Thanks to Professor Spates for sharing the following entry with its photographs from his blog, Why Ruskin?. Click on images to enlarge them. — George P. Landow
Friends,
In his comment on our last post, Mark Frost mentioned that I haven't put up anything of late which reminded us of Ruskin's unparalleled ability to make nature come alive. So today I've taken a step toward remedying that omission by reproducing a passage from the fourth volume of Ruskin's xModern Paintersx series, paragraphs telling us of the glories which are mountains, paragraphs that readers in his time judged to be among his very best (which praise is, if you've been following these posts for very long, considerable praise indeed). The paragraphs might serve another useful purpose as the summer comes toward us, for (I know for a fact that) at least some of you are planning to trek a bit in some in the mountains he describes below--for which exercising it would not be remiss to tote along this passage in your backpacks!)
Left: Foothills of the Swiss Alps from above the Lake of Brienzee. Right: .
From his first sightings of them in childhood Ruskin loved mountains--for their consummate beauty, for their power, for their ability to inspire, because they were to his keen eyes among the greatest instances of the incandescent loveliness of nature, creation, and the creator who had made them, and all else, possible. Gifts of glory!
Left:The Great Falls of Geissbach above the Lake of Brienzee, Switzerland. Right:The Mont Blanc Range (French Alps) from the Village and Bridge of St. Martins.
Later, he studied them and learned of their unparalleled (and much overlooked) ability to sustain us; learned of their necessity; learned that, without them, little else of delight and the good life would be possible; learned, in short, about the office which the mountains held on earth, learned of their intrinsic and eternal role in making that complex which is creation well, whole, and life-helping. Here is what he said (his first sentence alludes to the advances which had been recently made by geologists which had proven that creation had not been a seven-day but had been, at the very least, a seven-eons long process:
It is not always needful—in many respects it is not possible—to conjecture the manner, or the time, in which this work [of creation] was done. But it is deeply necessary for all [of us] to consider the magnificence of the accomplished purpose and the depth of the wisdom and love which are manifested in the ordinances [given to] the hills… [F]or without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become, for the most part, desert plain or stagnant marsh.
But, the feeding of the rivers and the purifying of the winds are the least of the services appointed to the hills. To fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God’s working—to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment—are their higher missions. They are as a great and noble architecture—first giving shelter, comfort, and rest, and covered also with mighty sculpture and painted legend. It is impossible to examine in their connected system the feature of even the most ordinary mountain scenery without concluding that it has been prepared in order to unite, as far as possible, and in the closest compass, every means of delighting and sanctifying the [human] heart… [For] the whole heart of Nature seems thirsting to give, and still to give, shedding forth her everlasting beneficence with a profusion so patient, so passionate, that our utmost observance and thankfulness are but, at last, neglect of her nobleness, and apathy to her love…
[To prove the point, let] the reader imagine, first, the appearance of the most varied plain of some richly cultivated country. Let him imagine it dark with graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures. Let him fill the space of it—to the utmost horizon—with innumerable and changeful incidents of scenery and life, leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle. And, when he has wearied himself with endless imagining and left no space without some loveliness of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, with its infinite treasures of natural beauty and happy human life, gathered up in God’s hands from one edge of the horizon to the other like a woven garment, and shaken into deep falling folds, as the robes droop from a king’s shoulders, all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rearing themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his horse plunges. And all its villages nestling themselves into the new windings of its glens. And all its pastures thrown into steep waves of greensward, dashed with dew along the edges of their folds, and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and he will have seen as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great Alps…
And although this...beauty seems at first, in its wildness, inconsistent with the service of man, it is, in fact, more necessary to his happy existence than all the level and easily subdued land which he rejoices to possess… The valleys only feed. The mountains feed and guard and strengthen us… The sea wave with all its beneficence is yet devouring and terrible. But the silent mass of the blue mountain is lifted toward heaven with a stillness of perpetual mercy… [It is evident that perfect] permanence and absolute security were evidently in no wise intended... Mountains were [made] to be destructible and frail… And yet, under all these conditions of destruction to be maintained in magnificent eminence before [our] eyes...
Fairly easily demonstrable, the veracity of these sentences, with just a few pictures from a trip not long ago made with Jenn Morris and Suzanne Varady to these same Alps Ruskin mentions, mountains which, all his life, he loved: No, stronger! Worshiped! (I suggest re-reading the passage above as you look at the pictures.)
The Summit of Mont Blanc from the Summit of The Brevant, Chamouni, French Alps.
Related material
- More commentaries on Ruskin by Jim Spates
- Ruskin on nature (Paul Sawyer)
- The sentences of Ruskin, “an artist in prose” (G. K. Chesterton)
- Ruskin as Word-Painter (George P. Landow)
Last modified 1 May 2024