"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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redolent of the happier moments with the tigress in “Descent from the Tower”. It can
also be read as a statement of earthly bliss or ecological balance where they are “freed
from striated meadows” (line 46). If these striations refer to furrowed plough lines, then
the implication is that farming and its technologies have been left behind, that there has
been a return to the abundance of an Edenlike state, overseen by “the licit sun” (line 47)
which provides the necessary and permissible energy for life. Symbiosis or a mutually
beneficial relationship is alluded to in the “clawed and clawing” (line 45) which forms
part of the passionate playfulness between the poet and Tiger-Woman.
He offers a one-line ‘commentary’ on this final imaginative and loving encounter:
“This sort of thing can leave you breathless” (line 48). This anticipates his “quite
transfigured” state (line 59) and indicates that – in loving and playing with the tigress –
he has imagined a perfect state, an ecological Eden, which he cannot put into words.
The final section returns to the present and the ‘real’ world. The storm abates and
the metaphoric music fades. He asks “Who was that son of Parsifal’s? Who / on earth, in
heaven, the hell was Wagner?” (lines 52-3). The importance of culture – both in literature
and in music – has disappeared for the poet. This line does not indicate amnesia, but a
shift in focus and a transcendence of the fake distinctions between earth, heaven, and
hell. What Livingstone has imagined makes human cultural endeavours pale into
insignificance. The “beauties” of the opening section are now “anthropopsychic athletes”
(line 54). Anthropopsychic is a word coined by Livingstone to indicate a synthesis of
human physical and psychic awareness. His imagination has both physically and
psychically transported him: he is “breathless” (line 48) and his “neocortex quite
transfigured” (line 59). This physical/psychic transfiguration is an imaginary ideal which,
momentarily, replaces the transcendental power of art (Wagner’s music fades).
Livingstone in his “slightly touched” and “pleasantly ruffled” animal-like state now sees
and feels in a new way.
The final stand-alone line, “Perhaps there was only one of her” conveys selfdoubt
and irony through the use of “perhaps” and concedes to the interconnectedness of
life. His half-realisation that there was “only one of her” indicates that, in biological law,
the four elements operate both separately and together to sustain life. This poem is a
celebration of life and the power of passionate love and, perhaps (!), a warning that the
imagination can be stretched beyond its limit.