Jo Lynn Sallee

02 October 2006

Desire and Loss Portrayed Through the Timeless Language of Nature

            Before taking this class, I did not understand the notion of Romanticism as a writing style. The term “Romanticism,” evoked visions of book covers depicting handsome heroes and swooning heroines.  I have now discovered the concept of Romanticism as a writing style originating in the pre-Civil War period.  It is full of contradictions, with no one set pattern to the technique.  It is a story that generally tells a tale full of longing, desire, quest and consequent loss.

            Three such narratives that have particularly piqued my imagination are the Christopher Columbus letters, Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage and Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and The Last of the Mohicans.  These stories share a reverence for nature that magnifies the classic desire and loss themes. Though mankind has changed throughout the ages, nature has basically stayed the same.  The universal language revolving around nature connects human beings across generations, religions and genders.  One can relate to and feel the beauty as well as the challenges of nature through the descriptions.   Therefore, the reader also can relate to the subsequent fall or loss that may occur.  This becomes clear through my chosen readings.

            Although Columbus actually wrote his letters in a pre-Romantic period, they convey the classic Romantic style, depicting desire and loss through nature. Our text describes it as “. . . a brief moment of wonder followed by a long series of disasters and disenchantments” (25).  In the Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage, desire and euphoria are evident in the natural descriptions.  At first, Columbus portrays the land as “very fertile to a limitless degree . . .”(26).  He goes into more detail as he gains momentum and his euphoria seems to grow as he tells of lands that are “. . . “filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky”(27).  Perhaps Columbus desires himself as ruler of this paradise that holds “. . . birds of a thousand kinds . . .”(27).  The timeless natural descriptions allow the modern reader to actively relate to the rapture felt by Columbus that occurred so very long ago.    

            Unfortunately, this tale turns from desire to loss as depicted in the Letter from Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage.  The correspondence makes it obvious that his vision of paradise has completely vanished.  Obviously, Columbus has lost his euphoria as he begins the letter with “Of Espanola, Paria, and other lands, I never think without weeping,”(27) as his first thought. While he does not mention the beauty of nature, what is glaring is the total lack of it in “. . .an  exhausted state. . .”(27).  Columbus makes a nature reference in his lament against his aggressors “enjoying its fruits . . .”(27) when he felt they should not get this benefit.  He gives his final nod to nature when he said, “. . . I have wept for others . . . may the earth weep for me”(28).  This statement seems to refer to a belief that nature is on his side in the described situation.  

            In contrast to the Columbus letters, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, is a satirical  short story written in the Romantic period and style.  However, Washington Irving also uses nature to highlight desire and loss issues.  Ichabod Crane seems to grow in desire for the young Katrina through her connection with nature.  He becomes intoxicated with the family farm that is situated by “[a] great elm-tree. . . which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water.  Ichabod Crane is mesmerized in a dream like manner by images of “martins skimmed twittering . . . rows of pigeons . . . unwieldy porkers . . . snowy geese . . . sucking pigs . . .”(5).  Ichabod so strongly desires the prosperous life that he could have owning the farm with Katrina that literally “[t]he pedagogue’s mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare”(5).  The narrative reiterates as it relates, “. . . his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea . . .”(5).  The modern reader is completely drawn into this classic tale of desire.  Through the timeless connection with nature one can absolutely relate with poor Ichabod when the author reveals “[f]rom the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel”(6).  The fact that this kind of natural richness would appeal to many people in this modern age, readers can still relate with Mr. Crane.

            The beauty of nature gives way to nightmarish nature to relay classic loss in this story.    After his rejection, Ichabod hears a “groan” from a tree.  The road he travels is seen as “matted thick with wild grapevines, [that] threw a cavernous gloom over it”(13).  If he had seen the grapevines only a day before on the farm, visions of beautiful fruit and wine may have danced through his head.  Using light and dark to accentuate the good and evil of nature it is related that, “[i]n the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge,”(13) as he begins his flight from the “haunted” forest. 

            However, the reader is given hope through nature when Ichabod sights “[a]n opening in the trees . . .”(14) which suggests an escape route for him.  The timelsss, and perhaps  biblically linked star of hope is then offered as “. . .[a] wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook . . .”(14).  Though Ichabod had suffered classic desire and loss we are left with hope of his redemption in life.  After all, his only crime was being over imaginative as well as wanting more than life and nature wanted to give him at that moment in time. 

            The third text chosen, The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper, offers a poignant portrait of nature linked with desire and loss during the Romantic period.  In her essay, Yvonne Hopkins impressively expounds upon the importance of nature in this tale:

            Resoundingly, the works of the early Romanticists present a multi-faceted view of nature as more than simply a backdrop against which humankind carves its destiny.  By the time Cooper develops his classic sage of frontier Romanticism, The Last of the Mohicans, the role of nature has become central to the struggles and the triumphs of the settlers in the new world.  As in earlier texts, the wilderness remains fraught with “hazardous chances,” and the power of nature to debilitate reinforces the sense of its psychological  grip on the outsiders: “the magnifying influence of fear began to set at nought the calculations of reason” (5,7).

Ms. Hopkins recognizes and writes admirably regarding the integral part nature plays in this classic Romantic story. 

            The desire in this narrative is marked with a journey to get from one point to another, safely. The author provides Cora and Alice with Uncas, Hawkeye and Chingachgook, men of nature, for their dangerous journey.   Through the perils of harsh landscapes they must travel, therefore, men of nature are necessary to guide the women back to their father.

         Hawkeye seems one with nature when described as, “[h]e wore a hunting-shirt of forest-green . . . and a summer cap, of skins which had been shorn of their fur”(29).  His body “appeared strung and indurated, by unremitted exposure and toil”(29).    Even his leggings “were gartered above the knee with sinews of a deer”(29).  Chingachgook is presented as a prime example of human nature as the author describes him as “nearly naked,” and having “a solitary eagle’s plume on his head” with “. . . expanded chest and ful-formed limbs . . . though no symptoms of decay”(29).  Uncas appears much like his father as “. . . graceful and unrestrained in the attitudes and movements of nature”(58). He is implicitly linked with nature through the mark of the tortoise.  Tamenund makes the nature connection clear as he relates that, “The blood of the Turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth, from whence they came, except Chingachgook and his son”(310).  Even today, through the timeless language of nature, one can understand how this crew would be the ones to take on a perilous journey.

            The desire of the journey is laced with incredible risks, but the author pulls the modern reader into the story with beautiful natural visions. Although the sisters are aware of the danger they are in they enjoy the following:

While the eyes of the sisters were endeavouring to catch glimpses, through the trees, of the flood of golden glory, which formed a glittering halo around the sun, tinging here and there, with ruby streaks, or bordering with narrow edgings of shining yellow, a mass of clouds that lay piled at no great distance above the western hills. . .(124)

Hawk-eye takes this scene as a signal from nature to “seek his food and natural rest.”  This beauty and grace of nature is as breathtaking today as it would have been back then.  As human beings, we can all relate to this kind of majestic display.

            However, as dictated by Romanticism, where there is desire and journey, there must also be a fall and ultimate loss.  If the characters of this story were allowed to live happily ever after, it would not fit the definition of the Romantic style.  The silence of the wilderness becomes described as “treacherous quiet”(327).  The peace that could have been perceived as beautiful has become menacing.  The sky is used as a backdrop as Uncas and Heyward see Cora in the distance “. . . all four were strongly drawn against an opening in the sky . . .”(336).  The vastness of the sky draws attention to the enormity of the job still before them.   

The ultimate loss in this story comes with the death of Uncas and Cora.  Again, Cooper uses the nature theme to describe Uncas as he defends Cora in his final fight.  The Huron is depicted as “like a tiger” and Uncas “arose from the blow, as the wounded panther turns upon his foe”(337).  The use of the two large cats of nature relays concise mental pictures of heroics and honor to the modern reader as well as a reader situated in the Romantic period.

While the three stories described are very diverse, they have the language of nature in common to relate desire and loss issues.  Resoundingly, these three factors combine to make them classic examples of Romanticism.  However, the language of nature allows a contemporary audience to have an understanding of the stories that will remain timeless for generations to come.