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The Road
Bolle, the main character of Harry Martinson’s The Road, wanders through the Swedish countryside. Here is one passage,
"So I went, and all that summer I tramped round the country, heard the birds sing, bathed in quiet streams and lakes and roamed through glens and valleys where the grass was dewy and clean. Clouds drifted, winds moved in the woods, flowers bowed and gleamed, bumble-bees buzzed in the clover, girls sang in the hay-fields."
Bolle’s aim is the wandering itself. It is a lifestyle for which he pays in fear and detachment, but for him it is a worthwhile trade: as a tramp, he gains nature, he resists the externally imposed and he finds hope in what might be around the next turn of the road.
Many times I have fancied myself a Bolle, someone who chooses the road however unknown. But it is a fancy. Like Ungaretti, I am always ready for departures but, unlike Bolle, it is “ready” as in “expectant” nor as in “prepared.”
Maybe no one can be prepared and maybe the road is not so much a choice. Maybe it is a reaction, which sometimes ends well and sometimes does not. When does it end well? Maybe as often as the settled life ends well, which is not often. But probably not even that much. What the road opens (irreversibly) is more sensible to keep close.
Martinson’s book points at the limitations on freedom imposed by social arrangements, the oppression of machines and the tyranny of those who hand down the rules, but it makes less of an issue of the challenge posed by the past. Maybe his approach was to tackle an idea akin to “practical freedom,” but it seems to me that the most intriguing questions come in search of “pure freedom,” even if such a concept proves silly upon further analysis—and it does, I think.
Every event, good or bad, narrows what’s possible and enslaves us in ways we often don’t want to give up; ways the road won’t always release. I have events, Bolle had events and Martinson as well—and Martinson, the beautiful tramp, was ultimately disheartened by his.
And yet, who, at least sometimes, wouldn’t want to wander or perhaps, to walk a mile without hypocrisy, without attachments?
The Road is too simple; one reason why it is touching.
"So I went, and all that summer I tramped round the country, heard the birds sing, bathed in quiet streams and lakes and roamed through glens and valleys where the grass was dewy and clean. Clouds drifted, winds moved in the woods, flowers bowed and gleamed, bumble-bees buzzed in the clover, girls sang in the hay-fields."
Bolle’s aim is the wandering itself. It is a lifestyle for which he pays in fear and detachment, but for him it is a worthwhile trade: as a tramp, he gains nature, he resists the externally imposed and he finds hope in what might be around the next turn of the road.
Many times I have fancied myself a Bolle, someone who chooses the road however unknown. But it is a fancy. Like Ungaretti, I am always ready for departures but, unlike Bolle, it is “ready” as in “expectant” nor as in “prepared.”
Maybe no one can be prepared and maybe the road is not so much a choice. Maybe it is a reaction, which sometimes ends well and sometimes does not. When does it end well? Maybe as often as the settled life ends well, which is not often. But probably not even that much. What the road opens (irreversibly) is more sensible to keep close.
Martinson’s book points at the limitations on freedom imposed by social arrangements, the oppression of machines and the tyranny of those who hand down the rules, but it makes less of an issue of the challenge posed by the past. Maybe his approach was to tackle an idea akin to “practical freedom,” but it seems to me that the most intriguing questions come in search of “pure freedom,” even if such a concept proves silly upon further analysis—and it does, I think.
Every event, good or bad, narrows what’s possible and enslaves us in ways we often don’t want to give up; ways the road won’t always release. I have events, Bolle had events and Martinson as well—and Martinson, the beautiful tramp, was ultimately disheartened by his.
And yet, who, at least sometimes, wouldn’t want to wander or perhaps, to walk a mile without hypocrisy, without attachments?
The Road is too simple; one reason why it is touching.
Labels: References
posted by EMC at
12:46 PM
3 Comments:
I was fortunate enough to stumble upon your book today. I was left with such an impression that I continue to read and research about you tonight. I wanted to say, that this blog has put into perspective, some complicated issues in my head. I will most certainly find this book for my own pleasure. At times, my own lust for wondering, enslaves me, rather than free me.
Thank you.
This post has been removed by the author.
EMC, your observations about martinson not focusing attention upon the 'challenge posed by the past' and your question, 'when does it end well? make me think of st. augustine's 'confessions.' for him, it makes sense to see god's presence in his life only as a retroactive event, an event of recollection, an act of historical discovery. we so often think about those paths as exclusively future events. and perhaps that is what makes martinson's bolle so discouraged, he lacks a past to see whether it has indeed ended well, or to discern a presence enables him to enjoy the present and look toward the future. and i wonder if this is where st. augustine and kierkegaard and his risk of faith meet.
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