The good life

Besides being one of four pen names of Rodney William Whitaker, Beñat Le Cagot was also a character in Shibumi, by Whitaker under the name of Trevanian (1979). I'm reading Shibumi now (listening to it in digital recording¹). It's an accomplished, thinking man's thriller with healthy dashes of philosophy and worldly wisdom for added seasoning². One such dash that struck me today was the following monologue of Le Cagot, made high on a mountain in the Basque Pyrennes, at night, to an audience of two shepherd smugglers and three caving³ companions just come up from the depths of the mountain:

"It is the good life," Le Cagot said lazily. "I have traveled, and I have turned the world over in my hand, like a stone with attractive veining. And this I have discovered: A man is happiest when there is a balance between his needs and his possessions. Now the question is: How to achieve this balance?
    "One could seek to do this by increasing his goods to the level of his appetites. But that would be stupid. It would involve doing unnatural things—bargaining, haggling, scrimping, working. Ergo—
    "Ergo, the wise man achieves the balance by reducing his needs to the level of his possessions. And this is best done by learning to value the free things of life—the mountains, laughter, poetry, wine offered by a friend, older and fatter women.
    "Now, me, I am perfectly capable of being happy with what I have. The problem is getting enough of it in the first place."
    "Le Cagot?" one of the old smugglers asked, as he made himself comfortable in a corner of the [hut, which is rendered in the Basque language in the book; I have no idea what it looks like]. "Give us a story to sleep on."
    "Yes!" said his companion. "Let it be of old things."
    A true folk poet who would rather tell a story than write one, Le Cagot began to weave fables in his rich, basso voice, while the others listened or dozed. Everyone knew the tales, but the pleasure lay in the art of telling them. And Basque is a language more suited to story-telling than to exchanging information. No one can learn to speak Basque beautifully. Like eye color or blood type, it is something one has to be born to. The language is subtle...Basque is a song, and while outlanders may learn the words, they can never master the music....[at approximately the 10-hour point of a 15-hour, 57-minute reading]

    I shared the gist of Le Cagot's rumination with my friend Ralph on a walk this morning in Chatham County. Ralph was of course familiar with the moral. "It's ancient."
    I told him I'd quote it in today's blog. There it is, Ralph.
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1. At any rate, the character's name sounds like "Beñat Le Cagot."
2. I'm indebted to Motomynd for recommending it. In describing Shibumi, he said:

   Nothing turns me off a writer more quickly than someone with an obvious lack of knowledge of a real, historical subject, or a lack of ability to maintain a plausible plot line from their own created topic. With that set up, have you ever come across Trevanian? Shibumi is a model of sharp, crisp creativity and detail nicely blended to sell the whole package.

3. Caving is known as spelunking in the United States—or so I'm informed by Wikipedia, which also informs us that speleology (a term used in Shibumi) is sometimes applied to the recreational activity of exploring caves, even though speleology proper is the scientific study of caves.