What I found most striking of Robinson Jeffers was his ability to blend the self-consciousness of man (though I wouldn’t say rational), with a sentient being (the hawk), and an insentient, permanent entity (the rock) into a collaborative explosive whole spectrum of emotion. “Hurt Hawks” perfectly exemplifies his theory that “poetry should be a blending of fire and earth—should be made of solid and immediate things…which are set on fire by human passion” (414). This man was on fire. His writing is sharp, and somewhat violent as he shifts the significance away from humanity towards a physical and psychological reality—an enduring and permanent truth. He expresses an indifference to man and our impermanence, and even to god (or the morality that belief in god imposes on mankind)—“I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk” (line 19). Although, at the same time, as he takes on the mentality of the hawk, he also claims that “[people] do not know him, you communal people, or have forgotten him; intemperate and savage, the hawk remembers him; beautiful and wild, the hawks, and men that are dying remember him” (lines 15-18). He seems to claiming that only the dead, the animalistic world, and the world of enduring, insentient, permanence has true excess to god—his wrath, or maybe are the only ones equipped to deal the cruel, unmerciful nature of the world.
His writing is extremely dynamic—impassioned by some force from which he seeks to make sense of, or reiterate, the physical and psychological reality of the world—reclaiming it maybe? In the author’s headnote, Jeffers is quoted saying that he would “present a certain philosophical attitude which might be called inhumanism, a shifting emphasis and significance from man to not-man” (415). A bold statement indeed, sir. Jeffers definitely seems to be a man who set himself apart from humanity—who actually disdained it, and liken himself to the mentality of a hawk—one to be feared and admired, soaring above the human race, full of violent emotions, and in-human abilities.
Excellent post, Emily. I especially like the connection you draw between the Hawk and Jeffers himself who did lead a life apart or on the margins clinging barely to the west coast of California in a stone house he build with his own hands just as he still clings on the peripheries of the literary traditions we’re studying in this class. I often wonder if Jeffers’s work will come back into vogue more in the contexts of environmental studies that de-emphasize the human role in the environment, or try to conceive of a less anthropocentric view of the world.