Kammen: Nostalgia and nationalism spur America's fascination with the four seasons

Cornell historian Michael Kammen is the author and editor of more than 20 books and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Robert Barker/University Photography

By Linda Grace-Kobas

Spring in Ithaca is a precious time, eagerly anticipated, especially after a hard, frigid winter. Green buds burst from branches and ground, and students scurrying along the Arts Quad wear bright colors again. In his fourth-floor office in McGraw Hall, in early May, Cornell Professor Michael Kammen acknowledged the seasonal shift as a perfect moment to discuss his latest book, A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture (University of North Carolina Press).

"Spring is the most eagerly anticipated of the four seasons," he said. "There is nothing more constant and predictable in our lives than the seasons. Humankind has always responded to the seasons and seasonal change, but with a gradual shift from responding for reasons of survival to responding with delight to change for its own sake and for sheer enjoyment."

A Time to Every Purpose explores the representation of the seasons in culture and art, beginning with a brief look at classical and native cultures, before delving deep into the ways in which Americans viewed nature and the four seasons in the New World, even as they transformed it.

Kammen, the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture, is author and editor of more than 20 books. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization.

His new book is receiving critical praise. A critic in the Boston Globe called A Time to Every Purpose "a book as filled with wonder as the cycling of the seasons themselves." The poet John Hollander wrote in the Los Angeles Times that it is "an ambitious, impressive and convincingly organized book ... offering to readers the likelihood that they will never regard the calendar in the same way again."

American attitudes toward the seasons differed from those of Europeans, Kammen said. While nostalgia for the lost Eden is a common thread, Americans added a strong sense of nationalistic fervor.

"Americans are quite proud of how spectacular seasons are here," he said. "While they conceded that American culture didn't have the depth of European culture, with its great cathedrals and literature, they also felt that the Europeans couldn't compete with us in grandness of nature. And most Europeans agreed, autumn is far more brilliant in America."

America was all about new beginnings, which is why Americans have traditionally begun the seasonal cycle with spring, whereas other cultures began with winter. And in a fairly new development, over the past 25 years, many Americans have shifted the seasonal cycle to begin in autumn, with the beginning of the school year and a return to routine. "This is totally new in human history," Kammen points out.

The seasons represented change, but also constancy, and reflected the young nation's conflicting trends.

"Americans embraced modernity but felt out of touch with nature," Kammen said. So they reached out to art and literature, to writers like Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard, and to artists like Jasper Johns. The seasons were depicted in popular calendars by Norman Rockwell and in commissioned public art and architecture.

Kammen has been collecting images about the seasons for more than 20 years. He's been visiting museums and art galleries since his boyhood in Washington, D.C. In the 1970s, he said, "I began to be struck by those suites of paintings devoted to the seasons, and began jotting down artists and dates." He worked on other projects over the years, but his season files "just got bigger and bigger."

In the late 1990s, he thought he would study those files and produce a scholarly essay, but he soon realized, "I had way too much material, and its complexity demanded a much bigger canvas."

Even with 336 pages, 48 color plates and 65 halftones, A Time to Every Purpose does not include all of Kammen's materials. He had to leave out a section on Asian art.

Kammen began writing the book in 2001. He had a fellowship at Cornell's Society for the Humanities, through which he presented seminars and received critical feedback. He later participated in visual studies seminars through the Graduate School, and he gave two undergraduate seminars during which he took students to Rochester's Eastman House and the University of Rochester Memorial Art Gallery. Kammen enjoys personal interactions with students, which, he said, transforms both student and professor into "three-dimensional persons."

He gives thanks to many Cornell colleagues, singling out for special credit Ellen Avril, curator of Asian art at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; Robert Dirig, assistant curator at the Bailey Hortorium, which has the greatest collection of American seed catalogues; James Webster, professor of music; and his wife, Carol Kammen, a senior lecturer in history.

Kammen already has begun work on his next book, which will be a history of art-related controversies in American culture. While recent outrages over the works of Robert Mapplethorpe, Karen Finley and other artists are well known, Kammen noted, "Art controversies go back to the beginning of the 19th century in American history." The Lincoln and Jefferson memorials were controversial for being in a neoclassical, rather than American, style. And there was a half-nude statue of George Washington that really caused a fuss.

A Time to Every Purpose was "another opportunity to hone my thinking about how a historian uses visual materials in research," Kammen said.

He added: "Over the last century, the ways people have responded to seasonal change is very fascinating, and moving. One of the ways we express our responses to political, economic and social changes is through the seasons as a metaphor, spiritually contemplating who we are at different stages of our lives. Immersing ourselves in these images and writings allows us to reflect upon the human life cycle and our obligation to posterity to be kind to our physical environment."

Kammen will be signing copies of A Time to Every Purpose with other Cornell authors during Reunion weekend at the Cornell Store, Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.