The importance of eco-criticism

[Part 1]

During the past 30 to 40 years, the study of literature has changed dramatically with the rise of such diverse critical approaches to texts as structuralism, semiotics, post-structuralism, feminism, new historicism, deconstruction, and post-colonial theory. Into this mix of approaches should be added the newly emergent field of eco-criticism.

What is eco-criticism? In its most simple form, eco-criticism can be described as the study of the relationship that exists between literature and nature. To be sure, there is nothing startlingly new about this as this relationship has figured prominently from the dawn of literature.

What is new is the novel layers of significance related to questions of representation, power, ideology, consumerism, capitalist modernity that enter into the discussions of eco-criticism as well as the new urgency that has entered discussions of environmental degradation in the light of new scientific knowledge.

Question

Those who are deeply interested in eco-criticism would almost certainly raise questions such as the following: In what ways is nature represented in Sandesha poetry, and how are they different from those adopted in Gi poetry? How does the natural setting of a work of fiction inflect the meaning and form? How do stage plays strive to disseminate social values that are consistent with modern ecological understanding?

How do tropes of nature, of land, of water shape our concern for nature and its preservation? Just as much as race, class, and gender have become important variables in literary study, should not the idea of place be accorded equal weight? Is it possible to identify a genre of nature representation?

What kind of interactions is possible between literary imagination and ecological imagination? These and kindred questions are apt to be of great interest to literary scholars attracted to eco-criticism.

Emphasis

There are various points of emphasis that characterise the work of eco-critics. However, one fact is abundantly and indubitably clear. They are all united by the conviction that human cultures are inseparably linked to the natural world, and that connection can and should be understood at various levels of complexity. What normally happens in literary communication is the focusing on the interactions between the writer, the text, the reader and the context of interaction. That context of interaction is unusually understood to be the social world.

Those who favour eco-criticism as a mode of literary understanding and analysis would argue that this context should include the natural world as well. The role of the natural world in shaping the message, style, techniques, tropes and vision of a work of literature deserves careful consideration.

When we examine the nature and significance of eco-criticism that is gaining momentum as a field of critical inquiry, we need to keep in mind two important facts. First, environmental decay is increasing at an alarming rate. Issues of climate change, degradation of the environment, denuding of rain forests and soil erosion are attracting more and more attention.

Ordinary people are increasingly becoming aware of the magnitude of the environmental crisis. Second, science is coming up with new and more sophisticated ways of charting, measuring and rectifying the environmental damage that is incessantly taking place as a consequence of the thoughtless and short-sighted actions of human beings. Both these facts have begun to have an impact on the imagination of writers who are concerned with the state of the world that they live in.

Relationship

What is interesting is the diverse and novel theoretical perspectives that writers and critics are seeking to bring to bear on their studies of the relationship between human beings and the natural world. For example, David Mazel in an essay titled, American Literary Environmentalism as Domestic Orientalism, draws on the path-breaking work of Michel Foucault and Edward said to point out the fact that, ‘the construction of the environment is itself an exercise of cultural power.

’Having pointed out that the environment is a social and linguistic construct, Mazel contends that eco-critics should ask questions such as the following which would elicit interesting information; ‘what has counted as the environment, and what may count/? Who marks of the conceptual boundaries, and under what authority, and for what reasons?’

I found David Mazel’s essay a most interesting and thought-provoking one; in it he raises a number of issues that those who are interested in the field of eco-criticism can pursue with profit. He opens his essay with the following observation. ’I wish to address two possible problems for the criticism of environmental literature.

The first of these is the incredible heterogeneity of that literature, the way it cuts across so many genres and the way its language draws upon such a variety of disciplines. The second is the close relationship between eco-criticism, environmental literature, and environmental politics. What is the critic to make of this heterogeneity and this politics?’

Problems

He goes onto say that in his paper he proposes to make of them an eco-critical theory in which they are not perceived as problems, but rather as necessary to and constitutive f the environment itself. Mazel’s essay enables us to grasp the complexity and many-sided significance of this field of inquiry. In recent years, many books have been written that aim to demonstrate the significance and applicability of eco-criticism. One of the seminal works that in my judgment, served to define this field was Joseph Meeker’s book The Comedy of Survival; Studies in Literary Ecology.

In it he asserted that, ‘human beings are the earth’s only literary creatures….if the creation of literature is an important characteristic of the human species, it should be examined carefully, and honestly to discover its influence upon human behaviour and the natural environment – to determine what role, if any, it plays in the welfare and survival of mankind and what insight it offers into human relationships with other species and with the world around us.’ He then proceeds to ask the provocative question, ‘is it an activity which adapts us better to the world or one which estranges us from it? From the unforgiving perspective of evolution and natural selection, does literature contribute more to our survival than it does to our extinction?’

One of the most productive ways of discussing the question of eco-criticism, it seems to me, is by examining English romantic poetry that most of us are familiar with in one or another. So much critical energy has been expended in interpreting the romantic poetry of Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge etc. using diverse forms of literary analysis that we have a vast body of critical literature to consider.

The idea of the complexities of the natural world and the human world and the subtle interactions between them, which is vital for the agenda of eco-criticism, is at the heart of romantic poetry. What eco-critics are seeking to do is to establish links between the natural world and the cultural world fashioned by human beings. And the romantic poets, they argue, succeeds in connecting cultural experiences to the world of nature through the power of the poetic experience.

Approaches

In recent times, two broad approaches to the study of romantic poetry have emerged with vociferous supporters on both sides. The first approach sees romantic poetry dealing with transcendental experiences – experiences that rise above the immediacies of time and place. Clearly, it is apolitical. The second approach, more recent in origin, advocates a kind of rhetorical and formal approach that presents the romantic poets as anxiety-driven nihilistic poets.

The eco-critics repudiate both these approaches and underscore the importance of understanding romantic poetry by locating it in biological and materialistic discourses and exploring the place of human beings in the world of nature and the problematic relations that exist between them. As the eco-critics rightly point out, the romantic perceived nature not as static but volatile, active and self-transforming.

As Karl Kroeber, in his interesting book Ecological Literary Criticism has pointed out, ‘the romantics’ tendency toward what might be called experience environmentally conceived is important as the foundation of their resistance to aesthetic doctrines in the art for art’s sake mode. They did not wish to remove poetry into an aesthetic realm. . They insisted on the practical efficacy and the practical duties of art – not just to the social but also to the natural world.’ He then goes on to observe that, ‘the romantics did not always succeed, and they often were torn by doubts about their own firmest convictions.

For those of us today who find ourselves struggling with difficult questions of how best to relate cultural productions to natural conditions, however, there are useful lessons in these romantic aspiring to connect nature and culture – so different from recent morose lamentations about their supposed inexorable antagonism.’

Historicists

In recent year an influential literary school, the new historicists, have argued that one cannot talk of nature in any meaningful sense because it is a social construct. Eco-critics feel that this tends to mask the complex interactions that take place between nature and culture. In some ways, this line of thinking goes against the writings of a literary scholar like Raymond Williams, who for example, in his magnificent work The Country and the City argued that this interaction needs to be situated in its proper historical contexts.

Hence, the kind of assessment advanced by some new historicists that romantic poetry represents an act of political displacement does not hold water. It does not take into consideration adequately the historical forces that impinged on the interaction between the natural and cultural worlds.

Apart from the need to adopt a historical perspective, eco-critics contend that in romantic poetry there is a intermingling of pleasure and pain, the physical and human worlds, the capacity for empathy, and the complexities of nature that has to be teased out carefully. Let is consider the following well-known poem by William Wordsworth.

A slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears;
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force
She neither hears nor sees
Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.

What English romantic poetry demonstrates, the eco-critics contend, is the straining towards the achievement of a more nuanced and deeper understanding of how nature and culture seek to accommodate each other.

One of the writers who was able to raise some of the issues that modern eco-critics are grappling with was the American writer Henry Thoreau. His book Walden is most important in this regard; as Lawrence Buell, who has done important work in the field of nature writing contends, ‘No writer in the history of America’s dominant subculture comes closer than he to standing for nature in both the scholarly and the popular mind.’ Thoreau displays the power of the environmental imagination vividly, forcing us to re-think our own specific relations to nature. Let us consider a representative passage from Thoreau; here he, as Buell rightly points out, seems to be replacing egocentrism with ecocentrism.

To see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind
blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects
look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough,
life ever-lasting, grows under the table, and blackberry vines
run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry
leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these
forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs,
and bedsteads – because they once stood in their midst.

In this passage, as in other passages of Thoreau, what we find is the replacement of egocentrism with ecocentrism that eco—critics prize so highly.

Nature

There have been many poets such as Thomas hardy, Walt Whitman, and a number of contemporary poets such as Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry who asked the important question regarding how human beings can fit into nature and what are the implications of such a fitting.. In the case of Berry it is how we establish a cordial and harmonious and mutually nurturing relationship with nature that interests him deeply. Let me quote a page from one of Wendell Berry’s poems. This is the end of his elegy at a country funeral.

What we owe the future
is not a new start, for we can only begin
with what has happened. We owe the future
the past, the long knowledge
that is the potency of time to come.
That makes of a man’s grave a rich furrow.
The community of knowing in common is the seed
of our life in this place. There is not only
no better possibility, there is no
other, except for chaos and darkness,
the terrible ground of the only possible
new start. And so as the old die and the young
depart, where shall a man go who keeps
the memories of the dead, except home
again, as one would go back after a burial,
faithful to the fields, lest the dead die
a second and more final death.

Memory

Commenting on this poem Lawrence Buell makes the observation that the only form of self-fulfillment that the poet recognises as legitimate is this sacramental return to the land that is hallowed by communally sustained memory. Interestingly, for him, freedom paradoxically is a form of bondage, bondage to a place. This is the kind of approach to land that eco-critics admire immensely.

Another American poet who represents forcefully the mutually nurturing interaction between human beings and nature is Gary Snyder. I have hard him give poetry readings to packed audiences in Honolulu; the Sri Lankan born writer Michael Ondaatje is a great admirer of Gary Snyder. Snyder evokes in his poetry the beauty of nature, the values associated with the earth, the fertility of the soil, the charm of animals and solitude in the wilderness with remarkable skill.

He sees ‘wild nature as the ultimate ground of human affairs.’ Let me cite two short poems and a passage from a longer poem by Gary Snyder to illustrate why eco-critics are so enamored of his writings. Because of limitations of space, I have selected two short poems from his collection titled Regarding Wave. They are not necessarily his best poems, but they indicate his interests and strengths as nature poet.

The first is called Meeting the Mountains.

He crawls to the edge of the foaming creek
He backs up the slab edge
He puts a finger in the water
He turns to a trapped pool
Puts both hands in the water
Puts one foot in the pool
Drops pebbles in the pool
He slaps the water surface with both hands
He cries out, rises up and stands
Facing toward the torrent and the mountain
Raises up both hands and shouts three times

The second poem is titled Roots

Draw over and dig
The loose ash soil
Hoe handles are short
The sun’s course long
Finger deep in the earth search
Roots, pull them out; feel though;
Roots are strong.

The third poem is from his book Myths and Texts, and is titled Second Shaman Song.

Squat in swamp shadows.
Mosquitoes sting;
High light in cedar above.
Crouched in a dry vain frame
Thirst for cold snow
Green slime of bone marrow
Seawater fills each eye

Quivering in nerve and muscle
Hung in the pelvic cradle
Bones propped against roots
A blind flicker of nerve.

Still hand moves out alone
Flowering and leafing
Turning to quartz
Streaked rock congestion of karma
The long body of the swamp.

Here we see the merging of human being and nature in a very compelling way. It is interesting to note that as in many classical Chinese and Japanese poems, the ‘I ‘of the poet is effaced; this lends more power to the captured experience. The obliteration of boundaries is reflected in the changing perspectives that mark the poem. In the opening stanza, it appears that the speaker is squatting in the swamp; he is subsequently engulfed by it. And as his hand moves out, it first assumes the appearance of a flowering plant and then quartz, rock.

The transformation is complete as announced in the line ‘the long body of the swamp.’ Despite the somewhat jarring locution ‘congestion of karma that makes its presence in flow of description, the poem, gives de-values the idea of human-centeredness; the effacing of the I that was alluded to earlier feeds into this mood. In Snyder’s lyrical nature writings, then, we see the diverse ways in which man lives in nature and nature lives in man

American poetry

So far I have been discussing the intricate relationships that exist between human beings and nature in English and American poetry and what implications they have for the understanding of the nature and significance of eco-criticism. Next I would like to focus on some Asian literary traditions which contain some of the finest nature poetry. What is interesting to note about the various Asian traditions of nature poetry such as Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Korean is the way that it bears the distinct imprint of the cultures that it inhabits.

Let us first consider classical Chinese poetry Classical Chinese poets excelled in nature writing, bringing out through their compact verbal textures newer perspectives on the nexus between man and nature. Li Po,

Tu Fu and Wang Wei are the three most celebrated Chinese poets (some years ago, I translated their poetry into Sinhala in my book Parani Cheena Kavi). Wang Wei is, perhaps, less well-known than Tu Fu or Li Po .

However, to my mind, his nature poetry which is striking in its compactness projects a distinct ecological vision that eco-critics would almost certainly find appealing.

Wang Wei (699-761 A.D) distinguished himself both as a poet and a painter and the two arts interpenetrate in his work in interesting and complex ways. From the point of view of Sri Lankan readers, an important aspect of Wang Wei’s poetry is the way it has been shaped by the Buddhist outlook. He was a practising Buddhist like his other members of the family. A sense of quietness and tranquility that ancient Chinese identified with Buddhism permeates his poetry.

Reading Wang Wei carefully, one would realise that he was deeply committed to the idea that it is very important to regard human beings as one constituent entity of the vast natural world. This conviction grows out of his understanding of the Mahayana form of Buddhism that was prevalent in China at the time. Wang Wei’s verbal depictions of the landscape bear his unmistakable presence.

However, it is important to bear in mind the fact that he does not objectify nature as some poets were wont to do, or project an image of a highly subjective poet who was dissociated from the immediacies of the natural environment that he was representing. His desire was to locate himself as an integral part of the ecological environment that he was seeking to capture,

Attachment

Wang Wei’s poetry is marked by a deep attachment to, and appreciation of, solitude in the midst of nature. Indeed this propensity is a vital part of his genius. Solitude, for him, represented a form of self-fulfillment, and this conviction connects closely with his religious outlook. He saw solitude not as something empty or vacuous but rather as a site full of potentialities. To be sure, Wang Wei’s attitude nature and solitude is complex and man-sided as one can glean from a poem like Bamboo Grove House (Translations are by G.W. Robinson)

I sit alone in the dark bamboos
Play my lute and sing and sing
Deep in the woods where no one knows I am
But the bright moon comes and shines on me there

Similarly, in the following poem titled Going at Dawn to the Pa Pass we observe the same complex appreciation of nature.

Just at dawn I set of to Pa Pass
With the last of spring I remembered the capital
In the bright river a woman was washing
With the morning sun all the birds sang
Water country, markets on boats
Mountain bridges up among the tree tops
I climbed and hundreds of villages emerged
And in the distance two rivers shone
The people spoke a peculiar dialect
Bur orioles sounded as in my own country
And lucky I know about the landscape
And that abated my feeling of isolation.

In this poem, it is evident that he was not consciously searching out solitude; it was foisted on him, but it moved him to compose a beautiful and vibrant poem.

Another aspect of Wang Wei’s poetry that modern eco-critics would find attractive is the way he invests natural phenomena with deep symbolic meaning. For example, in many of his poems he deploys the recurrent image of the white clouds to convey a complex of religious and metaphysical meaning. Let me cite toe examples. The first is titled Goodbye

Dismount and we’ll take a drink together
Where are you off to?
You say you’ve failed – retiring
To the foot of the Southern Mountains?
Well, go – and no more questions
For the white clouds there’ll never be an end.?

We find the figure of the white clouds in the following poem titled A Greeting from the Mountains to My Younger Brothers and Sisters (it is not unusual for classical Chinese poems to carry long and capaciously descriptive titles.) Many critics of classical Chinese poetry are convinced that Wang Wei is here indexing some trans-somatic and idealised land of the spirit. This image of the white clouds, it seems to me, combines his poetic and religious convictions in an alluring way.

To be continued