"Symbiosis or Death": - Rhodes University

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… we are the architects of our own salvation or destruction – which (terrible
thought!) means we are, finally, just another life-form despite these lofty choices
available to us. If we do not make it morally, or should I say spiritually, the earth,
the Creative Principle will replace us… If the globe is a living cell – and all the
evidence so far points to this – it will survive no matter what, no matter who or
what has to go. (Fazzini 1990:139).
Livingstone’s themes within the broader ecological framework
To explore his position which shifts between ecological hope and ecological despair,
Douglas Livingstone portrays humankind as both divided from and united with the
physical world or nature. Humanity united with nature is an idealistic position, imagined
as a possibility; while humanity divided from nature is a more realistic portrayal. The two
extremes may be termed deep ecology and ecological destruction. Livingstone implicitly
acknowledges that his search for a middle ground, where humankind would attain a state
of ecological equilibrium, is quixotic. His work reflects the following aspects or
dimensions, which are not clear-cut categories in his poetry but rather are portrayed as
tensioned links. I offer the following categorisation of themes as a means of analysis
rather than as distinct categories as few of the poems fit cleanly into any one category.
1. Evolutionary theory presupposes a common ancestor for all life-forms on Earth and
leads to a deep ecological awareness of humanity’s tenuous position on Earth.
Livingstone uses the evolutionary process as an ontological metaphor and in support
of his belief in a Creative Principle. I am aware of the contradiction between ontology
(as a branch of metaphysics) and evolution which is based in the mechanisms of the
physical or biological. Evolution and the idea of a creator or a teleological purpose
are mutually exclusive (see Mayr 49; 66-7). Livingstone, too, was aware of this
contradiction, which he referred to as “my running war with the Almighty” (Robbins
1992: 52). The religious is a recurrent theme in his work: in A Littoral Zone, for
example, he gives “An Evolutionary Nod to God”. The sea is often used a trope for
the Creative Principle in Livingstone’s poetry. Following Livingstone’s capitalisation
of the Creative Principle, this position requires that we view Nature with a capital N. I
have instead favoured the use of a capitalisation of Earth and have not written nature
with a capital N because of the term’s complexity.