Nature and the Überkind

Before the question of whether poetry can save the earth can be addressed, we must first understand to what purpose the earth needs to be saved. There is no shortage of frightening statistics relaying the current dismal trajectory for our natural world. A modern prophet of the environmental movement, Bill McKibben, has spent his entire career educating the populous on the disasters modern society has wrought upon our planet. In his groundbreaking work The End of Nature, McKibben argues that Nature, as our forefather’s understood and experienced it, no longer exists today. “By the end of nature,” McKibben does not “mean the end of the world” but an end to “a certain set of human ideas about the world and our place in it” (McKibben, 8). The loss of both the physical and ontological environment that has thus far enabled homo sapiens to reach the top of the evolutionary ladder should be seen as a threat to our further evolution as a species.

As with every other species, our further evolution rests wholly on our ability to both give birth and foster future generations. Though mankind has proved immensely successful at proliferating their species (this year the world population surpassed 7 billion) we continue to lose the environment to nurture properly our descendents. While the renowned German philosopher Martin Heidegger would disagree “with the claim, accepted by most environmentalists, that human beings are clever animals” he argues in Being & Time that humans, unlike any other creature, are endowed with logos, or the power of articulating reason. “Because logos gives rise to human language, the latter is not possessed by us; instead, according to Heidegger, we are possessed by logos” (Zimmerman, 5).

By exploring the way in which different cultures instill and pass down to future generations unique understandings of Nature, John Felstiner’s Can Poetry Save the Earth? serves as a testament to Heidegger’s philosophy that mankind is “possessed by logos.” Since language is the vehicle by which humankind comes to perceive nature, language is also the tool with which humans can learn to preserve nature. Felstiner uses countless examples to show the intertwining between nature and language citing both monumentally influential examples (e.g., the Creation story of the Hebrew Bible) and examples that pertain to a sole individual, as when Helen Keller first connected the “W-A-T-E-R in her palm” with the word (Felstiner 2, 3).

Having long since crossed the evolutionary threshold in which our physical attributes alone (e.g., strength and speed) are the determinate factors in our dominance as a species, it is clear that the future development of humanity will be a reflection of the environment it inhabits. Mankind’s ingenuity, best exemplified by our capacity to master communication skills, enabled mankind first to subdue and now, it seems, to destroy the earth. In his 1965 publication Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Noam Chomsky gained international fame for popularizing the nativist theory of language acquisition. The nativist theory posits that infants have the innate mental capacity to acquire and produce language, aptly termed a “language acquisition device (LAD)”. Though by no means universally accepted as scientific fact, the nativist theory suggests that like the innate capacity of a newborn to acquire language skills so too may they have the ability to learn a language that instills qualities of ecological beneficence.

Environmental Language and Development

Reflecting on the infinite potential of the “Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight” ably illustrates how someone can instill an environmental consciousness in a future generation that may not have existed in preceding generation (line 46). In the poem, Coleridge laments his own upbringing devoid of the wonderments of nature writing, “For I was reared/ In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim, and saw nought lovely but the sky and stars” (lines 5-7). By raising his child “By lakes and sandy shores, beneath crags/ Of ancient mountains” Coleridge hopes that his son “shalt learn far other lore,/And in far other scenes!” (lines 52-3). The education that Coleridge hopes for his child is “Of that eternal language, which thy God/ Utters, who from eternity doth teach/ Himself in all, and all things in himself. (62-4). Though the “eternal language” in which Coleridge speaks of is not the same understanding of language Chomsky considers in formulating his linguistic theories regarding human language acquisition, it is not difficult to see a parallel between a child’s language development and an environmental language development.

The idea that actual language and therefore language procurement is affected by the physical environment in which that language develops is not a novel one. James McKusick’s “Coleridge and the Economy of Nature” writes of how Wordsworth, himself, believes that “The natural world is a home (oikos), a birthplace and vital habitat for language, feeling, and thought.” Furthermore, Wordsworth “suggests that all language, and therefore all human consciousness, is affected by the "forms of nature" that surround it.” McKusick goes on to write that, “Although Coleridge did not fully accept Wordsworth's theory of poetic language, he certainly shared the view that linguistic form must emerge from a distinctly local set of conditions” (McKusick, 1). Since language is a product of the environment, and children are innately gifted with the capacity to develop language, it can be argued that the development of language and the development of an appreciation for the environment are one and the same.

Poetry, itself, can be used to help illustrate the theory that actual language and environmental language development occur simultaneously. The Lucy character in William Wordsworth’s “Three Years She Grew in Sun and Shower” teaches that, with proper stimuli, we can nurture in future generations more ecologically symbiotic individuals. Using the imagery of a flower growing “in sun and shower,” Wordsworth compares the fostering of a girl to the care a gardener takes to his plants: “This child I to myself will take;/ She shall be mine, and I will make/ A lady of my own” (lines 4-6). The poem goes on to detail various qualities Wordsworth hopes to instill in the girl:

The stars of midnight shall be dear

To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,

And beauty born of murmuring sound

Shall pass into her face. (lines 20-25)

Lucy’s untimely death in the poems concluding stanza, “How soon my Lucy's race was run!/ She died, and left to me,” should not be read as resignation to the futility of trying to raise “a lady of my own” but rather how the attempt to create “a lovelier flower” can make the fosterer a better individual.

Wordsworth’s concept that even the loss of a loved one can serve to nurture the emotional development of those still living is further explored in “Old Man Traveling.” The poem tells of “a man who does not move with pain, but moves, With thought” for the man is traveling “many miles to take/ A last leave of my son…[who] is dying in an hospital (lines 6-7,18,20). Despite the tragic circumstances under which he travels, the old man shows no sign of pain or in the words of Dr. Seuss, “Nature and time have given him the gift of self-contemplation and a resulting sense of worldly understanding” (Reply: An Expostulation of Old Man Traveling). Wordsworth writes that the old man “is by nature led. To peace so perfect, that the young behold/ With envy, what the old man hardly feels” (12-4). Though the youth may envy the stoicism of the old man, the man’s ability to endure tragic events without apparent emotional distress is not necessarily an attribute we want to bestow on our children. If our youth master too early how to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, there can be no hope that future generations will take meaningful steps to rectify our current environmental calamity.

The most important environmental concept that one can instill in future generations is the totality of mankind’s connection to the earth. In his description of the Übermensch in the prologue to magnum opus Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche aptly coveys the failures of our current environmental consciousness and how we can improve upon it in the future:

"Behold, I teach you the overman! The overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go!"

(Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue)

Nietzsche, as well as many environmentalists, decries the role popular religion plays in indoctrinating society with a resignation to the promise of another world, be it heaven or hell. Though many in our current generation have sundered their own fate from the fate of the planet, this does not always have to be the case. If instilled from an early age, a people whose faithfulness to the protection of the planet may someday replace our current world of environmental inaction. Adorning the cover of Barnes & Noble’s edition of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Casper Friedrich’s painting, Wanderer Above the Sea Fog illustrates the enlightened environmental consciousness achieved by Nietzche’s Übermensch.

Closing Remarks and an Example of How Poetry Can Foster Intellectual Development

Having used poetry to explain the connection between language and environment and the importance of this connection to fostering environmental consciousness in children, I will conclude this journey from where we began. The “Introduction” of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience is the ideal example of the purpose of poetry and the potential of a single poem to foster childhood learning development. The poem begins with a child asking the poet to “Pipe a song about a Lamb” (a reference to Blake’s “The Lamb” poem in Songs of Innocence) (line 5). Elated by the poet’s song, the child repeatedly asks “Piper, pipe that song again--/ So I piped, he wept to hear.” (line 7-8). After the child gets his fill, the child asks the poet to “sit thee down and write/ In a book that all may read” (lines 13-4) and so the poet does “And I made a rural pen,/ And I stained the water clear,/ And I wrote my happy songs,/ Every child may joy to hear.” (lines 17-20). That Blake writes Songs of Innocence and of Experience for the young and the young at heart is not only evident in his use of rhyme and simple language, but also in the presentation of the poem. Blake’s original renderings of Songs of Innocence and of Experience were in beautiful color engravings. Blake’s colorful illustration of his poetry would serve to attract individuals too young yet to read or comprehend the message of the poem. An early fascination with a particular subject, in this case a poem, instills within the young mind a desire to understand someday the power of poetry.

McKusick, James C. Coleridge and the Economy of Nature. Studies in Romanticism v35 p375-92 Fall ’96. New York: https://oak.vanderbilt.edu/bbcswebdav/courses/2011.FALL.AS.ENGL.243.01/McKusick_Economy.pdf

McKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. London: Viking, 1990: 1-91. Print.

Felstiner, John. Can Poetry save the Earth ?: a Field Guide to Nature Poems. New Haven (Conn.): Yale UP, 2009. Print.

Chomsky, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge: M.I.T., 1965. Print.