wendellBERRY

A journey between death and life and death once more.

THE MAN

The grower of trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout,

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

that the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

descending in the dark?

FARMINGTO

Wendell Berry lives and farms with his family in Henry County, Kentucky, and is

the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Among

his novels (set in the fictional community of Port William Kentucky) are Nathan

Coulter (1960), A Place on Earth (1967), and The Memory of Old Jack (1974);

short story collections include The Wild Birds (1986), Remembering (1988),

Fidelity (1993), and Watch With Me (1994); collections of essays include,

among many others, A Continuous Harmony (1972), The Unsettling of America

(1977), Recollected Essays (1981), and Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community

(=1993); and among his many volumes of poetry are A Part (1980), The Wheel

(1982), Collected Poems (1985) and Entries (1984).

Berry’s life, his farm work, his writing and teaching, his home and family, and

all that each involves are extraordinarily integrated. He understands his writing

as an attempt to elucidate certain connections, primarily the interrelationships

and interdependencies of man and the natural world. One of his premises in The

Unsettling of America at once evinces his notion of cultural and natural interde-

pendency: “Everything in the Creation is related to everything else and

dependent on everything else” (46). The Unsettling of America is about connec-

tions and thus ramifications.

The man behind the writing

THE CAREER OF RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM in America has run

mostly to absurdity, tragic or comic. But it also has done us a certain

amount of good. There was a streak ont in Thoreau, who went alone to

jail in protest against the Mexican War. And that streak has continued

in his successors who have suffered penalties for civil disobedience

because of their perception that the law and the government were

not always or necessarily right. This is individualism of a kind rugged

enough, and it has been authenticated typically by its identification

with a communal good. The tragic version of rugged individualism is in

the presumptive “right” of individuals to do as they please, as if there

were no God, no legitimate government, no community, no neighbors,

and no posterity. This is most frequently understood as the right to do

whatever one pleases with one's property. One's property, according to

this formulation, is one's own absolutely.

Rugged individualism of this kind has cost us dearly in lost topsoil, in de-

stroyed forests, in the increasing toxicity of the world, and in annihilated

species. When property rights become absolute they are invariably

destructive, for then they are used to justify not only the abuse of things

of permanent value for the temporary benefit of legal owners, but also

the appropriation and abuse of things to which the would–be owners

have no rights at all, but which can belong only to the public or to the

entire community of living creatures: the atmosphere, the water cycle,

wilderness, ecosystems, the possibility of life.

This is made worse when great corporations are granted the status of

“persons,” who then can also become rugged individuals, insisting on

their right to do whatever they please with their property. Because of

the over–whelming wealth and influence of these “persons,” the elected

representatives and defenders of “the people of the United States” be-

come instead the representatives and defenders of the corporations.

It has become ever more clear that this sort of individualism has never

proposed or implied any protection of the rights of all individuals, but

instead has promoted a ferocious scramble in which more and more

of the rights of “the people” have been gathered into the ownership of

fewer and fewer ofthe greediest and most powerful “persons.”

I have described so far what most of us would identify as the rugged

individualism of the political right. Now let us have a look at the left. The

rugged individualism of the left believes that an individual's body is a

property belonging to that individual absolutely: The owners of bodies

may, by right, use them as they please, as if there were no God, no legit-

imate government, no community, no neighbors, and no posterity. This

supposed right is manifested in the democratizing of “sexual liberation”;

in the popular assumption that marriage has been “privatized” and so

made subordinate to the wishes of individuals; in the proposition that

the individual is “autonomous”; in the legitimation of abortion as birth

control in the denial, that is to say, that the community, the family, one's

spouse, or even one's own soul might exercise a legitimate proprietary

interest in the use one makes of one's body. And this too is tragic, for it

sets us “free” from responsibility and thus from the possibility of mean-

ing. It makes unintelligible the self–sacrifice that sent Thoreau to jail.

The comedy begins when these two rugged (or “autonomous”) individ-

ualisms confront each other. Conservative individualism strongly sup-

Rugged Individualism

ports “family values” and abominates lust. But it does not dissociate itself

from the profits accruing from the exercise of lust (and, in fact, ofthe other

six deadly sins), which it encourages in its advertisements. The “conserva-

tives” of our day understand pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony,

and sloth as virtues when they lead to profit or to political power. Only as

unprofitable or unauthorized personal indulgences do they rank as sins,

imperiling salvation of the soul, family values, and national security.

Liberal individualism, on the contrary, understands sin as a private matter.

It strongly supports protecting “the environment,” which is that part of the

world which surrounds, at a safe distance, the privately–owned body.

“The environment” does not include the economic landscapes of agricul-

ture and forestry or their human communities, and it does not include the

privately–owned bodies ofother people – all of which appear to have been

bequeathed in fee simple to the corporate individualists.

Conservative rugged individualists and liberal rugged individualists believe

alike that they should be “free” to get as much as they can of whatever they

want. Their major doctrinal difference is that they want (some of the time)

different sorts of things.

“Every man for himself” is a doctrine for a feeding frenzy or for a panic in a

burning night club, appropriate for sharks or hogs or perhaps a cascade of

lemmings. A society wishing to endure must speak the language of care–

taking, faith–keeping, kindness, neighborliness, and peace. That language

is another precious resource that cannot be “privatized.”

In his worldThe hill pasture, an open place among the trees,

tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses

are in bloom. Along the foot of the hill

dark floodwater moves down the river.

The sun sets. Ahead of nightfall the birds sing.

I have climbed up to water the horses

and now sit and rest, high on the hillside,

letting the day gather and pass. Below me

cattle graze out across the wide fields of the bottomlands,

slow and preoccupied as stars. In this world

men are making plans, wearing themselves out,

spending their lives, in order to kill each other.

“...In this world

men are making plans, wearing themselves out,

spending their lives, in order to kill each other.”

In his world

“...In this world

men are making plans, wearing themselves out,

spending their lives, in order to kill each other.”

A PraiseHis memories lived in the place

like fingers locked in the rock ledges

like roots. When he died

and his influence entered the air

I said, Let my mind be the earth

of his thought, let his kindness

go ahead of me. Though I do not escape

the history barbed in my flesh,

certain wise movements of his hands,

the turns of his speech

keep with me. His hope of peace

keeps with me in harsh days

the shell of his breath dimming away

three summers in the earth.

A Jonquil for Mary PennMary Penn was sick, though she said nothing about it when she heard Elton

get up and light the lamp and renew the fires. He dressed and went out with

the lantern to milk and feed and harness the team. It was early March, and

she could hear the wind blowing, rattling things. She threw the covers off and

sat up on the side of the bed, feeling as she did how easy it would be to let her

head lean down again onto her knees. But she got up, put on her dress and

sweater, and went to the kitchen.

Nor did she mention it when Elton came back in, bringing the milk, with

the smell of the barn cold in his clothes.

“How’re you this morning?” he asked her, giving her a pat as she strained

the milk.

And she said, not looking at him, for she did not want him to know how she

felt, “Just fine.”

He ate hungrily the eggs, sausage, and biscuits that she set in front of him,

twice emptying the glass that he replenished from a large pitcher of milk. She

loved to watch him eat–there was something curiously delicate in the way

he used his large hands–but this morning she busied herself about the kitch-

en, not looking at him, for she knew he was watching her. She had not even

set a place for herself.

“ You’re not

You’re not

”

he asked. ”

“Not very. I’ll eat something after while.”

He put sugar and cream in his coffee and stirred rapidly with the spoon. Now

he lingered a little. He did not indulge himself often, but this was one of his

moments of leisure. He gave himself to his pleasures as concentratedly as to

his work. He was never partial about anything; he never felt two ways at the

same time. It was, she thought, a kind of childishness in him. When he was

happy, he was entirely happy, and he could be as entirely sad or angry. His

glooms were the darkest she had ever seen. He worked as a hungry dog ate,

and yet he could play at croquet or cards with the self–forgetful exuberance

of a little boy. It was for his concentratedness, she supposed, if such a thing

could be supposed about, that she loved him. That and her yen just to look at

him, for it was wonderful to her the way he was himself in his slightest look

or gesture. She did not understand him in everything he did, and yet she rec-

ognized him in everything he did. She had not been prepared–she was hardly

prepared yet–for the assent she had given to him.

Though he might loiter a moment over his coffee, the day, she knew, had al-

ready possessed him; its momentum was on him. When he rose from bed in

the morning, he stepped into the day’s work, impelled into it by the tension,

never apart from him, between what he wanted to do and what he could do.

The little hillside place that they had rented from his mother afforded him

no proper scope for his ability and desire. They always needed money, but,

day by day, they were getting by. Though the times were hard, they were not

going to be in want. But she knew his need to surround her with a margin of

pleasure and ease. This was his need, not hers; still, when he was not working

at home, he would be working, or looking for work, for pay.

This morning, delaying his own plowing, he was going to help Walter Cot-

he asked.

man plow his corn ground. She could feel the knowledge of what he had to

do tightening in him like a spring. She thought of him and Walter plowing,

starting in the early light, and the two teams leaning into the collars all day,

while the men walked in the opening furrows, and the steady wind shivered

the dry grass, shook the dead weeds, and rattled the treetops in the woods.

He stood and pushed in his chair. She came to be hugged as she knew he

wanted her to.

“It’s mean out,” he said. “Stay in today. Take some care of yourself.”

“You, too,” she said. “Have you got on plenty of clothes?”

“When I get ‘em all on, I will.” He was already wearing an extra shirt and a

pair of overalls over his corduroys. Now he put on a sweater, his work jacket,

his cap and gloves. He started out the door and then turned back. “Don’t

worry about the chores. I’ll be back in time to do everything.”

“All right,” she said.

He shut the door. And now the kitchen was a cell of still lamplight under the

long wind that passed without inflection over the ridges.

She cleared the table. She washed the few dishes he had dirtied and put

them away. The kitchen contained the table and four chairs, and the small

dish cabinet that they had bought, and the large iron cookstove that looked

more permanent than the house. The stove, along with the bed and a few

other sticks of furniture, had been there when they came.

She heard Elton go by with the team, heading out the lane. The daylight

would be coming now, though the windowpanes still reflected the lamp-

light. She took the broom from its corner by the back door and swept and

tidied up the room. They had been able to do nothing to improve the house,

which had never been a good one and had seen hard use. The wallpaper,

and probably the plaster behind, had cracked in places. The finish had worn

off the linoleum rugs near the doorways and around the stoves. But she kept

the house clean. She had made curtains. The curtains in the kitchen were

of the same blue and–white checkered gingham as the tablecloth. The bed

stands were orange crates for which she had made skirts of the same cloth.

Though the house was poor and hard to keep, she had made it neat and

homey. It was her first house, and usually it made her happy. But not now.

She was sick. At first it was a consolation to her to have the whole day to her-

self to be sick in. But by the time she got the kitchen straightened up, even

that small happiness had left her. She had a fever, she guessed, for every

motion she made seemed to carry her uneasily beyond the vertical. She had

a floaty feeling that made her unreal to herself. And finally, when she put the

broom away, she let herself sag down into one of the chairs at the table. She

ached. She was overpoweringly tired.

“The past is our definition. We may strive,

with good reason, to escape it, or to escape

what is bad in it, but we will escape it

only by adding something better to it.”

“The past is our definition. We may strive,

with good reason, to escape it, or to escape

what is bad in it, but we will escape it

only by adding something better to it.”Wendell Berry

I am oppressed by all the room taken up by the dead,

their headsontes standing shoulder to shoulder

the bones imprisoned under them.

Plow up the graveyards! Haul off the monuments!

Pry open the vaults and the coffins

so the dead may nourish their graves

and go free, their acres traversed all summer

by crop rows and cattle and foraging bees.

AMONGST

FARMERAMONGST

Familiar

The hand is risen from the earth,

the sap risen, leaf come back to branch,

bird to nest croch. Beans lift

their heads up in the row. The known

returns to be known again. Going

and coming back, it forms its curves,

a nerved ghostly anatomy in the air.

The

Berry, Wendell. Fidelity Five Stories. New York and San Francisco:

Pantheon Books, 1992

Fiction

Fidelity: Five Stories, 1992

Hannah Coulter, 2004

Jayber Crow, 2000

The Memory of Old Jack, 1974

Nathan Coulter, 1960

A Place on Earth, 1967

Remembering, 1988

That Distant Land: The Collected Stories, 2004

Watch with Me and Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered

Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Née Quinch, 1994

The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership, 1986

A World Lost, 1996

Poetry

The Broken Ground, 1964

Clearing, 1977

Collected Poems: 1951-1982, 1982

The Country of Marriage, 1973

Entries, 1994

Farming: A Hand Book, 1970

Given: New Poems, 2005

Openings, 1968

A Part, 1980

Sabbaths: Poems, 1987

Sayings and Doings, 1975

The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999

A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997, 1998

The Wheel, 1982

Essays

Another Turn of the Crank, 1996

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry, 2002

Citizenship Papers, 2003

A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural & Agricultural, 1972

This book was created by Michael Tarazi, a junior majoring in Communication

Design at Washington University in St. Louis. All writen material is credited to

Wendell Berry .

Berry, Wendell. Collected Poems 1957-1982. New York: North Point Press; Farrar,

Straus, and Giroux, 1987

Bibliography

Works Cited

Colophon

Berry, Wendell. The Way of Ignorance and Other Essays. Berkeley: Counter Point,

2005

In this world

The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural, 1981

Harlan Hubbard: Life and Work, 1990

The Hidden Wound, 1970

Home Economics: Fourteen Essays, 1987

Life Is a Miracle, 2000

The Long-Legged House, 2004

Recollected Essays: 1965-1980, 1981

Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, 1992

Standing by Words, 1983

The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, 1971

The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, 1977

What Are People For?, 1990