"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

Introduction
It was a Hogsback poet, Norman Morrissey, who first introduced me to Douglas
Livingstone’s poetry. He told me he thought Livingstone (1932-1996) is South Africa’s
greatest poet and lent me a copy of Eyes Closed Against the Sun (1970). I read it in our
lush Hogsback garden, and was perplexed. The stark harshness of his poems contrasted
strongly with Hogsback’s summer luxuriance. But it was more than this. I could not
pinpoint why the poetry was good. I am still struggling to understand Livingstone’s
poetry, yet I am convinced that he is South Africa’s finest poet. His writings continue to
perplex me, but after more than two years of intensive reading I am not bored by his
verse.
Some years after my introduction to Livingstone’s work I read his final collection,
A Littoral Zone (1991) more or less simultaneously with Jonathan Bate’s ecological book
The Song of the Earth (2000). The one seemed to inform the other: Livingstone’s wish
“to hymn the earth” (39) and Bate’s call to poets “to remind the next few generations that
it is we who have the power to determine whether the earth will sing or be silent” (282).
Hence my initial aim was to offer a new interpretation of the colonisation of land, from
an ecological rather than a political perspective. This is precisely what Livingstone’s
poetry does.
This thesis does not explore the political in any depth. I am aware that this is
contrary to the approach taken by many critics, particularly Michael Chapman. I claim
strongly that Douglas Livingstone is not a political poet and that to try to read him as this
is to seriously misread him. The political is concerned (broadly) with the manmade 1
ideologies and systems used to govern temporal affairs. The South African political
situation under Apartheid was draconian and immoral. I do not deny this and neither, I
think, did Livingstone. But it was temporary. Livingstone as poet has a vision which
1 I mostly use the terms humankind, humanity or, sometimes, the human race. But, there are times when the
syntax or the historical context demand (for me) the use of the now generally unaccepted term man. When
referring to the centuries-old man versus nature debate I have favoured the term “man” for historical
reasons.
The world presented in Douglas Livingstone’s poetry is that of man and woman, rather than that
of humankind. This may seem anachronistic, but I believe it is also to do with the cadence and flow of
language.
1