Thomas Bernhard on walking, thinking, and the paradox of self-reflection; a vintage illustrated ode to the wilderness; Langston Hughes on Nina Simone

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[Thomas Bernhard on Walking, Thinking, and the Paradox of Self-Reflection]( [thomasbernhard_walking.jpg?fit=320%2C493]( “I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession,” the adolescent Sylvia Plath wrote in her diary as she contemplated [free will and what makes us who we are](. “This is the entire essence of life: Who are you? What are you?” proclaimed Leo Tolstoy in [the diaries of his own youth]( a century earlier. These are abiding questions we all ask ourselves and answer with our selves, but also impossible ones. To hold up a mirror to oneself is to become both the looking-glass and the eye doing the looking — a sort of infinite Borgesian mirror of self-reflection reflecting itself. (Borges himself, in his own youth, [danced with the paradox of self-awareness]( No one has paced this labyrinthine paradox more elegantly, nor reached its center with richer insight, than the Austrian novelist, playwright, and poet Thomas Bernhard (February 9, 1931–February 12, 1989) in his novella [Walking]( ([public library]( — his unusual 1971 masterpiece exploring the nature of thinking and the impossibility of accurate self-reflection. [thomasbernhard_reflection.jpg?resize=680%2C551] Painting of Thomas Bernhard, with photographer’s reflection. Thomas Bernhard House. Photograph by Mayer Bruno. Half a century after The Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame asserted that to walk is [“to set the mind jogging”]( and a generation before Rebecca Solnit defined walking as [“a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned,”]( Bernhard writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]If we observe very carefully someone who is walking, we also know how he thinks. If we observe very carefully someone who is thinking, we know how he walks. If we observe most minutely someone walking over a fairly long period of time, we gradually come to know his way of thinking, the structure of his thought, just as we, if we observe someone over a fairly long period of time as to the way he thinks, we will gradually come to know how he walks… There is nothing more revealing than to see a thinking person walking, just as there is nothing more revealing than to see a walking person thinking… Walking and thinking are in a perpetual relationship that is based on trust. [shauntan_grimm4.jpg?zoom=2&w=680] Art by Shaun Tan for [a special edition of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales](. In a brilliant conceptual twist, which turns the mirror of self-reflection into a Möbius strip, Bernhard adds: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]However, we may not ask ourselves how we walk, for then we walk differently from the way we really walk and our walking simply cannot be judged, just as we may not ask ourselves how we think, for then we cannot judge how we think because it is no longer our thinking. Whereas, of course, we can observe someone else without his knowledge (or his being aware of it) and observe how he walks or thinks, that is, his walking and his thinking, we can never observe ourselves without our knowledge (or our being aware of it). If we observe ourselves, we are never observing ourselves but someone else. Thus we can never talk about self-observation, or when we talk about the fact that we observe ourselves we are talking as someone we never are when we are not observing ourselves, and thus when we observe ourselves we are never observing the person we intended to observe but someone else. The concept of self-observation and so, also, of self-description is thus false. [whatcoloristhewind1.jpg] Art from [What Color Is the Wind?]( by Anne Herbauts Bernhard extends this logic to the vastest questions about how the native limitations of our consciousness shape our perception and interpretation of reality: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]Looked at in this light, all concepts (ideas)… like self-observation, self-pity, self-accusation and so on, are false. We ourselves do not see ourselves, it is never possible for us to see ourselves. But we also cannot explain to someone else (a different object) what he is like, because we can only tell him how we see him, which probably coincides with what he is but which we cannot explain in such a way as to say this is how he is. Thus everything is something quite different from what it is for us… And always something quite different from what it is for everything else. [Walking]( translated into English by Kenneth J. Northcott, is a stunning read in its unparagraphed totality, fusing philosophy’s depth of thought with poetry’s contemplative spaciousness. Complement this fragment with Hannah Arendt on [time, space, and the thinking ego]( Lauren Elkin’s [manifesto for peripatetic empowerment]( and Solnit’s indispensable [Wanderlust]( then revisit former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith on [the persistence of the self]( and the great physician, etymologist, poet, and essayist Lewis Thomas on [how a jellyfish and a sea slug illuminate the mystery of the self]( — the most original, science-governed, yet deeply poetic perspective on the subject I’ve ever encountered. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving I pour tremendous time, thought, heart, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and ad-free, and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy, stimulation, and consolation in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [A Day in the Life of the Jungle: A Poetic Vintage Illustrated Ode to the Wilderness and the Glorious Diversity of Life on Earth]( [thelungle_cover.jpg?fit=320%2C437]( In 1964, the United States passed the epoch-making Wilderness Act — one of the most poetic pieces of legislature ever composed. “A wilderness,” [it proclaimed]( “in contrast with those areas where man[*]( and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” In the same era, the prolific children’s book author and artist Helen Borten traveled to the jungles of Guatemala — home to some of the most untrammeled wilderness on Earth, which very few humans and virtually no foreigners or women entered even as visitors at the time. Moved by the lush community of life in this otherworldly wonderland, Borten set out to invite children’s imaginations for an enchanting visit. In 1968, she published [The Jungle]( ([public library]( rediscovered and brought back to life half a century later by Brooklyn-based independent children’s book powerhouse [Enchanted Lion](. [thejungle1.jpg?resize=680%2C954]( [thejungle27.jpg?resize=680%2C413]( The story unfold as a day in the life of the jungle, lyrically narrated and vividly depicted in Borten’s distinctly mid-century yet singular illustration style, combining woodcut, painting, and printing techniques. As the hours unspool from morning to nightfall, wild and wondrous creatures awaken and assume their respective parts in this intricately choreographed dance of coexistence — a living testament to the words of Rachel Carson, who had made ecology a household word just a few years earlier and who so poetically observed that each creaturely existence plays out [“not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.”]( [thejungle2.jpg?resize=680%2C477]( [thejungle22.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( In the opening vignette, Borten transports the imagination to the almost surreal world of the jungle at daybreak: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]In a hot land near the equator, where winter never comes, a new day is beginning. The climbing sun looks close enough to touch as it turns the sky pink. Out of the mist a vast ocean of leaves appears, splashes with yellow, orange, and violet blossoms. It is the roof of the jungle. Butterflies dip in and out of the blossoms. Macaws and parakeets feed and squawk in the treetops. They drop more berries than they eat. A vulture circles around and around overhead. […] Under the leafy roof, it is dim and still. Time seems to have stopped in a wild summer world of long, long ago. [thejungle6.jpg?resize=680%2C473]( [thejungle24.jpg?resize=680%2C441]( [thejungle4.jpg?resize=680%2C955]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The trees are heavy with ferns and orchids and drooping beards of moss. These are “air” plants trying to reach sunlight by making their homes high above the ground. Their roots take hold on bark instead of in the earth. Dust collects around the roots, forming soil in which to grow. There are air plants cupped like pitchers to store rainwater and others with long roods dangling to the ground. […] From the ground, you cannot see the sky or feel the sun or hear the wind. It is cool and silent in the twilight gloom. Pale trunks disappear into the shadows above, like ghosts trailing robes of green. There are no low branches anywhere. Some trunks are covered with spikes. Some are smooth and look to be carved out of bone. And some have so many air plants molded around their bark that they will be strangled to death. There are more different kinds of trees in the jungle than anywhere else on earth. [thelungle8.jpg?resize=680%2C477]( This ode to place is also an elegy for time. Emanating from the bold and loving celebration of our planet’s living splendor is also the bittersweet awareness that some of the animals Borten depicts are now endangered or entirely extinct. [thejungle3.jpg?resize=680%2C626]( [thejungle23.jpg?resize=680%2C435]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]The jungle seems deserted. But thousands of tricksters hide behind the screen of leaves. A piece of bark falls… and becomes a lizard. A leaf trembles… and become a sloth. A vine uncoils… and becomes a snake. A spot of sunlight blinks… and becomes a jaguar’s eye. [thejungle25.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( [thelungle7.jpg?resize=680%2C477]( [thejungle26.jpg?resize=680%2C453]( Borten’s lyrical prose deepens the naturally enchanting science of the jungle. As the story unfolds across the hours of the day, we learn about the noisiest animal in the world, about the invisible universe of strange and magnificent nocturnal creatures, about the species composition of the insect orchestra scoring the jungle at dusk. [thejungle10.jpg?resize=680%2C954]( [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]High in the trees, the birds are about to begin their morning chorus, On the branches, monkeys sit motionless, their long tails hanging down behind them, like dark quarter notes dotting the gray dawn. Soon the sun will chase the mist and another day will begin in the mysterious green world. below. Born in Philadelphia in 1930, Borten spent the first half of her career composing and illustrating such lyrical, visually arresting, scientifically inspired books for children. Just before she turned sixty, she pivoted into the seemingly unrelated field of broadcast journalism. But she brought to her journalistic work the same ethos that animates her children’s books — a reverence for truth, whether scientific or humanistic, and a stewardship of that which is most beautiful and vulnerable. In 1991, she won a Peabody Award for a landmark NPR documentary exposing gender discrimination in the courts, the dangerous deficiencies of legal protections for abused children, and the way family courts often break up families in their deformed attempts at justice. In era when the vocabulary of children’s imagination is being [forcibly robbed of reverence for the wilderness]( and antiscientific, anti-nature, anti-truth propagandists are hard at work, Borten’s children’s books emerge not only as beacons of loveliness but also as quiet, steadfast pillars of resistance. [thejungle21.jpg?resize=680%2C386]( Couple [The Jungle]( with [The Forest]( — a contemporary counterpart by Italian author Riccardo Bozzi and artist Violeta Lopíz, also from Enchanted Lion Books, celebrating the wilderness and the human role in nature not as conqueror but as humble witness, then revisit Uri Shulevitz’s [vintage watercolor serenade to daybreak](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( [Langston Hughes’s Ardent Public Fan Letter to the Young Nina Simone]( [princessnoire.jpg?fit=320%2C459]( On February 8, 1949, a week after his forty-eight birthday, the poet, novelist, activist, and playwright Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901–May 22, 1967) traveled to Asheville to speak at the Allen School — one of a handful of accredited boarding schools for black girls in the South. There, he met sixteen-year-old Eunice Kathleen Waymon, who had helped organize the event as treasurer of the school’s NAACP chapter. Although Eunice was academically formidable — she had skipped the ninth grade and would graduate as valedictorian of her class — her supreme power lay elsewhere: music. Gifted, hard-working, and determined to become a classical pianist, she had been playing at her mother’s church since age four, performed her first concert at twelve, and had landed at the Allen School thanks to a scholarship fund procured by her beloved piano teacher and first great champion, Miss Mazzy — an Englishwoman by the name of Muriel Mazzanovich. When Hughes met the young Eunice that winter, he could not have known that she would soon revolutionize the music canon under her stage name, Nina Simone. Less than a decade after his Allen School visit, her debut album Little Girl Blue stopped the nation’s breath. Hughes, by then one of the most influential voices in black creative culture, was so stunned that he lauded it with lyrical ardor in “Week by Week” — the newspaper column he had been writing for the Chicago Defender since before he met the young Eunice and would continue writing until his death. Included in Nadine Cohodas’s biography [Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone]( ([public library]( the piece is no common journalistic report on a young artist’s debut but rather a prose poem, a kind of paean for the arrival of a new creative prophet. [langstonhughes_ninasimone.jpg?resize=680%2C357] Originally published on November 12, 1958, it was quickly syndicated by newspapers around the country and was eventually reprinted as a sort of extended blurb on the back of Simone’s 1965 EP Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, just like Walt Whitman had emblazoned a sentence of Emerson’s [electric letter of praise to him]( on a subsequent edition of Leaves of Grass. Hughes writes: [2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png]She is strange. So are the plays of Brendan Behan, Jean Genet, LeRoi Jones, and Bertholt Brecht. She is far-out, and at the same time common. So are raw eggs in Worcestershire and The Connection. She is different. So was Billie Holiday, St. Francis, and John Donne. So in Mort Sahl. She is a club member, a coloured girl, an Afro-American, a homey from Down Home. She has hit the Big Town, the big towns, the LP discs and the TV shows — and she is still from down home. She did it mostly all by herself. Her name is Nina Simone. She has a flair, but no air, she has class but does not wear it on her shoulders. Only chips. She is unique. You either like her or you don’t. If you don’t, you won’t. If you do — whee-ouuu-eu! You do! This short, lovely newspaper serenade marked the beginning of lifelong friendship, mentorship, and artistic collaboration that would last for the remaining years of Hughes’s life. He would send her books he thought would inspire her, invite her to his Manhattan apartment for dinner, and write words for her to set to song. When Hughes died in 1967, a devastated Simone turned her coveted set at the Newport Jazz Festival into a tribute and closed it with an exhortation to the audience: “Keep him with you always. He was beautiful, a beautiful man, and he’s still with us, of course.” Complement with Hughes’s [little-known children’s book about jazz]( and this [rare recording]( of him reading “We Are the American Heartbreak,” then revisit Nina Simone [on time](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving I pour tremendous time, thought, heart, and resources into Brain Pickings, which remains free and ad-free, and is made possible by patronage. If you find any joy, stimulation, and consolation in my labor of love, please consider supporting it with a donation. And if you already donate, from the bottom of my heart: THANK YOU. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now](  [Give Now]( [---] You're receiving this email because you subscribed on Brain Pickings. This weekly newsletter comes out on Sundays and offers the week's most unmissable articles. Brain Pickings NOT A MAILING ADDRESS 159 Pioneer StreetBrooklyn, NY 11231 [Add us to your address book]( [unsubscribe from this list](   [update subscription preferences](