Loren Eiseley
“I am midde-aged now, but in the autumn I always seek for it again hopefully,” begins the final essay, entitled “The Secret of Life,” in Loren Eiseley’s book of essays, The Immense Journey (1957). It is a great essay in a lifetime of great essays by one of the greatest naturalist-writers in American literature. It is characteristic that he wrote the essay claiming middle-age before he was 50, but then he may have had Dante’s beginning of the Inferno in mind — “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / che la diritta via era smarrita” [Midway in the journey of our life / I came to myself in a dark wood, / for the straight way was lost.”] If any writer would be mindful of passing time and be a good guide for the reader in traversing a dark wood, Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) would be the man.
Eiseley was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and eventually graduated from the University of Nebraska there with a B.A. in English and a B.S. in Geology/Anthropology. While recovering from tuberculosis in mid-college, he rode the rails in the Depression, gathering experiences that would unexpectedly enter his writing about nature and time and humanity’s frail existence. He acquired a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and eventually returned there to head its Anthropology Department.
Eiseley’s essays are haunted by his perspective of the Other. Through temperment and training he acquired a distance from humanity, sometimes as close as the Neanderthal, sometimes as distant as a fox, often even further back in time. He walked the narrow ridge between a nonverbal lyrical approach to the universe and a scientifically honed analytical approach to the universe — and he would be the first to say it was all the same universe, not at all affected by a primate’s attempt to define it. He is one of a distinguished line of naturalist-philosophers that have arisen in modern times, among them Henry David Thoreau, Jean-Henri Fabre, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, and other distinguished company.
Loren Eiseley: Commentary, Biography, & Remembrance
Loren Eiseley: Commentary, Biography, & Remembrance
Born, raised, and educated in Lincoln, Nebraska, Loren Eiseley (1907–77) was a highly respected writer and poet best known for explaining complex scientific concepts in poems easily read and understood by the general public. Much of his work covered anthropology, ecology, and human evolution, topics in which Eiseley himself was extensively educated. Loren Eiseley collects essays and remembrances of his work by friends and academics. Throughout this volume, Eiseley is praised as a brilliant thinker, accomplished writer, and esteemed man of science who drew inspiration from his midwestern upbringing and worked to bring science into the mainstream at a time when its understanding was restricted largely to those working directly in the field. Decades after his departure from the world he sought to understand, Eiseley is lauded for beautifully joining the worlds of science and literature.