"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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192 is quite another. Perhaps the power of art can inspire people to at least live more lightly on the Earth. A bigger question is: Has poetry ever managed to sway the hearts and minds of any but a few isolated readers? 44 So, how can poets promote an ecological sensibility? By continuing to write and continuing to hope. In Livingstone’s words: “No other course … but to accept the gage and buckle to” (LZ 61). The power of love As indicated earlier in this chapter, I am not going to attempt to define love. I will venture to say that the capacity to love is a human attribute and is (partly) what separates us from other living creatures. 45 I will argue that (conversely) Livingstone shows that this capacity for love is also that which could unite us with the rest of the living world. Further, there are different forms of love, such as passion and compassion, and Livingstone shows that compassion is a higher form of love. While “Beachfront Hotel” and “The Waste Land” connect love with art, the poems which are analysed in this section deal more specifically with the power of love. In her PhD dissertation “The Jewelled Net”, Julia Martin repeatedly refers to the importance of the heart and argues it is “crucial” for the attainment of an environmentally literate, or ecologically aware, society (83). She explains her use of the term ‘heart’: In the broader sense, when I refer to the heart I mean first to indicate modes of experience and knowledge which are not wholly governed by the rational. More specifically, I am using the term to indicate responses of compassion and imagination. (90) Martin stresses the importance of love to an ecological reading: “This nondual wisdom is inextricably related to the imaginative identification we call love or sympathy or compassion for every thing that lives “ (172). Her “imaginative identification” is a way to 44 Gillian Beer claims that the reading of Milton’s poems influenced Charles Darwin profoundly: What kind of imaginative sustenance did Milton offer to Darwin at this intensely formative period? One of the crucial discoveries that came to Darwin as a result of the voyage was that the green control of the English landscape with its many man-induced harmonies and its sober beauties could not be considered normative. Beyond England lay other natural landscapes full of tumultuous colour and life… Darwin walks the tropical rain forests with Milton. His intense sense-arousal takes him beyond his own power of language. (29-30) And it can be taken as a fact that Darwin has influenced present-day thought equally profoundly. 45 This is not to deny that animals are sentient beings, but as humans we can never know whether a dog’s devotion, for example, is experienced as love by the dog.
193 resolve humankind’s psychomachia, the battle between spirit and flesh or “the uneasy divide between humanity’s physical and psychic elements” (LZ 62). In The Lives of Animals, J.M.Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello also connects the heart, or sympathy, with imaginative capacity and points out that “imaginative identification” is not necessarily an outcome of the imaginative process: ‘The heart is the seat of a faculty, sympathy, that allows us to share at times the being of another. Sympathy has everything to do with the subject and little to do with the object, the “another”, as we see at once when we think of the object not as a bat … but as another human being. There are people who have the capacity to imagine themselves as someone else, there are people who have no such capacity … and there are people who have the capacity but choose not to exercise it.[’] (34-5) What about empathy? This is a question I would like to ask Elizabeth Costello. Sympathy implies a feeling of pity through the ability to share the other’s emotion, while empathy implies a full comprehension of the other’s emotion. Empathy – the power of mentally identifying oneself with (and so fully comprehending) a person or object of contemplation (OED) – thus leads to compassion; Costello lacks empathy. Her sympathy leads, instead, to the quality or state of being affected with a feeling similar or corresponding to that of another (OED). Of the following four poems from A Littoral Zone which deal with the power of love, “Elementals at Station 24” most vividly takes its readers into the realm of the imagination. In this surreal poem the ‘animal’ women the speaker loves seem to be simultaneously the object and the subject of his love-expressed-as-passion. But (the poem implies at the end) passion without compassion is not much use. The first love poem in the collection is “An African Loving, Station 3” (15). It explores the meaning which the object of love gives to the life of the now lovelorn and lonely speaker who is in a state of “dry beached fright” (line 9). Like the unfortunate beached whale in “Carnivores at Station 22” (55) or the snake in section III of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Snake (16), the speaker is, metaphorically, out of his element. This early and more personal poem introduces the image of the sea as a reflection of his emotions. This is more explicitly explored in “Subjectivities at Station 15” (40) where the speaker’s view of the seascape is coloured by his emotions. This subjective view or dimension becomes what may be termed an emotional ecology. The speaker’s lovelorn state is, again, the theme of the poem and is emphasised by the
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"Symbiosis or Death": An Ecocritica
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Swallow) and so obviate its certain
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Contents Abstract .................
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Acknowledgements To Andrew Stevens
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ix Humankind’s abuse of nature an
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Introduction It was a Hogsback poet
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3 USA and was the first to apply th
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5 cilia, spirochaetes, mitochondria
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7 Durban in 1964 to take up the pos
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9 as the Earth. The poetry demands
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Perhaps in moments of - shall we sa
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13 married? This chapter will explo
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15 This is an idealistic position b
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17 Here, the “planet” and “a
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value. Julia Martin repeatedly stre
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21 The puzzle of ecology, then, is
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23 historic social conflicts. Langu
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25 ‘There remains,’ wrote Heide
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27 discourse, but as a fundamental
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the contradictions of consciousness
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31 Shelley refers to imagination an
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33 The freedom of birds - Keats’
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35 universe as mere mechanism” bu
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37 My 1963 comically chivalrous res
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39 research has followed two main p
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41 is definitive, not only for its
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Chapter Two Douglas Livingstone: Hi
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45 admired by poets of all poetical
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47 in the publication of Sjambok an
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49 conflict: “I don’t think any
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51 long-term implications of this t
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53 urbanisation. He adds that in th
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55 be seen as a stylistic pastorali
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57 (173). Livingstone, too, speaks
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59 to find a closer identification
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61 notes the “universality” of
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63 The first chapter of Chapman’s
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65 It should be mentioned, however,
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the stones, slaked battles, seas; t
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69 while I claim the undertone is a
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71 conjuring up a bizarre psycholog
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Yet the overriding relationship we
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75 The next collection, Sjambok and
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77 reflects the major variations of
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79 This new idea-system… I shall
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81 … we are the architects of our
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83 our anthropocentrism. This deepe
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The first sputnik blipped above me
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87 way of finding our sense of plac
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89 poem, indicates that overcoming
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91 constancy” where living things
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93 dissolves” (line 46). He is le
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95 / their daily crust on farm and
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97 lightning” (line 14). The fig
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99 life-forms. The poem ends on an
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101 nature. As demonstrated in the
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103 planting and regeneration. In
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105 inhabitants, also cleansed and
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107 The poem is divided into four p
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109 position. Wilson defines biophi
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111 humanity has no future place on
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113 omnipotent power is disastrous
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115 Because he suffers from, or is,
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We are an animal that needs to use
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119 his scientific work lies in the
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121 "metallic man" (line 6) who com
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123 It [A Littoral Zone] might with
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125 Livingstone” (1997). David Le
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127 and decreases the pressure on p
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129 suggests that much of Livingsto
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Chapter Five From Darwinism to Desp
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133 conundrum also plagues Livingst
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135 anything Livingstone has writte
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137 The sestet explores the result
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139 [W]hile human survival may be c
Page 151 and 152: 141 The poem uses the coelacanth, a
Page 153 and 154: 143 examines evolution at cellular
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Page 157 and 158: 147 reconnecting with the Earth and
Page 159 and 160: 149 ignorant or arrogant to see thi
Page 161 and 162: 151 This densely layered poem explo
Page 163 and 164: 153 is best to leave nature to do i
Page 165 and 166: 155 this reverence is an even great
Page 167 and 168: 157 continuation of a species. The
Page 169 and 170: 159 The remnants of the San people
Page 171 and 172: 161 In the third stanza he sees the
Page 173 and 174: 163 implication is that the San sha
Page 175 and 176: 165 is his anger extended to humank
Page 177 and 178: 167 “Carnivores” and social des
Page 179 and 180: Chapter Six “Seeking life, seekin
Page 181 and 182: 171 symbolise cosmic evil, but rath
Page 183 and 184: 173 The snake here symbolises self-
Page 185 and 186: 175 of Looking at a Black Snake”
Page 187 and 188: 177 The dead snake lies on the beac
Page 189 and 190: [A] constant image is that of the c
Page 191 and 192: 181 with a duiker doe - the visitor
Page 193 and 194: 183 life force (signified by the su
Page 195 and 196: 185 This poem describes the first s
Page 197 and 198: 187 The poem works with the idea of
Page 199 and 200: 189 itself and so managed to captur
Page 201: 191 The title of the poem alludes t
Page 205 and 206: 195 The above ‘conventional’ lo
Page 207 and 208: 197 opera, Lohengrin so that the po
Page 209 and 210: 199 redolent of the happier moments
Page 211 and 212: I conclude this chapter with an exa
Page 213 and 214: 203 perceived by my senses, but not
Page 215 and 216: 205 resolution through atonement, w
Page 217 and 218: 207 they “meld / in manic songs o
Page 219 and 220: 209 A brief review will be useful.
Page 221 and 222: 211 appears as thanatos” (207). T
Page 223 and 224: Conclusion The coming together of t
Page 225 and 226: “An appraisal of sewage pollution
Page 227 and 228: Appendix B continued 217
Page 229 and 230: Primary Texts Bibliography Livingst
Page 231 and 232: Clouts, Sidney. "The Violent Arcadi
Page 233 and 234: Hillman, James. Dream Animals. San
Page 235 and 236: One’s Reality: A study of the wor
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"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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