"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

some include what might conveniently be called traditionally romantic
characteristics. Alan Ross has remarked on Livingstone’s ‘agreeable brand of
romantic cynicism’; he could as well have mentioned that the poet is at times
prepared to view love without a trace of cynicism. (117)
I argue in chapter six of this thesis that Livingstone sees love as a key towards attaining
ecological equilibrium. Chapman hints at this possibility when he claims that love is
firmly defined by the forces of nature in “Loving” and that the sea evokes a sense of both
tranquillity and mystery. “Love is thus given significant form in relation to the majestic
rhythms of the natural world” (119). Another poem which Chapman links to external
nature is “A Morning”. He explores it in detail and concludes: “The poet’s own sense of
the wonder of creation is embodied in the image sequences, so that the notion of harmony
between physical and spiritual nature emerges as an emotional experience” (121). He
observes with insight that:
Livingstone, then, views love as both a creative and a destructive passion; it can
synthesize disparate experience, but its failure leads to alienation and despair…
much of his most vital poetry may well arise from feelings of harmony or
disintegration, which are initially experienced on the very private level of intimate
human relationships. (128)
Unlikely as it may seem, love is essential to ecological health and Chapman is aware of
love’s important synthesising power in Livingstone’s poetry. Klopper refers to “the idea
of relationship, its prospect and failure” as an important aspect of Livingstone’s nature
poetry and says it is elevated to a central concern in his love poetry (1997: 46).
In the final chapter of his critical study Chapman claims The Anvil’s Undertone
marks a “turning outwards … away from the intimate relations to the realized events, the
symbolic images of civilization” (135). He argues:
it is as if both the experience of failed personal relationships and the uneasiness of
the socio-political situation in Southern Africa have, so to speak, forced the poet
towards a physical and emotional landscape which has affinities with the flinty
terrain evoked so powerfully in Sjambok. (143)
Chapman’s use of the qualifiers “it is as if” and “so to speak” weaken his already thin
argument. It is more reasonable to say that Livingstone’s “uneasiness” comes from a
global (rather than personal or local) awareness of the ecological and environmental crisis
of the 20 th Century. My claim is evidenced by autobiographical and biographical
information (see the section: “Douglas Livingstone as ecologist” p 35). Chapman claims
the undertones of this collection are mostly of existential struggle, desolation and death,
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