Revaluing Nature Writing: Toward Love and Flower Power
In one of the most influential essays of the ecocritical movement, “Revaluing Nature: Toward an Ecological Criticism” (published in 1990), Glen A. Love quotes from Joseph Meeker’s The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology: “Human beings are the earth’s only literary creatures…If the creation of literature is an important characteristic of the human species, it should be examined carefully and honestly to discover its influence upon human behavior and the natural environment—to determine what role, if any, it plays in the welfare and survival of mankind […].” 8 Meeker is credited with coining the phrase “literary ecology,” and because his book was published in 1972, Love, some twenty years later, questioned why the field of literature had not taken up Meeker’s concerns, why it eagerly created a forum for discussions about race, class, and gender, but remained indifferent to place. The main point of his essay is that “revaluing nature-oriented literature can help redirect us from ego-consciousness to ‘eco-consciousness.’” 9 Nearly another twenty years later, I propose that revaluing our definition of nature writing can keep us from privileging one consciousness over the other, for their relationship ought to be regarded as one of interdependence.
Manes, who seems to agree, supplies an analysis of animism and states that among “its characteristics is the belief (1) that all the phenomenal world is alive in the sense of being inspirited—including humans, cultural artifacts, and natural entities, both biological and ‘inert,’ and (2) that not only is the nonhuman world alive, but it is filled with articulate subjects, able to communicate with humans.” 10 I find it enlightening that Melquíades, the most unnatural (or supernatural) human being in One Hundred Years of Solitude, is the first character granted dialogue; and with the weight of this momentous honor on his shoulders, he says, “Things have a life of their own […]. It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.” 11 Although Macondo is not an animistic community, the fact that Melquíades believes and teaches that things have souls is a powerful statement about how the philosophy of animism—or a renewed appreciation for the interdependence of ego- and eco-consciousnesses—can provide a critical understanding of place. In Macondo, Melquíades suggests that every thing, even on planet Earth, has a soul and therefore a voice; his status as the first speaking subject serves to remind us to appreciate the responsibility of language and the privilege of being a literate species.
Let us not overlook that a Faulknerian ego-consciousness would bestow us with literature that aims to lift the heart, and that good writing, worth writing about, should be concerned with love. Together with García Márquez’s eco-consciousness and creation of a utopia of life where love proves true, it seems that the logical new category on the spectrum of nature writing ought to include certain literatures that handle love as thematic subject matter. Just as Faulkner asserts that writers must relearn the problems of the human heart, Leo Buscaglia maintains that love—because it is a learned human phenomenon (and as such, worrisome because “maybe many of us are not happy with the way we’ve learned it”)—can be relearned in such a way that a truly loving person will be able to say, “Everything is filtered through me, and so the greater I am, the more I have to give. The greater knowledge I have, the more I’m going to have to give. The greater understanding I have, the greater is my ability to teach others.” 12 Buscaglia’s Love, published in 1972, is a book inspired by his famous Love Class at the University of Southern California. I include his work here because the expanded spectrum of nature writing, as I see it, ought to recognize literature with natural representations of love. Nature writing will suddenly become more engaging to readers who may not care about flora and fauna but are likely to care about the problems, and the uplifting, of the heart.
