Building a Fire

(Leaf 112) – Art Inspired

 

Jack London

Jack London is one of those legendary writers, I think, whom we somehow seem to know without ever having read. Certain authors seem to have entered into our collective social consciousness in that strangely ubiquitous way. We absorb them as if by osmosis. Growing up, I was aware of the titles of his most famous works: ‘Call of the Wild’ (1903) and ‘White Fang’ (1906). But it is only very recently that I finally bought one of his books and actually read him. It was a book of his short stories, and one in particular – To Build a Fire (1908 version) – seemed to resonate with a genuine eidetic clarity. So strong was it, that I found myself thinking about it over and over again during the days which followed my first reading of it. Eventually, I found myself idly penning the following tanka; which hopefully goes some way towards distilling the visceral-vitality of this story about nature and man (and the essential elemental natures of both), a story which seems to me to be imbued with the kind of clarity which characterises the best attributes and aims of haikai. A short story which one feels rather than reads, perhaps.

 

 

TO BUILD A FIRE

(after a short story by Jack London)

 

Pine boughs slough

a sudden shrug of snow,

all his matches spent

– the dog silently watches,

his slow drift into sleep.