"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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anything Livingstone has written” (2002: 104), but does not explain why he says this.
Dirk Klopper, in arguing that Livingstone depicts Africa as a place of predatory violence,
says this poem offers “the hope of love” through the imagery of the knight’s armour and
that this counters “the fact that life is predatory” (1997: 44).
The poem reflects Livingstone’s belief in Darwinism, his need for purpose in the
face of contingency, and the role of the imagination in attaining this purpose. His
technical acuity is evident here as throughout the collection. The Petrarchan form
signifies order and pattern, but a variation of the traditional rhyme scheme reflects the
contingency or chance which governs the process of natural selection. The octave
explores the problem of fear and the sestet offers a resolution through determinedness.
The sonnet as lyric traditionally uses the first person pronoun, but Livingstone replaces
this with the distancing device of the second person pronoun your (line 9) and you (line
12).
The opening line’s regular iambic pentameter provides a scaffold for the list of
apparently disparate objects. What is the connection between the crab, clot, muzzle and
knife? They are all linked by the definite article “the”, but “or” separates the knife (a
manmade object which I read as a trope for the faculty of reason which resides in the
human neocortex) from the previous three natural objects. Given the title’s reference to
Darwinism, these four objects represent the adaptive process (or variation) which
constitutes natural selection. 29 The clot in this aspect is read as a coagulated mass of
material and the muzzle as that of an animal. For the poet, they belong to a set of
“nocturnal terrorisms” (line 2), an organised system of intimidation which is part of a
recurring nightmare. If the four objects are read as a trope for the evolutionary process,
then it is the contingency of existence which terrifies the poet. Metaphorically, each of
the four objects also represents danger, or death, through the pincers of the crab,
thrombosis induced by a blood clot, the muzzle of a gun, and the cutting sharpness of the
knife. Both the evolutionary implications and the mechanical dangers contained in the
four objects “patiently … stalk” (lines 1 and 2) the consciousness of the speaker.
29 Stephen Jay Gould defines this as “(1) agency, or organismal struggle as the appropriate (and nearly
exclusive) level of operation for natural selection [and] (2) efficacy, or natural selection as the creative
force of evolutionary change (with complexly co-ordinated sequelae of inferred principles about the nature
of variation…)” (2002: 59, my underlining).