A favorite small book, The Tree by the novelist John Fowles, is just the right place to turn for wisdom on this last day of the year. A memoir and a meditation on human and natural notions of control, The Tree can be read again and again. W. S. Merwin claims that he has carried the book with him on his travels for years. First published in 1979 (Fowles died in 2005), this book feels timeless in its clear view of where humans fit in the great chain of being.
An essential framing in the book is built around the difference between how Fowles approaches nature—in particular trees—from his own father. The elder Fowles had a small suburban garden of trees that he carefully pruned and controlled. “He had himself been severely pruned by history and family circumstance, and this was his answer, his reconciliation to his fate—his platonic ideal of the strictly controlled and safe, his Garden of Eden.” This approach reflected his larger view of life and a hatred of natural disorder. From his view, “Good philosophers prune the chaos of reality and train it into fixed shapes, thereby forcing it to yield valuable and delicious fruit.”
Not so for Fowles. When he bought a derelict farm with acres of unmanaged wildnerness, his father was horrified. From Fowles:
He would never have conceded that it was my equivalent of his own beautifully disciplined apples and pears, and just as much cultivated, though not in a literal sense. He would not have understood that something I saw down there just an hour ago…two tawny owlets fresh out of the next, sitting on a sycamore branch like a pair of badly knitted Christmas stocking and ogling down at the intruder into their garden—means to me exactly what the Horticultural Society cups on his sideboard used to mean to him: a token of order in unjust chaos, the reward of perseverance in a right philosophy. That his chaos happens to be my order is not, I think, very important.
Fowles goes on to describe how his father sent him two cordon pear trees to plant. But the outcome was not what Fowles’ father had hoped for:
They must be nearly fifteen years old now; and every year, my soil being far too thin and dry for their liking they produce a few miserable fruit, or more often none at all. I would never have them out. It touches me that they should so completely take his side; and reminds me that practically everyone else in my life—even friends who profess to be naturalists—has also taken his side; that above all the world in general continues to take his side. No fruit for those who do not prune; no fruit for those who question knowledge; no fruit for those who hide in trees untouched by man; no fruit for traitors to the human cause.
Therein lies an essential dilemma many of us face every day. Do we have the stamina to live like Fowles? Its implications for art making of any kind is deep.
The book is full of richness. Fowles goes on to decry Linneaus and the need to name, categorize and individuate every element. It is that detaching of an object from its surroundings that destroys our ability to see, apprehend and experience the whole. “What I gain most from nature is beyond words. To try to capture it verbally immediately places me in the same boat as the namers and would-be owners of nature: that is, it exiles me from what I most need to learn.”
From the book:
One can say of an attitude that it is generally held by society; but society itself is an abstraction, a Linnaeus-like label we apply to a group of individuals seen in a certain context and for a certain purpose; and before the attitude can be generally held, it must pass through the filter of the individual consciousness, where this irreducible “wild” component lies—the one that may agree with science and society, but can never be wholly plumbed, predicted or commanded by them.
I suppose the act of putting your thoughts in words orders, categorizes and labels them. And why art is so vital to the soul.
Deborah…I’ve been quietly following your blog and it is always so well documented and informing. I love lurking here and learning new things. Thank you for the fine posts. I do have one question, however, were you ever a member of ARLIS/NA? I’ve been wondering this for a while and decided to speak up.
thank you.
Di, it is a conundrum. I feel like I use language to walk around the outside of things, never expecting the words to give me entrance.
Henrietta, There are many Deborah Barlows in the world (I am friends with several of them on Facebook!) and one is a librarian. While I love books I lack those particular skills.
Thank you for lurking and I hope you will leave a comment from time to time. I am by nature more a lurker than a participant and consider an honorable profession.
I thought I had all of Fowles’s books but I don’t recognize having read “The Tree”; I’m certain I would have remembered if I had. I will put it on my list. Thank you for another wonderful post.
I will send an e-mail soon.
Love to you and wishing you a tremendous 2012.
Maureen, I think this is a first. You are the most book savvy person of my acquaintance. I think you would love this one. So poetic, so deeply evocative.
Here’s to a great year for all of us.
I’ve debated with myself about commenting on this post, which as always is passionately articulate and informative. But I have to say that I disagree deeply with Fowles’ positions as you’ve excerpted them. As a gardener and a person who walks in the woods nearly every day, I acknowledge the need for culture. Fowles’ wildness is as much a romantic construct as any ordered garden. Nothing in our world is wild any longer; it has all been worked over, changed, developed, allowed to re-grow. And I love knowing the names of things; I always take pleasure in someone knowledgeable letting me know the name of some small moss or lichen that I’ve photographed. It does not diminish that thing, but enlarges my pleasure in its existence. Naming something gives it a place in the world; would we as human beings want to go through life without a name? as fluid as our personalities might be? Would we really want to go back to an anarchic state of nature, without society, without culture?
Altoon, I hope my extracts didn’t compromise Fowles’ deeply expressed and very personal commentary on nature, humankind and creativity. Your comments are reasonable and call up the “both/and” energy in me.
But there is so much more in this small book that speaks to something deeper than I was able to achieve in my post. Yes you are right, wild is a construct in most cases. But there is something that he is addressing about not separating background and foreground that speaks to me profoundly. I had a similar, hard to articulate response to “A Thousand Plateaus” as well. The world is ready for a shift, a big one. Both Fowles and Deleuze and Guattari touch on that for me.
Thank you for taking the time to offer this point of view so clearly. I can always count on you to speak your truth without blame or judgment.
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I came across this jewel of a book only recently and it spoke deeply to me. There is something profoundly wise and wondrous about Fowle’s words of wisdom in honor of the wilderness within and without.
Holly, I am so glad (but not surprised) that The Tree was a connection for you too. Fowles was such a gifted writer as well.