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Show 381. So too, Muir provided his reader with a safe and comfortable place where the violence of the wind could not be felt, "looking through a calm sheltering opening in the woods, as through a window." More important, Muir provided aesthetic distance by using the language of art. He was speaking of God's art, asking how God created such scenes, but he used the language of human artifice. The purpose, it seemed, was to turn a scene which might normally be taken as "the war of the elements" into something lawfully beautiful. He was working with a strategy opposite from that which the humanist used, since he wished to make men see that a sublime natural scene contained an inner law and didn't require men to give it form. Snow banners were the lawful result of snow, a north wind, and the glacial forms of the Sierra, Muir argued. If the banners he saw streaming off the "Crown of the Sierra" seemed "in every way perfect," that was not only because God Himself was an artist, but because beauty was the natural result of His creation, a diminished though humanly understandable consequence. The essay fairly drenched the reader in the language of artifice. The banners were "as regular in form and as firm in texture as if woven of fine silk." Such "imposing spectacles" were "like a clear painting on the sky." At his forest window, Muir too was artificial, as he said, "And now, reader, come with a clear mind for a few moments and fancy yourself . . . looking with your own eyes." He constantly reminded his companion readers of their comfort, and of their distance |
