It's good to be back to the old homestead after an adventure in the Great White North. Thomas Edison said of his genius: 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration. "Adventure" has a similar dichotomy: 90% slogging perspiration, 10% terror. Perhaps the word "terror" is a bit overdone, but that was our trip.
I am leaving that for another essay, however. After unpacking our gear last night, I hobbled upstairs to the study and once again delved into the large book, The Secret Teachers by Gary Lachman, and read once again of a pivotal turning point in the West's perspective. It is the famous ascent of Mt Ventoux in France by Petrarch, one of the great poets of the 14th and 15th centuries. Today, climbing a mountain it hardly worth any notice at all, nor should it be. A few years back, I had just started out climbing one of the "Whites" in New Hampshire, and had to pass a group of Hasidic Jews - or so it seemed, although I suppose they could have been an off-sect of Hutterites - who were decked out in the traditional suits and hats and dresses, and worse, leather walking shoes. The group included several children, and some of the women carried old-fashioned picnic baskets. Hours latter, I sat on the top of the mountain enjoying the view and eating my sandwich and apple. Just as I was beginning to leave, the traditional group started filing onto the scoured rock peak, looking only slightly worse for ware.
Such it is nowadays, but back in Petrarch's time, no one climbed mountains without a very good reason. Petrarch, however, was doing it for the view. Petrarch, on his way to the top, passed a shepherd who told him that he had tried it once in his youth, had failed, and would never do it again. He was sternly warned, even beseached. But on he went, and he was rewarded with a glorious panorama at the top.
And that, the panorama, was the "change" that the classical scholars site, for in the past, people did not view things from afar; rather, they lived in their environment as an integral part of it. In the old paintings, there is little perspective - rather, the size of things was determined by their importance. All were part and parcel of their surroundings. But in the Renaissance, "good" paintings were produced with realistic depth. This was not due to greater skill, but with the change of perspective of the painters. They were now seeing things as viewers, as outsiders; they now would look "out" at a view, much as Petrarch had done. A great change towards objectivity had taken place. And with it, of course, came the scientific perspective, that of the outside observer of parts, that we have today.
In Germany, says Lachman, they coined a word that corresponds to outside perspective, sehnsucht, meaning "sweet yearning." My first experience of that came when I was four, when I would walk to the top of a hill where my older brother and sister got the bus to school. As they drove off, I would look longingly at the small, rolling mountains to the West and think, there is heaven! Already, I had sehnsucht; already I felt this separation which, the scholars tell us, did not exist before the Renaissance. The longing is for participatory union, for the ecstasy of belonging fully to life - and to whatever may surround life in its greatest fulfillment.
With age, this sweet yearning has grown deeper, as if all our years have us climb not only to greater wisdom, but to greater separation and loneliness. And this is true. Even my son at the age of 21 still has intense, unguarded moments with friends that he finds essential. At my age, such intercourse is highly stylized, polite enough to not provoke controversy. Words are carefully, wisely, kept. Although loneliness came to me at the age of four, I can still recall the absolute honesty and chumminess of me and my classmates through most of grammar school, and, like my son, the tribal-like closeness of friends into our early 20's.
No more. I have gained perspective and social delicacy, but at the price of sehnsucht. That this might have begun with a lone poet in France 600 years ago seems a stretch; but experience has shown that such objectivity does increase with age, and it does lead to longing. And longing leads to the Search. So while curiosity kills the cat, it might also bring a greater wisdom - and perhaps a greater union. Here, we once again confront the Great Road, and its many forks. Yearning, sweet yearning, then, might be one of our more important directional signs. It is, perhaps, everyone's calling. FK
I am leaving that for another essay, however. After unpacking our gear last night, I hobbled upstairs to the study and once again delved into the large book, The Secret Teachers by Gary Lachman, and read once again of a pivotal turning point in the West's perspective. It is the famous ascent of Mt Ventoux in France by Petrarch, one of the great poets of the 14th and 15th centuries. Today, climbing a mountain it hardly worth any notice at all, nor should it be. A few years back, I had just started out climbing one of the "Whites" in New Hampshire, and had to pass a group of Hasidic Jews - or so it seemed, although I suppose they could have been an off-sect of Hutterites - who were decked out in the traditional suits and hats and dresses, and worse, leather walking shoes. The group included several children, and some of the women carried old-fashioned picnic baskets. Hours latter, I sat on the top of the mountain enjoying the view and eating my sandwich and apple. Just as I was beginning to leave, the traditional group started filing onto the scoured rock peak, looking only slightly worse for ware.
Such it is nowadays, but back in Petrarch's time, no one climbed mountains without a very good reason. Petrarch, however, was doing it for the view. Petrarch, on his way to the top, passed a shepherd who told him that he had tried it once in his youth, had failed, and would never do it again. He was sternly warned, even beseached. But on he went, and he was rewarded with a glorious panorama at the top.
And that, the panorama, was the "change" that the classical scholars site, for in the past, people did not view things from afar; rather, they lived in their environment as an integral part of it. In the old paintings, there is little perspective - rather, the size of things was determined by their importance. All were part and parcel of their surroundings. But in the Renaissance, "good" paintings were produced with realistic depth. This was not due to greater skill, but with the change of perspective of the painters. They were now seeing things as viewers, as outsiders; they now would look "out" at a view, much as Petrarch had done. A great change towards objectivity had taken place. And with it, of course, came the scientific perspective, that of the outside observer of parts, that we have today.
In Germany, says Lachman, they coined a word that corresponds to outside perspective, sehnsucht, meaning "sweet yearning." My first experience of that came when I was four, when I would walk to the top of a hill where my older brother and sister got the bus to school. As they drove off, I would look longingly at the small, rolling mountains to the West and think, there is heaven! Already, I had sehnsucht; already I felt this separation which, the scholars tell us, did not exist before the Renaissance. The longing is for participatory union, for the ecstasy of belonging fully to life - and to whatever may surround life in its greatest fulfillment.
With age, this sweet yearning has grown deeper, as if all our years have us climb not only to greater wisdom, but to greater separation and loneliness. And this is true. Even my son at the age of 21 still has intense, unguarded moments with friends that he finds essential. At my age, such intercourse is highly stylized, polite enough to not provoke controversy. Words are carefully, wisely, kept. Although loneliness came to me at the age of four, I can still recall the absolute honesty and chumminess of me and my classmates through most of grammar school, and, like my son, the tribal-like closeness of friends into our early 20's.
No more. I have gained perspective and social delicacy, but at the price of sehnsucht. That this might have begun with a lone poet in France 600 years ago seems a stretch; but experience has shown that such objectivity does increase with age, and it does lead to longing. And longing leads to the Search. So while curiosity kills the cat, it might also bring a greater wisdom - and perhaps a greater union. Here, we once again confront the Great Road, and its many forks. Yearning, sweet yearning, then, might be one of our more important directional signs. It is, perhaps, everyone's calling. FK
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