"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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200 What is one to make of the fact that Livingstone’s descriptions of his encounters with these elemental women point to the workings of passion rather than of a more reciprocal love, even though he prefaces each invocation with “loving you”? To talk about love as the glue which binds humanity and, perhaps, the whole of the natural world is much harder than to talk of the scientific facts which support evolutionary theory. David Suzuki, in a chapter titled “The Law of Love” in The Sacred Balance, mostly examines human communities, but does try to extend this to the rest of the natural world. He concludes: Built into the fundamental properties of matter is mutual attraction that could be thought of as the basis of love. For human beings, love … is the humanizing force that confers health in body and mind. Receiving love releases the capacity for love and compassion that is a critical part of living together as social beings. That love extends beyond those of our own species – we have an innate affinity for other life forms. If we are to deliberately plot a sustainable future, the opportunity for each of us to experience love, family and other species must be a fundamental component. (182-3) Suzuki’s claim that we have “an innate affinity for other life forms” is an expression of Edward O. Wilson’s concept of biophilia. Livingstone analogously gives an imaginative account of elemental “loving”, where his love is for the basic elements which make up life. He uses surrealism to mesh the physical and the psychic; his descriptions are sexually explicit yet we know that the women he loves with such passion are not real. They are psychic manifestations of elemental forces. In conclusion, Livingstone portrays passion as a biological form of love. Passion is instinctual and selfish and, in the pursuit of pleasure, concentrates on the object of love as only an object. This is (crudely) the dynamic behind “An African Loving” and “Subjectivities”. Compassion is a higher form of human love; it is conscious and unselfish and it empathetically identifies with the subject towards which the love is directed. Compassion informs “Beachfront Hotel” and “A Tide in the Affairs” (if one interprets Dr Jekyll as the stronger ‘character’). Human-to-animal compassion is also a recurring theme in Livingstone’s work and is evident in A Littoral Zone in “Bad Run at King’s Rest” and “Carnivores”. A combination of passion and compassion is the highest form of love, for it would combine empathy with fervour. “Elementals” possibly belongs in this category.
I conclude this chapter with an examination of two poems which can best be called psychic quests for personal symbiosis. 201 The surreal as a gateway to a clearer understanding of the real Why does Livingstone venture into the bizarre world of the surreal, and what, if any, are the ecological implications of these psychic quests? With this question in mind, this section examines “The Wall Beyond Station X” and “Traffic Interlude: Descent from the Tower”. It is significant that the first poem is set at station x, a surreal or imaginary sampling station. The second poem, as a ‘traffic interlude’, is one of Livingstone’s three road reveries, the other notably ecological one being “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Snake”. Michael Chapman notes that “Livingstone does often successfully venture into unusual, sometimes daring areas of experience. An element of the hallucinatory has figured in his poetry from the beginning” (1981:153). He adds: Bizarre elements have of course featured importantly in twentieth-century literature. A failure of rationalism, a loss of faith, coupled with advances in psychology, have influenced movements such as Surrealism, which attempts to express the workings of the unconscious… Livingstone, too, attempts to shape his bizarre subject-matter into exact images and disciplined forms, as in ‘The Voice of the Experiment’[AU] (p.30): Scribbling at shutters and screens, lamenting under locked doors, the cold skeletal notes keen whistling through wire vocal chords. forty years ago, this wind found in a place of stasis its tongue, to sing tonight in spectral Hebraic accents (ibid.) This wind is also a predominant image in “The Wall Beyond Station X” where it signifies personal loss rather than the horror of the Nazi death-camps. Further, “The Wall” is one of the poems which “attempts to express the workings of the unconscious” (ibid.). In “The Wall Beyond Station X” (27) both the speaker and the hearer are Livingstone himself. He addresses himself as “you”, a self-dislocating ironising technical quirk also used in “A Darwinian Preface”, “Road Back” and many other poems. The poem traces an attempt to reconcile the scientist and the writer, signified by “one plume
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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
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141 The poem uses the coelacanth, a
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143 examines evolution at cellular
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145 (Dennett 86) which “propel”
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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
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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 and 202: 191 The title of the poem alludes t
Page 203 and 204: 193 resolve humankind’s psychomac
Page 205 and 206: 195 The above ‘conventional’ lo
Page 207 and 208: 197 opera, Lohengrin so that the po
Page 209: 199 redolent of the happier moments
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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