“Purgatory Now”

That Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated—even minimally—on The Rime of the Ancient Mariner serves to explain in part the presence of the theme of transgression and expiation that is recurrent throughout Wordsworth’s work but blatantly apparent in only this one poem of Coleridge’s.  But where Wordsworth’s episodic enlightenment to the glories of nature can be construed as the workings of the guilty conscience of an imaginative teenager, Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is imbued with a sense of the truly fantastical and horrific and, ultimately, edifying.  But this is not to say that the Mariner does not function within a world of his own making.  For, as Coleridge puts it in his Biographia Literaria: “The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I Am” (Norton Anthology, 477).  In other words, it is the primary imagination that continuously constructs our reality, because, according to Robert Penn Warren, to know something is to create that thing (New and Selected Essays, 342).  In this way, we re-create, in response to our ever-changing environment, ourselves, or our concept of ourselves, every waking moment of our lives.  Coleridge goes on to explain the secondary imagination: “It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify” (477).  To reiterate, it is our secondary imagination that allows us to respond poetically (and sympathetically, as the Mariner ultimately does) to our perceived ‘ordinary world.’  The Mariner’s sea journey is, then, the quintessential Romantic Quest, a meeting, according to Anca Vlasopolos, of mind with experience (Wordsworth Circle, No. 10, 365), in which the subconscious desire to understand the natural world supersedes the very conscious desire to get home (my extension of Ms. Vlasopolos’s argument).

         It is not unreasonable to regard the Mariner as a poet-prophet, very much akin, in an evangelistic sense, to Wordsworth of The Prelude.  Wordsworth’s witness to the soothing power of God, for example, comes after an extensive ‘chronodicy’ in which he relates the “spots of time” concept (The Prelude, Book Twelfth, 208-335) and the fearful episodes of boat stealing and bird nest plundering.  What is interesting is that both Wordsworth’s spots of time involve death (as the Mariner’s spiritual awakening involves the death of his shipmates).  It is eerily ironic that first-hand encounters with death or death scenes would evoke creativity and sensation in a mind, instead of deadening the senses and immobilizing the powers of observation. 

         It is line 105 that I believe is critical to understanding the Mariner’s conception of reality: “We were the first that ever burst / Into that silent sea [italics mine]” (105-106).  This can be read two ways: 1) that the sea to the Mariner seems insipidly expansive or 2) that the Mariner wills the ship onto a sea of his own creation (the ship being the first thing to ever sail upon it).  Unless these lines are a figure of speech (which is a matter of opinion), it can be said that the Mariner’s secondary imagination has re-created or modified this reality to be part of a grand self-reprobative process, in which everything from then on has the special task of punishing him.  After hanging the albatross around the head of the Mariner (as punishment), the shipmates drop dead (as punishment for abetment of the murder), but interestingly, by the light of the moon (not the light of the bloody sun).  Robert Penn Warren explains this in the following way: “[I]f we accept the interpretation that the Polar Spirit belongs to the imagination cluster and yet exacts vengeance, then the fact that horror comes in the moonlight is simply an extension of the [following] principle: violated and despised, the imagination yet persists and exacts vengeance” (Warren 373).  It is the shipmates’ act of hanging the albatross around the head of the Mariner that constitutes such a violation: They throw the whole guilt on the Mariner, and he eventually wills them dead.  It is only when he is made to retell his story for the rest of his life (at the injunction of a Polar Spirit, an entity from that same region he once detested), does he, like Wordsworth, become a prophet of the greatness of all things natural.

Secondary Source Works Cited

Vlasopolos, Anca. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as Romantic Quest”. 

            Wordsworth Circle 10 (1979): 365-69.

Warren, Robert Penn. New and Selected Essays. New York: Random House, 1989.

Beyond Ecology

I thought that Neil Evernden’s article “Beyond Ecology” raises many interesting points regarding humankind and its relationship to the non-human environment. He discusses this relationship within the context of “interrelatedness” but he takes this issue far beyond the notion of a casual connection. Instead, he interrogates whether or not humans and non-human elements are completely independent entities. In one instance, he explains that different bacteria can transfer an extra chromosome to other bacteria or to another species in general. This example undercuts preconceived notions that each creature is completely distinct from the other and highlights how the natural world is dependent on each other. I think Evernden is alluding to the idea that the boundaries within nature (including mankind) are much more fluid than we thought. It seems that he is encouraging us to take a more holistic approach when we consider what is natural and what is not. He argues that the only way we can understand human nature is to also study man within the context of the natural environment, not outside of it (95). We are accustomed to perceiving man onto himself and easily forget that man is deeply connected to his surroundings. Everden’s article attempts to bridge the gap between our preconceived notions of man with the reality of our relationship with the natural world. Although he makes a valid point, I think it becomes quite difficult to do so because over time, we have hidden nature from our sight. 

With the onset of urbanization, we do not see a inherit connection to nature; it seems as though mankind and nature are independent of one another. Evernden argues that “we not only see ourselves not part of the environment, we are not even part of the body. We, the real us, is concentrated in some disputed recess of the body” (98). Even on the few occasions when we attempt to connect with the natural world, we do so within the context of modernization. This eliminates any possibility of noticing our interconnection with the natural world. In order to perceive the interrelatedness that Evernden refers to, we must first begin to reframe our perception of man and nature, otherwise it will be difficult to reimagine the boundaries between them as anything but stable.  

Evernden brings up another interesting point when he urges us to include humanities within the conversation of ecology. He points out that we are misguided to believe that only the natural sciences are capable of understanding nature. He explains that the “significance of a place is a personal thing, and the battle for the right to know ‘where I am from’ is not one to won by environmental impact assessments and benefit-cost analysis” (102). I think he is right in the sense that since we are interconnected with the natural world, we need to utilize the social and the natural sciences in order to have a better understanding of our relationship with nature.  I think the field of humanities opens many opportunities for exploration that goes beyond the functionality of nature, but I’m unclear on how it would do so. Although Evernden stresses the importance of including humanities within the study of the natural environment, he does not provide a clear explanation on how this new approach would translate in practice. 

“The Distinctiveness of Humanity:” A Response to Neil Evernden’s Argument of Human Inter-Relatedness to Nature

In “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy,” Neil Evernden questions the wisdom of science on insisting upon the subject/object binary necessary for the observation and measurement of the objective, external world, arguing that concomitant with the aforementioned binary is a devaluing of the role of the arts and humanities in deciding what is most important in environmentalism. At the very heart of the issue, as far as Evernden sees it, is humanity’s insistence on seeing themselves meaningfully distinct from the environment at large. Following such a belief, is that nature ends up being valued above all for its utility to human life, that is, for its “resources,” a term that Evernden apparently finds loathsome, (“slurp of chunks of the world’). Attempting to destabilize this sense of human distinctiveness, Evernden takes great pains in stressing Ecology’s most positive contribution to date in the environmentalism debate: how inter-related is everything in the environment, meaning, that, as humans,“we can’t do as we wish without pay a price [for it]” (92). Throughout the article and with great attention to detail, Evernden attempts to show how difficult, if not impossible it sometimes appears to be, to consider a human being anything but a biological amalgamation of sorts. The implication, of course, is that the human sense of an individual self among the flesh is merely an illusion, and given humanity’s history of polluting the environment, a dangerous illusion at that. 

While I enjoy and appreciate Evernden’s biological analysis of, for instance, the stomach’s collection of living organisms, or the lichen’s being composed in reality of two distinct organisms, lost in the scientific minutiae of everything about the natural world he describes are just the sort of human concerns that he claims are most important. Part of the problem with his argument is how needlessly complicated he makes a human being out to be. Scientist and engineer Ray Kurzweil makes the profound point in the following of how important it is in science to approach a problem with the appropriate level of complexity, as clarity about a potential solution often will depend on a certain conceptual distance, as it were, from the details of what is being observed: 

It is important that we build models of the brain at the right level. This is, of course, true for all our scientific models. Although chemistry is theoretically based on physics and 

could be derived entirely from physics, this would be unwieldy and infeasible practice. 

So chemistry uses its own rules and models. We should likewise, in theory, be able to 

deduce the laws of thermodynamics from physics, but this is a far-from-strait forward

process. Once we have a sufficient number of particles to call something a gas rather than a bunch of particles, solving equations for each particle interaction becomes impractical, 

whereas the laws of thermodynamics work extremely well. The interactions of a single molecule within the gas are hopelessly complex and unpredictable, but the gas itself, 

comprising trillions of molecules, has many predictable properties. (Kurzweil ch. 4)

After reaching a certain microscopic level of examination, human beings are, too, hopelessly complex and unpredictable, full of various lifeforms, each having their own peculiar traits and manners of existence. Yet, when determining human values, little of any of this knowledge helps one get any closer to determining what matters most to us as human beings. How, for instance, would one's studying or being made aware of the various examples of bacteria in the human stomach ever lead a person to the knowledge of the Sistine Chapel? Or Neil Armstrong’s landing on the moon? Or the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse? In other words, peer too closely at a human being and what is missed is how all that is gathered together in that blink of an eye ultimately composes a complete and distinct person, someone with dreams, hopes, fears, desires, and loves. No amount of studying biology or the larger environment can ever teach a person what it means to be human. And my argument in no way should be interpreted as an attack on science. I love science. We need science. In a word, the kind of bare facts that Evernden’s argument depends on are just that: meaningless in themselves, and empty of human subjectivity, and therefore, incapable of explaining or bringing us any closer to a definitive understanding of what makes homo sapiens more than just biological entities but more importantly, distinct persons of, for lack of a better word, spiritual value.

Nature in Wordsworth: A List

In discussing the many different "natures" found in Wordsworth's poetry and prose, we were moving pretty fast (or rather maybe it was I who was moving pretty fast) through the corpus of early Wordsworth. Below is an extempore walk-through the selections in the Longman Anthology with some brief notes about the nature (or natures) found in Wordsworth.

Simon Lee: simple nature of common people (Simon Lee); what man has made of man (last two lines)

We are seven: simple nature of common people (little girl); "She was wildly clad"; "For this, for everything, we are out of tune" (a line from the Wordsworth sonnet "The world is too much with us late and soon" that sums up the mood of the poem)

Lines written in early spring: active nature; sentient nature; link, wreathes, blended; "cannot measure"; "every flower enjoys the air it breathes"; "The budding twigs spread out their fan, / To catch the breezy air"; "what man has made of man

The Thorn: Nature as opposition ("the mosses creep, / And this poor thorn they clasp it round / So close, you'd say that they were bent / With plain and manifest intent, / To drag it to the ground"; Nature as strong and indifferent ("oft the stormy gale / Cuts like a scythe"); natural beauty or human depravity (flowers cover "infant's grave"?); Nature not indifferent? ("And she is known to every star, / And every wind that blows"); blank and unreadable ("I cannot tell, I wish I could", "No more I know, I wish I did", "I cannot tell how this may be"); Nature/human (he mistakes Martha Ray for a stone); blankness and ineffability, silence in the face of suffering and the unknowable ("I did not speak--I saw her face, / Her face it was enough for me")

Expostulation and Reply: wise passiveness; we think "nothing will come" unless we seek it (the inquiry and mastery of science?); instead passivity ("The eye it cannot chuse but see"); how do we "know" Nature? through probing its mysteries with filthy hands (to paraphrase Victor Frankenstein)?

The Tables Turned: nature as source of wisdom; let Nature be your teacher; "Spontaneous wisdom" (what is that?); "One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man; / Of moral evil and of good /Than all the sages can"; our "meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous forms of things" (recall Tintern Abbey); we murder to dissect; watch and receive (more passivity)

Old Man Travelling: old man like nature itself; passivity; "insensibly subdued"; the birds "regard him not"

Tintern Abbey:
verse paragraph 1--the visible scene, once again, presence, impress, connect, lose themselves; sensory description of the scene as "landscape"; emphasis on deictics (this, these, words that anchor us in the present moment and scene, that are almost like pointing words)
verse paragraph 2--forms lead to memory lead to sensations leads to restoration leads to influence of best portion of life leads to maybe something more, the sublime, the burden of the mystery, the serene and blessed mood where we see into the life of things
verse paragraph 3--the contrasting world outside (fretful stir unprofitable and the fever of the world) but the power of memory to restore us
verse paragraph 4--not just traveling in space (from this scene back to the city and then back to this scene) but also in time from this moment back to prior moments and prior visits; memory and identity, the self as not just this-me but these-me's all taken together; the prior self as unworthy; love of nature as appetite and passion (consuming?); love of nature purely sensual ("that had no need of a remoter charm, / By thought supplied, or any interest / Unborrowed from the eye"); other gifts have followed, a presence that disturbs, something far more deeply interfused that is in the world and in the human mind; therefore, (i.e. my argument is concluded) am I still a lover of nature, where nature is both what we half create (the mind and imagination making sense and meaning out of sensory data) and half perceive (the sensory data); in Nature and the language of the sense is the anchor of our moral being;
verse paragraph 5--turn to Dorothy (what some critics call the colonizing of her mind, but you don't have to see it that way); she an earlier version of himself--glad animal passions? the poet's second self? transmission and inheritance; Nature never did betray the heart that loved her; protects us; this moment/memory/place and its tranquil restoration set in opposition to the world to which we must return ("evil tongues, / Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, / Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all / The dreary intercourse of daily life"); language of devotion (worshipper, service, zeal, holier); final return to the landscape ("this pastoral landscape")

There was a boy: we talked about this one; we left off with de Man but we probably should have returned to Fry. De Man leaves us contemplating the silence and the void, the existential abyss of the homeless human in a godless universe. Other critics would have us focus less on silence as deprivation and absence and more on silence as necessary precondition to enlightenment (with an eye made quiet we see into the life of things). When all is silent, then and only then does the visible scene enter into his mind, another kind of reciprocity that goes beyond interchange and becomes something like the loss of boundaries, not the human and nature as separate--in other words an encounter with the sublime.

Strange fits of passion have I known: natural world as symbol system; he sees the moon set and imagines the death of the girl

She dwelt among th' untrodden ways: rustic wildness here figured not as source of wisdom, but lonely and blank

A slumber did my spirit seal: elemental blank; what exactly are "human fears"? full of hesitation and hedging "She seem'd a thing that could not feel"; the girl's death unstated (occurs in the blank space between the two stanzas); she is part of nature where nature is reduced to its most elemental--no motion and no force (almost Newtonian); like us all, rolled around in earth's diurnal course with rocks and stones and trees (note the absence of humans and animals)

Lucy Gray: a folk ballad about the death of a little girl; she (like Luke) is a child called too early to duty; instead of death as absence, abyss, annihilation, the folk tale transforms her into an active presence in nature; she returns to the "wild"; she is Nature or part of Nature; her song is the whistling wind

Poor Susan: the country and the city; the girl in the city has a momentary vision of the country; but unlike Tintern Abbey and others her memories of Nature do not provide tranquil restoration nor do they protect her from the fretful stir unprofitable and the fever of the world

Nutting: we discussed this in class

Three years she grew in sun and shower: a tale of 'fancy'; Nature as goddess mother who will 'adopt' the little girl and raise her; the girl will come to feel nature's power and know nature's calm; blendings and interchanges in lines such as "And beauty born of murmuring sound / Shall pass into her face" (water => sound => Nature => face => beauty); but the last stanza shows this all to be a fantasy, like the folk story told of Lucy Gray, the little girl lost in the snow who didn't die but still wanders the moors; here the little girl is dead ("She died") quite matter-of-factly and the poem has been a seduction, a teasing away of death. Actual death leaves heath, clam, quiet, memory, and absence.

The Old Cumberland Beggar: the 'ecology' of the beggar, part of the environment (he is fed by the villagers and he in turn (unintentionally) feeds the birds) and part of the economy (he reminds people of charity and allows even the poorest to feel their boons); Nature's law, that no creature is divorced from good; interconnections ("we have all of us one human heart")

Michael: partially discussed in class; it would take me an hour to type up even general notes and this 'brief' post has already gotten out of hand.

Class Blog Digest for Week 3 by Amber and Jeff

Blog Digest - Week Three

Bill

Work: Michael and Tintern Abbey

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Why does the narrator find the poem “delightful”? How does this color the interpretation of the unexplained destruction of the Evening Star cottage in “Michael”? Who is the intended audience for “Tintern Abbey”? Why should Wordsworth address his sister Dorothy, if she isn’t able to benefit from his advice?

Yuliana

Work: Preface, Tables Turned, Exposulation and Reply, Tintern Abbey

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Wordsworth sees poetry as most fitted to address the familiar elements of the daily life of the everyday man rather than the esoteric concerns of the “Poet”. Nature as teacher and poetry as the language of learning.

Jane

Work: “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies”, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Are human cognitive abilities, reason and logic, part of the larger classification of human nature?   The idea of “Vindication as a critical response to the deep ecology philosophy ‘in which the ecospheric whole is understood as a contextual extension of the human self’”.

Dimitrious

Work: “Poems on the Naming of Places”, “Green to the Very Door? The Natural Wordsworth”,

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Culture and Nature, perception and imagination, “understanding or consciousness emerges from a dynamic relationship between language/mind on the one hand and nature on the other.”

Jeff

Work: “Poems on the Naming of Places”, “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies”,

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Environmental Commodification, Is naming a mark of connection or appropriation/control?

Johnny

Work: Preface to the Lyrical Ballads  

Thematic Concerns/Questions: The Image of Man and Nature, How does Wordsworth use/ discuss rationality, structure and methodology in the preface to The Lyrical Ballads? Does the Poet write as a duty? And, if so, how do we reconcile the process of writing as both “pleasurable” and “mechanical”?

Amber

Work: "We are Seven" and “Anecdote for Fathers”

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Grown-Ups and Children, How does our experiential knowledge influence or shape our perceptions of Nature?

Zully

Work: “Poems on the Naming of Places” and “Green to the Very Door? The Natural Wordsworth”   

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Wordsworth Naming Places, How do we reconcile attempts by Wordsworth to break away from “common life” with the modern day concerns of encroachment by humans? 

Ryan

Work: “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies” and The Blank Slate

Thematic Concerns/Questions: A Brief Analysis of the Ethical Problems Suggested by the Ideology of Deep Ecocriticism, Is it possible to separate human nature from our natural environment? Do humans, alone, determine the value of nature?  

Scott

Work: “Poems on the Naming of Places” and Tintern Abbey

Thematic Concerns/Questions: The Writing on the Rock: Graffitti in Wordsworth's Nature, Is it possible to name places in nature and not take possession or ownership over them? Is a natural space cluttered with masses of visitors capable of allowing the transcendence of an individual?

Alfred

Work: Tintern Abbey

Thematic Concerns/Questions: ’Tis Her Privilege, For Wordsworth, “Only by growing up in the country can each person arrive at a sense of place and a sense of purpose.” Given this idea, is it possible to connect with nature and ourselves even in our modern world of crowded hiking trails and camping grounds littered with RVs? Is “perpetual renewal,” in both body and spirit possible without solitude?     

Rosanna

Work: “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies,” “Lines Written in Early Spring”

Thematic Concerns/Questions: Lines Written in Early Spring, Is it possible to separate humans and nature? Is it possible for humans to encroach and manipulate nature, but still have the potential for a connection? But, would it be a connection or a simple mastery over nature?

Trends: Is it possible to name places and not gain control or mastery over nature? How are we to differentiate manipulation/ control from a connection/ interaction with nature? Can we separate humans from nature? Is it still possible, in the modern world, to connect with a commoditized and manipulated version of nature? How does nature influence our perceptions of others (e.g. children, loved ones, ourselves)?        

After reading Wordsworth’s "Tintern Abbey," I couldn’t help but see the poet as a modern "Bodhisattva," the Romantic interpretation of an enlightened being striving for wisdom in the likes of Buddha himself. In this particularly piece, the poet focuses on the issues of time and memory, and how the effects of each have ultimately changed his perspective on the essence of nature. He sits silently under a sycamore tree, viewing the landscape he once experienced in his younger days (an allusion to the Buddha meditating under the bodhi tree) and he notes: "For nature then, the coarser pleasures of my boyish days, and their glad animal movements gone by, to me was all in all. I cannot paint what I was then." He points to the faults of his "thoughtless youth," taking nature and its beauty for granted. Consequently, he laments over his current inability to recapture the same sense of joy and "dizzy rapture." After meditating on these thoughts, Wordsworth concludes that nature should not be regarded so cavalierly; it should not be objectified as a transient charm. Instead, the poet argues that the power of nature lies in its ability to "chasten and subdue" the soul over time, and its function is to provoke the "still, sad music of humanity" through its sheer magnificent presence. Nature, over time, moves from object to revered subject.

Immediately I drew parallels between the revelations of "Tintern Abbey" and the philosophical mission of Buddhist enlightenment. Nature exists as an important lens through which one can draw larger conclusions about existence, and Wordsworth's "meditation," sitting silently, overlooking the changed landscape of the Wye Banks, results in a philosophical stance on the issue of transience. According to Buddhist philosophy, one's path to enlightenment begins when he or she has accepted the suffering consequences of attachment, letting go of the sadness associated with loss or nostalgia. In "Tintern," Wordsworth does just that. He realizes that the land itself, as opposed to the changes made to it, represent "something far more deeply interfused" beyond passing joy. He pronounces a "far deeper zeal" for nature than he has ever felt before. In the end, the Romantic Boddhisattva echoes the tenets of Buddha himself: the world is nothing beyond essential existence.

CLASS CANCELLED TONIGHT (4/18)

The CSULA campus has been closed for the day and all classes have been cancelled. For now, we will move reading assignments and presentations from this week to next (4/25) and next week's assignments and presenters will move to the following week (5/2). The cancellation of our 4/18 class meeting will necessitate changes in our schedule. I will let you know when I have worked them out.

In the meantime, spend some more time with Wordsworth and watch this space for further postings.

The Writing on the Rock: Graffitti in Wordsworth's Nature

Submitted by Scott Ross

I find graffiti within an urban environment interesting, a colorful splash of anarchy that is good for the soul. However, in nature, or in non-urban areas that are closer to their natural state, I find graffiti becomes something almost blasphemous; people have taken great effort to find paths less traveled only to find some jerk has spray painted a shout out to their high school class in their school colors – and there appears to have been at least every high school in the state over the last fifty years if the kaleidoscope of colors that has replaced the sandstone boulder’s natural reddish-brown hue. This speaks to my own concept of nature, as an area set aside or preserved in a state that is natural as possible.

I found the graffiti in “To Joanna” problematic at first because it seemed at odds with Wordsworth’s love of nature. By chiseling Joanna’s name into the rock, the narrator spoils nature. There was no need to chisel Joanna’s name on the rock to name it after her – Emma’s Dell is known by that name years after Emma and the narrator “are gone and in our graves” without any defacing of the Dell. What advantage is gained by making the correlation between Joanna and the rock permanent?

However, I grew to realize that the graffiti was acceptable within Wordsworth’s poetry, and problem was that I have a different view of nature. Wordsworth clearly believes that nature includes man, and he frequently indicates that nature is best enjoyed by more than one person. “Tinturn Abbey” is a nature poem, although one set amongst the ruins of an abbey, which serves as the presence of man within that natural setting. In “Michael,” man’s presence in nature is found in the remains of the rocks that were to be used to build a sheep fold. Emma’s Dell is a favored natural spot that the narrator shares with shephards, the model of living economically within nature.

That nature should be shared is seen in “Tinturn Abbey,” a poem where the narrator recollects a previous trip to the abbey ruins with his sister. In “Michael,” the poems titular hero finds that “objects which the Shepard loved before// Were dearer now” that he can share them with his son Luke. However, Wordsworth would have recoiled at the multitudes that invade Yosemite every summer, especially those who stay in the hotels and bring televisions and video games along for their trip to nature. Wordsworth advocated nature over urban life in part because nature allows one to transcend. I think of transcending as allowing your mind to drift into a transcendent space where things are simpler, less cluttered. The sight of roads, telephone poles, and electric wires can diminish a person’s ability to transcend. The ruins are acceptable because they demonstrate the triumph of nature over man's machinations and spark that same aspect of the imagination that Wordsworth treasures.

Of course, the very act of naming makes a place somehow less wild. The places described are named because people enjoy these spots and they intend to return. Each time they return to a spot, they will remember the name they have given this location and the person memorialized with the naming. The graffiti in “To Joanna” is emblematic of this

Lines Written in Early Spring

In the poem “Lines Eritten in Early Spring,” Wordsworth seems to grapple with many of the issues discussed in Kevin Hutching’s overview of ecocriticism in Romantic Studies. Although the term “deep ecology” was not coined until the twentieth century (Hutchings 181), Wordsworth demonstrates his appreciation for the natural world beyond its usefulness to mankind.

          The poem initially situates the narrator in a grove observing nature, while he contends with the imperfections of man. Wordsworth does not describe the servitude of nature, instead he uses the natural surroundings to provoke questions about the current state of man.  After taking in the “sweet mood” he is must contend with “sad thoughts to the mind” (418). His connection with nature seems to move him away from simply appreciating the aesthetics of the natural world, instead it compels him to consider man’s position within nature. There is an implication that what man has become is the antithesis to his surroundings. In the second stanza, he acknowledges that his heart “much it griev’d” as he ponders, “what man has made of man” (418). This suggests that there is a desire to reconnect mankind to the natural world not for material incentives, but for the simple pleasures that arise from one’s connection with nature.  His desire to return to nature underscores his recognition of its inherit value as a whole. Wordsworth seems to move away (ever so slowly) from an anthropocentric ideology and desires to live within nature, not outside of it.       

          What is also interesting, is that the concluding lines in stanza three demonstrate that Wordsworth views nature as an active agent. He notices that even the flower “enjoys the air it breathes” (418). Although Wordsworth appropriates personified characteristics to the natural surroundings, he is still able to see the flowers and birds as lively beings that are participating within the world. Yes, his idea of the natural world is socially constructed, but at least he is attempting to figure out how man and that natural world can coexist with one another as opposed to living in conflict of each other.

          I think the poem also suggests that Wordsworth is alluding to a desire for a continuous interconnectedness with the natural world beyond its service to man. In the poem, the only service that nature brings to man is the realization that nature is also apart of his world. In fact, the birds and flowers described operate as independent self functioning entities that seem to have a greater purpose than just performing duties that fit the need of mankind. Even though it is not explicitly stated in the poem, I think it suggests that man and nature should not be separated; they are apart of one another, but the problem seems to be that they have lost their way of coexisting.

Two Perplexing Poems: “Michael” and “Tintern Abbey”

Both “Michael” and “Tintern Abbey” testify to Wordsworth’s profound genius—especially the latter work—but at the same time I found them both perplexing, as I will explain. 

Most of “Michael” reads like an embedded narrative; the narrator devotes the first 40 lines to introducing his tale, and then the next 451 lines to recounting it. But what’s absent is the after-story wrap-up, so to speak, in which the narrator places what we read into perspective, like the omniscient narrator in Ancient Mariner who relates the wedding guest’s delayed-till-the-morrow-morn response to the mariner's story. During Michael's introduction the narrator leads us off the “public way” and “in bold ascent” of the “pastoral Mountains” until we reach the opening of the hidden Dell. But then he discloses that he’s only telling us about this secluded, uninhabited location in case we happen to go there someday and “see and notice not” the “heap of unhewn stones.” Come again, sir? If we don’t know about this secluded location, how are we ever going to encounter the stones in the first place? Continuing on, the narrator says there’s a story attached to the stones that he heard as a boy, when he was enamored of nature, pastoral farms, and shepherds. Although the tale is “ungarnish’d with events” and “homely and rude,” the narrator will relate it “for the delight (my emphasis) of a few natural hearts” and especially for the next generation of poets that succeed him. But I question the narrator's description of his purpose as to delight his readers—regardless of what Horace says. Michael’s story is dark. 

Critics have accused Michael of choosing the land over his son (relax Scott, there are no footnotes), but, if Michael were so land hungry, why would he pledge his property as surety for his brother’s son? Furthermore, although Michael’s plan to make Luke the financial rescuer of the farm fails (due to Luke being corrupted by the evil ways of the city), Luke stood in the not-so-distant future to inherit the land from his eighty-year-old father, so Luke would have been the plan's chief beneficiary. Michael himself acknowledges this when he says: “Our Luke shall leave us, Isabel; the land/Shall not go from us, and it shall be free,/He [Luke] shall possess it, free as is the wind/That passes over it.” This is not to suggest that Michael is altogether blameless. Despite admitting his mistake—“I have liv’d to be a fool at last/To my own family”—Michael makes a “covenant” with Luke that he never agrees to, or even ask him to agree to. What’s more, the covenant is made over a symbolic sheepfold that doesn't even exist. After Michael and Isabel die, and the farm is sold to a stranger, for some unknown reason the new owner tears down the Evening Star cottage and leaves the land deserted, except for “a few sheep, with rocks and stones, and kites that overhead are sailing in the sky.” Could this be why the narrator finds the story delightful?  

In “Tintern Abbey” the confusion is not over the narrator’s message but his audience. Although I've read the poem many times over the years, I never realized this until my current reading. For the first 112 lines, it seems that the narrator is addressing the reader, until the second section when he abruptly addresses his “dearest Friend,” whom has apparently been his audience all along (okay, I know it’s Wordsworth's sister Dorothy). Maybe I'm over-sensitive, but I feel slighted. This may explain why in the past I usually drifted away towards the end of the poem. I am also distracted by the feeling that, by the time Dorothy appears, I've already read two false endings—“We see into the life of things” on line 50 and “Of all my moral being” on line 112. To my untrained eye, the poem would not suffer any if it concluded with the statement that Nature is the anchor, nurse, guide, and guardian of all the narrator's moral being.

Moreover, it's unlikely that Dorothy is in a position to even benefit from her older brother’s exhortations. If she’s in the same mental state that Wordsworth was at her age, in which Nature “had no need of a remoter charm,” then his message falls on deaf ears, because she is ontologically incapable of understanding Nature in any other way than as a profusion of “dizzy raptures.” And when the time comes that she can respond to Nature with “lofty thoughts,” those “aching joys” will be “no more.” In other words, they're not coming back. So why “disturb” the poor child with the “presence . . . of elevated thoughts” until she is “mid the din of towns and cities” and ready to receive them? 

Wordsworth, the worshipper of nature

In the expanded Preface to the 1802 Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth articulates a revolution in style and language. Wordsworth’s poetry presents the “incidents and situations from common life” in the “language really used by men” (409). Wordsworth rejects the notion that the “incidents and situations from common life” are undignified poetic subjects and that poetic language must be ostensibly ornate. The poet, according to Wordsworth, “thinks and feels in the spirit of the passions of men” and writes “not for Poets alone, but for men” (417).  Therefore, poetic subject matter and language should express the “general passions and thoughts and feelings of men” as they are associated with things they know, namely, the Nature within and without (417).  Otherwise, poets and their poetry are encouraging “admiration which depends upon ignorance” and pleasure from “what we do not understand” (417). Wordsworth engages the Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and understanding to advocate his shift in style and language and “excite rational sympathy” (417). Nature becomes the vehicle through which man can understand himself and cultivate this “rational sympathy.”

Through Nature man can understand his own mind and through poetry he can see “the image of man and nature” (415).  The poet, according to Wordsworth, “considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature” (415). The framing companion poems “Expostulation and Reply” and “The Tables Turned” articulate the importance of studying and contemplating nature. In “Expostulation and Reply” the narrator compares reading books to “drink[ing] the spirit breath’d / From dead men to their kind” (lines 7-8). In “The Tables Turned” the narrator rejects books and declares “Enough of science and barren art; / Close up these barren leaves;” (lines 29-30). Wordsworth is not rejecting knowledge but rejecting the early modern movement to close off from nature in favor of solitary confinement with ideas. Closing off from nature and turning solely to books is associated with death and emptiness, limiting the knowledge of the self that is acquired through the introspection of our image in nature. In “The Tables Turned” the narrator invites the readers to look up from their books stating “Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher” (lines 15-16). In “The Tables Turned” nature offers a true and accessible light, whereas in “Expostulation and Reply” light is being “beqeath’d” from one person to another. Nature has “powers” that can"feed" us and excite our minds via “wise passiveness” (“Expostulation and Reply,” lines 21-24). Wordsworth advocates contemplating accessible forms in nature to teach us more about ourselves.

In “The Tables Turned” the narrator states that “One impulse from a vernal wood / May teach you more of man; / Of moral evil and of good, / Than all the sages can” (lines 21-24). How exactly the vernal wood teaches man about himself and of “moral evil and good” Wordsworth does not explain, but he does know that “Our meddling intellect / Misshapes the beauteous forms of things; / -We murder to dissect” (lines 26-27). The enjambment functions to emphasize how our isolation from nature distorts the beauty of our minds in nature and the beauty of nature in our minds. We violate nature in order to understand and justify this violation in the name of progress. However, the religious resonance of the line “We murder to dissect" to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” drives home the violation. Wordsworth as a “worshipper of Nature” illustrates Williams’s point about the death of God and the embrace of nature. For Wordsworth nature is “[t]he anchor of [his] purest thoughts, the nurse, / the guide, the guardian of [his] heart, and soul / Of all [his] moral being” (Tintern Abbey, line 110-112). Nature can teach us about ourselves, each other, and our environment. Poetry, according to Wordsworth, is the language that can show us an “image” of both.

Read, Sweat, Repeat

Last week’s discussion of Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman helped clarify thoughts and possible interpretations I had of the text stewing in my mind. In fact, Professor Garrett explained quite well the author’s ideas and how they reflect issues of eighteenth century British social politics. Still, despite the rough understanding, I wasn’t wholly convinced of its significance in a course deemed “Romantic Natures.” Yes, we certainly discussed the variety of ways in which the term “nature” can be interpreted, and therefore, the obvious answer to my question would be that the text points directly to the nature of man. However, I found that Wollstonecraft’s argument focused much of its weight on the power of reason and logic. They are human cognitive abilities, yes. But would those abilities be lumped into the larger classification of human nature?

So as I began the readings this week, I kept certain thoughts distant from the texts. I read, interpreted, and conceptualized, but I was hesitant to try and figure the schematics of these particular pieces’ associations with the class’s overall mission statement. I figured I would wait until Thursday to solve the puzzle. 

It was Monday when I finally got around to pulling Hutchings’s “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies” out of my binder, setting on the nearest treadmill (I’ve found that multitasking works best), and getting to work, hoping to finish the article within the sixty minute time limit enforced on cardio equipment during peak use hours. I was relieved to find that it was more of an introduction to the genre of ecocriticism, and more important, it focused specifically on the application of ecocriticism in British Romantic texts. I walked and walked, read and read, and to my relief, I breezed through the article, developing a sense of clarity on the connections between the assigned texts and the class objective. Also, I got a good work out.

What I found most noteworthy of Hutchings’s piece was his explanation of ecofeminism in Romantic literature, focusing on Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as a critical response to the deep ecology philosophy “in which the ecospheric whole is understood as a contextual extension of the human self,” resulting in a consequential surrender of “critical self-reflexivity leading to political implications.” More specifically though, feminists like Wollstonecraft criticize the androcentric philosophical implications, linking the domination of nature and the subjugation of women in patriarchal society and arguing for these two processes as being “complexly linked and mutually enabling.” Therefore, what Wollstonecraft argues in her piece is not so much the rationale of logical cognitive thinking; instead, she shows the faults of irrational social conditioning established by patriarchal education. The ideas of femininity and feminine nature, she says, are merely ideological constructs and not true examples of human nature or biology.

Now having read and digested Hutchings’s article, I have a better understanding of the class’s direction this quarter. Might I suggest, should this class be offered at some other point in time, that this reading be a required assignment for the first week as opposed to a later date? In my humble opinion, I think it would help entirely with the understanding of the material and class objectives.

Wordsworth and Naming Places

Wordsworth’s “Poems on the Naming of Places” touch upon themes of culture and nature, the same themes that figure in Paul Fry’s article “Green to the Very Door? The Natural Wordsworth.” There Fry finds that the opposed positions that either nature or language is prior are not so absolutely distinct. Instead, in each position there is some overlap with the other. Those who believe Wordsworth is a nature poet acknowledge that he has “blank misgivings” about the reality of the sensible word, while those who believe him to be an anti-naturalist acknowledge that his language stumbles upon these blanks and abysses that are engendered from the sensible objects that are supposed to not really exist.

It seems like a better approach to accept that, in Wordsworth, understanding or consciousness emerges from a dynamic relationship between language/mind on the one hand and nature on the other. This mingling and interpenetration contribute to our conceptions of nature and to the development of culture (in the sense of living, dwelling, and making meaning in a place). The first poem begins with the poet’s perceptions of and responses to a spring morning. He closely observes the sights and sounds and attributes human feelings to them, committing what the New Critics called the pathetic fallacy. He humanizes the world around him even as he carefully notices its particularities. The rivulet that flows with the melted snows of winter “ran with a young man’s speed,” but its “voice … was softened down into a vernal tone,” anticipating the diminishing of the water’s rush that spring will bring (3-5). The poet senses a “spirit of enjoyment and desire” that he compares to “a multitude of sounds” (6,8). The spirit of enjoyment can only be an emotion of the poet that he is projecting onto the place, yet there really is a multitude of sounds circling in the air that he will later describe. Wordsworth is aware that the mind, to paraphrase lines from “Tintern Abbey,” both half-creates and perceives. He notices the “budding groves” of early spring, but when he assigns intentionality to them, he says they “seemed eager to urge on the steps of June” (my emphasis) (9).

The poem explores an interplay between culture and nature that parallels this interplay between sense perception and imagination. The “ardent” stream, when it turns in the glen, suddenly becomes calmer, making a “glad sound”; all sounds contribute to make a “a voice of common pleasure” (22-25). The rushing of the stream has become a “voice,” something which characterizes living creatures. In their turn, the animals' intermingled voices make a “song,” which is an element of human culture (27). Yet the speaker compares this song to something wild: “[it] seemed like the wild growth or like some natural produce of the air” (28-29) There is a complex mutual interpenetration of nature and culture so that the one cannot be easily separated from the other – they each can transform into the other. While on a summit in this secluded dell, the speaker views a “mountain-cottage”; his position and perception mediate between or unite the cultural and the natural (36). The speaker's subsequent statement is puzzling: “Our thoughts at least are ours” (38). It indicates an awareness of being a stranger, in a place not one's own. Indeed, he calls the nook “wild” (38). However, once he names the place after Emma, he humanizes it, incorporating it into human culture through language. Now the spot becomes so intimate and familiar that it is “my other home, / My dwelling” (40-41). The dell further is woven into human culture through the fact that its naming and the event which occasioned it pass beyond the speaker to the local shepherds and potentially to the entire community. The “wild place” has been given a story and a name through which others will know it (46). It is not simply that the name has made the wild place knowable or been substituted for its “reality,” as some might argue. Conversely, through the place and the human experiences attached to it – through the place's housing of memory in the name – humans are connected to each other across time, and so, in some way, it helps them understand themselves.

On Environmental Commodification: A Brief Analysis of “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies” and its Implications for “Poems of the Naming of Places”

                Wordsworth, in “Poems on the Naming of Places,” highlights an interesting “attachment to rural objects” where individuals demonstrate a tendency to name unnamed places or locales in nature. The speaker’s  description of nature in stanza one is pure and unrestrained where the April morning is “fresh and clear” and streams run “soft into a vernal tone” (Wordsworth 1, 5). There is a connection between the speaker and the other creatures of the wild, but it is also apparent there is no sense of ownership or control. At first, the speaker seems content in acting as a tourist or passerby in an environment he can simply observe and admire. The speaker’s observations soon evolve into a desire or perhaps a need to name the natural space. The speaker eventually names this wild space “Emma’s Dell” and later mars a space by brutishly carving “Joanna’s Rock” onto a stone nearby (47, 85). The actions taken by the speaker seem to represent the tendency of human beings to both acquire and place nature in a system of, what I might call, environmental commodification. On its’ face, naming places in the wild might imply that humans can connect to nature and personify both its beauty and granger, but there is also an opportunity to commodity such natural spaces.

                The commodification of nature or natural spaces is still a vibrant point of discussion today. Hutchings, in “Ecocriticism in British Romantic Studies,” discusses the “field of inquiry for ecocriticism” as a medium that “reflects and helps to shape human responses to the natural environment” (1). Romantic literature introduces the idea that “nature is celebrated as a beneficent antidote to the cross world of getting and spending” (1).  Yet the encroachment of human society is quickly diluting and polluting the antidote nature once provided with plentiful abundance. The growth of suburbs and industry, as Blake put it, caused “cities turrets & towers & domes / Whose smoke destroyed the pleasant gardens” (qtd in Hutchings).

                Wordsworth’s speaker, in naming and appropriating natural spaces, acts as the clichéd “writing on the wall” for what would eventually be described as environmental crisis or plight in the following centuries. When the speaker of Wordsworth’s poem names a place and marks it for himself this immediately begins a process of decay and disruption in nature. Yes, naming a space might bring individuals closer to nature in some sense of identification or personification, but naming also leads to the possibility of exploitation of nature in its use and abuse by humans. Ecological criticism, as noted in Hutchings, “purports to speak on behalf of non-human organisms and the biological processes that sustain them,” but it seems that humans position their environment as more of a living space akin to a house or dwelling (3). It seems industry and innovations have made the environment a space that can be manipulated and edited.  Forests and plains can be reorganized and reallocated as one might reposition furniture in a den or living room. Yet, sadly, the exploitation of nature goes far beyond the trivial act of moving furniture. In an effort to extend this argument, Hutchings notes “[the word] environment presupposes man at the centre, surrounded by things [and depicts] human mastery over, and possession of, nature” (qtd. in Hutchings). Overall, it seems Wordsworth is able to point to the eventual progress of man in acquiring and manipulating nature. The idea that humans can both appreciate and degrade nature begins in its personification. There is, indeed, a delicate balance that must be observed to preserve unity with natural spaces and also, paradoxically, a respectful distance.                              

"The Image of Man and Nature"

The Romantic Age has generally been seen as a reaction against a too narrow account of human experience in terms of reason alone, brought on by the scientific methods and ideals of the Age of Reason. This worldview tended to emphasize the mechanical, orderly, structure of the universe, among other things, and ignore feelings or thoughts that weren’t considered rational . Romantics such as Wordsworth sought to appropriate human nature with what they believed to be something greater than what science alone could tell us: namely, our passions and feelings regarding the natural world. But Wordsworth doesn’t dismiss rationality, structure or even methodology altogether for the sake of “the spontaneous overflow of power feelings” (LABL 435). He uses the language of science, to a certain degree, to describe his conviction and principal object for composing the poems collected in Lyrical Ballads. In the “Preface,” he states the poems were published “as an experiment” in “metrical arrangement” to rationally impart pleasure to his readers (LABL 433). As I read these words, my mind paused on the words “experiment,” “metrical,” and “rationally.” Science conducts experiments about the natural, material world. But the “Poet thinks and feels in the spirit of the passions of men,” and only a poet can undertake such an experiment (LABL 442).

The word “metrical,” besides implying poetic meter, also relates to quantities of measurement, thus recalling the language of science. In terms of the latter, I don’t know if Wordsworth would agree that our feelings and passions could be measured, but that they do need to be contained or controlled seems to be implied. The natural world is overwhelming for us, and since the Poet “considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other,” there are feelings and passions which create a sense of excitement ineffable for most people (LABL 442). Because “the end of poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an over-balance of pleasure,” Wordsworth has to use poetic meter as a sort of restraint for our emotions (LABL 443). In this way, the person lost in excitement, has a sense of self-awareness and control, and thus doesn’t remain oblivious to the demands of reason and accountability.

Wordsworth is equally aware of his own feelings, recollected in long hours of tranquility and meditation. That he be accused of following spontaneity of feelings alone, or even impulses and instincts, as the word suggests, is an unfair critique. There is good poetry as well as bad poetry, and the former can be identified by having a value approach. Good poetry, according to Wordsworth, is produced by “a man, who being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply” (LABL 435). Several times does Wordsworth invoke the word “habit” to suggest a long, contemplated approach to thinking deeply about the human passions, which he believes can be traced back to “the primary laws of our nature” (LABL 434).

Our nature can best be understood by through the conditions of the humble and rustic life because that is where our passions “are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature” (LABL 434). And only the poet can describe these associations we feel to the natural world, because the poet studies “general nature,” as this knowledge is “one that cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance [a Burkean echo?]” (LABL 441). It is no wonder, then, why Wordsworth calls poetry “the image of man and nature” (LABL 440). As science gives us insight to the physical world, poetry reveals the emotional, passionate side of human nature, and, in turn, the beauty of the natural world. It even, as Wordsworth says, carries “sensation into the midst of the objects of the Science itself” (LABL 441). Poetry is the best tool for capturing the side of our nature which science would otherwise eclipse with its cold hard facts.

As I finished reading Wordsworth’s “Preface,” I was left with the intention of exploring, or better understanding, what in my mind seemed to be a bit confusing. As the title of this blog recalls, Wordsworth personifies poetry as the image of man. He says of the poems that he resorts to abstract personification of ideas when they “are occasionally prompted by passion” (LABL 436-437). I wonder if there is anything more to say about this other than Wordsworth felt prompted by his passions to include such an abstraction in his “Preface.” What I am more interested in, however, is sorting out his notion that a Poet writes as a duty, a “necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being” and “the Poet, although he describes and imitates passions, his situation is altogether slavish and mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering” (LABL 440). Then Wordsworth says, “So that it will be the wish of the Poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes to give pleasure” (LABL 439). At one point it seems the Poet is obligated, and at another point the Poet seems to have a choice. I didn’t know what to make of that.

Grown-ups and children

I responded most to the poems that seemed to show how people can learn from Nature and the poems that showed children interacting with adults. I was most taken by "We are seven" and “Anecdote for Fathers”. The footnote attached to Wordsworth's "We are seven" explains that he wrote the poem to show "the perplexity and obscurity which in childhood attend our notion of death, or rather our utter inability to admit that notion." However, I don't see that the child in the poem is ignorant of death but that perhaps her idea of it is different from the narrator's.

The narrator in the poem describes a conversation he has with a small girl. He asks her how many children are in her family and she replies "'Seven are we,/ And two of us at Conway dwell,/ And two of us are gone to sea./ 'Two of us in the church-yard lie'" while she lives with her mother in a cottage near the church yard. The speaker tries to correct the little girl's belief that there are seven children in her family by pointing out that if two of her siblings are dead then they are actually only five. The speaker makes much of the child's inability to realize that since two siblings are dead that they are gone and don't count.

I don't agree with Wordsworth that this shows how children are ignorant of death. In the poem I see that the little girl does know about death, intimately even since she has had two people close to her die. It's not that she doesn't understand death but that perhaps due to her innocence she refuses to equate death with non-existence. Just because she can't see them anymore doesn't necessarily mean they are no longer part of her family. She chooses to spend her time in the graveyard singing to the graves of her sister and brother and to share her meal time with them. In this way she is continuing her connection with them. The narrator's comment that trying to explain that her siblings are dead "'Twas throwing words away" only serves to show that the narrator is blind to anything beyond the rational and not that the girl is stubborn as is implied. Just as she counts those siblings who live at Conway and at the sea as still part of her family so too does she count those unfortunate young ones she can no longer touch. In this case youth sees more clearly than age. This poem seemed to have a unintentional thematic connection to the "Anecdote for Fathers", in that it presents an example of an adult interacting with a child in a way that provides an opportunity for the adult to learn about human nature if the adult is open and observant.

One thing that struck me, or made me wonder about “Anecdote for Fathers” was the repetition of the father holding the son’s arm as he asks his son if he prefers Kilve or Liswyn farm. I couldn’t figure out why the question was so significant or why his son’s response should agitate him so. I’m not even sure why the father is certain that the son is lying, he might have glanced up at the weathervane by coincidence. Besides why would the son lie about which home he prefers? That didn’t make sense to me and seemed to cause a strange note of discordance in the poem.

A Brief Analysis of the Ethical Problems Suggested by the Ideology of Deep Ecocriticism

Hutchings presents a well-rounded perspective of the conflicting ideologies comprising ecocriticism while also allowing for someone new to the field like myself to situate himself and his own ideology about the environment within the critical discourse. Of particular interest to me in the article is Hutchings' discussion of those particular ecocritics involved in the “Deep Ecology”strand of ecocriticism, who hold a “radically egalitarian or ‘biocentric’ discourse that ‘accords nature ethical status at least equal to that of humans’” (Hutchings 10). I have some reservations about such individuals as often concomitant with beliefs such as theirs is a morality that is based on the blank slate theory of human nature, where as humans, we are born neither essentially male or female for instance, nor are we  necessarily wired with a propensity for destructive behavior like observers outside the discourse might find to be manifestly true, as all of these instead owe to the various imperfections and ideologies of the autonomous culture said to be governing the individual. 

Steven Pinker, in his magisterial book, The Blank Slate, critiques this pernicious belief about human nature among many currently in political life and academia for its poor basis in what has been shown to be demonstrably true about objective reality. The embrace of the Blank Slate theory is due in part to a fear of the imperfectibility of human nature, that is, that there may be within us morally and intellectually corrupting influences beyond the reach of social engineering and the good intentions of the individual. If one disbelieves in an inherent selfishness, for instance, like the kind brought about by evolutionary forces related to survival, then for some, this denial will lead them to the belief that “whatever happens in nature [must be] good,” a belief identified by Pinker as the "naturalistic fallacy." Pinker states that at first hearing of the fallacy, many might think first of Social Darwinism, and for good cause, as the social theory was informed by a particularly poor understanding of the relationship between morality and the notion of the survival of the fittest. However, as he points out, the naturalistic fallacy is revived in some strands of the environmental movement as it exists today, which often “appeal to the goodness of nature to promote conservation of natural environments, despite their ubiquitous gore” (Pinker 422). Pinker illustrates this appeal by citing what he calls the “makeover” given such carnivorous animals as wolves, bears, and sharks, into being the “euthanists of the old and the lame, and thus worthy of preservation or reintroduction” (422).

Deep Ecologists, taking the naturalistic fallacy as moral doctrine, problematically call for a “quasi-mystical surrender of critical self-reflexivity,” according to Hutchings, (Hutchings 183) a program that John S. Dryzek has rightly pointed out as representing “surely the essence of totalitarianism” (qtd. in Hutchings, 183). The biggest moral problem with having this particular kind of reverence for nature is that non-human life is not so much lifted up to man’s importance as it is the case that man’s importance is demoted to that of non-human life, a valuation of the human being entirely at odds with a great deal of religious belief and natural philosophy (Hutchings 180). Both religion and and natural philosophy tend to see nature as not intrinsically valuable “but merely as a means to an all-too-human end; existing simply as a commodity or ‘material resource’” (180). Personally, I see little problem with such a belief, and as I mentioned in class last week, to use a thought experiment, if there were no human beings on earth to enjoy its resources, the planet would be for me literally devoid of value. Politically, those who espouse Deep Ecologist convictions are on the political left, and this being the case, tend to be highly critical of institutionalized religions and the idea of their being anything but moral equality among cultures throughout the world. Ironically, Deep Ecologists apparently see themselves immune from this sort of criticism aimed at their own beliefs, as according to Hutchings they would look to impose on others who happen to hold differing ideologies about the environment their own totalitarian perspective without flinching. And would do so in the name of some etherial notion of nature that is wholly at odds with science, a project that would ultimately make human beings essentially a form of eco-zombie. Why this is an attractive idea is unfortunately never explained in the article, leaving those like myself wondering whether Deep Ecologists ever happen to place themselves in a position to have their world view challenged and checked by intellectuals such as Pinker outside their particular niche in the larger ecocriticism discourse.

’Tis Her Privilege

’Tis Her Privilege

Tintern Abbey explores the life of William Wordsworth in relation to nature.  What is fascinating about the poem as a whole is that from the banks of the Wye, and in as short a space as 159 lines, Wordsworth recounts his adolescent days of pure emotional communion with nature (along with the requisite teenage angst and uncertainty and passion) and his adult days of sublimity, and a basic knowledge of a “presence” (94) that is interfused in sunsets, in the ocean, in the sky, in the air, and most importantly, in the mind of man.  But a consequence of this sublime vitality is the weakening of his emotional powers that allowed him to explore nature each day with a fresh sense of awe and discovery in concurrence with “aching joys” (84) and “dizzy raptures” (85).  A useful question is: Does Wordsworth utilize the newly realized, mysterious, permeative presence as a vehicle to see in Dorothy what he once was?  The obvious answer is yes.  His adolescence, which engendered “an appetite; a feeling and a love” (80) within him, certainly must be cherished and missed for its vibrancy and immediacy and novelty and, even, charity.  Yes, charity, for Wordsworth was an orphan and nature became his parent.  Wordsworth, then, carries two kinds of memories: in an acute sense, those memories of nature that made an indelible imprint on his mind (“the steep and lofty cliffs” [5] and “[t]he [h]ermit” [22]), and in a larger sense, the aggregate of all his adolescent pleasures that lie “unremembered” (31), deep in the fugal recesses of his mind.

            But does it not seem selfish that Wordsworth beckons Dorothy every time he wants to see what he once was?  Or is her company necessary to sustain him against the onslaughts and the “dreary intercourse” (131) of daily life?  One of the first things we learn of Dorothy is her inherent quality to remind Wordsworth of what he once was:

           …and in thy voice I catch

           The language of my former heart, and read

           My former pleasures in the shooting lights

           Of thy wild eyes.  (116-119)

Wordsworth, in short, is able to see into the life of her; the intimate relationship he shared with nature in his adolescence continually governs his perceptions and actions, even in adulthood.  It is through memories of his feelings at being one with nature that Wordsworth is able to recognize a similar vitality in Dorothy.  Such a recognition immediately reminds Wordsworth of what nature has done for him in the intervening five years (during which period his enthusiasm in the French Revolution and the greater cause of liberty for all people waned greatly).  Dorothy, in a real way, represents that part of Wordsworth unchanged by the sights and sounds of the Revolution.  She is vibrant, mentally and physically.  Daily communion with nature has afforded her the opportunity for perpetual renewal, both in body and spirit.  Wordsworth, on the other hand, has witnessed firsthand scenes of senseless carnage and violent scuffles for power, along the way having an illegitimate child in an apparently loveless relationship (he later marries someone else).

            The uncommon combination of Dorothy and the cherished scenes of his youth triggers in Wordsworth a fructification of sublime proportions.  He realizes what has sustained him throughout his boredom at University and his tribulations abroad; he credits the indelible impressions made on his mind by the awe-inspiring scenes of his youth with saving him from many a sensual inundation in the city:

           These beauteous forms,

           Through a long absence, have not been to me

           As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:

           But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din

           Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

           In hours of weariness, sensations sweet

           Felt in the blood and felt along the heart…  (22-28)

So we begin to see that the emotionality of his adolescence reverberates, “unremembered” (31), deep in his soul and subconsciously affects every action he undertakes.  Wordsworth was, then, in his espousal of the early causes for the Revolution and his unabashed admiration for nature, the original hippie.  For him, only through nature can we “see into the life of things [not necessarily people but later on true of all things in Wordsworth’s case]” (49).  Only by growing up in the country can each person arrive at a sense of place and a sense of purpose.

Work Cited

Wordsworth, William.  “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey.”  The 

           Longman Anthology of British Literature Fifth Edition Volume 2A: 

          The Romantics and Their Contemporaries.  Ed. Susan Wolfson and 

          Peter Manning.  Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2012.  429-433.  Print.