"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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So, for Livingstone, love is the necessary condition for understanding his psychic
connection with the natural world and thus for attaining ecological equilibrium. In
“knowing” or making love to the woman he “knows” or understands – through the
physical act of love – his psychic being. The ambiguity contained in the word “know”
points to the importance of both the physical and the cognitive within the human
condition. To attain a glimmer of understanding of the human disposition, “the latency”
of that disposition must be uncovered. For Livingstone “there is a key” – love. His use of
the indefinite article, coupled with the inherent difficulty of defining or pinpointing the
nature of love, points to our tenuous grasp of what it means to be human. Our position or
place within the ecological framework is part of the equation. Livingstone perceives,
through his loving, that the Creative Principle (represented by the trope of the sea) is
subtended beneath, or supports, his lover.
The only poem which explores a state of ecological equilibrium in The Anvil’s
Undertone, the next (and final) collection in Livingstone’s earlier work, is
“Reciprocals” (52). This poem indicates that Livingstone’s earlier ecological hope is
waning and that ecological despair is gaining the upper hand. In “Reciprocals”
Livingstone attempts to comprehend the creative force behind the multi-dimensional web
of life on Earth. The poem moves between the cosmic and the organic and focuses on the
psychic human connection with the creative force which he describes in both scientific
and spiritual terms. The poem is, essentially, about a search for symbiosis or ecological
equilibrium. The title points to the implied give-and-take of a reciprocal relationship
grounded in exchange or mutuality. Reciprocal is also a scientific term for an inverse
relationship, and this poem postulates that the opposites of science and spirituality, or
reason and imagination, are connected through just such a relationship. An inverse
relationship, by contrast, points to an inverted state or condition where a thing is in
reverse order to something else.
The poem is centred around the rhythmic rise and fall in the patterns of life. The
Earth is compared to a “great heart” (line 1) which rhythmically contracts and dilates and
‘pumps’ the sea. The human psyche is also connected to this earthly rhythm through the
reciprocals of faith and doubt, which are compared to inhalation and exhalation. Human
spirituality is thus linked to the Earth’s rhythmic pattern (the sea’s tides) through the
trope of physiology: the heart and lungs as part of an integrated life-sustaining system.