One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow… (Wallace Stevens, “The Snowman”)
Be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good… (Romans 12:2)
Winter is a wordless season. Cast your mind over a frozen lake, place yourself in a silent, snow-covered forest, step out of the house and into that still-immaculate tranquility of the first snowfall of the year. Nothing, really, needs to be said—at least not by you or me. Something is already being said in the silence of winter. That something is memento mori: remember death. Every leaf-less tree stands as a signpost of that fact. The mud, the withered grass, the chill in the air—they all the signal the same. All of this is dust and unto dust it shall return. Little wonder, then, that winter is the wordless season—for what meaningful things can be said in the face of death?
One must have a mind of winter…
And have been cold a long time…
and not to think
Of any misery…
But never mind the ultimate for the moment. What can we say, meaningfully, in the face of life’s relentless “petty pace from day to day,” the inexorable process of aging, the powerless witnessing of time passing nearer and nearer to the “last syllable” of its record? Life, to a very great extent, defies speech. Death does too, of course. My sense is that it does so because of how much of life escaped our speech as well, and now that that life is over, we are forced to confront finally the fact that we did not say the things we wanted to say or we did not say the things we wanted to say in the way we wanted to say them, and now the opportunity to do so—in this life—is gone.
Even if we have no words in the face of death, or in the face of life’s unfolding towards its final destination, it bears repeating that death itself does not possess the power of the last word. Not at the end of time, most certainly; nor, I dare add, in the midst of time either. Everything dies. That’s a fact. If we die, we can bring forth much fruit. That’s a fact, too. It’s a fact that never bothered me much, either, until I became a father. Now the last thing in the world I want is death, of any kind: no growing up, no growing old, no getting up and leaving, not now, not ever.
But that’s life. All of those things, one after the other. And every attempt to capture in words some aspect of the meaning of life, of my life, and to express that meaning in a way which matches the feeling of it deep down in the very roots of my being, is to be caught time and time again in the “intolerable wrestle with words and meanings.” This is not to say that there is no merit in the effort, or that silence is the only dignified response to life. On the contrary, the fundamental response to life is speech; after all, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But silence attends upon the Word: Jesus is born and then his life is almost entirely hidden in silence for all of thirty years. Christmas makes way for Calvary.
As I write this, Christmas is nineteen days away. This morning our kids found their shoes lined with treats and a new (to them) ornament for the Christmas tree from Saint Nicholas. Tonight they will put the ornaments on the tree and then they will watch The Snowman, the 1982 film adaptation of the Raymond Briggs’ book by the same name.
Fittingly for winter, The Snowman is—with the exception of one song—an altogether wordless story. Told entirely through pictures and beautifully scored by Howard Blake, The Snowman recounts the day a young boy built a great mountain of a snowman who comes to life. That evening, the boy and the snowman become friends, they play together and fly to the North Pole to celebrate with Father Christmas. Yet when morning comes, the snowman has melted. As the boy stands over slushy remains of the snowman, he pulls from his own pocket the scarf which Father Christmas had gifted him. The snowman’s coming to life, the evening of friendship and revelry—it was not a dream, but real.
You can watch The Snowman and be charmed by the animation, amused by the storyline, and entranced by the music, but care nothing for the ending. You may even think the ending ruins the the story’s charm and goodness. I’ll freely admit that, on our first viewing of The Snowman, I was taken aback by the ending. With some trepidation, I braced myself for the adverse reaction of our daughter to this sad and somewhat unexpected turn of events. Naturally enough, she was sad, I dare say even upset. Not because the snowman melted, however, but because the movie was over. The melting of the snowman was, I suppose, not unexpected for her, and therefore nothing to cry over, really. That’s what happens to snowmen, after all: they melt. The reason for the sadness was that, once melted, the snowman didn’t spring back to life à la his more famous, American counterpart, Frosty. There being nothing left to tell, the story came to an end. Cue tears and entreaties to play it again, Dad.
The American poet Wallace Stevens, in his book The Necessary Angel, claims that we “do not have to be told of the significance of art.” He quotes Henry James in support of this assertion: “It is art which makes life, makes interest, makes importance…and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.” And Stevens concludes: “The world about us would be desolate except for the world within us.”
Significance is the keyword in all of this, I think. Were it not for that word, I would say these two literary geniuses present a pretty compelling case for the nature of reality and art and our understanding of the two. Were it not for that word, I might even be tempted to see things as they do. But I’ve watched The Snowman with my kids and so I think I know better. For me, it is life which makes art; it is life that excites interest and conjures importance; except for the world about me, the world within me would be very drab indeed.
Our children have no need to be told of the significance of art. The reason for that is simple: they lack the conceptual capacity for significance. A child, I think, understands that one thing can signify another thing, a more profound thing, perhaps: the ringing of this bell means time for dinner, the ringing of that bell means Christ is present on this altar. The concept of significance, however, is beyond their ken. The bell rings and dinner is ready. That’s a fact. The bell rings and Jesus is there. That’s a fact, too. The snowman comes to life and he and the boy become friends and then the snowman melts and the boy is alone but for the scarf that he received as a present. Those are facts; those are real.
What do they signify? Children don’t intuitively know. You have to tell them. I would know: I’ve done it. I’ve tried to express to them the meaning and assure them of its trustworthiness. The scarf means that the snowman really did come to life; the boy didn’t dream it. The scarf signifies our power to carry dreams with us and wield our imagination with power and authority for the good. The snowman’s melting signifies that childhood comes to an end, always painfully, sometimes suddenly and without warning, and perhaps even in the immediate wake of ineffable happiness. The scarf also signifies that childhood is enduring, that your years as a child will remain always with you and the fruit of them will attain their full flavor as you reach maturity. The snowman’s melting also signifies that the process of maturity, of reaching one’s full and marvelous stature, is not a process bereft of pain and loss and grief. On the epigraph page of Paul Horgan’s novel Things As They Are (forthcoming, I have to add, from Cluny in the new year) is this quotation from the French philosopher Jean Guitton:
Hugo said that to grow old was to possess all ages and the essence of each one, particularly that of childhood; that which the child represents to adults, something he himself does not understand or experience: newness, and the sense of existence in the process of both, the idea of a new world about to be born.…
We are born and our life is meant to be hidden with God in Christ Jesus. Which is to say, the pattern of life is made up of word and silence—of spring and winter. Winter is the season when the earth lays dying. It is the midst of this season that we celebrate Christmas: the incarnation of God himself as an infant, born to bring us life, to die and free us from death. Christmas is a winter reality.
The Snowman opens with the voice of Raymond Briggs, saying: “The whole world seemed to be held in a dreamlike stillness. It was a magical day…” Fitting words for Christmas, in one sense. In another sense, surely, these are altogether inappropriate words for Christmas. Are they not? For on this day is born unto us a child, unto us a son is given—and in due time we will take him and mock him and condemn him and scourge him and crown him with thorns and make him die a terrible death.
No, these words are perfectly right and perfectly just for a Yuletide banner. God, if I may be so bold, thinks like a snowman. He alone, in fact, has the wintry mind capable of devising such a perplexing, paradoxical, providential plan as is our history—and making it actually and gloriously good. For us—we poor, frigid listeners who have yet been cold only a short time—what is our part to play in all of this? Our cues are written. Unless the grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit. Another: Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. And another. Be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good.
These are hard sayings. I think you must have a mind of winter to understand them.
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitterOf the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare placeFor the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. (Wallace Stevens)
Credits: Pekka Halonen, Snow-Covered Pine Saplings (1899), via Wikimedia Commons; Wallace Stevens, “The Snowman” (1921), via Poetry Foundation.