Homage …

… The Achievement of Loren Eiseley —  Education & Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… Eiseley’s lack of specialization, and his essential outdoorsiness, though problematic, were never as offensive as his propensity for wonderment. And that propensity has made Christians some of his best and most fervent readers. No one understood Eiseley better than the poet W. H. Auden, who wrote that Eiseley’s great theme is “Man the Quest Hero, the wanderer, the voyager, the seeker after adventure, knowledge, power, meaning, and righteousness. . . .The Quest is not of his own choosing—often, in weariness, he wishes he had never set out on it—but is enjoined upon him by his nature as a human being.” (I do not believe that Auden knew of Eiseley’s interest in Tolkien.) Auden’s shrewd commentary, in a long review of The Unexpected Universe (1969), rightly notes several of Eiseley’s most persistent traits: his melancholia; his preference for nonhuman company; his love for “the lost ones, the failures of the world” (Eiseley’s own words); and his prayerfulness. “He reveals himself as a man well trained in the habit of prayer, by which I mean the habit of listening.” And listening leads to wonder.