At first, it was just a book to read for me. The chapters were denominated by the months of the year (the author had taken it upon himself to use one year to finish a collection of Classics - occupying a shelf five-foot high - compiled by Charles Eliot in the nineteenth century). I had read until October without much feeling, despite the tribulations underwent by the author which he described alongside his thoughts about the books he had read. It was rather easy reading, nevertheless, and I wasn't bored.
Then, in 'October', the last paragraph of the chapter struck and humbled me: "... But as I sat in the dining room - the classroom - with my nieces and nephews, it seemed to me that the things my sister was teaching them, and not any accidents of biology, made them her children."
To be humbled by the writings of one rather much younger than me and who had no children of his own! I start to wonder what I have been teaching my children. Probably nothing much, especially since I started working. How can I claim them to be mine if I continue to be removed from their upbringing and know only to scold them for the things they do which disturb me?
Then, in 'November', I was moved by the poem which he highlighted because it had also moved him in a profound way. It was Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth, or 'Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798' -the complete title of the poem. I will append the full poem as downloaded from the Project Gutenburg, but here, I will just reproduce the portions that he had picked out:
"To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things."
"For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue."
"That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake."
Years ago, I would not be able to appreciate this. Certainly not at the author's age. Although I had just come back from England then and the memory was still fresh in my mind, and I had doubtlessly replayed the natural beauty of the places countless times in my mind, I was still rather untouched by the travails of life then to look for elixir in the past. It was mostly with nostalgia that I looked upon those images. Years on, I still can't say I have suffered much, but I now know this 'heavy and weary weight' full well and how nature could have lightened it. In the midst of this congested city life, both physically and mentally, numbing all your senses, reading these sentences gave me a breath of fresh air; like some cooling panacea to the parched soul. Like I could revive, I could get rid of the mould and rust on myself and be as pure as a baby once more.
Beha's other sentence also resonates with what I sometimes feel when I have something to write in my mind (nothing so ambitious as to amount to a book) and yet when I actually do begin to write, I will be suffering from 'wordblocks' and mental blocks and the final piece usually turns out quite different from the original intention. He said, "In some ways, I suppose no one ever writes the book he sets out to write. The process of writing is a series of compromises by which the ideal gives way to the actual." He further lamented how the ability to express oneself in words that could touch the hearts of the masses, which the likes of Lincoln and Jefferson possessed, was rapidly being lost in our generation. Perhaps he was only talking in the American context, yet I have sometimes felt the truth of it myself.
Allow me to end this rather disjointed piece of essay with a touch of something else, again from another author's words, who might have shown me the light to a conundrum that has been bothering me for quite awhile. Beha quoted from Tolstoy's Anna Kerenina. Levin was having a revelation: "This new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith - or not faith - I don't know what it is - but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.
I shall go on in the same way... but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness which I have the power to put into it."
Much of what we have gone through in our lives have at certain times brought about some changes in our inner self. For me, they are notably the two periods of overseas life, having children and seeing how they develop. And I have always wondered why these have not enriched my actions and dealings with the people around me, the environment I live in and the society as a whole. Perhaps the clue is in the above passage. I, too, won't change much of my habits, my natural inclinations, my character flaws because I have experienced a certain degree of this nameless 'feeling' that came upon Levin. But perhaps I am closer to understanding life as it is.
Appendix (well, not really, since this has no separate chapter...)
The full poem of 'Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798' by William Wordsworth
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Among the woods and copses lose themselves,
Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees,
With some uncertain notice, as might seem,
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
The hermit sits alone.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft,
In darkness, and amid the many shapes
Of joyless day-light; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart,
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee
O sylvan Wye! Thou wanderer through the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguish'd thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by,)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me, here, upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our chearful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain winds be free
To blow against thee: and in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure, when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; Oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.
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