It would be a violation of The Tree to do much analysis of John Fowles’ wonderful paean to the natural world. The unpruned, unespalliered, untended, natural world. Let the man speak for himself on the subject.
It [the uncultivated copse] can be known and entered only by each, and in its now; not by you through me, by any you through any me; only by you through yourself, or me through myself. We still have this to learn: the inalienable otherness of each, human and non-human, which may seem the prison of each, but is at heart, in the deepest of those countless million metaphorical trees for which we cannot see the wood, both the justification and the redemption.
Fowles, author of such wonderful works as The Collector and The French Lieutenant’s Woman, died in 2005. He applies the principle of the uncultivated wood to the world of the imagination and artistic creation in the most inspiring way. I daresay this little-known and recognized small piece (90 PP.) is as valuable as anything else he ever produced.
