MIDWINTER


To my surprise, as I was looking at a copy of the Chinese Tao Te Ching in the school bookshop, the headmaster, who taught French and collected ceramics, came up and told me that it was a wonderful book.  I knew little about it then, but my interest in Eastern philosophy and spirituality was already beginning to take shape. A year or two later I recognised some of its verses in George Harrison’s The Inner Light, which was released in 1968 as the B-side of The Beatles' single, Lady Madonna. In the 1970s I gave my brother the book, and he has since told me, more than once, how important it is to him. Last Christmas he returned the gesture and sent me a new translation as a present, and I enjoyed reacquainting myself with this ancient, beautiful, and mysterious text, which is full of poetic and resonant thoughts. This, for instance, is a rendering of the verses that inspired Harrison’s song:

Without stirring abroad
One can know the whole world;
Without looking out of the window 
One can see the way of heaven.
The further one goes
The less one knows.
Therefore the sage knows without having to stir,
Identifies without having to see,
Accomplishes without having to act. 

The basic idea of the Tao is not difficult to grasp, although the Tao Te Ching declares that it is ‘nameless’ and can never adequately be described or intellectually understood. The word is usually translated as ‘Way’, and while it does not have definite characteristics, the Tao is commonly characterised as strong, gentle, and fluid. Historically, Taoists were often hermits and recluses; they kept their light hidden and didn’t identify themselves.

In the recent past, perhaps because of its apparent simplicity and exotic appeal, Taoism has spread widely and thinly, to the point where it has lost something of its original depth and savour. An example of this popularisation was the 1982 publication of Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh, in which the characters from A.A.Milne’s Winnie the Pooh are used to explain the fundamentals of Taoist philosophy, and although it is overly cute, the book does have charm and interest. Pooh is the Taoist, uncomplicated and flexible, never worrying about how life will turn out; he embodies ‘wu wei’, which is often translated as ‘non-action’ or, in vernacular terms, ‘going with the flow’. His friends and companions, in contrast, tend to over-think and create bother, for themselves and other people. As Piglet says, ‘Pooh hasn’t much Brain, but he never comes to any harm’.

Hoff’s approach to Taoism reflects the manifestations of 1960s counterculture that valued childlike qualities of innocence, fantasy, and imagination. This whimsical attitude to life now seems willfully naive, but at the time, and in relation to a society that emphasised materialistic progress above all else, it made some sense. William Blake, who was also much admired by the counterculture, saw both sides of the issue. In Songs of Innocence and Experience he suggested that childhood, while pure and protected, is not immune to the fallen world, whose frailties and corruptions sometimes impose themselves. This is ‘experience’, which is usually suffused by fear and inhibition. The Songs of Experience reveal ways in which adult life destroys much of what is good in innocence, but they also articulate some of the weaknesses of a predominantly childlike way of living.

At Christmas I also took the opportunity to read Tove Jansson’s letters, which have just been published in a handsome and substantial volume. I’ve become fond of her writing, and The Summer Book, which I discovered some years ago, is now a firm favourite. It tells the story of an old woman and her grandchild who spend the summer in the Finnish archipelago. Nothing much happens, but they wander around the small island looking at life with wonder, holding vividly candid conversations. The Summer Book combines innocence and experience, and Jansson’s simple narrative, which seems to have no purpose other than the graceful illumination of everyday life and its unremarkable problems, has something of a Taoist spirit. Given the season, however, I turned instead to Moominland Midwinter, one of her children’s books, after browsing through the letters.

I have been slow in catching up with Jansson’s Moomins, those strange and  benevolent creatures whose meditative nonchalance and adaptable tolerance are also lessons in the Taoist way of life, but I’m gradually working my way through the series. Living in an archetypal Scandinavian setting of mountains, forests, seas, and valleys, the Moomins can be both joyful and melancholy, and their extended family is agreeable, inclusive, and composed of motley outsiders, both tranquil and anarchic. Their stories relate how the Moomins overcome dramas and upheavals through genial and affectionate compliance, and Moominland Midwinter is no exception. It is a tale about what happens when Moomintroll, who wakes up early during hibernation and can’t get back to sleep, decides to stay awake through the rest of the harsh winter. Normally placid, he is angered by the absence of the sun and the fierce blizzards, soon becoming resentful of those of his companions who are able to enjoy the snow and ice. Moomintroll is convinced that winter is playing an unkind trick on him. One day, however, he stops fighting the storm and notices that the wind isn't cold and that it makes him feel light, almost as though he is flying. ‘I’m nothing but air and wind, I’m part of the blizzard’, Moomintroll says to himself, and he begins to let go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swT6YTPYwgM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swT6YTPYwgM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAsGD9YLT50