Coëtquen

Use in the book

Coëtquen is an important small instance of Guérin’s education in looking. The stream’s dark water first displeases him. Its colour changes value when he relates it to black oak trunks, dark ivy, and the contrasting white legs of birches. The place teaches no maxim in advance; attention discovers an arrangement that the first isolated impression had missed. The scene then changes through wind, cloud, and interrupted sunlight. Trees struggle like furious beings, and openings in the dark moving cover admit sudden flashes. These illuminations do not simply reassure. They make the shaded depths look haggard, ending in the unsettling comparison of a laugh on a dead person’s lips. Thus the named walk contains both the recovery of harmony and an encounter with strangeness. It should not be flattened into an example of nature’s invariably consoling power. Coëtquen also gives a concrete local setting to the wider demand, voiced in his remarks on education, that things be understood through their surroundings and relations.

Places to read

1. 19 March 1833 · ¶1The stream’s disliked darkness is reconsidered through colour relations; changing light then makes the forest uncanny.
2. 6 February 1833 · ¶1The educational argument supplies a useful parallel: detaching a figure from its setting prevents adequate understanding.

Translation in this edition

The supplied French prints vent [du] nord with brackets. That small textual intervention belongs to the witness as supplied and is not a reason to alter the direction or smooth away the mark.