Romantic Nature & the Trouble with Wilderness PDF

ROMANTIC NATURES & THE TROUBLE WITH WILDERNESS JMW Turner, Hannibal and His Army Crossing the William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness” “Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, [wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation...

ROMANTIC NATURES & THE TROUBLE WITH WILDERNESS JMW Turner, Hannibal and His Army Crossing the William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness” “Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, [wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation—indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history … Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural. As we gaze into the mirror it holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires.”  Cultural reversal of the meaning of “wilderness”: 1) The Sublime (Romantic aesthetics): Vast, grand, uninhabited, landscapes and vistas are sites for witnessing God/Eternity as Nature, natural cathedrals; sites of recovery from the strain of city life ; made scarce/precious by industrialization and urbanization 2) The U.S. myth of the (vanishing) Frontier: drawing on Rousseau’s primitivism, the notion that in confronting the Wild West, European settlers had shed their decadent, corrupt ways, reinvigorated their original human/racial energy and forged an American identity based on rugged, masculine, democratic individualism  National and spiritual identities – settler/colonial identities - threatened by the “loss” of the frontier, spurring the first efforts at WILDERNESS CONSERVATION  As long as there has been a (white) environmental conservation movement in this country, its object has been Wilderness in this sense  The first protected, National Parks mirror the type of landscape exalted in Romantic aesthetics The TROUBLE with Wilderness:  Sets up an antithesis between human beings and Nature: where we are, Nature is not  Nature as Wilderness is a place “out there” that we un-natural humans go to restore our sense of vitality, perspective, spirituality, (ironically) humanity  Presumes the class and social privilege of urban elites who can “get away from it all” by visiting nature for recreation and vacation  Erases, invisibilizes, or makes enemies of people who live and work in/on the landscape, every “use” of Nature conceived as abuse  Erases the history of forced “Removal” and genocidal wars against Indigenous Americansthat changed habited places into plausibly “uninhabited” wildernesses  Represents, in general, a flight from History and from recognition of the historical entwinement of peoples and environments  Prevents us from seeing “Nature” here, wherever we actually do live, thereby blocking an environmental justice perspective that recognizes poverty, racism, Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Wanderer Above the Caspar David Friedrich, Mountain Landscape, 1822-3 Photograph by Charles Leander Wood of Yosemite Valley in 1864, the year it became a protected state park; the National Park was formed from 1890-1906. Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting These forms of beauty have not been to me, the banks of the Wye during a tour, July 13, 1798 As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din - Once again Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Which on a wild secluded scene impress Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect And passing even into my purer mind The landscape with the quiet of the sky. With tranquil restoration… The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view Nor less, I trust, These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, To them I may have owed another gift, Which, at this season, with their unripe fruits, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, Among the woods and copses lose themselves, In which the heavy and the weary weight Nor, with their green and simple hue, disturb Of all this unintelligible world The wild green landscape. Once again I see Is lightened—that serene and blessed mood, These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines In which the affections gently lead us on, Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms Until, the breath of this corporeal frame, Green to the very door; and wreathes of smoke And even the motion of our human blood Sent up in silence, from among the trees, Almost suspended, we are laid asleep With some uncertain notice, as might seem In body, and become a living soul: Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, While with an eye made quiet by the power Or of some hermit’s cave, where by his fire, Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, The hermit sits alone. (ll. 1-23) We see into the life of things. (ll. 24-49) And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, For nature then With many recollections dim and faint, (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, And their glad animal movements all gone by,) The picture of the mind revives again: To me was all I in all. – I cannot paint While here I stand, not only with the sense What I then was … Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That time is past, That in this moment there is life and food And all its aching joys are now no more, For Future years. And so I dare to hope And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Though changed, no doubt, from what I was, when first Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur: other gifts I came among these hills; when like a roe Have followed, for such loss, I would believe, I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides Abundant recompence. For I have learned Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams … (ll. 59-70) To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. (ll. 73-76, 84-94)  “The Brothers” These tourists, heaven preserve us! … Perched on the forehead of a jutting crag, Pencil in hand and book upon the knee Will look and scribble, scribble and look Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, Until a man might … on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a Reap an acre of his neighbor’s corn tour, July 13, 1798 … Oft in the piping shrouds [sails] had Leonard heard Though absent long, The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds Of caves and trees; and when the regular wind These forms of beauty have not been to me, Between the tropics fill’d the steady sail As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye: … he, in those hours But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Of tiresome indolence would often hang Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, Over the vessel’s side, and gaze and gaze, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, Flash’d round him images and hues, that wrought And passing even into my purer mind In union with the employment of his heart, With tranquil restoration… He, thus by feverish passion overcome, Even with the organs of his bodily eye, While here I stand, not only with the sense Below him, in the bosom of the deep Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts Saw mountains, saw the forms of sheep that graz’d That in this moment there is life and food On verdant hills, with dwellings among trees, For Future years. And Shepherds clad in the same country grey Which he himself had worn.* Cornelius Varley, Rye River Valley View , 1803 (view inspiring Wordsworth’s Tintern Wilderness: what might be worth “saving” “On the one hand, one my own most important environmental ethics is that people should always be conscious that they are part of the natural world, inextricably tied to the ecological systems that sustain their lives … On the other hand, I think it is no less crucial for us to recognize and honor nonhuman nature as a world we did not create, a world with its own independent, nonhuman reasons for being as it is. The autonomy of nonhuman nature seems to me an indispensable corrective to human arrogance.” (87) Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk By the Sea, 1809  The fields, the lakes the forests and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the daedal earth … The works and ways of man, their death and birth, And that of him and all that his may be; All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell. Power dwells apart in its tranquility. Remote, serene, and inaccessible: And this the naked countenance of earth, On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains Teach the averting mind. The glaciers creep Like snakes that watch their prey, from the far fountains, Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice, Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled: dome, pyramid and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower. And a wall impregnable of beaming ice. (84-105) -- Percy Shelley, “Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni” J.M.W. Turner, Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804 Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing Its destin'd path, or in the mangled soil Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; Their food and their retreat for ever gone, So much of life and joy is lost. The race Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever Rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves, Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. -- Percy Shelley, “Mont Blanc” Dizzy ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, To muse on my own separate phantasy Mont Blanc appears—still, snowy, and My own, my human mind, which passively serene; Now renders and receives fast influencings, Its subject mountains their unearthly forms Holding an unremitting interchange Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales With the clear universe around … (II.34-40) between Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread And wind among the accumulated steeps; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously Its shapes are heap'd around! rude, bare, and high, Ghastly, and scarr'd, and riven.—Is this the scene Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young Percy Shelley, from “Mont Blanc” (1817) Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea JMW Turner, St. Gothard’s Pass (1803-4) Of fire envelop once this silent snow? “Bold, overhanging, and as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piled up the vault of heaven … the boundless ocean rising with rebellious force … make our power of resistance of trifling moment in comparison with their might. But, provided our own position is secure, there aspect is all the more attractive for its fearfulness; and we readily call those objects sublime, because they raise the forces of the soul above the height of vulgar commonplace, and discover within us a power of resistance quite of another kind, which gives us courage to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature." “The irresistibility ofthe might of nature forces upon us the recognition of our physical helplessness as beings of nature, but at the same time reveals a faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of nature, and discovers a pre-eminence above nature that is the foundation of a self-preservation of quite another kind from that which may be assailed and brought into danger by external nature. This saves humanity in our own person from humiliation, even though as mortal men we have to submit to external violence. rd JMW Turner, St. Gothard’s Pass (1803-4) Edward Burtynsky, Iberia Quarries #3, Paradais, Portugal, 2006 J.M.W. Turner, Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804Edward Burtynsky, E.L. Smith Quarry,  Friedrich, Sea of Ice, 1823-4 Shipbreaking, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000 Densified Oil Drums, Hamilton, Ontario, 1997 Makrana Marble Quarry, Rajasthan, India, 2000 DISCUSSION QUESTION: How does Major Jackson’s “Pest,” or Gerald Barrax, Sr.’s “To Waste at Trees” present a version of nature that evades, counteracts, or remobilizes the troubled concept of nature as “wilderness”? LET’S PREPARE … THE UTOPIAN WORLDS’ FAIR Create groups of 10-11 people (we need 3 groups of 10, 5 groups of 11, 8 groups total) 1) Write down all your names on a sheet of paper for the Professor 2) Exchange contact info yourselves 3) Begin to brainstorm a Utopia. What might be its core principle or radical/absurd provocation? 4) Crystallize the values of your society in a single ritual, festival, or event that you could perform for Outsiders, allowing them to see the essence of your Utopia/Social Dream. 5) Consider how each of you can contribute to the performance. Roles include: Music, song, sound design  Food/cooking Set design, scenography  Animation/videography Lighting  Acting (many social roles to perform) Iconography (emblems, insignia)  Scriptwriting, dialogue Costumes  Frame narrative, metafictional elements The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. --William Wordsworth, sonnet, 1807 “THE ANTHROPOCENE”: A proposed geological epoch (like the Pleistocene) that designates the (ongoing) period of significant human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems, including, but not limited to anthropogenic climate change.  Atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen: since the Industrial Revolution, the influence of human behavior on the Earth’s geology and atmosphere has been so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch.  Dated to 1780, with the invention of the steam engine.  In fact, start dates are disputed – why not trace it back to the Agricultural Revolution millennia ago? – but key features of the concept links it – and us – indissolubly to ROMANTICISM.  The sentiment that Human History and Natural History are out of joint – our “progress” – our productive, technological transformations of the given world – are Francisco de Goya, The Colossus 1808-12 accruing unforeseen losses, casualties, and costs.