The Kinship of Nature by Bliss Carman (1904)

The now-forgotten Carman is a New World variant of the 90s aesthete. The key difference seems to be a sense of Arts and Crafts washing through the high language. I can imagine him togged in 'artistic' clothing wandering windswept Canadian beaches, taking in the implications on Art, and his art, that Nature inspired. Not at all a dandified, tailed aesthete of the London type. But many of his preoccupations in these thirty-two essays are those we might expect. Beauty rules supreme, and casts her spells through the seasons, writing, and personal philosophy. There is a strange two-speed quality here, too, though. Some essays are pointed, clear, resounding searchings. Others are a little lost in their own verbiage, or in half-ideas. Apparently he lived in a menage-a-trois with a couple and dabbled in early examples of mind-body-spirit alternative philosophies, but there is no sense of revolution in this work, just an endearing dedication to simple principles. I've not yet read his poetry, which was apparently the crowning achievement of his career. As an example of the art of essay-writing, this is a flawed and yet engaging pleasure.