"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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of Looking at a Black Snake” and its repeated examination of human cruelty towards
the snake, it can be argued that Livingstone offers religion or “orthodoxies” as a form of
misguided ‘higher culture’. This is highly ironic because “the black snake / of
orthodoxies” is a human construct, which would make doctrine a self-imposed human
cruelty.
Section VI’s opening statement is then followed by a question: Livingstone
introduces “a votary”, a devoted worshipper, a chthonian cultist who (misguidedly) aims
to catch the black snake with “a forked stick” and kill it with a panga or African knife.
She is misguided because it is not the snake which is the ‘problem’ but the human
confusion over what the snake represents as well as a masculine, artificial, rational or
Apollonian view of the world. The votary’s actions are symptomatic of humankind’s
stunted knowledge of good and evil. It is because of this stunted knowledge that
Livingstone asks:
Is that why, tonight, a votary will raid
the Snake Park
armed with a forked-stick and a panga?
The above lines contain incongruous juxtapositions which point to the chasm between
ancient ways and contemporary practice. The word “votary” indicates the ancient or
religious, in contrast to the modern, artificial “Snake Park” where snakes are kept in
captivity as exhibits. Perhaps the capitalised Snake Park refers to more than an actual
place in Durban; the capitalisation could also intimate that it has replaced the temple or
religious place of worship in modern society. The “forked-stick” and the “panga”
represent natural and artificially constructed tools respectively and also hint at the
juxtaposition of ancient and modern methods. These three, short lines thus convey a tone
of confusion. Livingstone intimates here that confusion of consciousness leads to
destructive physical acts. The conventional ‘cure’ for confusion is reason and
humankind’s rational faculty does have a role to play in the overcoming of this antipathy
towards the snake. Livingstone suggests (through the metaphor of the masculinefeminine
opposition) that reason and reverence towards the Creative Principle are,
paradoxically, both necessary. Camille Paglia approaches it from the opposite
perspective: “Apollo links society and religion. He is fabricated form. He is exclusion
and exclusiveness”; but she also claims: “Apollo can swerve from nature, but he cannot
obliterate it” (73 and 14).