"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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while I claim the undertone is a metaphor for the reverberations of the abused Earth (or
nature) which is being damaged by humankind’s wanton misuse of its resources.
Chapman says The Anvil’s Undertone is also about “man’s knowledge of isolation and
his need for relationship in an uncertain world” (143).
The poem “A Piece of Earth” in which the poet comes across a duiker trapped in a
snare depicts, for Chapman, the desperate struggle to exist:
In these lines Livingstone achieves a symbolism which is in a sense direct speech.
Animal existence and landscape are both so austere that a plain statement (‘The
earth remains unmoving’) is somehow informed with sympathy for the wretched
creature. (145)
Is Chapman claiming that the landscape (or the earth) feels sympathy for the duiker? His
syntax is not clear, but if this is what he means, it is incorrect. It is we, as readers, who
feel sympathy for the duiker. Livingstone indicates in this poem that although nature is
indifferent to the suffering of animal life (including man) through the phrase “the earth
remains unmoving”, humankind, in the form of the careless poacher, is the pariah. In
fairness, Chapman does correctly add: “‘A Piece of Earth’ is a powerful nature study
which evokes the naked extremity of the primary struggles” (145). (See p 89 for a fuller
discussion of this poem.)
Chapman rightly notes there are several poems which, in their attempt to define
and analyse experience, introduce a ratiocinative voice (146) and gives “A Natural
History of the Negatio Bacillus” as an example. (This ‘ratiocinative voice’ is carried
strongly into A Littoral Zone.) According to Chapman, The Anvil’s Undertone displays
three aspects of Livingstone’s poetic development: his response to the scientific attitude;
his exploitation of surrealistic effects; and his presentation of peculiarly South African
social realities (146). Haresnape also pinpoints three main themes: concern with the
natural world; the differing outlooks of colonizer and colonized; and religion (252). Both
Chapman’s and Haresnape’s explanations are correct, but limited. I claim the
predominant theme of this collection is ecological destruction and argue this more fully
in the next chapter.
Chapman argues that the ratiocinative poems “Homeostasis”, “Isotopes” and
“Reciprocals” draw their imagery from both scientific and romantic sources and “are all
concerned with the relationship of ‘thought’ and ‘emotion’, of ‘reason’ and ‘mystery’, in
human life” (147) while Haresnape argues that the underlying concern of “A Natural