Yi-Fu Tuan - Dear Colleague

May 24, 2005

Dear Colleague,

If one walks through an art gallery of nineteenth-century paintings, one is bound to see some pleasant scenes--a family at dinner, a picnic in the park, friends chatting at a sidewalk café, and so on. Just think of the lushness of Impressionist paintings, which, as one critic put it, is the Haute Bourgeoisie's dream come true. On the other hand, if you read nineteenth-century novels, you are likely to encounter the gloom and doom of a Balzac, Dickens, or Chekhov. Where is the glow of life, the good times that most people know unless they suffer from a painful disease or extreme poverty?

In my forty commonplace books, I have collected all sorts of oddities of human experience. Few are of the good life--the happiness of ordinary people doing ordinary things. Here are a couple to cheer you up. One comes, astonishingly, from Virginia Woolf, who has not a sentimental bone in her high-strung body. She describes the happiness of her friends the Leafs. "Why all this pother about life? It can produce old Walter, bubbling & chubby; and old Lotta, stately & content; and handsome Charles, loving & affectionate. Plunge deep into Walter's life and it is all sound and satisfactory. His son kisses him and says, 'Bless you father.' He sinks back chuckling on his cushions. He chooses a macaroon. He tells a story. Lotta purrs, in her black velvet dress."

The other example is from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. "How little stir the real miracles cause! How simple are the most vital events!... It was on a day before the war, on the banks of the Saone, near Tournus. We had chosen to lunch at a restaurant whose wooden terrace overlooked the river. Leaning on a plain table scarred by customers' knives, we had ordered two Pernods... And since two bargemen were unloading their barge nearby, we invited them along. We had invited them quite naturally, as friends, perhaps because we felt an inner joy. It was obvious they would respond to our invitation, and we enjoyed a drink together."

"The sun was warm. Its warm honey spread over the poplar tree on the opposite bank and over the plain to the horizon. We were more and more joyful, still without really knowing why. The sun shone reassuringly, the river flowed reassuringly, the meat tasted reassuring; the bargemen who responded to our invitation and the waitress who served us smilingly, as if presiding over an eternal feast, were equally reassuring. We were completely at peace, sheltered from the disorder of civilization. We tasted a kind of bliss where, all wishes being fulfilled, we had nothing to confide to each other. We felt pure, righteous, luminous, and indulgent..."

The first example of the good life shows love and happiness in the family. The second shows love and happiness among total strangers, but since all were natives of France, Saint-Exupéry calls it "the love of country." Why can't we have more of both? Why can't a son, for no particular reason, kiss his father and say, "Bless you father"? Why don't strangers share a Pernod more often in a landscape where the sun's warm honey spreads over the poplar tree and the river flows reassuringly? What is it, but original sin, that prevents us from grasping at happinesses that God, like a fond and indulgent parent, dangles so invitingly before us?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu