"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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his scientific work lies in the opening line: “most weekdays”. He extends his work
into the ecological through the extended metaphor of the knight errant, the Quixote
figure, who becomes the champion of Mother Earth. Livingstone is the “black knight”
because he wages war against pollution and therefore death, and because he has a grim
view of his quest. The black knight is not, as Chapman claims, “The black worker, who
each day must trek from the outlying townships to the ‘white’ city” (1984: 94).
In the first stanza his accoutrements (line 1) are his scientific equipment. His
attendants or “armourers” (line 2) are, presumably, his colleagues, while the “uniformed
citizen” (line 6) possibly represents the bureaucratic organisation for which he works. It
is significant that he is “unneutered” (line 5) or uncowed by the bureaucracy. The second
stanza is a quixotic portrayal of his work, which he describes as a battle, using chivalric
imagery such as “jousts” and “battlements”. His fight is against the “concrete” and
“steel” of the built-up environment. He “tilts at windmills” (line 9), which alludes to his
awareness of the futility of his task. He continues on his quixotic quest even though he
knows his efforts are doomed to failure on a grand scale because he also knows that his
intentions are good. The poem thus reflects a hidden irony: despite his “tilting at
windmills”, Livingstone (unlike Quixote) is not deluded – he sees very clearly what the
reality is, and this gives him a purpose to continue in his quest to fight pollution.
The final stanza of “The Black Knight” is both quixotic and clearly ecological.
Livingstone sees himself as the Earth’s prophet of doom, but also as the labouring and
sweating, if errant, saviour of the Earth. This double interpretation arises from the
ambiguous phrase “apocalyptic for the Earth” (line 14). He is, further, “in training
against” this ecological doom, if doom is to be found in the “Last Quartet” (line 15). The
black knight, Livingstone’s alter ego, has inherited the mess of pollution, the “hustle”
(line 13) which, presumably, has brought on the impending apocalypse. But he is
resolved to train and fight, to pit his “muscle” against the tide and to sweat profusely to
save the Earth. He will do this without thought, “improvident with his muscle” (line 17).
The “Last Quartet” (line 15) alludes to Section II of Little Gidding, the final poem in T.S.
Eliot’s Four Quartets:
Dead water and dead sand
Contending for the upper hand.
The parched eviscerate soil
Gapes at the vanity of toil,
Laughs without mirth.