H05017 R. MABEY ON NATURE - 3/1/05 - HARDY FORUM ARCHIVES ____________________________________________________________________________
From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: Mabey& Hardy
Date: March 1, 2005 9:39:23 AM PST
I came across this in an essay called 'Biophobia' by Richard Mabey and I
thought fellow Hardy enthusiasts might appreciate it:
"In conservation itself, the word 'nature', with all its ambivalence and
protean richness, has been abandoned in favour of the dispassionate
'biodiversity', with its solemn species tallies and 'endangerment indices'.
In literature, a tradition of celebrating our dwelling in nature, a lineage
that stretched from Gilbert White's Selborne and Hardy's novels to Ted
Hughes' poetry and J. A. Baker's indescribable The Peregrine, has been
replaced by a vapid and repetitive strain of guidebooks and pop science
volumes whose overriding message is that we already know all those
'innermost secrets'."
Patrick Roper
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From: schweikr@localnet.com
Subject: Re: Mabey& Hardy
Date: March 1, 2005 6:26:56 PM PST
Patrick Roper calls attention to what, at least for me, has
been an unnoticed linguistic shift in public discourse from
"nature" to "biodiversity" (and, I suppose, a host of other variant
terms). Of course, as Patrick implies, Hardy would be the
last to suggest that "we already know all [the] 'innermost secrets'"
of nature, and, it goes without saying that writings today on "biodiversity"
and the like surely lack literary quality and some, no doubt, are written
with an air of too great assurance.
But I'm less confident, however, that this linguistic shift is as pernicious
as Patrick suggests, or that Hardy would not welcome even
those clumsy and possibly misguided efforts to protect the extermination of
species. His imagination was certainly caught not by some general "nature"
"with all its ambivalence and protean richness"--though he was certainly aware
of that--but by that multitude of particulars embodied in his memorable
evocations of even its smallest individuals--of humble toads, of
ephemera in a pool, of vividly characterized insects on his writing table. He
had a remarkable affection for living things.
And, given his well-known opposition to thoughtless cruelty toward
animals, particularly the most helpless, I cannot imagine that he would have
any less concern for the thoughtless endangerment of species--however
much he might have lamented the unliterary clumsiness of those
attempting to preserve them.
Bob Schweik
Robert Schweik
University Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
State University of New York
Fredonia, NY 14063
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com
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From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: Mabey& Hardy
Date: March 2, 2005 8:31:03 AM PST
Bob Schweik wrote an interesting response to my posting about Mabey & Hardy.
The point that Richard Mabey was trying to make, and it could not be
properly appreciated without reading his whole essay, is that modern
'presenters' of nature seem to need to hype it up a great deal more than
writers like TH. The public, he argues, prefers to see nature as a kind of
alien fantasy rather than a thing of wonder and beauty of which we are part.
Mabey's essay, btw, is on line here:
http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/issues/mabey220.htm
While TH is not a wildlife writer in the sense that Gilbert White or Richard
Jeffries were, one feels the profound understanding of and sympathy for the
natural world that is shot through his work.
I am sure there are still people who can, and do, write well about nature,
but today they are unlikely perhaps to be employed by the major TV networks
to script their wildlife series. I feel that TH, for all his skill and
knowledge, might have shared this fate.
I know all this sounds like the 'grumpy old man' syndrome but I do fear the
consequences of a failure to understand and appreciate nature through having
it misrepresented and poorly described.
When I am out at dusk, as I am every summer, here in England, looking for
'snakes and efts' and the 'dewfall hawk comes crossing the shades' I will
feel the spirit of Hardy walking beside me rather than the latest high-tech
TV offering on the private lives of these gentle creatures. Much of our
modern concern for conservation is, I feel sure, derived from these past
writers who lived and worked in a much richer, less threatened countryside
and I just hope their voices can continue to be heard above the sometimes
depressing clamour of the modern world. (Oh dear, I am a grumpy old man.
My excuse is that it has been snowing all day and I am cold).
Patrick Roper
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From: Rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: RE: Mabey& Hardy
Date: March 2, 2005 11:30:55 AM PST
Patrick --when I am out at dusk, as I am year-round to coop-up my hens for the night (we have possums and raccoons, not snakes and efts), I look to see how much their feed has been demolished by the squirrels (who no longer hibernate -- at least, not in this city), and where that skunk stink is coming from. One side benefit to having chickens in my (um) biodiverse garden, who get along famously with the wild birds - sharing the scattered corn -- is that not only do they eat mosquito larvae and other bugs but, now being full-grown, also chase off the squirrels. Will this mean that I'll finally get to eat the peaches and plums from my fruit trees this summer (normally devoured by these arboreal rodents)? It's high time there was less of Nature's "anarchy loosed upon the world," -- in my city backyard anyway!
Rosemarie
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From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: Mabey& Hardy
Date: March 3, 2005 4:54:42 AM PST
Well it may mean you get to eat peaches and plums, but there is never any
guarantee. Apart from the daily "loosed anarchy" there are very long
natural cycles - maybe a thousand years or more - before truly wild habitats
cycle back to square one and start again. I think TH understood these long
time-scales as is, perhaps, borne out by his celebrated passage of Knight
clinging to the cliff in PBE.
Indeed, I was somewhat reminded of your back yard re-reading the following:
"the mastodon, the hippopotamus, the tapir, antelopes of monstrous size, the
megatherium, and the myledon--all, for the moment, in juxtaposition.
Further back, and overlapped by these, were perched huge-billed birds and
swinish creatures as large as horses. Still more shadowy were the sinister
crocodilian outlines--alligators and other uncouth shapes, culminating in
the colossal lizard, the iguanodon. Folded behind were dragon forms and
clouds of flying reptiles: still underneath were fishy beings of lower
development; and so on ...."
We too have squirrels, grey ones from North America but, as you say, no
possums or racoons. Southern England is, however, seeing the return of the
polecat (which I understand is an alternative name for the skunk in North
America). Like skunks they are very smelly and great chicken run raiders.
They would have died out, or rather been trapped out, in Dorset during TH's
lifetime and I expect he would be pleased to hear that they are now
returning to his beloved county. See here:
http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=news&id=938
Patrick Roper
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