Walking, Art And Nature (10)



Camino, Spain


I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. THOREAU Walking

The political philosopher and educationalist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) believed that human beings were inherently good, and that they were only corrupted by the evils of society. He gradually lived an ever simpler life, becoming closer and closer to nature, studying botany, and enjoying the solitary walks he recounted in his ten, classic meditations Reveries Of The Solitary Walker.

Walking, art and nature - these three things are so bound up in Rousseau, and, since his time, have been inextricably linked.  



Camino, Spain

Walking, art and nature. We think of Thoreau's ecstasies in Walden and in his Journals; the mystical outpourings of Richard Jefferies in The Story Of My Heart; William Wordsworth's 'emotion recollected in tranquillity'; the labourer-poet John Clare's walks among the dispossessed pastures of English agricultural history; Gary Syder's Beat and Buddhist mountain treks; Richard Mabey's gentle, literary eco-strolls through the Chilterns and Norfolk; Robert Macfarlane's explorations on foot of Britain's wild places; John Constable walking and painting in Dedham Vale; JMW Turner walking and painting in Europe.    



Camino, Spain

As well as walking in nature being an inspiration for art and literature, walking itself can be an art form in its own right. Richard Long, whom I've written about before, gives walking a totemic resonance through natural artworks created on the walk, or even through the signature of the actual walk itself: its mark, footprint and track across the landscape.

 

Camino, Spain

Sadly (for me at least!) I've reached the end of my ten-part journey through walking country. I hope some of it has been inspirational, or at least informative. Most of all I hope that's it's motivated you to go walking, or, if you're walkers already (which I know many of you are), to go walking even more. It's a land without class, without prejudice, without materialism, without competition, without complication, without compromise, without celebrity culture, without bonds. Rousseau famously wrote at the beginning of The Social Contract: Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. Why don't you throw off those chains, and start walking?



Caparra, Via de la Plata, Spain



Here's the Roman arch at Caparra in the Spanish region of Extremadura. I walked under it nearly a year ago on my pilgrimage along the Via de la Plata. Why don't you join me as I step beneath it again, right now? Let's walk together towards those distant hills, that blue horizon. You never know what we might find... 

Caparra, Via de la Plata, Spain

The Person From Porlock

On the second day of my walk along England's South West Coast Path I passed through Porlock and down to Porlock Weir (see photo). The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge used to live not very far away - in the village of Nether Stowey between Minehead and Bridgwater to be exact - and he and his friends William Wordsworth, Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, and the poet and essayist Thomas de Quincey, used to take frequent long walks in the surrounding hills of Exmoor and the Quantocks. What lively, literary conversations they must have had! Or do you think they must have just grumbled about the weather and the state of their feet, like most walkers? (Though actually we know both from Wordsworth and from William Hazlitt that Coleridge was a brilliant conversationalist.)

Of course, the name of 'Porlock' resounds in the literary imagination because of Coleridge's famous story about being interrupted by a 'Person from Porlock' while feverishly writing his visionary poem Kubla Khan. Whether Coleridge was struggling to finish it, or whether his juices were in full creative flow, we will never know. Whether the 'Person from Porlock' really existed, or whether this was a fiction invented by Coleridge to excuse the fragmentary nature of his poem, we will also never know. But what is certain is that only fifty four lines were ever completed - out of a projected two to three hundred. And what is also highly probable is that the poem was composed in an opium-induced trance. For Coleridge was addicted to laudanum (an easily obtained, readily prescribed pain-killing drug at the time) - as were many of his friends and contemporaries, including Thomas de Quincey (whose book Confessions Of An English Opium-Eater I strongly recommend; it makes wonderful reading.) Indeed, some scholars believe that the actual 'Person from Porlock' was Coleridge's physician, Dr P Aaron Potter - who had called unexpectedly on that day in 1797 to supply Coleridge with his fix, thus diverting him from one of his wildest visions. Anyhow, the term 'Person from Porlock' has been alluded to by many poets and novelists ever since to mean any unwelcome visitor or unwanted intruder.

On a wider note, all this got me thinking about 'unfinished' art in general. Creative works may be 'unfinished' for many reasons: the death of the artist, the deliberate wish of the artist, the interruption of the artist. Consider the great 'unfinished' masterpieces: Jane Austen's Sanditon, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, Coleridge's Kubla Khan. Does the fact that they're 'unfinished' really matter all that much? Personally I feel it matters not one jot. Indeed, for me, some works of art are all the better for being 'unfinished'. Perhaps this is why I like so much some of the suggestive, seemingly unpolished drawings and sketches by artists like Constable, Van Gogh and many others. Perhaps this is why I like so much the fragmentary nature of a poem such as Kubla Khan, with its half-fulfilled desires and half-complete visions. Sometimes the 'unfinished' work of art reflects more truly the life we really live. We can fill in any gaps and omissions and endings in our own imaginations.

Back at Porlock Weir, this family's having a good time crabbing and messing about by the boats ...

But this couple's striding off rather purposefully towards ... what ..? I leave this unfinished, as I don't know the answer myself ...

(If anyone is interested in the relationship between opium and English Romanticism, try reading Alethea Hayter's terrific book Opium And The Romantic Imagination, a book I read and enjoyed many years ago.)

Constable Country

From Thursday 16 to Saturday 18 August my wife and I spent time in Suffolk. I used to go to East Anglia for family holidays as a child - to Cromer, Sheringham, Southwold, Frinton, that kind of genteel seaside place. Nothing's altered that much. Just a few more people, cars, South-of-England retirees, smarter shops - as everywhere. But the creeks and estuaries, reed beds and lazy rivers, painted cottages and flintstone churches are unchanging. We supped Adnams ales in the Crown and the Lord Nelson and The Sole Bay Inn at Southwold; we ate take-away fish and chips on Aldeburgh sea front and they were excellent. I passed a few hours late on Friday afternoon at Minsmere RSPB Reserve - I could have spent the whole day there quite happily - and saw a marsh harrier (earlier I'd seen 2 floating over the reed beds near Snape Maltings), an egret, 2 avocets, 2 stonechats, several reed warblers, common terns and barnacle geese, some redshank and lapwings, a flock of 50 feeding black-tailed godwits - and a small deer, which could have been a muntjac. On the Saturday we explored Dedham vale and John Constable country. Many of Constable's magnificent canvases were of scenes centred on the small but sublimely picturesque area surrounding Flatford Mill (see photo). We stood at the exact spot from where The Haywain was painted - or at least initially sketched as most of his paintings were worked on and finished in London. This is one of the greatest of all English rural life pictures according to the art critic, Sir Kenneth Clark. I would not disagree. It's such a tranquil, timeless scene, beautifully composed, and coming to life in such details as the spaniel with its wagging tail, the 2 figures in the horse-drawn cart, and various other country people and animals merging with the landscape. We walked the few miles to Dedham and back, across the water meadows by the river Stour. It gave us a strange feeling. What with the willow trees and the reflecting water, the grazing cows, the clouds and the big skies - it was just like walking through a series of those Constable six-footers. Like Cornwall or the west coast of Ireland, Suffolk has always attracted artists. It's to do with the water, the sky and, above all, the light. (Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Alfred Munnings - and the art forger Tom Keating - are also associated with the area.)