Genesis, Metamorphosis, Pastoral, Turtle Island PDF

UTOPIANISM BEFORE UTOPIA: The Golden Age, The Garden of Eden, Turtle Island & Pastoral Poetry MYTHS OF ORIGIN, EXILE, RETREAT, & RETURN “On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world were shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of...

UTOPIANISM BEFORE UTOPIA: The Golden Age, The Garden of Eden, Turtle Island & Pastoral Poetry MYTHS OF ORIGIN, EXILE, RETREAT, & RETURN “On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world were shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not be filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast. Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road to her real home in heaven.  GENESIS 1, Key features Creation by DIVISION / SEPARATION: Creation of “MAN” in God’s own image: (1:26-28) light from darkness And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our day from night likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the above from below sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Creation by performative SPEECH ACT So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be Dualism and hierarchy of SPIRIT/MATTER fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” upon the earth. God – Nature / Earth High – Low  Creation in God’s likeness immediately means … Creator – Created Heaven - Earth Form – Material Word - World - “dominion” (supreme authority, control, soverignty) Light – Darkness Spirit – Matter/Body/Flesh over the rest of creation, aka Nature  These spirit/matter binaries are not neutral. - Gender parity and gender trouble: both “male and female” are created in God’s image  In each case we know which element is superior, divine, and rules over its opposite. GENESIS 2, Summary An entirely different human creation story: The serpent – “subtlest” of the animals – Adam formed from “the dust of the suggests to the woman that the forbidden fruit won’t kill her, as God had said; ground,” into which God breathes life Rather, God had forbidden it because He God plants the Garden of Eden, knew that if they ate it, “your eyes shall be placing Adam there to “dress it and opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing keep it” Adam may freely eat of every tree good and evil.” Seeing that the tree was “good for food,” except the “tree of the knowledge of “pleasant to the eyes,” and would “make good and evil” God says it is not good for Adam to one wise,” the woman takes the fruit, eats it, and shares it with her husband. be alone; he will create a “help meet” And “the eyes of them both were opened, for him God creates the animals and birds and they knew that they were naked” and they sewed fig leaves together to cover and allows Adam to name them Yet none are his fit/proper helpmate themselves. They hear God coming and hide, which So God puts him to sleep and makes makes their guilt obvious a woman from one of Adam’s ribs God curses them and expels them from Man will therefore “cleave unto his GENESIS 2, The Curse / The Fall God curses the serpent, who will now Adam calls his wife, “Eve,” crawl in the dust and be the enemy of meaning “mother of all living” womankind God clothes them. God expels Adam from Eden, To the woman: saying: - “in sorrow thou shalt bring forth - Look, he’s become “as one of children” us,” with God-like knowledge of - “thy desire shall be to thy husband” good & evil - “he shall rule over thee” - He may next eat from the Tree To Adam: of Life and live forever - “cursed is the ground for thy sake” - “therefore the Lord God sent - “in sorrow shall thou eat of it all him forth from the garden of the days of thy life”; Eden to till the ground from - “in the sweat of thy face shall thou whence he was taken.” eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”  GENESIS 2, key themes, differences  The earthiness of Adam : - Adam made not in the Divine Image, but of dust - this being dust returns emphatically in the language of his curse, albeit in a different, punitive key - a telling of the advent of agriculture, of settlement, of going out and finding, clearing, plowing, tilling the soil - but also the future of mankind as a kind of arduous work on his own substance, a self-making - that substance, the earth, the ground, his body – Nature inside and out - is against him  The fleshiness of Eve, her DERIVATIVE, SUBOORDINATE, and ERRANT status - a secondary creation, derived from Adam’s own body, in order to help him - “flesh of my flesh” constitutes a powerful, poignant bond that rivals and disturbs the relationship to the Creator - The temptation: vulnerable to sensuous appetite, beauty/appearances, curiosity (desire to know) - Her curse chains her to bodily desire, childbirth, and her husband’s rule  Recalling the dualistic logic of Genesis 1, Adam’s superiority to Eve manifests in his Name-Giving, a masculine power of the Word over the animal and feminine Flesh. Dominion ( “subdue the land”) persists.  For both humans, curse consists of LABOR and SORROW as if these were not given, as if the original stake was one of worklessness and joy (c.f. Marvell)  The land where they find themselves – where Judeo-Christian people find themselves as their spiritual descendants - is a place of EXILE, not ORIGIN, out of which they must eke a short, bodily existence (before returning to their spiritual home).  Ovid, the Four Ages (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron) from The Metamorphoses Notion of human dominion, exceptionalism, SIMILARITIES to Genesis: and godlikeness: “An animal with higher intellect, Creation as a work of division and more noble, able—one to rule the rest: categorization that brings order to chaos: such was the living thing the earth still “A god—and nature, now become benign – lacked. ended this strife. He separated sky Then man was born.” (5) And earth, and earth and waves … Unraveling ”[Prometheus’s] mold recalled these things from their blind heap, assigning the masters of all things, the gods. And each while its place – distinct – he linked them all in all other animals are bent, head down, peace.” (3) and fix their gaze upon the ground, to man “When he—whichever god it was—arrayed he gave a face that is held high; he had that swarm, aligned, designed, allotted, made man stand erect, his eyes upon the stars. each part into a portion of a whole …” (4) So was the earth, which until then had been so rough and indistinct, transformed: Equivocations / contradictions around the it wore agency responsible(e.g., creation of man, 5-6) a thing unknown before—the human form.” - fundamental Gods/Nature equivocation in paganism: “There was no Titan Sun … no Key differences from Genesis: Polytheism: many Gods … but also many people (no particular individuals, no personal psychology) Procreation, succession in nature as metamorphosis, “bodies becoming other bodies”: transformation or shape-shifting vs. like begetting like, each “after its kind” Zero emphasis on speech, no divine fiat Indistinct causation/culpability: the succession of ages seems simply to happen; it is distinctly moralized as worse and worse, yet is nobody’s fault in particular An emphasis, however, on technological “advancement” as decline: - Silver Age: building houses, planting, plowing (agriculture and settlement) - Iron Age: shipbuilding, navigation, exploration, surveying, mapping, mining, money A thicker, richer description of the paradisal moment in the classical tradition, The Golden Age OVID: THE GOLDEN AGE That first age was an age of gold; no law Earth of itself – and uncompelled – and no compulsion then were needed; all untouched kept faith; the righteous way was freely by hoes, not torn by ploughshares, willed. offered all There were no penalties that might instill that one might need: men did not have dark fears, no menaces inscribed upon to seek: bronze tablets; trembling crowds did not they simply gathered mountain implore strawberries the clemency of judges; but, secure, and the arbutus’ fruit and cornel cherries; men lived without defenders. In those times, and thick upon their prickly stems, upon its native mountain heights, the pine blackberries; still stood unfelled; no wood had yet been and acorns fallen from Jove’s sacred tree. hauled There spring was never-ending. The soft down to the limpid waves, that it might sail breeze to foreign countries; and the only coasts of tender zephyrs wafted and caressed that mortals knew in that age were their own. the flowers that sprang unplanted, The towns were not yet girded by steep moats; without seed. there were no curving horns of brass, and no The earth, untilled, brought forth abundant yields; brass trumpets – straight, unbent; there were OVID, “Declension Narrative”: 4. IRON: Navigation, Property, Mining, Money, Gold to Silver to Bronze to Iron War And this, the worst of ages, suddenly gave way to every foul impiety; 2. SILVER: Seasonality, agriculture, earth saw the flight of faith and modesty settlement and truth—and in their place came snares and But after Saturn had been banished fraud …Jove’s rule began; deceit and force and sacrilegious the silver age is what the world knew then— love of gain. Men spread their sails before the … Jove curbed the span that spring had had winds before; …the wooden keels, which once had stood as he made the year run through four seasons’ trunks course: upon the mountain slopes, now danced upon …The air was incandescent, the unfamiliar waves. And now the ground, parched which once—just like the sunlight and the air— by blazing heat—or felt the freezing gusts, had been a common good, one all could share, congealing icicles: such heat and frost was marked and measured by the keen as earth had never known before. Men surveyor— sought – he drew the long confines, the boundaries. for the first time–the shelter of a house; Not only did men ask of earth its wealth, … Now, too, they planted seeds its harvest crops and foods that nourish us, of wheat in lengthy furrows; and beneath they also delved into the bowels of the earth: the heavy weight of yokes, the bullocks there they began to dig for what was hid groaned. …the treasures that spur men to sacrilege. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1599) A gown made of the finest wool Which from our pretty Lambs we pull; Come live with me and be my Fair lined slippers for the cold, love, With buckles of the purest gold; And we will all the pleasures prove, A belt of straw and Ivy buds, That Valleys, groves, hills, and With Coral clasps and Amber studs: fields, And if these pleasures may thee move, Woods, or steepy mountain Come live with me, and be my love. yields. And we will sit upon the Rocks, Seeing the Shepherds feed their flocks, By shallow Rivers to whose falls Melodious birds sing Madrigals. And I will make thee beds of Polarities of Pastoral (aka, court poets pretending to be shepherds) Rural – Urban (courtly, cosmopolitan) Simplicity – Sophistication, decadence Pleasure – Intellect “otium” – “negotium” Leisure – Business/ambition/striving Timelessness – Modernity, progress Folk culture – Elite culture Orality - Literacy Authenticity - Artifice Spontaneity – Technique … aka, NATURE vs. CULTURE Kimmerer, “SKYWOMAN FALLING” “She fell like a maple seed, pirouetting on an autumn breeze. A column of light streamed from a hole in the Skyworld, making her path where only darkness had been before. It took her a long time to fall. In fear, or maybe hope, she clutched a bundle tightly in her hand. Hurtling downward, she saw only dark water below. But in that emptiness there were many eyes gazing up at the sudden shaft of light. They saw there a small object, a mere dust mote in a beam. As it grew closer, they could see that it was a woman, arms outstretched, the long black hair billowing behind as she spiraled toward them. The geese nodded at one another and rose together from the water in a wave of goose music. She felt the beat of their wings as they flew beneath her to break her fall. Far from the only home she’d ever known, she caught her breath at the warm embrace of soft feathers as they gently carried her downward. And so it began.” Kimmerer, “Skywoman Falling”: Basic Similarities … 1. Falling. 2. Light illuminating darkness, definition between land and water 3. Being the last created, the most recent arrival 4. a Tree of Life 5. The experience of abundance, “filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low” (7); “wild grasses, flowers, trees, and medicines spread everywhere” (5) … and differences … - Relation to the animals: dependency, gratitude, juniority “In native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as ‘the younger brothers of Creation’ We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance.” (9) - Relation among the animals (not a thing in Genesis/Golden Age): teamwork, mutual aid, sacrifice - A fall (and a pregnancy, p.9) that is not a moral failure, not a loss of plenitude, but its beginning ; bodily generativity creates the world and the future, the earth and human-animal earthliness/fleshliness are not despised, but celebrated - Kimmerer stresses that this is an immigration story, despite the etymological/conceptual association of “indigeneity” with being born in place. “It was through her actions of reciprocity, the give and take with the land, that the original immigrant became Indigenous … becoming Indigenous to a place means living as if your children’s future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives … depended upon it” (9) - you don’t come empty handed, you share your gifts.. - CO-CREATION – receives gifts and returns them, depends upon others and sustains them - Ceremony, gratitude is consequential, world-making “Moved by the extraordinary gifts of the animals, she sang in thanksgiving and then began to dance, her feet caressing the dab of mud on “On one side of the world were people whose relationship with the living world were shaped by Skywoman, who created a garden for the well-being of all. On the other side was another woman with a garden and a tree. But for tasting its fruit, she was banished from the garden and the gates clanged shut behind her. That mother of men was made to wander in the wilderness and earn her bread by the sweat of her brow, not be filling her mouth with the sweet juicy fruits that bend the branches low. In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast. Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her