The Sphinx and the Milky Way (1)
An Asynchronous Studio Book Club Reading of The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield, edited by Ben Estes.
Twenty-one pages into The Sphinx and the Milky Way is this gorgeous passage:
…Let us forget that the sky, as scientists theorize, is distance, and imagine that it is in reality a dome, whose edge rests on the horizon. If you can do that you are ready for this statement: The sky is dissolving, and the sky dust is coming down to mingle itself with the haze & smoke. The world is turning to blue, and at any time the distant hills may become sky and the sky, hills. One expects at any moment in a wind like this, to see the dissolving heaven part and reveal to us some of the secrets of life.
It was from Charles Burchfield’s diary entry of August 1, 1914. Heedless, or constitutionally indifferent, to the war blowing up in Europe, the 21-year-old Ohioan was sagely though unwittingly evoking the Shōbōgenzō:
There are mountains hidden in treasures. There are mountains hidden in swamps. There are mountains hidden in the sky. There are mountains hidden in mountains. There are mountains hidden in hiddenness. This is complete understanding. An ancient Buddha said, "Mountains are mountains, waters are waters." These words do not mean mountains are mountains; they mean mountains are mountains. Therefore investigate mountains thoroughly. When you investigate mountains thoroughly, this is the work of the mountains. Such mountains and waters of themselves become wise persons and sages.
“The world is turning to blue.” I looked over at my cell phone and fleetingly felt tempted to throw it into the yard. Even writing a Substack post about this strikes me as somewhat stupid. The answers are within and outside. Go there. This is a note to self.
As explained in an editor’s note by Ben Estes, Sphinx is distilled from a 740-page compilation of Burchfield’s journals from 1993 that I’ve long coveted. That in turn was selected from 10,000 pages of diary across 72 volumes. Since the 1993 book is a rarity and the source is longer than the Talmud, it’s most welcome to have this new distillation, handsomely illustrated, spaciously arrayed, and judiciously selected.
The above passage is not the only one that echoes some Eastern master. Page 42:
A period of depression is again come over me—I know of no manner how I can possibly be interesting to anyone. I have never learned to talk and have only listened to the trees. I never longed for solitude as much as I do now. Strange phantom lands, in which I wander as a half-insane carefree being, loom up in my mind. I see enormous moonlit cliffs with water flowing at their bases.
Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused.
Other men are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Other men are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea.
Without direction, like the restless wind.
Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.
Burchfield was a thoughtful Lutheran with five children, and I don’t mean to imply more than a temperamental similarity. The names of a hundred books appear in the journals, according to the introduction by Burchfield scholar Nancy Weekly. The sample listed is all Americans and Occidentals. If Asia rings in the words, it’s because of a transcendent humanity that obliterates categories of east and west.
“Walking under the trees I felt as if the color made sound,” he remarked in the fall of 1915 (p. 39). He was a proper synesthete, one gathers, but more significant was an underlying sensitivity. From 1917 (p. 57): “I would be so sensitive to Nature’s moods—so close that a coming change would make itself known in the look of a house hours or days in advance.” By 1923, at a prematurely aged thirty, working in a wallpaper design job that he detested in Buffalo, he was moved to record (p. 69):
…my mind recalled certain events of my adolescent period that I wrote about. Such as the enthusiastic account I gave of walking in the country around Salem, Ohio. Then, everything was of equal interest, every stick & stone, every sound and smell. Now a landscape is either interesting or dull. I thought with regret that that period, when the whole world, the procession of the seasons, is packed with wonder, must pass.
Yet even this sad realization turned out to be a product of acute receptiveness. In February 1931 he had one epiphany among many:
Never before has the great star we call the sun seemed so much like a star as today—Shining from such a depth of blue, with little mist or atmosphere to obscure it, it cannot be seen as a sphere, but only as a diamond-shaped burst of dazzling light—even its color is like starlight—cold and remote—I walk along in ecstasy—
A couple of weekends ago we drove to the top of New Hampshire to witness Totality, and I had a similar experience. We are orbiting a star. With the moon shielding it you can see with bare eyes its silver rays piercing the blackness. Photos of the thing are meaningless; in person the spheres feel like they’re resting on your forehead. The light shortly before and after looked like day and night poured into one vessel.
But indeed that was all the product of the regular motion of earth, moon, and sun. The trick is to continue to walk along in ecstasy.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscriptions keep it coming. Please consider one for yourself and thank you for reading.
The current entry of the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is The Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles Burchfield. For more information see the ASBC calendar.
Dissident Muse’s first publication, Backseat Driver by James Croak, is available now at Amazon.
Aphorisms for Artists: 100 Ways Toward Better Art by Walter Darby Bannard is out now at Allworth Press. More information is available at the site for the book. If you own it already, thank you; please consider reviewing the book at Amazon, B&N, or Goodreads.
Bernie Chaet, whom I studied with in school was a fan of BurchfieId, so consequently, I have been familiar with his work ever since and was keenly interested in reading this book. Burchfield’s writing reveals what can be seen in his paintings; one immersed in and with nature in a somewhat whimsical, but intense, mysterious way. His descriptions of houses, trees and the weather were fascinating. Chaet, too, in his manner and painting had similar tendencies, but perhaps less cerebral than Burchfield.
I can imagine Bernie describing a similar scene as to what Burchfiled sees here: “…I was struck with the beauty of the dead leaves by our neighbor’s garage-the sort of beauty that is absolute. The soft tones of brown, lavender, yellow brown & reddish brown, with sharp accent of green grass, were very satisfying. Later I watched whirling leaves in sunlight-and it was revealed to me suddenly that this was not leaves & sunlight, but beautiful abstract colors in motion, in ordered movement. The whole world from that tiny event was all at once re-created.”
A good recommendation.
Nice. Very asynchronous.