SEPT. 3 - 5, 2019 PART 10: WILDERNESS: A JOURNAL OF QUIET ADVENTURE IN ALASKA - INFLUENCES & REVIEWS

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

Part 10 – Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska - Influences & Reviews

Sept. 3-,5 2019

ABOVE – Illustration from Wilderness, with a quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche: Zarathustra himself led the ugliest man by the hand, in order to show him his night-world and the great round moon and the silvery waterfalls nigh unto his cave.

       

“Between the Devil of Dullness and the Deep Sea of Vagueness”

At the very least, the various reviews of Rockwell Kent’s Wilderness call attention to him and his art. Most are positive, promote his reputation and attract readers to the Alaska book. Any negative comments are mixed with praise -- as in this case, with an international audience:  The writing is well enough, according to a critic in the July 23, 1920 London Times Literary Supplement, but Mr. Kent is not a born writer; he is a born, though very unequal draughtsman. The review is titled “The Artist –What Will He Become?” and continues: Some of his drawings, such as the one of Zarathustra leading the ugliest man by the hand, are failures; but even they lead one to expect that others will not be failures… One of the finest of his drawings is called Running Water {Part of The Mad Hermit series}; there is no vague idea in that, but a perfectly concrete image of a huge man, like a piece of sculpture, letting the water of a cascade run through his fingers; and behind, a black rock and a sky with three stars. he has drawn a kind of intimacy between the man and the water, like the intimacy between the man and the water, like the intimacy in Chinese pictures. You cannot say what it means, nor does he pretend to tell you; but you believe in it. It does express a friendship of all created things, such as we ourselves seldom attain to, seldom can believe in, a primeval friendship, out of which no doubt, arose the myths, and the images of the poets, and the melodies of nature--musicians like Hayden and Dvorak. But it is a rare achievement in a modern artist thus to express it in form.

ABOVE –  “Running Water”

BELOW “Superman” both from Wilderness

“Superman” is not one of his best drawings, according to the critic, for it expresses nothing but his vague admiration of Nietzsche and is rhetorical with Nietzsche's rhetoric. he is at his best when he does not, like the Superman, try to make of the mountains his wash-pot or to cast his shoe over the heavens: when he draws, not the Superman, but man doing something in particular, man intimate with the water, or whittling at the stock, or going to bed, or dragging drift wood. Then he escapes from the emptiness of Blake himself at his worst, and reminds us of Blake at his best. “Rain Torrents” is another favorite of this reviewer where we see the waters streaming down the ravines of precipitous  hills into the sea, for it shows the artist’s power of reducing landscape to its simplest terms without emptying it of character.

ABOVE  – “Rain Torrents” from Wilderness

This is an important review from the London Times Literary Supplement. It praises, criticizes, and warns while at the same time seeing great potential. As its title suggests – what will Rockwell Kent become?  The piece claims that There are in the book too many of the great lumbering, superman, figures which express nothing but a desire to draw something tremendous; there is a danger that Mr. Kent will get the habit of producing these enormities and waste his remarkable gifts upon them. Blake himself is often thus willful and forgets reality in his own way of vague and exorbitant ambitions. Mr. Kent should remember Blake's own doctrine, so often repeated but not always practiced, that excellence is in minute particulars, that the task of the artist is to speak in terms of his own art and not to be satisfied with lumbering allusions to literary fantasies. Nowadays artists are always being misled this way or that, into mere dependence on the model, or, by reaction, into some kind of pompous abstraction. They have a narrow and perilous road to tread between the devil of dullness and the deep sea of vagueness. 

That last sentence is reminiscent of what American literary critic Roger Sale called the English tradition of visionary authors in his book Modern Heroism: Essays on D.H. Lawrence, William Empson and J.R.R. Tolkien (1973). He included Milton, Blake, Shelley and Swinburne. Rather than being direct, these writers invented their own system of symbols which created either greater vagueness or greater cultist insistence, or both. These visionary authors assembled a cult which created quarrels between staunch admirers or alarmed detractors who stand outside and insist that all writing make sense. The critic, of course, is referring to Kent's art -- specifically the pen and inks in Wilderness. The text may occasionally get philosophical, but not vague and abstract. Like D.H. Lawrence, of whom Sale writes, Rockwell Kent's language is hard, concrete, and prosaic. These are the times in life when nothing happens - but in quietness the soul expands -- may seem to teeter on the edge of the devil of dullness and the deep sea of vagueness -- but it is supported by solid and specific descriptions of the Alaska wilderness and other details of Kent's experience on Fox Island.

The London Times Literary Supplement review ends with:  We have our fears for Mr. Kent, but also great hopes.

BELOW – “Zarathustra and his Playmates” from Wilderness.

Kent’s friend and young admirer, Carl Zigrosser, knew Nietzsche’s work better than Rockwell and – as Kent scholar Jake Milgram Wien suggests, he was the one who probably titled many of Kent’s pen and inks from Alaska. Still, I believe that while Kent is closely reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra on Fox Island, he is absorbing significant ideas from it. Look closely at the image above. Zarathustra is resting among the lions – and they are among his playthings. He has becoming a child in the ideal evolutionary process of the creative soul as described in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  Zarathustra is focused in this world, not any other. The Persian prophet advocated an agrarian lifestyle and those supporting gods. When he  descends from mountain and enters the village he tells people he will teach them the meaning of the earth. He reveals the creative soul’s ideal process toward the Ubermensch (Overman or Superman).

First one must become the Camel. The camel is a load bearer -- and in this case the burden is tradition. Before one can question and reject the tradition, one must absorb it completely, carry it, embrace it. Only then can one enter stage two and become the Lion – and we see Zarathustra above lying down with the lions. At this point one has become mature and earned the right to question the tradition and challenge its truths. From that point one must emerge into stage three – the Child – a phase beyond both obedience to the tradition and challenging its validity. One must achieve a new affirmation, an individuality – a new innocence. The creativity and dynamism of childlike play – experimentation and risk-taking – is essential. This takes toil, gamble and spiritual death followed by a rebirth. Just watch a child’s focus during play. This is serious business. The child has boundless vitality and intensity. It’s no accident that Kent comments much about Rockie’s creative play in Wilderness – and some reviews recognized that emphasis.

From Fox Island Kent writes to his wife that he has changed. He claims to be a new man, reborn. On March 4, 1919, he describes for his wife the perfect home he will find for her and their family – the place that becomes “Egypt” in Vermont. He writes: I want our home to be a kingdom situated in space in the year of the lord 36. Amen. So be it. The world begins anew in the year 36, his current age. He has carried the suffering burden – his extensive training and apprenticeships over the years -- and now in Alaska he has laid down with the lions. He is ready to begin again and deal with the world on his own terms. This evolutionary descent into the wisdom of childhood from Nietzsche blended with Kent’s reading of William Blake’s Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence.

What about Kent’s “Superman?” For Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the Ubermensch is the spirit who has overcome, transcended human limitations. It leaps over mountains and sea with unlimited passion endanger life and limb, even at the risk of death. Rowing from Fox Island in winter in an 18-foot leaky dory, facing frigid seas and a fierce north wind, Kent is reenacting this struggle of transcendence. He might perish in the process, but at least he will have lived. I wanted it all, he once said. Don’t you? He would not abide becoming Zarathustra’s -- the Last Man – an effete, ambitionless, sheltered being who will never take risks. That kind of invented happiness is worthless to Kent. Pain and life are one. On Jan. 13, 1919 Kathleen wrote him in Alaska about her sacrifices and all her suffering: For years I really believed I would get my reward in Heaven, as Mother used to tell me; then I believed I would get my reward on earth, now I no longer believe in a reward but feel sure I will die as I have lived, longing for things unattained. On Feb. 13, 1919 Kent wrote back – probably reflecting on his life -- There’s no reward, there’s just life.  Rockwell Kent was no utilitarian – striving for a life of minimum pain. That would be numbing.  Suffering and failure was part of the process of descent into the abyss, into the dark cave. One might fail, but one also might return into the new light of a rising sun. Success wouldn’t be easy returning to the herd with the gift of wisdom. Even Zarathustra was misunderstood and at times considered himself a failure – but he struggled on.

ABOVE -- "The Vision," from the Mad Hermit series in Wilderness. 

BELOW -- A sketch in a Feb. 17, 1919 letter from Rockwell to Kathleen.

Recall all Kent’s paintings of the sun, mostly setting, over Resurrection Bay. Note that Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins with the prophet, at age 30, addressing the sun before descending the mountain. He is weary and ready to burst with wisdom, like a bee who has gathered too much honey. He speaks: I would give away and distribute, until the wise among men find joy once again in their folly, and the poor in their riches. For that I must descend to the depths, as you do in the evening when you go behind the sea and still bring light to the underworld, you overrich star. Like you, I must go under – go down, as is said by man, to whom I want to descend. So bless me then, you quiet eye that can look even upon an all-too-great

happiness without envy! Bless the cup that wants to overflow, that the water may flow from it golden and carry everywhere the reflection of your delight. Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become man again. Thus Zarathustra began to go under.

ABOVE – “Pioneers” or “Into the Sun” (1918-1919). 

Kent, too, has gone under and descended from the mountains – with the sun’s cup of golden water – wisdom. He writes in Wilderness: The still, deep cup of wilderness is potent wisdom. Only to have tasted it is to have moved lifetime forward to a finer youth. At mid-age he has evolved, reverted forward to Nietzsche’s child. In German, the verb “to go under” often describes the sunset, and also carries the sense of dying. The sun sets and dies, but it also again rises – and regenerates.

SOURCES for this delve into Nietzsche: The Modern Library edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1995), translated and with a Preface by Walter Kaufmann; American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (2012) by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen ; The Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, a 24-lecture audio course from The Great Courses with Professor Robert C. Solomon and Professor Kathleen M. Higgins -- especially Lecture 8: "Nietzsche, Jesus, Zarathustra."

BELOW – Rockwell Kent and his family, summer 1921. Front row from left, Rockie, little Kathleen, Barbara, Clara. Back row from left, Rockwell, Kathleen (holding Gordon). Rockwell Kent Gallery, Plattsburgh State University, Plattsburgh, N.Y.

During the summer of 1920, Rockwell, Kathleen and the children welcome to their Vermont home fox farmer and goat rancher – Lars Matt Olson. He has made the long journey from Alaska. (I’ll write about Olson’s life and his short stay at “Egypt” soon.) Word has spread among Kent’s friends that the old Swede has arrived and he has many visitors. The lucky ones may have convinced both Rockwell and Olson to sign copies of Wilderness. Perhaps a few had little Rockie sign the book, as well. Among the visitors is Polly Steele, probably with her husband Fred. We run into Polly and Fred, and their daughter Anne, in Kathleen’s letters from New York City to Rockwell in Alaska. On Nov. 22, 1918 she writes: I went to the Philharmonic concert this afternoon noon with Ann Steele. Polly had gone to Washington so sent me her ticket. On Dec. 15, 1918: Polly called (me) up Friday morning to say she had an extra ticket for the Philharmonic & wanted me to go. On Jan. 6, 1919: I was talking with Polly Steele on the phone this morning and she couldn’t say enough about the chart. This is Kent’s Chart of Resurrection Bay. He sent the original to Carl Zigrosser who made copies, and Kathleen has been distributing them to friends and family. On Jan. 8, 1919: Yesterday afternoon I had Polly Steele and Mrs. Du Bois here for tea.{Mrs. Frances (Duncan) du Bois is the wife of painter Guy Pene du Bois, who studied with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri as did Kent.}

When Polly got home she found someone had sent her a box at Aeolian Hall to hear chamber music.  She & Fred could not go, so she called me up right away, asked me to go and take two friends. Billy and Bernice went with me. Anna Steele also went & two relatives of Fred’s. Polly is certainly being good to me. That’s the third time she has given me a ticket to hear music. It was lovely last night; the flutist was splendid, and his silver flute shown wonderfully. And I wondered if yours still shines so beautifully. It turns out that Polly’s husband, Fred, is Frederick Dorr Steele – the artist famous for his illustrations of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Their daughter, Anne (Steele) Marsh became an internationally-known printmaker and painter. According to her obituary (She died in 1995 at age 94): The family spent summers on Monhegan Island, Maine, with many other artists, including the young Rockwell Kent, whom Mr. Steele instructed in the art of printmaking. The Steele’s were old friends of the Kent’s and, as Kathleen says in her letters, Polly looked after her while Kent was in Alaska. In July or early August 1920, Polly and Fred visited the Kent’s in Vermont. On August 10 she wrote a letter to Kathleen about that visit. (The letter is labeled and filed with 1916 letters on Archives of American Art website, but from the internal references, it’s clear it was written in Aug. 1920. She mentions both Olson and Kent’s recently published book.)

BELOW – The first page of the August 10, 1920 letter from Polly Steele to Kathleen Kent followed by a full transcription.

                                             Westport – Tues. Aug. 10.

Dearest Kathleen –

         I can’t tell you how much we enjoyed the little visit with you and Rockwell and your descendants and Mr. Olson and all and all –

         You certainly have a lovely spot up there – but, though I know you all love the remoteness I wish just at this time you were nearer all of us that love you. And we might help you a bit till thelittle new citizen is safely here –

         I feel a very good-for-nothing friend so far away, and can only think of you and love you when I really want to come and can your string beans and ease the household chores –

         We are keenly enjoying Rockwell’s book. Fred was working last night on a mechanical job that left him free to listen – so I read aloud & I was so absorbed in his interest, I could hardly drive him to bed at nine -- & the first think we know it was 11 -. It is so beautifully written – so direct & so full of meat as Fred says – We hat to put it down. There are so many people I know, who will enjoy it – in greater or less degree.

         While we were in Williamstown a dozen people saw it who all want to read it – even though some of them could not understand the drawings!! One woman said “she should think the costume quite inadequate for the climate.”

         I want to make something for the baby – What do you want most – Would you like a little slip – and have you a pattern you like? Mine are long since given away and I don’t want to cut by guess.

         I hope Rockwell, Jr. enjoys his camp life as much as Bob whom we saw on Sunday – He is one of 70 boys in the camp – a big busy lot of youngsters – swimming twice a day- fishing, taking long hikes – some times over night – and everybody so well and happy.

         Bob returns next Monday & Anne the day after. Anne is having a wonderful time with a group of young people at Raquette Lake and writes she is (aqua playing?) every day and dancing most nights. Westport will seem pretty quiet when she gets back.

         It is very warm here now – Sunday the hottest day this year – but we always get a breeze at our house, and with a good swim every day from the beach and sleeping porches enough to go around we are most comfy.

         Z sends her love to Kathleen & Barbara & Fred and I add love to all of you big and little, and our greetings too to Mr. Olson.

         Send me a line when you can easily – never when it is a tax – but I’d love to hear –

         If there is anything I can do – at this distance – shopping or anything you can think of – please let me do it.

                                                      affectionately always

                                                               Polly Steele

NEXT ENTRY

PART 11

WILDERNESS: A JOURNAL OF QUIET ADVENTURE IN ALASKA

MORE INFLUENCES & REVIEWS