DONALD AULT
Author and friend
In Memoriam: Carl Barks, March 27, 1901
- August 25, 2000
Written on August 30-31, 2000, by Donald Ault and read by him at
the memorial service for Carl Barks on August 31, 2000.
An irreplaceable part of all of us died on August 25, 2000,
and nothing can bring back the smile, the radiance of being, the
unexpected phrase that would catch us off guard in conversation
that accompanied Carl Barks wherever he went.
Nothing can bring all of that back into our physical presence.
Wordsworth, speaking of a similar loss wrote:
"There hath passed away a glory from the earth."
We’re here today to acknowledge and begin to try to accept the intolerable fact of that loss, symbolized by the bodily shell that once housed an infinite imagination and an indomitable human spirit.
Carl knew we needed to confront
the reality of his passing, and that is one reason he chose to
have this public display of his physical remains. As he told me
in one of our last conversations, "Funerals and cemeteries
are for the living, not the dead."
But he would not have us dwell forever in this gap between what
was and never again shall be. No. As he insisted to me, time
after time, that he "put life" into his drawings—his
own life—"from the white paper on up to the finished
product," "a one-man show," that made the ducks
look so "authentic," "genuine," and his
favorite word for his work, "sincere": "The way
the ducks were feeling just came out of the ends of my fingers
and right on to the paper."
And the more he put life into the ducks, the more alive he became—and
he was the most alive human being I have ever known or hope to
know. So we must not look at his massive legacy of stories,
drawings, paintings, and writings as if they are dead images
wrapped in a funeral pall but as our only remaining direct access
to the life force that animated the soul of one of the greatest,
most prolific, and most diverse visual narrative artists of the
twentieth (and perhaps any) century.
Before I met Carl, I couldn't
imagine what the person would be like who had written and drawn
all those stories I had marveled at as a child and had developed
such a deep respect for as an adult, but the moment (almost
exactly thirty years ago today) that I first laid eyes on him and
shook the hand that had produced those magical duck stories, I
realized that no other person in the whole world but this man
standing before me could have accomplished such a feat. And as I
grew to know him better, as I watched the seemingly endless flow
of productivity and generosity from a man who could well have
been passing his days lazily in retirement, the more inevitable
the congruence became between this man’s very being and the
body of work he was producing.
Despite his great refusal to acknowledge consciously the full
depth, complexity, and influence of his work, at some fundamental
level—"deep beneath the subconscious" he once told
me—he recognized the power of his talent and the gift life
had given him in the opportunity to use that talent to its
fullest. And he accepted the awesome responsibility that
accompanied this gift, bequeathed in part, but only in part, by
Disney. Although his vision of life could be expressed most fully
through the Disney ducks, Carl created many more characters than
he inherited, and those he did inherit from his days in the
animation story department underwent a genetic transmutation of
epic proportions. In his own homespun terms, "I always tried
to give the guy—whether it was the kid at the newsstand or
Walt Disney himself—more than he paid for."
In this light, I believe it is not too extreme to say that Carl
gave his life for us—not in a sacrificial or sacramental way—but
in a joyous, therapeutic, healing way, to save us from the
monotony and depression of everyday life—at times by
exaggerating the frustrations he confronted Donald with in order
to make Donald’s absurdity, pridefulness, tenacity, and,
more often than one might expect, heroism show up for us as
infinitely meaningful—at other times by enchanting us into
imaginary, mythical worlds (the land of the square eggs, the
Terries and Fermies, the Peeweegahs, Atlantis, the Seven Cities
of Cibola, and on and on) that were extraordinarily plausible
because they were built around the "tools of everyday life"—all
the while creating a moveable locale (Duckburg) and a cast of
fluid, dynamic continuing characters, including Scrooge who
became more famous than Donald, Gladstone Gander who "curdled
everybody’s cream," Gyro Gearloose (Carl’s alter
ego), the Beagle Boys (the world hardest-working would-be thieves)
and so many, many more, including some who made only one
memorable appearance (Porkmuscle J. Hamfat, Pulpheart
Clabberhead, P.J. McBrine, Chisel McSue, and Prunella Prunepuss,
a.k.a. Angina Arthritis, to mention just a few)—characters
who were so believable that they seemed more real than the
mundane world to which we had to return after following them on
their imaginative journeys. Carl's commitment was to teach us to
read with wonderment, all the while "telling it like it is,"
"laying it right on the line," making us recognize that
"everything isn't always going to turn out roses."
For us, today is such a day, even though it may be strewn with
roses. However much we yearn for it to be different, for Carl to
have retained his seemingly eternal youth forever; however much
we might hope to hear one more new word, glimpse one more
sidelong, mischievous glance from his vibrant eyes, he has been
taken from us. And, as much as is possible in this life, he left
us on his own terms, still thinking of us and how this day might
be for us. In so doing, he has taught us how, when our time
comes, we might, like him, die in dignity and peace.
Let us celebrate the undeniable fact that we are the lucky ones—far
luckier than Gladstone Gander could ever understand—for we
have been allowed to share the same time on earth with this great
man; we have lived in his time; and we can say, "He walked
among us, and, for a while, we walked with him."
May the soul of this gentle, generous, moral, creative man—who has changed the world more than any of us may be able to imagine—rest eternally in peace.
http://www.cbarks.dk/THEFAREWELLault.htm | Date 2002-08-25 |