| | “THE LEAVES STREAMED DOWN, TREMBLING IN THE SUN. THEY were not green; only a few, scattered through the torrent, stood out in single drops of green so bright and pure that it hurt the eyes; the rest were not a color, but a light, the substance of fire on metal, living sparks without edges. And it looked like as if the forest were a spread of light boiling slowly to produce this color, this green rising in small bubbles, the condensed essence of spring. The trees met, bending over the road, and the spots of sun on the ground moved with the shifting of the branches, like a conscious caress. The young man hoped he would not have to die. | | “Not if the earth could look like this, he thought. Not if he could hear the hope and the promise like a voice, with leaves, tree trunks and rock in stead of words. But he knew that the earth looked like this only because he had seen no sign of men for hours; he was alone, riding his bicycle down a forgotten trail through the hills of Pennsylvania where he had never been before, where he could feel the fresh wonder of an untouched world. | | “He was a very young man. He had just graduated from college - in the spring of the year 1935 - and he wanted to decide whether life was worth living. He did not know that this was the question in his mind. He did not think of dying. He thought only that he wished to find joy and reason and meaning in life - and that none had been offered to him anywhere. | | “He did not like the things taught him in college. He had been taught a great deal about social about social responsibility, about a life of service and self-sacrifice. Everybody had said that it was beautiful and inspiring. Only he had not felt inspired. He had felt nothing at all. | | “He could not name the thing he wanted in life. He felt it here, in this wild wilderness. But he did not face nature with the joy of a healthy animal - as a proper and final setting; he faced it with the joy of a healthy man - as a challenge; as tools, means and material. So he felt anger that he should find exaltation only in the wilderness, that this great sense of hope had to be lost when he would return to men and men’s work. He thought that this was not right; that man’s work should be a higher step, an improvement on nature, nor a degradation. He did not want to despise men; he wanted to love and admire them. But he dreaded the the sight of the first house, poolroom and movie poster he would encounter on his way. | | “He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky’s First Concerto - or the lat movement of Rachmaninoff’s Second. Men have not found the word for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don’t help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers - show me yours - show me that it is possible - show me your achievement - and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. | | “He saw a blue hole ahead, where the road ended on the crest of a ridge. The blue looked cool and clean like a film of water stretched in the frame od green branches. It would be funny, he thought, if I came to the edge and found nothing but that blue beyond; nothing but the sky ahead, above and below. He closed his eyes and went on, suspending the possible for a moment, granting himself a dream, a few instants of believing that he could reach the crest, open his eyes and see the blue radiance of the sky below. | | “His foot touched the ground, breaking his motion; he stopped and opened his eyes. He stood still. | | “In the broad valley, far below him, in the first sunlight of the early morning, he saw a town. Only it was not a town. Towns do not look like that. He had to suspend the possible for a while longer, to seek no questions or explanations, only to look. | | “There were small houses on the ledges of the hill before him, flowing down to the bottom. | | | | |
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