Cooper and Natty Bumppo

Use in the book

The friends’ excursion to America is explicitly an act of recollection and conversation. They ascend great rivers, navigate lakes, and wander forests in the company of Natty Bumppo and Cooper’s other heroes. No literal Atlantic crossing is being reported, and no single novel is named. The delighted return to remembered reading briefly gives friendship the scale and freedom of travel. The transition back to Europe then changes the ethical pressure of the entry. Discussion of society’s ferment and the vast sea of thought ends in the conviction that each person must fulfil a social mission, even at the cost of innocent preferences or private happiness. The literary excursion is therefore not simply condemned as escapism, nor offered as a permanent refuge from duty. It makes possible an expansive conversation that eventually places limits on the friends’ desire for tranquil seclusion. Guérin reports the whole encounter as restoring his courage. Cooper here belongs to the shared resources of friendship, where imagined space can enlarge attention before attention turns toward common responsibilities.

Places to read

1. 6 March 1833 · ¶1The friends follow Natty Bumppo through an imagined America and explicitly describe the pleasure as recollection.
2. 6 March 1833 · ¶3Their return to social questions produces a resolution to choose the place where they can do most good.
3. 6 March 1833 · ¶4The conversation as a whole restores strength and a hopeful inward sweetness.

Translation in this edition

The text prints Natty Bumppo by name but leaves the novels unspecified. The American rivers, lakes, and forests belong to recalled fiction, not to Guérin’s physical itinerary.