“Thirteen Moons” (and “Cold Mountain”): When Prose Becomes Poetry
Thirteen Moons begins with a reflection on the end — the end of a human life and the end of an era. The protagonist, Will Cooper, is an elderly man adrift in a modern world. “Resolutely antique,” as he calls himself, Will belongs to the bygone age of rugged frontiers and untamed country. His heart remains in that time, refusing to embrace the intrusive and overpoweringly noisy new era of thundering railroads, growling automobiles, and whining telephones. Lonely and nostalgic to the point of despondency, he withdraws to his front porch and keeps company with his memories, those “pitiful and powerful tools” of old age. As he waits for death and the beyond — “the Nightland” — to claim him, Will shares with us his story.
The narrative that unfolds is a celebration of a culture, an homage to the natural world, and a shrine to an everlasting and all-consuming love. The novel acts as a personalized page of history that memorializes what is lost to relentless, reckless change. In the words of its jacket cover, Thirteen Moons is the work of “an American master” — a title that its author has rightfully earned. With the publication of his first novel, Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier proved that he has a finger on the pulse of both the adventurous American spirit and the eternal human soul. In terms of eloquence, perception, and feeling, he is the peer of Hawthorne, Whitman, and Steinbeck. His voice is a unique combination of the rough and the poetic, simultaneously raw and majestic like the human heart stripped bare. In Cold Mountain particularly, there is an intensity and authenticity to every page that makes each chapter blaze like a revelation. As with all great works of literature, the experience is a literary as well as a spiritual one.
With an insight and power that transcend the ability of most writers, Frazier is able to identify and express what is, quite simply, true. While contemplating the character and purpose of being, nature is often Frazier’s inspiration and guide. With the detailed eye of a naturalist but the sensitive heart of a poet, he paints a poignant portrait of the landscape, flora, and fauna of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Not only does nature possess a spirit and a beauty mirroring that of the human soul, but our relationship with the natural world reveals profound aspects of our own being. In Thirteen Moons, it is the thoughtful voice of Bear, a Native American chief and Will’s adoptive father, that calls us to a deeper introspection.
“[Bear] talked a great deal about several new opinions he had developed in my absence, one of which was that we come to value the fall of the year more and more as we age and decline. It is easy in youth to become emotional at the overwhelming symbolic autumnalness of withered peaches and reddened honey-locust pods. Later in life, though, the season becomes more actual to us, not sentimental, just sadly true. Therefore, autumn was now Bear’s favorite season by far, replacing early summer in his affections. He ached with newfound pleasure all through autumn’s many stages, the slow day-by-day coloring of fragile dogwood and sumac and redbud in late summer, then maple and poplar, and the sudden netherward jolt of the first frost and the overnight withering of the weeds, and finally the heroic fortitude of oak, its most persistent dead leaves gripping the branches all through the bitterest winter until finally cast to earth by the push of new growth in spring. And above all, the waxing and waning of the several moons — End of Fruit, Nut, Harvest, Hunting — commanded Bear’s deepest interest. The different ways they rise and fall in the sky and change from one to the next, from milky and enormous in late summer to tiny as a fingertip and etched hard as burning phosphorous against the wee stars in cold early winter.
“And, big or small, whatever the season, the moons had begun to streak across the graphite bowl of sky at a harder pace in the later years. Alarming, really, how all the wheels of the world — the days and nights, the thirteen moons, the four seasons, and the great singular round of the year itself — begin spinning faster and faster the closer we get to the Nightland. We’re called to it and it pulls us. And the weaker we become, the harder and faster it pulls.”
My heart immediately recognized the reality of these words, which will stay with me long after the covers of the book fall shut. As we grow older, the tragic beauty of autumn does become more consoling than haunting. Once we accept that all things must conclude, we take comfort in proof that even decay and finality have a unique splendor, dignity, and purpose. As we age, we do marvel at the quickening pace of time, pondering the transience of our lives in contrast to the cosmic constants of sun, moon, and stars. And like Will Cooper, sometimes we hope for the end as infirmity and grief loosen our ties to this unpredictable world. At some point we must all return to the earth that bore us, the earth that indulges our destruction and endures as familiar and mighty and timeless as the heavens.
As the close of Will’s life, the ending of Thirteen Moons is not perfect. There is loss, sorrow, and regret; but there is also strength, defiance, and a wry humor indicative of an unconquered spirit. The conclusion is true to the human experience, rich and meaningful because of its blessings as well as its hardships. And despite suffering and error, hope raises a resilient head through the smoke and disorder, persisting like the mountains ravaged by the invading railroads — “shorn and damaged and eternal.”
