Stories About Artists; Amazing Novels about Artists and Paintings: Steel, Chevalier, Smith and Hustvedt

What is it about visual artists that attracts those word artists...writers, I mean...to use them so often in their novels?

Stories about artists, both real and fully imagined, abound. 

We've all heard of Girl with the Pearl Earring, which features a real oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, but Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn is also a great read; about an imagined 15thC artist, Nicolas des Innocents, who created the illustration for a richly embroidered wall tapestry, based on a real tapestry, rediscovered by French historian and archeaologist Merimee, in 1841, in Boussac castle in central France.

Then there's The Goldfinch, which, when I read the book, I imagined Donna Tartt had invented this rather wonderful little oil painting for her scintilating 2014 Pulitzer Prize novel, but is in fact a painting by Reneissance artist Carole Fabritius, which   I talk about here 

I've love all of Ali Smith's novels, but How to Be Both is perhaps as challenging read as you're likely to find. Smith plays with conventional fictional form, letting the reader in on  the poignancy of the story before the characters even start to realise. Smith examines a little of the life of  the 15th-century Italian painter Francesco del Cossa. Meanwhile, George is a teenager who has lost their mother, and tries to bring her back to life by recalling how they saw this  artist's  work.   Smith seems to investigate the symbolism of frescos: many layers, simultaneously.

curtesy of The Women's Prize

Most recently, Lucy Steed has just won the Waterstones Debut Prize for her first novel. She writes about one Edouard Tartuffe, “the Master of Light” an artist who lived in the early 20th Century,  a bit of a hermit and not a very nice man, really. He loves to paint rotting food, which gives his young housekeeper, Ettie, a bit of a headache. In 1920, Joseph Adelaide, an aspiring journalist, arrives at the remote farmhouse in the Provençal village of Saint-Auguste. He takes
comfort in art after being branded by the horror of the first world war, and wants to write an article about the famed oil painter.  Slowly, the young Englishman falls for Ettie, and tries to persuade her to escape her overbearing uncle.

If you're wondering why you haven't heard of Tartuffe, it's because Steed has created him, but he could be real, a cross between many artists of this incedury time. But her depictions of his art feel sensual and authentic and I could almost smell the paint...and the rotting peaches. 

Finally, a book I read some time ago, but have never forgotten. I must read more by this American author; Siri Hustvedt, Her 2003 novel, What I Loved sparkles with intelligence. It begins in the New York art world in the 70s, with art historian Leo Hertzberg and his friend, artist Bill Wechsler, whose artwork Leo has discovered in a SoHo gallery. Hustvedt is strong on the psychological effects of love, grief and hysteria, and her narrative voice pulls you into, and through, the story.

So now I'm looking for more exciting depictions of art and artists through a novelist's eye, although, I don't think, for now, I'm going to find more emotional maturity, than Steed, more passion than Hustvedt, more tense drama than Chevalier, or more brilliant plotting than Tartt.

Symbolism in Literature: The Rose

Roses are 'the queen of flowers', so it is not surprising that  they feature widely and richly in literature. Each colour of the rose means something special, and this is often highlighted in the pages of romantic fiction;

 Red - Love, Respect, Courage, Blood

 Yellow - Joy, Gladness, Freedom

 Pink/Peach - Gratitude, Appreciation, Admiration or Sympathy

 White - Reverence, Purity, Secrecy

 Black - Strength, Power, Danger, Death

 Two Roses - Engagement

 Red and White Roses Together - Unity

Roses can be found in literature everywhere and in all eras. It is in Greek myth that the association with both love and blood began. Adonis died in Aphrodite’s arms and the first red roses were said to spring up from his blood soaking into the earth. Even today, the idea of the rose as a gift on Valentine's Day clearly symbolises its powerful  association with love.

Roses can also symbolise mystery and magic. In The Golden Ass, the ancient Roman novel by Lucius Apuleius, the goddess Isis instructs the main character, who has been unluckily transformed into a donkey, to eat rose petals from a crown of roses worn by a priest to regain his humanity (it takes him the entire novel to succeed in this!). In Romeo and Juliet', Juliet wishes that Romeo was loved by her family as a person and not treated as an enemy. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose; By any other name, would smell as sweet.’ 

The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley explores the different stages of love and how they can change with time. The rose, a symbol of everlasting love, is the perfect flower for a story filled with romance and secrecy. 

Of course, the rose is everywhere in poetry. Who cannot quote Robert Burns:

O my Luve’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

Or William Blake's ‘The Sick Rose’:

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Perhaps less known is Emily Dickinson's poem:

Nobody knows this little Rose—
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it—
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey—
On its breast to lie—
Only a Bird will wonder—
Only a Breeze will sigh—
Ah Little Rose—how easy
For such as thee to die!

A recent book covering the symbology of this wonderful flower is: Sacred Rose: The Soul’s Path to Beauty and Wisdom, by Mara Freeman. Filled with magnificent colour illustrations, Sacred Roseis a work of scholarship. Freeman’s careful research is combined with an attractive writing style that is never difficult to read. Throughout the book, we journey through historical fact, world literature, sacred religious texts, legend and myth to find roses at the very heart of humankind’s longing to experience the mysteries.

Mara Freeman

Freeman begins with the connection between roses and goddesses, especially Isis, Aphrodite and Venus. She then examines the relationship the medieval church had with the rose, especially though Mary, the Mother of Christ, who is often portrayed in a rose garden. She offers refreshing insights into the Rosary and the amazing rose windows in cathedrals across Christendom. Looking across the ancient world, Freeman compares the rose to the many-petaled lotus,  explores its hermetic connections, its honouring in the Arabic world, both Islamic and Zoroastrian, and the links with the Rosicrucians and the Tarot. Freeman uses poetry to illustrate this. From Danté’s ‘celestial rose’, to the 13th century Sufi poet, Rumi, to Yeats and Elliot, she demonstrates how the rose symbolises a portal leading us closer to the mysteries of life. 

The core  message of the book is how the reader can enter the ‘language of the rose’– how the Mystic Rose…also blooms within the individual soul. Freeman sets out methods of attaining this beauty and peace, including the use of rose essences and by creating a sacred space which would include the perfection of a plucked rose, and through meditations set out in the book. 

It’s not hard to love roses – they abound in my garden, making them a common theme. 

Using the symbolism of the rose can enhance the very aroma of  your writing. Using the powerful symbol of the rose can be likened to how a tight rose bud allows its many petals to spread open into a perfect sacred geometry. So use the rose symbol with care and attention; using it in an indifferent or offhanded way will cause its value to dissipate. The rose, although ubiquitous, is priceless, and its symbols are deep, compelling and affecting. 

Symbolism in Writing - The Sun

 

As a writer, it's easy to forget that the sun is a strong and useful literary symbol. There it is, up there in the sky, and indeed at the moment perhaps shinning a tad too brightly for comfort in some places. I'm a druid, so at this time of year, coming up to the Midsummer Solstice, the sun means a lot to me and my life. I am in awe of the incredible strength of the sun and the divine powers that create life. This year (2023)  the solstice falls in the afternoon of 21st of June I'll be celebrating the growth and life that the summer sun brings.

Haleakelã in Hawaii as the sun rises over the volcano

People for millennia have celebrated the sybolism of our  sun – our own bright star, as it shines its light onto the Earth. Because the sun gives us life, growth, brightness and warmth, of course it might be worshiped.  Over the last few weeks in the UK, the sun has shone above us, strongly and brightly, reminding us of the glories of summer and brightening our world with the colour of flowers. The power of the sun at Midsummer is at its most potent, and its ability to make crops grow, is all around us; the earth is fertile with the bounty of life, wildflowers are on every verge, and flower borders are redolent with colour. This imbues us with new hope.

It’s not surprising to find the sun in literature, where it can be a symbol of hope, life, power, growth, health, passion and the higher self, as well as a link to the cycle of life. All this  is used as a representation in fiction and poetry especially. 

In the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro,Clara and the Sun, the sun plays a god-like role. Ishiguro allows it to symbolise the emotional power of having faith in something bigger than oneself. The protagonist, Klara, is an Artificial Friend  – a humanoid machine bought  Josie's parents to help her loneliness. Josie responded badly to being ‘lifted’ and is often seriously ill with something that may have killed her sister.  Klara is solar-powered, so the sun actually does provide nourishment to her—she is sluggish when she doesn’t get enough sunlight. She tries to communicate with the Sun in her mind, as if it is a deity that can read her thoughts. Perhaps because of this, Klara seems to overestimate the effect the Sun has on humans. Josie makes a miraculous recovery on a sunny morning after Klara has pleaded with the Sun to spare her. In the book, as in previous millennia of humanity, the Sun  symbolises the power of believing in something bigger than oneself. And yet, none of the humans around Klara think about the Sun at all. As a result, the novel  represents how people in the futuristic world Ishiguro created have become out of touch with the natural world. 

Although the sun is often seen as a guiding light in the dark or as hope in times of despair, in  Albert Camus' famous and unconventional novel, The Stranger, the sun represents the bright light of the sun which clouds the thoughts and judgment of the protagonist, Meursault. The sun is personified to represent society, which throughout the story frustrates, angers and eventually takes control overs life.

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row is a memoir by Anthony Ray Hinton recounting his wrongful conviction of capital murder and the death sentence that resulted from the conviction. Hinton's sentence resulted in thirty years of solitary confinement at Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama as he awaited death by electric chair. In the memoir, Hinton recounts both his time in prison and his time as a child and young man. Hinton's mother raised Hinton and his nine older siblings by herself while confronting poverty and racism in rural Alabama. In The Sun Does Shine, the sun symbolizes Ray’s persistent hope for a better life. In maintaining that the sun will never refuse to shine for him, Ray implies that he will always keep up hope, even in his darkest days, because that hope is critical for his survival on death row. 

All Summer in a Day by American writer Ray Bradbury is a short story first published in a Sci Fi magazine in 1954

The story is about a class of students who live on the planet Venus, where the sun is only visible for one hour every seven years. Margot is the only one who remembers the sun from her early childhood on Earth. She describes the sun to the other children as being like a "penny" or "fire in the stove". The other children, refuse to  believe her and  lock Margot in a closet down a tunnel just before their teacher arrives to take them outside to enjoy their one hour of sunshine. In their astonishment and joy, they all forget about Margot and gleefully rush to play outside. When it begins to rain again, the children realise they won't see the sun again for another seven years. They let her out of the closet and stand frozen, ashamed over what they have done now that they finally understand what she had been missing.

One of  my favourite poets, Mary Oliver, looked at the symbology of the sun in a poem of the same name; 

 Have you ever seen 

anything 

in your life 

more wonderful 

than the way the sun, 

every evening, 

relaxed and easy, 

floats toward the horizon 

and into the clouds or the hills, 

or the rumpled sea, 

and is gone-- 

and how it slides again 

out of the blackness, 

every morning, 

on the other side of the world, 

like a red flower 

streaming upward on its heavenly oils, 

say, on a morning in early summer, 

at its perfect imperial distance-- 

and have you ever felt for anything 

such wild love-- 

do you think there is anywhere, in any language, 

a word billowing enough 

for the pleasure 

that fills you, 

as the sun 

reaches out, 

as it warms you 

as you stand there, 

empty-handed-- 

or have you too 

turned from this world-- 

or have you too 

gone crazy 

for power, 

You can learn more about these vivid descriptions and powerful images which invite  us  to reflect on our relationship with the sun at this webpage; https://poeminspiration.com/unlocking-the-meaning-behind-mary-olivers-the-sun-poem/.

In Count that Day Lost, by George Eliot, the sun is the primary image in the poem. Eliot begins the poem with the idea that at the end of day, if a person has been kind just once, that is a day well spent. 

If you sit down at set of sun 

And count the acts that you have done, 

And, counting, find 

One self-denying deed, one word 

That eased the heart of him who heard, 

One glance most kind 

That fell like sunshine where it went -- 

Then you may count that day well spent. 

But if, through all the livelong day, 

You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay -- 

If, through it all 

You've nothing done that you can trace 

That brought the sunshine to one face-- 

No act most small 

That helped some soul and nothing cost -- 

Then count that day as worse than lost.

Finally, there is  

The Sun Also Rises  Ernest Hemingway's first novel. It is said that he meant this to be a piece of nonfiction portraying his friends,  American and British expatriates, who travelled along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights.  The title is from a longer quotation from the Bible – One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. Hemingway suggested though, that the book was not so much about a generation being lost, but that "the earth abideth forever." He thought the characters in The Sun Also Rises may have been "battered" but were not lost.

Although the sun may be thought of as a cliché when using it as a writer, there is plenty of flexibility in this symbol. Thinking about what it offers a writer as representation can help you create imagery that really stays with the reader. 

To read more blogposts about symbolism in literature, click here

Symbolism in Writing – The Chair.

Using symbols to represent abstract ideas or qualities enhances the depths of your writing. Poetry, fiction, nonfiction, film scripts, plays, they all use symbolism  because it offers a subtlety of meaning – a nuance – creating  layers in your work and giving your writing a poetic feel.  

The crucial words in the paragraph above are 'nuance' and 'subtlety'.  To be  effective, symbolism has to be implied; you can't slam your reader in the face with it. In fact, if you are hitting your reader over the head with symbolism, then you are probably using clichés. 

I've just read a couple of books that used the image of The Chair as a central symbolism, and this made me wonder – what comes into our heads when 'chair' is represented in story, and how long have writers been using it? 

In art, the chair often features, making its own point about life. Vincent van Gogh's Chair (1888) shows a  simple, unpretentious rustic chair, wooden with a cane seat. It is clearly Vincent's chair; in the background is an onion box with his name, and a pipe and a pouch of tobacco has left in waiting. 

In literature, an empty chair can signify a personal loss or absence of an important character or person. It can be the empty chair at a meal; the person dead or cold-shouldering the family. 
In literature, an empty chair can signify a personal loss or absence of an important character or person. It can be the empty chair at a meal; the person dead or cold-shouldering the family. 

The silence of the empty chair is used to amazing effect in The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien.  It has wide-ranging themes, but the most clearly portrayed is that of exile; immigration and asylum. The chairs of the title were laid out in rows on the 6th of April 2012, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the start of the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces. There were 11,541 along the 800 meters of the main street of Sarajevo -- one for every man, woman, and child killed during the siege of the city – many of them small,  representing the hundreds of children killed. This symbolic act is described at the beginning of this amazing novel, and then not mentioned again. You can read a review of the book here.

In medieval times, chairs were an obvious indicator of a person’s wealth or craft. There is little mention of chairs in the Bible, or in  Homer, and in some plays by Shakespeare almost no one ever sits down. But by the middle of the 19th century, it is a completely different story. Charles Dickens, Thackeray, Hardy, Austin; they all have their chairs, mostly middle-class and often symbolising hearth, home and family.

But then you can imagine an extravagant chair like a throne which symbolises status. Royalty traditionally are seated on chairs embellished with gold and gems, making the symbolism of  the throne an ultimate status of superiority –

 a place to sit high above the mass of people and judge those below you in order to make decisions about your realm.  As George RR Martin writes;

‘When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die:'

Throughout his series A Song of Ice and Fire, warring houses fight and plot for their moment on the Iron Throne, which stands as a bloody and brutal symbol of power.

As with power, bondage is  unpleasantly linked to chairs. Think Casino Royal, if you can bear it. Or C S Lewis's  The Silver Chair (number six in the Narnia series), in which the children final find the missing Prince Rilian of Narnia –         

a wicked witch has been keeping him under a spell, binding him to a silver chair every night, sending him mad to prevent  him  breaking free. Chairs as prisons and the way one can become 'pinned' to them, becomes a dark symbol. 

This symbol can also represent restlessness. During the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, in Alice in Wonderland, everyone has to change seats (and change perspective), to the annoyance of Alice who finds herself sitting  where there is little to eat or drink, while in Madame Bovary, Emma sits in the chair by the window every day, to watch life pass, and also to see Leon, who never turns his head to return the gaze, even though he is familiar with the house. 

This restlessness is also used to effect by Yevgeny Petrov in his USSR era satirical novel The Twelve Chairs. Bender is an unemployed con artist who joins forces with a former nobleman who hid a cache of missing jewels in twelve chairs during the revolution. These chairs have been appropriated by the Soviet authorities, and the search  takes the nobleman and Bender from Moscow to  Georgia to the Trans-caucasus mountains. In  1970  Mel Brooks directed the film of the same name, described as 'one of the funniest film in years'.Chairs can represent laziness in a big way, especially the easy chair. With sitting being called 'the new smoking', in that a  sedentary lifestyle is known to be bad for the health, the easy chair can become a symbol for that 'drug of choice'.  In film, perhaps the iconic chair is that  of the computer whizz kid, always in the middle of a bag of crisps as he hacks (pr prevents the hack) that will change the world from his enormous black swivel chair, complete with computerisation, in which he is fully enveloped. Or if you like the idea take a look at The Couch Potato by Jory John and Pete Oswald, which is a picture book for small children.

The Couch Potato has everything he needs within reach of his sunken couch cushion. But when the electricity goes out, Couch Potato is forced to peel himself away from the comforts of his living room and venture outside. And when he does, he realises fresh air and sunshine could be just the things he needs...
So chairs are fair game as symbols, and there are just so many other ways emotions and storylines can be represented by them. It may be simply describing the chair and thus describing the seated character. Or, like O'Brien and Petrov, it may a symbol of something deeply important to society.
To read more blogposts about symbolism in literature, click here

Symbolism in Writing – The Tree

 

I’ve been away from my blog posting desk for a little while; the weather was holding good and the garden was crying out for attention. I’m writing course materials for the Open College of the Arts as well, so there wasn’t much time left to do anything else.

But now I’m back, I can’t get my garden entirely out of my mind, and so I’m going to look at trees as symbols in fiction. 

Trees are used to represent life and growth in mythologies, legends, poems and novels. Trees are considered representative of life, wisdom, power and prosperity. In literature trees are used as the metaphor of stability, solidity, strength and being grounded, and sometimes patience; that slow growth from a vulnerable sapling to a sturdy tree.

Trees can’t help but be spiritual, representing all the good in our lives; peace and prosperity, love and loyalty. as exemplified by the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge which can represent our personal development, uniqueness and individual beauty. Just as the branches of a tree strengthen and grow upwards to the sky, we too grow stronger, striving for greater knowledge.

The ancient Celts in Ireland so loved their native trees, that they based their alphabet on them – the Ogham – bestowed by the god of language, the Ogma. Each letters is affiliated – oak, of course, but also birch alder, willow, hazel, holly, rowan…twenty-five indigenous trees, each with it’s own symbolism. For instance Yew, which constantly regenerates itself and grows to a great age, is known as the tree of death and reincarnation. 

 Yggdrasil 

In Norse mythology the cosmology of the nine worlds, centres around a tree named Yggdrasil which reaches high above the clouds with roots that delve deep into divine realms. The god Odin hung from this sacred tree to gain enlightenment. 

Two of our most-loved and inventive writers, in their time, have featured trees in their work. J.R.R. Tolkien's Ents, the talking tree-like characters in the Lord of the Rings are the caretakers of forests, headed by Treebeard (believed to be the oldest creature in Middle-earth), and over millenia they have become more and more like the trees that they herd. Nimloth, the White Tree of Gondor, is central to the mythology of the books. It grew in the Court of the Fountain in Minas Tirith and was also the motif of Gondor's flag. It represented the pride of Gondor, and a symbol of friendship between humans and the Elves.

The Whomping Willow

J.K. Rowling also loved featuring trees. My favourite is the whomping willow, a violent tree in the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. which destroys anyone who disturbs its branches. In  The Chamber of Secrets, Ron and Harry narrowly avoid getting crushed. Later, in The Prisoner of Azkaban, they discover that the Willow hides the entrance to a secret passageway.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is a beautiful book I’ve written about here, as it’s an old favourite of mine. A ‘tree of heaven’ serves as a symbol of rising above adversity, as it sprouts in the tenement buildings. This tree is native to China and Taiwan and now considered an invasive species in New York City, but in the story its determination to grow and its resistance to being destroyed parallels the ambitions of the main character,  Francie…                                                                    

There’s a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach the sky. It grows in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up out of cellar gratings. It is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly . . . survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many of it.

Individual tree species can create mood alongside metaphor, because of their individual characters. The Beginning of Spring  by Penelope Fitzgerald, is set in Russia. Towards the end of the story, the family stay at their dacha next to a forest of white birch, which Fitzgerald might be using to represent both change and constancy. One night Lisa and Dolly walk into the forest:

‘There were paths through the birch forest, made for the autumn shooting. In fact there was a path, which might have been called a ride, almost opposite the dacha. Lisa walked steadily along it, taking the middle of the track, which was raised above the rain-worn hollows of either side.  You couldn’t say it was pitch-dark. The moon on the cloudy night sky moved among he moving ranches…

…The leaf scent pressed in on her. There was nothing else to breathe. Then Dolly began to see on each side of her, among the thronging stems of the birch trees, what looks like human hands, moving to touch each other across the whiteness and blackness.…

…They were in a clearing into which the moon shone. Dolly saw that by every birch, close against the trunk, stood a man or woman. They stood separately, pressing themselves each to their own tree. Then they turned their faces towards Lisa, patches of white agains the whitish bark.’

As a writer, I'm hugely drawn to trees and their symbology. They feature heavily in all my books. In my first Shaman Mystery, In the Moors, a black poplar grows against an abandoned cottage with a dark history. It allows one victim to escape and gives entrance to Sabbie Dare, when she's exploring. Black poplars are known as magical trees, which is why I chose it.

Later in the novel, willows feature, and their role is even more macabre than that of the whomping willow; a series of murder victims are buried in a marsh below an ancient willow tree.

The honoured carcass of the Glastonbury Thorn

The third novel Beneath the Tor, has several important trees that are Glastonbury icons. I couldn't help but want to write about the Glastonbury Thorn, the tree supposedly planted by Joseph of Arimathea on Wearyall Hill, which flowered every Christmas, until it was destroyed by locals angry about boundary disputes. Since then it has become even more of a quest for pilgrims, and its carcass is covered by ribbons flowers and other votive offerings.

I also gave a part to Gog and Magog,  a famous pair of stately, wise and ancient Glastonbury oaks, which Sabbie encounters immediately after leaving the scene of someone's sudden death:

        As we tramped along a country path, Wolfsbane mounted a fence that took him into a small enclosure where two old oaks stood proud. It took me a minute to catch him up. I found him leaning into the further of the two oaks, his arms hugging the trunk, which was so broad it would have taken several of us to surround it completely. I rested my hand on the gnarled and weathered bark of the other tree. The day was warm, bees already buzzing in the foxgloves. A woodpecker rapped with furious persistence in the distance.

'Oh, listen,' I whispered.

We stood in silence. I couldn’t imagine a better way for us to recharge our spiritual batteries. Eventually, Wolfsbane turned round. He hitched his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and looked at the ground, as if the weight of what we’d seen only an hour ago was dragging at him. 'I think I might have to apologize to Brice.' 

I found myself gawping. Not a deliberate act, but I was startled by his words. Apologize seemed altogether the wrong sentiment. When someone you know has lost the love of their life, you condole. You sympathize and sorrow with them.

'Why ever would you need to apologize to Brice?' 

Wolfsbane leaned right into the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes. 'This is Magog, you know.'

'Oh,' I said, recognizing, but not quite placing the name. 

'The twin oaks. End of an avenue of ancient oaks.'

'Gog and Magog. I remember.' The oaks were almost leafless and white with age. 'They’re dying, Wolfs.'

'They’re dead.'

I put my hands over my mouth. 'That’s sad.'

'They’re the last, Sabbie. The rest were cut down – heck, a century ago. Even then they were millennia-old. It’s their time.'

Of course, there are so many poems that feature trees and use their symbolism, that they could not all be mentioned in a post of this size, but my favourites include Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “This Lime-tree Bower My Prison” and Robert Frost’s  “Birches”

Perhaps we should leave this subject by touching on what trees do, every day, for our planet. We're going to need all the trees we can get to help the next generation keep life on Earth for Humankind and many animals on an even and sustainable keel. I loved The Man Who Planted Trees, a short story published in 1953 by French author Jean Giono. It chronicles a shepherd’s three-decade-long effort to reforest a barren tract of land in Southeastern France. Spanning a time period shortly before World War I until shortly after World War II, the story is both an environmental and an antiwar allegory, but it has influenced the generations that have come after it, and now there are many guerrilla tree planters who fill their pockets with discarded acorns and carefully bring on the saplings they produce, before taking them back into barren places. 

To read more blogposts about symbolism in literature, click here