By Harvey Spears

Reading James Fenimore Cooper’s "The Deerslayer" was the beginning of a literary adventure that brought meaning and tremendous pleasure to my life. Cooper is a writer of great stature, whose influence can be seen in the diversity of his novels _ from the adventurous sea novel, the melodrama, to the modern western, and more. He profoundly influenced many writers including Melville and Hawthorne, Balzac, and with every year, his novels have stirred people.

I believe why this is so was understood by Eli Siegel, American poet, critic and founder of the education Aesthetic Realism. He described Cooper as having one of the greatest imaginations the world has seen, and in a review of a biography of Cooper, for Scribner’s magazine in 1931, Mr. Siegel wrote:

"Cooper and Whitman are America’s two greatest writers, and "¦ they are two of the 30 or so great writers of the world of all time. ... One of the words for Cooper in the history of the art of literature, is indispensable "¦ He had America in his "¦ corpuscles" (The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, #740).

Why Cooper is indispensable: his rich and imaginative seeing of America and its proud, freedom-loving people is in his novel "The Spy" of 1821, an American Revolutionary War tale based on an American double agent, serving in the espionage network during the Revolution to uncover British plots.

The book, Eli Siegel explained, "is deeply ingenious. Harvey Birch, who seems to spy for both the British and the Americans, is an example of double personality that has taken an external form."

As a spy, Harvey Birch had to seem to be for two diametrically opposed things _ the American Revolution and British tyranny. This aspect of the novel does bring up a deep question Cooper had, and every person does: Are we two people or one person? Do we act one way with a person, for instance, affable and friendly on the outside, while having scathing thoughts inwardly, thoughts that make one ashamed? Every person, I learned from Aesthetic Realism, has a fight between respect for the world and people, and contempt, the lessening of other people and things.

This book has affected many people _ myself very much included _ because it makes this tremendous inner battle outward. For instance, in a dramatic scene Harvey Birch trips and falls while being chased by a trooper on horseback with sword drawn. Then the trooper’s horse trips and the tables are turned. The writing here is lyrical, tough and beautiful:

"As quick as thought, Birch was on his feet again, with the sword of the discomforted dragoon in his hand. Vengeance seems to be too natural to human passions. There are few who have not felt the seductive pleasure of making our injuries recoil on their authors; and yet there are some who know how much sweeter it is to return good for evil.

"All the wrongs of the peddler shone on his brain with a dazzling brightness. For a moment the demon within him prevailed, and Birch brandished the powerful weapon in the air; in the next, it fell harmless on the reviving but helpless trooper. The peddler vanished up the side of the friendly rock."

What Cooper is saying is very important: he’s describing the steep fight in every self. There’s an instinct to want to even the score, a tendency Mr. Siegel once described in me: "Did I teach those guys a lesson! Did I put them in their place!"

At the same time, we want to have a good effect on the life of a person, even someone we see as our enemy. And this is not "turning the other cheek." The choice to have a good effect is one of the toughest things, and most necessary for a person’s well-being. Speaking about this fight in me, Mr. Siegel asked: "Which one is more in keeping with what one is?"

I believe Cooper shows that Harvey Birch (representing what we all hope for) felt it was more in keeping with who he was to put aside the thirst for revenge and to see having a good effect as a man’s real strength. It moved me as I thought about Cooper describing the rock as friendly. Was it because he made a choice not to pursue revenge that he felt the world as represented by this rock was his ally?

I think James Fenimore Cooper felt that there was something better, even noble, in all people that we should understand in ourselves, and as he described this hope, he created some of the world’s greatest art.

For more information about James Fenimore Cooper, you can log on to the James Fenimore Cooper Society website: http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper. For more information about Aesthetic Realism, you can log on to the Aesthetic Realism Foundation website: www.AestheticRealism.org

___

Harvey Spears is a freelance photographer and writer in New York City. He is also creative director of Red Monkey Design.