the one who senses that it's actually happening, it's actually obtaining. It was Franklin and Jefferson that first had the vision. It was particularly Jefferson who made sure that all of the elements were there, that there was a West, that there was a Frontier, there was movement. And like master spiritual architects, once the basics were there and in motion, they withdrew. "They'll have to find it some way. We can't do it for them. They will have to make this life for themselves, and they will have to realize it." And it's this quality, the hero, the American Western Hero, who makes his first appearance in the world in Cooper's works, and he has many different names.
Finally, he's just called the Old Man, almost like the Chinese Laudsa (sp? 26:02). It's no name, it just means the old one. The Old One knows. He realizes that he must carry himself with equanimity, that his personal dignity is not based upon the equanimity of limbo, but upon the equanimity of full self-consciousness. In the prayer, there is a very learned preacher who is about to be molested and lose his life to the Indians, and the old trapper is there. And the preacher is trying to get the old trapper to speak for him: "Save my life, say something to these Indians." Then he says "veribal, vaditor, or hunter or trapper?" So that this consulate oped (sp? 27:12) "I rejoice greatly in meeting thee again. I fear that the precious time, which had been allotted me in order to complete a mighty labor, is drawing to a premature close." They're going to kill him. "And I would gladly unburden my mind to one who, if not a pupil of science, has at least some of the knowledge that civilization imparts to its meanest subjects. Doubtless many and earnest inquiries will be made after my fate by the learned societies of the world, and perhaps expeditions be sent into these regions to remove any doubt which may arise on so important a subject. I esteem myself happy that a man who speaks the vernacular is present to preserve the record of my end. You say that after a well-spent and glorious life, I died a martyr to science and a victim to mental darkness, as I expect to be particularly calm and abstract at my last moments. If you add a few details concerning the fortitude and scholastic dignity with which I met my death, it may serve to encourage future aspirants for similar honors." And he goes on with this.
And the old man, in response to this hyperbole, lent an attentive ear to this melancholy appeal, and apparently he reflected on every side of the important question before he would presume to answer.
"I take it friend, physicianer," he at length bravely replied, "that the chances of life and death in your particular case depend altogether on the will of providence, as it may be pleased to manifest it through accursed windings of Indian cunning. For my own part, I see no great difference in the main end to be gained, in as much as it can matter, no one greatly, yourself excepted, whether you live or die."
He delivers ultimate equanimity, and he conveys that. He says it doesn't really matter whether you live or die. Your whole life is in the hands of providence and it's going to work through these Indians here and that's the truth of this situation.
The preacher, the physician, says "Would you account the fall of a cornerstone from the foundation of the edifice of learning a matter of indifference to contemporaries or posterities? Besides, my aged associate he reproachfully added, the interest that a man has in his own existence is by no means trifling, however it may be eclipsed by his devotion to more general and philanthropic feelings." "What I would say is this" resumed the old trapper, he was far from understanding all the subtle distinctions with which his more learned companion so often saw fit to embellish his discourse, "there is but one birth and one death to all things. Be it hound or be it deer, be it redskin or white. Both are in the hands of the Lord, it being as unlawful for man to strive to hasten the one as impossible to prevent the other. But I will not say that something may not be done to put the last moment aside, for a while at least, and therefore, it is a question that anyone has a right to put his own wisdom, how far he will go, how much pain he will endure and suffer, to lengthen our time that may have been too long already. Many a dreary winter and scorching summer has gone by since I have turned to the right hand or to the left, to add an hour to a life that has already stretched beyond four score years. I keep myself as ready to answer to name as a soldier at evening roll call."
Remember when he dies at the end, he sits calmly for about two hours, his old bones seemingly gone? And then at the end, he stands straight up and he says "here." And everyone is shocked and they reach for him and he's already gone. Dead. Waiting for his name.
"I keep myself as ready to answer to my name as a soldier at evening roll call. In my judgment, if your cases are left to Indian tempers, the policy of the Great Sioux will lead his people to suffice you all and sacrifice you all. Nor do I put much dependence on his seeming love for me, therefore it becomes a question, whether you are ready for such a journey. Are you ready to go? And if being ready, whether this is not as good a time to make a start as another. Should my opinion be asked, thus far, I will give it in your favor. That is to say it is my belief your life has been innocent enough, touching any great offenses that you may have committed, though honesty compels me to add that I think all you can lay claim to, on the score of activity and deeds, will not amount to anything worth naming in the great account."
The scale of heaven is vast. Don't worry about the personal details. Worry about the integrity of the being. It is the integrity of the being that can be committed and that is resonant with unity. All of the details are negligible. And so he goes on with this: This is the way the Old Man responds.
When he was young, when he was first twenty years old, he was called Deer Slayer. That was his name. And, in Deer Slayer, there's a whole interesting section here where his name comes up and he is asked, several times, about his name. And in the Deer Slayer, I don't know if you remember, you probably haven't read it for a long time. It takes place on the lake Glimmer Glass, and there are two daughters, one of them rather light-headed, named "Heady." And so Deer Slayer comes in and he gets interested because he's been raised by the Indians, and the Indians say that light-headed people are cared for directly by God. The Great Spirit directly cares for them.
And so one has a respect and an openness with such people because one is in the presence of the Divine. And so Deer Slayer comes in, and he's looking around and sizing everything up with his minute eye, and he sees Heady and they start talking. And she says "Well tell me your names then, added Heady, looking up at him artlessly "and then maybe I'll tell your character." She has the sight. So young Deer Slayer is going to give her now his complete history of names so that she may read his character truthfully and tell him. "There's some truth in that, I'll not deny" he said, "though it often fails. Men are deceived in other men's characters." Men are deceived in other men's characters. This is where we go astray. Because you see character is a spiritual form. Now only by being able to delay a spiritual form, as we talked about at the beginning tonight, can a human being be seen. Otherwise they are invisible; their real nature is undisclosed. We have only the aggregate, the collection of data, and it never adds up. It's like a sieve grok (? 36:20), getting finer and finer, and the essence is forever lost.
"Men are deceived in other men's characters and frequently given names they by no means deserve. You can see the truth of this in the Mingo names, which in their own time, signify the same things as the Delaware names, at least so they tell me, for I know little of that tribe unless it be by report. And no one can say that they are as honest or as upright a Nation, I put no great dependence therefore on names." "Tell me all your names" repeated the girl, curiously, for her mind was too simple to separate things from professions, and she did attach importance to a name. "I want to know what to think of you." "Well, certain? searching? (37:17), I have no objection and you shall hear them all. In the first place then, I am Christian, a white boy, like yourself and my parents had a name that came down from father to son as is a part of their gifts. My father was called Bumppo, and I was named after him, of course, the given name being Nathaniel, or Natty, as most people saw fit to term it." (? 37:44) "Yes, yes, Natty and Heady" interrupted the girl quickly, and looking out from her work again with a smile. You are Natty and I am Heady. Though you are Bumppo and I am Hudder, Bumppo isn't as pretty as Hudder, is it?" "Why that's as people fancy. Bumppo has no lofty sound I admit, and yet men have bumped (? 38:06) through the world with it, and did not go by this name, however, very long for the Delawares soon found out, or thought they found out that I was not given to lying. And they called me firstly 'Straight Tongue.'"
When he was a little boy first adopted by the Delaware he was called "Straight Tongue."
"That's a good name" interrupted Heady, earnestly, and in a positive manner. Don't tell me there's no virtue in names." "I didn't say that, for perhaps I deserve to be so called, lies being no favorites with me, as they are with some. After a while they found out I was quick of foot and then they called me "The Pigeon," which as you know has a swift wing, and flies in a direct line." "That was a pretty name" explained Heady. "Pigeons are pretty birds." Most things that God has created are pretty in their way, my good gal, though they get to be deformed by mankind so as to change their natures as well as their appearance. From carrying messages and striking blind trails, I got at last to following the hunters, when it was thought I was quicker and surer at finding the game than most lads. And then they called me the "Lap Ear," as they said I partook of the sagacity of a hound." "That's not so pretty" answered Heady. "I hope you didn't keep that name long." "Not after I was rich enough to buy a rifle" returned the other, betraying a little pride through his usually quiet and subdued manner.
The rifle you see.
"Then, when it was seen I could keep a wigwam in venison, and in time I got the name of Deer Slayer. (Deer Slayer.) Which is what I now bear, homely as some will think it, who set more value (? 40:05) on a scalp of a fellow mortal than on the horns of a buck."
And in the course of the novel Deer Slayer, within about 50 pages he gets his new name, because for the first time he kills a man. And the way that he kills a man is the way in which he gets the name because the man that he kills, the Indian man that he kills, gives him the name. The new name. The name that he will bear for the rest of his maturity. And this is how it happens.
They were out on the Glimmer Glass and there were several canoes. And there were fierce Indians, the Mingos surrounding the lake. So they were trying to keep out on the lake, and one of the canoes drifts in towards shore in the early morning. And so Deer Slayer goes after it, to bring this canoe back. And he gets in there, and there's a Brave, a very powerful Brave, a Mingo, who has taken this canoe. And they start discussing this canoe; the ownership of this canoe.
"Two canoes" he said, in the deep guttural tone of his race, holding up the number of fingers he mentioned by way of preventing mistakes. "One for you, one for me." "No, no Mingo, that will never do. You will neither, and neither shall you have as long as I can prevent it. I know it's war 'tween your people and mine, but that's no reason why human mortals should slay each other like savages and savage creatures that might meet in the woods. Go your way then and leave me to go mine. The world is large enough for us both and when we meet fairly in battle, why the Lord will order the fate of each of us." "Good," explained the Indian. "My brother missionary, Great Talk, all about Manitou." "Not so. Not so warrior. I'm not good enough for the Moravians, (?) and I am too good for most of the other vagabonds that preach about the woods. No, now I'm only a hunter as yet, though before the peace is made 'tis likely enough there will be occasion to strike a blow on some of your people. Still, I wish it be done in fair fight, and not in a quarrel about the ownership of a miserable canoe." "Good. My brother very young, but he is very wise. Little Warrior, Great Talker, chief sometimes in council." "I don't know this nor do I say it Injun" (?) returned Deer Slayer, coloring a little, at the il-concealed (sp? 43:09) sarcasm of the other's manner. "Good. My brother has two scalp, grey underneath tother, old wisdom, young tongue."
And they go on this way, and finally Deer Slayer says "I'm going to take both canoes and row out and you stay here and when there's a situation we'll have it out with each other, but not over a canoe." And he starts to row out and as he rows out, he senses that there's been a change. That the sarcasm of the other has suddenly come into manifestation, has frozen, has become static. And he feels this. And as he feels this, he visualizes or sees, the hardness of the eyes of the man in the bush. That in doing this, he responds to that image instantly, turning and shooting his rifle instantly, coordinating it all by this visualization. And of course, the moment that he turns and he shoots, the Indian is running with his hatchet and he, he is already dead. The Indian's eyes are already glazed......
END OF SIDE 1
[He is already dead.] The Indian's eyes are already glazed, but he keeps alive his consciousness long enough because as he throws the hatchet Deer Slayer, because he's in this mode, this __________ (??? 00:31) integrated unified mode, is able to reach up with his hand and he grabbed the hatchet in mid-air by the handle, and holds it down. And the Indian, who realizes that he has been shot by spiritual sight, that the young man has grabbed this because he is one with the woods and everything, mutters out to him as he comes to care for him... he shot him, he's going to be dead, he brings him water and he's caring for him and he says "Your name is Hawkeye, and you have that, you have the sharpness of the eye of the hawk." This is fraught with all kinds of implications people don't usually draw. Horace is the hawk, is the spiritual hawk. It's the eye of the sun. It's the eye of the world. It's the single unblinking eye of nature which sees accurately in terms of real spiritual form; in terms of the composition of the material world. And the old Indian brave recognizes that this youngster sees in that way. No way he could have seen him materially; no way he could have shot him, taken his life. So he calls him Hawkeye, and that's how he gets his name. And then Deer Slayer carries this new name and this experience back with him and he realizes that he never again will be Deer Slayer simply. He is now Hawkeye, and the development of the work from then on is the amplification of the increased ethical span that now comes to the man who is Hawkeye.
His close Indian friend, Chingachguk (sp ?? 02:32), actually that name means Great Serpent. The Great Serpent. And that's his friend, that's his blood brother. And the Great Serpent, in his serpent ambulation, creates a presence, a threshold through which Hawkeye sees accurately. It's because of his having learned from the Indians in this way that he now is able to manifest this. And Hawkeye becomes the first western hero. Deer Slayer is still a part of the Atlantic Sea Board experience. Hawkeye becomes the first western American hero, the archetypal man to step through the threshold and to become at one with the landscape. Free in the landscape. And thus opening up and fraying for the first time in thousands of years this archetypal energy of the spiritual hero whose very movement rights reality. And it becomes this that's the integrated core, the spiritual form that amplified this what we call the Frontier. It's the movement of the western hero that creates this shockwave of the Frontier, that illuminates and coordinates the Garden of Eden all over again with ______________, (?? 04:14) with that drama of life.
Well I guess we better take a break, the machines are having their say. (APPLAUSE)
The old Indian has been shot by Deer Slayer and he says "what is your name?" "Deer Slayer is the name I bear now, though the Delaware's have said that when I get back from this war path, I shall have a more manly title provided I can earn one." "That good name for boy, poor name for warrior. You get better quick, no fear there." The savage had sufficient strength, one of the strongest excitements he felt to raise a hand and tap the young man on his breast. "I Sartan, fingered lightening, aim death, (?? 05:15) great warrior soon. No Deer Slayer, Hawkeye, Hawkeye, Hawkeye, shake hand." And so they shook hands, he dies. "Aahh, his spirit has fled," said Deer Slayer in a suppressed melancholy voice, "aah's me. Well to this we must all come sooner or later. And he is happiest, let his skin be what color it may who is best fitted to meet it. Here lies the body of no doubt a brave warrior, and the soul is already flying towards its heaven or hell, whether that be a happy hunting ground of play scant of game, regents of glory. According to Maregan (sp?? 06:06) Doctrine there were flames of fire. So it happens to as regards other matters. "No warrior. Hand of mind shall never molest your stealth, and so your soul may rest in peace on the point of making a decent appearance when the body comes to join it, in your own land of spirits."
And so Hawkeye is born.
At the beginning of Deer Slayer, which was the last novel in The Leatherstocking Series, Cooper wrote it in 1841. He was 50 years old. He knew what he was doing. It was a talisman of a coming of age, of maturity, in a very special way. And at the very beginning of the book Deer Slayer, Cooper lays out a (?? the?) field of the novel itself. He says, he writes, "On the human imagination, events produce the effects of time." Thus he who has travelled far and seen much is apt to fancy, that he has lived long and the history that most abounds in important incidents, soonest assumes the aspect of antiquity. In no other way can we account for the venerable air (error??) that is already gathering around American annals (sp?? 07:40). And of course by 1841 the tremendous opening of the West was already moving a pace.
Cooper's making self-conscious the phenomenon that had already occurred. The American hero had made his appearance several generations before. It was Cooper now who was reflectively introducing it to consciousness, making it possible. And it is not forming on the land, but it is on the sea too, on the open sea, the ocean, that Cooper is there. Cooper writes the first great sea story, since The Odyssey of Homer. The Pilot ___________ (?? 08:46). And he'll write many sea stories and in fact create the genre. And it's in this genre of the sea story, the maturation of the spirit, of the achievement of spiritual form through the personal journey of maturity on the face of the sea that, Melda (sp?? 09:11) will raise to epic levels. That someone like Joseph Conrad will make the probing instrument of psychological discovery, and the dozens and dozens of others who are somewhat lesser in their artistic advancement.
It's Cooper who introduces this genre also. He creates the western hero, and he creates the hero on the sea. In The Pilot, it's an interesting way of describing most sea stories so-called before The Pilot, were second hand and they had no sailing experience. They had no real feel for the sea, but you can tell by now that Cooper was able to understand it in a poignant way. The sea, a spiritual form of human character made mobile against this background. That without this mystical landscape, man's mobility would not hang together. He would be but a happenstance coagulation of random occurrences, but not a person, not someone. Not someone of purpose, someone who would have the capacity to commit their spirit to the All.
Here's a story:
That all is lost indeed and among the rest the foolish hopes with which I visited this coast, there was however time for reply. The ship had been rapidly running into the wind, and as the efforts of the crew were paralyzed by the contradictory orders they had heard, she gradually lost her way. In a few seconds all her were sails were taken back. Before the crew understood their situation, the Pilot had applied the trumpet to his mouth, and in a voice that rose above the tempest, he thundered forth his orders. Each command was given distinctly, and with the precision that showed him to be master of his profession.
The helm was kept fast, the head yard sprung up heavily against the wind, and the vessel was soon rolling round at her heel with a retrograde movement. Griffith was too much of a seaman not to perceive that the Pilot had seized, with a perception almost intuitive, the only method that promised to extricate the vessel from her situation.
He was young, impetuous, and proud, but he was also generous. Forgetting his resentment and his mortification, he rushed forward among the men and by his presence and example added certainty to the experiment. The ship fell off slowly before the gale and bowed her yards nearly to the water as she felt the blast pouring its fury at her broadside, while the surly waves beat violently against her stern, as if in reproach at departing from her usual manner of moving. The voice of the Pilot, however, was still heard, steady and calm, and yet so clear and high as to reach every ear. And the obedient seamen whirled the yards at his bidding in despite of the tempest as if they handled the toys of their childhood. When the ship had fallen off dead before the wind, her headsails where shaken, her after yards trimmed, and her helm shifted before she had time to run upon the danger that had threatened as well to leeward as to windward. The beautiful fabric, obedient to her government threw her boughs up gracefully toward the wind again. And, as her sails were trimmed, moved out from among the dangerous shoals from which she had been embayed (sp? 13:45) as steadily and swiftly as she had approached them.
In a moment of breathless astonishment, succeeded the accomplishment of this nice maneuver, but there was no time for the usual expressions of surprise. The stranger still held the trumpet and continued to lift his voice amid the howlings of the blast whenever prudence or skill required any change in the management of the ship. For an hour longer there was a fearful struggle for their preservation, the channel becoming at each step more complicated at the shoals' thickening around the mariners on every side. The league was cast rapidly, and the quick eye of the Pilot seemed to pierce the darkness with a keenness of vision that exceeded human power. It was apparent to all on the vessel that they were under the guidance of one who understood navigation thoroughly. And their exertions kept pace with their reviving confidence.
Again and again the frigate appeared to be rushing blindly on the shoals where the sea was covered with foam and where destruction would have been as sudden as it was certain, when the clear voice of the stranger was heard warning them of the danger and inciting them to their duty. The vessel was implicitly yielding to his government and during those anxious moments when she was dashing the waters aside, throwing the spray over her enormous yards, each ear would listen eagerly for those sounds that had obtained a command over the crew that could only be acquired under such circumstances by great steadiness and consummate skill. The ship was recovering from the inaction of changing her course in one of those critical tacks that she had made so often, when the Pilot for the first time addressed the commander of the frigate who still continued to superintend the all-important duty of the leadsman.
And so you can hear for yourself the exquisite archetypal tone of Cooper's writing. Does it make any difference that it's 160 years old? Not at all. Is it literature for children? Is it of no consequence to us? Does it make it any more important to say that there are deep metaphors of politics in it? He's talking about the Jeffersonian vision, the eye of state, which had gone completely astray by this time; that the ship of state of was in danger of shallowness; that this ocean of potential had lulled everyone into a kind of an ignorance of how to run the ship. And that at the first storm, which was surely to come because nature has storms, all would be lost. Is it any wonder that Cooper predicts the civil war a generation before it happens? Lays out all the causes just exactly as they occurred. And diagnoses like a good spiritual physician the cure that's needed. What is that cure? The cure is that we must be able to see spiritual form in its human nature. We have to be able to delineate our own character to ourselves and to others and thus create a reality in which landscape and man are consonant and revitalize each other. Otherwise, the ship is without navigation and the natural cycles that come, the storms, unknown shores, will claim us all.
There have been, of course, recently, studies from 1969 the University of California, '76, the University of California Press published a book on Cooper's landscapes, which has some interesting quotations in. In The Last of the Mohican's, Cooper was confronted for the first time with the problem inherent in all his frontier romances. Except for the episodes at Fort William Henry, all of the events take place against the vast, and for the most part, undifferentiated landscape of the count? (sp? 18:49) of American wilderness. The Last of the Mohican's is the first work set against the wilderness as an undifferentiated (???? 19:04) we would call it today, as the perfect archetypal symbol of the unconscious.
What and how good is it? Of what use is it to acquire self-consciousness of oneself against the background of the shifting sands of social relations, of psychic correlations, of mental suppositions, if they're all distorted and in fact negated in terms of the real contrast, our spiritual form, and the cosmos. That's the only defining differentiation that heals reality. Nothing else, nothing else will do.
He writes: The contemporaries of Cooper refer to it as the boundless forest, or sometimes as the interminable forest. And it was always associated with the word grandeur, that is by this time it was called grandeur. It was terrific to the early settlers.
In the absence of the artificial accessories so indispensable to the European romancer, how Cooper must have asked himself: does the artist individualize such a setting? How else such a picture regarded simply as a picture composed? And this is the tone, the kind of academic, critical tone that's here, but in the beginning, the author says: "What really started him off himself was not an academic thing. It was having read somewhere in Parkland (?? 21:24), the great American story, that Cooper's pictures, as Parkland called them, seemed to linger in the mind and the memory long after one has forgotten the plots of the novels, long after one has lost interest in reading fiction, that Cooper's landscapes are artistic compositions which evoke some primordial response in oneself. That once having read them, they stay with you for the rest of your life. They inhabit one. It's this kind of a mode that Faulkner once described that when he discovered that characters, literary characters, cast shadows, that he stopped writing p____________ (?? 22:17). That it is just as real, that literature is not a surrogate. It's not fiction as opposed to non-fiction. Literature is real. It has an indelibility to it. And that the indelibility is due to composition, and in composition perception is arranged and honed to produce a tone of visibility, and it's in this visibility that Cooper's landscapes become most appealing to us.
In The Last of the Mohican's, there is this kind of a description:
"We have been like hunters who have lost the points of the heavens, and from whom the sun has been hid for many days," said Hawkeye, turning away from his companions. "Now we begin again to know the signs of our course and the paths are cleared from briars. Seat yourselves in the shade, which the moon throws from yonder beach; tis thicker than that of the pines. Let us wait for that which the Lord may choose to send next. Let all your conversation be in whispers, though it would be better, and perhaps in the end wiser, if each one held discourse with his own thoughts for a time." (Emphasis added.)
Hawkeye. Cosmic navigator trying to guide the unknowing through the landscape, through the boundless forest, to what they think are their destinations. For Hawkeye, there is no destination. There's no place to leave from. There's no place to get to because the forest is home. The whole cosmos is home. He has arrived, he is present, he is conscious, wherever he is. He is this kind of Hawkeye.
Cooper writes:
The manner of the scout was seriously impressive, though no longer distinguished by any signs of unmanly apprehension. It was evident that his momentary weakness had vanished with the explanation of a mystery, which his own experience had not served to fathom, (?? 25:05) and though he now felt all the realities of an actual condition, that he was prepared to meet them with the fullest energy of his heart and nature. This feeling seemed also common to the natives who placed themselves in positions which commanded a full view of both shores while their own persons were effectively concealed from observation.
And so they go on in this manner. Notice how Cooper now shifts from the person to the landscape. The landscape becomes now an amplification of the person. We have our focus with the character, and now the amplification of that character is committed to the writing without saying it.
In this manner, hours passed without further interruption. The moon reached the zenith and shed its mild light perpendicularly on the lovely site of the sisters slumbering peacefully in each other's arms. Duncan (?? 26:23) cast the wide shawl of Cora (??) before a spectacle he so much loved to complicate. And then sunk of his own head to seek a pillow on the rock. David began to utter sounds that would have shocked his delicate organs in more wakeful moments. In short, all but Hawkeye and the Mohicans lost every idea of consciousness, in uncontrollable drowsiness, but the watchfulness of these vigilant protectors neither tired nor slumbered, immovable as that rock of which each appeared to form a part. They lay with their eyes roving without intermission along the dark margin of trees that bounded the adjacent shores of the narrow stream.
Not a sound escaped them. The most subtle examination could not have told they breathe. It was evident that this excess of caution proceeded from an experience that no subtlety on the part of their enemies could deceive. It was, however, continued without any apparent consequences until the moon had set and the pale streak above the treetops at the bend of the river a little below (? 27:40) announced the approach of day. "Now is the time to journey," he whispered. "Awake the __________ ones (? 27:51) and be ready to get into the canoe when I bring it to the landing place." "Have you had a quiet night?" said Hayward. "For myself I believe sleep has got the better of my vigilance." "All is yet still as midnight. Be silent but be quick."
And so we are introduced to the qualities of Hawkeye in his maturity in The Last of the Mohicans coming into his full maturity. He has found this being because the landscape has allowed him to develop in this neophyte (sp??) way. The key has been the American Indian. He has long since given up his white name, his family name, his European tie. All those umbilical cords have been cut. He has been born into the wilderness and in this re-birth into the wilderness he has been brought in and adopted to this family, the family of the Great Serpent.
Cooper looked upon the United States as having the most incredible promise of any country since ancient Israel, and as he looked around himself with this visionary capacity, he could see that they were busy throwing it away as fast as they could.
When Cooper came back from Europe and saw that it was the American spiritual values that appealed to all peoples, not the materialist, real estate-based banking monopolies. That was all the re-hash of the futile empires that Europe had died of ... centuries before, a thousand years before. And the ice age was busy going down this garden path all over again, so Cooper turned social critic. And he decided he was one of the few left alive who still remembered, who still knew, what the country was about. And so he had a say. And next week we'll see it in his great book called The American Democrat, and a sequel to it called "Home as Found."
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