Samuel Beckett, Nature Boy

When I stumble upon a writer rhapsodizing nature, swooning over the seasons and the great cycle of life and the supernal beauty of fungus, beaver dams, and deer ticks, I think of a passage from Samuel Beckett’s first great book, Watt, the one he wrote in France while working for the Resistance:

“The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep’s placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of the gorse and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling `The Roses are Blooming in Picardy’ and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the sluch and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again.”