"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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“tide” of the title, and structurally through the placing of the word at the end of each
stanza as a closing rhyme (note the intricate rhyming link: lines 1 and 3 of each stanza
rhyme with “tide”). The tide is a trope for the pulsations or cycles of life. The extended
metaphor of the sea signifies mystery, power and creativity, or the intangibles of life
itself. The word tide also has connotations of a rise and fall in fortune and can be
connected to the “luck” and “destiny” of line 3.
Man thus enacts in his own body the whole of evolutionary history but the “cool
Jekyll” or “manic Hyde” (or both?) of the third stanza precludes him from knowing this.
This split personality or inability to synthesise reason and passion results in a dualistic
and consequently unecological view of the world. Possible salvation lies in the “durable
and permanent” (line 21) power of love, spiced with a sprinkling of luck. This poem asks
that we imagine that this is possible. “A Tide in the Affairs” is a love poem to the Earth
rather than an address to a woman as the object of the speaker’s passion. This makes it an
unlikely, but more poignant, love poem, since the “power” lies in compassion rather than
in passion. The poem also contains the realistic recognition of man’s (biological) limits.
He competes “hollowly” like mindless fish “sprats” (lines 18 and 19) for this “woman
beloved”. Mother Earth is a highly unlikely paramour, but a wholly necessary one.
In “Elementals at Station 24” (57) Livingstone addresses not one, but four
womanly figments of his imagination, and loves each of them passionately. In this poem
the act of loving is more obviously connected to an act of Earthly reverence than it is in
“A Tide”. He imaginatively identifies with the basic elements of life and with the genesis
of the planet Earth.
“Elementals” recounts an imaginative and surreal encounter with the four
elements. The encounter starts realistically enough when the speaker’s “concupiscence”
(line 15) leads him to offer a lift to four young women caught in a rainstorm. The poet
imaginatively loves and copulates with the women who are embodiments of fire, air,
water and earth, in this order. This exhilarating encounter leaves him “quite transfigured”
(line 59), or psychically in tune with the universe. Livingstone connects the figures of
these four elemental women to each of the elements’ essential role in the creation of the
Earth. The love lyrics, set in italics, provide the heart of the poem, which is framed by a
description of a storm in sections one and three. The storm is compared to Wagner’s