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023 - XXIII The Artist's Notebook · Gentle Art of Tramping

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Speaker 1: Chapter twenty three of the Gentle Art of Tramping by
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Speaker 1: Stephen Graham. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
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Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
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Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. The Gentle Art of Tramping,
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Speaker 1: Chapter twenty three. The Artist's note Book, holding but lightly
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Speaker 1: to material things, happy to stay, yet eager to be gone.
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Speaker 1: He is the poet, though he never writ a line
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Speaker 1: of meter. He is God's free man, and has the
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Speaker 1: franchise of eternity into his soul through every sense. Their
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Speaker 1: steel immortal melodies, this song of praise, This verdant life,
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Speaker 1: this fragrance, The blue sky, those mighty mountains, and the
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Speaker 1: distant sea are symbols of the everlasting song, swelling from
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Speaker 1: age to age among the stars. Self expression is life.
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Speaker 1: What gives more satisfaction to one's being than to have
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Speaker 1: expressed one's self. One builds a house and expresses himself.
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Speaker 1: Another writes a poem and expresses himself. Another begets a
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Speaker 1: large family and expresses himself. And looking back, they can say,
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Speaker 1: VIXI I have lived some years ago. They used to
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Speaker 1: sell on the streets, little blue revolving spheres for a penny,
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Speaker 1: spheres with the continents and seas painted on them. They
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Speaker 1: were toys. For a penny. You could give your baby
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Speaker 1: the world to play with. That is what he needs
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Speaker 1: and what the world was made for. We were given
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Speaker 1: the world to play with, as blocks with letters on
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Speaker 1: are given to children for play and for expression. The
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Speaker 1: whole object of the world is to help us to
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Speaker 1: say a few words about ourselves. I think it is
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Speaker 1: Norvalis says quote, the world, all native is an encyclopedical
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Speaker 1: index of our own souls end quote. If you would
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Speaker 1: read the cipher of your soul, you must use the
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Speaker 1: cipher key of nature. If you would learn and read
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Speaker 1: the language of the heart, the world, the visible universe,
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Speaker 1: shall be your dictionary. When Richard Jeffries wrote the Story
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Speaker 1: of My Heart, it proved to be all birds, flowers, bees, grasses,
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Speaker 1: skies and trees and airs. It was no cinema story,
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Speaker 1: no Tarzan romance, nor was it book lore. He did
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Speaker 1: not go to the British Museum to obtain materials for
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Speaker 1: the story of his Heart, did not mug it up
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Speaker 1: with the help of great authorities. But in the wild
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Speaker 1: woods and on the Wiltshire hills. He spelt it out
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Speaker 1: with his fingers, letter by letter, like a blind man
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Speaker 1: fingering braille. I sometimes think that the gold of all
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Speaker 1: literature and art is self expression of this kind, and
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Speaker 1: that after all, the best passages and the best pictures
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Speaker 1: are impressions day voyage. After we die, we may be
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Speaker 1: set to write an essay on our life story. It
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Speaker 1: will be impression's day voyage. Fifty years in an office
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Speaker 1: will be found shriveled up to a dot, and a
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Speaker 1: few days in the wilds we'll expand into the whole essay.
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Speaker 1: Why do we stare at beautiful things we see them?
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Speaker 1: Is that not enough? Can we not merely glance and
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Speaker 1: pass on? We stop, and we stare at that mountainside,
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Speaker 1: at that flower, at that dreaming lake. We cannot pass
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Speaker 1: at once. We seem to be looking intently, star gazing
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Speaker 1: at something further off and yet more kindred than the stars.
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Speaker 1: But we are not using our physical eyes. Perhaps we
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Speaker 1: are not using our eyes at all. We are listening.
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Speaker 1: Nature is trying trying to tell us something. She is
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Speaker 1: speaking to us on a long distance way. Your mind
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Speaker 1: is haunted, you have forgotten something, and the flower is
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Speaker 1: trying to tell you. It is reminding you of a
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Speaker 1: forgotten air, something you cannot quite hear, cannot quite make out.
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Speaker 1: Once you belong to a kingdom where once you knew
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Speaker 1: some one young and fair. Once you were lost, still lost,
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Speaker 1: always lost. But you could join us. Yet did you dare?
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Speaker 1: What is the flower trying to say? What does the
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Speaker 1: mountain say? And the lone bird on the branch? The
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Speaker 1: heart aches? You lie on the downs heaven is alive
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Speaker 1: with birds. The bosom of the sky heaves with their song,
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Speaker 1: and you down below on the cropped grass of the hills,
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Speaker 1: lying on the chalk, shading the eyes with a hand,
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Speaker 1: look up, and the heart aches. It aches with home, sickness,
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Speaker 1: with love, or that some one of whom the flowers
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Speaker 1: speak and the lark sings. You are camped by the
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Speaker 1: side of a stream, and a boatman goes past in
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Speaker 1: his boat in the dusk. You are dreaming by your
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Speaker 1: fire in the morning, and a wild bird comes unbidden
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Speaker 1: to your wrist. You are yourself mirrored in the water
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Speaker 1: below a rock. Just before you are about to plunge.
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Speaker 1: You watch an eagle bridge a chasm with its flight.
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Speaker 1: You see cliffs shaped like giants, and trees like dwarfs,
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Speaker 1: the snake serpentines through the dust across your path, drawing
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Speaker 1: a line thus far and no further, which, however you overstep.
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Speaker 1: You find yourself treading in primeval forest, where no step
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Speaker 1: of man has ever been heard before. The trees change
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Speaker 1: into great armies, marching upward in platoons, in serried battalions.
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Speaker 1: You come to great walls termini. You overclimb them. Death,
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Speaker 1: new life, you are out of touch with Below. It
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Speaker 1: is the great plateau. You can yearn upward with your hands.
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Speaker 1: You cannot yearn downward to those you have left below.
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Speaker 1: Lark's song comes up to you from other people's heaven.
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Speaker 1: You are in upper mountain country, among glaciers and scarred rocks,
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Speaker 1: amid frogs, amid storms. You dance in the ear with
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Speaker 1: the snowflakes, the soul plums, the depth of the world,
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Speaker 1: with a sad thought dropped from the height. Listen the
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Speaker 1: little avalanches, a crack, a rumble, a thudding, a whispering.
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Speaker 1: You reach and stand astride the pass between two countries.
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Speaker 1: God divided up the world, and you are a pair
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Speaker 1: of compasses in his hand. The first tramp left Eden
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Speaker 1: many years ago, They say he died. But to my
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Speaker 1: mind he is still wandering. God made him wander. He
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Speaker 1: has wandered so far. His wits are wandering too. He
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Speaker 1: doesn't remember much about the garden now. It was a
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Speaker 1: pleasant place. It had a snake in it, however, very pleasant,
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Speaker 1: a place in which one could lie down and rest
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Speaker 1: for an eternity at a time. If it were not
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Speaker 1: for the snakes in the grass, the devil got loose
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Speaker 1: in it. Still it was the only place in which
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Speaker 1: one could feel at home forever and ever, and outside
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Speaker 1: of it one must wander. Life is a wandering and
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Speaker 1: a seeking where it was once a sitting still and
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Speaker 1: an adoring. So the tramp's life is a type of existence.
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Speaker 1: I like the symbolism of the Jewish passover, the standing
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Speaker 1: dressed for departure into the wilderness. Man is not man
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Speaker 1: sitting down. He is man on the move. The tramp
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Speaker 1: se lehome, even if in small measure the tramp is
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Speaker 1: a pilgrim. His adventure is a spiritual adventure, or it
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Speaker 1: is nothing. The clouds part and orion is disclosed. The
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Speaker 1: rude pencilings are erased, and the main curve remains, And
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Speaker 1: the curve of your adventure is a broken arc on earth,
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Speaker 1: the broken arc in heaven. The perfect round, says Browning.
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Speaker 1: But given the ark, the center can be found. We
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Speaker 1: revolve about the sun, but there are planets revolving around
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Speaker 1: a sun invisible to us. Our souls, i suppose, revolve
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Speaker 1: about some invisible spiritual sun which we are always thinking about,
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Speaker 1: a center called God. So with all our hilarity, our
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Speaker 1: joyous meetings, our mad cap doings, with all the fun
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Speaker 1: of the tramping expedition, there is the deeper interest underlying all.
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Speaker 1: Most people will make the tramp without one conscious deeper thought.
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Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. Their nature is getting something intuitively, although
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Speaker 1: the mind has no knowledge of it. The gay undergraduate,
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Speaker 1: all them, and no soul, shies at religion and has
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Speaker 1: no thought except about climes, leafs, jumps, food, sporting chances,
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Speaker 1: pedestrian achievement. He may not see this glorious jaunt in
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Speaker 1: a poetic light until years afterwards. Cunningham Graham remarks in
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Speaker 1: one of his clever prefaces, that nothing in the present
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Speaker 1: ever seems so good as what is past. Some years pass,
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Speaker 1: and your present, which is silver today, comes gold in recollection.
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Speaker 1: You lie in a matter of fact mood, under the
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Speaker 1: stars in the midst of the mountains. Your mind is
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Speaker 1: at rest. You ask for nothing beyond perhaps good sleep,
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Speaker 1: and belike you thank neither God nor yourself for having
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Speaker 1: got there. But ten years later you look back with
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Speaker 1: a sigh and say, how wonderful it was. Ah, I
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Speaker 1: was happy. Then the intuitive understanding rises slowly to the mind,
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Speaker 1: like light traveling from a distant planet to this earth.
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Speaker 1: But you get it at last, and see so the
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Speaker 1: experience is kindred for all manner of minds. The poet
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Speaker 1: may exult too feverishly at first and grow tired of
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Speaker 1: his own rhapsodies. The reflective intellectual may become bored by
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Speaker 1: his own meditations. But neither the poetic rhapsodies nor the
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Speaker 1: intellectual notes record the measure of the tramp, For it
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Speaker 1: is a measure of hidden honey that is being stored.
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Speaker 1: And you are seldom allowed by nature to eat of
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Speaker 1: your own store. Day by day. We are bees rather
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Speaker 1: than wasps. The true beehive of inner experience is in you,
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Speaker 1: And yet, of course there are what may be called
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Speaker 1: auxiliary bee hives. I believe the conscious experience of a
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Speaker 1: tramp can be greatly increased in a pleasurable way by
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Speaker 1: the use of note books. It is worth while keeping
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Speaker 1: a record, if only to remind yourself In other years,
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Speaker 1: the details of your spiritual adventures fade out unless you
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Speaker 1: have a good memory or an aide memoir. The whole
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Speaker 1: work of some writers is no more than a tramp's notebook. Blake,
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Speaker 1: for instance, a series of marvelously scrawled hieroglyphics the story
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Speaker 1: of his journeys from one world to another. But one
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Speaker 1: does not need to be a writer, as it is called,
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Speaker 1: or an artist. It is a spurious classification. We are
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Speaker 1: all writers and artists, from the day when we scrawl
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Speaker 1: with our toy spades in the wet sand, to the
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Speaker 1: day when we put the seal of death on our wills.
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Speaker 1: Man is such an artist? Being public, being printed, being
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Speaker 1: exhibited are matters connected with the minor function of being
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Speaker 1: professionally artistic. Jodo drew a perfect circle to show what
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Speaker 1: he could do. We shall draw imperfect ones and be
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Speaker 1: more true to art. The fact is he has lost
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Speaker 1: a great deal. Who has not kept a day book
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Speaker 1: of the soul? Something very sweet happened to Lee Hunt
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Speaker 1: one day, and he wrote, time, you thief who love
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Speaker 1: to get sweets into your list put that in it.
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Speaker 1: It was entered in his day book. Certain happenings make
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Speaker 1: a day worth while and perhaps forever memorable to you.
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Speaker 1: Today I knew that I had conquered all my doubtings,
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Speaker 1: wrote Carlyle once in his diary, recording his transit from
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Speaker 1: skepticism to positive belief. It was an entry into his
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Speaker 1: day book. As a practical detail, I love page a
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Speaker 1: day diaries, the new sort used mostly in America and France.
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Speaker 1: It is a nicely bound, thin paper book with a
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Speaker 1: whole page for each day in the year, and no
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Speaker 1: postal information or cash columns. Unfortunately, in England, such books
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Speaker 1: are generally bound to look like bibles and have appropriate
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Speaker 1: scripture references. At the head of each page. One is
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Speaker 1: reminded of the lessons and the collects. That's very well,
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Speaker 1: but we require a minimum of printed matter on our
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Speaker 1: daily page. It is ours like our life when we
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Speaker 1: wake up in the morning, free and open, and we
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Speaker 1: may write there only what is given to us personally.
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Speaker 1: To write. Such a note book should be free from conventions.
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Speaker 1: If we wish to draw sketches in it mixed with
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Speaker 1: written notes, we will. If we need to overstep the limits,
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Speaker 1: of a page. We will find a less covered page
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Speaker 1: among our yesterdays, and let to day spill over to
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Speaker 1: fill out the measure of time past. If you have
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Speaker 1: had a tramping expedition in the midst of an otherwise
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Speaker 1: sedentary year, how the empty pages will fill up from
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Speaker 1: the more glorious days. The artist's note book is free
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Speaker 1: for sketches, notes, impressions of moments, beaumets, poems, things overheard,
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Speaker 1: maps and plans, names of friends and records of their idiosyncrasies, paradoxes,
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Speaker 1: musical notations, records of folk songs and other songs, which
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Speaker 1: you copy in order that you may sing for years afterwards.
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Speaker 1: But it should not contain too much baanal detail, such
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Speaker 1: as petty accounts, addresses, druggists, prescriptions, number of season ticket
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Speaker 1: and fire insurance policy memos to send rent. These things
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Speaker 1: are apt to clutter up your book. And when you
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Speaker 1: come to old year's night and sit waiting for the
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Speaker 1: chime of bells which rings in another year, and you
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Speaker 1: have your day book before you, and you go over
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Speaker 1: its pages, you do not want to pause on a
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Speaker 1: scrawled laundry list or some false staff in account of
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Speaker 1: wine and bread consumed at such and such an inn.
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Speaker 1: The artist's day book is his own living gospel, something
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Speaker 1: coming after Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and should be
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Speaker 1: sacred to him if he is not merely a flippant
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Speaker 1: and cynical fellow, seeing life in large part as a
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Speaker 1: buffan aid. A thought record, one that is your own,
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Speaker 1: written down the day when it occurred, is a mental snapshot,
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Speaker 1: and is at least as valuable as the photographs you
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Speaker 1: may take on your journey. Yesterday's thought is worth considering again,
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Speaker 1: if only as the stepping stone of your dead self.
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Speaker 1: The thoughts of some people are constant, but of others
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Speaker 1: varying and contradictory. It is like landscape. Some live their
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Speaker 1: lives in sight of a great range of mountains. They
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Speaker 1: live in the presence of certain, ever abiding thoughts. Others
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Speaker 1: change their mental scenery from day to day in the
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Speaker 1: shallows and flats of the low country. But we all
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Speaker 1: have our epocal days, our epocal thoughts. We turn to
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Speaker 1: a page in our note book and say, on this day,
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Speaker 1: the thought occurred to me in the light of which
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Speaker 1: I have lived ever since. You draw two candles there
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Speaker 1: with light rays to show the thought of the year.
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Speaker 1: It is much the same. If the expression of the
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Speaker 1: thought has been given to you by another, your thought
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Speaker 1: of the year may take the form of a quotation.
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Speaker 1: Those who search while they read naturally find in the
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Speaker 1: expression of others what their souls need. I remember long
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Speaker 1: periods of living with certain thoughts derived from books brownings.
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Speaker 1: He placed the midst distance of plastic circumstance this present thou,
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Speaker 1: forsooth wouldst fain arrest, and then another time Richter's we
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Speaker 1: are near awakening when we dream that we dream persistent
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Speaker 1: thoughts on a path of life's pilgrimage. Morning after morning,
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Speaker 1: one awakens, and the thought awakens with one, and goes
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Speaker 1: through the day in company, in communion with one. Each
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Speaker 1: day Nature puts her magic mirror in our hands. Oh child,
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Speaker 1: do you see yourself today? We look, We look, and
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Speaker 1: answer wistfully, Ah, not today. Not today. Is it that
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Speaker 1: the reflection is dim and vague, or that our eyes
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Speaker 1: have not yet cleared? Short sighted people see curious distortions
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Speaker 1: of themselves in the glass. But it may even be
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Speaker 1: true that no one has yet seen his own face.
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Speaker 1: You can never be sure that what you see in
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Speaker 1: a glass is what other people see in your face.
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Speaker 1: So also in the spiritual mirror of nature, one seeks
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Speaker 1: to identify oneself, and yet never is satisfied. Cheek and
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Speaker 1: nose are wandering with the ripples of the lake. Every
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Speaker 1: pool in the marsh has its star reflections, and as
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Speaker 1: you bend or one of them, your visage is broken
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Speaker 1: by the starlight. On the desolate north cape, amid ice
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Speaker 1: flows leaping seals, with the bleak, homeless winds of the
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Speaker 1: Arctic about your ears, you are as near to your
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Speaker 1: own image as in the warmth of Gibraltar's opening gates.
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Speaker 1: In the center of the Great Pyramid. Your heart turns
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Speaker 1: to dust, but coming forth it vivifies again, and as
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Speaker 1: young as the year of your age. Pharaoh's uncovered face
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Speaker 1: is a faded hieroglyph, but still it asks, thousands of
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Speaker 1: years after death, who am I? Whither do I go?
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Speaker 1: So life scroll is full of question marks, pointers, index fingers,
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Speaker 1: records of bearings, soundings, answers, and partial answers to the
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Speaker 1: question where am I? Drake climbs a goodly and high
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Speaker 1: tree in Darien and descries afar the Southern Sea. It
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Speaker 1: is a picture in his artist's note book, such an
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Speaker 1: artistic thing to do, and life made him do it.
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Speaker 1: It was no pose his going forth to singe the
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Speaker 1: King of Spain's beard. It was more of a pose,
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Speaker 1: I think, when he refused to allow his game of
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Speaker 1: bulls to be interrupted by the approach of the armada.
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Speaker 1: Pose is, unfortunately a prevalent disease of the quest. Some
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Speaker 1: natures are betrayed to striking attitudes on the top of
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Speaker 1: mole hills to day I conquered the mendips. Henceforth there
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Speaker 1: are no mendips. But good hard, earnest living, tramping and
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Speaker 1: seeking will cure most people of the false theatrical Beware
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Speaker 1: of going to Jerusalem in order that you may come
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Speaker 1: back and tell the world you have been. It spoils
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Speaker 1: all you have found on the way. I do not
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Speaker 1: like the Palmers. Those who have been and have come
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Speaker 1: back admitted that it is a vice of ourselves. We
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Speaker 1: professional little airs we go and then partially spill over
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Speaker 1: when we return. Selling the wine of experience for so
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Speaker 1: much when it is genuine experience, you may well wonder
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Speaker 1: what the vintners buy one half so precious as the
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Speaker 1: goods they sell. But of course one can tell one's
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Speaker 1: story and yet escape pose make thyself small saith Buddha,
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Speaker 1: make thyself unobtrusive, lest someone may think that a very
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Speaker 1: ornate and luxurious loudspeaker is responsible for the music itself.
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Speaker 1: In an old fashioned phrase so difficult to stomach nowadays,
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Speaker 1: give God the glory the personal diary. However, that day
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Speaker 1: book of the soul is not meant for other's gaze.
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Speaker 1: I should imagine oneself shy, even of the eyes one's
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Speaker 1: most intimate friend, wife, sweetheart, alter ego. There is a delicacy,
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Speaker 1: a secrecy about the functions of mind and soul. You
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Speaker 1: do not wish others to see what you have written,
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Speaker 1: and blush at the thought of half a line being
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Speaker 1: read over your shoulder. And the better the diary is kept,
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Speaker 1: the more private and personal it becomes. I do not
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Speaker 1: consider Peep's diary to be the type of a good
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Speaker 1: day book, though it is extremely valuable as a record
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Speaker 1: of the life of the age in which Peep's lived.
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Speaker 1: It is one of the great curiosities of literature. As
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Speaker 1: after a lifelong imprisonment one might find the diary of
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Speaker 1: a prisoner written to kill time. So after Peepe's life
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Speaker 1: one finds this astonishing document wherein as it were, all
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Speaker 1: is written down, but that all of Peep's diary is
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Speaker 1: not all. It is all that is immaterial. There is
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Speaker 1: much that escaped Peeps because he was not on the
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Speaker 1: lookout for it. The chief of missions are the answers,
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Speaker 1: or attempted answers to the questions who was Peeps? Whom
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Speaker 1: did Peeps think he was? The answers to these questions,
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Speaker 1: covering the whole of Peep's life could well occupy as
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Speaker 1: much space as the famous diary we have. But Peeps,
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Speaker 1: perhaps without intention, described his england very well. He set
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Speaker 1: down so much detail that he provided something resembling cinema
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Speaker 1: films of daily life. As you read his pages, you
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Speaker 1: drop away from your own century and walk in his.
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Speaker 1: His work is not a selection of phenomena. You make
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Speaker 1: your selection from it. You can, in fact, make a
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Speaker 1: diary from his diary. His many pages become one page
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Speaker 1: or half a page in your diary. There was in
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Speaker 1: Russia up to the revolution in which he perished. A
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Speaker 1: Peepsian writer, more selective, it is true, but determined to
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Speaker 1: write down all everything that occurred to him from day
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Speaker 1: to day throughout life. He became naturally voluminous and put
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Speaker 1: down all manner of things, discreet and indiscreet, some very
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Speaker 1: shocking to decent minds. But in one of his later
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Speaker 1: volumes of Fragments and Thoughts, he wrote, it may be asked,
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Speaker 1: what possible interest is there in these things? I am recording,
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Speaker 1: But that is my affair. For a long while now
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Speaker 1: I have been writing without reader. If some one reads,
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Speaker 1: that is his look out. I do not invite him.
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Speaker 1: One resolution I have made and will carry out, and
24:52
Speaker 1: that is to print all. So many of his day
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Speaker 1: book entries have curious tags after them, such jazz written
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Speaker 1: on my cuff at Mademoiselle so and So's reception, written
25:05
Speaker 1: while waiting for the tram on Nevsky. It is fair
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Speaker 1: to him to say that he only recorded thoughts and observations.
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Speaker 1: If he was making love to a captain's wife at
25:17
Speaker 1: any time, he did not tell of it, but only
25:20
Speaker 1: gave current reflections on love and what women really are.
25:25
Speaker 1: His whole literary output makes one spiritual note book. Few people, however,
25:31
Speaker 1: have much persistence. The January mood is familiar. This year
25:36
Speaker 1: I will keep a diary. The February pages of most
25:40
Speaker 1: diaries look pale and consumptive. March May pass without a
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Speaker 1: single entry, as if throughout that glorious month, nothing of
25:49
Speaker 1: moment had passed before one's eyes or occurred to one's being.
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Speaker 1: That is not, however, such a default as may appear.
25:58
Speaker 1: One drops the diary, one resumes it to day. I
26:02
Speaker 1: take stock of life and thought and all good things
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Speaker 1: that are mine. Tomorrow I will swing all day on
26:10
Speaker 1: the garden gate, singing a nursery rhyme. The day after
26:14
Speaker 1: I shall put on my silk hat and go to
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Speaker 1: the city and a company meeting. I shall promenade at night.
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Speaker 1: Something will occur sooner or later, and I shall say, ha,
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Speaker 1: my diary, my tablets, my ink fountain, that I may
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Speaker 1: write down something special and wonderful and curious that has
26:34
Speaker 1: occurred to me this day. Some are so fortunate that
26:38
Speaker 1: their professional and intellectual life blend. The writer, the artist,
26:42
Speaker 1: the social worker, the barrister, sometimes the lawyer, the politician,
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Speaker 1: often the doctor. Matters of deep interest professionally have also
26:53
Speaker 1: a personal spiritual interest. But whatever the profession or calling,
26:57
Speaker 1: all interests become one. On an occasion of travel, on
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Speaker 1: a tramping expedition or a visit to a strange country.
27:05
Speaker 1: Then the day book rests in the inner pocket, the
27:08
Speaker 1: ready help meet of one's thoughts. In visiting foreign countries
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Speaker 1: and studying other peoples, I always look out for what
27:16
Speaker 1: may be called key phenomena. I like to be able
27:20
Speaker 1: to record a fact which means so much more than
27:23
Speaker 1: its bare utterance seems to imply. Such a fact, bursting
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Speaker 1: with brilliant significance, is like a luminary on the page.
27:31
Speaker 1: It may be light on your way for the whole
27:34
Speaker 1: of the year. A nation reveals its secret in a sentence,
27:38
Speaker 1: or it may be an animal tells its nature by
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Speaker 1: one trait observed. There is a curious satisfaction of the
27:45
Speaker 1: soul in knowing about the ways of men and beasts.
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Speaker 1: Of course, I do not mean that there is any
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Speaker 1: particular satisfaction in recording trivialities and prejudices. A man once
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Speaker 1: wrote in his diary, the Frenchman eat frogs. I do
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Speaker 1: not like them. It was not worth his writing down.
28:06
Speaker 1: But one day, tramping with a hungry American, I was
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Speaker 1: astonished to hear him exclaim I wish I could see
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Speaker 1: a frog. I would soon have him in the pot.
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Speaker 1: That rid me of a prejudice, And I sat down
28:21
Speaker 1: complacently afterwards to a dish of frog's legs. It was
28:26
Speaker 1: worth a line in the diary. A pilgrim once said
28:29
Speaker 1: to me, I do not know you. To know a man,
28:33
Speaker 1: one must eat forty pounds of salt. It was worth
28:37
Speaker 1: a line in my diary. Nichevo, said a Russian peasant
28:42
Speaker 1: servant to Bismarck, when out hunting, they were lost in
28:45
Speaker 1: the snow in the forest, Nichevo, and it lasted Bismarck
28:50
Speaker 1: all his life. He never forgotten Nichevo, and was always
28:54
Speaker 1: fond of saying it. He is a gentleman. He keeps
28:58
Speaker 1: a gig Carlyle overheard, and it became one of the
29:02
Speaker 1: brevities of his spiritual life. Gigmanity. I am a workingman.
29:08
Speaker 1: I have carried my dinner pail, someone else said, defining
29:12
Speaker 1: himself and a workingman at the same time. Such definitions
29:17
Speaker 1: and explanations, pointers and street lamps are worth keeping. The
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Speaker 1: diary of this kind is sometimes called a commonplace book,
29:27
Speaker 1: which however, seems to be too modest a title, as
29:31
Speaker 1: one does not inscribe in it one's commonplaces. The Dean
29:36
Speaker 1: of Saint Paul's published recently large extracts from a wonderful
29:40
Speaker 1: series of commonplace books, which he had kept during most
29:45
Speaker 1: of his life. But I would rather call them uncommonplace books. Truly,
29:50
Speaker 1: in the Dean's case, these scrap books garnered the fruits
29:53
Speaker 1: of reading rather than of life. And my especial plea
29:57
Speaker 1: is not for the fruits of reading as for the
30:00
Speaker 1: fruits of life. The digest of books is the habit
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Speaker 1: of the good student, who sets down in brevity the
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Speaker 1: content of whatever he reads, and so preserves knowledge for
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Speaker 1: future guidance. But the keeping of the day book represents
30:15
Speaker 1: a different habit of mind with many. It begins in
30:19
Speaker 1: happy school days or school holidays, when natural history diaries
30:24
Speaker 1: were started. The enthusiastic collector of birds, eggs, butterflies, or
30:28
Speaker 1: beetles makes constant expeditions and delights in chronicling the results.
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Speaker 1: He may do it at length or briefly, may describe
30:38
Speaker 1: habits of species and adventures in tracking them, or merely
30:42
Speaker 1: set down the names of captures and of the localities.
30:46
Speaker 1: In boyhood, one records the marvelous doings of the oak
30:49
Speaker 1: egger female. Later on one records what man the insect
30:54
Speaker 1: is doing. It is just as much worth while, though
30:58
Speaker 1: so much more difficult to describe what people look like
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Speaker 1: as to set down what they say. And then most
31:05
Speaker 1: people and things are silent to our ears. They speak
31:09
Speaker 1: more to our eyes. Certain shapes, certain groups speak at
31:14
Speaker 1: times enormously to our eyes. But how record them if
31:18
Speaker 1: we do not describe. It is in description that the
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Speaker 1: keeper of a diary becomes artist. All description is art,
31:27
Speaker 1: And in describing an event, an action, or a being,
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Speaker 1: you enter, to some extent into the joy of art.
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Speaker 1: You are more than the mere secretary of life. Patiently
31:39
Speaker 1: taking down from dictation. More than life's mere scribe, you
31:43
Speaker 1: become its singer, the expressor of the glory of it.
31:47
Speaker 1: With a verbal description goes also sketching, the thumbnail, sketch,
31:53
Speaker 1: the vague impression, the pictorial pointer. There is no reason
31:57
Speaker 1: for being afraid of bad drawing in one's own personal
32:00
Speaker 1: travel diary. The main thing is that it be ours
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Speaker 1: and have some relationship to our eyes and the thing seen.
32:09
Speaker 1: I have seldom gone on a tramp or a long
32:11
Speaker 1: vagabondage without seeing things that made the heart ache with
32:16
Speaker 1: their beauty or pathos, and other things that set the
32:20
Speaker 1: mind a tingle with intellectual curiosity. I do not refer
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Speaker 1: to great episodes glimpses of important shows and functions, but
32:30
Speaker 1: to little things, unexpected visions of life. Some were unforgettable
32:35
Speaker 1: in themselves and seemingly needed no tablets other than those
32:40
Speaker 1: of memory. And yet it was a great addition to
32:43
Speaker 1: inner content and happiness to describe them as they occurred
32:47
Speaker 1: in my day Book of travel. It is good, also,
32:51
Speaker 1: after describing something that has specially affected one, to add
32:55
Speaker 1: one's observations, the one line perhaps that record its one's
33:00
Speaker 1: mind at the time. For these and for other reasons,
33:05
Speaker 1: the artist's Notebook, the Diary, the common and uncommonplace book,
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Speaker 1: the day book of the soul, are to be placed
33:13
Speaker 1: as part of the equipment of life when faring forth,
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Speaker 1: be it on pilgrimage, be it on tramp, or be
33:21
Speaker 1: it merely on the common round of daily life. Every
33:25
Speaker 1: entry is a shade of self confession, and the whole,
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Speaker 1: when duly entered, is a passage of self knowledge. End
33:33
Speaker 1: of chapter twenty three The Artist's Notebook, read by Deborah
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Speaker 1: Beach Giordano