Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth
Front Inside Book Jacket
by David Brower
September 28, 1960
A poignantly beautiful variation of the theme in This Is the American
Earth appears in this book (of the same format) by a man who was a
musician, a poet, a photographer --- and also a man who could see more than
beauty in the mountains he loved.
On a page he wrote in 1954 to preface one of the many early
versions of Words of the Earth, Cedric Wright said: "I have been
unusually privileged in knowing intimately those wilderness areas where the
intangible values sing clearly. It has seemed important to conserve the
significance of that singing, to understand its significance not merely in
some art form, but rather to try to clarify what it could bring to human life
in general. The artist seeks fundamental beauty, the voice of concord, in a
world which is presently dominated by opposite types of understanding. Beauty
and understanding are the foundations not only of art, but also of a peaceful
human world. It is imperative that in such times as these the artist should
use his words and his thought in addition to his art."
With the sensitive aid of Nancy Newhall, Cedric Wright has
posthumously made an integral whole of words, thought and art. How this could
all happen is a long story that should be told --- later. A story that might
begin with his birth in Alameda, California, in 1889, that would tell of the
various schools he was exposed to, of his studying the violin in Praque and
Vienna under Sevcik, of his two marriages and his three children, of his
teaching of the violin at Mills College early in the 'twenties, of his
beginnings in photography early in the next decade.
I think this will all be told one day, when people seek out
the beginnings of the beauty in this book. But for now, I'd like to start
merely with my recollection that in the summer of 1953, at a camp high on the
Kern, Cedric told me that this was his thirty-third High Trip (the eleventh we
had shared) --- which is to say that he had spent almost three years of summer
days on the species of Sierra Club outing that has taken people of widely
ranging means far back into big wilderness, mostly in the Sierra Nevada, since
1901. All too soon after that camp there was a sad task, an obituary to write
for the November 1959 Sierra Club Bulletin, that said this:
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In the High Sierra wilderness country that is
the climax of what John Muir liked to call the Range of Light, Wright fell
in love with the high world even as Muir had, and each summer brought him
closer to its forms, its moods, its tones, its light --- and to the thousand
textures that unfolded as the trail turned or as a tailless slope opened up
on a broad sweep or an intimate glen that no man had seen before.
Oh, others may have stood there, yes. But
none could see what he saw, not until with black cloth and box he had worked
his magic, had captured and carried away the essence of beauty without
harming a hair of it, had printed and fixed its image, had let others see it
at last, far from where it was, and had led them, in that way, to look for
it and find it next time.
On many of these high trips Wright served as
official photographer, meaning that the check he sent in for a reservation
on the trip was returned to him in gratitude for what he had already
contributed, worth many times a trip's cost, in exquisite display prints of
the previous year's trip. These became the mainstay of the club's permanent
photographic collection; they were augmented by Wright's gift to the club of
all his Sierra negatives.
From these prints and negatives will come the
illustrations for Cedric Wright's book which the Sierra Club plans to
publish as a memorial next year, "Words of the Earth" --- the High
Sierra earth. The text comes from the same piece of terrain. People who knew
Wright in his mountains --- and there are hundreds who did --- know that the
text came to him by osmosis as he lay upon some choice piece of Sierra, in
between his exposures of film, and was himself exposed to inaudible words
and music. The book will contain the best of his poetic expression and of
his photographs. It will be of fairly large format to let the photographs be
big enough to speak clearly, and they will be reproduced just as handsomely
as present-day achievements in graphic arts will permit. To aid this major
project and to widen the audience for his artistry, the club is accepting,
with Rhea Wright's permission, donations to a Cedric Wright Memorial Fund.
One of the nicest of all memorials to Cedric
Wright, however, is the picture so many friends carry in their mind's eye of
Cedric before the first of a series of strokes grounded him and impaired his
eyesight. For in that picture he is the Good Samaritan of the trailside,
bringing music to a campfire, pouring a warming cup of tea from his billy-can
for the weary, brightening the tired end of a day with his good humor and
his good heart. Above all, we his friends are grateful that because he saw
clearly, we can begin to see clearly, or at least be less unseeing.
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*
As a postscript, we should share with you two
of the notes written on odd-sized pieces of paper, that turned up in the vast
collection of splendid negatives. One note says:
"Explanation of my filing system.
All the best negatives from over 3 or 4 years past are in this box. Recent
years' negatives have been left in the straw basket --- each High Trip, 1949
on --- in packings by themselves. It might be well to give all my negatives
to the Sierra Club."
And the other:
"It's been beyond me, to figure out how
to file all my negatives intelligently. Most all my portrait negatives are
in the cellar in fruit boxes."
I has been almost beyond the Sierra Club, too.
All friends who hold this book should also hold themselves in readiness for an
emergency call from the Sierra Club to attend a gigantic identification party,
to pass in review of all the examples of evanescent beauty that Cedric stopped
and fixed, and to tell us, while human memory still can, where he was at the
time, and what or whom he was photographing!
David Brower
San Francisco
September 28, 1960
__________
Brower, David. "Cedric Wight: Words of
the Earth." Front-Inside Book Jacket.
The Sierra Club, 1960.
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