For my final project, I chose to focus on the philosophies of Robinson Jeffers and the limitations of modernism that have carried over into our postmodern society in relation to ecocriticism. I believe that modernist poets, while appearing to be constructing entirely new ways of looking at the world, ignore ecocriticism and use nature as merely an illustrative backdrop for human events. I have created a Prezi in order to depict Jeffers side by side with contemporary poet Gary Snyder and our postmodern world.
Jeffers (1887-1962) is considered by many to have been a misanthrope. He lived away from the rest of society on the California coast to brood on the failures of Western civilization. His intention, through his prophetic poems and mournful lyrics, was to encourage human re-education into a species-sharing place:
“Integrity and wholeness, the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life
and things, the divine beauty of the universe.
Love that, not man
apart from that, or else you will share
man’s pitiful confusions, or drown in despair
when his days darken”
-The Answer, “Such Counsels you Gave to Me” 1937
While Jeffers is, perhaps alone, responsible for the initial evolution of dehomocentric philosophy in the United States, he is guilty of replicating the very alienation of man from the rest of nature that the dominant culture practices. In “Original Sin,” he writes, “I would rather be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.” This distinction between man and nature is the very idea that has caused the disdain toward nature in Western culture. Lynn White, in his “The Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” explains that Christianity is to blame for this Western sentiment through the biblical description of God giving man dominion over all creatures. The land became ours to do what we wished with it, and all creatures were to be considered subordinate. Jeffers maintains a focus on “the problem of civilization,” while entertaining the possibility that humanity itself is an evolutionary error.
Gary Snyder (1950-present) shares this idea of humanity as a “botched experiment,” but unlike Jeffers, who acts as an “arhat” (according to Snyder himself) seeking and winning enlightenment for himself alone, Snyder acts as a “bodhisattva.” Snyder feels that it is much easier and less demanding to stand alone, as Jeffers did, rather than shouldering the responsibility of persuading others and bringing them also to enlightenment. The enlightenment that Snyder seeks is a maturity of humanity to the point of recognizing our wholeness as a biosphere, and thus placing equal value on nature and man.
Today, our world is an irreducibly postmodern world produced by an intrusive media. Mainstream theory and criticism resist ecological concerns. Poets like Wendell Berry, A.R. Ammons, and Adrienne Rich are working to prove that environmental poetry is as theoretically sophisticated as postmodern poetry by integrating aspects of postmodern socialist criticism and “derrida,” or deconstruction, Contemporary poets should accept the deconstructive assertion that there is nothing outside the text, thus brining about in the reader the fusion of the self and the world, man and nature.
Work Cited:
Jeffers, Robinson. The Selected Poetry Of Robinson Jeffers [Electronic Resource] / Edited By Tim Hunt. n.p.: Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2001., 2001. Library Catalog.
Murphy, Patrick D., 1951-. “Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder, And The Problem Of Civilization.” Robinson Jeffers & A Galaxy Of Writers (1995): 93-107. Essay and General Literature Index (H.W. Wilson).
Robinson Jeffers And A Galaxy Of Writers : Essays In Honor Of William H. Nolte / Edited By William B. Thesing. n.p.: Columbia, S.C. : University of South Carolina Press, c1995., 1995. Library Catalog.
Scigaj, Leonard M. “Contemporary Ecological And Environmental Poetry Différance Or Référance?.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies In Literature & Environment 3.2 (1996): 1. Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File.
White Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots Of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155.3767 (1967): 1203. Publisher Provided Full Text Searching File.