Some of my earliest memories are of my brother and I clambering high up into trees – clinging to the uppermost branches and letting the wind and our weight carry us to and fro, the busy-buzzing world below altogether unaware of our presence. Even to the mind of a child the trees exemplified strength, stability – traits too-often lacking in the world below.
So on this vibrant Sunday morning when the first shades of autumn tint the leaves of the maple and oak outside my window, I share a beautiful little passage written by Herman Hesse, received today from one of my favorite sources. Enjoy.
For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.
In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness. – Herman Hesse
From his novel Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse…. on thoughts of men, not trees…
But I believe you too are interested in books and such matters. Your aunt told me one day that you had been to college and were a good Greek scholar. Now, this morning I came across a passage in Novalis. May I show it to you ? It would delight you I know.
He took me into his room, which smelt strongly of tobacco, and pulled out a book from one of the heaps, turned the leaves and looked for the passage.
‘ This is good too, very good,’ he said, ‘ listen to this: ‘ A man should be proud of suffering. All suffering is a reminder of our high estate.’ Fine! Eighty years before Neitzsche. But that is not the sentence I meant. Wait a moment, here I have it. This: ‘ Most men will not swim before they are able to.’ Isn’t it witty ? Naturally, they won’t swim ! They are born for the solid earth, not for water. And naturally they won’t think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.’
Hermann Hesse, one of my favourite authors; only wish I could read and understand German but the translations are still wonderful.