Перший млинчик із Торо)

Читаю "Волден". Стільки всього повязано з цією книгою.
Наприклад, парадокс: раніше я вважала Торо нудним моралістом, а Вітмена - гуморним і квітучим. Тепер багато в чому навпаки.
Ще я пригадую постмодерне читання. Влітку роздрукувала собі "Волден" і привезла на табір просто неба у Швейцарію. Табір був повязаний зі змінами клімату. Другого ж дня листки безнадійно перемішалися. За тиждень частиною листків довелося розпалювати пічку (тобто пристосовуватися до тих-таки злощасних змін клімату). Коротше, я читала 131 сторінку після 22, а там і 49. І нічого, читалося))
Одна професорка відкоментила це так: "Now, it is true postmodern reading")
А тепер - ближче до тіла.
У романтиків є категорія піднесеного (англійською це крсивий термін із подвійним дном - я би переклала радше як "невловиме" - sublime). Якщо говорити саме про англофонне поняття, воно, мені здається може бути застосованим до тих речей, які людина сама в собі не може вловити, але які вирішальні для сексульності, таланту і таке інше (тобто і для прописування себе в тексті природи - сформулюємо це так). Різні романтики по-різному розбудовували стосунки з цією штукою. Хтось намагався опанувати, хтось творчо використати. Торо - фіфті-фіфті: він, з одного боку, практикує самообмеження, з іншого - це приносить йому задоволення. Близько до гибинної екології Наесса, яка базується на розширенні "я" до всіх живих істот (хоч і не воно). В будь-якомй разі, дуже важлива річ саме в етичному плані оце саблайм.
А от у Канта піднесене - це своєрідна категорія явищ природи, які викликають у людини жах, повагу і ем... піднесення (пошукаю цитату - в мене була, саме з Канта, не Бориса Борисовича)). І найголовніша її функція - естетична. Треба про це думати.

Джон Берроуз: погляд реаліста на міфофітоніми))

Джон Берроуз, про якого пише Б'юел, був ученим і трошки критиком у часи розквіту американського реалізму. Він написав проникливий текст "Про природу й поетів" на тему того, як некоректно з погляду біології поети-сучасники й романтики користувались образами птахів, рослин тощо. Виявилося, що часто образність американців напряму передерта з англійської поезії (деякі птахи прямо поводяться відповдно до англійських, а не американських реалій). Благородному обуренню пана Джона нема меж. Із цього можна було б зробити висновок, що дослідник цінував більш екологічну грамотність, ніж поетичну майстерність, і все ж... У кінці він робить консервативний пасаж про те, що природа для поета (образ поета збірний - це і Блейк з його нехіттю до природи, і Теннісон із розумінням) лише матеріал, і не варто чекати від поетів нічого істотнішого, ну, він сам розуміє, але ж судіть самі, це безграмотно - писати про жовту фіалку, що вона пахне.
Кілька моїх міркувань про українців - і будуть цитати)
Прерогатива говорити від імені реальності (як воно все насправді) робить нас сильними. Тому іноді екологічна грамотність стає зброєю в руках критиків проти письменників, а письменників проти попередників (тут у звязку з темою диплому не зайве сказати про блумівську ідею страху впливу). Приклад - те, як жінки-авторки романів про фронтир вистьобують і обігрують стереотипи природи з маскулінних по суті романів про захід (приклад - Мері Остін і Брет Гарт). Мені відразу згадується Зеров, який написав колись шпильку Шевченкові, що, мовляв, тополя - дерево не українське за походженням, дарма ви отак, пане кобзарю, зробили з неї національний символ. Або Вільде, яка весь час імпліцитно критикує стереотипи простору в Кобилянської: жінка в лісі за містом у Вільде не вільна й не щаслива, а ще й ущипливо каже: от як містянии люблять поїхати за 10км від міста й уявляти себе дикунами. Я більше ніж переконана, що такого багато можна накопати і в Домонтовича, але навмисне не шукала. Ще згадалося, що критики завжди кидали помідорами в Сосюру за фактологічну некоректність (у нього багато історичних і географічних ляпсусів, якщо писав не про рідний край).
Мій Свідзінський у цьому плані повівся дуже грамотно й розіграв ту карту, яку Бюел дуже цінує в Торо, тільки розіграв краще. Він увесь час наголошує на тому, як бажане від природи й дійсне в ній не збігаються. Магія і шарм цієї поезії полягає в тому, що магічне підпорядкування природи або недопрацьовує, або працює не на руку магу. "Не мріє іволга співати в садах коралів під водою". То у нього купа міфологічних і ще Бог знає яких алюзій у двох рядках, а то цілком конткретні образи, про які можна здогадатися, що це вони, тільки побувавши в лісі чи в полі, слово честі (я колись так у походах несподівано познаходила дуже реальні референти цих модерністських рядків). І ще не раз писали про те, що оце звернення до природи - своєрідна форма ескапізму від агресивного й політизованого режиму, смішні речі навіть писали (але прихований меседж такий, що екологічна грамотність робить людину сильнішою).
А ось нарешті й те, до чого я це все.
Eckermann could instruct Goethe in ornithology, but could not Goethe instruct Eckermann in the meaning and mystery of the bird?
for as a rule, the greater the poet, the more correct and truthful will be his specifications
We have several varieties of blackbirds, it is true; but when an American poet speaks in a general way of the blackbird piping or singing in a tree, as he would speak of a robin or a sparrow, the suggestion or reminiscence awakened is always that of the blackbird of English poetry.

"In days when daisies deck the ground,
And blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound
To see the coming year"--
sings Burns. I suspect that the English reader of even some of Emerson's and Lowell's poems would infer that our blackbird was identical with the British species.

The cuckoo is a bird that figures largely in English poetry, but he always has an equivocal look in American verse, unless sharply discriminated. We have a cuckoo, but he is a great recluse; and I am sure the poets do not know when he comes or goes, while to make him sing familiarly like the British species, as I have known at least one of our poets to do, is to come very wide of the mark. Our bird is as solitary and joyless as the most veritable anchorite.
In like manner the primrose is an exotic in American poetry, to say nothing of the snowdrop and the daisy. Its prominence in English poetry can be understood when we remember that the plant is so abundant in England as to be almost a weed, and that it comes early and is very pretty.
By cowslip, our poets and writers generally mean the yellow marsh marigold, which belongs to a different family of plants, but which, as a spring token and a pretty flower, is a very good substitute for the cowslip. Our real cowslip, the shooting star, is very rare, and is one of the most beautiful of native flowers.
Another flower, which I suspect our poets see largely through the medium of English literature and invest with borrowed charms, is the violet. The violet is a much more winsome and poetic flower in England than it is in this country, for the reason that it comes very early and is sweet-scented; our common violet is not among the earliest flowers, and it is odorless.
When they name a flower or a tree or a bird, whatever halo of the ideal they throw around it, it must not be made to belie the botany or the natural history. I doubt if you can catch Shakespeare transgressing the law in this respect, except where he followed the superstition and the imperfect knowledge of his time, as in his treatment of the honey- bee.
Nature is of course universal, but in the same sense is she local and particular,--cuts every suit to fit the wearer, gives every land an earth and sky of its own, and a flora and fauna to match. (це банальний, але важливий додаток до теми національного партикуляризму, вираженому через природу)
The poet is also a little unfaithful to the lore of his boyhood when he says
"The partridge beats his throbbing drum"
in midsummer. As a rule, the partridge does not drum later than June, except fitfully during the Indian summer, while April and May are his favorite months. And let me say here, for the benefit of the poets who do not go to the woods, that the partridge does not always drum upon a log; he frequently drums upon a rock or a stone wall, if a suitable log be not handy, and no ear can detect the difference. His drum is really his own proud breast, and beneath his small hollow wings gives forth the same low, mellow thunder from a rock as from a log. Bryant has recognized this fact in one of his poems.
Our poets are quite apt to get ahead or behind the season with their flowers and birds. It is not often that we catch such a poet as Emerson napping. He knows nature, and he knows the New England fields and woods, as few poets do.
His "Titmouse" is studied in our winter woods, and his "Humble-Bee" in our summer fields. He has seen farther into the pine-tree than any other poet; his "May-Day" is full of our spring sounds and tokens; he knows the "punctual birds," and the "herbs and simples of the wood:"
Yet he was not always an infallible observer; he sometimes tripped up on his facts, and at other times he deliberately moulded them, adding to, or cutting off, to suit the purposes of his verse.
(А от просто цікавий факт) . To help the young bird forth would insure its speedy death. It is not true, either, that the parent shoves its young from the nest when they are fully fledged, except possibly in the case of some of the swallows and of the eagle. The young of all our more common birds leave the nest of their own motion, stimulated probably by the calls of the parents, and in some cases by the withholding of food for a longer period than usual.
In "The Song of the Sower" our poet covers up part of the truth with the grain. The point and moral of the song he puts in the statement, that the wheat sown in the fall lies in the ground till spring before it germinates; when, in fact, it sprouts and grows and covers the ground with "emerald blades" in the fall
Both Bryant and Longfellow put their spring bluebird in the elm, which is a much better place for the oriole,--the elm-loving oriole.
Longfellow is perhaps less close and exact in his dealings with nature than any of his compeers, although he has written some fine naturalistic poems, as his "Rain in Summer," and others. When his fancy is taken, he does not always stop to ask, Is this so? Is this true?
Whittier gets closer to the bone of the New England nature. He comes from the farm, and his memory is stored with boyhood's wild and curious lore
But there is seldom a false note in any of Whittier's descriptions of rural sights and sounds.
Nature's strong and striking effects are best rendered by closest fidelity to her. Listen and look intently, and catch the exact effect as nearly as you can. It seems as if Lowell had done this more than most of his brother poets. (про важливість досвіду контакту)
Tennyson is said to have very poor eyes, but there seems to be no defect in the vision with which he sees nature, while he often hits the nail on the head in a way that would indicate the surest sight. True, he makes the swallow hunt the bee, which, for aught I know, the swallow may do in England.
Whitman is less local than the New England poets, and faces more to the West. But he makes himself at home everywhere, and puts in characteristic scenes and incidents, generally compressed into a single line, from all trades and doings and occupations, North, East, South, West, and identifies himself with man in all straits and conditions on the continent. Like the old poets, he does not dwell upon nature, except occasionally through the vistas opened up by the great sciences, as astronomy and geology, but upon life and movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history here and there,--the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron, the razor-billed auk, the lone wood duck, the migrating geese, the sharp-hoofed moose, the mockingbird "the thrush, the hermit," etc.,--to help locate and define his position. Everywhere in nature Whitman finds human relations, human responsions. (до речі, важливо, як Берроуз цінує локальність. Глобальність може бути знаряддям антропоцентризму. Або причиною)
There is nothing in nature but what the beholder supplies. Does the sculptor interpret the marble or his own ideal? Is the music in the instrument, or in the soul of the performer? Nature is a dead clod until you have breathed upon it with your genius. You commune with your own soul, not with woods or waters; they furnish the conditions, and are what you make them. Did Shelley interpret the song of the skylark, or Keats that of the nightingale? They interpreted their own wild, yearning hearts. The trick of the poet is always to idealize nature,--to see it subjectively. You cannot find what the poets find in the woods until you take the poet's heart to the woods. He sees nature through a colored glass, sees it truthfully, but with an indescribable charm added, the aureole of the spirit. A tree, a cloud, a bird, a sunset, have no hidden meaning that the art of the poet is to unlock for us. Every poet shall interpret them differently, and interpret them rightly, because the soul is infinite. (у цьому пасажі є два цікавих нюанси: один, що все одно поети ніколи не інтерпретують природи, а другий, що нескінченність комбінацій, у яких може вловити природу геній поета, множинність, є цінною).

Алдо Леопольд, Етика землі

Це есе - уривок (причому прикінцевий - це найідеологічніша частина) з дуже відомої книжки цього послідовника Торо Sand County Almanac (1949). Алдо Леопольд - відомий еколог, зокрема дослідик лісів. До нього дуже часто звертаються екокритики, яких я читала (Глотфелті, Б'юел, Геррард та інші). Міркування певною мірою суголосні ідеї "письма про довкілля", запропонованій Б'юелом, що вже спонукає замиситися про глибинний звязок в екокритиці між ЕТИКОЮ і поЕТИКОЮ)) Цікаво, що це есе я прочитала не так заради диплому, як... для роботи. І воно виявилось незайвим.
This extension of ethics, so far studied only by philosophers, is actually a process in ecological evolution. Its sequence may be described in ecological as well as in philosophic terns. An ethic, ecologically, is a limitation on freedom action in the struggle for existence. An ethic, philosophically is a differentiation of social from anti-social conduct.
The first ethics dealt with the relation between individuals; the Mosaic Decalogue is an example. Later accretions dealt with the relation between the individual and society. The Golden Rule tries to integrate the individual to society, democracy to integrate social organization to the individual.
There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property.
The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if I read the evidence correctly, an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity.
Ethics are possibly a kind of community instinct in-the-making.
The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.
Many historical events, hitherto explained solely in terms of human enterprise, were actually biotic interactions between people and land. The characteristics of the land determined the facts quite as potently as the characteristics of the men who lived on it.
Consider, for example, the settlement of the Mississippi valley.
This said to farmers, in effect: we, the Public, will furnish you free technical service and loan you specialized machinery, if you will write your own rules for land-use. Each county may write its own rules, and they will have the force of law. Nearly all the counties promptly organized to accept the proffered help, but after a decade of operation, no county has yet written a single rule.
Land-use ethics are still governed wholly by economic self-interest, just as social ethics were century ago.
One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives is that most members of the land community have no economic value. Wildflowers and songbird are examples. Of the 22,000 higher plants and animals native to Wisconsin, it is doubtful whether more than 5 per cent can be sold, fed, eaten, or otherwise put to economic use Yet these creatures are members of the biotic community, and if (as I believe) its stability depends on its integrity they are entitled to continuance.
Lack of economic value is sometimes a character not only of species or groups, but of entire biotic communities: marshes, bogs, dunes, and 'deserts' are examples.
An ethic to supplement and guide the economic relation to land presupposes the existence of some mental image of land as a biotic mechanism. We can be ethical only in relation to something we can see, feel, understand, love, or otherwise have faith in.
The image commonly employed in conservation education is 'the balance of nature.' For reasons too lengthy to detail here, this figure of speech fails to describe accurately what little we know about the land mechanism. A much truer image is the one employed in ecology: the biotic pyramid
Each successive layer depends on those below it for food and often for other services, and each in turn furnishes food and services to those above. Proceeding upward, each successive layer decreases in numerical abundance.
Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.
When a change occurs in one part of the circuit, many other parts must adjust themselves to it. Change does not necessarily obstruct or divert the flow of energy; evolution is a long series of self-induced changes, the net result of which has been to elaborate the flow mechanism and to lengthen the circuit. Evolutionary changes, however, are usually slow and local. Man's invention of tools has enable him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity and scope.
This thumbnail sketch of land as an energy circuit conveys three basic ideas:
1. That land is not merely soil.
2. That the native plants and animals kept the energy circuit open; others may or may not,
3. That man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary changes, and have effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen
Western Europe, then, has a resistant biota. Its inner processes are tough, elastic, resistant to strain.
The combined evidence of history and ecology seems to support one general deduction: the less violent the man made changes, the greater the probability of successful readjustment in the pyramid. Violence, in turn, varies with human population density; a dense population requires more violent conversion
Professor Weaver proposes that we use prairie flowers to re-flocculate the wasting soils of the dust bowl; who knows what purpose cranes and condors, otters and grizzlies may some day be used?
A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land. Health is the capacity of the land for self-renewal. Conservation is our effort to understand and preserve this capacity.
Scientific agriculture was actively developing before ecology was born, hence a slower penetration of ecological concepts might be expected.
It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for land and a high regard for its value. By value, I of course mean something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the philosophical sense.
. Your true modern is separate from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow.
The 'key-log' which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for an ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
The fallacy the economic determinists have tied around our collective neck, and which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land-use. This is simply not true.